Low Effort, Big Impact: SEO Work You Actually Have Time For

In this Follow Through Friday episode, Crystal Waddell (that's me!) revisits her discussion with Holly Homer and  walks listeners through her process of improving a dedicated page on her e-commerce website for senior athlete posters. 

She shares practical tips on reusing content, internal linking, and leveraging quick SEO wins to create a user-friendly page while managing time constraints. Crystal demonstrates how small, actionable steps can bring big results for your website's SEO strategy.

Key Takeaways:

1. Content Optimization Matters: You can elevate existing content by repurposing images, videos, and text into structured assets.
2. Quick SEO Wins: Highlighting existing customer examples, creating collages, and adding clear CTAs can enhance pages quickly without heavy lifting.
3. The Power of Internal Linking: Linking to specific pages (like “softball posters”) improves navigation and boosts SEO.
4. Reuse and Repurpose: Use tools like Canva for creating visual collages and videos to showcase your product offerings.
5. Give Your Pages a Job: Define the role of every page, button, and piece of content to guide user journeys effectively.

Episode Highlights:

• “Give every page a job: What's the customer's job? What's the page's job? What's the button's job?”
• “I love playing around with ChatGPT—it helps me optimize content with a simple checklist and actionable ideas.”
• “Low effort, high impact content ideas are ideal when you’re time-poor.”

Listener Action Items:

1. Audit Your Website Pages: Identify content that can be optimized or repurposed for better SEO results.
2. Create Quick SEO Wins: Highlight existing examples, add strong CTAs, and make small internal link updates to drive traffic.
3. Brainstorm with AI Tools: Use ChatGPT or similar tools to generate actionable ideas when you're short on time.
4. Repurpose Content: Combine existing visuals and videos into new assets using tools like Canva.
5. Contact Crystal for SEO Help: Visit simpleandsmartseo.com for a strategy that aligns with your budget.

If you’re a small business looking to improve your SEO strategy on a budget, Crystal would love to help! Visit simpleandsmartseo.com to connect.

Transcript

Introduction and Catch-Up

[00:00:00] Crystal Waddell: , Welcome back to the Simple and Smart SEO show podcast. This is Follow Through Fridays. I know I said there was not going to be any more episodes this year, but what I'm doing right now is I'm playing catch up from. All of it sounds like I would say I'm playing mustard, but I am catching up on all of the follow through Friday episodes that I have not made for this third season.

Content Optimization for SEO

[00:00:21] Crystal Waddell: So today I'm revisiting the episode with Holly Homer. Holly came on and she was talking about content optimization for SEO. And adding like structured assets to make your existing content even better. 

[00:00:37] And so there was a few different things that I could have done from her episode. I'll just name a couple of them. I could have did content optimization for SEO, which is the one that I chose.

[00:00:46] And I'll show you my thought process on that. I could have built and used an editorial calendar.

[00:00:52] Another thing was to work on leveraging email lists for traffic.

[00:00:57] And then another thing was internal linking for the user journey. Now, that 1 was super good. 

[00:01:03] I'm definitely putting it on the never ending to do list. But I decided to choose the first option, which was content optimization for SEO. 

[00:01:13] Because I had it on the never ending to do list to update a page on my website that really targeted athlete posters.

[00:01:22] So for those of you who don't know, I have an e commerce store called collage and wood. com. 

[00:01:27] I am an artist that designs digital posters and physical posters with Photoshop. And I use the photos of people's kids. When they're participating in sports.

[00:01:38] So every senior year, there's this event called senior night for every sport. 

[00:01:43] And usually on senior night, people will give gifts and flowers, and sometimes they will give things that I make, which are like giant posters or photo collages on the Jersey number of the player. 

[00:01:54] So anyway, posters have been something that I really like because I can design them in Photoshop.

[00:01:59] And then I send them to a third party printer for print on demand. 

[00:02:02] Where they print and frame everything. And ship to my client. So you can see how that really frees me up time wise. 

Creating the Hall of Fame Page

[00:02:09] Crystal Waddell: So I wanted to create a dedicated page where I could do like a hall of fame for all of the people who've ordered posters.

[00:02:17] So over the last few years, I've made like over 500 posters and I don't have them all mocked up. But I came up with some workarounds that I want to show you today. 

[00:02:25] I'm actually going to share my screen a little bit. 

[00:02:27] I brainstormed with chat GPT on this. I was like, okay, what can I do based on these options? And chat gave me back some great ideas, but guess what? They all took a lot of time that I don't have. 

[00:02:38] The great news is, I told chat, I was like, I need something that I could do a little bit faster because I am time poor. And I love this term that I heard from someone where they talked about like different things being a heavy lift.

[00:02:50] And I was like, I don't want any heavy lifting, with the workload. 

[00:02:54] So chat gave me some general quick wins that I could do. And one of them was highlight existing customer examples. And that fit in perfect with my whole hall of fame poster idea. And if you're in the SEO squad, you've heard me talk about this before.

[00:03:11] Another thing was a quick video tour, which is something I still need to do! 

[00:03:15] Because one thing I've noticed is my target customer is very intimidated uploading the images. And so I really need to come up with a better plan for that, but that is for another day.

[00:03:26] And on that other day, I'm going to use my phone to record a walkthrough of how to do it.

[00:03:33] And then the third thing was like creating a CTA based lead magnet. And I was like you know what? I really want to do this poster hall of fame. 

Implementing Quick Wins

[00:03:42] Crystal Waddell: So the reason why this idea worked is because number one, it's low effort. And It reuses existing content, product images, and essentially texts that I already have.

[00:03:53] It's high impact because it's got clear calls to action that drive people directly to the product page where they can order. And it's repurpose friendly. 

[00:04:01] You'll see in a minute that I actually reused a video that I'd already created. I used images that I had either downloaded or pictures that people had sent me.

[00:04:12] And I put it in a Canva collage. And I'm really excited because I feel like I really maximize like my use of time, the assets that I already have. And I can build on it in the future. So just in case you don't know, I love playing around with chat, GPT.

[00:04:27] And if you're watching the video, you're going to see me show you guys this. I've created a GPT that helps me on page SEO. 

[00:04:35] And it gives me things to do, based on a checklist that I created within the GPT. 

[00:04:41] So for instance Heather Physioc was at the Brighton SEO conference in 2023, and she talked about SEO in relationship to jobs to be done.

[00:04:52] And so I've never forgotten that. 

[00:04:54] Give every page a job. 

[00:04:55] Break everything down to a job, what's the customer's job, what's the pages job, what's the button shop. I think about what. Job is everything on my website supposed to do. 

[00:05:05] So, with that in mind, I then created a new page based on this and that's what I'm going to share with you now.

[00:05:13] So let me grab it. 

[00:05:14] One thing that's really important to note about this page is that it's built in Shopify. And Shopify has these theme pages. 

[00:05:24] There's not a lot of flexibility within the actual page. But you can go into the templates in the online store section and you can modify.

[00:05:33] Let me show you the default page. Okay.

[00:05:36] This is what the page looked like when I started. All right. It was hidden because it was ugly and stupid. And I didn't really know what to do with it. 

[00:05:42] But I had put in the title of the page, make it a hall of fame page. And so I'd made that note to myself months ago and I'm now following up.

[00:05:50] Thank you, Holly. Okay. So I'm going to stop sharing this and go back to what it looks like now.

[00:05:57] So now we're where, what the page looks like now. So you can see it's just, it's a lot. Better looking, right? Cause there's this giant picture here and I probably could put some more text over here or whatever, but I didn't. 

[00:06:10] So one thing that chat and I were talking about is okay what could we do as a good headline?

[00:06:15] What would be some good text under that? And what would be a good call to action? 

[00:06:20] So that's what I did here. 

[00:06:22] I have a picture of a poster telling people to celebrate your athlete's journey with stunning senior posters. And then the text under it is find the coolest designs to replicate and start creating your senior night gift today. 

[00:06:33] Because I want people to understand, look, this is for somebody else, but you can make it your own.

[00:06:38] And so then there's a call to action button that says, get started on your senior gift. When you click it, it takes you to this sports poster page where you can actually order the poster. Okay? 

[00:06:48] So let's go back over here. Now, the next thing I did was I created a collage of all of these different posters that I've made over the years.

[00:06:58] So I did three different collages because that's about how many pictures I had in Canva.

[00:07:03] There's a collage of all those poster designs. And then I have another header that says 500 plus posters designed for athletes across the U S. And then I have links to specific posters.

[00:07:16] So say softball posters, there's like a little blip underneath here about softball posters and the middle there's basketball posters. And on the right there's football posters. So I'm just going to click the softball posters. 

[00:07:29] And you can see it takes you to the softball posters order page. 

[00:07:34] I'd already made those order pages, but now there's some more internal linking going on my site.

[00:07:39] And then of course there's the explore all athlete posters, because I don't have pages for every sports poster just yet. 

[00:07:46] So for those guys, they're still grouped under the main athlete sports poster pages. So then I have another collage here of all of the posters that we've made. And then there's a little section here that says why collage and wood?

[00:08:01] And this was suggested again by chat. So it just tells people that, Hey, every collage is unique. Your number, your pictures, your design, and you get to approve it before it's made. 

[00:08:10] Which a lot of times if people buy from others, say on Etsy, you get what you get and you don't throw a fit.

[00:08:16] But with me, I design it, I send it to you, you approve it. And so that's cool. 

[00:08:21] Those are a couple of the why I think people would enjoy purchasing from my company. And then there's a section that says how to. order custom athlete posters from collage and wood.

[00:08:32] This is a YouTube video that I already created that tells you what is the process ordering from collage and wood? First, you choose what type of collage you want the, and there I am. 

[00:08:43] I probably could have used just a straight poster one. But I did want to let people know that in case you didn't know, I also make these photo numbers.

[00:08:52] And so then I have my final collage of all of these different posters that I've designed. And I put on there, do you have three plus weeks until senior night? And then I put, there's still time to order, start yours now. 

[00:09:04] So that is the structure of my new page. 

[00:09:09] It killed a lot of birds with one stone because I did some internal linking.

[00:09:13] I created a new page that I really had wanted to create for awhile. 

[00:09:16] Was it as in depth as I really want it to be? No, but it's a step in the right direction. 

[00:09:22] And it's something that I can at least cross off that never ending to do list. The other thing that's great is because I have that GPT that I created with chat GPT. 

[00:09:32] I have my checklist of things that I want to add to it to make it even better, make it more helpful content, make it even better for the person on the other side of the screen.

Final Thoughts and Encouragement

[00:09:41] Crystal Waddell: That's what I did for Holly Homer's follow through Fridays. 

[00:09:45] It took me a minute, but I got there. And so I hope that encourages that even if you don't have time right away, if you can just make a note of it.

[00:09:53] And then one day when you actually do have a spare moment. That's the time you can tackle those things on your never ending to do list. 

[00:09:59] If you are a small company in need of SEO or want to talk to somebody about an SEO strategy, that's not going to laugh about your budget.

[00:10:07] Please give me a call. You can visit simple and smart seo. com. And my contact form is right there on the front page. I would love to chat with you. Maybe even work with you and see how we can move forward together. So until next time, keep moving forward. 

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