****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.****

Shé Langley 0:00

Hi, I'm Shé Langley and you're listening to A Shark's Perspective.

(Music - shark theme)

Kenneth Kinney 0:20

Welcome back, and thank you for joining A Shark's Perspective. I am Kenneth Kinney, but friends call me "Shark". I am a keynote speaker, a strategist, a shark diver host of this show, and your Chief Shark Officer.

Kenneth Kinney 0:32

It's very often that when we talk about business strategies and tactics, to me often hear people talking at a very academic level where it's more theoretical from a beginning point, rather than being pragmatically where most businesses are not just at the start or even at the end, but somewhere in the middle. The same is true with search engine optimization. You or your company have a website, it's been up for some time. And now it's time to change your SEO strategy. And that often involves switching your SEO person or agency or vendors or even philosophy. And with so many technologies, advancing this so quickly, switching these SEO strategies and strategists can have a major impact that can make or break your traffic and your business. So in regards to SEO, when you're making that switch, what direction do you go?

Kenneth Kinney 1:21

Shé Langley is the founder of RankLift and she's a full stack Digital Marketer experienced in helping brands, both big and small, utilize their website to grow their business.

Kenneth Kinney 1:30

And on this episode, we will discuss switching search engine optimization strategies, teams, vendors, agencies, the to do's and the to don'ts with SEO, correcting recipe with website redesigns, going left or right with your SEO content, strategy and business goals, how not all digital marketers are created equal, owning your own assets and properties, CMS, chatGPT, SEO dad jokes, Squarespace, WordPress, and Wix, things to do with friends when in Virginia, grandma's job at Cracker Barrel, and a lot lot more.

Kenneth Kinney 2:02

So let's tune into a full stack developer for the full stack sharp on this episode of A Shark's Perspective.

[music]

Kenneth Kinney 2:11

Shé, welcome to A Shark's Perspective. Tell us if you will a little bit about your career and your background to date.

Shé Langley 2:19

Sure, so my career right now mainly is focused on engine optimization, and web design development for my clients. But my background is really in various types of marketing. So you know, I've worked in IT ad agency, I've worked for IT company. I've worked for print shop when you know that was poppin. Now it's not everyone has canvas. Well, you don't need that. But yeah, it's really just runs the gamut of everything digital marketing, but my love right now is SEO.

Kenneth Kinney 2:55

So you consider yourself a full stack developer. What do you typically run into with the clients use service? What kind of engagements?

Shé Langley 3:02

Yeah, so often it is clients who are looking to redesign their website. That's my sweet spot right now. Not as many clients that are, you know, just getting started and just need, you know, website to get them over. Usually, they're gonna go to Squarespace or Wix to get started. But um, often is businesses or nonprofits that are, you know, looking for ways to grow their business, specifically, maybe looking to earn more organic traffic to their website. Some clients I work with, they are solely SEO clients. So maybe they already have a sound, web presence. And, you know, their website is doing well, but they're looking to push the needle a bit with SEO.

Kenneth Kinney 3:49

So that's a perfect setup to today's topic. We're going to talk about switching, no idea what made me think about that. But you know, I've had a lot of conversations with people lately. I mean, where we met, we were talking about some redesigning websites where I got to see you speak at the National Speakers Association's when our workshop thrive. But it's so often that we have this kind of conversation with SEO, or when we look at businesses as if they're starting from scratch or their startups, per se, but seems like we're always at the starting point in this conversation. Even when they're in the infancy though, they may be three laps around the track, and closing in on the fourth, you know, to get that first mile, but they already have a website and some gray hairs of wisdom, if you will, in their business or their web presence, maybe that gray hairs, maybe they're losing some hair, but let's talk about switching. Let's say you have a current website and you want to redesign it from an SEO standpoint, where do you start with your own checklist of the to do's and the don'ts?

Shé Langley 4:44

Okay, so I, first of all, I love this big and even the fact that you brought it up because I think what you said is, of course true where we think that everyone is starting from zero but they're not.

Kenneth Kinney 4:57

With a redesign. They're generally starting From a complete pest that they have to fix.

Shé Langley 5:02

Oh, yes. Or one that they don't know they need to fix?

Kenneth Kinney 5:07

Yeah. Well, it's like a recipe. No, in our world, you're not starting with a recipe to create a pie or a cake or whatever, it's to repair something that looks and tastes like a tire. Yeah,

Shé Langley 5:21

yes, that's true. So with the redesign, where I'd like to start is looking at the current website and performing, because if it is, if it does have facets of it that are performing well, we don't want to mess that up, we want to either improve on it, or at least that level. And when when I say that, I'm specifically talking about times the individual page performance, you know, if there are blog posts that are doing well, and bringing you in big, we don't want to mess with that too much. You know, we don't want to shake it up. More needs to be. So we start there. And then we start to consider, you know, what, what does this redesign entail? You know, is it a complete overhaul? Like, is your messaging changing, or your services changing? Because then we have to consider how we're going to optimize the new content, and then how that works with, like I said, the old content that we still want it to perform well. So those are the two entry points that I usually start with a client, because that gives us a good baseline. And then from that baseline, we can determine HTTPS for launching the new site.

Kenneth Kinney 6:35

So when they start thinking through that, then how did they determine, go left or go right? I guess, really, I mean, I get that you wouldn't want to change it. But let's say you do need to change it, when it does require something that's beyond just moving the colors here and pieces up and down. But when you know, you have to take action, what's the kind of action you typically look at starting to take?

Shé Langley 7:00

Alright, so we'll look at new content, and which pages we want to have on the new site, even down to URL structure. So how we want the content and the information architecture on the website to function. So that really, that's for your user to make sure that they can actually navigate your site when they get there. But it's also useful for search engines to understand the content on your website, like how you actually have it organized, I like to tell people, it goes back to you know, being in elementary, middle school, that teacher doesn't want your paper without an outline, like they want to know, how you're structuring your content so that they can understand before they really dig into what's going on. So it's the same thing, you know, with a new website. Something else though, that is really important when I'm, when I'm talking with clients, when we're trying to figure out the content strategy for the redesign, is actually looking at their overall business goals. You know, that's really what is driving the website, like your website, website should be working for you, and working to help you meet and reach those, hopefully surpass those business goals. So when we're redesigning the website, and also considering the content, the performance indicators, you know, do you need more calls? Do you need more contact form submitted all of that information, we need to tie it back to those business goals and that that'll really help guide what content or what changes we need to make for the redesign?

Kenneth Kinney 8:37

Sure, well, let's talk then about switching companies. Because now we know that we're going to do this and you're coming in to I'm going to call it a mature situation, something that's not just from scratch, but if you're coming in as a vendor, or as a consultant, might be that you're not the first person that worked on the website, odds are they either had an IT person, a an office manager, or an SEO person that was doing this stuff. So when you consider switching SEO vendors and consultants, how do you position that conversation with somebody? Because that is a big step. A lot of times it's a can be a real change in philosophy. It's not just an exact ones and zeros. Science, there's an art to it.

Shé Langley 9:19

Yeah, I think the first thing we should discuss though, which you've you've probably encountered yourself is sometimes business or even entrepreneurs will assume that the person they hire to design or develop a website for them, understands everything about marketing, whereas they may not have any expertise in SEO. Like they may just be giving you a website and they have no idea. You know about the information architecture that we just talked about or how it should perform or how to give you access to analytics so you can see how the website performs. So I think that's number one like if you are going to engage the one that, you know as saying that they are a digital marketer, and they have expertise in certain areas. I'm not saying every person you hire needs to have that spread of expertise. But you do need to understand that, if your web developer does not have SEO expertise, you may want to consider finding someone that does especially for redesign. Because when you're, first of all, when you're switching to do a redesign, you could lose all your traffic like that, that is the threat to redesigning your website without someone out to make sure it continues to stay optimized. So that's something you want to consider if you're going to be switching your vendors or the business that can for for the redesign or working with for the redesign, I would start there.

Kenneth Kinney 10:53

I got involved with a company that they have a super person who's working on the website, who helped build it went through a little bit of a redesign. And we were addressing some of the more hyper intensive locality, stuff that they needed to focus on. And the first thing that this person did was take a pretty established website and an established location that happened to be the northern equivalent, I'm not going to say which one it is, but it would be like saying, Atlanta, and then there's a North Atlanta city where they live. Well, they decided to change up all the Atlanta traffic pages and add in north to the URL. And it was something literally like that, that all of their incoming traffic into that Atlanta, fictional Atlanta page. But it was little things like that, that can be so detrimental to traffic sources that people don't think through in this person's highly accomplished. But I love your point, because I run into this all the time. You know, I've learned a lot. But I also know I have a lot to learn. I worry when they sometimes think that the social media person that they hired or the content marketing person they hired has a clue about what's going on in Google Analytics, or automatically knows what's going on and TV advertising. They don't it's such a wide swath and although you do need to have a background in it, you don't have to be the the cost of the mistakes can far outweigh sometimes the cost of what you think maybe the savings when hiring the wrong kind of consultant,

Shé Langley 12:22

right? Yes, I agree. And then just, if you're considering switching your vendors, I would also just pay attention to some things you may need to know up front. You know, what their process is? What the deliverables will be. Oh, and this is, so this is a big one too, which I feel like, you'll also understand, I find clients who are switching, maybe they're switching to me, they're coming to me to for support, they don't have access to any of their accounts.

Kenneth Kinney 13:00

So all the time? Absolutely, yeah, that's something

Shé Langley 13:03

you should have, you should, you should either own it, or you shouldn't know upfront, when you're working with the vendor, like who maintains access to my accounts, like who maintains ownership, like I've had issues where, you know, you let's say a client comes to me, and they've had an established website for over 20 years, and they decide they want to switch and their previous developer, either they cannot find them, or won't release the domain. So then we're forced into the type of redesign where you, you can't really maintain the organic traffic or the the authority that your previous website had, because you're forced to switch your domain, change your URLs. So yeah, making sure you have access to all of your accounts is really

Kenneth Kinney 13:51

such a great point. It's upsetting to even bring it up. It's so true. I'm specifically working with one company now who has worked with an agency. It's a solid agency, but they don't have the keys to the car, they own the car. They know they own the car. But I got on a conversation. I'm basically functioning on their behalf. As someone who's telling this agency give my client the keys. They're pushing back. Oh, you know, it's tied to our back end systems. Okay, it is, that's fine and all but they still own it. And you don't want to become so dependent or codependent on that agency or vendor or whoever it is that you can't make even the basic changes yourself. We met at a professional speaking event. I know a lot of speakers are that way as well, because most of those people are not web designers or in any way and so they've hired it off to someone but that can be quite scary. So another switching question. What about we're seeing a lot of movement is sort of feels like the old days when the internet came up, but there are so many people who are competing. There's so many people right now that I'm talking to are also switching platforms, not ever anybody's WordPress, not everybody's Wix. Not everybody, Squarespace, Squarespace has been running a bunch of Superbowl ads, they're very enticing and their SEO has gotten 1000 times better. But when you make a change from word space to WordPress to where they're starting to combine WordPress to Squarespace or Squarespace or Wix, or whatever it is, there's some to do's and don'ts there. So what do you think of when helping redesign relaunch or change or whatever a site going from one hosting platform to another?

Shé Langley 15:30

Well, what first comes to mind for that is just the fact that some, some content management systems aren't going to have a one to one migration option. Right. So if you need to either backup anything, or even if it gets down to it, I have to manually copy this content and put it in my Google Drive. So you know, I still can maintain access to the old content, because sometimes, you know, once you switch domains, and you cancel that Wix account, you don't have access after afterwards. So that's one thing you want to maintain access to your content, if at all you can, whether that's manually doing it, if you're switching from WordPress, it's likely your developer, IT company can just you know, get a backup for you so that you can maintain access to that bit in your drive somewhere just in case you needed. Also, something to consider is the tools that sometimes there are add ons for for WordPress, for example, that you're using to help with SEO. So let's say Yoast or rankmath, where in those plugins, the plugin is storing your titles or your meta descriptions or schema, different things you've added that are either on page or technical as well. But you know, if you're just pulling content from the website, and other website, you may not know all that's happening on the back end. So having a developer that understands the, the platform you're coming from, and the plat form you're moving to can be very, very helpful and advantageous for you. You know, some some of the developers or even SEO professionals are going to have expertise in one CMS system over another. Some of that I feel like just comes from the speed of change with content management systems. Now, you know, if I'm working in WordPress, every day over Squarespace, I may miss, you know, update they've made to some of their tools. But if you're connected with a service provider that, you know, really wants to stay in the know about the work that they're doing, they're going to have a good understanding baseline of the tools to help you migrate them well. So I think that's the biggest thing, just the basic understanding of it's not always a one to one match. And like, there may be some, you know, little loopholes, you have to jump in, jump through to get your site working on the other content management system.

Kenneth Kinney 18:17

Well, I would be remiss without because we needed one more show to talk about chat GPT. But with the speed of everything moving forward, are you thinking much about how chat GPT plays into SEO?

Shé Langley 18:31

Yeah, yes, I am. Um, but first, let me say I'm, it's not a worry of mine. I feel like

Kenneth Kinney 18:41

you need to declare yourself an expert. And like everybody else as

Shé Langley 18:45

well, everyone's expert in exactly.

Kenneth Kinney 18:49

The right SEO, you can make yourself an expert tomorrow.

Shé Langley 18:53

I'm just I feel like our industry shifts and changes so often, like even the fact that, you know, when I was in school, looking for, you know, what I wanted to major in or what, you know, industry I was interested in SEO wasn't even on my radar. It's just that over time, things change, they adapt, you learn new things, more resources become available that can be leveraged to improve things so that that's really how I approached Chet GPT. You know, could my job be obsolete next year, of course, but we've seen over the past years, you know, changes, impossible to avoid, and it could happen tomorrow. So I don't really think it's anything anyone should be worried about, but just more aware, and then also consider how, how it can be a tool or for you to grow your business or you know, just any way that you can use it. I think it's an amazing tool, the fact that we even have access to it, you know, I was a child that watched the Jetsons. So I'm wondering, you know, are we going to be on Mars? Now that we had II, that's the next step. Right. But, um, I do think there are probably going to be big thing with SEO and I don't know what side of it we're going to be on like is, will AI copy be stronger than the search engines that can determine how it was written? Like, who's algorithm is gonna win? I think we'll just have to see, but I think is an exciting time that these tools are even available for us to use or leverage.

Kenneth Kinney 20:47

Great. I have two really quick, important questions to ask you before we get to the clothes. Why did Tiger Woods start studying SEO?

Shé Langley 20:56

Oh, gosh, no, no. Why?

Kenneth Kinney 20:59

To get his number one ranking back. SEO dad jokes. Alright. Why did the SEO expert cross the road?

Shé Langley 21:09

I don't know. Why?

Kenneth Kinney 21:10

To get hit with more traffic. Sorry. I know these are dumb, but it works in this context.

Shé Langley 21:18

I'm going to use that one.

Kenneth Kinney 21:23

Yeah. It will work really well at Moz or you know any of those. So Shé ask everybody who appears on the show. What is your favorite kind of shark and why?

Shé Langley 21:31

Ooooohhh.

Kenneth Kinney 21:33

Any any Virginia breach? You're in a coastal community.

Shé Langley 21:38

Now I mostly see dolphins here. But I've always liked the Hammerhead but I think it's only because it's it's shaped so differently.

Kenneth Kinney 21:47

I mean, dolphins are the real evil ones. They're nasty. They just get a cute name because oh yeah, they're horrible. They're horrible. And it flipper screwed everything up just like Jaws did make people think the wrong thing about them. Alright, well, Shé it's a special time in the show. Are you ready for the five most interesting and important questions that you're going to be asked today?

Shé Langley 22:09

Okay, I think I am. Let's do it. Okay.

Kenneth Kinney 22:11

These will make a lot of No, no sense whatsoever. All right, number one. And I didn't want to go WordPress because it's too easy, but I'm gonna say this Wix or Squarespace?

Shé Langley 22:23

Squarespace.

Kenneth Kinney 22:24

Why so?

Shé Langley 22:26

Oh my god. So are we allowed to talk about brands and how bad they are on here?

Kenneth Kinney 22:33

Sure.

Shé Langley 22:34

Okay. Just I've had issues with wigs like getting getting clients blog posts to indexed because of the JavaScript they use to load their content.

Kenneth Kinney 22:48

Squarespace isn't perfect, but it has gotten so much better. Or yeah, in the last couple of years. It's It's bananas better if they could just get the history thing down like WordPress as it would sure. go a long way. So number two, Google or Bing?

Shé Langley 23:04

Google.

Kenneth Kinney 23:06

Now, I'm going to say, Google with Bard or Bing with chatGPT?

Shé Langley 23:11

Oh, God. I don't...

Kenneth Kinney 23:13

Changes that one, doesn't it?

Shé Langley 23:15

Yeah. Yeah Can you give me a give me a couple of months.

Kenneth Kinney 23:19

Okay, here you go. You'll scream Yahoo. All right. We talked about switching a lot. We're going to talk about switch hitters. You don't have to be a big baseball fan and Pete Rose or Mickey Mantle. Mickey Mantle. There you go. It's hard to go wrong with with the MC. Plus, he was never, you know, all he did was drink and smoke. He never gambled on games that we know of. All right, number four. If you were taking somebody on a historic trip through Virginia would you take them to like the Shenandoah mountains or to Monticello or to the museum? Any of the museums there? What would be your your pick?

Shé Langley 24:07

I would start with where I grew up in the book Row area and Fort area were the first slaves were brought to Virginia and they were live.

Kenneth Kinney 24:20

Virginia has so much amazing history. Yeah, you can experience the whole Civil War, right with the confines there.

Shé Langley 24:28

Yeah. And you're always always close to water. So it's nice. There you go.

Kenneth Kinney 24:32

And politicians, number five way 100 Throw them in the water. Number five and the most important question that you're going to be asked today. It's not a good SEO question, but it's biscuits or cornbread.

Shé Langley 24:45

Cornbread.

Kenneth Kinney 24:47

You said that like not sure feel guilty about saying

Shé Langley 24:51

I do have to know who made it like did grandma make it?

Kenneth Kinney 24:57

grandma's got a job at Cracker Barrel and she's made biscuits and cornbread. Maybe grandma's

Shé Langley 25:01

Maybe it's grandma's biscuits that's over cornbread. record? That's how.

Kenneth Kinney 25:05

okay. Well Shé where can people find out more about you learn about what your company offers what you're doing and keep up with your thought leadership and more.

Shé Langley 25:13

Sure, so you can find me online at my website that's rank lift digital.com. Or I'm also on various social networks when I'm not with my two little kids and also working for clients in my family, my husband, my mom. That's when I'm on socials. But you can find me there are also ranked lift digital on, you know, all of them.

Kenneth Kinney 25:37

Awesome, Shé, thank you very much for being with us today on A Shark's Perspective.

Shé Langley 25:42

Thank you so much.

[music]

Kenneth Kinney 25:48

So there was my conversation with Shé Langley, the founder of RankLift and a full stack Digital Marketer experienced in helping brands both big and small utilize their website to grow their business. Let's take a look at three key takeaways from our conversation with her.

Kenneth Kinney 26:01

First, we talked about switching SEO platforms, great point Shea made in particular, not all of them always have a one to one relationship. So make sure that you have your content somewhere backed up in some CMS can be a Google Doc for all I care, simple role, but very necessary to remember also, not all the tools can be transferred. Again, a simple but necessary thing to remember.

Kenneth Kinney 26:23

Second, whether you're switching agencies or employees or consultants with SEO, remember that not all digital marketers are created alike. Make sense into you hire one that doesn't have a lot of SEO experience. Maybe they're great at social or content or copy or advertising, that they do something that they think is small to a website even as simple as changing a URL. And then there goes all your web traffic to highly traffic page or pages. Unless you're pouring ad dollars to the new pages, redirecting fluorophores with laser precision, or you want to hold your breath and wait for Google to crawl it again, then you realize that strong SEO knowledge is needed and different from other forms of digital marketing. So don't do that, you know, your website is what are your biggest and most important properties. If you're hiring someone to make changes to it, then make certain that they know SEO to a level that makes you money, not loses you money and traffic and so much more. And this comment was brought to you by the letter O which is for optimization.

Kenneth Kinney 27:21

Third, just ran through this multiple times in last few weeks. It may sound silly to some, but it's more common than you would think. And dangerous for a brand. Che brought it up but you the brand must own and possess. The key is all your assets and your properties, not just the agencies with whom you work, even if they are great and trustworthy. You should be the super admin to your home Google Analytics, for example, and not your agency. It just puts you and the agency in an awkward position when you have to ask for it back. I saw this recently, multiple times, the agencies become paranoid when you ask put you in an odd relationship and that's not worth anyone's time. Take the time to audit in inventory, your properties and your tools and those relationships. Many may be owned for proprietary reasons by an agency, but many are the brands especially when you realize that it's your data or more accurately the data from your customers. So take care of that.

Kenneth Kinney 28:16

Got a question? Send me an email to Kenneth at a shark's perspective.com.

Kenneth Kinney 28:20

Thank you again for the privilege of your time and I am so thankful to everyone who listens.

Kenneth Kinney 28:26

Today is about optimization. So it's time to optimize your website, your content, your business, and most importantly your life. So join us on the next episode of A Shark's Perspective.

(Music - shark theme)