Frequency of checking website analytics

Alex Beadon 0:03
So you want to scale your online business while purposely prioritizing your most joyful, free, and luxurious life. This Podcast is your weekly dose of connection and self-reflection. As you set strategic intentions along the way, it’s time to prime your mind embrace your pace, and take consistent action towards creating what you truly want from your online business without sacrificing the small moments all around you that are so worth treasuring. So, take a deep breath, relax, and let’s get you back to where you belong. On purpose.

You’re listening to season two episode 25. Of on purpose with Alex Beadon as visionaries something we often do is spend time visualizing what we want. And if you’re listening to this podcast, a big part of your vision is probably maximizing the impact that your work has on the world by being able to sell more of your digital product. If you’re someone who regularly envisions your online course skyrocketing to success, then you’re going to be obsessed with this episode just like I am. I’m thrilled to have Galen Mooney, a website designer, SEO expert and past together relaunch member. Join us today to share all of her secrets on how to make your online course website and sales page irresistible. By the time I finished recording this episode, I felt so inspired in more ways than one. She introduced me to new tools, she gave me new simple ideas that will help me get more of an ROI for my existing content. And after the episode, I felt so excited for it to go live, because I just know that you are going to love it too. GALEN will guide us through the maze of making a sales page that doesn’t just look good, but reels customers in and keeps them hooked. From speaking your customers language to addressing their doubts. She leaves no stone unturned. Have you ever wondered why some websites make you feel like staying clicking and buying? GALEN unveils the secret showing how you can tune up your website to make visitors feel at home and ready to take action. We dive into how the speed of your website and the images you can use influence a customer’s decision to stay or leave. We tackle how you can boost your online visibility with SEO. And she shares things I didn’t even know about how to get Google to notice you. She shares her top strategies for online course creator specifically emphasizing the role of blogging and tracking your performance. But I want you guys to know this. This episode is not about bombarding you with techy stuff. Instead, this is your guide to understanding the online landscape better. Learn what your customers are looking for, and how you can present it to them in the best way possible. So remember, you don’t have to rush to implement all of these things right away. But having a better understanding of them and how they work is only going to strengthen your skill as an online business owner. I’m Alex feeding your favorite lawn strategist and your guide to the online business world. I’ve had an online business selling digital products since 2011. And I’ve been helping online businesses scale through launching since 2016. I’ve been featured in Forbes and entrepreneur I’ve worked with clients ranging from solopreneurs to multi-million dollar small businesses. Here at Team Beadon. We pride ourselves on being the industry-leading destination for all things launch strategy. Our 12 month program together we launch teaches our signature rinse and repeat launch strategy that has helped course creators and membership owners from all over the world to have their best launches yet. Our goal is to give you the tools to create a wildly profitable online business while prioritizing your most joyful life so that you can truly experience time freedom, location, freedom, and financial freedom. Let’s jump into today’s episode. Galen, welcome to the show. I’m so happy to have you here.

Galen Mooney 4:07
Alex, thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here today.

Alex Beadon 4:11
I am just so grateful to you because in the midst of our sales page catastrophe sales page crisis, you swooped in. You are one of the first few people that I message I was like, Okay, let me see if we have like, who are the website designers have together we launch and I messaged you first I was like, Okay, let’s see if she’s available. And you were and I was so happy that you were able to squeeze us in and help solve the the sales page dilemma that we were having. So thank you.

Galen Mooney 4:40
Yes, yeah, of course, sales pages are so critical for any business who relies on them heavily to make their day to day month to month income. And so I know it’s a really big deal when things don’t work how you expect them to

Alex Beadon 4:52
100% so today, for everyone who’s joining us in this episode, what I’m going to be speaking to Galen about is all about out your sales page, how do we optimize your sales page for sales? How do we make sure that the customer is going through a journey that’s very strategic, but also enjoyable for them. I want to talk to you a little bit about SEO, Galen, because I know you’re an SEO experts, we’re going to be speaking about how important it is to have a mobile friendly version of your site. That was where we went wrong with together, we launched sales page. So I’m excited to talk about that. But I know that you said that you have six tips written down that you definitely wanted to share with our audience today. So I’d love for you to walk me through those six tips. Okay, perfect.

Galen Mooney 5:37
And for anybody who’s looking for good examples of these, you can definitely go check out Alex’s together, we launch sales page, because it’s going to have a lot of these on there. And I always love looking at sales pages for inspiration. So definitely go take a look, we can start with my very first tip, which I think is something that a lot of us struggle with when we are especially DIY in our own sales page. And that is to be really, really concise. So a lot of times we look at sales pages, and we think they need to be these long form super text heavy pages. And they do right, you need to be able to answer all the questions you need to be able to address address objectives. But at the same time, people have really short attention spans. And it’s important to make sure that your sales page is easy to skim through easy for people to find the content that they’re looking for on that page. And that comes down to making sure your content is super concise. So instead of having paragraphs that are 500 words, or even 300 words, we want to shrink those paragraphs down, use lots of headers, and make sure each and every paragraph is maybe only a sentence to two or three sentences Max, or else you’re going to find that people are dropping off, and they are not finishing the sections on your page, they’re gonna end up clicking out of there, because they’re going to be overwhelmed by all the text on your pages. Alex, are you feeling like I know we did a little bit of editing of your copy, you had a great copy base to start from. But that was definitely something we worked with on your sales page a little bit too,

Alex Beadon 7:05
for sure. I feel like it’s so easy to go on and on and on and on and to want your ideal client to know everything. But like you said, it’s important you want them to be able to find what they’re looking for, and to be able to skim. And I think you know, this, I think what you did so beautifully on the together relaunch sales page was like if you scroll through that page, it is so visually interesting. And you know, the page tells the story, even if you’re not necessarily reading every single word, it feels like your attention is held. And you’re being beautifully guided through the storyline of the page, which I loved. And just so everyone knows, if you want to go and take a look at that sales page, you can go to together we launch.com. And we’ll also leave the link in the show notes. But you just did such a good job of shortening everything, making it more concise, like you said, and visually keeping the person interested because even if you shorten your text, it could still be super boring for someone to scroll through so and repetitive. Yeah, for sure.

Galen Mooney 8:05
And that’s funny, you said telling a story, because that’s actually my second tip is to really look at your sales page as a story. One of my favorite things to do when I’m designing a sales page is to take a full page screenshot of the sales page and really step back and get that high level view of how each section leads into the next one. And how the content really guide somebody through your page. So you’re not repeating information, but you’re building as they become more invested in as they’re learning more about your program, you’re giving them the information that they need at that step in the awareness and the purchasing process. So that’s a huge piece of it, too, is telling that story, bringing them through the page. But taking those full page screenshots, and there’s some great, I use a Chrome extension called go full page, and it lets you with one click of a button, take a full page screenshot of any website, and then look at it again, taking that step back looking at the entire thing and seeing how each section blends into the next.

Alex Beadon 9:03
You read my mind, I was gonna be like, how do you do that? But you shared it with us. Okay, so there’s a Chrome extension called go full page. And that’s how you do it, I was actually looking at your Instagram, and seeing the real videos where you’re just like scrolling through someone’s page and it literally looks like one big screenshot that you’re just kind of like scrolling through is that what you use for that as well,

Galen Mooney 9:23
that’s actually a different one. So that’s even a simpler trick. For those I just right click on any page in Chrome and inspect element which basically shows you all the code for your website, which you don’t even need to look at, but you’re able to drag in the side to get the mobile view and then I just zoom out in Chrome a few times and you get like a really nice long version of your page so don’t even doesn’t even require any extensions to do that. I love finding out all these little hacks and details. So if you want to nerd out with me about that, feel free to like come DM me for other tips like this because I’m upset

Alex Beadon 9:56
but like you So yeah, you’re like, I need a tool that does this. I want to find out how to do this. I’m like, Oh, I’ve been there. I love it so much. Yes. So point number two tell a story, you want to lead them through the page. And I love what you said about like, looking at the whole page, because I think something that a lot of people forget, is to do that. So for me, I don’t I have never done that before, where I have like a literal, literal screenshot of the whole page. But I will just read it from the top all the way through to the bottom again, and again. And again, it is hard sometimes because you kind of feel like your head is in the sound if you look at something for too long, so even giving it space, which is why I always like looking at a sales page as a living, breathing thing that you can constantly change and edit and improve. It’s like it doesn’t have to be perfect from the get go. So I love that tell a story. Okay, what’s number three? Number three is to overcome objectives and not in the way most people think. So most people think of overcoming objectives by having an FAQ section on your sales page and having your FAQ section answer questions like,

Galen Mooney 11:00
What if I don’t have enough time? What if I don’t have the cash on hand right now? Oh, there’s a payment plan? Oh, you can do it at your own pace. Like they think of that as addressing objections. But I like to reframe this a little bit. And not just think about what are the objections that potential clients might have to your program to signing up for your program, but what are the objections they might have to the thing that your program helps them achieve? So for you, Alex, in this case, it was launching and the alternate to launching was going evergreen, and there’s so much hype around evergreen content and why evergreen is the only way and the best way. And so not only do you need to help people understand why together we launch as an amazing program, you also want to help them understand why launching is such an asset to their business, and something they should really be doing, whether they’re doing other evergreen or not, they really need to prioritize and focus on launching for the overall health and growth of their business. So it’s like what are those things that are that your your program helps people accomplish? And how can you address objections to that thing? And how can you get them excited. And let them know that that way, the way that you help them is the way that they are going to get to their goals?

Alex Beadon 12:11
That’s so beautifully said I think as well, it speaks to the fact that it’s so important for us to communicate the value of that transformation, and to understand the problem. And all of our courses, programs, whatever, they all solve a particular problem that comes with like a variety of different details. And so to be able to speak to that and give a bigger picture and be like, Okay, let’s look at the bigger picture. Let’s see, you know, in this case, Evergreen I loved when you put that little section in, I think it was called like, why why you should or launching versus evergreen was it or no, it

Galen Mooney 12:50
was evergreen is great. But and then I went into like all the reasons why launching is so fantastic for your business, whether or not people do evergreen, because again, that’s kind of a buzzword right now. But I think launching helps them on such a different level, having those live launches, connecting with their audience and community getting that big boost in audience growth. Like there’s so many things that people don’t realize, can really help their business when it comes to launching. And so it’s reframing that of like, not just the objections of your program, but what are the objections to the way that you are helping people achieve their goals?

Alex Beadon 13:22
Yeah, and you’re not just convincing them for the program, you’re convincing them of like the bigger picture of what it is that you’re selling and teaching. So for everyone listening, I want you to really think to yourself, like what what is that for you? What is that for your own course or membership site, and making sure that you’re including speaking to that on the actual sales page? Okay, talk to me about number four.

Galen Mooney 13:43
Number four, is to be persuasive. And this is a funny one, because I don’t really consider myself a salesy person. And if you are on that level with me, and you’re somebody who’s like, I know, my program is really good. I feel really confident. And once people are in there, getting them the results that they want, that help want to help them achieve, but you’re just maybe your sales page isn’t converting that well, or you just don’t feel like your sales copy is strong enough. I recommend going through writing your sales copy out once letting it sit for a minute and coming back and being like, How can I be more persuasive? How can I take this to the next level in terms of really illustrating the value of your program because it takes time, it’s not something you can just write the first time. Sometimes I’ll do that, and I’ll come back and I’ll be like, this is really not convincing. Like this is really not exciting copy, I could have done such a better job coming in here and really getting people excited about the results excited about the journey to the result. And I think sometimes it just takes writing the copy ones stepping away, coming back and really working on that persuasive voice and how you’re able to help people see the journey they need to take to get that result.

Alex Beadon 14:54
I think that’s also why it’s so important when you’re creating your sales page for the first time to work on the copy first And don’t get distracted by you know the graphics and the design and everything but work on the copy, first refine the copy, try to get it, as you know, as persuasive and as concise and as perfect as possible. And then bring it into the graphic and design side. Because I feel like that’s something that people like to do is they just start like in the actual website area, and that can just be so distracting and, and really take away from the actual message of the site itself.

Galen Mooney 15:28
And that’s why I love custom sales pages, too. It’s so much fun for me, as a web designer who designs full websites, I love sales pages, because I have a background in digital products and course creation and group program creation and things like that. And so it’s really fun for me to get to build out those pages based on a unique brand based on unique copywriting versus just having a template for your sales page for something so special when it’s really custom and really fits you and your brand. Amen. Give us tip number five, we’re ready. Tip number five is show don’t tell visuals are super, super important. And obviously, you’re always going to be telling with your sales copy. But we talked about this a little bit on on your site to just thinking about how we can really agitate the problem. But don’t just say, you know, you’re going to stop experiencing this and start experiencing this, like, what would that look like and in your copy in your visuals, think about how you can actually describe a specific situation that will make your ideal client raise their hand and be like, Oh, my goodness, that’s me. I was there last week, I was in that exact same position, doing that same thing. And we talked about some of the examples of like, visually, somebody pulling their hair like wanting to pull their hair out, or visually, somebody sitting at their computer at 2am, stressing about something like, what does that look like, don’t just tell us it’s going to make your life better, it’s going to save you time, it’s gonna save you money, like tell us what it’s going to feel like in the before and what it’s going to feel like or look like in the after. And then use visuals on your site to complement that, whether it’s actual visuals of people, whether it’s your branded photoshoot, or whether it’s visuals of what it looks like inside of your program, using Jeff’s really taking advantage of the long form page to show people the before and the after, make them feel it. And then use visuals to really complement that. Yeah, and I loved as well. You know, on the sales page, we have that little different kind of shows you a video of me and Laura, what it would actually look like inside a relaunch. Yeah, I thought that was so cute. Like this was perfectly chosen.

Alex Beadon 17:30
It’s so great. And then also on the together, we launched sales page, I really wanted to try out using the AI imagery from mid journey. And yeah, it actually worked out really well. Like I loved the way that you took all of those images and kind of made them fit really well in ways that I didn’t imagine I thought you did such a good job of that.

Galen Mooney 17:51
Yeah, it was really fun playing around with AI imagery. For some of that. I haven’t done a ton. I mean, AI imagery is so new. And so it was cool to be able to like incorporate it in and then even take some of those images and edit them to kind of fit with your site a bit more, whether it’s like pulling characters out of images, or putting things in or editing the colors a little bit. It’s just really fun to be able to customize it and make it sort of fit in with everything else. But again, people respond to people, they respond to feelings. So how can you incorporate more of that into your sales page?

Alex Beadon 18:22
Yeah. And so for everyone who might be wondering, the way that we use the AI imagery was I tried to create imagery of female astronauts that were very on brand. Like that’s really what I was trying to do. So like a lot of, you know, pink astronauts and astronauts on laptops and things like that, to tie in with the launch theme. And I think it worked really well. So if you haven’t already checked out, definitely go and take a look. And then what is your sixth? Sorry, go ahead.

Galen Mooney 18:49
No, no, I was just gonna say one of my favorite things is working with brands like you who already kind of have a little bit of that identity, like you knew your color was pink you had like you have the launch motif and your copy and things like that. And I just love taking that and then just going to the next level with it, like really owning it. And just having that page exude that energy. And it’s also really important for me during the process, and I already knew you which was helpful, but to kind of go through the process of really getting to know the person behind the business, because people don’t buy from businesses they buy from people. And it’s really helpful to pull out your personality and make sure it matches your copy. It matches the style and everything kind of works together.

Alex Beadon 19:29
Yeah. And you did such a good job of that. And for anyone who doesn’t know Galen was actually at together we launch member I want to say a few years ago a year or two ago.

Galen Mooney 19:38
Yes, yeah. Yeah.

Alex Beadon 19:42
But so that’s why I was so happy to have you be the person to bring it to life because I was like, You know what together we launch is all about you’ve been inside of it. And so you did such a good job. I love it. Share with us. Tip, Galen, what is the sixth one?

Galen Mooney 19:56
So my sixth tip is to make it easy. The two purchase and this one seems so obvious. And you talked about it a little bit in your podcast episode. From last week, I believe when you were talking about sales page tips, but I’m really talking about like mobile friendly versus desktop friendly, and just making sure that your website works. And this again, sounds so obvious. But so many times, I find that the opt in form is cut off, or something’s not loading properly on desktop, or mobile or the pop up, you can’t close, there’s just so many little things you want to test before you actually push that page live, do all the buttons work, do all the links work, does everything click and go to where it needs to go because people skip this step all the time, or don’t double check it. And then you end up with a page that’s malfunctioning, and that could end up losing you a sale, which is a big deal. And it adds up over time you were talking about that percentage rate when you’re looking at your conversion rate for sales, that one or 2% additional extra are lost makes a huge difference to your bottom line at the end of the year.

Alex Beadon 20:58
Huge difference. And it’s so interesting to see, you know, okay, so we just downloaded this, I guess it’s a tool. It’s called hot, what is it called? Hold on, I wrote it somewhere hot jar. Yeah. And we can see, oh, my god, I love hot jar, we can see like what people are clicking on and where their mouse is hovering. And it’s been fascinated, like, you can actually see the video of the journey that someone goes on for each website visit to your website, it’s fascinating. And it’s making me realize that people are clicking on things that I that’s not even in my like, hemisphere of caring about or, you know, like little footer links and the all of the menu links that I haven’t thought about and so long on my website, and it’s just really important to make sure that everything works, you’re 100%, right, I love that make it easy to purchase.

Galen Mooney 21:47
Yes. And that goes with also having a lot of calls to action, you don’t just want to have one call to action, when you definitely don’t want to make somebody scroll to the bottom of your very long sales page. To find out how to buy from you, we added a lot of different opportunities for somebody to purchase knowing that there are going to be people who read almost every word on your sales page and make it all the way to the bottom. And there are people that are going to jump around and purchase from the middle. And there are people that are gonna read the first line and be like, you know, I’m in I’m sold, I’m ready to go. So make sure that you have calls to action ready, depending on the style of buyer that you have on your site. So no matter what, you are going to be able to capture that sale.

Alex Beadon 22:24
Okay, so we’ve gone through your six tips, I loved them. But I also have some other questions for you. Are you ready? Okay, so, where to begin? Okay. How can business owners optimize their websites to increase the conversion rates of visitors to customers? So like, how do we make sure if you could say that there were like, a few little things when it comes to making sure that people are actually clicking on the Buy Now button. And following through that purchase? Based on the way that their website is created? What would that be?

Galen Mooney 23:01
So do you mean on the sales page itself? Or from like the homepage on their website all the way through to the sales page?

Alex Beadon 23:06
Oh, that’s such a good question. I was thinking about the sales page itself. Let’s go with both I feel like you’re full of good tips.

Galen Mooney 23:16
So for the sales page itself, one thing I really like to do is make sure that the design of your call to action button stands out from everything else on your page. So for you, Alex, we had a really consistent call to action button, it actually has your little rocket image in there, right. So they look the same, they stand out from the rest of your content. In some cases, we actually had it like subtly blink on the page, just so it kind of draws the person’s eye right to that button. We want it to be clear, I’ve worked on some websites before where the original like before website I go to look through. And one of the things I noticed is I can’t even tell where the buttons are from the regular text. Or maybe they’re just text links, or maybe the color of the button looks like other texts. And even with you we were talking a little bit in the before stage, when you had sort of like the circle bubbles around text and then your buttons looks really similar to that. So it almost wasn’t obvious what was just text with a circle around it and what was a button. So you want to be really, really clear about your calls to action and make the design unique, the color unique and make them really stand out on the page. So it’s obvious what you want people to do next. And then the next tip for that one is really just to make sure. And you actually mentioned this last week as well. But to make sure that you the links that you have are all going to the same place. If you have a sales page, you don’t want to be taking people to your blog, you don’t want to be taking them to your Instagram page, you want to be keeping them on the sales page. And the only way to get off that sales page is either to exit out or to go to your cart really, really important. Now when it comes to the main page of your website, or like your main site and thinking about how you’re going to be driving people to your sales page from there, how you’re going to be closing that sale from maybe a cold or are a slightly warm a person who’s ended up on your website. This is where I love email marketing. And I love designing custom opt in forms for my clients. There’s a lot of great email tools out there, most of them have embed forms that you can put on your site. And out of the box, they don’t look that great. And it’s really fun for me to go in there with just a little bit of custom css, and style the opt in form so that it matches the look of your site and blends in with everything and the button stands out. And that way you get that person who might be interested in buying from you at some point, but maybe just not right now. And you’re able to think about what that what that process looks like for them, maybe it’s getting them on your email list, adding a few emails, and then pitching them your course versus trying to get that cold sale directly to your course or program depending on the price point. So I love email marketing, I love having an opt in form front and center on your website, getting them on your list and then nurturing them from there. And if they’re ready to buy right away, great, but if they’re not at least you captured that potential sale, and you can nurture them and sell to them in the future.

Alex Beadon 26:06
That was one of the things that was my favorite parts of working with you was looking at the difference in the forum’s because for anyone who doesn’t know, to join together, we launch you first have to fill out a an application. And so you have to request an application first. So if you go to together, we launch.com You’ll see all of the by now buttons are technically request an application button. And if you tap on that, you’ll see the beautiful opt in form that Galen created for us. And when I saw it for the first time, I was like, this is luxury.

Galen Mooney 26:38
It’s so different. It’s just on brand, right? You want everything to

Alex Beadon 26:42
print? Yeah, for sure. I love that. My next question for you is talk to me about the importance of the speed of your websites. Because what’s interesting about our whole crisis with the together relaunch sales page is that the mobile version of the sales page actually did work. It just took about like a ridiculous not even just like 20 seconds, it took like more than a minute up to load. And I couldn’t go ahead with a website that was going to take that long to load. So I’d love for you to just share with us, you know, what, do you have any tips when it comes to improving the speed of your website? And how important is it really? And is this something that business owners should be monitoring?

Galen Mooney 27:26
Yeah, so speed is really, really important. And it’s not so much about having the fastest website out there. It’s about having a website that’s going to load fast enough so that the person who is using data on their phone out and about and then wants to go sign up for your email list or wants to load your sales page and join the waitlist is able to do that without having to wait so long, they get distracted and exit out and forget to come back later. So it’s really important that your website is loading in just a few seconds or less ideally, and a few things that I do for all my clients just add the box to make sure that we are getting that fast speed is to optimize our images. So I tried to resize all of our images before they ever go into your website. So I’ll resize them on, depending on where they’re going to go on the website. But usually nothing is bigger than about 2500 pixels on the long end. That’s usually great for a background image, but works well for other size images too. And then I also put them through an image optimization tool, there’s a bunch of great ones out there, I highly recommend JPEG Mini is a great option. And if you’re a Mac user, there’s one called Image optim op T I M, it’s totally free. And you can just drag your images in, and it resizes them for you. They don’t have any noticeable loss in quality. But it will shrink your image sizes sometimes by up to like 50 or even 80%, which is absolutely insane. And those images slow down your site a ton. One other tip is I love to incorporate movement on websites. I love Jeff’s, I love videos, but you just want to make sure that you don’t have too too many things directly on your page that are going to slow it down. Or if you do, you want them a little bit further down the page. You don’t want there to be a delay, especially for that first section of the page. That’s one of the most important ones, because that is the thing that loads first and it’s the first thing they’ll see when they come to your website to that top section. You want to make sure that it loads really quickly. And then you can have a little bit more fun with GIFs and animations as you go further down the page. Again, I’m a big fan of GIFs and movement and animation you just don’t want to go to too crazy. So then you ended up slowing down your site and having some issues later on.

Alex Beadon 29:39
Amazing. Thank you for sharing that and I love I’m just gonna think of you from now on as the Queen of tools. Yeah, you know all the tool they love it. If you are someone who has a course or membership site, and you want to get more people into it, you want to be able to make more impact with the work that you’re doing in the world. Old and you want to have more clout and build a little bit of a reputation around what you’re doing in the online space, then definitely check out the launch expansion method. Inside of that masterclass, I’m teaching you exactly my launch strategy, you’re gonna get a really good overview of what it’s all about what types of things you need to be considering. And it really is an excellent use of, I think it’s like an hour long. So go and check it out, you can find the link in my bio, I’ll also make sure to include the link here somewhere in the show notes, you can also find it at Alec speed and.com, it’s 100% free, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. So go and check it out. Just imagine how much more powerful you could be if you had the right launch strategy in place. That’s what it’s all about. It’s going to teach you so much about what you need to be thinking about mathematically, and really just kind of making launching sexy and sales sexy. So go and check it out. That’s the launch expansion method masterclass 100%, for free. And I look forward to seeing you there. So I want to talk about SEO. I know you’ve been an SEO expert for years. So I’d love for you to explain to our listeners in case anyone doesn’t know what is SEO? And how can it benefit an online business owner, especially someone with online courses and membership sites?

Galen Mooney 31:22
Yes, I love SEO, SEO stands for search engine optimization. And I specifically like to talk about organic SEO, organic versus paid paid being like Google ads and organic being the process of making changes to your own website. So it shows up higher in search engines like Google. Pretty simple concept. But it gets a little more complicated when you try to figure out how it works and best practices for making it happen. So when it comes to SEO, for online course creators, you want to remember that you are going to approach SEO differently than somebody who runs a service based business or somebody who runs a local business specifically, because you are targeting people from all over. And you’re targeting people with a specific problem that you help them with through your courses and digital products and things like that. So for SEO, the first thing I like to think about is how you are or what pages on your site that you want to rank. And I think most people skip this step. And they think well, of course, I want every page on my site to rank, but you actually most likely don’t. For example, you probably don’t want your Instagram Lincoln bio page to rank because that page, they should only really get there. If they’re coming from your Instagram, like you don’t want somebody to find that in Google, it’s gonna skew your analytics. Same thing with your sales page, you might not want your sales page to rank because maybe your sales page uses deadline funnel, or maybe your sales page is only available at certain times of the year when you have a launch. So you might not want that specific page to rank. And you might want to keep it private. So in that case, you want to be looking at the behind the scenes setting depending on what website builder you’re using, you can usually turn on or turn off your Google search ranking, which is basically just adding a little no index tag to your page to tell Google Hey, you should ignore this page. But for the pages that you really do want to rank typically, that might be your homepage. And for course creators that’s really going to be heavily into your blog content. This is going to be so so important. Most people are a little bit intimidated by blogging. But really you want to think of it as look at your ideal client, what problems are they having either at the stage where your program can help them or the stage just before they might be ready for your program, but they’re looking for that free education to get them to the point where they might be ready for your program. So think about what problems they have, how you as the expert in your industry can help them solve them. And make a list of all those and start creating blog content that answers those questions and solves those problems and make sure they all have a nicely designed email opt in form. So that way you are converting those cold leads who stumble across your site in to potential customers of your courses and programs. So really, really important to consider blogging as an amazing way to help your website rank to help your site build credibility helps you build credibility, regardless of SEO because you’re seen as more of that expert in your space. But blogging is one of the number one ways to improve your SEO as a course creator.

Alex Beadon 34:29
Okay, so I have a few follow up questions. Yeah. Firstly, I don’t know anything about SEO but I’m assuming that if you are someone who let’s say you publish a blog every single week, the fact that your website is being updated and creating new content on a weekly basis that must help your ranking on when someone searches right like that must help your is rank ability a word no.

Galen Mooney 34:59
It does. but not in the same way you would think with Instagram who actively will penalize you, if you’re not showing up regularly, Google doesn’t care so much I like to say quality is better than quantity, I’d rather see somebody push out a really high quality long form blog post, once a month, twice a month, rather than putting out kind of a lame, really short blog post once a week or something like that. So it’s not as important. The nice thing about putting content out weekly or putting content out monthly is not so much that you’re constantly updating your website, which can help but not as much as people think it does. The better part of it is, blogging can sometimes feel like you’re throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. And in the case of blogging, the more spaghetti that you throw, eventually something’s going to hit. And so you can kind of see like, what topics are doing well, what topics aren’t doing well, what are people interested in, based on getting those blog posts, publishing them, and then seeing what content sticks and what content starts to really bring people in and do well, and I have posts, I think, one of my most popular posts on my website, I think I wrote it three and a half, three years ago. And it’s still crushing it haven’t updated it since then it is just doing really well. And it continues to rank. So that’s why I love blogging because you really put the work in upfront and you build that momentum, and then you can see results for years to come, which is pretty incredible.

Alex Beadon 36:18
I’m with you. I think I just looked today at my Google Analytics, and one of the most popular pages is something about, I don’t know, I answer some question about Snapchat, maybe like how to add a friend on Snapchat. It’s something really basic, like probably five years ago, and it’s still getting traffic for us, which is just bizarre. So if someone’s listening, and actually I’m asking this for myself, as well. So we have a podcast, obviously, every week, we are posting that podcast to our blog. We’re also taking the transcript and putting it into the blog as well, because really, the only reason I did that was because I assumed it would be good for SEO. And I know that I find a lot of people through transcripts of podcasts. What else can someone be doing? Or should someone be thinking about when they’re creating that blog post in order to help them rank higher?

Galen Mooney 37:08
Yeah. So I love that you’re creating blog posts from your podcasts, that’s great. Logs tend to do best when the content is really actionable. Or the blog post is a little bit more like Question and Answer structured. So like somebody’s having a problem, like they don’t know how to add a friend on Snapchat, and you have the blog post? That’s the answer. So that type of content tends to do really, really well. And you want to remember, especially as a course creator, and you’re teaching something that maybe you’ve gone through or you’ve done yourself, and now you’re the expert, you might think oh, that’s a silly question. No one’s going to ask that. But in reality, somebody who’s three or four steps before you is dying to know the answer to that question. So don’t write off a question because you think it’s too silly, or you just don’t think it’s relevant enough, right? Write the post, if you get yourself in the mindset of the person, that’s a few steps behind you. And don’t be afraid to approach a topic that you feel like it’s too basic, but it because it could actually really help somebody who’s just a few steps ahead of you. So I always recommend trying to like shift your mind that away from being thinking that certain topics are too elementary for you. And then in terms of the content itself, a really descriptive title is super helpful. So a lot of times people will have a blog post title, and especially if it’s like from a podcast interview or something like that. And maybe, for example, in this podcast title could be something like sales pages with Galen from local creative, which is fine. But unless you’re trying to rank for Galen and local creative, and then also just the word sales pages by itself, which is probably a pretty competitive term, that might not rank as well. You want to really think about maybe taking like one key actionable item out of the podcast or something that’s like, I hate to say click Beatty, but a little bit more click Beatty to get somebody excited, like what’s a question somebody has about sales pages that we’ve answered in this podcast episode. And you can still include my name if you want to do or my business, but you really want to focus on like, what is the actionable thing someone’s going to take away? What is the question that they have, or the juicy info that they want to know about? That’s gonna be in the podcast and the blog post titled to get them to click and to read that. So it’s not just sales pages, like what are they going to learn specifically about sales pages, then in the blog content itself, that first sentence or two of the blog is really important. You want to reiterate kind of that maybe that main question or those main keywords again, and then to format the post. You want to think about adding headers, H twos, H threes throughout the page, having paragraphs in between them, just like sales pages, blog posts, paragraphs should always be short and sweet and easy to digest and really skimmable so people can skim through and find the thing. So you might take each one of the points from this episode or something like that. break those down into headings, and then have a little bit of a description below each one. Transcripts are great, they definitely do help but it’s great to able to break down the key points from an episode into the podcast, each point could be a heading. And then within that you’re gonna have paragraphs. And then I always love to have visuals too, because it’s helpful to have visuals to kind of demonstrate what you were talking about in the episode. But long form content is always best. And breaking it up into short paragraphs with lots of headings is really helpful, too.

Alex Beadon 40:22
I love this, I think my favorite thing that you said was that there’s nothing too elementary for people, you know, like, it’s okay to keep it super basic. And just because it’s really easy to use doesn’t mean it’s not really easy to someone else. I also love that because, you know, what are people Googling, they’re Googling the things that they’re wondering. And a lot of times, you know, people are beginners. And so having really bearing in mind what people are searching for is very important. So do you have any tools that you would recommend to help people get a better idea of what people are searching for?

Galen Mooney 40:59
Ooh, this is a really good question. And I sort of probably have an unpopular opinion on this. For SEO tools. There’s a lot of great ones out there, a lot of them are super expensive. I love Uber suggests that’s not a super expensive one. That’s a pretty good one. But in terms of where I get inspiration for topics, a lot of times, I’ll just go to Google, start typing in a question. See what autocomplete gives me? That’s a great one, too, because anything Google is going to autocomplete for you. Like if you’re, you know, asking how to sales pages or something like that. And questions come up, you can see what people have frequently asked. I also love scrolling all the way to the bottom of Google results. And seeing in that suggested they have a bunch of like suggested search queries or like related search queries, those are really helpful for keyword research. And then the other thing is, I just love going to Facebook groups or community groups or things like that. And genuinely seeing like, what questions are getting asked a lot what questions people have, because sometimes what shows up in a keyword research tool is going to be so general and so high level that it’s going to be either impossible to rank or you’re going to end up just getting people who aren’t really specific enough to the ideal client that you have. So I like to find those more longer tail keywords, meaning multiword keywords or keyword phrases that are specific to your ideal client. And going off of those and like I said, sometimes you’re gonna miss, you’re not always going to throw spaghetti at the wall, and it’s not always gonna stick, right. So you just have to really keep going. And keep answering those questions that either you had when you were just getting started, or that come up when you’re talking to people in your who are already in your course or program and see what they’re struggling with, or ask what they used to be struggling with. But now they feel like they really understand that they’ve been in your program, talk to people that’s that’s the number one thing is talk to people, check Google check, autocomplete, and SEO tools are great. But I wouldn’t go over the top and spend a bunch of money on an SEO tool specifically for keyword research. Because I think most of the ideas they give you are just going to be too broad.

Alex Beadon 43:00
Yeah, I love all of this, I feel so inspired. I hope everyone listening feels the same way. I’m like, I feel a renewed sense of energy around my blog, and my website and all of this. So thank you so much for sharing everything that you’ve been sharing with us. My next question is how do you go about monitoring this? Or how do you recommend that someone monitor this? You know, there’s so many I know for me, like I really focus on Instagram marketing, that’s a huge lead generator and lead nurture for us. And so right now I’m at the stage where like, every day, I’m looking at reels and how they’re performing, and really trying to make little tweaks here and there. How often should someone be taking a look at their analytics? Do you? What do you recommend for analytics? Isn’t Google Analytics? What should we be looking for and paying attention to?

Galen Mooney 43:47
Yes, so in terms of your website, the biggest tools, the biggest free tools from Google are Google Search Console, and Google Analytics. Those are the two big ones. And Google Analytics is showing you how users interact with your website from the moment they find you all the way through to what they’re doing on your site, what pages they’re clicking on how much time they’re spending on your site. And Google Search Console is telling you how your website is being interacted with inside of Google or in the Google search engine. So they’re very different tools. They work together really well. So Google Search Console, how people are finding you and Google Analytics, basically what they’re doing once they get to your site. So it’s really great to make sure you have both of those, especially Google Analytics just just closed off their old version, Universal Analytics, and now they just have the new Google Analytics for so if you have not already upgraded take this as your sign to go do that now, because you’re gonna be you’re gonna have a huge gap in data if you don’t update to the new version of Google Analytics. But those are the two big tools I recommend for just understanding in general, how people are using your site, how they’re navigating, how they’re getting around. I love heat map tools. Even if you don’t want to pay for one monthly sometimes it can be helpful to just say If not do it for a month, see how all of your pages are being interacted with, and then cancel the plan. If you don’t want to keep going on that heat map tool, just a good way to see how people are interacting with especially long form pages. And there’s always surprising things that you find like, there’s a section that no one ever clicks on that you thought was really great. But people don’t seem to care about it. So there’s things like that. And then for SEO, I do really like Uber Suggest sem rush, there’s a bunch of great ones out there, again, they can get pricey, so you want to be careful with that. But sometimes you can do a free trial and just try out those. Uber Suggest, I believe, has like free free options to play around with, which is really fun. And I, in general, for analytics for my website, I check it on a weekly or monthly basis, I would say I probably check it more than the average person because I’m really into numbers and data. But if you’re checking it once a month, and just making sure everything’s you know, staying where you want it to your rankings are either staying the same or improving, you’re not seeing any major drop offs or things like that. You’re going to be good as long as you’re keeping a general eye on it about once a month.

Alex Beadon 46:01
And you said it was Uber Suggest and SEM rush? Did I hear that correctly? Yes. Okay. Okay, good. Just wanted to make sure we got that for everyone. And for anyone listening, we will have all of gallons, suggested tools in the shownotes. For you guys as well. I feel very inspired. Like I feel I even feel inspired to take a podcast episode like, for example, this one, we’ve spoken about so many different things. And even just turn them into like many blog posts, you know, where it’s like you’re answering one thing at a time, instead of just having like one big page. So I’m loving everything that you’re saying. And also just a reminder to everyone, you know, if we are working on creating this content that’s going to be showing up on search engines, we want to make sure that we’re collecting emails, and that we do have those freebies there for people that are attracting the right ideal client for whatever it is that we’re offering. That’s just a very, very important reminder, because traffic without converting them is a waste of time.

Galen Mooney 47:01
100% and traffic that isn’t your right target audience either, like don’t waste time writing blog posts, for people that aren’t going to buy your programs. And don’t waste time writing a blog post if you’re not going to optimize it, right? Like why write a blog post, if it’s not gonna rank in search? Or if it’s going to attract the wrong person for your business?

Alex Beadon 47:17
What would you say are because I know you just said you check out your analytics monthly or weekly, what are maybe three different things that you’ve learned recently, or that have surprised you recently that maybe our audience could benefit from knowing.

Galen Mooney 47:32
When it comes to SEO, one thing I just want to mention, and I think people often forget about this or don’t really understand this fully. But if you make a change to your website, you may not see the impacts of that change from an SEO perspective until a month or two later. And so anytime you’re making a change, you want to let that marinate for a little bit, you want to let Google digest the change. And if you’re not, you know, if your site’s not getting a lot of traffic, it might even take longer. Sometimes for me, like I remember when I first started blogging, I wrote this post, and it maybe took six months for that post to get on the first page of Google. And so it went from almost no traffic to getting a ton of traffic. And so it’s really important to just keep in mind that any changes you’re making, they are going to take time. And you just want to not rush it, not stress about it. And especially not continue to make changes because then you’re not really going to be able to tell which change had the result that you wanted to get. So take that time, make the changes, be strategic about it. But then let those changes kind of marinate, let Google understand what you’ve just changed. And then you’ll be able to see the results a little bit further down the line, which is totally normal, and to be expected. And then in terms of checking on my analytics, I’m just looking to see kind of, I check pretty frequently. So I’m looking to see have any of the blog posts that I’ve written in the last few months started to rank really well, I’m always looking for content trends. So I might find a blog post that I wrote a few months ago, that now is ranking but not great. Or I might find what I wrote a few months ago that all of a sudden has popped up to my number three blog posts in terms of traffic driving on my website, that tells me people are interested in that content. Maybe I want to go back in and edit that old blog post to make it even better. That’s the trick most people don’t talk about. They think I’ve written the post, it’s now out into the world. I can’t edit it again, I should just leave it as is. But a lot of times if a post is already doing well, and you go back and you edit that old content, and you make it even better, you’re not really removing anything, you’re just adding and expanding on it. You’re gonna find that maybe you go from being ninth on the first page and getting some decent traffic to being third on the first page. And now you’re getting a firehose of traffic. So pay attention to those pages that are starting to rank well, and then look at how you can improve those pages for the keywords that they’re already ranking for.

Alex Beadon 49:52
How often are you blogging? Oh, goodness.

Galen Mooney 49:54
Um, so there is how often would I like to be blogging and How often I’m actually blogging are two different things. I would say, I think I started the beginning of every year with a goal of weekly. I am a huge fan of YouTube, I have a YouTube channel. And so I try to create a new video every week. But it’s probably more like twice a month is what ends up happening. You know, we have the ambition of every week, I have a team. So it’s not just me, but I feel like and you probably feel this too a little bit, Alex, but you run two businesses, there’s like the content creation side. And then there’s the actual side of like serving the people in your courses and programs. And for me, there’s the service base side to of working with clients, which I love. And so it’s balancing all of those things. I wouldn’t say if you’re somebody who wants to blog more, you have to make it a priority, you have to put it above the other things on your to do list and set aside time every week. And I do do that I set aside time every week to create content, I just don’t necessarily get around to publishing it every week. So I’m working on it every week, but I don’t publish every week. So sometimes just takes a little longer to get those those posts out into the world. But I would say I try four. I actively publish I would say about twice a month.

Alex Beadon 51:09
And what percentage of your clients are currently coming from SEO? Ooh, that’s a great question.

Galen Mooney 51:17
I do I do track it. And it’s actually my number one lead source right now is either Google or YouTube and it kind of pins back and forth. But I was trying to see if I can pull it up for you. Yes. So right now, let me see if I can actually look at my analytics while we’re on here. Because that’s always fun to see. Yes. So right now, Google is my number one. And I don’t think I have percentages. But you see here, I’m trying to think if I could like actually count the number for you. But uh, by far like if I combine Google and YouTube, it just trumps everything else on my left, including word of mouth. So right now I have Google YouTube, word of mouth, Instagram. And then Facebook is like way down there as last. But Instagram is still a big one for me, too. But Google and YouTube is probably four times what Instagram is for me right now.

Alex Beadon 52:17
Wow. And so on your website, just that everyone can have an idea of what kind of freebie you’re using to get people to sign up for your email list, like what is the main thing that’s generating the leads.

Galen Mooney 52:32
So that’s specifically actually for the form that people fill out to work with me. So that’s not even a freebie form. That’s specifically for clients. And it’s funny too, because I can even look at conversions by that. But for my, I could actually look, I’m trying to sync it up with my email one, two, before email specifically, like for my email one, I have a few different freebies that I have. Right now I have a program for designers that talks all about my systems and processes, because I’m very passionate about that. And then I also have a program for SEO. And if I look at those, and keep track, right now, Google and YouTube are also my number one. For those two, I’m trying to see if I can find specific numbers for you. But definitely, by far Google and YouTube. And it’s nice, because it’s all content that I created a long time ago, I have actually at this point, not come I still love Instagram, I still love posting stories. But I have taken quite a bit of a break from social media this year, just I think, for my own mental health, and you just get overwhelmed. And it’s just a lot, sometimes that constant having to show up and having to be front facing in your business. And so I’ve taken quite a bit of a break from that this year, and just posted more sporadically and when it feels good, and when I feel inspired. And so Google and YouTube have both really taken over for me for my opt in forums. And you asked what they were and for my for my designer program, I have a workshop about becoming a more or it’s actually a three part challenge about becoming a competent designer, and how to help people get over that hump introverted designers how to help them be more confident. And then for my SEO, it’s an SEO challenge that we have.

Alex Beadon 54:14
That’s so brilliant. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. And where can people find you like, where’s the best place for someone to go and learn more about you and everything that you do?

Galen Mooney 54:25
Yes, so my website is local creative.co. And my Instagram is also local creative.co. Come say hi there. I’m also on Tik Tok and YouTube. It’s just local creative everywhere. If you search for me, and I would love to connect with you. There’ll be a lot of fun to get to know you and your courses and programs and things that you’re working on. Yeah, I would. I would love to chat. It’s been

Alex Beadon 54:49
such a good episode. Like I told you a million times. I feel so like high energy and buzzed and excited about everything that we spoke to and I think everyone’s gonna love this episode. So, so much So thank you, is there anything else that you would like to share with the listeners that maybe I didn’t get around to asking you or anything that just feels particularly important for you to share?

Galen Mooney 55:12
I would just say, I know we talked a lot about all of the things that you should have on your sales page, and you shouldn’t be doing on your sales page. But I think the number one thing is just to get it out there, get it out into the world, and iterate and test everything everyone thinks that needs to be perfect before you hit the publish button and push it live. But know that it is, like you said, it’s a living breathing thing it’s going to be changing, you can add to it every week, every month, you can leave it alone for six months and come back to it. But you can always edit it later. So if you are stressed about launching something and you think your sales page needs to be perfect, take that off your plate Done is better than perfect. Get it out into the world, knowing that you can come back and make all these changes and implement these best practices at a later date. As long as you are launching as long as you are starting as long as you are working towards your goals. You’re going to be just fine.

Alex Beadon 55:59
Galen, thank you so much for being on our podcast. We love to having you so much a reminder for everyone that they can go and find you at local creative.co on the just regular in your browser and also tick tock and Instagram. So hopefully people go and find you there. Thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you for having

Galen Mooney 56:25
me. It’s been such a pleasure to catch up.

Alex Beadon 56:30
Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of On Purpose with Alex Beadon. I want to remind you that if you have yet to check out the brand new sales page for together we launched, you can go and do that at together we launch.com scroll through, see all of the brand newness, you’re going to see exactly what Galen and I have been speaking about in today’s episode. And trust me, you are going to love it. So go and check it out. It really is something that I’m so proud of. And so excited to walk into the next launch with. So go and check it out if you haven’t already. Thank you again, so much for being here with us. We appreciate you more than you know, if you haven’t yet left us a review on your favorite podcast app, this is your little reminder to take one minute to go and do that. It really makes a huge difference to us here at the podcast and really help support the work that we’re doing. So please take a minute to go and leave a review. We really appreciate it. Lastly, I want to encourage you to go and check out the launch expansion method. This is a free masterclass that I created specifically for online course creators and membership site owners to help them scale their sales. So if you haven’t gone to check it out yet, you can go and do that using the link in the description. You can also check out the link in my bio. I also have it available for you on my website. It is called the launch expansion method and it teaches you my six figure launch strategy that has helped so many business owners from all over the world to have their first six-figure launches. So definitely go and check that out now. Thanks so much for listening, and I really look forward to next week’s episode. I hope to see you there. Bye.