#awinewith Shonavee Simpson Anderson
MEET Sam, founder Sam Says.
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Transcript
Danielle Lewis (00:05):
Amazing Shonavee welcome to Spark tv. Oh, that unintentionally rhymed. How are you?
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (00:11):
I'm really good. How are you?
Danielle Lewis (00:15):
I am so well. I'm so excited to have you on the show today. Let's start out by telling everyone who you are and what you do.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (00:24):
Alright, so I am a SEO professional. I've been working in SEO for about 10 ish years now. And I got into that through copywriting, which I started about 12 ish years now, just to give people an indication of how old I'm now. And what I'm doing is I have launched my hometown, which is Newcastle. I've launched our first ever SEO conference, which is really, really exciting.
Danielle Lewis (00:59):
Yay. So
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (01:01):
Good. I love it. And we're trying to create something a little bit different with that. So for me, I really wanted to make sure that what we were putting together was something that was going to really be worth the value. And also I think would put out a message that was really important to me as well, which is the way that we currently operate as an industry is not the most ideal. We tend to be kind of relegated to a bit of a siloed, you've tried everything else, it's not working, so now you're going to go out a limb, you're going to do SEO. Whereas for me, SEO is actually, it's more of a collaborative framework than it's anything else. And the reason I say that is SEOs get into this industry through basically all those digital skill sets. So I got into it through copywriting and others got into it through website development or through marketing.
(02:05):
And for a lot of us, it just so happens you rock up to work one day and someone says, it's your job. You're doing SEO, and you're like, excellent. What is it? And then you just kind of have to figure it out on the fly. And that's how a lot of us got into it. So we get into it through these other skill sets. And to me, SEO is not really this standalone skillset. It's actually a lens that you put over your existing sets and you use those skill sets through that knowledge of how search engines work, what they're looking for, and how they're going to understand content. And then try and serve that up to users. So if I can get more people to understand what that kind looks like, then less people are going to be vulnerable to bad actors who are just trying to take advantage of them, because that happens a lot. And I really don't like being the bad guy that comes in, has to point that out to someone that doesn't make them feel good. And it certainly doesn't make them like me. And also it will make, I think people less afraid of it. People are very wary because they don't really understand what it is. And so then I also don't have to come in at the end of projects and be like, I love everything that you've done a for effort, I am going to change everything.
(03:30):
So what I'm trying to do with edge of searches, raise that awareness of SEO in the broader digital professions and kind of bring us together at the same time, be like, Hey, we should work together. You and me. That's the goal.
Danielle Lewis (03:49):
I love it. I was literally talking to someone about a website yesterday, and they were like, so does it have the SEO done? And I'm like, I don't think you get what SEO is. If you're asking me that question,
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (04:05):
I love that. You're like, yep, I did. I pushed the button that said SEO. It's SE now.
Danielle Lewis (04:09):
Fully integrated. Fully integrated.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (04:12):
The plugin now.
Danielle Lewis (04:13):
Yeah. So I mean with that lens, if someone's listening to us going, what the hell is SEO? How would you explain it for a business owner? So a business owner is mostly the people listening in. So they're people who have built brands, they sell products, they sell services, they have websites, and they're like, what is this SEO thing that everyone keeps talking about?
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (04:36):
Yes. So the way that I usually try to describe it is you're looking at different ways to optimize for online visibility. So that doesn't just cover your website, it covers content wherever it may appear online, and it covers social media and all these other areas as well, which I think SES have also, we've steered very clear of it for a very long time because most of us just really hate it. But the way that Google has changed more recently means that we can't really avoid it anymore. But I guess the core of it is if you are looking for online visibility, it's understanding how to optimize whatever you are doing within those campaigns, whether that's your producing new content or you are trying to build brand authority, or you are trying to run ads, things like that. How do you optimize your visibility, whether that's increase just the amount of visibility you have or refine the visibility to the very specific audience that you want to get in touch with.
Danielle Lewis (05:51):
Yeah, and it's really interesting that you describe it like that as well because, and that's kind of where had my head, when the website lady was saying that, I was like, there's so many moving parts to SEO, and I say, this is a non SEO expert, but when I think about SEO, I go, I've got almost like a list. I'm like, am I keeping my blog up to date with keywords about my niche, my social media posts linking? Do they have keywords and do they link back to my website? Is the copy on my website what it should be? And yes, there are some technical elements as well in terms of how your website's built. There's actually so many tick box, even other people linking to your website. There's so many things that you can actually do. SEO,
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (06:39):
So many, and I think that's what intimidates people is when you get into it, it is overwhelming. But it's one of those things of, I guess what I usually say to clients when they feel that is you can explore any number of rabbit holes and you might get something from it. But essentially we're just trying to, let's do the basics first. Let's get where is your actual presence? Let's look at optimizing that presence that you have. And then we can look at expanding. And from there, it's a case of let's actually think about what you're capable of. What are your resources?
Danielle Lewis (07:20):
Yes,
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (07:22):
Yes, yes. Every bit is be like, oh yeah, yeah, my resources
Danielle Lewis (07:29):
Totally, totally. Do I have time between 10:00 PM and 12:00 PM 12 midnight?
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (07:34):
Yeah. How much sleep do I actually actually need? Yeah, if you just add and add and add, and this happens to people all the time, they get overwhelmed with how much is there. They just start throwing things at the ball, seeing what happens. But then they're not really dedicating time and energy to any specific thing. So for my clients, I'm like, let's just look at where you actually are now, where you need to be, and then what resources do you actually have to make that happen? And then we can go from there. Do you think
Danielle Lewis (08:10):
That it's also a long game as well? It's not like, and I dunno if this is my just legacy thinking, but I think about to my other business, scrunches digital marketing or influencer marketing specifically, and we started writing blogs from day one. So we have a decade of blog articles and we just get such great organic search traffic from that. But I think to myself, well, if you've not started a blog, one blog article is not going to be great. SEO, I'm talking about a decade of blogs here.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (08:40):
Yeah, yeah. It's one of those things of, I guess the traditional line with SEO is it's a long game. We usually say to clients, particularly just the average person can actually afford to see results within the six to 12 months. And here's the famous SEO line. It depends. So essentially everything is a balance of time and money. As business owners, that's the golden rule. If I don't have money to pay for it, I need time to do it myself.
(09:23):
So SEO is no different. If you've got a ton of money that you can throw at it, and you can pay for people to output anywhere between four to six blogs for you a month and to create all those pages and get your website up within a month and to coordinate cross channel optimization with matching keywords and content, things like that. If you've got the resources to do that, you can get really quick results. But what the average person can actually afford in terms of resources means that for most people, SEO does take usually about six months of consistent effort. And that's because there are layers to the way that a system like Google understands what a website is and what your business is. So it's not just looking at your business, it's looking at your social profiles, it's looking at your directory listings, it's looking at anywhere that you've been mentioned on the internet and kind of collating all of this stuff. Sorry everyone. I'm blurry now. I'm a Monet.
Danielle Lewis (10:33):
You love cameras. I know camera coming in and out of Don't worry about it.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (10:37):
It's
Danielle Lewis (10:37):
Fine. I'm a
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (10:38):
Monet painting now. So yeah, so it looks at all these different aspects of what we would call your digital profile or your digital footprint. And it starts to gather all that information and it relates it back to what we call entities. So entities is far more important in Google than keywords. Keywords is just how the majority of people who are not SEOs and even still the majority of SEOs actually, that's still how we understand how to speak to the system essentially. But the way that it really does it is through entities. So it has this idea of topics or ideas or concepts, and then keywords make up those entities and they do them in these kinds of think them like clusters essentially. So related clusters that make up that concept or idea or topic. So what it does is essentially you fit within these ideas, and so it takes time to build that up. For the vast majority of people, it's never going to be a quick thing because it takes time to really establish who you are, what's your position, how does something like Google actually understand you and understand your business?
Danielle Lewis (12:04):
So if you were talking to a business owner and they said, okay, I'm going to do some stuff myself to start with and I'm happy to invest the time and I'm going to appreciate that it is a six plus months exercise, would there be a top three to five things that you would have them focus on?
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (12:28):
Depends on what kind of business it is. Because content, just putting out blogs or whatever is not going to be the best course of action for every business, but for the majority it's going to be a case of let's really look at your website, let's look at your connections and let's figure out what are you actually offering. So the first thing is, what are your services? What are your products? And that's usually the starting point for us is really get your offering down and understand that within the concept of entities or the concept of keywords as we talk about it. And then we can use that to optimize your service pages or category pages. If you are doing e-commerce or anything like that, that's usually our first port of call list to look at those category pages because they can bring in a lot more of that middle funnel traffic than what your product pages will. So you're kind of building that idea of this is who I am, this is what I sell, this is what I do. So yeah, the first step is get that main offering down. What are you actually doing? And then how does that translate into keywords?
(13:50):
And then what needs to be optimized from there. And some businesses are really interesting in that they're so niche. I'm back, you're back. Hi PhD again. Some businesses are so niche that you can't really optimize their service pages, which is really interesting. You have to get a little bit more creative then where you have to. So for example, one thing that I would do with a business that is look at providing what is your overall offer? What is your job? And then you can create kind of a directory page on the website of services, but you optimize that main kind of navigational page for the job, essentially. Yeah. So that's one way of doing it. And then other things to focus on is your imagery have original images wherever possible.
Danielle Lewis (14:55):
You're telling me I shouldn't have my stock images on my website?
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (14:59):
You can. And no hate to the stock images truly, but I would say that they are starting to get, they're really cracking down and making it hard for people to even use them.
Danielle Lewis (15:15):
Really?
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (15:16):
Yeah.
Danielle Lewis (15:17):
I'm really interested in that because I use stock images for a blog header. So now in my mind I'm like, Ooh, maybe I shouldn't do that.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (15:27):
It can be totally fine. So I think the more specific you need the image to be, the harder it is. And they always keep those really specific types of images at the premium level, so you have to pay for the accounts. And also we have also noticed quite recently, there's been some scammers that have been going around about image rights, hitting people up for money. Really? Wow. Do you get someone who's asking you to send money to a bank account in Switzerland for the image rights of stock images on your website? Don't do it.
Danielle Lewis (16:06):
Public service announcement.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (16:07):
Public service announcement, don't do that. Having a few here or there is totally fine, but wherever you can have those original images, yeah, absolutely. Try and get those wherever you can just because personally it's going to be a point of difference for you, and you're not going to be kind of targeted in that way
Danielle Lewis (16:28):
Looking blend looking like a stock website.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (16:33):
And I think people will use this, they do respond better to that,
(16:38):
But it also gives you a point of difference for trying to rank an image search as well. So you can optimize those images in the alt text specifically. So the idea of that is to describe the image, but because it's an accessibility thing for blind people, they can't see exactly what the image is, then they can use that alt text is used to read out what the description of the image is. But if it's something that's really specific to your business, then you can put those keywords in and you can optimize for that. So that's really handy, especially if you're in products, especially if you're in any kind of service where you do design, like interior design or outdoor design, anything like that. If you build stuff, paint stuff, if you deal with stuff in any capacity, physical things, get original images and start optimizing those. Get those in image search because a lot of people also do like to look for things that way as well.
Danielle Lewis (17:47):
And is that why we should name them correctly? Like the file name of the image?
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (17:52):
Yeah. Only because it gets pulled into the metadata and robots can read it. So if they can read the name and it's just 0 0 0 1 3 8
Danielle Lewis (18:07):
IMG. Yeah,
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (18:08):
I-M-G-P-N-G, then under
Danielle Lewis (18:11):
Goes underscore, I bought it from my bloody stock side.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (18:15):
Yeah, a lot doesn't know that. That's not important. It just goes, oh, that has something to do with the image. So if you can name them correctly, that's really good. If you can optimize alt text where it's appropriate with some keywords, that can be really great and compress them as well. Images will bog down your page speed really, really quickly. So images are a really important part that we focus on. And then, gosh, what else? I've already talked so much about.
Danielle Lewis (18:49):
No, it's so interesting. Even, I know we kind of went, there's so many elements to SEOA search engine optimization, and it's like even that mentioning page speed, load speed. And I think that's why it is interesting for business owners. They do go, have I ticked off SEO? It's like, no, you,
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (19:09):
You'll never tick off SEO.
Danielle Lewis (19:11):
No. And then the Google gods will change the rules and we'll be doing something else.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (19:17):
Yes, the Google gods. The
Danielle Lewis (19:18):
Google gods. That's how I describe SEO. I'm like SEO is appeasing the Google guards. That's what it's,
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (19:26):
Yeah. I mean particularly in Australia, just because they have so much at the market, but it's one of those things of traditionally SEOs have operated on the idea that there's like 200 plus ranking factors to work with. And so we're like, it's a checklist. Tick up as many things as you can, but don't stress it if you can't do everything so much. And then the Google API leak recently kind of blew that entirely out of the water. It was like, oh, you think there's 200? That's cute. There's actually 14,000. Enjoy. Yeah. You're like, oh, cool. Alright. You're like, well, at least I'm employed forever. Yeah, yeah. Never going to be out of a job.
Danielle Lewis (20:11):
Totally.
(20:12):
Well, and it's even interesting, sometimes business owners say to me, I've tried everything and I dunno what else to do. And I'm like, I guarantee you you haven't tried everything. SEO is one of those tasks where it's like, yeah, as we've described today, if you're a business owner sitting there going, what the hell else do I do to try and grow my business? It's like, well, maybe once a week or once a month, you should be going, I'm going to do X, Y, and Z in contribution to SEO because it is something that stacks up over time and it is something that you need to consistently work on. And I mean even I know this is giving myself a kick up the bum. I'm so bad at naming images, I just am so lazy. And I was like, that's really interesting. Even I go, no, okay from now I should make sure that I'm doing that correctly. And because I search so many women in business, and this is why it's landing for me, because I Google women in business because I'm usually updating their listing in our directory or something for some women and some businesses that you can't find a profile picture, you can't find a logo. And I'm now going, I guarantee you their file names aren't correct and they haven't been indexed. And so they're not showing up for their own business.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (21:27):
Well, probably more they don't have any old text on those images. So yeah, incorrect name, but also they probably haven't put the old text things, what's that for? And just gone too many things and just moved on.
Danielle Lewis (21:41):
Oh my God, that's going to be the subject of this podcast. Sort your alt text out, ladies
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (21:47):
Sort your alt text. You know what kickass ladies do? They have alt text?
Danielle Lewis (21:52):
Yes. Oh my god. It's cool because again, it's like for the people who are sitting there thinking I've tried everything, I'm like, no, there are so many hacks, so many things you can do to optimize your business. And I love this because it is a checklist of things that we can start doing to start ranking better.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (22:11):
And look, if your business has been around for at least a couple of years, then there's always little things that you can do that can get you some quick traction because age is a weirdly kind of part of it, which always sucks when you're a new business, but you'll be happy about it in a couple of years. But freshness, for example, is a part of the system from when Google first started integrating news into the SERPs
(22:41):
And they're like, how do we assess what is news and what's not news? And a part of that was freshness. How recently has this been updated? And so that's why you see the dates and stuff so that they're always looking at that sort of thing. And one of the things that we like to do at the beginning of every year is go and have a quick review of the content, make sure everything is up to date, and then we update the dates. And that can be just a quick little tick over for you. Honestly, it amazes me every year just how well something small that works.
Danielle Lewis (23:21):
That's so cool. And again, how the job is never done. There's always stuff you can do to improve.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (23:27):
Always. Yeah. That's the bad news of this podcast is it never ends. There is always more to do.
Danielle Lewis (23:37):
It's so true. That's just like business in general though. What about voice? I kind of remember a few years ago when these, I'm going to say Alexa and she's going to yell at me next to me. I feel like a few years ago the whole world went crazy and I was like, you've got to optimize for voice. Within years people are just going to be talking to their thing, they smart home things and whatever. So your website cetera. But I feel like then that died out. Is that a thing?
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (24:08):
I mean, heaps of people do use voice search. The thing is that the way people use voice search isn't drastically different to how they currently search when they type. So the reason it was such a big deal, and I think this is pre all of the hoopla about ai, pre-chat, GPT every year was the voice of search, the year of voice search. You know what I mean? I was reading articles every year, they're like, this is the year this, you have to optimize for it. Now chapter is like every year is the, you have to use ai. So yeah, back when it was, I guess at that peak of that hoopla, the way people search was different to how they spoke. So the way they were using voice search is they would ask for questions, but the way they searched was instead of saying, what do I need to fix my shrub? It would be shrub tools. What use or something like that.
Danielle Lewis (25:20):
Dead. Yeah, I've killed my plant.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (25:25):
So the way that people were typing in search was very different. I don't know if you remember this, but there was a whole system to how you had to use Google when
Danielle Lewis (25:36):
Oh yeah, I remember when I was in primary school and they taught us how to use search engines and you had to put plus symbols and you had to put equations. You had to use equations to search search
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (25:49):
Engines. Yes. What we call the Google docs now, which is really cute, but, and that all still exists, but no one uses it. And it ties back into a conversation I've been having a lot recently, which is the way products are designed now is you need to have a top layer of, anyone can use it, anyone can use it any which way they want and it'll work. And then you have this underlayer of complexity for people who want to be the hero users. So there's people out there who do use the Google docs and they get in there and they put all the equation, they use all that stuff, but most people just go, how do do thing?
(26:36):
And that's it. So it had to evolve for that. And so what has happened, I think probably it may even be partly as a result of voice search, is people have, it is now trained to understand all these little InBetween bits. So Bert, for example, is just one part of the ecosystem and its whole purpose is what's a preposition? That's it. What does it mean when something is from, with what do those words mean? How do they create context? That's its whole purpose to the system. Wow. Yeah. We love bur, he's great. So the system's gotten really, really complex. And so the idea that you need to optimize separately for voice search I think has been anyone who is still saying it now, I would say that's a really overblown claim. And it's just like you don't need to because people now search the way that they speak.
Danielle Lewis (27:40):
Yeah, I love that. And you mentioned ai, so how about that? Because one common thing I'm seeing people talk about is using AI to write content and now having to flag content if it's AI generated. Are you seeing anything going on between AI generated content and SEO at the moment?
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (28:03):
So Google did roll out what we call helpful content to update, which is a whole system within the ecosystem. And a lot of people who used AI to basically just create mountains of content really quickly have all been tanked.
Danielle Lewis (28:23):
Wow.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (28:23):
Very purposely tanked. Well, I can't say that very purposely for legal reasons, but
Danielle Lewis (28:28):
Allegedly,
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (28:30):
Allegedly tanked, but they have all by chance tanked after this. That's not to say that you can't use it, you just have to be reasonable. At our agency, I've used AI content writing particularly to do some of the stuff that really makes you just want to die when you have to try and write it.
Danielle Lewis (28:57):
As much as I would love to say, I find it good as a starting point as well, because also it's just that concept of blank page. When you look at a blank page, you're like, I dunno. But then if I have an article in front of me, I'm like, oh, this sucks. And then I just edit, edit, edit, edit, edit out. Oh, now it sounds like me, but it just accelerates the
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (29:17):
Process. Yes. Yeah, a hundred percent. And that's no different to using writing prompts to get you going. But the main things that I would say, if you are looking to use an AI writer, which you totally can, there's some out there, and for the most part they write better than the average person. That's the kicker. They don't write better than good writers. So if you have a good writer, keep them. Don't get rid of them, please keep them. But for the average person who's not a writer, who doesn't have that technical know-how, because it is a skill, then yeah, absolutely. You can use an AI writer and it's probably going to produce something better than you could do. And the main thing is to be careful about the structure because all these different AI tools, a lot of them are just pushing out the same kind of format and structure. And so that's a bit of a giveaway, but have your own structure, do your research, actually research a topic. Don't rely on these AI tools to know things for you because they don't know things. And that's where AI as a term is really, really misleading. This is not intelligence,
(30:37):
It's an algorithm. And that's,
Danielle Lewis (30:41):
Oh my God, I love that. You're so spot on. It's almost like, I'm going to say this in a terrible way, but it's like an idiot that just searches the internet, pulls information in and spits out an article. You're right, it's, it's just regurgitating what it searched.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (30:57):
Yes, it's a web scraper essentially with machine learning capabilities to put that information into grammatical sentence structures. That's really what's going on. So the idea of AI is a little bit of a misleading term, and if people kind of approach it with that awareness, like this is a tool, it's not something to do the thinking for me, it's something to help me with the technical execution, then it's going to be really useful to, you still put in the time, if you used to take six to eight hours to write a blog before chat GBT, it should still take you probably four to six hours to produce a blog. It still should take that time because
(31:43):
Then you are researching your topic, you are doing the editing, and you're probably considering the outline as well. So my recommendations, do your research, create your own outline of what you want, and then use that outline to get very specific responses out of the AI that you want. Because the more specific you are with it, the better the response you're going to get. You just say, Hey, write me a 700 word blog on blah topic. It'll do that and it'll be crap. If you go, Hey, can you write a response to this very specific question on this topic? Keep it to 200 words and please use, let's say it's legal or something, please use New South Wales Australian legislation for this. Then you're going to get a much, much better, much more correct response. So yeah, do your research, do your own outlines, and then edit edits, edits and edit again.
Danielle Lewis (32:56):
I love it. This has been amazing. So tactical. I love that. I love that. Amazing. And I haven't even asked you about running the business. This has been all strategy, all stuff that we can actually implement.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (33:12):
Talk
Danielle Lewis (33:12):
To me about, so you mentioned you started as a copywriter and that's how you got into this industry. And obviously you said you check every year, you kind of take your own, you eat your own dog food, you do your own stuff, do your own SEO. But what's it like the underlying business element for you? What is it like running an SEO agency?
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (33:37):
So I don't run the agency. So Edger search is my separate business that I've established with the help of my boss, who is lovely. Awesome. When I first came
Danielle Lewis (33:52):
In, you're an intrapreneur essentially.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (33:55):
Yes, entrepreneur. I love that. Yes, yes. So when I first came to him with the idea, I was like, I'm thinking about doing this conference. And he was like, do you want to do it yourself? You go out, you register the business, you do all the stuff's like, or do you want to do it through FireWire and then where we can utilize business resources to help it make it happen? I was like, I will take option two. Please
Danielle Lewis (34:23):
Totally shortcut success always wherever
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (34:28):
You can get help. So yeah, I mean, I am very involved with FireWire and I'm super grateful to my boss for that. Any big changes that happen, we discuss them first and thankfully we're pretty much always on the same page. So that's smooth sailing.
Danielle Lewis (34:49):
Awesome.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (34:50):
So I'm very involved in the direction of that. And then in the business side, and then with the conference, I think with that, because it's an event-based thing, although I want to expand it outside of that, I'm really getting the benefit of just that creative business side of things, of what is this going to be? What are we building to?
(35:17):
And that's been really interesting is building something from the ground up and being there from the beginning, because I've never had that experience before. And luckily we've got so many partners that have just thrown their support behind it as well. I've been so surprised that I haven't really had to convince anybody, which is insane to me. That is so good. That is insane. I know. So we've got a branding partner, for example, who we do work with them through the agency, and we're like, so would you want to be the branding sponsor? I'm a Manet painting again, sorry guys. Oh, I'm back. Would you be interested? And yeah, I was like,
Speaker 3 (36:00):
Great.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (36:02):
Yeah, cool. So they've helped create the edge of search brand, which is amazing. And one of the things they really, I loved about it was they pushed back on us. So when I was like, this is my idea, this is what I'm looking at, this is what I want. And originally it was going to be called Newie, SEO conference because Newcastle, good old Newie keeps it a bit more, I guess in the vibe of the city. But they were like, but what do you want to do with this? Where do you want to take this? I was like, that's a good question. So
Danielle Lewis (36:43):
The power of asking great questions seriously.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (36:46):
Yes. And that's been the most wonderful thing about everyone we've worked with. And so for me, I'm in the thick of organizing the 2024 event, and we're starting to look at 2025, but I'm also starting to think about what else can this be as a business? Because I want it to be more than just an event. Obviously I want that and I want it to be the event, and I want to keep Newcastle the home of that event because we're a National Geographic smart city here. So I think it's just really appropriate, and the digital and tech scene here is incredible. And also the city's just wonderful.
Danielle Lewis (37:34):
Yeah, Newcastle's pretty cool.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (37:36):
It's very cool. So I really want to keep Newcastle the home of it, but I want to make it, I want to make this a bigger business and just, oh, it's an annual conference. I want to get courses out and do master classes and build it up into something like that. And I want it to lead search. I broad search and involve not just SEOs, but people who are in digital marketing, people who are branding people who are in social media and start actually, I guess infiltrating the industry with that message of we're not silos, we're actually all on the same team, and we need to start getting on each other's teams with this.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
So
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (38:30):
My experience of the business so far is highly creative end of that, which I'm very grateful for. And also finances. We've been running the finances, which has been eyeopening.
Danielle Lewis (38:44):
Yeah, always is. Yes.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (38:47):
You're like, oh, everything costs so much more than you think it does. Tell me about
Danielle Lewis (38:52):
It. Yeah.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (38:55):
So I'm probably having a much softer, much nicer experience of starting something than most people, and I'm very aware of that, but very grateful for it.
Danielle Lewis (39:07):
I think it's so cool though, because it's actually such a great lesson and sharing of the experience, because I think sometimes people think they've got to have the full on end game, first in mind, whatever it is, whatever the empire is, versus let's do an event, let's build that community. Let's get people on board the mission and plan for the vision and big picture and execute. Because you're right, everything does cost a shit load of money and time. Sometimes the empire might feel far away, but what can you do right here, right now to test the idea, get people on board and just start building towards that vision. So I actually love that it's starting as a conference. I think that's so cool.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (39:57):
Yeah, I think building with the community at the center of it is such a core part of it, especially for SEOs. We love our community. Any chance we have to meet up with each other, we're so down for it. The problem is dragging them outside of that community can be a bit difficult.
Danielle Lewis (40:23):
Well, I love your, and you said it at the beginning as well, the idea that it isn't just about SEOs, it is the whole digital marketing community. It is getting everyone on board with the fact that SEO is so broad and has so many moving parts, and if we all need to work on the same team, it just makes me laugh because in my other business scrunch, we do social media and sometimes you can't even talk to a marketing person because an outsourced agency. And I'm like, why are you thinking about this in a silo? And same with influencers. When we do influencer campaigns, it's like this silo campaign. And I'm like, no, it's all supposed to be connected and leveraged, and otherwise you're just kind of doing it as this drop in the ocean. Whereas if you integrate it into the rest of your strategy, it goes so much further.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (41:09):
So
Danielle Lewis (41:09):
I love that you're doing that for SEO. I think that's brilliant.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (41:12):
Yeah. Well for me, I think SEO is the connective tissue between all those areas because you are optimizing for wherever you are online. That's the purpose of SEO is just, it started with search engines because that's kind of what came first. And we keep building stuff out of it. SXO, for example, which is search experience optimization, but it's the same kind of, it's SEO, it's still just SEO. And so with the presenters, I've been really specific about headhunting every person and getting them to talk to their passion area. So I've got Remy Orette as an example coming in to talk about branding and digital PR and how SEO plays a role in that. I've got Sarah Pecon who's going to be talking about social media and SEO, which I was like, do you want to take that on? I was like, are you sure? And she was like, yeah, I can do that. I'm like, all right. She's a brave woman.
Danielle Lewis (42:22):
That's cool.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (42:23):
SEOs don't want to know about social media a lot. And we've also got someone to come in and talk about the role of SEO and UX design and design in general, unlike her whole agency is around SEO. It's actually called SEO Meets Design.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
Cool.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (42:39):
Yeah. So the whole goal is SEO is the connective tissue between all these other areas.
Danielle Lewis (42:48):
That is absolutely brilliant. You are incredible. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today. I've got a to-do list now, so thanks so much for that.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (43:01):
Sorry, everyone always leaves with homework.
Danielle Lewis (43:03):
I know, but it's so good. I absolutely love it. I'm all about what are things that I can actively do to grow my business? And if somebody gives me a task, I'm like, I'll do it. I
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (43:17):
Just done, yeah.
Danielle Lewis (43:19):
Think it's so good. So thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today. I know everybody listening in would've gotten so much value out of that. So appreciate you so much.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (43:31):
No, thank you so much for having me and letting me prattle on for as long as I did.
Danielle Lewis (43:36):
You are welcome back anytime and we'll spook the event as well. So I'll share that in the show notes so people can come along.
Shonavee Simpson Anderson (43:45):
Awesome. Thank you so much.
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