A New Way To Think About SEO For Soloists with Sarah Moon

If you’re like most of us in the soloist expertise space, you probably think of SEO—if you bother with it at all—as picking the right keywords so that maybe you’ll get discovered in a google search. But marketing consultant Sarah Moon has a different take.

We explore:

Why SEO is not the mysterious, robotic box we’ve heard about—and a new way we can think about it.

How to discover—and capitalize on—the big questions your audience is asking when they search.

When SEO can help you discover a new audience you didn’t even know existed.

The three key elements of game-changing SEO for knowledge businesses.

Aligning your authority not only with your vision and point of view, but with what your ideal clients and buyers are searching for.

 

LINKS

Sarah Moon | Special Soloist Women Page | Newsletter | Website | LinkedIn | Instagram

Rochelle Moulton Email List | LinkedIn | Twitter| Instagram

GUEST BIO

Sarah Moon is a Portland, Oregon-based marketing and business strategist on a mission to rethink modern marketing so it works for us—instead of making us miserable. She’s known for her unique knowledge of SEO and how solo consultants and “personal brands” can leverage this underutilized approach to get found and make an impact. She founded Sarah Moon & Co by mistake in 2008 after a layoff from a cushy public sector public relations job and never looked back.

Outside of work, Sarah is a servant to two Australian Shepherds and is an avid cyclist, bread baker, standup paddleboarder, and local food nerd.

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TRANSCRIPT

00:00 – 00:29
Sarah Moon: Nothing makes me more excited when I see someone sort of take something that I have said like, hey, this we can do this better. And they play off of what I’ve said and kind of make it their own. It’s like that. That’s that impact that just, yes, obviously I want to make a good living. I want to have a life that’s enjoyable and comfortable. I want to be able to buy my dogs a fancy dog food. And yet I want other people to kind of take ideas and make them their own and continue that impact. And

00:29 – 00:31
Sarah Moon: for me, that’s part of how wealth is defined.

00:37 – 01:02
Rochelle Moulton: Hello, hello. Welcome to Soloist Women, where we’re all about turning your expertise into wealth and impact. I’m Rochelle Moulton, and today I’m here with Sarah Moon, who I think of as the movement marketing champion for people like us who are leading revolutions. And she is on a mission to rethink modern marketing so it works for us instead of making us miserable. Sarah, welcome.

01:03 – 01:26
Sarah Moon: Thank you. That made me sound really fancy. You are. You’re fancy. You’re fancy. I am on a mission though. That is something I feel so strongly about because I hear so many people say, Oh, I hate marketing. I hate marketing. I’m like, I don’t hate marketing. I love talking about the stuff I care about. And then when I say that to people, they’re like, wait, that’s marketing. I’m like, uh-huh. It is.

01:27 – 02:01
Rochelle Moulton: Exactly. The new definition. So 1 of the reasons that I asked you to join me is that is really what you have to say about SEO for Soluis because I’ve you know beyond thinking about choosing smart keywords I’ve always thought of SEO as a thing that product-based businesses use or like truly local service businesses like you know say a plumber but as you know in the last couple of months I’ve been reading what you have to say on this and you’ve been changing my mind, which I love. Yes. So I’m excited to dive in and see

02:01 – 02:17
Rochelle Moulton: if we can’t open some eyes to SEO. But first, just as kind of an introduction, I believe our listeners want to hear a little bit about how you got here doing what you do now. So maybe we could just start with like, what made you decide to start your business?

02:18 – 02:54
Sarah Moon: Well, I’d never decided to start a business. And I don’t know if you’ve heard this kind of story before. I bet you have. I was 1 of the many, many, many victims of the 2008 financial crisis. I had a great career in public sector communications. So I had fancy job titles like communications director, public information officer, those kinds of things, working in the public sector, helping the communities that I worked in understand various issues that impacted them by using media. It was the beginning of social media doing a little bit of that. I wrote my city’s

02:54 – 03:06
Sarah Moon: first social media policy. So doing a lot of that. And then in 2008, basically the public sector was hit really hard and I, you know, everyone looks around, they’re like, we got to get rid of the marketing people. What do they do?

03:08 – 03:09
Rochelle Moulton: Always the first to go, right?

03:10 – 03:47
Sarah Moon: And I was just, you know, I’d been lucky enough to kind of be have like very fast acceleration of my career. And that was very humbling to go from kind of like this sort of young star to like no job. It sucked. I mean, I wish I could be like, it was such a great learning experience. No, it sucked. But what I discovered was because I’d always been experimenting with new ways of helping people get the information they needed, whether it be blogs or it was very early in using Twitter. We played with Twitter for our

03:47 – 04:27
Sarah Moon: bureau, things like that. And I was like, well, this is, I have some interesting knowledge. And I started applying for jobs and it was brutal out there because it was the economic collapse, really. And so I actually was able to pitch my previous employer on a project and did a project for them. And so I kind of did that like, I guess I’m a freelancer now. And we’ve always thinking like, well, when the right thing came along, I would jump back in to what I was doing. And that never happened. And so my business, it’s interesting

04:27 – 04:57
Sarah Moon: because when I started out, I was doing a lot of basically various marketing strategy consulting. And as that progressed, I started doing a lot more work more very much on the digital side and more execution, which I’m gonna be really honest, execution is not my top strength. I’m a strategist at heart. And actually slowly kind of accidentally built up almost an agency model. I had a handful of employees. I realize I bet you understand this story.

04:57 – 05:02
Rochelle Moulton: I totally do. I totally see that. So you had actual employees, not contractors.

05:03 – 05:04
Sarah Moon: You had employees.

05:04 – 05:05
Rochelle Moulton: Yes, actual employees.

05:05 – 05:05
Sarah Moon: And are you

05:05 – 05:06
Rochelle Moulton: saying past tense had?

05:07 – 05:39
Sarah Moon: Yes. Yes. Okay. I technically have 2 employees, but 1 of them is me and the other 1 is my husband. So now. So I don’t think we count. And sort of had this agency model that was, I think, quite successful, but it did kind of send me professionally down a direction that was less that me doing that consulting stuff, which I’m really good at, the consulting and the strategy and the really creative problem solving into a lot more of this rolling out work. And I was like, I need to get back to what I really am

05:39 – 05:56
Sarah Moon: awesome at and started emphasizing the Sarah time really being focused on that strategy. And over the last couple of years, that side of the business, I was like, wait, this is what people want. People were literally telling me, Hey, this is what we want from you. Yes. That’s the

05:56 – 06:07
Rochelle Moulton: G zone, right? Because we think you have to do certain things to grow your business. But then your people start saying, no, no, no, no, we don’t want that from you. We want this thing.

06:08 – 06:41
Sarah Moon: That is such a gift. It absolutely is. And I love that I have been so fortunate to work with really wonderfully aligned humans, many of whom have worked with me for many, many years. So they do tell me these things and they stay in touch and are like, oh, I’m so excited about what you’re doing. I can’t wait to get in on this and that kind of thing. So, you know, as that agency model is people moved on, I didn’t replace them and brought in, you know, contractors to service some of the clients we had like

06:41 – 07:17
Sarah Moon: on a smaller scale. And so now it’s kind of scaled back down, which I think in sort of the business world, sometimes people think of in a negative way, which bothers me a lot. But I know this is a safe place to talk about, because what I’m doing now is really actually very much back to my roots 15 years ago, which is really having the space and time to help clients develop really creative strategies that actually work for them and leverage their strengths. I have a lot to say about that. And 1 of the things though,

07:17 – 07:51
Sarah Moon: in that time of that more agency life of this business was I really started figuring out some great ways for my clients to expand their visibility and for me to expand my visibility using the search engine and or using the data that the search engine was telling us. And that kind of got to be something I was really known for. So it kind of all coalesced a couple of years ago in this methodology that I use now. And that’s how we got that. They said that pretty quickly, actually. Go me. Yeah.

07:51 – 08:09
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, like 15 years in a nanosecond. So just 1 more question before we dive into the SEO. So I’m asking everybody this because it’s so fascinating, the diversity of answers. So do you remember how long it took you to hit your first 100, 000? And if that was like before you had employees or after?

08:09 – 08:46
Sarah Moon: Yes, it was before. It was just me. And I was trying to remember this the other day because someone asked me and I changed bookkeeping systems. So I’m like, I can’t look that up. I’m going to have to guess. In my mind, it was probably pretty far along. Like, because I also missed I skipped the step, the part of the story where I had a part-time job for 3 years, doing writing. And so that was, I don’t, that time was weird. So I think it was at the year after I left that part-time job. So 4

08:46 – 08:47
Sarah Moon: or 5 years.

08:47 – 08:47
Rochelle Moulton: So I’m

08:47 – 09:00
Sarah Moon: going to put it up. Yeah. So it was the year, it was that year that leaving that kind of safety net, which was really scary was actually I had 2 part-time jobs because I forgot about how the first 7 years I had a part-time college teaching job as well.

09:03 – 09:28
Rochelle Moulton: Well, you know, everything after 2007, 2008, I mean, it was just, yeah, there was a weird time. Yeah, we all did some weird things then. I hear you. I totally hear you. Okay, well, let’s get down to SEO for soloists because I think we might change a few minds here, maybe blow a few minds here. Do you want to start with this basic description of SEO just so that we’re all on the same page?

09:28 – 09:51
Sarah Moon: So when you hear people talk about SEO, what they generally mean is they want to get found in Google. And that’s the most possible basic way of saying it. Now when I ask people for more information beyond that, they will say something like, Well, what I want is if someone Googles business coach, I wanna come up. And I’ll say like,

09:51 – 09:53
Rochelle Moulton: okay. That’s a tough 1.

09:53 – 10:23
Sarah Moon: Yeah. Oh, you know what my answer is. That’s a tough 1. And also I would argue they don’t actually wanna come up when someone is Googling business coach, because the person who is the intention, this is where the fun part of this is, the person who is just at those, like, I want a business coach stage, they actually don’t have a lot of clarity on what they want to get out of that experience. So my argument is, actually, that’s kind of not where you want to put your efforts anyway in the search engine because you want

10:23 – 10:53
Sarah Moon: to be reaching someone who knows the results they want to get. They know what the outcomes they want to get. And so when I talk about SEO, I talk about it very much deep into understanding your audience and their intention and what they need and all that kind of stuff. But at its core, what it is, is if someone is doing a search of some sort, whether it’s in Google or YouTube, because that’s a whole part of the search engine as well, or even image searches, that’s the results that come up. I do want to say

10:53 – 11:12
Sarah Moon: that about 90% of online experiences start in a search engine. The reality is that most of our audiences, when they have a question, they’re going to Google first. So that’s something to keep in mind too. I’m like, that’s the reality we live in. We may as well figure out how to make it work for us.

11:13 – 11:38
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. You know, when we were emailing back and forth, you made this comment that search engines aren’t just for discovery. We can use search data to help us better understand our audiences and their intention and then develop messages that take flight through that work. I call this SEO-fueled movement marketing. So talk some more about that, would you?

11:40 – 12:11
Sarah Moon: Yeah, so this is such an interesting thing because often when I work one-on-one with clients, What I’ll do is I have a whole bunch of software subscriptions that make understanding what’s going on in the search engine easier. And I will often pull 1 of those up and I’ll plug in just some basic words that I’ll ask a client. So what are some of the big questions people ask you when you first talk about your subject matter. So not things like how much does this cost, but more around subject matter expertise. And let’s plug them in and

12:11 – 12:21
Sarah Moon: see what people are asking this Google, because sometimes when people are asking Google and what people are asking us are 2 really different things because we’re embarrassed to ask the professional sort of our basic questions.

12:23 – 12:24
Rochelle Moulton: That’s juicy. Right?

12:24 – 13:03
Sarah Moon: And it’s true. It’s absolutely true. Like when I was hiring an intellectual property attorney to help me with some trademark stuff. Do you know how much Googling I did so I didn’t look like a ding-dong when I was talking to her? So what’s interesting is it’s almost like a chance to eavesdrop on what people are asking the search engine. And so for example, I was talking to a client yesterday and we were looking, she’s a fellow marketer, and we were looking up information around marketing is actually a very interesting keyword in general to start digging into,

13:03 – 13:39
Sarah Moon: we’re like, let’s see if what you think your people know and what the data is telling us are aligned. Well, it turns out that her folks are at actually a much more, they need a lot more foundational information than she thought they did. So a lot of them don’t have, they think that marketing is posting on Facebook. Like that’s, they’re like marketing. Yeah, I do my posts and that’s not marketing. So they don’t even the idea of having a strategy, they think that’s actually just action steps. So that’s what that keyword data told us is basically

13:39 – 14:02
Sarah Moon: like, oh, a strategy is a checklist. So she was speaking at this level that was assuming sophistication and knowledge that her people didn’t have. And that doesn’t mean that it’s time for her to dumb down her message. It’s actually time for her to add more context around her messaging so that people feel that she is someone who can actually help them understand and make progress towards their goals.

14:03 – 14:21
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, I mean, I’m thinking about that. I mean, what an interesting use of SEO. I mean, it’s sort of like, when I say inbound, I don’t mean like inbound marketing, but it’s like you’re taking what’s coming in versus pushing stuff out. It’s, you’re actually using it to decide what to do.

14:21 – 14:55
Sarah Moon: Love that. Exactly. And yeah, I have a lot of clients who are web designers because that was a service that we used to offer. And they saw that I had a successful web design product that did really well and was very successful. So I actually have a lot of clients that I help with marketing strategies for their web design business. That is a fascinating 1 to start looking at the keywords. My clients will think that their potential clients have a lot of understanding of what they need in a website, what content goes on the website. Yeah,

14:55 – 15:27
Sarah Moon: I know. What platforms to use. And then when you look at the data, it’s like someone’s like, you see all these searches like do I need a website redesign or a website refresh? And I was again, having a conversation this week where this is what we pulled up and my client was like, oh, I never thought to explain which 1 of those is, and this is a person who offers both of those options and never thought to explain those 2 because it seemed like someone would already know which they need, but they don’t. And it’s not

15:27 – 15:57
Sarah Moon: that they’re bad clients. It’s not that they’re uninformed. They actually don’t have the knowledge to make the decision. So if we can then create, I feel like the word content at this point has lost so much meaning, so I almost hate using it, but create our content, whether it’s the stuff that it will actually bring in search traffic or even if you’re big on social media or you’re doing a lot of speaking and that kind of thing, but frame your messaging and your content with that knowledge of where someone’s at. You can actually really attract awesome

15:57 – 16:05
Sarah Moon: people into your world because you’ve made them feel kind of smart. You know, you’ve said like, Hey, I get it. You don’t know this. Why would you know this?

16:05 – 16:09
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, why would you? That’s what I’m here for is your message. Yeah.

16:09 – 16:47
Sarah Moon: It’s an interesting it’s to me. It’s very exciting. And I always talk about we’ve got to have a way for people to discover you. And there are lots of ways for people to discover you. A podcast like this is a great way to discover really interesting people. A YouTube channel is a great way for people to discover really interesting people who can help them. Social media connections, networking, speaking. And also, I think that it would be undesirable to ignore the place where most people are starting their exploration, which is the search engine. So it’s all piece

16:47 – 16:50
Sarah Moon: of this sort of discovery pie is the way I think about SEO.

16:50 – 17:01
Rochelle Moulton: But what was it you said to your class that you did over the summer about SEO? I understand that you had something on a slide that was Well received.

17:02 – 17:41
Sarah Moon: So this summer I taught a workshop series that was called the Summer of SEO. You can still get the replays. And it was basically, to my knowledge, there’s another course like this, which is focused on search engine optimization for what I call knowledge businesses. So these are our smarty pants professionals, designers, creatives, brand strategists, lawyers, accountants, financial planners, these people who are really bringing high level knowledge to one-on-one or small group pools of clients. And they tend to be higher ticket, all of that kind of stuff. And I was like, these folks are not being served

17:41 – 18:11
Sarah Moon: by any of the SEO information that’s out there. And I went back and forth whether or not to include this slide I wanted to include in the first workshop. And I finally was like, you know what, I’m going to just say it because I believe it. And that’s something else to say, like, say what you believe. Sure, it’ll repel some people, but it also people who are like, yes, that’s me, will be loyal for so long. And so I said, set aside everything you have been told about SEO because it’s not for you. And that’s because

18:11 – 18:43
Sarah Moon: most of the SEO information that’s out there is not for consultants and highly skilled one-on-one service providers, most of the information out there is really, I call it, it solves the white t-shirt problem. So if you need a white t-shirt, right, you may be worried about size, fabric, how fast is the shipping, Maybe if you’re a real savvy consumer, you might be worried about sourcing and sustainability. But really you’re kind of in this, like your decision is like, is it the right size? Is the right fabric? How fast can it get to me? Like they’re pretty

18:43 – 19:19
Sarah Moon: small. It’s the price, right? They’re pretty like simple decisions. And so your SEO strategy, while important, and that is in no way to disregard the hard work of being a product-based SEO person because y’all have a hard job. It is, it’s a really hard job. Imagine trying to compete with 8, 000 different white t-shirt vendors. But the tactics and the strategy are different because you’re just trying to have someone make an immediate decision. But if we are, say, a financial planner, people are probably taking a longer time to make a decision. There’s a lot of softer

19:19 – 19:54
Sarah Moon: things that go into making that. You know, it’s not what’s the price, what’s the location. It’s different, is this person going to understand me? Have they worked with a family that looks like mine? Can they help me plan for, you know, a financial independence, retire early situation? All these things that are more nuanced and complex go into someone’s decision making. So the strategy and the tactics for that person in the search engine is going to be very different. Plus their volume of clients that they need is so much smaller. So they can be much more selective,

19:55 – 20:29
Sarah Moon: both in their clients and in, I try not to talk about keywords too much, but and in the keywords that they target. So for that person, I would make very different recommendations really around creating pillar content that gives people really good information that they need to make a decision, supporting content that helps those people go deeper, and then something to get them into their marketing system, preferably some kind of really amazing lead magnet that helps people make a great decision. Lead magnets are a whole different discussion for another day.

20:29 – 20:30
Rochelle Moulton: Yes, yes.

20:30 – 20:40
Sarah Moon: But that is part of the SEO ecosystem for knowledge businesses that is often not even talked about when we’re talking about products and sort of these quick hit things.

20:40 – 20:42
Rochelle Moulton: I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it discussed.

20:43 – 20:44
Sarah Moon: I don’t think it is

20:44 – 21:10
Rochelle Moulton: that way. And we’re going to link to that white t-shirt problem article because there’s something that you said in there where a light bulb went off and you said something like, you know, they’re not designed for buyers who are more concerned about getting the right solution than the cheapest solution. Right. And none of us listening to this podcast want to be the cheapest solution. No. We want to be the right solution, and it’s usually the big expensive solution

21:10 – 21:41
Sarah Moon: at the same time. And as a buyer of those kinds of services, I also don’t want the cheapest solution. And that’s something that we can sometimes forget is that, you know, where the price is just 1 of the many comparisons that people are making. And a lot of the stuff that can actually come across in your SEO fueled content are those softer, but more connective elements. And so when I talk about SEO-based content, yes, you’ve got all kinds of opportunities for SEO on a website, but I’m really talking about articles that would be in a blog.

21:41 – 22:13
Sarah Moon: And so you have lots of opportunities to create articles that fuel traffic and fuel engagement and get people into your marketing system. But those articles should also be what I see is a lot of times, and I want to be really clear on this, a lot of times I see people go from, I’ll maybe see their Instagram lives and they’re high energy and they’re engaging and they’re telling stories about clients and dropping statistics into their discussions. And I’m just like, this person’s awesome. And then I’ll go look at their website and I’ll see an article they

22:13 – 22:40
Sarah Moon: wrote and it’s formal and robotic and they’ve clearly tried to write it for SEO, but you don’t need to let go of that, like that personality and that energy and that vibrancy to have something work effectively in the search engine. I would actually argue these days, the stuff I’m seeing that is most effective, both in my own content, but in clients content and just cool people I snoop on. Their content is the stuff that, I mean, who doesn’t snoop

22:40 – 22:45
Rochelle Moulton: on cool people? We all do that. I love that you’ve admitted it. We all do it.

22:45 – 22:48
Sarah Moon: Absolutely. There is no shame

22:49 – 22:51
Rochelle Moulton: in digitally snooping.

22:51 – 23:25
Sarah Moon: I mean, I like, I don’t know, like I like to be inspired by people doing cool stuff. And so the ones that I see that are really, really succeeding sort of in that double dip of engagement and discovery are the ones who are infusing their personality, their point of view, what they believe into that SEO content. So if you ever look at any of my articles I will reference my clients, I will reference my own experiences, I will reference statistics and information that I’m like, whoa, this blew my mind when I discovered it. So I’ll bring

23:25 – 23:39
Sarah Moon: me and my story and my company story and my client story back into it over and over again. So not only is this attracting people in the search engine, it is actually getting them to buy into my thought leadership and point of view.

23:39 – 23:40
Rochelle Moulton: Your point of view.

23:40 – 23:42
Sarah Moon: Yeah. And I think that’s fun.

23:44 – 24:14
Rochelle Moulton: Well it totally is and it’s just so funny because you know my view of the whole SEO thing, when I think of the people I’ve met who do it and talk about it, it is robotic. It’s like, it’s like there’s this box, it’s a magic box. And we just need to know what’s in the box. And then we need to drop pearls of keywords every time. And we need to say it over and over and over again, because it’s all about the Google bots picking things up. What you’re describing is so much, 1, it’s refreshing, but

24:14 – 24:47
Rochelle Moulton: it’s Also, I think it feels good to people like us who are leading revolutions. We want to engage people. We want to transform their work, their lives, or some combination. And so the whole, it’s easier to ignore SEO when you think it’s about fitting into a box versus embracing not only what’s unique and special about you and your genius zone, but your clients. Where is the intersection between what you bring to the table and what these people are looking for.

24:48 – 25:27
Sarah Moon: Well, and here’s the other thing that’s interesting. And I almost, I’m like, I almost don’t want to tell this story because I don’t want to inspire anyone to not do this. But I have a wonderful client that I absolutely adore. And that client is incredible on social media. Incredible. So we developed a whole SEO plan. Most of it has not been implemented. But that plan is being used on social media. And it’s working really well. Because again, meeting people where they’re at, setting the stage that is giving lots of context and information. Even though maybe the

25:27 – 26:02
Sarah Moon: search engine piece is breaking my heart and not happening to the extent that I would like. There’s still richness in using that human language to bring people to calling people into your world. And so that’s something to me, it just seems like it’s so obvious to do that. Right. And yet I think when we do marketing, I’m using air quotes right now, and I know you can’t see me. Marketing. To do marketing, we suddenly think we need to not do that somehow. I’m not any, it’s a weird brain thing, right? Like now I’m going to sit

26:02 – 26:32
Sarah Moon: down and I will do my marketing. And so I’m no longer going to sound like me. I’m no longer going to use natural human language. I’m going to sound weird. And I have a lot of theories as to why that is, but this is where the richness comes in is that we have this opportunity to really understand our audience, the language they’re using, what their challenges are. I love doing the filter in, there’s various tools that you can use to discover keywords and I love doing the filter that is filters out just questions. That is a

26:32 – 26:56
Sarah Moon: treasure trove. What are people 42% of voice searches? So someone asking Siri or whatever are questions. Well, what are people asking Siri? Well, guess what, We can find that out. And it’s really interesting. It’s very revealing. So again, like just all that kind of information, it’s a better way to meet people where

26:56 – 27:30
Rochelle Moulton: they’re at. Yeah, I just, you know, mind blown. I just love this because it so ties. It just ties with what, you know, I’ve been preaching since I started preaching this stuff, which is, you know, you, you do you, right? Yeah. This is about being real and being in touch with your ideal clients and knowing what they want, but using your own voice. So it’s like melding all of these things together. So let’s use an example. So I kind of want to help somebody who hasn’t done much with this yet kind of figure out where to

27:30 – 27:38
Rochelle Moulton: start. So let’s say I’m an expert on, you want to pick up 1 of your brand people or like a consultant building tech teams.

27:38 – 27:48
Sarah Moon: Oh man, that’s like, brands are hard because brand strategy, I will tell you all you brand strategists out there, People do not understand what brand strategy is.

27:48 – 28:24
Rochelle Moulton: No, and Google it and you get like 10 million things coming up. Okay, so let’s use a consultant, somebody who is, let’s say, building tech teams for SaaS companies. So that’s very specific And I want to do that intentionally, because I want to encourage people to be very, very specific. So if that’s me, and I have an email list, and maybe I write some pieces for LinkedIn and for my list, And I have a handful of options for clients to work with me. So nothing, you know, terribly fancy, but I’ve got a list. It’s probably not

28:24 – 28:39
Rochelle Moulton: a big list. And I’m doing a little bit of writing, but I’m not doing a lot. I don’t have a podcast. I’m not really speaking. So if I wanted to incorporate SEO into my marketing and content strategy under that circumstance, where would I start?

28:39 – 29:11
Sarah Moon: So 1 of the things that I tell people is they want to jump straight to the keywords. And if you’re starting with keywords, I don’t like to say you’re doing it wrong, but you’re doing it the hard way. You’re doing it the hard way. So what I would first ask is, okay, so this person is helping folks build tech teams for SaaS companies. That’s an interesting, that’s actually, I’m like, this is interesting. And my question is, why does this service that they have exists? What does it do for these companies?

29:12 – 29:32
Rochelle Moulton: Okay, so I’m making this up. So it’s, it’s circling around some folks that I know. So let’s say that it increases productivity, but it also increases the happiness factor of the people on the team. So long-term, it will improve retention of some very expensive people.

29:32 – 29:54
Sarah Moon: For some very expensive people. And I would imagine it would also help make for a better customer experience. I mean, there’s a whole lot. I can kind of think of the knock on effect of these kinds of issues. And then I would say what sides of SaaS company? Is it sort of startup? Are they series A? Are they established? Like what’s, see this is the thing.

29:54 – 29:55
Rochelle Moulton: I asked these questions. Yeah, but

29:55 – 29:56
Sarah Moon: this is great. This is,

29:56 – 30:07
Rochelle Moulton: I’m gonna get in trouble with this example at some point, but let’s say that it’s established. Let’s say that, yeah, I’m not playing in the startup space because it’s just too much going on. I’m going to

30:08 – 30:34
Sarah Moon: stick with established. In that case, what I would start doing, because that established is really important because there tends to be, and this especially in the tech space, I will say I’ve done enough research in the tech space. There tends to be kind of 2 tracks. There’s the folks who are like, have no, they’re just kind of running on vibes like they’re trying to figure it out. And then you’ve got the folks who have got it figured out. They have some cash flow, they probably have investors, things are, they have a direction that they’re going in

30:34 – 30:43
Sarah Moon: and they tend to have their needs, their informational needs tend to be different. So I was just doing some SaaS keyword research for 1 of my favorite clients.

30:43 – 30:45
Rochelle Moulton: Oh, well, that’s good timing.

30:45 – 31:12
Sarah Moon: Shout out to Jamar, 1 of my favorite people on the internet who does what I do, but for YouTube. So with this particular audience, so I always tell people, like I look at the, we understand, so I’m going to tell you, I have a framework, it’s 3 parts. The first 1 thing we do is we clarify who the audience is, what’s the transformation, what is your unique perspective on that transformation and that audience. So that’s kind of where we start. So that’s why I asked those kind of beginning questions. Then what I would do is I

31:12 – 31:42
Sarah Moon: would go into 1 of my tools, which I did while we were talking, because I actually… I like to get an A on my homework. So here’s an interesting thing that came up and I just was like, let’s see what people are googling about SaaS tech teams, right? And I saw this interesting 1. How to structure a SaaS support team. And I’m like, that’s interesting. That seems more like it might be customer service. But I would probably file that away as, this seems, and it has a decent volume. That means a decent number of searches, kind

31:42 – 32:23
Sarah Moon: of interesting. But what I’m seeing is a lot of the searches that have any measure of regularity of volume are around support, customer service, that kind of thing. They’re not tech, which is fine. And so I was like, that seems And I was like, what if I do developer? What if I plugged in developer? What’s going to happen? Then I started seeing some interesting stuff. And I saw what should my SaaS development team structure be? Has a really good volume. SaaS engineering org chart. Yeah, so you see what I started seeing? Because I’m starting to see,

32:23 – 32:52
Sarah Moon: OK, so these folks, again, this going back, if you remember we were talking, a lot of times we assume people have a more sophisticated knowledge than they do. And there’s a lot of similar things like wanting examples and all kinds of stuff. I’m like, well, that’s interesting information that I just saw in there. And so if I were having a conversation with a client who had this challenge, I’d say, hey, do you have people asking you questions about? Because again, whether we’re getting the information from the humans or we’re getting the information from the data, we

32:52 – 33:23
Sarah Moon: wanna kind of trust but validate, you know? And so it’s like, this is interesting information that I’m seeing is a lot of people are really at this, what should the structure look like? What should, you know, they’re wanting to know about the org chart, these kinds of things, you know, what the engineering operation support model looks like. I mean, these very specific terms. Does this track with conversations you’ve had with your clients? And then the next step would be, okay, if they say yes, well, let’s look at what an authority building, search-fueled topic cluster would look

33:23 – 33:57
Sarah Moon: like that is built around this information that we’ve gotten. Topic cluster is kind of an old school way of approaching article writing on a website. You can also adapt this to LinkedIn, social media, what have you. Basically it is thought leadership is what it really is. The reason I really love this philosophy called topic clusters, I did not invent it. It’s also sometimes called hub and spoke. I have my own spin on it. My spin on it is actually, it has a name that I use, I call it Aligned Authority Method, which basically means we wanna

33:57 – 34:27
Sarah Moon: build authority that’s actually very aligned with your vision, with your purpose, with what you want to shift and change in your industry. Because my people are movers and shakers. They do not like the status quo. And they want to make a change. They want to they see a way to do things better. And the way You’ve got to fund the movement, right? That’s another part of that framework I was talking about. Yes, we do. Absolutely. It’s literally in my business practices framework. I have that called out because I think it’s so important because a lot of

34:27 – 34:56
Sarah Moon: these folks who are really fueled by wanting to do great work and make an impact. Sometimes they forget how important it is to do that. You got to fund the movement. I want them to be able to command premium prices for clients they love, for clients that they’re aligned with and they believe in. And that doesn’t mean it has to be like, do good. You don’t have to be doing this for a nonprofit organization. You don’t have to be doing this for a cause. But there are a lot of companies out there that are doing amazing

34:56 – 35:10
Sarah Moon: things that my people love to work with. And so that’s where we kind of want that positioning and messaging stuff comes in, but also that making sure that they are attracting those people and getting paid what they should.

35:11 – 35:42
Rochelle Moulton: It’s all about alignment. And it’s why I’ve been using the word impact when I talk about this podcast, because we want to have an impact. Yes, we want to have a successful business. We want to build wealth and wealth is not just money. Money is a piece of it, but it’s also free time and the flexibility on how to use that time. And we all have our own unique definition of what wealth looks like for us. So there’s no wrong answer, but it’s also and impact because we’re doing this for a reason. There is a change

35:43 – 36:05
Rochelle Moulton: that we want to see in the world And it doesn’t have to be the biggest 1 ever. It just has to be 1 that you believe in and that you are sort of married to as you go forward. That’s this whole idea called your, what’s the revolution that you wanna lead. And getting clear on that makes a lot of these other decisions so much easier.

36:05 – 36:34
Sarah Moon: Nothing makes me more excited when I see someone sort of take something that I have said like, Hey, this we can do this better. And they play off of what I’ve said and kind of make it their own. It’s like that. That’s that impact that just, yes, obviously I want to make a good living. I want to have a life that’s enjoyable and comfortable. I want to be able to buy my dogs a fancy dog food. And yet I want other people to kind of take ideas and make them their own and continue that impact. And

36:34 – 36:36
Sarah Moon: for me, that’s part of how wealth is defined.

36:36 – 37:12
Rochelle Moulton: That’s the best. When you see somebody like taking something and taking it in a new direction, you’re like, wow, I know, I helped midwife that. That is awesome. Well, I think that, you know, before we end, I just want to kind of come back to this idea of thought leadership. I always use that carefully because I prefer to think of it as, you know, the authority in our space. It’s a fraud word. Yeah. This idea that you can use this wisdom that you have and this thinking that you have, your point of view, the revolution you’re

37:12 – 37:45
Rochelle Moulton: leading, how you see the process of moving people to this new desired state. What I love about what you’re saying and some of the pieces that you’ve written is that it gives you a chance to reach all kinds of people who need you and maybe you hadn’t even thought of them as an audience. And what I’m wondering is, do you ever have people who maybe hadn’t honed in so completely on who their audience was, and then they went through this exercise and came out the other side with some clarity?

37:46 – 37:49
Sarah Moon: It probably happens more often than it doesn’t happen.

37:49 – 37:51
Rochelle Moulton: Oh, I wouldn’t have guessed that.

37:51 – 38:25
Sarah Moon: It actually happens a lot. And it may not be massive. It may not be a massive shift, but it oftentimes is someone will say like, Oh, I never thought of talking about that this way. And I’ve always had this idea that I could sell this service to, for example, a SaaS brand since we’re on that, but I didn’t think it was possible. And it turns out it is. So it’s like a lot of that kind of stuff or honestly actually it happens all the time. I’m just gonna say it happens actually all the time where we

38:25 – 38:46
Sarah Moon: will uncover we will uncover some richness that will be like oh wait I could sell this to this happens quite often I could sell this to a corporate audience where someone’s maybe been selling that sort of lower level B2B, like just sort of solopreneurs. And they realized that the offer they have actually has a potential audience with like corporate or institutional audiences.

38:47 – 38:48
Rochelle Moulton: Moving up the food chain.

38:48 – 39:16
Sarah Moon: Yeah, and that’s something that they’ve maybe wanted to go towards, but didn’t know how or they thought they had to build an audience that was that was not within their reach because they didn’t have the connections. Because, you know, we’re always told, well, if you don’t have the network, you got to have the right network. And they’re like, oh, wait, maybe I could leverage this thought leadership to justify getting on the right podcast, speaking at the right conference. So there’s a lot of that kind of opening doors that maybe it seemed like they were going to

39:16 – 39:20
Sarah Moon: be harder. So yeah, it actually happens a lot. It’s kind of cool.

39:21 – 39:42
Rochelle Moulton: Well, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. So I just have 1 more question, which is actually not about SEO, but it’s about you. And if you could go back, way back to 2008, I guess, to who you were when you first started your business, what’s the 1 thing you would have advised her to do?

39:44 – 39:46
Sarah Moon: You saved the hardest question for the last. That’s kind of mean.

39:48 – 39:52
Rochelle Moulton: I know they haven’t published yet, so it’s not like you could listen. I feel, yes,

39:52 – 40:21
Sarah Moon: I just ambushed you. I know, I know. But actually I do love that question because it’s really funny. I was talking to my husband about this sort of subject, like if I could travel back in time. And I do have this kind of, you know, little bit of idealistic, like everything that I have done, I did for a reason to get me to where I wanna be. I do believe that. With that said, I wish that I could tell Sarah, who was, wait, how old was I when? 31, and now everyone knows how old I am,

40:21 – 40:53
Sarah Moon: who was 31 and didn’t have a job and was trying to figure out a way that the thing that you know how to do is actually the thing that no 1 else knows how to do. It’s easy and fun and exciting for you, but it’s really hard for everyone else. And I believe for years that I could not sell pure strategy, that that was just that I had to have some kind of hands-on execution on the back end. And it turns out the execution is really easy for a lot of people. But

40:53 – 40:55
Rochelle Moulton: not for people like us.

40:56 – 41:25
Sarah Moon: No, no. But it just did, my brain did not comprehend that. And when I really had this this epiphany and I do have to say I have to shout out Ravi Tor Who was a coach I worked with a few years back who really honed in? Helped me understand that that was a real superpower and a real asset that I had I did not come up with this sort of in a vacuum on my own. And if I could have seen that earlier, I really think I could have skipped a lot of steps that were really

41:25 – 41:28
Sarah Moon: hard. So what you hit on, I

41:28 – 41:34
Rochelle Moulton: mean, I think so many of us experienced that, which is we think it’s supposed to be hard. Right. It’s

41:34 – 41:36
Sarah Moon: so drained. Right.

41:36 – 42:05
Rochelle Moulton: And that like what comes naturally to us. And I think part of it we get from maybe from our upbringing and all of that. But the other part is, you know, when you have a job job, they’re always trying to work on your weaknesses. Like that’s the whole thing. Oh, if you could just do this better. And so we hit ourselves again, our heads against the wall trying to get better at this thing that we’re never going to really care about anyway versus getting even better at the stuff that we’re already brilliant at. Right.

42:05 – 42:29
Sarah Moon: Like I am really the leaps in progress I’ve made in the last few years focusing on the stuff that I am really naturally excellent at. It is, it blows my mind And I’ve always been a very competent person. Like I’m 1 of those people who will do a good job. But I look at like, wow, I’ve developed some incredible stuff. Like that’s awesome. And I wish I’d seen that, you know, earlier on.

42:29 – 42:33
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, because now it’s fun. And it wasn’t.

42:33 – 42:36
Sarah Moon: I know. I hear you.

42:36 – 42:51
Rochelle Moulton: Well, thanks for sharing that. So we’re going to be putting all sorts of links to the content that we talked about in the show notes, but just where’s the best place for people to learn more about you. And we’ll have your LinkedIn and Insta links also, which I highly recommend you follow.

42:52 – 43:22
Sarah Moon: So the best place to find me is if you sign up for my newsletter. And the direct newsletter link is hey.saramoon.net slash posts. And that’s where you can get a direct sign up for my newsletter and read back issues. Most of them are up there. My website is Sarah moon dot net and I have a special link for all of your listeners, which is Sarah moon dot net slash solo. I had to remember which 1 it was.

43:22 – 43:27
Rochelle Moulton: I’m not sure if it’s solo or solos, but we’ll put it in the show notes. Yeah, we’ll put it there.

43:27 – 43:53
Sarah Moon: I should have, it’s a real URL and it, There’s a really fun assessment, a self-assessment, so you can best understand what your next marketing move is that’s up there that you can do. You don’t even have to opt into my newsletter. If you don’t want to, as part of that, you can skip that step, but you should opt into my newsletter. I mean, there’s a whole bunch of curated articles and such. They’re all about SEO as well on that page since that’s what we were talking about mostly here. So you can read those and binge read

43:53 – 44:10
Sarah Moon: instead of Netflixing. And so those are the best places to catch up with me. I am hanging out on Instagram a lot. So you can always hit me up in the DMs to chat about marketing or business stuff or if you send me dog pictures, I’m always super pumped.

44:10 – 44:13
Rochelle Moulton: Oh, I’m sure you follow WeRateDogs on Instagram.

44:13 – 44:16
Sarah Moon: Obviously. Yes, Of course.

44:16 – 44:26
Rochelle Moulton: It’s my favorite. 1 of my clients said, you know, it’s like the only thing it looks like you are liking are dog pictures. And he says, that’s just the mood I’m in

44:27 – 44:28
Sarah Moon: today. Like it’s my joy.

44:30 – 44:50
Rochelle Moulton: Exactly. Well, Sarah, thank you so much for coming on the show. I mean, I feel like you’ve given us just an eye opening taste of what SEO can do. So I’m really excited to see where listeners go with this idea and information and really rethinking SEO. So thank you.

44:50 – 44:51
Sarah Moon: Thank you so much for having me.

44:51 – 44:59
Rochelle Moulton: It was a pleasure. So that’s it for this episode. I hope you’ll join us next time for Soloist Women. Bye bye.