#96 Holiday Special: Elevate Your Website in 2024 - Episode 20 of the 90-Day Mastery Podcast

Jonny Ross: 00:00:17

It's Christmas.

Jonny Ross: 00:00:21

Welcome.

Jonny Ross: 00:00:22

Merry Christmas. Pascal. How are you? I'm very good. Merry Christmas to you. Viewers and listeners, this is episode number 20. Would you believe it? I know, happy holidays. Uh, we are absolutely in the festive season. Uh, and the festive spirit, shall I say, welcome to the 90 day website, Masaryk Podcast. Uh, yes. As Pascal's just said, this is episode 20. We're celebrating the launch of our new program, the completion of the website Best Practice Webinar series. We wanted to find a way to continue to share more advice and insights about making your website work harder, and for you to feel proud about your website again. We've got four segments in every episode we've got us.We answer. We have website stories, we have the website engine room, and of course we always finish with a call to action. So we have the website Call to Action, where you could make one change or adjustment that you could make to your website right now to help you start feeling proud of your website.

Jonny Ross: 00:01:20

Pascal, we've got the, uh, the title of this one as being, uh, boost your website success, content optimization and essential tools. So, um, I, uh, I'm, I think we're in for a treat seeing that it's, uh, Christmas as well.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:01:33

Yes. I mean, ultimately, you know, when we think about number 20, that means that 20 questions that we've answered so far, that's 20 content pieces about, you know, being proud of your website. Again, that's 40 tech. And as we reviewed for people and 40 adjustments that you could do so that your website can work harder for you.

Jonny Ross: 00:01:54

When you add it the numbers, it's mad. Uh, I think we should just get cracking Christmas crackers. Uh, it will start with the first segment, which is you ask, we answer.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:02:12

So we have a very interesting question for number 20. In fact, this is somebody that kind of challenged me. Uh, a listener of the show that, um, reminded me that some episodes ago, John and I recommended that people should look at the performance of their blog post, pick the best performing ones, and add media content to get more value and and more results from your website.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:02:35

But then I was challenged saying, well, what about the blogger articles who have little to no traffic? What am I supposed to do with them? You didn't mention it on your show and question is should I delete them or should I keep them?

Jonny Ross: 00:02:49

Well, from my SEO background, I'm forever looking at things like this, to be perfectly honest, because what you find is that blog, uh, blogs that you have on the website that get very little traffic actually drag your website down in a way, um, and hold your website back and, and can have an effect on the relevancy of your overall website. So what we're wanting to do is constantly paint a picture to the likes of Google, to the likes of the search engines that our entire website is engaging. Um, and so if you have a blog post that have little to no traffic, actually it's really important to start dealing with them. I know that, um, we have the, the three R's, uh, methodology, which I'll let you go into a bit more.

Jonny Ross: 00:03:35

Pascal. Um, but for me, it's about understanding, having a look at the content and deciding, okay, what could is this something we could do with this if we're if there's low traffic, does it need an update? Does it need, uh, rewriting? Or alternatively, do we need to delete it. Do we need to remove it. Um, and uh, and just admit that actually that blog post was great at the time and it was relevant for whatever it was at the time, but actually it's just way past it. It's not not relevant anymore at all. So it's around, you know, could we make something evergreen? Could we update something or actually is it just time to delete? And and as I said, from an SEO point of view, there's, um, one of the first, one of the the things that we do in the initial work, looking at a website is looking at traffic to blogs, identify ones that are low traffic and actually start removing some.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:04:24

Uh, that's interesting that a kind of decluttering, uh, I'm a I'm a self-confessed content hoarder. So do you find it difficult to remove to your point, only sometime if I myself having very fond memories of the creation bit. So you kind of go, oh, do I have to spell like video editing, which we're going to come on to in a moment. So, so I'm going to bring the audience as well as the SEO element to say, well, can you do enough research to ascertain whether or not what the article is about is still of interest and still relevant? And if that's the case, then is it that maybe it was too short? Maybe was it poorly supported by the lack of internal links? Or maybe it was one of those that got forgotten for during the email marketing and social media push and so on. So if it's relevant, then I'm keen to look at a way to either retain, rewrite or remove. These are the three hours that we teach on the 90 day website mastery program.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:05:18

So the retain for me training would be that some very, very minor adjustments to bring it alive again to maybe refresh, you know, the, the the the thumbnail to maybe look at the way you split the article by creating more headlines, some headers and that, that kind of things and, and making sure that it is linked and referred to internally very, very well. So so the retain is where once again it remains relevant and remains of interest and hopefully belongs to a bigger family of articles. The rewrite suggests that you are still on subject, but you completely got the tone wrong. You got the structure wrong. Uh, it needs to completely be looked at again from, from, you know, top to, to to bottom. And then the remove is what you said. So, uh, it's not relevant. It's, it's of no interest. Maybe you've written something that is actually a lot better and resonate more with your audience and needs to literally been superseded by perhaps not even more recent, but just better performing one.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:06:14

So retain, rewrite and remove is something that people should do. I would say once a quarter by looking at the performance of their website. But the end of year, the start of a year is a very, very good time as well to be doing this exercise.

Jonny Ross: 00:06:28

I like the phrase that you use declutter. You know, we all need to declutter. I'm also a hoarder as well. Uh, and, um, but, you know, it freshens the mind decluttering. Uh, and so I think, yeah, really, really worth it. I should say, by the way, that, uh, if you're listening or watching, uh, perhaps you're, uh, listening to the replay. Brilliant. If you're here on the podcast. Thank you very much. Maybe you're with us live right now. We are live. We live on Facebook. We live on LinkedIn. We live on YouTube. Uh, so if you're with us right now, please do, uh, drop some comments.

Jonny Ross: 00:07:01

Merry Christmas to you. Uh, and, uh, but if you're listening on the replay, it's brilliant to have you, uh, and, uh, make sure if this is helpful, uh, resourceful. Please tell your friends as well. So I just wanted to I missed I missed mentioning that at the beginning. I just wanted to make sure that everyone felt welcome. Whatever platform you were listening to us on, we're really grateful that you're here. So thank you very much. Um, perhaps we should move to our next segment, which is Website Stories.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:07:33

Now, in this segment of the show, John and I choose an article, a podcast or video, something that we can review and react so that we can derive some lessons and be better website marketers. So we've chosen a video title on page video SEO Whiteboard Friday by Krystal Carter for our friends at Amazon.com. So I think that's probably the third or fourth time that we've had most. It's just a great resource. It's a wonderful destination.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:07:59

It was really my first go to website when I started as an SEO trainer and consultant. A quick introduction for you, Jenny and Obvious and listeners. Krystal Carter is the head of SEO Communications at Wix, and she was asked to quote a mention what if everything is about SEO? And I love this sentence that she wrote in her profile. Uh, she wrote, I enjoy the thrill of the hunt, finding a riddle, coming up with a solution, and making it work. And I think, you know, with regard to what we do, um, whether it's from website design to website optimization in SEO, it is about actually solving the this enigma, the riddle of audience engagement, audience interest, but also on passion as business owners and as content creators and having that that kind of perfect relationship. Now, on the subject of on page video SEO, the Whiteboard Fridays is, um, well, it's known to you and I, but very, very quickly, as the name may suggest, we have an expert like Krystal that literally has written on the whiteboard.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:08:58

Uh, a quick summary, sometimes a visual of what she wants to talk about, and then she just, you know, does the chalk and talk. And there's something really, really attractive about a handwritten note on a whiteboard. Different colors, very imperfect graphics, as opposed to what we're seeing at the moment where people are trying to make it look too sharp and too perfect. And there's a reason why I'm mentioning this. So what I like about the video is twofold. Structure. I love when something is explained with structure. So in this case with video SEO, with regards to video on your website, she splits the considerations and a reflection into the conversation should be having with your team and your design around three elements the video content itself. So the video file. You could also see the video platform that will host your video and then the video webpage and on. Bear in mind, you know the subject of the podcast and our program, and we're going to zero into the video webpage. So please do watch the entire video to have some insight into what she recommends when it comes to video content with your platform.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:09:58

But this video webpage. So how do we get maximum value from the the effort it takes to create a video just looking at four columns? Number one, of course, the technical SEO foundation of having a video. And in 2024 onwards, you won't be surprised to hear that it just not enough now to just copy and paste the URL from YouTube or Vimeo and Wistia and a few others, and then walk away from the whole thing. She's really asking us to consider doing a bit more and talk to your designers, talk to your kind of technical technicians to have the ability to generate structured data for your website, and in particular adding additional meta tags. So that's number one. Number two, this is interesting adding a transcript to your site. So below the video maybe after the show notes as we sometimes call them, can we have a literally word for word transcript, uh, of the conversation. Now someone could be surprised and say, well, what's the point? Uh, you know, I'm either going to read or I'm not going to watch, but we now know that people will press play you and then follow along once reading the transcript, almost like what we used to when we're children.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:11:08

You know, we had the story being read. We wanted to see the pages and word. But what she's arguing is not just and of course, that's the primary consideration. It's not to add value to your visitors experience, but also Google is needing to see that we have some natural language on the web page at the time where everything is produced by AI in volume, and she's making reference to the ad for the infamous experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. Next, make sure that your video is at the top of the page, literally just after your H1. Now, this may surprise obviously listeners thinking, well, sure, that's obvious journey, and I will show you examples of videos that are literally at the bottom of a page. I see this all the time, a bit of a of a site. People are rushing a bit that their content creation they forgot are quick and they plonk, you know, the YouTube URL, so it needs to be at the top of the page. And then finally, can you find ways to encourage people to react and comment on that video web page by opening up the comment sections if you have one, or at least finding ways for people to be seen to be reacting positively.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:12:17

Google is also looking after that. So this is the element of video web page, which is supplemented by the video on video content and video platform consideration. But yeah, it was a great Whiteboard Friday. Um, she covers a lot of grounds in the space of ten minutes.

Jonny Ross: 00:12:33

It's got the key elements. Uh, totally. Um, so the the four things that you mentioned, it's adding that schema, adding that, uh, additional meta tags. And if you've got a WordPress site, you can use things like Rankmath or Yoast to be able to inject, uh, meta tags onto the, the, uh, the video quite easily. Transcripts, you know, no brainer. It's a great way to get the content onto the page. In fact, I'd go further and I'd add, uh, section, uh, topics, uh, or sorry topics or um, uh, and sort of bullet point the different topics that we're in in the video as well. Uh, to add a bit more content to the page.

Jonny Ross: 00:13:05

Um, yeah. Making sure that the videos at the top of the page, obviously, and user generated content, how can you get some, uh, real content on the page from users? So, yeah, I think you're right. A lot of website owners literally just embed the video and don't even think about the SEO side of it or the the engagement side of it. And, um, if you want to feel proud of your website, which is what the 90 day website mastery, uh, course is all about, then you need to not just do the bare minimum.

Jonny Ross: 00:13:36

No.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:13:36

And if I may just very quickly make a recommendation because I've been working with clients a lot. I mean, obviously people will know that video is kind of my favorite content type, although I cover all, all others. Um, there's a lot of video content now is produced directly on social media, uh, which is then lost to time and, and algorithms. So my recommendation would be for people to spend time maybe early next year to reclaim those video files, find a way for them to, you know, be a part of your website experience because this is just, um, lost and and wasted opportunities for your audience to be impressed with what you have to say and do.

Jonny Ross: 00:14:16

Absolutely. And on that note, we'll go to our third segment, which is the website engine room.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:14:30

In each episode, John and I choose one app, one software solution, maybe one piece of kit that can make life easier as a web site manager and content creator. We always surprise each other. We don't discuss it before, you know, going live or recording the, you know, the podcast. So, Jonny, what is your selection for episode 20?

Jonny Ross: 00:14:48

For episode 20? I'm going with opt in monster. Uh, it's a this is a it's been around quite a while now. Um, but it's so powerful. It's a really powerful lead generation piece of kit, basically, that you can embed put on top of your website. It's highly effective. It gives you, uh, pop ups. It gives you floating bars, all sorts of other types of, um, features that it's got, including opt in forms as well, ultimately, to help grow your email list, uh, and to convert more visitors into subscribers or clients or customers.

Jonny Ross: 00:15:21

It's about that making sure that you know, you're giving them a welcome, making sure that you've got, um, uh, things happening at relevant thinking about that user journey. And as they're going around the website, as they're doing different things, as they're interacting with different areas, it's about, you know, jumping out and taking their hand and, and leading them where exactly where you want them to go. Um, and getting those, uh, that, that trust in front of them to be able to ultimately convert, as I said, into growing the list, whether it be email list or what we, you know, really want clients and customers. So converting into clients, customers. Episode 20. It's all about opt in Monster.com for me.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:16:02

Thank you very much, Jonny. So my selection is probably an odd one. It's something that we mentioned ever so briefly a few episodes ago, which is having zoom meetings and using them to actually support your content creation efforts. So my role as a digital marketing consultant and storytelling consultant is to find ways for people to not miss out on that spark, that moment, which I call the content moment, where you are at your best in conversation mode.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:16:31

And it is likely that the vast majority of you will have video meetings with prospects, with clients, with colleagues, with suppliers and so on. And you're having great conversation. Within this conversation, you'll find yourself sharing very helpful, insightful advice. And very often I'll say to, you know, when people ask me the question, where do I begin with my website management journey? Where do I begin with my content marketing journey? I should begin by retelling the conversation you had yesterday, but the reaction I get is, ah, do you know what? I wish I'd recorded this because I've forgotten. Or I said something really, really clever. I don't remember the words I use specifically. So zoom introduced a few months ago and I've been testing it with a vengeance. The I summary with the call it sometimes the AI companions part of a portfolio of support. So you and I could be on zoom. We could actually be recording this session and you get a pretty damn good AI summary. So it's not.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:17:28

Transcription. Let's be very, very clear here. It's a as if somebody was taking notes on the side of the room, and then they were sending you the meeting notes afterwards. And my condition therefore, is get into the habit to always, always select the AI summary as often as you can on zoom. And I'm sure the platform will have a similar platform. And then at the end of each month, I want you to take the best bits of those different AI summaries and write a article which is essentially the best advice round up so you know you and you can take a paragraph from AI summary number two, a paragraph from the AI, summary number four and six and ten and 11 of that month. And you create yourself an article saying, well, I've been quite busy. I met some very interesting people. And here's a summary of the kind of conversation and advice that I've given for your own benefit, because unfortunately, you could not be there yourself. And I think those habits of capturing yourself when your conversation mode is going to be very, very important for next year.

Jonny Ross: 00:18:26

Yeah, there are other tools that you can get for teams. Um, but with zoom, it's fully integrated, dead easy. You can actually leave it on default as well. So it's always on whenever you start a meeting. And as Pascal said, it's it's frightened, frighteningly good. It's very clever. Um, and it really does summarize very well, uh, so much so that you can even turn it into purely just, you know, sending notes to the client afterwards to say, this is what we've agreed. Perhaps you're using it for internal meetings, but it's. But what, uh, what Pascal's particularly talking about here is taking those I call them gold dust moments, uh, you know, and really grabbing them and and making something of it. Uh, and, uh, and the AI is there to ultimately capture everything that you're saying and remember it. So, yeah, it's worth, you know.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:19:16

Do you know what's interesting now that I know that I've got I summary I'm being more careful about how I structure what I say so that I don't have to edit the advice afterwards, which is actually to the benefit of.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:19:27

The other person saying like, you know, or I do a better job not to recap at the end of the meeting as well than I used to, because I know that I'm going to get a better I summary for it.

Jonny Ross: 00:19:37

It's very true.

Jonny Ross: 00:19:38

But I but you know what's also interesting? I find myself sometimes holding myself back thinking the machine is listening. I might be careful what I'm saying.

Jonny Ross: 00:19:50

But. So now.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:19:51

Interesting for viewers and listeners who is training who, you know, is my behavior being, you know, detected by the presence of I. But sincerely, I did a final test before yesterday. I had a one hour meeting with the client and the I summary. I just had to essentially tweak the spelling of their name. And that was it. It was perfect.

Jonny Ross: 00:20:11

It's mud.

Jonny Ross: 00:20:13

Well, that was segment.

Jonny Ross: 00:20:14

Three, the three, the website engine room. Uh, let's move to segment four, which is the website Call to Action.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:20:28

And this is about the one change the one adjustment should be making right now on your website.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:20:33

Jonny, what is your recommendation?

Jonny Ross: 00:20:35

So if you have a form or a checkout on your website. It's all about adding a progress indicator. And what that is, is it's, uh, it shows how you're progressing within the checkout, within the form. Perhaps you're showing the number of steps. So maybe, you know, something green in a bar shows that you're at step one, step two, step three, stage one, stage two, stage three. Or perhaps it's a percentage so that the user can easily see that the sort of at 33%, they've got, uh, whatever left. And what this is about is, is ultimately increasing that conversion to the user, filling out the form or completing the checkout, because what you're showing is how many steps they've already taken and there's not that many left. Um, and you're showing that progress and you're making them feel like there's not too much more to do. Obviously, if you've got a very complicated long form, then of course that's going to take longer.

Jonny Ross: 00:21:29

But even so, it's still going to help you get the proof. Uh, and the data shows that people are more likely to fill out more of the form or complete more of the checkout if there's a progress indicator in place. So it's it's one small change that I think can make quite a difference on the conversion, which ultimately if you make just, you know, a 1% change on conversion, the power of that in terms of profit is is quite remarkable.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:21:57

And you're right, the data is very, very clear that that kind of, you know, the progress bar could be visual, could be a percentage figure. It could be you're on to 3 or 5, um, really, really works really well. My, my selection is a build up on something you mentioned a few months ago, which is around the footer. So your recommendation at the time was around making sure you have all the elements expected of you from a legal standpoint as well as a practical one. But again, because of the time of year, I think there is an opportunity here for all of us to review and rethink the layout and the design, in fact, of your footer, so it doesn't look like it's something that's been neglected completely.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:22:37

It'd be like what can happen sometimes only, you know, with the the contact us form or that kind of thing where it looks very mechanical and it doesn't give the impression that there's been any care and attention given to it compare to the rest of the website. So for me, you know, the footer is probably an element that, granted, can be left alone when you need to go for launch. But a year to year, five, ten years later, I think the, you know, you want to give the impression that at least you've grouped things differently. You've even look at the language, you've looked at the design element and and make them smile. And then I would add on to that a very, very important launches around credibility. Make sure that when you have your copyright statement, you put actually the yeah, your business started and the current year. So you can really show that you've been in operation for a number of years, because I know some people have got the footer to automatically change a year, but actually you miss your your under communicating.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:23:35

One of my favorite terms this year with cider. Well if you've been trading for ten years, it should read 2014 2024 as opposed just 2024. Copyright or right to serve. So look at the footer, do some research. Look at what other industries do the design and layout of the footer, and make sure that in your copyright statement we see the full kind of the full trading years, if you will, and and your seniority as an active participant in your industry.

Jonny Ross: 00:24:01

And and what I love about this is that we absolutely it's just in our nature. We try to give actionable advice. That's that's just what we like to do. And that's the smallest of things. Using a 2014, two, 2024 instead of just 24, it adds another tick box of trust. And and ultimately people buy. They buy from people they like. They buy from people. Uh, um, it's about, you know, it's the price. Um, it's the product. But it's also do they like you? Do they trust you? And just being able to demonstrate that you've been trading for ten, 15, even five years, it adds trust.

Jonny Ross: 00:24:41

And it's just a tiny tweak that, you know, will take a, a fraction of a minute to, uh, to implement. So yeah, really like that. But in terms of the footer itself, so many websites I've seen, you know, maybe it's a template website, the footer just hasn't been considered in the slightest. Um, and, and that's where sometimes you can start scrolling down and think, hmm, I'm not very proud of this website. And you get that pang in your stomach when someone says, what's your website address? Um, and, and partly the footers actually had some play in it because it's just bloody awful. So so I love that, uh, website call to action this week. Pascal.

Jonny Ross: 00:25:18

Thank you, thank you.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:25:20

And yours as well. Um, obviously, because recently I did have to complete a survey. And you know that when you begin to go, I hope this is not going to take too long. And they had a progress bar. And which meant that, you know, I had I was more willing to participate and complete the survey as a result as well.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:25:36

So very, very valid point.

Jonny Ross: 00:25:38

Yeah, totally. What? Another episode. Let's relax. Let's, uh, let's see what we've covered. So I'm going to play some music at the same time because, you know, it's it's easier than it is.

Jonny Ross: 00:25:51

And we talked about.

Jonny Ross: 00:25:53

Um, we talked about blog articles and really considering whether you need to use our three R's, which is retain, rewrite or remove. And what we're suggesting is that if you've got low traffic, uh, blog articles, you absolutely need to do something with them, whether it be retained, whether it be rewrite, whether it be remove, retain is making a little tweak. Rewrite is full rewrite or remove is just delete. Nothing wrong with a bit of decluttering, especially at this time of year. Uh, although I think you are suggesting once a quarter. Pascal. Was that what you said?

Pascal Fintoni: 00:26:24

Yeah, once a quarter. Doing your kind of website review meeting?

Jonny Ross: 00:26:28

Yeah, we, uh, talked about video SEO.

Jonny Ross: 00:26:30

Don't just put don't just embed the video. Think about the meta tags. Think about the transcript. What other content can you add to the page? We talked about using AI to enhance your meetings, but also to get those gold dust moments out of your meetings, opt in monster to help convert uh, and uh, into whether it be into subscribers or customers. And we've given you a couple of call to actions, use progress indicators on your forms and rethink and review your footer. So all in all, it's content optimization with a few essential tools that hopefully will start making you feel more proud of your website.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:27:07

And as you mentioned, these are very, very easy to implement. There are also great point of discussion with your team, with your designers and so on. So don't try and do everything on your own necessarily. Uh, there's pleasure in delegation as well as, you know, working as part of a team or a cohort if you're part of a mastermind group. And the whole idea being that 2024 will be then within to 31 years of internet and you are addressing an audience who is very, very mature, who is very visually literate about what is good but an ugly.

Pascal Fintoni: 00:27:39

And we only have a few seconds to make the right first impressions. So go through what was discussed today, but also the the other 19 episodes. They are short form on purpose, so you can really take action and well, let's just say that we will have a few more surprises to announce next year as well, to make sure that once again, you can feel part of your website again and just approach what you need to do with great passion.

Jonny Ross: 00:28:05

Well, that is it for today. This was episode 20 of our new website podcast series, The Audio companion to the 98 Website Mastery Program. For more information, please visit 90 Day Marketing mastery.com and you'll be able to book your discovery call with either myself or Pascal. We'll be back with another episode, of course, in 2024. Uh, in the meantime, feel free to send your questions, share your preferred apps and links to your website once you've made the changes we spoke about, because we'd love to give you a shout out. Merry Christmas everyone.

Jonny Ross: 00:28:35

Happy holidays. It's, uh. And and Happy New Year even. Bye for now. And we'll leave you with a fun video and audio montage whilst you go through your notes and actions and put them in place and make your website amazing. Take care.

Jonny Ross: 00:28:51

Merry Christmas season.