Best SEO Strategies for 2021 with Dresean Ryan
Episode 505: Show Notes
In today’s episode, we speak with Dresean Ryan. He started his SEO career only four years ago after bootstrapping it and learning everything he could to make a better life for himself. Dresean has gone on to work with some large companies like Etna, Signa, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. He helps his clients make millions of dollars just by improving their search engine optimization.
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Today we are diving into how you can DIY this process and how you can learn how to hire the right kind of person. Dresean breaks down SEO in an easily-understandable, digestible way to keep things simple for you. He supplies listeners with actionable steps to outlining your content, deciding what your content should be, and then creating that content. To do this, Dresean uses a bunch of excellent tools — both free and paid — and references his amazing resources at the end, including his very own program you can use or even pass on to your VA. This ensures that even if you’re not up to speed with SEO in your business, someone on your team definitely will be. Let’s get to it then!
How Dresean Entered the World of SEO and His Experiences Since
When Dresean entered the digital realm, he never actively pursued SEO but rather stumbled into it. Working as a security guard at the time, Dresean was putting in 16-hour shifts and needed a break — a break in business. So he took to the internet, a place that would become his professional playground and key to success. He Googled how to make money online and came across a video covering something called search engine optimization, or SEO. Intrigued, he continued to research the topic and created a blog to test his knowledge. Eventually, Dresean’s efforts were paying off, literally, and he realized that if he could make it work for himself, he’d probably be able to make it work for others too. He started his professional career in SEO by working for free and eventually gained enough confidence and clients to start charging for his services. Dresean also spends some time talking to us about his journey on a personal level, sharing that finding your “why” is so important.
Creating an SEO Playbook With Actionable Steps To Follow
Part of Dresean’s rapid success in SEO has been thanks to a series of easy-to-follow steps. He says the first thing to do is to tap into your audience by searching for keywords. Dresean goes on to reference one of his most useful SEO tools of all, UberSuggest. This nifty piece of software helps you find profitable SEO keywords that’ll help you not only create good content but the right content. But sometimes even cutting-edge software isn’t enough, as Dresean shares, just because a digital tool tells you that a keyword has no search volume, doesn’t mean that people aren’t looking for it. To work around this, you just need to go old-school and create a short, precise, easy-to-fill-in survey for your audience. You can ask them questions like, “How would you phrase this question in Google Search?” Getting keywords doesn’t come more organically than that, and now you will have gained valuable insight that some of the world’s best AI can miss. With these keywords in mind, you can now create content and serve an audience you might never have found. Creating the content, though, can be tricky and you need to keep following the right steps. If you’re going to make content that will stick, Google needs you to create several thorough pieces of varied length. Dresean tells us a good rule of thumb is to design a web of content. In the middle of the content web is a sturdy, well-written article that covers a range of topics, and spinning out from it is a short article — or two — on each topic. Be mindful though, because this is where you can favor quantity over quality which is a big no-no. Whatever you do, always preference quality over quantity. For example, finding out how to seal an envelope shouldn’t require 5,000 words, but mastering astrophysics might.
What You Should Be Looking To Get From Your Audience
If you’ve nailed your SEO, you should start seeing an increase in traffic. But what’s the point of traffic if your audience isn’t going to do anything about your great content? Lead magnets cover this. If you’re not familiar with a lead magnet, then in simple terms it is something like resources, courses, or documents to give out for free in exchange for an email address. Never feel bad about pursuing someone for their email address. Remember: your audience came to your website in the first place because they were looking for value. Whether you are solving a problem of theirs, contributing to their creativity, or practically anything else — they came looking for you. You might also encounter some of your traffic leaving, but just know that there is always another person to fill that gap. So how do you ensure your content attracts the right traffic? Dresean tells us it’s all about the basics, creating searchable content, and understanding the content management system you’re working with — that’s how you can get that golden email address.
Ensuring You Get The Results You Deserve
You can’t do it all on your own, and why should you? That’s why there are a bunch of tools out there for you to use. Begin with competitor research, find out which keywords they’re using, how many times they’re using it, and see if you can one-up them in any area, keeping quality in mind, of course. The problem with SEO is that there isn’t a cookie-cutter approach for you to use and each effort is going to require nimbleness and adaptability. Dresean shares examples of how there are some pages that can rank higher than your own branded content. Well, that’s just how Google works. So how does it work? In short, Google doesn’t look at any one keyword but rather finds the commonalities and likened nuances between all top-performing pages. Another great tool you can use to help you with this is Surfer SEO, which is an SEO optimizer that helps you write the best content possible. What’s more, is that Surfer SEO is great for those of you who don’t have time to become SEO experts but still want to be involved in the process. To finish off the show, Dresean leaves us with his top SEO tips. He touches on keyword research; fine tuning your content in the right ways; reminding yourself that SEO takes time and your ROI will reflect this fact; and last but not least, the need for you to have a Google My Business profile. As 46% of all searches are made with local intent, this will help Google push up your visibility when people are looking for your product or service in their area.
Quote This
It’s all about the basics — creating searchable content and understanding the content management system you’re working with — that’s how you can get that golden email address.
—Dresean Ryan
Highlights
How Dresean Entered the World of SEO and His Experiences Since Then [0:04:54]
Creating an SEO Playbook With Actionable Steps To Follow [0:10:39]
What You Should Be Looking To Get From Your Audience [0:21:27]
Ensuring You Get The Results You Deserve [0:38:58]
#TalkStrategyToME
Do keyword research.
Fine tune your content in the right ways.
Remember SEO takes time and your ROI will reflect this fact.
You need to have a Google My Business profile.
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Dresean Ryan
Website | Instagram | YouTube | LinkedIn
Dresean’s personal philosophy is that he believes everyone should live their life filled with purposefulness, happiness, and freedom. As a Business Coach and Startup mentor at Amazon, he helps SEO freelancers grow their business by monetizing their knowledge through content creation, courses, and consulting. SEO experts have so much to offer, but the problem is, most people don't understand what the heck they do. Because of this, a lot of SEOs get caught up in the cold calling and cold emailing rat race.
This is often a desperate attempt to land new clients and sadly enough, most of those clients won’t value their time. So Dresean helps SEOs learn how they can attract leads that will value their knowledge and their time without doing a single cold call, or cold email.
During Dresean’s career, when he worked with large fortune 500 companies such as Aetna, Cigna, and Blue Cross Blue Shield, he always found himself attracting new opportunities and increasing his income by simply creating high-quality content, consulting, and coaching. He was always able to continuously monetize his SEO knowledge in some way, shape, and form.
Since Dresean has a passion for seeing others live a purposeful life full of freedom and happiness, he decided to start coaching SEO professionals that want to learn how they can attract opportunities that will help them live their best life.
KEY TOPICS
SEO, Keywords, Google Ranking, SEO Tools, Content, Lead Magnet
