[00:00:00.320] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Wedding industry SEO expert, Sara Dunn, is my guest on today's episode of the podcast. She is returning for a special episode, sharing with you three ways you can use AI to boost your SEO and blogging.

[00:00:18.300] - Candice Coppola (Host)

You're here to grow a business, but not just any business. You want to grow a profitable business with purpose, a business where you wake up every single day driven to serve your customers and make a difference in your own life. I'm Candice Coppola, published author, business coach, and your guide to building a profitable business with purpose. Join me here every single week as we explore how to build and grow your business with purpose. Get ready to dig in and have meaningful conversations about the strategies and techniques that will help you build your dream business. This is the power in purpose.

[00:00:59.390] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Hey there, friend. Welcome back to the power in purpose podcast. It's me, your host, Candice. We have a returning special guest on today's episode. Sara Dunn is a wedding SEO specialist for all types of wedding pros, planners, photographers, venues. If you're in the wedding industry, she is your SEO BFF, and she wants you to rank your website higher on Google.

[00:01:26.460] - Candice Coppola (Host)

In today's episode, we're talking all about how you can use AI to increase your SEO and to blog for your business. Now, listen, I have heard every excuse on the planet of why you don't want to blog. I get it. It's time consuming. You are not Carrie Bradshaw. It's so much work. You don't know what you're doing. You don't necessarily want to do it. But you know that there's so much value in being able to rank on Google for specific keywords that your ideal client is out there using and searching for information on. But you have every excuse in the book. Today's episode is going to leave you with no excuses. You should leave this episode fully embracing the fact that you can blog on a consistent basis and that you can do it with a strategy and that you should do it, especially in these interesting, weird, shitty economic times where the majority of wedding pros are seeing a big retraction in their sales, which is something Sarah and I do talk about in today's episode. In my interview, Sarah is going to share three ways to use AI to boost your SEO and blogging.

[00:02:38.410] - Candice Coppola (Host)

If you're unfamiliar with Sara, let me just introduce her properly. She's been a guest on the show before. She has a knack for making SEO easy to understand, and she's created a unique wedding SEO framework that simplifies what it takes to get your wedding business in front of your dream clients. Now, she has been featured everywhere. Honey Book, Special Events, Nace, wedding pro educator of 2023. And yes, she has been a guest on this podcast before. And in the last year, her framework has helped over 1 million searchers find the wedding pros and the advice that they are looking for. Her framework on how to use SEO for your wedding business has helped over 1 million searchers find the wedding pros and advice that they're looking for. So if you are ready to reach rockstar status on Google, Sarah is ready to be your geeky best friend that shows you how it's done. She's seriously the best and makes this SEO talk so simple and easy. All right, so without further ado, let's get into my episode with Sarah Dunn. Sarah, welcome back to the show.

[00:03:50.070] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

I am so excited to be back for a topic that I feel like it's very hot right now. So thanks for giving me a place to come talk about this.

[00:03:57.420] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Oh, my gosh, super hot. I feel like I can't do generate enough AI podcast content fast enough. I'm so excited you're here to talk about AI and SEO and blogging and how we can make sense of this all and use it to boost our SEO and blogging in our business. You are our SEO queen, the woman we look to for all of our SEO needs. You're definitely the person I would call to come and teach us about all this stuff.

[00:04:22.290] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I feel like so many people are like, I'm using AI for my blogging, and what do we think about that with Google? So I really want to dig into that today and talk about some what to do, what not to do.

[00:04:36.630] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Oh, yeah. Okay. This is such a popular hot topic, and I know all of my folks out there who blog regularly are dying to hear your take on it. They definitely want your opinion. And I'm hoping that after today's episode, everybody who's been listening to you and I talk about SEO and blogging for jackass years will finally do it. Literally, it could not be simpler to do these days.

[00:04:58.880] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

Right. I mean, one of the things that I was thinking in preparing for this episode was doing blog posts has never been easier. Now is the time. There are more tools that are helping you to get this done. So yes, now is the time. Feel empowered. We've got help for you.

[00:05:16.650] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yes, 100 %. Okay, so first, let's talk about some examples of AI power tools that can really help our listeners with blogging. And just in case anybody is listening to my podcast for the first time and you're like, AI, I don't know what you're talking about. Episode 100 with Don Richardson talks all about AI and tons of different tools and ways you can use AI. We're going to skip over all of that with the basic that you have the basic understanding of what AI is. W ith that said, what are some examples of AI power tools that you're using that can help with blogging?

[00:05:48.980] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

I'm so glad you asked because there are different options. T he very first one that I tried was Jasper. T hat was before chat GPT came out and I was learning about AI writing writing tools for the first time. I personally found Jasper a little confusing. It did a couple of different blog posts for me just as an experiment. I was like, I don't think this is for me. It wasn't until chat GPT came out with its more conversational chatbot style that I really felt like it was easy to do because using AI felt like a conversation and the tool could actually respond to what I was asking for and then what I asked for in follow up. My answer to what I'm using when I'm using AI, it is usually chat GPT, just because I find that format is the most simple and because it's free. Anyone who hasn't played with AI yet, I just want to encourage you, this doesn't cost anything to try. You can go to chat GPT and just start your experimentation and see what comes out of it. I would definitely recommend whether you feel like this is going to become part of your process or not, at least experiment a little bit so that you know what all the hype is and what everyone's talking about.

[00:07:03.600] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah, I agree. I think chat B2 is such a great tool. It's actually probably the tool that I'm leaning on most right now in my business. I find that it's the most consistent. I actually decided to upgrade to chat GPT 4, which is the paid version of chat GPT just to test out. It comes with plug ins and other automations that you can use with it. I think that that's where this is going to evolve to. But for right now, chat GPT 3 is free and it's amazing.

[00:07:29.130] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

It's incredible. It's even a little bit scary. I mean, the conversation type of thing that you can have knowing that it's just an automated chat bot on the other side, but what it comes up with feels a lot of times very conversational and very creative. So it's a really powerful tool that has been trained on lots and lots of knowledge on the internet. And now it has the knowledge to actually write like us and to produce things that we as business owners can use in our business from social posts to sales page copy to blogging. And blogging is definitely where I think business owners should think about it when using it for SEO.

[00:08:11.410] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Oh, yeah, 100 %. For anybody listening here who has not started blogging because it takes too much time and you're not a good writer and all that stuff. You literally have no excuse now. Well, I would like to hear your excuse now is what I'm saying here.

[00:08:24.390] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

Yes. Seriously, now is the time. Even with all these changes in how content is getting created, SEO is still based on content that hasn't changed. Now what you need to do for SEO is easier than ever before to create helpful, long form content that really serves the searcher who has a problem or is looking for a solution. We're still creating content in order to rank, and now you've got a little bit of a sidekick that can help you get across the finish line or get a first draft started for you.

[00:08:57.780] - Candice Coppola (Host)

As Dawn would say on her episode, going from stuck to started, which is really, most of the time, what we need in order then to take the reins and produce something that we've actually written or that we're proud of when it comes to content. I know that someone listening maybe pays attention to Google and pays attention to all the changes in the algorithm. I feel like YouTube and other Google experts make Google out to be... It has all these algorithm changes, and if you don't follow things perfectly, you'll never rank, and there's all these rules and behind the scenes conspiracy theories and all this stuff. My question to you is, what is Google's perspective on using AI to create content? And is it going to hurt our website ranking? Because there's lots of hot takes on this.

[00:09:45.580] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

So important to talk through this because you would think objectively that when Google is trying to figure out what content on the internet is the best answer for a certain search, you would think Google would be like, We only want human written content. We want Candice to be writing this with her own fingers and brain, and that's the content we want. It's been very surprising that Google's public perspective on SEO and AI is they don't actually care who writes the content as long as it is helpful for the end user. They've told us, they haven't come straight out to say, use AI as much as you want, but essentially, we don't care who writes the content as long as it ends up being helpful. Now, there's a caveat to that. And that is some of the changes that Google has been making to prioritize unique content that indicates first hand experience. So let's talk about that. Google, for several years, has been trying to identify what authors actually have topical knowledge. They're actually experts in the topic, not just, Hey, I'm hiring my summer intern to write a blog post about wedding planning, and they've never planned a wedding before, but this content was created by an expert wedding planner who's done this a hundred times.

[00:11:04.980] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

Google's trying to figure out, Is the person behind this content actually authoritative, an expert, and are they trustworthy? Google recently added one more factor to that, and that is called experience. They're trying to identify if the author of a blog post had first hand experience with the topic. I think this is really helpful in the wedding industry to think about the fact that, let's et's say I am a wedding planner and I want to create a resource on my website about a specific venue. So there's a venue and I love working at it and I know tons of things about it because I've worked there a dozen times. You have actual first hand experience then with the topic of your venue spotlight blog post. However, someone a thousand miles away can also say, I want to rank on Google for that venue. I'm going to just scrape the internet for whatever information I can find and write something about the venue and try to rank for it. And so Google is trying to figure out the difference. Is this content written by someone who's actually been to this place that has real experience? And so I think that this is really a push toward reducing the visibility of boring, not unique, basically scraped and rewritten content created by AI and emphasize things that are actually unique.

[00:12:31.320] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

So a big change that we're making for content that we write for our clients is in the introduction, we actually express why we know what we're talking about. So instead of just the Greencrest Manor wedding venue is in a state wedding venue in Michigan, it has this much capacity, we start the blog post with, as wedding planners who have worked at Greencrest Manor more than seven times, this is one of our favorite venues and we love working here because. R eally bringing in some first hand experience is going to be a big part of moving forward with SEO. T hat's the big shift that I'm seeing right now that I think has been caused by AI.

[00:13:15.730] - Candice Coppola (Host)

That tip is worth its weight in gold. I am stealing that tip. I am making sure every blog post sets the tone and says why I'm the expert and authority on this topic. Before I go into it, that is such a good tip. I have a question for you about, and now we're going off the rails, we're going off the script.

[00:13:35.440] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

I'm.

[00:13:35.730] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Ready.

[00:13:36.530] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

I would.

[00:13:37.150] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Love to hear your perspective on some of the changes Google announced to how it's going to show different businesses and articles in its search ranking, including its new tab called Perspectives. M aybe you're so great at breaking down complex topics into simple to understand terms. So I say all of this, somebody listening is going, Huh? If you could maybe give us a little overview as to what Google's changes might be and just your opinions about them. I'd love to get your insight.

[00:14:11.370] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

So this is a time in search where a lot of things are changing based on the experience that search engines think that people will want in the future. And I think it's really important to know that while there's a lot of different options being tested, these are all just tests. So some people, I mean, if you start watching SEO TikTok, there are people like, Google has completely changed the search results. I'm like, no, they're testing different options to see what people like and find helpful. So there's a new version of Google that actually brings in AI answers, and that is in test right now, and it's very limited availability. A lot of people that I've seen testing it haven't been that thrilled by it. So I don't necessarily think that that is the search experience of the future. There's also these changes that are emphasizing different types of content in the search results. How do we bring in more video? How do we bring in more visual search results with photos? So changes like that are also coming forward. And I think the most important thing to think about is that no matter what the search results look like, Google and other places where people search are trying to figure out the fact that people have a question and deliver them an answer.

[00:15:35.030] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

And as a business owner, if you want to position yourself as the answer, you still have to create content on your website. So no matter what that search experience looks like a year from now, we need to be the content creators in order to get the visibility to come to our business.

[00:15:54.670] - Candice Coppola (Host)

I feel like there's so much that we just don't know yet, and it's evolving and changing so rapidly. It's really hard to predict what it's going to look like in two weeks, let alone in two years, especially with how Google is using AI. Have you had a chance to use Google's AI tool, B ard?

[00:16:14.520] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

I have a little bit. I personally didn't think it was as responsive and useful as Chat GPT. I felt like I was talking to a dumb robot instead of a smart robot. I wasn't a huge fan. I also got really irritated when I tried to get it to site its sources. I asked it some things, find me a list of I think it was like doughnut shops or something. I was like, Which one is the best one? It first of all wouldn't tell me. Then I was like, Okay, well, which one has red velvet donuts? It said, This one. I said, Well, cite your source. Where did you get that information? It wouldn't do it. It said, Go do a Google search. I was like, This is a terrible experience. This is not giving me an answer that I can actually trust. I think that's going to be part of the problem with AI based search engines. We won't know the sources of some of the information that gets put back to us. I think it's going to result in bad answers that are actually presented as fact and answers that come from sources that aren't cited.

[00:17:28.780] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

I think that's maybe a greater problem than we're talking about with just using AI for your business. But that's really probably my concern about AI based search in the future.

[00:17:39.080] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah, I think that's a fair point. So how can we use AI to help improve our website traffic and our search engine rankings?

[00:17:48.810] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

So I am excited about the opportunity to use AI as your assistant writer. So if you're not a writer, you don't like writing, you get really really stuck, I really think that AI is now the way that you can start creating content and get unstuck, get some ideas and start brainstorming. And as we said already, content is really the key to SEO. Getting more authoritative information onto your website is how you get found when people have questions. And we want when people go to a search engine and they have a question about weddings in your area, anything related to that, we want them to land on your website as the answer. Especially if you are a wedding planner and you have all this information, all these answers, and you're an expert at planning weddings in your area, you want to get in front of people when they have questions, and you want them to realize that you have those answers. If they just hire you, they can have your help throughout that entire process. Content is so important to ranking higher on Google and bringing more engaged couples to your website. Candice, I think we had talked about, maybe you're talking about three ways that SEO could actually be used.

[00:19:09.150] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

Should we dig into those?

[00:19:10.800] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Let's do it. I'm excited to hear. Okay.

[00:19:13.880] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

Three ways to use AI that are safe, that won't get you on Google's bad side. I want to actually start with what not to do before we frame the three ways that you could be using AI. The number one thing that I don't want any business owner to do is to go to an AI tool and just put in an open ended prompt. Chat GPT, write 700 word blog post about X topic, and then just sit back and take what it writes, copy and paste it and put it on your website. That is what we don't want to do because, again, it doesn't show any first hand experience. It's probably not written in your voice and tone. It probably could get caught by AI detection. And we don't know if Google is going to change its tune in the future and decide that it wants to use AI detection and promote those pieces of content in the search results. And the last reason not to do that is because sometimes AI makes things up. And if you aren't actually reviewing what it's written, you could be copying and pasting false information on your website and pretending you wrote it it.

[00:20:30.040] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

I have an example of this, again, related to that venue spotlight type blog post. I was just experimenting, trying to see if chat2pt could write a blog post about a venue that I'd never been to, and would it write something that was useful and accurate? I just said, Write a blog post this many words about this place. And what came back sounded very polished. It was very organized. It talked through the different event spaces at that venue. And from just a writing perspective, it sounded great. I was like, Copy and paste, right? Well, let's fact check this first. I go to the venue's website and I realized that it has made all sorts of factual errors about the venue. It misquoted the capacity of several spaces where it said the space could hold 120 guests when it actually could hold 200. And then it described an indoor atrium venue as an outdoor wedding venue with beautiful views. It doesn't have views of anything. So it's really important not to just assume that what comes out of an AI writing tool is actually factually accurate. So really important to fact check. Now, all that said, it's like, Well, then how are we supposed to use this if we can't just tell it to write and let it write?

[00:21:54.330] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

Here's three ways that I think are useful. Candice, I want to hear your ways too. But my first one is to use an AI tool to help you brainstorm or outline. So let's say you've got a topic. You can actually go to chat GPT and say, What are some common questions that people have about this topic? It will give you some ideas of things you could write and include in a blog post. You can even just clearly say, Help me outline a blog post about this topic. You can, of course, give it more context and say, I am a wedding planner, I'm writing about this topic. Help me outline a blog post that will be around 500 words. Great way to use AI is that brainstorming, planning, and outlining phase. Have you ever done anything like that with it?

[00:22:46.510] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Many times. Podcast episodes, YouTube scripts, blog posts, you name it. I've been using AI to just help frame up ideas or just to get things started. What's nice about outlines is it gets you thinking. Sometimes what it spits out you disagree with, which then in turn is actually a really interesting moment in your video and your blog post and your piece of content where you can actually speak against something it suggested, adding more flavor to whatever it is you're presenting. I've been using it quite often for all of that.

[00:23:19.840] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

Yes, sparking ideas, actually helping you figure out what your own perspective is. Oh, I didn't think about the fact that that's a common misconception about this topic. And then you can go off and feel a little bit more energized about what you need to write. I think that's really good.

[00:23:38.040] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Is SEO making your head spin? If you've dabbled in all the SEO tips and tricks and your website still is in showing up high enough to really get found on Google, I want you to consider investing in Sarah Dunn's SEO boot camp. Sarah is the authority for wedding pros on how to get your website to rank on Google. Right now, the doors are to wedding SEO boot camp are officially open. Inside her course, you will learn her wedding SEO framework that gives you a clear, proven step by step process to rank your wedding business on Google. If you want to learn more about wedding SEO boot camp and how you can get a very special discount on this program, go to candice coppola. Com boot camp. That's candice coppola. Com boot camp. What's your next tip to use AI to boost our SEO and our blogging?

[00:24:34.200] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

All right. So I think a lot of us might know what to write in the middle of a blog post. So, hey, I know the advice I want to give or the questions I want to answer in this blog post, but what's really hard is figuring out how to start it and end it. One of my favorite ways to use AI writing tools is to actually ask it to write your introduction or conclusion. The reason I think this is really effective is in my experiments with chat GPT, I've actually found that the more you put in, the better the output is. When you can say, Here's my blog post about the topic, and it's long and it's in your voice and it includes tons of information, and then you just say, Write an introduction to this blog post that's engaging, that would encourage the reader to read further. You're more likely to get something that actually sounds good, that sounds like the rest of your writing and is accurate as well. I love AI for introductions and conclusions.

[00:25:34.640] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah, it's a great tip. In your intro and in your conclusion, you need to be focusing on a keyword. This helps to make sure that that keyword is incorporated. It gets you started. It might even help to push the content in that messy middle forward that you're trying to write about and to educate people about or share your tips on weddings. So yeah, I love an intro and a conclusion. That's where I feel like most people struggle is just getting started there. And if you can get started with a good intro and then you've got your outline, which you write about, and then you can wrap things up with a nice conclusion that makes it so easy.

[00:26:07.290] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

Yes. It gets you past those parts that are the hardest to write and just let you write from the part that you're most excited about. All right. The third way that I think you can use AI to boost your SEO and blogging is a really specific tip around real wedding blog posts. So a lot of us in the wedding industry, we spend a lot of time writing real wedding things, essentially that blog post that sums up or tells the story about one couple's wedding day. And the cool thing about this post is you probably have some information already that you can put into AI and ask AI to actually create it into the story of the wedding day. So you probably have a questionnaire from your client that talks a lot in their voice about whatever questions you like to ask them. That's a great great input to put into a chat GPT tool and have it write more of that, more like a story. The other thing is you can come up with a set template or set of questions that you can answer yourself about the wedding day. I actually have a template on my website.

[00:27:19.310] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

It's my real wedding blog post template. It is the 12 questions we send to clients when we write for them. And it pulls information out of you about that wedding that's actually interesting. Instead of just saying, Oh, this couple was so kind and so in love, and that's the thing you say. It actually asks you to think more critically about things like, What was one moment of this wedding day that was the most special and stood out in your memory? If you can answer that question just in the Q&A format, then you put all this information into a prompt for an AI writing tool and you ask it to put it all together into a story about this real wedding, it actually does a decent job. I've been playing with this a lot and it's so helpful in making sure that the blog post is unique and interesting and it's just requiring you to come up with that information to put in from the start. I'm a big fan of AI for real weddings.

[00:28:25.120] - Candice Coppola (Host)

That's it. So true. You can just sit down and draw a blank about what to write about the wedding and how to make sure your keyword is incorporated. Because we've done this so many times, you feel silly. It's like, How many times can I write about blush pink weddings? What's the new angle here? How can I make this sound different? I feel I'm just so over it. A I can help give you a different take. I love your tip of taking questionnaire answers and putting that into the chat, GPT chat box for that to use so that it can spit back to you a blog post that really incorporates personal details.

[00:28:59.290] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

Yes, for sure. I'm not saying you have to take what comes out of it and, again, copy and paste it straight on your website. I don't want you to do that. But it's going to get you started. It's going to give you the full bones of that blog post. And maybe you're like, Oh, yeah, I don't want it to say swoon worthy. That sounds ridiculous. I would never say that. And you can just do some tweaks of the language, the tone, and the voice. And it's so much easier than sitting down with a blank page and going, okay, blush pink wedding. Let's do it. How do I sound excited? Because I'm not.

[00:29:34.130] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Very true. I love using chat chp t for juicy headlines for blog posts that incorporate the keyword. I find that sometimes I really get stuck trying to write a title for a blog post that fits into the length it needs to be in characters that uses the keyword. So how can we use AI to help take that and make it easier? I also love it to condense down what a blog post is really about for a meta description using the keyword so that we can then tick off all the boxes that Google likes while not getting stuck trying to figure out what to write with limited characters. I also find that it works really nice for p intrest titles and descriptions as well, especially trying to mix those up and play around a little bit, making them different for every image. That's just a nice way to use it, too. I mean, to sit down and write a pin description for every image on your blog, describing the image and the keywords. That takes forever and this takes seconds.

[00:30:38.060] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

Yes. It's such a nice way to automate some of those repetitive tasks. Again, especially if you can put in a lot and just ask it for a little. I think the tools really shine when we can give it more information and then ask it for summaries, titles, intros, conclusions. Because if you're not giving it a lot in the input, what comes out may not be quite what you expect or may not be good enough to use. I just want to second the idea of using it for titles, for sure. I love that you can ask it to give you options. When I do it, I usually say, Give me five options for an email subject line about this topic, or Here's my description of an event I'm going to be doing. Can you suggest five titles for that event? P I think that's genius and super smart. I will say as far as using it for SEO, for things like SEO titles and descriptions, I have been experimenting with this a little bit. I will say you need some baseline of SEO knowledge still. Try not to fully abdicate your SEO responsibilities because if you just say, Write a meta description, I've actually found that it doesn't follow best practices.

[00:31:56.590] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

Usually, write something too long and so you do have to have some SEO knowledge in order to prompt it properly. The proper number of words or characters, exactly where you want the keyword used, things like that. It does take a bit of SEO knowledge and I wouldn't just say that these tools are brilliant about knowing what all the SEO terms are.

[00:32:17.990] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah, trust but verify, that's my motto in life. T hat should be your motto with AI. Because I feel like there's so much that goes into AI where we have all these questions about ethics. I would just love your take on this. I'm going to ask this of every single AI guest that we bring on in conversation. What are some of the ethical considerations that maybe we should keep in mind if we're going to use tools like chat, GPT for SEO and blogging?

[00:32:47.080] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

Yes. I think ethics are really tricky. T here's so many different parts of the ethical considerations around AI. I think as far as using it for content in your business, it's another reason I don't recommend just putting in a prompt and copying, pasting the output onto your website. You have to keep in mind that somebody's hard work and writing work was actually put into whatever was put on the internet that trained that robot to be able to write what it just spit back out for you. A real person probably wrote the original source for what you just received. I do hope that everyone will take what an AI writing tool creates and put some effort into actually making it better. Put some effort into not just having junk content on the internet. I think we all need to have a part in that as website owners. I am worried about what is this going to do for what we end up finding on the internet in the future? Is it actually going to be high quality or not? Is it going to be fact checked? I hope as business owners thinking about the ethics, you do put a little bit of effort into what comes out, you fact check it, and you make it unique and in your voice so that there is some work on your part and you're not just benefiting from everyone who created content in the past.

[00:34:10.330] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah, that's a very fair assessment.

[00:34:13.330] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

I.

[00:34:14.050] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Guess off camera, you could say we were talking just a little bit about how AI is scrubbing the internet and information is being fed into it, likely information that I've written, that Sarah has written, and perhaps you, listener, have written. How do we feel about that? How do we feel about that information then being used by other folks and just being copied and pasted? There's so many conversations around this that I hope we have a chance to have.

[00:34:39.790] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

Yes. I didn't realize and really have a problem with that particular angle until a friend of mine, we were on a Mastermind call and he was like, Look what it can do. He put in a prompt that was like, Write five SEO tips for wedding venues and write it in a blog post of a thousand words. I looked at that post that came out and I was like, Some of those are the exact things that I wrote in my article about SEO tips for wedding venues. Not that I'm the first one to ever think of this, but I felt very much like some of my ideas had been taken and spun into this new piece of content. From that perspective, I don't love it as a content creator who has spent many hours and many years creating real resources for people with my brain and fingers. But I also think there's not a lot we can do about it. So we might as well embrace it and use it in our businesses.

[00:35:36.430] - Candice Coppola (Host)

As well. Yeah, I agree. Well, I would love to cap off our interview talking a little bit about why we should be focusing on SEO and blogging now rather than during our downtime and engagement season. At the time of this episode airing, it is August, which is typically a very busy time for wedding pros. Either you're really in the thick of producing or you've got a little bit of a lull and you're getting ready for a busy fall season. Also, I think we need to just acknowledge that there is a retraction in the wedding industry. Sales are down for most wedding pros, at least in my student base. What would you say about yours, Sarah? Are you seeing a retraction with your students and sales coming down?

[00:36:22.640] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

Yes. Even for my clients where we still see a lot of traffic and inquiries, there seems to be more hesitation toward booking. Sometimes I'm like, You're doing great. You're killing it. Then my client is like, But can we get people to book? I'm like, Let's drive more traffic, and then likely you will have more opportunities. W e're definitely seeing it everywhere.

[00:36:45.870] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah. Well, thanks for acknowledging it because I know that every person I speak to feels very lonely in this time where they feel like, What am I doing wrong? What's wrong with me? What's wrong with my business? For some people, this is having some dramatic effect on their business and their livelihood and maybe their hopes to maintain a business. I think SEO presents such a great opportunity to market your business and to drive traffic and to get found. But I don't want to speak for you. I would love for you to explain why that is so. And also why we should just be spending time and now in a busy season focusing on SEO versus when we have more free time in our downtime.

[00:37:32.920] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

Yes, I think you're so right as far as the ability of SEO to drive more traffic and more interest to someone who maybe feels like they're struggling a little bit. You felt like you got all the inquiries you needed for the last few years. Now is a time where you need to probably be drumming up more traffic than you've ever had before to get in front of people who are ready to make decisions and book clients and book their wedding day. So it's really important to not take off the gas pedal, but really put down the accelerator and look for these ways where for the long term, they can bring you more traffic from the right people. And SEO and search engines are definitely one of the best options you have. This is something that you can invest some time into, and it's something that can continue to bring you traffic for years to come when you do it the right way. So you put that time and effort into learning some SEO best practices, and then you create the content you need to create. I'm not saying you have to blog every week. There's some key content that should be on your website that really addresses those needs that people have over and over again, season after season, that can then be those helpful resources that people find.

[00:38:54.470] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

And you become their expert because you had the answer they were looking for. Seo is wonderful because it really is time and effort. It's not paying for advertising, it's not paying for clicks. It is investing in your business for the long term to set it up to get found in the future. And to answer the question as far as why do this now when you're busy? It's important to know that SEO takes time. And I can't sell SEO on speed. We don't put up a blog post today and get found for it tomorrow. It takes time for Google to find our new content, to trust that content. It takes time for Google to recognize that this is something that people really like reading. And so SEO results can take weeks, months, sometimes even longer. And so the sooner you get started setting your website up right and creating the content you need to have, the sooner you can start seeing success. So we all know what happens in December January when engagement season comes around. And you can't just unfortunately show up in my inbox in December and say, Sarah, I want visibility for engagement season because it's too late.

[00:40:12.500] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

So it's really important to get started and just make the steps you can now to set yourself up for success when engagement season does come up in months from now.

[00:40:23.170] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Yeah, it's so important to remember that it takes time for your SEO to start ranking. You also need to learn some of the tricks of SEO, how to do it effectively. You're going to need time to maybe write your 10 cornerstone blog posts that will help your site to rank. You want Google serving traffic to that, and you want to test it and try it out and make sure that it's working and fine tuned for engagement season and not just being created at that point in time. Here's the good thing, though. Sarah has the definitive resource for anybody in the wedding industry who wants to take SEO into their own hands and learn how to do this. By the way, this is a life skill that you should know how to do. It's like balancing a checkbook, I think. As a business owner, you need to have a few skills in life and SEO is one of them because you will carry this skill everywhere you go. But don't let me sell it because I feel like we've sold it. You need to know how to do this. But Sarah makes this so simple. And the doors to your program, wedding SEO boot camp, are open.

[00:41:32.720] - Candice Coppola (Host)

Would you mind telling us more?

[00:41:34.390] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

Yes. So wedding SEO boot camp is the absolute best program for SEO for the wedding industry because it's tailored exactly to the wedding industry. I think that's what's so special about it is I tried to look at this not for, let me show you everything that you could ever learn about SEO. No, instead, I've tried to dial it back and make it incredibly focused on only what a wedding business needs to do in order to show up on Google. So all of the advice is very tailored to the wedding industry. It includes instant keyword ideas for multiple vendor categories. It includes specific blog post ideas for multiple vendor categories. And it's all about getting found by engaged couples. And when you join wedding SEO boot camp in a time like now, when we have the live program coming up, we'll actually be going through this as a group, which is super fun. So you'll get to join a group of wedding industry professionals who are all working on their SEO and learning the things that you're learning together. It includes four Q&A sessions with me, so we'll jump on live and I can make sure that you don't get stuck in progressing forward with any step of the process, which I think is really, really important because I want you to start, I want you to learn, and I want you to get it done and move on with your life.

[00:42:55.040] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

So that's why I love the Q&A so I can guide you and make sure that you are getting pointed in the right direction. And this is not something that is available year round. So I just do the live round twice a year and it is coming up in August. I would love everyone to join if you want to position your business for this engagement season.

[00:43:15.610] - Candice Coppola (Host)

This is the perfect time to jump in to learn this now, even if you're busy. It's a skill you need to have, especially during times like this, where you have to make sure your marketing is diversified and you need more traffic to convert. Because at this stage, the same 100 visitors that used to visit your website three years ago, maybe 20 of them would convert, and that's a ridiculously extreme number. That's not the case. But we're just going to use it for simple math. 20 of them may convert into an inquiry. Now, maybe two of those people are converting into an inquiry. So if we increase the traffic by logic, we increase the number of conversions. You absolutely need to know how to do this. I have linked all the details about wedding SEO boot camp in the show notes. And I also have set up a little landing page about SEO boot camp. You can go to candice coppala. Com boot camp. T here's also a special gift for our podcast listeners, which will help you to save a few dollars on boot camp, which we love saving dollars.

[00:44:17.850] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

Yes, we do. Yes. I would love to invite the listener. You're so right that this is a skill that you can use in the future. So many people come to me and they're like, Sarah, I don't want to learn this. I'm just going to outsource it to you. I love that. And we're happy to help people with services, but I would actually prefer that they go through wedding SEO boot camp first to learn the basic skills. Because when you learn to do your own SEO, you can do it on every piece of content you create in the future. You can set up your SEO on every new website that you have designed as you evolve your business. This is a skill, as Candice says, that is such an important piece of your tool belt if you want to see big long term success in your business.

[00:45:06.240] - Candice Coppola (Host)

100 % agree. Sarah, thank you so much for being a guest again on the podcast, our resident SEO expert. It's always a pleasure to have you on the show.

[00:45:16.860] - Sara Dunn (Guest)

Thank you. I love coming to geek out with you. So thank you so much for the invitation.

[00:45:21.960] - Candice Coppola (Host)

All right, friend, thank you so much for listening to today's episode of the show. I have to tell you, Sarah dropped a golden nugget in this episode, and I loved what she said about starting off all of your blog introductions, establishing who you are, and why you're the authority on whatever topic you're writing about, that is gold. I am using that and making sure to use that in every blog post that I write going forward. It's such a great tip. I loved everything she had to say about how you can use AI to improve your blogging and SEO. I want to remind you, if you're interested in learning more about SEO and you want to make this one of those skills that you take with you for a lifetime, I'm going to encourage you to sign up for wedding SEO boot camp. I put all the details, including how you can get a special discount on this amazing program by going to candice coppola. Com boot camp. That's candice coppola. Com boot camp. All right, friend, I'm here to remind you that there's so much power in your purpose until next time. Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of the Power In Purpose podcast.

[00:46:28.770] - Candice Coppola (Host)

If you enjoyed the show, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode and consider leaving a review. Head over to powerandpurpose podcast. Com to access all of the resources and links mentioned in today's episode. That's powerandpurpose podcast. Com. I'll see you next time.