Best Tips and Tricks Connected to Technical SEO For A Membership Website In 2024
Unlock the secrets of SEO for membership websites in 2024. Elevate your online presence and attract more members effortlessly. With Guest co-host Kurt von Ahnen of MananaNoMas.
Elevate your membership website’s online presence with our groundbreaking video on SEO strategies for 2024. We cover everything you need to know, from keyword research to link building to dominate search engine results and grow your member base exponentially. Ready to supercharge your website’s success?
This Week Show’s Sponsors
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Convesio: Convesio
Omnisend: Omnisend
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:07.230] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 85. In this episode, we will be talking about critical things in SEO that you need to know about your membership website in 2024. It’s a generalistic guide to this episode. It’s a 101 to intermediate-level guide of the critical factors that you have to understand about SEO in 2024, based on my own experience and probably Kurt’s experience as well, there’s a lot of misinformation out there, a ton of it.
[00:01:55.590] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve read most of it and watched most of it. It should be a great show. So, Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the growing number of new listeners and viewers? The podcast is growing, Kurt.
[00:02:09.940] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I can see. That’s awesome—my name’s Kurt von Ahnen. I own an agency called Mañana No Mas, and we focus on membership and learning websites. I also have a podcast by the same name and work directly with the guys at WP-Tonic and LifterLMS.
[00:02:26.280] – Jonathan Denwood
And Kurt’s a fantastic member of the team at WP It’s been a pleasure most of the time to work with him. He can say that less because sometimes I can be a bit troublesome, but my heart’s in the right place, I think. There we go. Well, I haven’t got any heart, but there we go. No, I’m only kidding. As I said, we’ll be looking at the fundamentals of on-site and off-site SEO and the technical side. Should be a great discussion. But before we go into the meat potatoes of this great show, I’ve got a couple of messages from our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. Before we go into it, I want to point out that we’ve got a great resource page on the WP-Tonic website. Who is the parent company of this podcast? It gives you all the resources, plugins, services, and an excellent course for you looking to build your membership website on WordPress, which was done by Kirk himself. And you get a coupon code, you get 50% off. Plus, there’s a list of the best plugins that you should use for your membership website with some great offers from the sponsors.
[00:03:59.850] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s a great resource. To get this, all you have to do is go over to Wp-tonic.com/deals. Wp-tonic. com/deals. The link will be in the show notes on the WP The repeat tonic website. It’s a great resource. Go there. In this, Kurt, we will be discussing on-page SEO strategy, things you need to know, off-page SEO strategy, and technical SEO strategy. I’m hoping to do the on-page and off-page in the first half of this show and maybe do the technical, or we’ll probably do mostly the on-page and maybe half the off-page and finish off the off-page and do the technical in the second half. How does that sound, Kurt?
[00:04:55.230] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m game. I’m going to follow your lead.
[00:04:57.230] – Jonathan Denwood
That was a mouthful, wasn’t it? So before we go into it, Kurt, what are some of the things? If you had a friend or somebody you were advising and they came to you and said, I don’t really know that much about what I’ve done, I know you need an SEO plugin on my WordPress membership website or community website. You don’t want to overwhelm them, but what would you, in a quick chat, What would you hope to get across to them that you feel they need to understand, Kurt?
[00:05:36.670] – Kurt von Ahnen
The thing I’m going to say about SEO, and maybe we should have had a pre-talk before the show today, I really am not an SEO expert. In fact, I have other people on my team that I pass SEO tasks over to. And here’s my initial thoughts on this, Jonathan. I look at it like, when you’re in business and you might be really great at sales or you might be you might be really great at merchandising or you might be really great at accounting, right? It seems like SEO is the accounting equivalent of web development to me. I always focused on great content, I I would write my stuff and I love the stuff that I was putting out. But if I was honest, it wasn’t getting enough eyes to it because I wasn’t following the structures and the rules of SEO and setting things up correctly. To me, it’s almost like the difference between between enjoying running your startup and making sales and interacting with customers, but you still have to do the accounting on the back end. And a lot of business people hate doing the accounting. And I find that a lot of creative types sometimes struggle with the SEO both sides and putting things to a structure.
[00:06:47.440] – Kurt von Ahnen
And so if I’m talking to a friend, like what your question was, my advice would be, learn what you can about SEO, but don’t rule out the idea that you might want to bring someone on your team that actually enjoys Yeah.
[00:07:02.760] – Jonathan Denwood
One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made on my online journey, folks, was concentrating on the technical side as a developer. But if you’re working for a local regional agency or you just want to do web development. If you’re working for smaller clients, you tend to have to be more of a generalist. And Really, if you’re trying to build any online business, which is what a membership website is, you’ve got to know the fundamentals of SEO, in my opinion, folks. Some people would disagree with me there. I wish I’d put the amount of effort that I’ve put in the last four years, and especially in the last two years, a long time ago. But on the other hand, it’s taken me quite a while to build up my own business. And what I mean by that, folks, is precisely what I’m selling to people. That’s half the battle. I try and explain that to people on their first membership course, is it’s very unlikely that your first course is going to be the basis of the business. It will morphise. Is there a word morphise, Gert?
[00:08:28.090] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think you just made it up.
[00:08:29.480] – Jonathan Denwood
You did? I It’s a good one, though, isn’t it? It’s a good one. It’s a good one, morphise. It’s going to change, folks. In all my heart, I hope that you build a great business, folks, and you have the determination and the grit to do it. But the business that you end up with, the course is that you aren’t going to be anything like the first That’s just the truth of the matter. It’s the same with most online businesses, folks. I wish I had concentrated more on SEO earlier. Now, We are living in the age of AI, and this episode won’t cover AI, because I could do a whole show about that and its linkage to SEO in 2024, folks. Some people say that SEO is going to die. I’ve gone through that myself when social media erupted in ’27, ’28, ’29. The same thing was said there. I don’t know. I think in reality, and I utilize a lot of AI, is in specific questions, you probably can get a better answer using AI. If you really don’t know much about the subject and you’re doing general research, you don’t know the questions to ask.
[00:10:12.630] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re going to be utilizing traditional search methodologies. It applies to the deeper end. Ai at the present moment, and obviously it will improve. It’s going to improve. But at the present moment, if you are looking for very specific, higher-level, expert-level insight, you’re not going to get it from AI. Where it works well is in summarizing information, providing lists to some extent, but you got to know the the right questions to ask it, and generalistic outlines. It’s glorified Wikipedia. Wikipedia is really useful, but you got to know the prompts, the questions to ask. It gives you enough information, but you normally move on to other resources to do deeper study. Is that making any sense, Gert?
[00:11:28.530] – Kurt von Ahnen
It is a little A bit of waffling, but I think you got on the point.
[00:11:32.310] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re good. What are some of the basics? Well, fundamentally, it’s cutterizing three categories. You got on-page SEO, off off-page and technical SEO. Now, what do I mean by on-page? Well, it’s the structure of your pages, how Google sees Sees your pages, sees a post, sees a bit of content that you’re trying to rank in Google and the other SEO search engines. The fundamental thing is that Google has about 90% plus of the search market. That’s just the reality. Google has technology that it scrapes your pages, indexes your pages. It’s indexing the engines, it’s indexing technologies. To some extent, they’re AI-driven as well. They were emphasizing more and more on-page SEO utilizing their AI technology. But you cannot trust everything that Google says. You have to listen to it, but do not follow experts that buy kindly just give out what Google is saying, because Google has a history of misleading whole groups of people, individuals. You have to listen what they’re saying, but you never take it as gospel. If you do, you’re making a mistake there, folks. You could apply that to anything you come across the internet, or me, or Kirk, or anything.
[00:13:52.100] – Jonathan Denwood
Listen to it, they make a judgment call. Now, what’s come to light is that these on-site, you have more control over. But what’s come out lately is the external, the off-page elements, have never gone away to the way that Google was trying to make out. They consistently over the last 5-6 years have played down the external elements that they utilize to make a judgment call about a particular a particular post about a particular page, about a particular website. But the truth is, these external factors never went away. Is that making sense, Kurt?
[00:14:43.350] – Kurt von Ahnen
It is. Just to be super clear, any link to another site or another site linking to you, though that’s all off-page stuff.
[00:14:53.690] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes. You Basically, what is Google looking for when it comes to your on-site SEO? And what are some of the things that you got to know and understand? They’re looking for how long somebody stays on a particular page and how long they stay on a particular website. How many internal clicks does somebody do on a website? How long, how engaged are they on particular content? What do I mean by engagement? Well, you have a blog post. Do you have any audio content on it? Do you have a video? Do you have multiple videos on it? Do you have images? Do people graph Info elements. They measure how far somebody… Obviously, somebody enters a blog post, a page, the content before the fold, what What I mean by that? The content that’s first shown on a mobile device and on a desktop or tablet. Increasingly, Google’s emphasis is on mobile because this varies, but mobile has a dominance of people using mobile devices to look at websites. It’s the stuff that shows on that mobile device and then Google measures how far do they scroll to read, to consume the other content on that particular page and post.
[00:17:01.150] – Jonathan Denwood
Do they click to watch a video that’s on that post? Do they click to other pages? That’s one of the main things that they look for when it comes to on-page SEO. Does that make sense, Kurt?
[00:17:18.440] – Kurt von Ahnen
It does. It does. And just in transparency, those are some of the things that I, as a content creator, had the biggest issues with. I would make the title and I’d write 10 paragraphs. I’d slap in a couple of pictures and hit publish thinking that I was writing really smart content. But what I didn’t recognize was I need those H2 subtitles. I need those H3s for clarification, I I need a list. I need an infographic, if I could put a video as a sister product to drive home my authority on the topic. Those are all things that Google is looking for. But I hadn’t realized that until late in the game, that that’s what Google was looking for. Once I implemented those things, I saw my traffic go up.
[00:18:05.300] – Jonathan Denwood
I don’t know if you can agree, I think you’ve learned a little bit by working with me, haven’t you?
[00:18:10.460] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, you pretty much show me exactly what not to do, Jonathan.
[00:18:14.150] – Jonathan Denwood
All right.
[00:18:16.310] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, a lot of it comes from that and the work with Lifter and other folks that are in this content game. And then, to be honest, I felt it took some of the art out of what I was trying to do. Sometimes I would look at something and be like, does that even meet my initial intent of making that content? So as someone that considers themselves a writer or an artist, those are things that you have to battle internally. But if you want people to see your stuff, the goal is to get people to see your stuff. What’s Google looking for? How’s Google going to recommend your content? Follow some guidelines. You don’t have to follow everything 100%, but follow some guidelines and you’ll see your traffic go up.
[00:18:58.680] – Jonathan Denwood
I So they’re looking for engagement, internal clicks, how long somebody stays on a page and engages with that post-page article, whatever you want to call it, folks. Now, the next thing is page titles. These are really crucial. This is one of you need to do research about. You come up with an idea about a particular post, you need some mythology to research. Is that particular subject and title? Is it getting any search volume, or is it too competitive? The reality in 2024 is that if you choose to write particular titles around particular subjects, and you’re in an extremely competitive area with fully professional or semi professional competition in websites that have more domain authority, and I will explain that later on, is that that post, that article that you’re writing is unlike… If somebody hits your website and they come across it, it could still influence them to buy something called Contact You. It’s not a total waste of time, and it will gradually build your domain authority, but you’re not going to get a lot of traffic from it. Doing basic research about a content idea and seeing by utilizing one of these tools how competitive it is, or they also can suggest other titles that are less competitive, is a really important step, which a lot of people that just put on a SEO plugin.
[00:21:22.740] – Jonathan Denwood
Some of these SEO WordPress plugins also supposedly can offer you insights. I I would never utilize a WordPress SEO plugin to recommend titles. I would use an external tool to do that. Headers. Well, Kirk just mentioned that headers are like your H2s, your H3s, a basic structure and having keywords in those headers and that. I I would suggest that don’t go absolutely crazy about this because it will totally disrupt your ability. It’s best to write out the post, write something out and then edit it and then do some authorisation to… I wouldn’t keyword stuff too much. In your actual content, I would just edit on the H2s and maybe some H3s after you’ve written the content. Did that make sense, Gert?
[00:22:35.690] – Kurt von Ahnen
It does.
[00:22:39.030] – Jonathan Denwood
Then you got meta description. The meta description is if you do a search in Google, you get the page title, and underneath is a description. That’s the meta description. It has no direct influence about where Google will index your actual piece of content. But why It is still very important because it is the description. It is the sales piece of search. You got the title and then people quickly look at the meta description to make a judgment call. Is it worth clicking on this and wasting two minutes of my life on a decision that I’m going to actually consume this content? And those two minutes can quickly add up, can’t they, listeners and viewers? So we all skim. We all see if… And the meta description is the thing that… It’s one of the biggest factors that will make people click or not. I use AI to really help you with that. That’s one of the things that can be quite That’s very helpful. Another factor which is really important is to have images in your blog posts. But I’m not sure about this. I might be wrong, folks. I still think Google doesn’t have the…
[00:24:17.280] – Jonathan Denwood
But with AI, they probably can, visually, with the use of AI, make some judgment call about what an image is about. I don’t think it’s totally perfected, but I think that side has improved quite a lot. But part of your SEO strategy with any SEO plugin tool that you’re using is it will give you the ability to add a text description, a title and text description to every image. For usability, this is the important factor anyway. Anybody that’s got a visual disability or some other disability, especially visual disability, they rely on page readers, and they won’t be able to see the images. But this is a real important factor. It’s not a mega factor, but it also tells Google if you’re really serious about the content. So they see it, somebody just slapped something up and hasn’t spent any time editing or formatting it. Every SEO plugin allows you to do a title and description of every each image. I would strongly advise you to do that. The structure of the markup, Kirk mentioned this. It’s best to write the article, get it up, and then look at it and edit the structure. That’s when you do more work on the H2s, H3s.
[00:26:01.980] – Jonathan Denwood
Edit. You don’t want the paragraph to be too long. Obviously, you don’t want them all the same size either. But keep in mind, you want to break it up. Don’t write stuff that’s too wordy. That’s one of the problems of AI. It tends to write a bit wordy. You’re looking at seventh to eighth grade with it. But that can vary because obviously, if you’re writing a specific target audience in a technical area, obviously, the language is going to be a little bit higher than that. But most people who have an English degree who think they’re a very good writer tend to overutilise wordy language and overwrite and use a vocabulary that is not that easy to read. You really got to keep that in mind. And then you got Page ULRs. Keep them short, and that’s why you should research your page title, because you really do need keywords in your Page ULRs. In WordPress, the page title will become your Page ULR, so it sorts itself out. But that’s why you also don’t want your page titles to be too long. You can overdo this. You also need to sort your categories, catorising. If you’re writing about a certain topic, But there’s categories that you regularly write.
[00:27:49.610] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s best to put those categories in subcategories, and WordPress is really very good at this. It just makes it easier for and their technology to index the site. Internal linking is really important as well. It’s a factor linking your certain… If you It generally covers similar areas and you’ll have other posts linking from one post to another internal post around what I said earlier about Google wants to see how long somebody stays on your website is really important. Mobile responsiveness. It’s really a world of Marble first, really. We all tend to build websites and as membership owners or trying to build a membership website or WordPress professionals or web designer, we We tend to work on desktop, but the majority of people that are viewing the content and the website will be on mobile. And Google, it’s one of the reasons why you want a decent host, because if you’re building on WordPress, and we recommend that you still do, because ownership and everything else that we’ve covered, folks, is that the speed factor on mobile is really important to Google. Because they know the majority of people that are consuming content on mobile. I’ve last thing is site speed, and I’ve just covered that.
[00:29:40.130] – Jonathan Denwood
What’s your reaction about everything I’ve just outlined, Kirk?
[00:29:46.410] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, it’s one of those things where we go through a list like this, and I just picture the average listener or viewer just going like, all of that. I got to manage all of that. And it’s like, yeah, Yeah. Especially if you’re doing a startup or a new course launch or something like that, it’s a lot of work. But in order to launch properly and to get eyes to your product, you have to touch each of these things. You really got to participate at a high level or get help.
[00:30:18.920] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. It’s not that difficult. Actually, it’s not that. You just need a process. There’s a number of resources, but there’s a lot of so called gurus and people that are so high up that their advice is relevant. Then there’s a lot of… I think even though they’re in direct competition to WordPress in some ways, HubSpot have a lot of resources about SEO, and they’re quite credible. They have a lot of investment from Google, actually. I I think Google is trying to buy them actually, or I have bought them, I’m not sure, but I think they’re in the process of trying to buy them, is they’ve got a lot of resources and it’s not too technical. The The language they’re using isn’t too technical because a lot of these more SEO specialized advice websites, the language can get very technically oriented very quickly. I have some links to some of their resources in the show notes, folks. But you can read about four or five of their articles and then look up and work out. You want to use the same process on every post. Write out a process and stick to it. That’s what I’ve done.
[00:31:54.140] – Jonathan Denwood
I have a process that I utilize on every blog post, on every bit of content I produce, folks. It’s a template, and I apply it to every bit of content that I put on the WP Tonic website. I think you do the same, don’t you, Kurt?
[00:32:12.550] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, having a process is big. For me, when I said it’s a lot to handle, it’s things like internal linking. You can write the content, you can start to structure the content, but then you have to switch your brain into a different gear and go, Oh, What other assets do I already have that closely match or are related to this topic? And then how do I link them in a way that makes sense? It’s those things, right? It’s those extra pieces.
[00:32:43.060] – Jonathan Denwood
I think we’ve thrown enough information at you. I know that was a lot, but I tried to keep it to the basics, folks. But like I say, don’t lose heart. Just do some basic research. Get a template of action that you apply to every bit of content, and it will soon become second nature, and you’ll be doing yourself a lot of favors. We’re going to go for our mid-break. We’ve got a couple other messages from our great sponsors that we really appreciate. We will be back in a few moments. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. We’ve had a feast, a feast of basic SEO 101 to intermediate level in the first half. We got some more great insights that will help you get traffic to your membership, to your courses, so you can build the lifestyle that you’re looking for, for yourself and your family. Before I go in, I just want to point out that we’ve got a fabulous Facebook community, a Facebook group. It’s totally free. You just go to Facebook and you just search for the Membership Machine Show. We love you to join. It’s a great mixture of WordPress professionals and people building their Membership website like you.
[00:34:14.030] – Jonathan Denwood
You can put some questions or see what people are talking about. We love you to join. On to off-site. Like I said in the first half, for a while, Google With the use of AI before it become more publicly in the consciousness in the last year, the last three to four years, they were utilizing it a lot more for their own search technology, and they were really playing down off-site. I never believed them from day one. I believed that the on-site AI technology was having a place and an increasing place, but I always thought they were using off-site as well. Now, when it comes to off-site, one of the factors is called domain authority. Basically, Basically, if you’re building a new course on a new website with a new ULR, you’re going to be put into a Sandbox by Google. It’s very unlikely, especially if you’re trying to compete even in modulately, not high, I’m talking to moderately low SEO terms, titles. It’s very unlikely your website pages, posts are going to rank. That’s just the brutal truth, folks. That’s why you really want to be posting stuff earlier on and trying to build credibility.
[00:36:24.860] – Jonathan Denwood
There are ways of getting round this that I’m not going to go through here because this is a introductory. We’re probably going to be doing another show about SEO with Harun, where we might go into that a bit more. But Domain Authority, every website has a score from Google scores a whole website. If you’re trying to compete with a domain that has a website that has a higher domain name, it’s very unlikely that you’re going to be that successful. What’s your thoughts? Did you learn this? What did you learn about this, Kurt?
[00:37:15.050] – Kurt von Ahnen
I just think when people are choosing their topics or choosing what they want to compete in, it’s very important to select wisely. For instance, I talk to a ton of people that want to make a leadership course and then try to corner the market on leadership. Well, that’s not going to work. It’s optimistic and it’s fun to think about. And you could be the smartest guy in the room for most of the rooms that you’re in But the idea that you’re going to be able to rank for leadership and oust people that have held those high positions in the search algorithms for decades is really, really slim. So what I’m saying is you may focus on leadership, but then you need to niche that down. And for instance, I have stuff that I do in the power sports fixed operations world. If you were to search leadership, I’d be lost. If you were to search even motorcycles, I might get lost. But there’s not very many people that focus on leadership within fixed operations of motorcycle dealerships. And the idea there is that you just need to you need to pick what you’re trying to rank for and then be very purposeful in that direction to establish that authority.
[00:38:37.340] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I totally agree. But you got to keep this in mind, folks. This is why you got to do some general research using one or two tools that we might mention. Because you can’t choose something where there’s no search volume because nobody’s looking for it. You got to choose a a particular niche, and I totally agree. And then you got to check what are the… I’m thinking of building a book of content. I call it a book of content around a particular category niche. I’m not going to get an enormous volume, but I’m not looking for it. I’m looking to get the right people, and I’m trying to offer them a product, a course, whatever I’m selling at a price that that particular individual could afford. There’s no point in offering a $15,000 course to people that would struggle to pay for a $1,000 course. It ain’t going to work, folks. It just isn’t going to work. That’s just the facts, folks. There’s no point in trying… You got to think this out a little bit, folks. But if you do and you listen to this podcast and you go to the your petonic website and read some of the enormous amount of content that we have on that website and do a bit of dive, you’re going to be in a much better position in not failing on your building up your membership It’s a project website, folks.
[00:40:19.240] – Jonathan Denwood
So link building. Now, I must get about 20 to 30 outreaches a week about people saying, Will you share this bit of content? Do you allow people to be guests to write articles on your post? My position is I only allow my top sponsors that possibility. Secondly, they must work. There are people that allow regular guests posting, and there is a strategy which is to Too much to go through in this particular show in allowing guests and third parties to post on your website. I think Google… I don’t want to go into it because we could talk about 15 minutes, 20 minutes on its own. There are professional SEO, external link building agencies, a lot of them a bit iffy, some are more credible. I think the strategy I would advise you to do is utilize third-party platforms and posts some of your content on these platforms, like a bit of the article, a third of the article, half the article, and then have a link back to the full post. And some of the platforms is using… You can use images on Pinterest. A lot of people are using that quite a lot. It depends on your audience because I’m not trying to be funny here, folks, but by looking at the analyticals, it has a strong female following.
[00:42:25.130] – Jonathan Denwood
But if you’re in a particular subject, posting on Pinterest Posting on the Instagram, having a link back is plausible. The problem with the meta-dominated properties like Instagram, Facebook is unless you cough up money, your posts aren’t going to be seen by a lot of people. In some ways, it’s a bit of a waste of time. You’re better off trying to build a group. It’s one of the few things that work, but it’s not easy. But it might be worthwhile. Linkedin got a more open, but it does depends on the subject. It’s mostly, I would say, totally business to business. If you’re trying to sell business to consumer, but there is a bit of overlap, isn’t it? What is business to consumer? What is business to business? In 2024, it overlaps a bit more, but it has definitely a more business to business. Then you can also utilize YouTube and do a video and then write a longer post and have a link to that post. The great thing is that YouTube is owned by Google, and it’s the second biggest search engine on the internet. I’m not a great lover of the owner of X, formerly known as Twitter.
[00:43:57.680] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s not somebody I really admire, but I don’t hate him either. X has a good reach as well. Usualising these to build signals to Google about external platforms back to you is a good mythology that the average person could utilize. What do you think about this, Kurt?
[00:44:29.520] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m I’ve seen a lot more activity on X than I had seen, I would say, the previous two years. I think X is definitely coming up a little bit. As you well know, Jonathan, I’m a big fan of LinkedIn, especially with their other tools, because you can do newsletters and articles through LinkedIn, and you can have those linked back to you.
[00:44:52.060] – Jonathan Denwood
At least some people will see it. It’s not enormous, but unlike meta properties, nobody sees it, do they?
[00:44:59.100] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I really I feel like when I publish on a meta property that my post is downgraded, if it has any link or anything that goes to business for me, I don’t think anyone really sees it. But if they click like and notifications and all that stuff, they might. But then you’re just preaching to the choir then. You’re publishing the eyes that you already have. So for me, I really find that LinkedIn is one of the best social tools because Because of the extra tools they bring to the party. You can copy your post into the article and other areas.
[00:45:37.740] – Jonathan Denwood
What I would say about Meta, if you really think your audience on Meta properties, on Facebook, Instagram, threads, you got to go all in.
[00:45:52.520] – Kurt von Ahnen
All in.
[00:45:54.510] – Jonathan Denwood
What I mean all in is…
[00:45:58.440] – Kurt von Ahnen
Swipe that credit card.
[00:45:59.430] – Jonathan Denwood
No, it’s not even that. If you’ve got some budget for paid over time, it will serrate. But what I mean is you won’t have the bandwidth. I understand, I discussed this, my My understanding is that video was really popular on Metta and on all these properties. Another expert told me they’re backing off on that because even for organizational of the enormous financial and breath of Metta, hosting all these videos was costing them a hell of a lot of money. They’re almost Google, but not quite. But what they want to see is they want people on their platforms and not to leave. If you’re on there all the time producing a ton of content and you’re keeping the people on meta and on meta properties, and you’re just throwing a ton of content, they will show it to more people. But it’s got to be content, and you’re not linking to external, if you start linking to taking people off their platform, they’re not interested. Your content, it’s just they’re going to show it to less and less people. Is that making sense, Kurt?
[00:47:30.080] – Kurt von Ahnen
It is, absolutely.
[00:47:32.150] – Jonathan Denwood
If you’re going to go in with Mark and Metta, they want an exclusive relationship, folks. I don’t believe in that because putting all your eggs in one basket, I don’t think is a great idea, but some people, they’re fine with it. The other area, and I’ve linked it together, is influence and affiliate marketing. We I had a great interview last week with a real expert, Matt, who’s got one of the biggest podcasts about affiliate marketing, and he’s built a multi-million business where he runs affiliate outreach for clients. And he brought a lot of value last week. I’ve combined it too, because I think influence in affiliate marketing have become very intertwined in some ways, because most affiliates, either they’re being directly paid, or they’re being directly paid, and also They have access to special affiliate deals. It’s something I put a little bit work in. It’s an area that I haven’t… I know that… What’s your thoughts about this? Because I’ve done a bit, but I know other people that really built their business totally through influencers and affiliate marketing, haven’t they?
[00:49:11.470] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s a mixed bag for me, Jonathan. I think it really depends on the culture of your project and how tightly woven or knit the people are that are looking to be your affiliates. I’ve seen projects where affiliates do really well, and then I’ve seen Here’s the weirdest thing, I signed up for a ton of affiliate programs and I thought, oh, I’m going to have all. And as an agency, I would tell my clients, oh, if you want to use this, let’s say you want to use this CRM tool, Hey, go ahead and sign up for that, use my link and blah, blah, blah. And then they’re like, Oh, I got that tool. And I’m like, I didn’t see any notification. So getting people to use the links and getting people to understand the directions, you got to be organized.
[00:49:57.680] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, the reality is, Unless it’s a video, social media content that actually drives the person to- Directly to it. And your affiliate link is there, or it’s a bit of content on your website and you’re getting enough traffic, and they read it, they want the product, they click the link, they go. It ain’t going to pan out for you.
[00:50:26.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, you have to have a mechanism and a connection to your point, which is instantaneous. If you think they’re going to have a conversation with you and then tomorrow sign in to do something, that’s not going to happen.
[00:50:39.400] – Jonathan Denwood
Another factor that I haven’t listed, folks, is the email list, and that’s another thing.
[00:50:44.760] – Kurt von Ahnen
Big topic.
[00:50:46.420] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s really hard to build up an email list. There are ways of building it, but building an email… It’s a bit like affiliate marketing. I’ve I do a regular weekly newsletter. It goes out religiously. I’ve increased the quality. I do research. It has a little bit of an article, but I have links to various WordPress and tech stories that come on my radar during the week. I don’t think it’s a bad result. It’s a quick skim five, six minutes, look over. It’s really hard. It starts to gradually go up now because I went through a period where I kept changing the focus of the audience and people were I’ve got to subscribe because I’m changing the content. I think I’ve settled on who it’s aimed at, and it is gradually going back up now, but it’s not easy. I’m always But depending on the price of your course, folks, you don’t need a massive newsletter. You need people to open it. I’ve looked at people and said, I got a 30,000, and they’re only getting like-2 %? Yeah, 2%? Yeah, 2% opening. You do realize that the opening rate is tracked by Google and that.
[00:52:27.250] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s not great. It’s better to I have a 500 list and they have 30, 40% opening, which is very high. I get around, what do I average? I get slightly below 20% opening, but they open one month and then another group opens the next month. I don’t think getting between… Some of them I get about 25, 27, depending on the title and the topic. I don’t think that’s too bad. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:52:59.740] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, it’s good. I have segmented all my users on different projects, and I had one project that was nailing a 58% open rate for years. But to your point, that list only had less than 2,000 people on it, but they were really engaged, and it was a really good group. Communication was strong. To your point, these folks that have these giant mail lists or these automation tools that Everyone that emails my outlook gets added to this list, that’s not growing an effective list. That’s just spamming folks that didn’t anticipate getting your email, and that’s never good.
[00:53:41.650] – Jonathan Denwood
No, but it should It’s going to be a focus offering lead magnets folks, doing a pre-launch launch, as they say, offering some mini… So you’re building your list because long as they’re engaged, it will help. I’ve not found it, but my own journey has been more about what the newsletter. If you’ve done, and we’ve covered this in other episodes, folks, if you’ve really known the niche, you’ve done your persona identification, you’ve learned something about your target audience, it will make the focus of your newsletter much easier because I’ve been really bad and I’ve wasted a lot of years moving. But I got my list at one stage up to 5,000 people, but it was all people in Northern Nevada because I was a freelancer for a couple of agencies in Northern Nevada, and I was doing my own stuff. And then I decided about eight years ago, I can’t believe that I wanted to build an online business that I wanted, and I wanted to cut back on… And I’ve managed, I’ve made progress, but it’s been a long journey. We got about eight, nine minutes. What is the time? Oh, yeah, the time’s gone quick, really.
[00:55:21.160] – Jonathan Denwood
I think we’re going to wrap it up. We’re not going to go into the technical side. We’re probably going with that with Harun. Hopefully, we’re going to do a show. He’s gone off on holiday, folks. Hopefully, he will be back. He’s always going off somewhere, but he does do a lot of business travel. We were talking about doing a show with him on the technical side of it. But I think We’ve covered a lot of stuff in this, though. I know you’ve just been listening to me a lot, but your contribution has been great as well. But I think we’ve together given some good insight. I think this conversation has It wasn’t real, hasn’t it?
[00:56:01.320] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s been a little more natural. To recap, you said something at the beginning of the show, and then you duplicated that same thought at the end, and that was, keep in mind that what you start with might not be what you finish with. Be open to change. Be for ease. Yeah, be open to change, tweaks, getting feedback from your audience, and making adjustments. And then the other thing I think that was important, Jonathan, that we covered, I mean, we barrage people, information by fire hose with all these different things that went for on-page SEO tactics. And then you brought it all home. You said if you have a process or template, that’s really important. Craft yourself a template, an outline, or something. Give yourself a checklist that you can follow. I know some people who put it on a Trello board. I know some people who have project management software, but you figure out what works for you. Put those elements elements on some checklist. And once you template this process for yourself, it’ll be much easier, and more organic, and then your content will hopefully begin to feel more natural as you fill that process.
[00:57:13.940] – Jonathan Denwood
I think this is what I’ve learned, folks, to keep your costs down. This is a great thing about WordPress. You are signing up for some of these SaaS products, which are excellent. They’re pretty expensive at the start, and as soon as you get any traction, they start getting expensive. They’re really expensive. If you start getting traction, trying to move to another platform and all the agro, not only is it costly to do that, but it’s such a pain in the posterior. It is painful. People still do it because they just get fed up with being taken to the cleaners by these SaaS platforms. I think it’s best to start with WordPress, not having to go through that process, and it enables you to keep your cost to a reasonable level. Because I’ve got nothing against SaaS products, folks. I use a few myself. But you end up with subscription dieters, as I call it. The subscriptions flow out every month, and I try to keep them under control. But if you’re running a membership website and owning a website, The other factor is, as I say, don’t overthink it, your initial launch or your membership website. You need something that looks good.
[00:58:46.150] – Jonathan Denwood
You need a good message. You need to identify your niche and your persona. And your first course just will not be the thing that you end up with. It’s a process, and people don’t understand that. And hopefully, we’ll make this clear to you. And as long as you’re making progress, I’m not saying Most people give up too early. They don’t realize it. It might be slow progress. It might be painful progress. It might be process Process progress. That’s too slow for you. But as long as you’re making that, you should keep on. Most people give up too early. But I’m not saying if you’re not making any progress, at some stage, you do have to give up. But most people, folks, it’s slower than you think, and they give up too early. Would you agree with that, Kurt?
[00:59:57.920] – Kurt von Ahnen
I agree with that. There are way too many of these flashy guru Lamborghini types on social telling you, do X, Y, Z, and in 30 days, you’ll make this money, and it’s not true. It takes work, it takes time, it takes patience, it takes the ability to tweak and make those changes you’re talking about. But if you have the patience and you can keep your expenses low enough and survive getting to the other end, the rewards at the end. It is.
[01:00:26.770] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, my time is running out, folks, but this podcast is something that would educate people who have some credibility. But I wish I’d done what I knew ten years ago. But it is what it is. So you just have to applaud and keep the game, folks. So, Kirk, what’s the best way for people to learn more about you and what you’re up to?
[01:00:58.630] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, mañana nomás Nomas is our company name. So maniananomas. Com, Manana Nomas on X, all those things. But if you want to connect with me directly as a person, make that connection on LinkedIn because I’m the only Kirek von Annen on LinkedIn.
[01:01:14.130] – Jonathan Denwood
He likes uniqueness. If you know his fakes, he likes unique names, doesn’t he? Hopefully, you found this helpful podcast. It gives you some tips and some things to think about. We’ll be back next week. We’ve also got some great guests coming on the show in the next few weeks. You’d be surprised. Got some fabulous people coming on the show. We’ll see you next week, folks. Bye.
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