51:25
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
website, black friday, google, people, keyword, talking, copy, create, words, page, business, story, storytelling, brains, propeller heads, company, optimize, writing, important, jambo
SPEAKERS
Damon Pistulka, Sarah Johnson
Damon Pistulka 00:00
All right, everyone, welcome once again, the faces of business. I’m your host, Damon Pistulka. And first of all, I want to apologize because we’re about five minutes late. I was talking with Sarah, we got on the topic of children, and I can go on about that. But Sarah today, we’ve got Sarah Johnson here today from Jambo John, we’re talking about creating websites that speak for you, Sarah, awesome having you here today.
Sarah Johnson 00:27
Thank you so much for the invitation. I can’t wait to dive into this awesome topic. And it’s so nice to be introduced to your audience. So hello, out there.
Damon Pistulka 00:36
All right. All right. Well, we’re excited to have you Sarah. I mean, while we were going through some potential topics, things there’s so much happening in the website world right now that I’m excited to talk about some of those. But this started a little bit farther back. Yeah. So you guys started doing web development in the early 2000s,
Sarah Johnson 00:59
early 2000s. Uh huh.
Damon Pistulka 01:03
So what what really is like, hey, these website things are cool. And they’re getting more interesting. So what really got you into let’s do this as a business. So let’s start doing this.
Sarah Johnson 01:14
Yeah. Oh, my gosh, we just time warped and then time back. So. So I actually was working at I’m in Utah and set in salt, the Salt Lake Valley, I was working on a botanical garden, in my college internship. And back in those days, the websites were brand brand brand new. And I was tasked in the communications department to help create the wireframe and the content for the websites. And so that was my first introduction to that.
Experiencing, I was working in PR talking to radio stations, doing press releases, doing events, you know, doing graphic design, all the things that marketers do. And website development was brand new, like there was no WordPress, there was no blogger, there was no Blogspot.
It was HTML and Dreamweaver, like, your lucky ticket. Right? Yeah. And we’ve come so far from so far since then, my husband, Johnny, who’s my co owner with a jumbo John. He was a marketing director for a small software company here in the Valley. And he worked with a bunch of programmers. So there’s two kinds of programmers, there’s the ponytails and the propeller heads. You know what I’m talking
Damon Pistulka 02:23
about? No, let’s hear that.
Sarah Johnson 02:26
Sounds good. Propeller heads are the tall, thin ones that are really smart and actually made a joke about this one. So the client and the guy goes like, just a minute, and he goes to his office, and he gets one of those little hats like a beaming propeller. And the ponytails are like ice that code really well. But they’re not on the floor sale selling for like trade shows, none of the suits come out for that.
So yeah, anyway, my husband worked with a bunch of ponytails and propeller heads, and they handed him an HTML book and said, We need a website. He’s like, I’m a marketing major. Cool. I’ll figure it out. Fast forward 20 years, 21 years. And now we have a company, we have a team, we’ve built hundreds of websites, 1000s of pages of copy, and have helped companies all over the country with their websites.
Damon Pistulka 03:10
Yeah, yeah. And you kind of you yourself, Sarah, you come at this a little different because you have a passion for writing. Yes. Explain. Explain, first of all, your passion for writing because I was going through profile and knowing you and other things. explain some of the fun projects you’ve done writing wise, not just some fun stuff. Yeah. So
Sarah Johnson 03:35
last week, I wrote some copy for a mortgage company. Mortgage Company is pretty cut and dry. You think right. And I was so excited. I shared the copy with the executive team. And they were like, This is brilliant. This is poetry. Who writes poetry about mortgage companies. It was awesome. It was so fun to see the words coming out. And the feeling of this particular merch company helps low income and traditionally unserved populations. And so we were talking about the tapestry of different cultures and the feelings and the colors that are brought about from these different minority groups and creating these new American communities.
And it was so fun to have copy that tells a story about something as cut and dry black and white as a mortgage. So that was really, really fun. But my my writing career started, I actually started writing a journal in fifth grade. And so I have I’ve written over 47 journals. I think I’m on number 48 right now. And I can go back and actually used to record my favorite commercials in my journals. Nice. So but I love I love writing copy.
It’s it’s one of my favorite things. And the reason that’s really cool about incorporating storytelling and learning about storytelling is that really great stories, whether it’s a movie or a book, or website copy, tells the story of the human experience. And so I think a lot of people Like, Hey, I’ve reached this set in my I’ve reached this goal in my business, I want to show off my success.
Well, if you don’t show the failure, and if you don’t show the journey and the tragedy and the triumph and the trial and error along the way, people won’t feel like you’re relatable. They won’t feel like it’s obtainable, what you’ve achieved, because there’s no struggle. And so that’s what we do is that’s what I do as a copywriter is really just show the human experience the struggle and the triumph in in the product and service that you provide.
Damon Pistulka 05:31
Wow, that’s, that is really cool. I’ve I’ve not heard it explained like that before, when you’re talking about website copy race talks about telling stories and importance of telling story, and then triumphant struggles and, and those kinds of things. But when you think about that, in terms of website, it really does make it as it says, read the title says it really starts to speak for you. Yeah, well, let
Sarah Johnson 05:55
me connect. Can I give you an example of that? And yeah, yeah. So one of the reasons why I love words, is because I actually met my dad, through his words, he passed away when I was 10. I never lived with my dad. And, and so I have all of his journals and all of his letters. And so I actually got to know him through his words. And I became like this passion to, like, collect the family stories. And so I began, I wrote a story about my dad. And then I started writing my grandparents story. And my grandfather has, at the end of his life, he was wildly successful.
his obituary was in The New York Times, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Smithsonian, like, this guy was stellar. He was, had accumulated great wealth, he had an amazing family. And he really acted like a father. To me, the most powerful thing I ever read about his life was when I uncovered letters that he had written to my grandmother. And it was before he was famous before he had a successful company before he made an impact that changed the world. He wrote a letter to my grandmother. And he said to my grandma, hey, I got this opportunity to go from being a professor to starting my own company.
And there’s like this rat race, I’m not sure if I want to pick up the the my running shoes again, he said, but thank you for pinching pennies. I know things have been tight. But I believe we can do this as a family that we can make this dream work. And at the time, I had three small children, and my husband and I were just barely starting our own business. And I was starting the rat race, and we were pinching pennies. And so I had this moment where it’s like, I knew where my grandfather’s life ended, I know the success he created.
And all of a sudden, I could see myself experiencing success, because I realized he started where I was. And so that passion for storytelling, I realized how powerful it can be because it can create a roadmap of belief, and a roadmap of taking action towards a desired goal.
And so for in that situation was a family story. And my grandfather was my mentor, and my guide, he acted like my father, in many circumstances, but it gave me hope to me, like, if Grandpa the same way that I’m feeling now, as a new business owner, how powerful if I’m willing to be courageous like he was, eventually I’m going to see some success like he did. And so that power of storytelling is, is not, not the glittering lights, not like the big result that you created. But those little steps along the way, and the relationships that were fortified and built and the tragedies that were overcome, because you’re willing to take action.
Damon Pistulka 08:34
Wow, that’s powerful. I just soaking that in. That is so cool. That is so cool, that you were able to, to find that letter. And then to see, see how his life transformed from that with with the hard work, dedication and support within support along the way with his family to be in, you know, creating great things and doing, doing some pretty incredible things. And then relating it back to yourself. Yeah, the business.
Sarah Johnson 09:05
Well, and I think like this idea, a lot of times we don’t want to be vulnerable, we don’t want to show case, why would we want to showcase our failure. That’s the last thing like I’ve been there, done that I don’t want to do that.
But I just think that I would encourage your listeners if you’re when you’re writing your story, when you’re writing, recording the stories of your business and you’re trying to invite people into your community and your cause to recognize that the journey the hero’s journey has to include being invited into an extraordinary world it has to be include gathering your tribe, it has to include meeting a foe, failing, meeting a mentor that can guide you and teach you and help you avoid failure and help strengthen you.
And then you have to have an epic battle that you almost lose. And then you can defeat the the bad guy then you can defeat the problem. And so make sure that you’re incorporating all those elements of storage Calling in your marketing, and then all sudden people are drawn to you people that their hearts are drawn to you. Their minds are open to receiving your message.
And they realize they want to come on the journey with you. They want to be part of the success in their own business in their own family’s lives. That’s That’s great marketing. That’s why you have millions of fans around the globe that loves Star Wars. That’s why you have fans around the globe that love Legos. There’s so many great companies that do use storytelling. But you want a cult following if you want to follow like passionate followers, make sure you’re telling good stories.
Damon Pistulka 10:36
Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, two brands, by the way that I love. Anything that comes out Star Wars, we’re watching it at our house.
Sarah Johnson 10:49
We had two Star Wars shows on at our house in at the same time in two different rooms. Two different things happening at the same time.
Damon Pistulka 10:57
Yes,
Sarah Johnson 11:00
Lagos. How many of the same? Like I have a four block brick, that’s great. How many of those have I bought? How many have I bought? Like, same product that I’m buying over and over again? Why am I buying it again, is because there’s no story. And my son has to buy the new Lego that tells the new story. That is brilliant. I’m buying the same product again, because it has a different story.
Damon Pistulka 11:23
Yes, it’s a different color. It goes together a little differently. But you have to how many Christmases Do you sit there going through the instructions and trying to really go through them? You know, when they’re little when they get a little older?
Sarah Johnson 11:37
I celebrate that that’s not my job at my house. I sold.
Damon Pistulka 11:41
Yeah, good thing. Yeah. So they it is it’s really cool how you relate storytelling and a website? Because I think you know, and it’s not just you Donald Miller talks about that, like crazy and in and storytelling and how important it is. But we get so mean website, you want to say Oh, this is what we do. But that really isn’t. That’s boring as heck.
Sarah Johnson 12:11
It is boring. And I think it’s important to understand brain psychology to appreciate why it’s important to write stories that stick Kinder hauls, and other one of my favorite authors who talks about storytelling. But so this is really interesting. If if you’re okay to like scroll a little bit. Yeah, our brains are designed to keep us alive. And our brains are designed to use programming that has already been installed to make things run quickly.
And so this is important for a couple of reasons. Number one, if your message is not easy to understand, the the brains of your potential customers will actually make your message invisible. We were watching a show a couple months ago called Brain games on Disney plus, have you seen it? It’s kind of cool. So so that the host of the show is like, Okay, I want you to pick a football and just follow the football. So there were there was all of these footballs on the screen. And they were like moving back and forth.
There was illustrations of footballs, there was like 15. And I’m just going back and forth. And he said, Pick one football and just follow it. So I pick one, and then all of a sudden, literally, there’s one football on the screen and the background is blue, the whole background of the screen is blue. And that happens for about 10 seconds. And he says, Great, tell me what you saw.
And of course, like I’m talking to the host, because that’s what you do on TV shows when you’re letting him and I was like there’s only one football and he said, Did you think there was only one football? And I’m like, Yes. And he’s like they were all there. Because of what you focused on your brain made everything else disappear. So our brains actually make things disappear. If it’s not, in the like the front part of our mind, if it’s not solving a problem, if we’re not focused on it, the messages, the graphics, if they’ll disappear.
So if your message is not solving a problem, and if it’s not easy to understand, people will not even see your message, it will absolutely disappear. That’s number one, it has to be sent home. Number two, there’s a part of your brain called the reticular activating system, the RAS and I don’t know if I have a pencil around here. It’s about the size of a pencil. It’s on the back of your school. And it’s a filter.
So your subconscious mind is processing over 11 million bits of data a second. Did you know that? Oh, then million. And this is everything from Hey, kidneys, we need some more chemicals. I stubbed my toe that reminds me of the time I was too. Oh my gosh, it’s hot in my house.
I’ve got to turn my hair down all of these 11 million bits of data that are happening. And our conscious mind can only focus on about 50 and so that you’re activating system is the filter to get from your subconscious to your conscious mind of what you can see. So how do you pass this as a marketer? How do you get from 11? million to 50? How do you pass the threshold? What’s your guests? Damon, what’s your guests?
Damon Pistulka 15:16
Telling the story?
Sarah Johnson 15:19
No, well, actually, no, that’s, that comes next, you have to solve a problem.
Damon Pistulka 15:26
Okay?
Sarah Johnson 15:29
Because if you’re not solving a problem, the brain is like, Nope, I don’t care about that. I don’t need to know about that. To survive, I don’t need to know that I have, I’m too busy taking care of my family, running my company worrying about sales. I’ve got my exit strategy that I’m working with Daymond on, right. And so if your marketing is not solving a problem, they will not stick around to hear the story.
Damon Pistulka 15:52
That’s awesome. Good. And that’s, and that’s why when you when you talk about websites that that initial, you know, whatever they call above the fold on your homepage, it’s so important to be real thrifty with how many words you’re using, but 777 There we go. So we got to, and, and then you then you, it’s got to explain the the problem you solve and, and also, Isn’t it supposed to how it makes their life better? Or something like that? Or
Sarah Johnson 16:23
the formula? Do you want me to give you the formula? Sure. So you’re here about our seven to 10 words, it’s like a billboard. The words have to describe the the problem you solve. So we’re getting that information about the problem so that if somebody has the problem, their brains like, oh, that’s the solution I’ve been looking for. The graphics have to show what it looks like when the problem is solved.
Because the images, we want to plant that image of like, hey, like, let’s say you’re a dentist, okay. And you, the text might say we help get you out of pain with root canals. So you’re addressing a problem. You have your key word of root canals in there is that’s in the text. And then the photo is not somebody writhing in pain on their bed, because the brains like I don’t want to have that. The photo is of a person biting an ice cream cone.
Damon Pistulka 17:13
Yeah. Ah, yeah, yeah.
Sarah Johnson 17:18
Yeah, that’s the point. You’re your hero banner.
Damon Pistulka 17:22
It is it is crazy, though. When you look at websites, and you see, like a paragraph of stuff, or it just, it just seems like we try to belch out just puke up words. In quantity.
Sarah Johnson 17:45
Yeah, I see him every day. Writer, I do this all the time. When I’m writing, I’m like, this is poetry, I just like keep going, this is amazing content, keep going. And I’ll send the copy into my designer, and they’re like, we can’t have that many words, we have half of them. Discard half of them. Keep them in another document. Use them for your blog posts, right. Don’t throw those beautiful words away.
But keep it simple. Testimonials should be one sentence, do not put a full paragraph testimonial. Don’t do it. No one’s gonna read it. If you’re doing a case study, you can add a whole paragraph testimonial. But ask your customers to give you a review online on Google. So it’s like in the public eye, grab one sentence of it and make it really big so people can skim. Don’t be afraid to use bullet points so that people can skim through your content.
And then as they’re getting into your site as you’ve captured their interest, then you could do some more long tail keywords and those long format content pieces, like your blog posts and things like that. But especially on those main landing pages, keep it simple. Keep it short. Use alliteration use poetry, use rhyming words like make it sticky. Another thing, Kendra hall like I mentioned, she’s a great author.
She has a book about writing stories that stick. But she talks about when you’re writing a story, have specific memories specific details, because what’s going to happen is if you mentioned the specific detail in a story, my mind will recall that memory in my own life and I will relate to your story. I’ll put myself in your story. So for example, you can talk about how the chair feels when you’re sitting down or you can talk about the click Enos of the pen or you can talk about the sound your ringtone of your cell phone.
All those details. I bet you guys watching and Damon you just were thinking about all the things because you’ve had that experience of clicking a red and white pen that you got at a trade show right. So using using details will anchor people into the stories and help them see themselves in your stories as well.
Damon Pistulka 19:48
Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. Because it is it is so your skill to be able to write and then translate it in into the stories is really in. It’s really incredible. And then you think about the science you’re putting behind it to really understand how people think. So you’re translating it into text that really helps those companies websites connect with those people. Right? Right. It’s a it’s a wild circle. Oh,
Sarah Johnson 20:25
well, and here’s the thing is that a lot of web developers, and this is not to disparage this type of developer, because I think that there’s an important place that they hold. But a lot of web developers will say, Hey, tell me what theme you want, give me your copy. And I’ll go and put it online. And you can expect to find, you can put a website up for fairly inexpensive doing that.
But I’m guessing that if you’re a plumber, if you’re an electrician, if you’re a CEO of a company, if you’re a technology specialist, you don’t have the time to become an expert writer marketing copy, you don’t have time to know how to write do graphic design so that the conversion rate is high, you don’t have time to understand how to do search engine optimization in a way that’s going to bring you revenue. Like as a business owner, you should be in the trenches, building revenue, building systems, creating dreams, having a passion.
And your job should be finding the right pieces, the right people to fill in your team, whether you’re in house, whether you’re out of house, that have that skill, that can immediately help you build your revenue, rather than trying to start from scratch figuring out how to, because you can write copy, you know, if you’re running a business, yes, you can write words. But are the words going to convert?
Are they optimized for Google for keywords? Are they optimized so that humans can understand what they’re saying and want to take action? So I would encourage the listeners if if you value growth, make sure you find people in your team that can support your vision. And then you spend your time doing the things that only you can do and then have a team that can support you with that.
Damon Pistulka 21:58
wise advice right there. wise advice from Sarah Johnson. October 27, October it’s getting close to getting close to Halloween. Big Halloween plans with the kids. Oh,
Sarah Johnson 22:14
fun. We just went to Mickey’s not so scary Halloween party in Orlando. And the funnest party on the block our family. We dressed up as Hercules, the Hercules family. We had painted red Hercules mag. We had Hades, we were just missing Pegasus. So I wish our dog was with us because I would have dressed him like Pegasus
Damon Pistulka 22:33
would have been awesome. Awesome. Good stuff. Well, let’s talk a little bit more about you’ve got some you’ve got some stuff. Now if people haven’t looked at don’t know your website Jambo John, just like it sounds JMBOG o n.com. Yep. You got we were talking a little bit about Black Friday. You guys got some free? Friday, let’s talk a little bit about Black Friday stuff. Because yes, you were talking about I’m like, oh, it’s always off. But no, it’s coming up.
Sarah Johnson 23:05
No, it’s not. It’s it’s here. So Black Friday. And then I’ve done this both ways. There’s the kind of Black Friday where my K, it’s Black Friday. And then I think I wish I would have done something for my business when I’m seeing all these people online during this cool things. Or there’s the years like I’m so glad I’m ready, bring it on. So whether you’re like selling a product, that’s a $25 product, or whether you’re selling a $5,000 or $50,000 product, take advantage of Black Friday, like there’s $13 billion in revenue is going to be earned on Black Friday 13 billion, will you be part of that pie. Amazon is the biggest retailer. If you have an Amazon piece of your business, that’s huge.
But don’t be afraid to take advantage of Black Friday. So I’ve got a couple of trends that are happening this year on Black Friday. Let’s go ahead and start there. Does that sound okay? Yeah, let’s do that. Yeah, so um, don’t be afraid to start early. With inflation happening in the economy, the way that you see a lot of retailers already promoting Black Friday specials. My realtor just sent me an email, she’s doing a Black Friday, gift card that people have to put their name and email for in exchange for a gift card.
And during that she’s doing for Black Friday, I thought that was a great idea. But you’re gonna see a lot of people even it’s we’re at the end of October starting tomorrow. So don’t be afraid to start really, that’s number one. And then a lot if you’re selling something online, if you have a shopping cart, a lot of merchant services offer a buy now pay later.
And so that way, it’s kind of like in the olden days when you’d go to the department store and have a layaway plan, or had it but you as a business owner don’t have to take the risk on that your merchant services account already has those arcs and tools created. So like for example WooCommerce if you’re using Google emersed has over nine payment gateways that already are built in to do payment plans, which is found as a consumer, you’ve seen them like if you do Apple Pay or Pay Pal, they’re like Gianna, split this in installments.
Another thing to do, especially if you’re a service based model, if you have some kind of education, you can do membership model. So whether you like have a subscription box are super popular. Now, you see a lot like with the stem, like the science programs and schools, they have programs that send like a monthly box, I have a friend who’s in the healing industry, she has a healing box that goes out once a month that are beautiful.
But you can also have that membership subscription model for content team and you should not like a coaching program, or you have you know, your your area of expertise, you can have this other revenue stream, where you’re making those people who have the capacity to learn and the drive to do it on their own to make a revenue stream out of it and do member so.
Damon Pistulka 26:01
Yeah, yeah, that’s cool. And I never really crossed my mind as a service provider rather than a product company to use black Friday in the same way. But it’s a good time.
Sarah Johnson 26:17
Yeah. Well, and here’s another thought too, about Black Friday is even if you’re not, if it’s like you’re not a quick cash kind of business, that you’re riding the tide of awareness. And so there’s huge momentum, this huge tide, we’re also heading to end we’re in the middle of quarter for almost the middle of quarter four, but we’re your quarter four is going to lead into quarter one next year, like the momentum is going to carry you through quarter one. So a lot of people at the time, they’re like, oh, I’ll just start over in January. Well, if you don’t start until January, you don’t have any momentum until February
Damon Pistulka 26:52
or Yeah, yeah.
Sarah Johnson 26:56
So think about like that momentum. The other thing, that’s a great idea, especially if you’re a service provider, if your higher ticket item is to piggyback with an partnership with a nonprofit organization. So Giving Tuesday is always the Tuesday after Black Friday, that’s a really big push for nonprofits. So what I would recommend is you find a nonprofit in your area or in that’s complementary to your industry, and donate a portion of your proceeds or create a campaign that you can help create funds for that company, a couple things are happening, a lot of people will buy products from a company because they support nonprofits, and they support their community.
The other thing too, is that there’s this awareness that happens this multifaceted, beneficial awareness, not only for your company, that honestly like we live in the most wealthy time in the history of the world, where the abundance and more resources, there’s no reason why our capitalism shouldn’t be supporting important causes that are funded by nonprofit efforts. So that’s what I also encourage you to do is take advantage of that.
Damon Pistulka 28:01
That’s a great idea. I had a friend of mine, actually, that, that he’s not living in where I am now. But he moved away. But he was a realtor. And I think it was like yeah, 10% of his of everything he did went to the Boys and Girls Club in the area. And you think he was here for decades, you know, when you think about how much money that helped those and as you said, people just came back because they knew that that that money was going part of what you’re doing was going back goosebumps
Sarah Johnson 28:30
as you’re talking about that? Well, and seriously, it’s like we have so much abundance and so much opportunity and think about for 10 years being supporting 10% The kids that grew up that had an affinity for a better life and for connections and for better relationships and more confidence that went out and spread that into the communities that they started creating.
I think it’s so important, especially right now and we’re living in such a time of polarization and yeah, backbiting and some finger pointing online, that to be a source of joy and light and hope that you’re shining a light and helping other people serve and have their needs met, I think is a beautiful opportunity and capitalism. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 29:14
yeah, that’s awesome. That’s a that’s a great that’s a great suggestion for black Friday’s. No matter what company are what you’re doing service product, whatever. Yeah. It’s often in support something in your community that makes a difference.
Sarah Johnson 29:28
Definitely. So the key thing, the key to Black Friday is being prepared. And so we have a worksheet on our line. If you go to jumbo Gianluca comm. There is a link to compass at the very top, which is our newsletter, and I’ll drop a link. I’d be happy to share a link with you that your group, but we have a Black Friday calendar that walks you step by step by step every day. If you spend an hour a day, you’re ready for Black Friday, for giving Tuesday for cyber, like you’re ready for the whole week. And then we have a workbook that will help walk you through that process as well.
Like the checklist of there are so many little moving pieces like, is this form connected to my CRM system? Is there a tag on it did the email gets sent with a free download, like, there’s so many pieces that have to happen, which is why a lot of people don’t do anything. With this guide, you’ll be able to have make sure that you haven’t forgotten anything that you’re prepared. So on Thanksgiving, you can enjoy that Yummy Turkey with your family and watch the game. You can have a nap, you know, have your pie and then you’re ready to go on Black Friday.
Damon Pistulka 30:34
There we go. There we go. So get on to that Black Friday. Guide on Jambo John. Yes. Yep. Awesome. Awesome. So the other thing that we were talking about, oh, my goodness, is not only Black Friday, cool, Black Friday 20, trans tools, other things. We’re talking about this article that just came out not so long ago about Google and AI copy.
Sarah Johnson 31:00
Yes. I just learned about this last week. So you’ll have seen it. Have you seen ads for AI copy? Have you done? Have you seen I have
Damon Pistulka 31:09
seen that I Oh, it’s been been a while because that’s been out for a while and someone looked at it. I’m like these, these are kind of I mean, I, I see it, I see that I can generate stuff for you. But it’s like, that doesn’t sound like I would right? So it was not really
Sarah Johnson 31:27
well, like every side had like two coins, two sides of the coin, right. And one side, it’s so cool that the capacity of our technology, literally you put in a keyword. And I don’t know all the details about it. But it’s really quite simple to give a computer some bits of data and literally will come up with new copy for your website, which in theory is a fantastic idea. However, Google just announced in their most recent update their biggest, most recent update that they are going to ding you if you have a copy on your website.
And the reason why is they want to provide links to websites and to business owners that actually have expertise in that area. And so using AI copy, you just put in a couple keywords, the AI technology does the research and creates the copy that does not indicate that the owner of the company or the company itself is an expert. So if you have aI copy on your website, create a strategy to replace it with human made copy.
And if you haven’t incorporated that don’t because Google’s gonna ding you. Google’s not credit for a copy. And even was asking, Does transcription count as a copy? And the answer is no. Because if you record a video and you put your video at what are your words to transcription service, that’s just making your words into a Word document. That’s not a computer making words for you. So they’re fine.
Damon Pistulka 32:55
That is that is what I was concerned about. Because we use it for our transcriptions every almost every day of the week.
Sarah Johnson 33:01
Yeah, yeah. So no, there no AI copy for new blog posts, new website copy.
Damon Pistulka 33:06
Yeah. So then you kind of get treated me for one more thing. And you may or may not know, but when you talk about Google once, websites, from people that really know subjects. Okay, so I’ve recently read some books that talk about well, it was I read they asked you answered by Marcus Sheridan, I don’t know if you’re familiar with it. But it’s talks about how you should be answering your customer questions on your blog post.
How does this work? How much does it cost? How to how do you do this? What’s the process? Like? What’s Why choose you over somebody else? Or somebody else? And not just to blow but really answer the questions honestly, and say you could not you might this is, you might not be a good fit if you’re this, but you’re a great fit. If you’re that that better copy on a website, then then other things, is it really more powerful you think to write those kinds of things?
Sarah Johnson 34:09
Yeah, that is a great question. And the answer is yes. And I’ll tell you why. So with your website, you’re gonna want to have those pillar pages, those landing pages that are going to hold up the structure of your website, your homepage about us services, products, and things like that. Your long term content strategy should come in form of a blog. And so the reason why questions are so powerful as keywords is because of this little device right here. So in the olden days, when we just used our desktop on Google, we would type out keywords that were just nouns, it would be like dominoes. It would be like a noun, base keyword.
And so as web developers, we would optimize pages just for those specific nouns. Sometimes we would include a city as a tag with it right? But now that you have a phone, how do you ask on your phone? Hey Siri, where’s the nearest Domino’s? And so the key word that we’re searching from is actually a question. Mm hmm. And that’s why so if you look on Google, there’s actually like you have your paid ads, you have your organic ads, you have your local ads. Have you noticed there’s a new section? That’s questions?
Damon Pistulka 35:29
Oh, yes. Yes, actually results dropdowns. And if you put the right snippet in the drop down, kind of gives you an overview of the
Sarah Johnson 35:36
ads. Yes. So how you do that is that literally, when you’re writing a blog post, or when you’re writing a website page, the key word that you choose has to be in a question. So use the full question as your keyword. If you’re using a product like Yoast, that’s going to give you a checkmark, that’s going to be really easy for you to make sure you’ve got everything that you need. But like, do you want me to give you the secret how to optimize a page? Share it?
Yeah, really simple. The person who taught me is the founder, like he wrote the curriculum for three local Utah colleges. So he actually knows what he’s talking about his Google certified one of two Google certified SEO companies in the state of Utah. So take your keyword, whether it’s a question or whether it’s a longtail keyword or short tail keyword, and you need to in four locations, you need to on your link.
So you have the website.com forward slash, what the what, whatever, what the what the what that’s your your link, when you’re heading one, your title website you’re heading to to just subtitle and in your Paragraph Font, depending on the length of your content, some of those on site optimization tools might suggest that your density is a little bit higher than that. But if you have it in North, those four places, you’re gonna get a green line. The other thing you need is you need an inbound links, you need a link from that page to another page on your website. And you need a link from your page to another page off of your website.
Really, really important that you’re doing that. And a lot of people are like, I don’t want to give links away. Yes, you do. Because that’s what Google wants is to create a web of links. Yeah, I just went out. And that’s fun. And then I need you to put your keyword in your metadata, make sure you’re tagging you’re on many of her page, and make sure that you’re labeling your images with your keyword. So this is the beauty of this.
When you optimize your page correctly with the correct keyword, if you use that keyword when you’re advertising and the keywords that you’re advertising with matches your landing page, your ad spend is going to be less expensive per click. And you’re going to get a higher priority in the auction of Google if you’re optimized correctly.
Damon Pistulka 37:57
Yes, yeah. And the fact that, you know, no keyword costs have gone up what you know. Now, I don’t know if they doubled quite yet, but they’ve done over the last few years got pretty close with the haven’t. Yes, yeah. Yeah, that’s, that’s great advice there. Because it is, it is the details anymore to get found.
Sarah Johnson 38:20
When you spend so much time creating copy, it takes a lot of time to create, copy and to post it and to get the graphics and things like that. Why would you spend all that time and not spend the extra 10% polishing it for Google? Because if you don’t call it Google, your audience isn’t going to see it, the humans won’t see it if Google doesn’t see it. So taking the time to like once you have your transcription if you’ve done that, and decide what keyword Am I optimizing this, this post for and making sure that you have the keyword in those four locations?
Really, really simple. But you guys i, i We have some clients that have had doing some major off site SEO strategy. We’ve been doing a lot of new content on their website. And so the site was built really well. We had a great team of SEO experts behind us and we optimize this page. really competitive word. Within a week of launching this page. We were above we were ranking above Zillow for a while in our area.
Above or Below above Coldwell Banker above everybody, we’re ranking number one on the first page, because the the container was programmed correctly. That doesn’t always happen. But I just encourage you, like make a strategy. So when you’re building out your copy when you’re growing your website that it’s you’re maintaining the structure that your web developer created in the beginning, yeah, grow and get the great link strategy that link juice.
Damon Pistulka 39:49
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Because you know, a lot of people build pretty websites, they might even have the right words on it, but if you don’t set it up, right, it’s not gonna get found.
Sarah Johnson 39:58
It will not get found at all. or it’ll get found by the wrong people, and they don’t want your product. So doing some research, like, do people say, realtor or real estate agent? They say, when they’re like for their keywords, they say, are they shopping for you based on your state? Or are they shopping on you based on your city.
So you can do some research with some really cool tools out there to figure out how what the volume is and how, how to succeed. And you’re gonna hire a competent team. So we, the web development, we create the design, the copywriting and the programming. That’s what we do. And we optimize the site’s we have some awesome vendors that do off site SEO, like the pay per click. And if you’re purchasing SEO, we have some awesome vendors that do that.
Damon Pistulka 40:46
Yeah, yeah. Good stuff. So you were talking about another thing when it comes to websites. And that is something that people will not know is about the web P images. What’s that?
Sarah Johnson 40:59
Yes, web p is the next generation image. So if you’re using a tool like Google Site checker, or GT metrics is another tool that it gives you kind of a site audit of health of your site. If your images are saved as PNG s or JPEGs, it will say serve your images and next generation formats. So use that word next generation format. JPEGs, and PNGs are quite heavy.
And so if you think about if all of your data and all of your code and all of that like the database within a bucket, the heavier the bucket, the more slowly it’s going to take to get that data from the servers to people’s Internet browsers into their phones. So you want to make sure that you are super, super lightweight. So web P, W, EB p one word is the next generation format. And so if you have a website that has JPEGs, there’s really easy converter tools that you can use, you can get plugins on WordPress, there’s a plugin that will take your JPEGs and convert them to web pages automatically.
So you don’t have to download all your photos and resize them and things like that. Not all the old browsers can see web P images. So having that converter on your website is actually a great tool. Because some of the old browsers if your customers haven’t updated their browser, they’ll get to your website and don’t see any pictures versus the converters. They’ll show a JPEG if they need to.
And they’ll show web p if they can. But honestly, Google wants your site to load in 1.2 seconds your page. And in 2020, the average load time across the Internet was six seconds. So that’s, that’s 600 times longer than Google wants on the average. And so I from what we can see, like you’ve got your programming, you’ve got your plugin, you’ve got your themes, that core plugin programming that can be heavy, making sure that super lightweight, but the next thing that’s going to slow down your site is the size of your images.
So if you take a picture from your phone, and posted on your website, that photo has enough data, you could blow it up two feet by three feet and put it on your wall. Yeah, you don’t need that much data. Yeah. So making sure you’re cropping your images and that you’re saving them out converting them to web P. All we can just Google Web P converter. And you can take a JPEG or PNG and shift it over to wet piece of breezy.
Damon Pistulka 43:30
Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s something because it the speed requirements that that are what Google would like you to do it that those kinds of things. Control where they place you even within a certain keyword, right?
Sarah Johnson 43:48
Yes. Yes, yeah. Google wants you to be the most relevant answer to their customers questions. Because if their customers which are the searchers are not satisfied with the results Google is providing them, they will go to other search engines to find answers that I’m looking for. So Google is actually prioritizing their customers, their searchers, over their, their companies are on, you know, their website holders, because they want the most relevant answers to the questions. They want to make sure your answers are being your ask. Your questions are being answered the way that are the best of their ability.
Damon Pistulka 44:25
Yeah, awesome. Awesome. So as you’re doing the website development, what has been the most challenging site that you just until it was done? You just said, listen, I’d rather stick a needle into my toe.
Sarah Johnson 44:45
Well, you know what, this this client has been fantastic. We actually just finished a pharmaceutical website in Utah County called Smith rexhall.com. And that was a fantastic project. It turned out beautiful. Ah, but that project has an ecommerce store and has online quizzes. It has a Learning Management Portal, an online directory for doctors. And so we’re adding classes, we’re adding new providers we’re adding, they have over 100 different skews that we added to their website. We’re doing subscriptions now forum. It was a beautiful website.
And really fun like that. That’s a great example of storytelling. Because this, this pharmacy specializes in compounding and how women with their hormones, really specific health challenges that they’re addressing at on the pharmaceutical level. And so that was a really fun project to dive into the challenges that people are facing. And then showcasing how this pharmacy can kind of hold your hand and help you help you feel better help you live your life. So that was a big.
Damon Pistulka 45:53
That’s awesome. And I can I can imagine how the technical challenges of putting all those things together was, yeah, and and trying to have it load fast and
Sarah Johnson 46:04
work. Right. Right. Well, and the fun thing about hiring a great web developer is you speed up your learning process, because you don’t have to fail because they’ve already failed for you. Not only can I tell you what plugins and themes and platforms to use, I can always also tell you what not to use. So yeah,
Damon Pistulka 46:22
that is important. Because you know, people that are good at what they do got there because they were bad. A lot of times yes. Yeah. I don’t think there’s any other way.
Sarah Johnson 46:31
Yeah, exactly.
Damon Pistulka 46:34
So I just wanted a quick take a take a moment to say hey, Ken, great seeing you today. Thanks for stopping by. And Juliet. She’s in there with lots of comments. Thanks a lot. Thank you. And then Christopher Christopher here today. Awesome. Thanks for stopping by today.
You know, the the such interesting stuff and I know that we’re all sitting here as business owners and and thinking about the websites and just what the heck do we do? So I really appreciate you stopping by Sarah. And, and sharing your knowledge because man from the writing to the chief that tell him about your grandfather, oh, my goodness, and then learning learning, you know, get to know your your father from the wow, that’s powerful. Are you
Sarah Johnson 47:25
hearing stories can change a generation, being a keeper of stories is such a valuable and important thing. And I think as business owners, we cannot we cannot let go of the the importance that a role that we play in this American culture and in this worldwide culture that we can really make a difference and create prosperity for future generations. Yeah, provide hope and provide resources and and support our customers. And storytelling is a great way to do that.
Damon Pistulka 47:54
Yeah, man, if people are listening that didn’t just get inspired, I gotta tell you, I started tearing I started when you started this, I gotta just kind of hold back, I’ll start crying by the, because it is true. It is true. You know, we’re shaping generations in what the stories we tell the way we do it. And the way we show younger people how we should act is what we’re building the future.
Sarah Johnson 48:21
We are building the future. Yeah. And there’s so much hope. Like we get, we get sucked into the media. And we think that the world is ending tomorrow, but not like you’re so much resources, there’s so much hope there’s so much light. And I on one of the platforms that we’ve grown jumbo John as a belief that every person has come to the planet for a reason and a mission and a purpose.
And for some of us, that includes owning a business, and you’re excellent in your business, you left a whole community because you can hire people, you’re supporting other families, you’re supporting your own family, you’re sending kids to college, you’re great, you’re serving your customers. And if you’re not willing to step into that role and be excellent in that role, there’s so much loss opportunity.
But the reverse is also true. Because if you’re brave enough to step into it and say, gone for this, you can change not only like generations, but you can change right now and right here and have prosperity and abundance and happiness and joy and enjoy failing forward. Because we all know business requires a lot of failure. But just to encourage you guys to have like if that dream is in your heart, and if that’s in your mind, to like celebrate that you’re living in a time where there’s so much opportunity to succeed.
Damon Pistulka 49:38
Thank you. I know. I can’t talk I can’t even comment on it. That’s so awesome, sir. I don’t even mean that I wanted to try to talk or even add to it. It’s so great and your passion is so awesome. I’m just I just feel blessed that you stopped by today and talk. Now what I would do want to do though I want to make sure every Everybody understands Jambo John J m bo g o n.com. Go there. Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn, go to the Jambo Jada website, look at some of the great work they’re doing. And reach out if you want to talk to her about us.
Sarah Johnson 50:16
I would love that I love meeting new friends. I love networking, I send out dozens of referrals a month. And so if you have a website and you’re like, I don’t even know where to start, I offer totally free consultations, we can run a website audit, see how the technology is doing and brainstorm, no pressure, just a chance to serve. So if you guys want to schedule a 30 minute free consult, I love that. And I love making friends. So that’s an invite for your audience. I’d love to meet them.
Damon Pistulka 50:43
Awesome. Awesome. And we’ll drop that in the comments here after we get off today. Sarah, thanks so much for being here.
Sarah Johnson 50:51
So much. I really appreciate the invitation. And I’m so excited to see your audience like their businesses grow. And I know that’s what you do is you help create a growth strategy so that they can leave that legacy and I just am so excited to be a small sliver part of this awesome community. So thank you for inviting me.
Damon Pistulka 51:07
You bet anytime. We’ll have you back again soon. Thanks so much everyone for joining in. We have Juliette Christopher and Ken and I believe it’s Kenny actually not Ken, but thanks so much for being here. We’ll be back again next week. Sarah hang out for a minute and we’ll turn
