Part 1 of an Interview with SEO Expert, Jason McDonald of JM Internet Group
Professional Voice Over Actress Debbie Grattan chats with SEO Expert Jason McDonald about how professional voice over marketing SEO tips can improve voice talent website ranking through SEO (search engine optimization).
Dr. McDonald has extensive online journalism and teaching experience. In charge of eg3.com’s SEO and PPC strategy, he built eg3.com into the oldest and largest web portal in embedded systems with over 25,000 monthly users and over 35,000 registered eLetter subscribers. He also teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area at AcademyX, DeVry, and Stanford University (Continuing Studies).
Debbie Grattan, Professional Voice Over Actress: Can you give me a sense of a big picture look at what the best professional voice over marketing strategy would be for a voice over talent looking to improve their SEO?
Jason McDonald: To begin with, I think you have to divide your customers into groups. That’s Marketing 101, right? Customer segmentation. There is one group of people who have never heard of you or even perhaps the whole professional voice over industry, but they have a need for your voice over service. Those people are generally going to go to Google and do a search. So, I think that SEO (search engine optimization) is a very important part of the overall strategy if potential customers are going to be searching for what you are selling.
Now, the question becomes, “What keywords or key phrases are these people who are searching going to use?” It is imperative that you know what keywords are most often used by your professional voiceover clients and customers, so that you can optimize your site for those words and phrases and get to the top of search results. It takes some time, effort and a little brainstorming to get a good solid list but it’s a critical step.
Finally, once they click over to your website, then you get to phase two, where there has to be something on your website that’s engaging, and that makes them want to kick the tires and find out a little about you. This is where I think a lot of people fall into the trap of not realizing that you have these two groups: 1) People who know you or come through word of mouth and 2) people who don’t know you and are searching. I think that conceptualization is really important to the process of developing a good internet strategy.
Debbie Grattan: We also have another group of people that know me and have worked with me, but maybe only once. What is the best strategy for that group?
Jason McDonald: Exactly. You have people who’ve used you one time or they’ve requested a voiceover services quote and then you’ve got to stay in touch with them so that they think about you the next time they have a need for professional voice over services because they’re busy too and they might forget about you if you don’t stay in touch.
Debbie Grattan: Looking at the list of keywords, what would you recommend for professional voice over actors to focus on?
Jason McDonald: I would use a systematic approach, rather than pulling them out of thin air. There are free tools on the internet that will be helpful for this. The most famous one is Google Keyword Tool, which posts the results of a 24/7 survey of how people search the internet. It will give you the volume of how many people are searching any specific keyword or keyword phrase.
The first thing you’ve got to know is what those keywords are for your business. It’s like going to the Olympics — You have to know what sport you want to get a gold medal in. You have to know what keywords you want to rank high in before you do anything else.
Once you know those keywords, the next important thing to do is get them into the “title tags” on your website. It’s the biggest bang for your buck. Probably the most common mistake that businesses make is that they don’t have good title tags on their website. They’re trying to show up for “female voice over talent”, but their title tag says something like “Home” or “John Smith”. You’ve got to get those title tags working for you.
Third is decent content. Most websites just throw up ten pages and call it a day. Google rewards sites that have lots of content. This is where we need to get in the rat race. You need to stay on your keyword themes and you’ve got to create a lot of content and keep creating it with some consistent frequency. In my classes for my students, I say, “Let’s set a goal of a thousand pages indexed by Google.” There’s usually an audible gasp or groan and people say, “Oh my gosh, how can I ever get a thousand pages?” and I say, “Well, if you get one blog post per day; it doesn’t have to be a ton of content, but you have 365 pages per year right there.”
Please keep reading this interview:
Part 2: Professional Voiceover SEO Marketing Tips for Voice Talent – Part 2
Part 3: Affordable Voice-Over SEO Tips for Voice Talent – Part 3
