Maggie McTavish 07:47
For sure. So a couple items that come to mind as number one is increasing website load speed. So this goes for both Google’s happiness and your website visitors happiness. If you have a slow loading website, people are just going to leave. Googlebot is not going to be happy and it probably won’t rank as well as it could be. So that’s absolutely key.
So making sure that you have like a fast, reliable hosting provider and within the actual website. One quick tip would be resizing images in a way that are optimal to the max size that you’ll have on your website displayed, so you’re not uploading huge files that are worth hundreds of megabytes, because that’s really going to start slowing things down. You want something that’s extremely fast.
Jeremy Weisz 08:40
Do you sometimes move people like, let’s say it’s the first thing you check, right? Okay. People are probably thinking, okay, we start ranking keywords and you’re like, your site is slow, will you sometimes go, listen, let us put you on this faster hosting and that will help.
Maggie McTavish 09:00
It’s definitely part of the process. Yes. So many times my role I come in a bit of as an advisor and a consultant for a lot of these businesses. So I find especially smaller businesses tend to start their website with certain providers like Wix or Weebly or Squarespace. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Like they are very user friendly, very easy to work with.
But on the downside, you don’t have the technical ability to modify the speed like you’re kind of like dependent on them. So many times I had clients come to me that are within these platforms, and we end up migrating to the WordPress environment, for example, because that’s when we can really have more control and speed things up for them.
Jeremy Weisz 09:50
Are there certain hosting providers you prefer?
Maggie McTavish 09:53
Yeah, I’d say one of the more reasonably priced ones that is very reliable is SiteGround. So that’s one that typically I’d say it’s very sufficient for a lot of the clients. If not like Kinsta is really good too. So yeah, there’s some really reliable ones. But how I would advise and no hate, but I would advise staying away from like GoDaddy and some of these other probably more popular sounding providers just because, yeah, they’re not worth the negative points you’d get with an SEO.
Jeremy Weisz 10:31
Yeah GoDaddy more for domains. But —
Maggie McTavish 10:34
Right. For hosting it’s very different situation.
Jeremy Weisz 10:37
So if people are like, oh, my site is so slow, people do call you and you can kind of migrate their site over to like a faster hosting and make sure the SEO is intact. That makes sense. Yeah. What else will help people rank better on Google?
Maggie McTavish 10:52
Okay. So I mean, as we see here on your screen within my process, the first step is you have to have the proper keyword library that you want to go after identifying based on where your website is at, identifying which keywords are realistic for your site. Because we might find keywords that have thousands of searches a month. But if your website doesn’t have the authority to really compete and try to gain that keyword, I’d say like, let’s be realistic and go after keywords that you could probably rank for at this stage as we continue to work on your authority and add to that. But always first prioritizing keywords that are lower in the sales funnel. So making sure that, yeah, we’re going after the keywords that have higher intent to buy or complete some sort of transaction.
Jeremy Weisz 11:49
Yeah, that’s great. Do you do a discovery with them, or do you do research through tools to figure that out?
Maggie McTavish 11:58
Yeah. So typically I like to get an idea of what keywords they believe are what people are searching for within Google. And then I’ll validate that as we go through our keyword research process. Of course, we have different tools to validate that, where we then identify the whole library of keywords that people are searching for that are related to their business. How many people are searching that per month? What’s the keyword difficulty for them to rank for that? And that’s going to really help set the strategy for all the content that will be either changing that already exist or new content that we want to be targeting.
Jeremy Weisz 12:39
Maggie, what are some of your favorite tools and software that you like?
Maggie McTavish 12:45
So I’d say probably the ones that I just use all the time, like there’s many out there, but SEMrush is very reliable. Like, they have lots of great data. They’re sometimes I’d say it’s an overwhelming amount of data. And the second one that’s newer, it’s called Rankability. So this tool was created by SEO professionals like SEO experts. And essentially it captures all the content within, like the top ranking pages for a specific keyword. And it helps you create and write better ranking content.
Jeremy Weisz 13:20
What about from like a staff management perspective? What do you use kind of internally, whether it’s project management or email or communication?
Maggie McTavish 13:32
Yeah, I’d say like honestly like I like to keep it pretty simple when it comes to that. So the Gmail suite is like the Google suite is really great. It does the job. And yeah, typically like email or Google Chat is sufficient.
Jeremy Weisz 13:50
I want to point out I did have Eugene Levin on, who was the chief, or maybe he is now still of SEMrush. I think it’s used, they were saying at the time, used by over 3 million marketers, their tool. So it’s probably pretty robust and comprehensive. And he kind of shared some of the ways that he does. He overcame adversity and how he thinks about strategy and development. So that was an interesting episode. So thanks for mentioning them.
And so anything else like that people should be thinking about from a ranking on Google, better perspective.
Maggie McTavish 14:31
For sure. So let’s say if they are serving customers locally, their Google business profile is key. Something to not be ignored or forgotten about. So one thing is your website for all the rankings within the actual search results. That’s great, but low-hanging fruit?
Yeah. Optimize your Google business profile. Ask for reviews. Like most times your customers will want to leave you a review. They might just not think about it or they might forget about it. So sending them a friendly reminder, asking them for a review goes a long way.
Jeremy Weisz 15:08
One thing that struck me, Maggie, on your website is niche. That popped out to me and its niche also not just from services like SEO website, but also from a niche of location. Right? You’re really targeting a geographic location. Can you talk about your thought?
I mean, because I know with what you do, you could really serve anyone anywhere, right? But it seems to me you specifically are focused in on a specific region. And I’d love for you to talk about that thought process and decision to do that.
Maggie McTavish 15:49
Absolutely. Well, with everything that I’ve seen through the years of experience, it’s like, yeah, like businesses tend to be more successful when they niche down. And within the SEO web design world, it came down to two things. Either I pick a specific industry that I want to service, just like one type of industry category or focus within like the local region where I live in. So I’m based in the Niagara region in Canada and that’s yeah, that’s our number one target. So servicing local businesses, medium sized businesses.
And also what I love about helping promote the businesses here too, is that it ends up being an economic multiplier because they’re getting discovered, they’re getting more leads, more transactions, more businesses. So it’s really helping them.
Jeremy Weisz 16:50
I don’t know, I find these days it’s rare I see this really local niche, right. So like if you’re looking at the page here when I was reading it this week, we offer a range of SEO services to help businesses, and I didn’t expect this, in Saint Catherine’s. Right. So if I’m a business in Saint Catherine, I’m like, oh, this person’s for me, right?
What are some of the favorite — what types of you know, I kind of want to talk about the favorite businesses in Saint Catherine’s. Like, what are the popular businesses like? If I’m visiting that area, where am I going? And the types of businesses that you serve, because I’m sure there’s like a lot of restaurants and shops and other things. I don’t know if those are the type of clients you serve, but talk about some of the fan favorite places in Saint Catherine’s.
Maggie McTavish 17:38
Totally. Yeah. So of course, Saint Catherine’s is within the Niagara region, which is very popular for wineries. So it is wine country over here and Saint Catherine’s. Yeah, like they have great restaurants. There are a few wineries, I believe there’s 2 or 3. Niagara on the Lake and surrounding areas have more wineries. But yeah, Saint Catherine’s is one of the more populated cities within the Niagara region.
So I’d say that interestingly enough though, my target for the businesses here that I serve are more in the professional services industry. So believe it or not, they’re businesses related to real estate, brick and mortar stores. So like fireplace shops, businesses that offer renovations. So like bathroom renovations, tree care services, so arborists. So these types of businesses, the people that live here are seeking to solve some sort of problem that they may have.
Jeremy Weisz 18:49
Speaking of tree service, right. It’s funny because we just had to have a tree chopped down in our backyard. And it’s expensive. It’s actually. And for good reason because it takes a lot of work to do it.
But I didn’t realize and I started talking to people. I’m like that. So one of the people I know actually sold, they started a business a couple years, you know, they were running for a couple years and they sold it for a lot of money a couple years later. And it was a tree service. You’ve helped a tree service too. Talk about what you did for them.
Maggie McTavish 19:25
Absolutely. So yeah, it can be a very lucrative business. I agree. Exactly. So actually, the company that I helped out, they actually helped me. I moved into a home a couple months ago. And the backyard, it was just crazy. So my husband found them just through the neighborhood, they bumped into each other, and next thing you know, they’re in my backyard chopping down all these dead trees that we needed to take care of so they weren’t a liability.
And just chatting along, he’s like, hey, do you have a website? And that’s how a lot of business actually happens, just organically through conversations. And they said, no, but we have a Google business profile that we’ve been having lots of trouble changing our hours, our location. We bought the business recently and we can’t get a hold of, like we don’t know what to do, we’ve tried many times, we’ve tried reaching out to different agencies to help us. Nothing’s working. So that’s when I’m like, okay, great, no problem, I’ll come and help you out.
I was able to claim their Google business profile. We built a brand new website for them that is specifically —
Jeremy Weisz 20:35
What’s the website you will remember?
Maggie McTavish 20:37
It’s regional tree care.
Jeremy Weisz 20:40
Tree service tech?
Maggie McTavish 20:42
Yeah. RegionalTreeService.com.
Jeremy Weisz 20:44
This is them right?
Maggie McTavish 20:45
Yes, that’s the one.
Jeremy Weisz 20:47
You’re like, first of all, how do you not have a website? Like I don’t know. Good thing they —
Maggie McTavish 20:53
Every business needs a website today. Yes.
Jeremy Weisz 20:57
Geez. So what else?
Maggie McTavish 21:00
Yeah, we built the website from scratch. Yeah. And every time. Yeah. Like we work on something is with that foundation, focus on SEO to make sure that we’re selecting the right keywords to incorporate everything throughout the content and the site itself.
So we launched this site actually not too long ago, but just as an example, we launched it on a Friday and it took a couple days for it to index within Google so Google would recognize it. And within a couple of days later on Monday, they already got like their first form submission.
Jeremy Weisz 21:39
So I feel like I can go to town with good copywriting for these tree services, because the reason we did it is literally it was going to fall on our house. Right. So it’s like, do you not want the dead tree to fall on your house and crush your family? So call us.
Maggie McTavish 21:58
Exactly. Yeah. There you go.
Jeremy Weisz 22:02
Another. So like that. That’s a good example. It’s kind of interesting to me that businesses, some businesses don’t have a website even, but I guess it’s word of mouth and they just are listed on Google Business.
Maggie McTavish 22:19
It. Yeah. Surprisingly it does happen, I think, especially in more rural areas too. But at the end of the day it’s like, yeah, having a website for your business is like your online business card. So even if it’s something simple and straightforward that can convey your value proposition, everything that you have to offer and its ranking on Google so more people can find you like it’s a no brainer for you to gain more traffic and leads.
Jeremy Weisz 22:50
So, Maggie, I know you’re a new mom. Talk about balancing running a business and now family life, now that you have a young child.
Maggie McTavish 23:03
That’s right. So yes. So I have my daughter Elizabeth. She’s seven months old. And yes, it’s wild. Parenthood is no joke. It’s like all the things that I would hear from other parents make sense now that I’m going through it.
But what I made sure to do before giving birth more than seven months ago was making sure that I had everything in as much check as I could, and delegating was absolutely key. So having the right people in place that I knew that could support me, especially throughout those first few months that I wanted to be fully present for my newborn child.
And yes, I think that that was just the key component, just delegating and having the right people to rely on.
Jeremy Weisz 23:53
What did you put in place specifically leading up? I mean, some people have issues and there’s no notice, right? In this case, you’re like, okay, I need to prepare things for this. What were you doing to prepare? When you say delegating or were there a certain systems you were, you know, actually working on behind the scenes or people what were you doing from like a training perspective?
Maggie McTavish 24:18
Absolutely. So at least with every everything that we do from an SEO perspective, we have like standard operating procedures, so SOPs built for every single step along the process. So the beautiful thing of that is, I don’t want to say literally anyone could come in and do it, but almost anyone could come in with some sort of basic experience and help support, because everything is laid out in a way that they can just understand what they’re supposed to do and be effective.
So the other thing, too, is being very transparent with these individuals who supported and continued to support me along the way, setting those clear expectations like, hey, I know you typically work during the day, but I’ll probably be messaging you at two in the morning when I’m taking care of my my little one.
So that was really beautiful with clients too. Like they knew that I was going to have my first child. Everyone was very supportive and there was nothing, no, nothing really felt wrong as I was going through the process like everyone was very supportive, even though, yeah, like times I would message them would be kind of crazy sometimes.
Jeremy Weisz 25:38
Is there any software or how do you house the SOPs? What do you use for them?
Maggie McTavish 25:43
So I actually have them all within Google Sheets like Google Drive, Google Sheets like everything is in that environment.
Jeremy Weisz 25:51
Love it. Yeah. So I want to say there’s a really good interview I did with Owen McGab. He is the founder of SweetProcess, which is a software that helps you, we actually use them to house our SOPs, so they’re searchable.
And he did talk about just how to increase efficiency with existing staff and onboarding new staff and with process SOPs like Maggie’s talking about. So check that interview out. It’s really, really good. One I geek out on this stuff, Maggie, to the SOPs, because that’s kind of what makes everything run and makes it so we can sleep at night.
Maggie McTavish 26:26
Gives you a bit of peace of mind, that’s for sure.
Jeremy Weisz 26:29
100%. How did you get into running an agency?
Maggie McTavish 26:34
Great question. So for the majority of my career, I actually was an employee. So I worked at different corporations, different marketing agencies, and the last one was an AI startup in Toronto. And honestly, throughout my whole career, I always had this deep desire to want to run my own business, become an entrepreneur. I think, of course, having that job security kept me within that space.
And part of me just understands now that the timing in which everything worked out was just perfect, because working at different corporations allowed me to gain more of that experience, see how other agencies are run, understand how to manage a team, how to deal with clients. So basically getting a lot of experience and practice by working at other companies.
Jeremy Weisz 27:32
What made you branch out finally, because you could have just stayed? Like you said, there is security there. You’re having fun. You don’t have to do all the other stuff involved. What was the deciding factor, like, okay, I need to do this?
Maggie McTavish 27:48
Honestly, Elizabeth, my baby. So once I was pregnant and I knew, like, okay, this is going to change my life, I want more of that flexibility where I can be more present for her and not just be always tied to a 9 to 5, for example. So with Mango Media, yeah, for about two years now, that’s when I’ve really ramped up the business side of things, because I knew that once she was born and once she becomes older and she’s going to need more care, I want to be more involved. So yeah, she was definitely a big part of it.
Jeremy Weisz 28:26
What were some of the key more positions, key hires for you as you were growing the company?
Maggie McTavish 28:31
So actually the way I run things is a little bit different, where I believe in partnering with top tier experts who excel in their respective fields, rather than building an in-house team that requires a lot of training and management. At least that’s how it works right now. So like, for example, when I have like a custom website project that comes in, I collaborate with a branding expert and she brings a wealth of experience, creativity and insights to the table. So then that way she works independently, delivers high quality results and in return. I also help her and collaborate on a lot of SEO support that she might need. So similarly, that works then with my web developer, my copywriter, and a lot of the other specialists.
Jeremy Weisz 29:27
Are they located all over the place or are they local also?
Maggie McTavish 29:29
Most of them are within Ontario. So yeah, within the GTA, the Greater Toronto Area.
Jeremy Weisz 29:36
Love it. So, Maggie, first of all, thanks for sharing the journey and some of your thoughts. I have one last question before I ask it. I want to point people to, they could check out MangoMedia.ca. Also, you can check out more episodes of the podcast as well.
My last question is really mentors? Is there any business mentors you’ve had through your journey? It could be a boss you had or just someone who’s helped along the way, and maybe a good piece of advice they’ve given you.
Maggie McTavish 30:08
Absolutely. So it’s funny you’d say, boss, because yeah, one of my previous managers is one of my mentors and now friends. So yeah, we met in 2017. His name is Patrick. So hey Patrick, if you’re watching, shout out to you. Thank you for absolutely everything.
And yeah, like I definitely say, having a mentor or someone that believes in you, someone that can explain things in simple terms is key. And yeah, Patrick has been someone very influential throughout my life to help me get where I am.
And on the industry, like SEO specific side of things. Nathan Gotch. So this he’s from Gotch SEO also very popular within the SEO world. So being part of his community has been amazing, where everyone’s very, very collaborative. We’re all SEO experts within the group. And just like if someone needs help with something or there’s a new change within the Google ecosystem that needs someone needs more clarity. It’s a very supportive group that we’re all part of. And yeah, it’s very helpful.
Jeremy Weisz 31:21
Yeah, I’d love to hear. What’s a piece of advice you’ve maybe gotten from Nathan? Because I have found the same, Maggie, is community of people, like minded people, and mentorship has been key in any part of my growth, whether it’s business or health or whatever it is. What’s something you remember Nathan sharing? It doesn’t have to be with you, but with someone else. Or it could be with you. That’s been helpful.
Maggie McTavish 31:44
I’d say, actually, the whole niching down side of things came from him. So that comes up a lot in conversation. And it’s like you either pick an industry that you want to focus on and be very good at it, or niche down within your local area where you live and be the best one. So that’s what you’re known for.
Jeremy Weisz 32:04
Love it. Maggie, I want to be the first one to thank you. Check out MangoMedi.ca. Check out more episodes of the podcast. We’ll see everyone next time. Thanks, everyone.
Maggie McTavish 32:14
Thank you.
