Episode 067 - SEO For Career Pivots_ Get Found When You_re Starting Over As A Beginning Entrepreneur (1)
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Welcome to SEO Day Studio with your hosts, the Findability Queen, Denise Millet, and the entrepreneur whisperer, Kim White. This is a space to hear the questions that fellow entrepreneurs have about SEO and get them answered. So many discussions involving techy topics like SEO are loaded with jargon and unnecessary complexity, so much so that anyone outside the tech industry has difficulty getting to the real meaning inside the information.
Denise believes that every entrepreneur can benefit from search engines once they hear how they work in a clear and straightforward way. She is on a mission to help entrepreneurs get the content they spend hours creating included in search engines, so when their customers search online, they're findable.
Because she believes if they can't find you, they can't do business with you. So stay tuned. The fun starts now
Welcome back to the SEO Day podcast studio, where we help new business builders get found online without drowning in tech talk. I'm Kim White, and I'm here with your findability queen and your SEO guide, Denise Millet.
Hello, Denise.
Hey, Kim. I'm so honored you are here helping with that heavy mail bag today. Cool. Building- What kind of,
what
kind of questions have you pulled out for us today?
I'm building my mail bag muscles, is what I'm gonna call it. So today we're talking to those of you who are in a career pivot.
This is a very common thing. Maybe you've had a whole career in one field and now you're starting an online business as a coach, a consultant, or even an educator. The big question is: how do you use SEO to get found when you're starting over?
Mm.
So Denise, before we dive in, what would you say to someone who feels like they're starting from zero online?
Oh, I'd say you're not starting from zero, you're starting from experience, and that makes a huge difference. So SEO can help you introduce your new direction to people who've never heard of you, it can connect you to other people who are actively searching for the problem you now are going to solve, and it can let you reuse parts of your old story in a way that builds trust in your new work.
I love that answer. Mm-hmm. So question number one: if I'm pivoting careers and starting a new business, how can SEO help me get in front of a brand new audience faster?
Hmm. Well, SEO connects your new message to people who are already searching, right? So first you get clear on your new who and what. Who you help now, what specific problem you help them solve.
Write it in simple, beginner language, right? 'Cause that's what people use when they search. Second, you create content that directly answers their questions, their beginner questions, like how to start a coaching business, how to use SEO for my website. and then you use those phrases in your page titles, in your headings, in the first paragraph, so search engines g- are triggered.
They know that that's the subject matter that you're writing about.
Love it. So question number two: If I've been known for something else for years, how do I choose keywords that fit my new direction without confusing myself?
Hey, that's a risk for all of us every day, right? confusing ourselves. So you're basically reindu- reintroducing yourself to search engines.
You write your positioning statement. You say, "I help who with what so they can get what," right? And let that guide your keyword ideas. So then you go and you write five or 10 simple questions your new audience might ask and search, and you turn them into the real words they're gonna use, right?
and you use those, like you have the lists, and you use variations on those things in everything you do, and you make all your content surround it so that over time your new site has that going forward. It doesn't negate what you were before, but it has that going forward. Mm-hmm.
Love it. So question number three: What should I do with all my old content about my previous career?
Keep it, hide it, or rework it?
Well, you have to sort, sort through it, right? You- don't panic about it because you don't negate your history when you start something new. It's still your history, right? you wanna keep it up- lightly updated, so any old content that still rev- rep- makes sense to the people you're working with shows your new direction.
If it doesn't match, just make sure it doesn't go against what you're doing now. Make sure it's in alignment to what you're doing now. if you had- Don't remove anything. That's my first rule and anything that's linked in a search engine, you just, you have to not delete it. But you need to make sure they're aligned.
So if you had to have a strong opinion in a corporate position you did before, but it's not in alignment with what you're doing now, find a way to rework it if you can, or to somehow soften it or make sure you have a conversation about it in case anyone does find it. So it's a hard thing to do. I mean, what do you recommend, Kim?
Well, I think of Melissa Davy right off the top. She was a high-level executive who turned filmmaker. She pivoted into something completely different, but it gives her a lot of character and a lot of, street cred because of the level she was at in her, in her career that she would go and do this other thing.
So I think your experience from before can be used as a huge asset, because it does give you that street cred, and I know we're talking SEO here, but that, that gives confidence to someone who wants to know if she knows how to budget for a film or if she knows how to, you know, do some of the high-level things.
They don't have to know all the details. They can know what she, where she came from. Yeah. I think where we came from helps. So- That's good ... that's my little one and a half cents worth, so.
Well, your, your resume doesn't roll off, you know? Like- Yeah ... it's your resume. It's where you've been, it's what you've done.
So unless you've changing, you've had some epiphany that has changed in your heart on something and going a totally anti what you used to do- Yes ... then y- you sh- you don't have to say a word.
Well, let's take a minute to hear from our sponsor today.
This episode is brought to you by the Findability Queen, Denise Millet.
Visit her YouTube channel, youtube.com/@findabilityqueen, for her collection of short videos answering questions about findability and SEO for entrepreneurs every day.
We're back talking about how SEO can help people making a career change into entrepreneurship, how that can help them. Let's get back into our questions, Denise.
I'm always excited about the questions. Question number four: how can I use my previous career experience as a strength in my SEO instead of feeling like it's baggage?
Your past could be a trust builder if you frame it well. So you tell your short why I pivoted story on your About page or your Start Here page, showing how your old career led you to serve this new audience.
Use examples and language from your previous field in your content to show you understand your client's world, especially if they share the background. And I don't know, you could use titles like, "What 10 years in healthcare taught me about business," and how it made you to think about things where you are now.
Great example. So question number five: how do I avoid confusing all the search engines and new visitors while I'm in the middle of this pivot?
Hmm. You know, I, I'm gonna say that there are ways to do this. So you could use clear signals like now and, you know, phase out, like patient phase out things where you'd have a list of things that you would be working on, but still add in some of the old stuff so that you're still talking about that.
I just think that you wanna make your homepage and your main focus where you are now and what you offer now, and how to get started working with you. Because people are gonna go back to the search engine and they'll see your old stuff, wherever it was, and if they wanna find out more about you, that'll be there.
But what you have on your site today should be about who, how, who you are today and what selected stories you wanna share about it. I don't think you really have to worry about a whole plan unless you had stuff in a queue that you can't stop, like your blog posts scheduled a year out that are gonna come out, you know?
So I don't think any of us have that. So I think you should just worry about your, your website and your current stuff being about you, and let what's out there now speak about your credibility from before and let it build trust.
Well, Denise, for the listener who's thinking, "I'm in the middle of a career pivot.
I'm starting this new business, and I like these ideas, but I still don't really know what I need to understand about SEO. If I wanna do it myself, what's a good next step?"
Oh, I feel you. I do, and that's why I created this SEO quiz. It's for new business builders, including those pivoting from careers who wanna understand what they actually need to know about SEO, see which parts they can confidently do on their own, and spot where they're missing simple, beginner-friendly things they can pick up.
You answer a handful of short questions, and the quiz gives you a clear result. it shows you what you're already doing, what you already know, and what you've gotta find out, so you're not trying to fix everything all at once
And I've taken it, y'all. You can do it. I will say that. You can do it. So if you're starting over, sweet listener, in a new direction and you want to understand what you need to know to do SEO on your own, go take Denise's SEO quiz, all the letters.
You can find the link in the show notes.
Just take 10 minutes, answer, seven questions, answer honestly. It doesn't go anywhere but between me and you, and let your results guide your next steps. Quiz will show you how much, which SEO pieces deserve your attention now, which can be for later, and you don't feel like you have to do it all.
So yeah.
I love it. Well, Denise, thanks for showing how SEO can support a career pivot instead of working against it. And thank you, sweet listener, for being with us today for the SEO Day podcast. If this episode helped you, share it with another new business builder who's starting over and wants to be findable in their new field.
We'll see you on the next episode on Tuesday.
Until next time
Thank you for joining Denise and Kim in the SEO Day studio for today's discussion. If you would like one of your SEO questions answered in a future episode, head on over to denisemillet.com/questions to let us know. The link is also in the show notes. We hope you enjoyed listening to this episode of the SEO Day podcast.
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