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Most of your clients are driven by fear. It's just the truth. In fact, most of humanity is driven by fear. It's kind of sad actually. Advertising that would make you buy something that you perceived as a risky investment. A viral social media post, not a clever email rebrand solution to a new set of problems. Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Kate Show. Today is already episode 294. We are approaching 300 episodes of this podcast. Cannot believe it. So today I am talking about SEO keywords made easy. Whether you are an interior designer, home stager, professional organizer, or window treatment pro. And saying that there's a way to make SEO and AIO keywords easy is quite a strong statement because for a long time it's been shrouded in mystery. But here is the thing. Google has made tons of changes this year, and it has actually made it easier to rank if you know how to play by their rules. But you can. You can't play by the rules if you don't even know what those rules are. So I'm just going to start with the basics. So let's rewind all the way back to the beginning of this year, the beginning of 2025. The whole year has been a wild one for the home industry. 2025 brought a roller coaster of tariffs, inflation, rising and falling mortgage rates, and a complete upheaval in online search. Thanks to the aforementioned Google's core updates and as well as the rise of AI search tools. All of this impacted homeowners and changed how they find and decide to hire home professionals like you. As an interior designer, you can't control tariffs, inflation, mortgage rates, Google or ChatGPT. But you can control how you present yourself to your clients. If prospects aren't signing your proposals, it doesn't mean they're uninterested. It might just mean you haven't met them where they are at right now. And I'm going to dive into that. So today on the show, I'm sharing two key things you can do to keep your website relevant and keep leads coming in. And yes, it involves two things like repositioning your services and using the right keywords on your website. So let's just get right into it. Most of your clients are driven by fear. It's. It's just the truth. In fact, most of humanity is driven by fear. It's kind of sad, actually. But growing your business doesn't mean that you should be constantly trying to convince homeowners to pay for something that they perceive as risky. And you also shouldn't have to rely on Google Ads to get traffic that's expensive. And it's often a sign that your sales funnel isn't doing its job. Remember, Google Ads don't convert clients. Your website is what does the heavy lifting. So instead of throwing more money at advertising, focus on making your website organically magnetic to both search engines and AI. And hey, you know what? Real humans too. It all starts with using the right words, both in how you describe your services and which keywords you choose. So you see, these two things go hand in hand. But first, you have to start with the services. You need to reframe your services to keep them relevant. If you're constantly chasing leads or getting ghosted or sending out a proposal and never hearing anything back except oh well, think about it. It's a sign that your service is no longer fulfilling the most urgent need your clients have. So how do you figure out how to reposition it? Well, it starts with some self reflection and redirection. Ask yourself, how many times would I need to see an ad for something I didn't feel safe buying before I finally just bought it anyway? Never. The answer is never. There is no amount of advertising that would make you buy something that you perceived as a risky investment. Even if your potential clients want your service, they might feel this isn't the right time to spend money on a remodel or a new build or or whole home organizing or whatever it is. No marketing tactic can overcome fear. Not a viral social media post, not a clever email, not a fancy new website, not even a rebrand. Why? Well, because you're trying to apply an old solution to a new set of problems. Your services need to be repositioned first. So here's how to reframe what you've already got. Let me clarify. You don't need to invent new services. You just need to repackage what already has been working or was working up until recently. For example, if you offer project management and you sell it as that, you need to realize that homeowners often think they can do project management themselves. In fact, that's one of the first things people will draw a line through on the proposal. Because they're like, I don't need to pay her to do that, I'll do it myself. And once they start trying to be a project manager, they realize, wow, this is so much harder than I thought. I'm not doing a good job, my project has gone off the rails. And then they realize your value. But by then it's often too late. So instead of saying you are a project manager or you offer project management services, you could call it something else such as budget protection oversight or stress coordinator. And that will help people to understand there is a real time, real life value to what you do. And of those two I mentioned, I think budget protection oversight is the best. Who doesn't want that? And that's what a project manager does. Now if you're in a home organizer, you might be like, okay, that's great. That doesn't apply to me. Ah, don't worry, I have something for you too. If you offer home organizing, you could try. You could test no longer labeling it as strictly organization, instead position it around what solves the problem. So you could say it's finance and efficiency prep for downsizers, or it's sensory overload minimization for young families or clarity coaching or busy professionals. Which would make sense if your ideal client is a career driven entrepreneurial workaholic. Each of these communicate urgency and value without changing your actual service. So again, remember, your deliverables are staying the same, but the way you talk about them, the messaging is the only thing that changes. When you make these changes, you'll also need to update the how we work section of your site or add it if you don't have it already so that it aligns with your reframed services. Okay, that's actually a huge step. If you can wrap your mind around how to best reframe your services, you're already halfway there. Once you have that figured out, then it's time to figure out good keywords for SEO and aio. So I'm going to walk you through what we do internally when we are accomplishing SEO for a client. So what we do is start with service areas because most of our clients need local SEO. If you're targeting a place like, let's just say Chicago, okay, your list of geographic locations might look like Gold Coast, Lincoln Park, Lakeview, Hinsdale, Highland park because those are affluent neighborhoods in Chicago now, you don't need to have a page of your website for each of these neighborhoods. Some SEO professionals will tell you otherwise. And that's fine. Everyone has their own way of doing things. I've just found it to be quite tacky. And you're also paying for them to create many, many, many, many pages that you actually did not need. Instead, narrow down your top three to four service areas because Google will still recognize nearby regions. You don't have to have a page for every freakin location. Okay, you don't. Now that you've Narrowed down your top three to five service areas, narrow down your top services. So after you've reframed your services, pick the top three, the ones that your ideal clients are actively searching for. For example, it could be kitchen interior design or MLS photo makeovers, or organizing for stay at home parents. But again, avoid jargon like full service or project management, because nobody searches for that. Nobody really understands what that means anyway. The next step is to match one service and one location to each page of your site. So each money page on your site, the money pages are home, about, and each services page should have one keyword pairing. For example, if you were trying to target keyword the Chicago area and you offer window treatments, your home page could have the keyword Chicago window treatments. The about page would be drapery workroom, Deerfield Services page would be window shades, Glen Ellen. Now, obviously, we don't just randomly pair things together. We test each keyword to see if it has value, to see if people are searching these terms and sometimes they're not. So we can't just use them blindly. There does have to be an element of research involved, but generally this is the outcome. We take one service and one location, pair them together, and they become the keyword for a page. And again, you can only optimize one page of your site for one keyword or keyword pairing at a time. Now, once you have your keyword pairing for, let's just say, your homepage, what do you do with it? Well, you have to make sure that keyword appears in very specific places. Number one needs to be in the URL. So when you've got your website.comInterior DesignGold coast with a hyphen between each word, that's one way that you can put a keyword in there. And then if your keyword pairing was interior design Gold coast, then that should also appear in the SEO title. The SEO title, by the way, should be 50 to 60 characters, not more, not less. And it has to include the keywords, the meta description, or rather the SEO description. You might also hear it as it needs to be 150 to 160 characters. That's characters, not words. But it should include the keyword pairing. And it should not be more than 160 characters and not less than 150 characters. Okay, so some of this is a little bit picky. Also, that page should have only one H1, which is the biggest heading out there, because that is the first thing that Google will read. And if you have more than one H1, it's going to confuse Google regarding the content of the page and it will hurt your ranking. So only one H1 per page and that H1 has to be a certain length and it must include the keyword phrase. The H2 or H3 should also include the keyword phrase. You can have multiple H2s and H3s on a page and alt text. So your keyword pairing needs to show up in the alt text of at least one image on that page. And then as far as your body text is concerned, you need to use the keyword pairing in the first 100 words of the text on that page and use it a few more times, naturally throughout the rest of the page. Now you might be wondering, well, how many words should I have on a page of my website? Well, each money page, so the important ones like home, about and services should have at least 500 words each. But top ranking sites usually exceed 3,000 words total, not including blog posts. So 3,000 words across the homepage about page and services page that does not count the words for your blog post because that would easily be in the tens of thousands. So why does this matter? Well, 2025 has been a very busy year on many fronts and AI search tools are not going away. ChatGPT perplexity and Google's Gemini pull content that matches user intent and tone. If your website clearly communicates who your ideal client is and what specific problems you solve for them, AI will surface your content more often. This means clearer messaging, stronger keywords, and service positioning that resonate emotionally and practically are crucial. So what are your interior design, SEO and AIO must dos? I have a list for you. There's five things. Number one, reframe your services to match your client's current mindset. Number two, update your service descriptions and how we Work sections to reflect your new position. Number three, optimize every money page for one keyword pairing again, service plus location and then write at least 500 words of copy per page. And number five, stop depending on ads. Let your website do the work and make sure your website is supported by a sales funnel. So guys, I'm gonna wrap this up with a few FAQs because I get these questions from you all and I want to make sure that this episode is as comprehensive as it can be without totally overwhelming you, because I know you have other things on your mind. And that's the thing when you start a business or you've been in business for a few decades, there's the actual creative work, the part that keeps your clients happy. But then there's all of this stuff, this, you know, for some of you, it's, it's the, the crappy work. Like I don't want to understand SEO or aio. I just need enough to be dangerous and I want to know that it's working. So let me just give you a quick rundown of the frequently asked questions I get around this topic. How do I find keywords for my interior design website? Well, we talked about this, but let's run through it one more time. Start by listing your top service areas and your top services. Pair one service with one location for each Money page. Use those pairings as your core keywords. Verify their strength with tools like SEO Space or Keywords Everywhere. It can be helpful to check out the Competitor Analysis tool with SEO Space to see what keywords your competitors are ranking for and whether you want to emulate them. The next question I get is how do I get clients when no one is reaching out or when leads are ghosting me? Well, this is a sign that your services are not aligned with your client's current priorities. Reframe your offer so they solve a more urgent or emotionally relevant problem like financial peace, mental clarity, or family comfort. The next question I get is do I need to change my interior design services if I'm not getting clients? Because quite honestly, I've seen this. I've seen this happen so much. A designer will run short on clients and think that she just needs to add more services to her offerings. That just makes it worse. If this is you, you likely just need to repackage what you already offer and get better at marketing it. And also realize that you can't control everything. You know, we can't control Google. We can't control what the economy does, we can't control the political landscape. And it's not helpful to get paranoid. So control what you can control and leave the rest to God. The next frequently asked question I get is how do I get chatgpt to send me potential clients? And the answer is, you can't like directly make AI tools send clients to you, but you can make your website more visible to AI search by optimizing your content. So clear Keyword rich client focused copy helps AI surface your site when users ask for designers or organizers in your area. And the big question how do I know if my website is already optimized for Google and AI search? Well, here are some signs. Each Money page targets one service in one location. Each page has at least 500 words. Your SEO title, SEO description, H1 and Image Alt text include Keywords. Your copy clearly addresses who you serve and what problems you solve. And if you have squarespace, you can use the SEO Space tool to check your website. You'll need to give SEO Space a specific keyword for each page if you want the most accurate SEO score. Now, some people will use that tool, then tell me, oh, my website scored 80% out of 100. But then they'll say, well, I didn't actually have it test the keyword optimization part. I just had it test the technical components. It's like, okay, well that's, you're part way there. Don't fall for any sort of online tool that gives your website an SEO score without first asking you. And which keyword are you trying to optimize this page for? Because without the keyword, there's, there's nothing to really measure. It'll tell you if your images are too big. It'll tell you if your buttons are too close together. It'll tell you if your loading speed is slow. But that in and of itself is not SEO. True search engine and aio, you know, actual optimization involves keywords. All right, now if you guys can check those boxes, you're already ahead of 90% of the home industry. This is a whole new world out there. It's a whole new frontier of SEO and AIO and repositioning your services to stay current. All right, guys, that was a lot. Before I shut her down for the day, I want to remind you that we have a new marketing app launching very soon, so I want you to stay tuned for it. I do not have a sign up link for you as of yet. I wish I could give it to you, but I don't want to put the cart before the horse. So just know that our Socialite app will be releasing to the general public in January and it's going to make marketing so easy because when you open up this app, you will be able to pick any content that is all human created by us and make it sound like it came from you. It'll be transformed right in front of your eyes. And our tool will pull in data from your own website to ensure the voice sounds like you. It can also pull in customer testimonials and it can pull in different press features that you've had to make it a fully custom to you piece of content that did not cost you an arm and a leg and got transformed right in front of your eyes on your screen. As simple as pulling out your smartphone while you're on a job site waiting for someone and getting a blog post or an email newsletter put together within three to five minutes. It's really that easy. All right, guys, until next time, keep your marketing simple, your message clear, and also, don't lose yourself in your business. If you are spending all your time working on your business, your marketing, your client work, your financials, probably a sign that you need to go take a walk outside because there is more to life than these businesses that we are running. All right, have a good one. I'll talk to you later. Sam.