On October 20, 1950, Thomas Earl Petty was born in Gainesville, Florida. In 1976, he formed the band Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Shortly after, while on a plane, Tom Petty read an article about a Florida spiritualist camp a hundred three miles southeast of his hometown. Although he had never been to this camp, he would go on to immortalize it forever in his song, Casadega. In 1978, Petty would first introduce this song to a live audience by saying, This is a town in Florida that has 35 acres of weird people. Before his death in 2017, Tom Petty had sold more than 80 million records worldwide, making him one of the top selling recording artists of all time. But before we go any further, you know what to do. Please hit that subscribe button and give us a like. As always, a very, very special thank you to all of our producers and our patrons here on Esoteric Atlanta. If you would like to join our Patreon or our producer community, there is a link down in the description box below. Welcome to Esoteric Atlanta and today on this deep dive, we're going to be talking about Casadega, Florida. Today, Casadega is an unincorporated community in Volusia County, Florida. It is also considered today to be the psychic capital of the world. It lies on the eastern coast of the Florida Peninsula, just 110 miles south of Jacksonville and about 35 miles northeast of Orlando. Today, Casadega holds the Casadega Hotel, a central auditorium, the Colby Memorial Temple, a library, a healing center, a bookstore, an educational building, and a wellness center. It also contains a fairy garden that seems very spectacular to me and very much reminds me of our very own doll's head trail here in Atlanta. On March 14, 1991, Casadega, Florida was officially declared an historic landmark and an historic district. At present, the community is officially owned by a specific association of spiritualists. In order to actually live in the vortex, and I do mean vortex because allegedly there is a particular, very significant vortex in Casadega, Florida, the same as the likes of Stonehenge, you have to actually be a licensed and certified psychic medium to be able to claim residency in this town. In order to be certified as a psychic medium, this takes about four years of training and internships and you have to be tested by the board of spiritualists and psychic mediums. But how did this little sleepy town come to be the psychic center of the world? Of course, when I found out about Casadega, Florida, I had to do my own deep dive to get the answer to my own little mystery. But before we get into the mystery itself and my deep dive, just a brief little word from our sponsors. My uncle Dan used to talk about QTR. QTR meant for him quality time remaining. My uncle Dan was a very active cyclist and a very avid hiker. 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And because this product uses the intelligence of your body, each individual person is going to start to notice different things occurring with this product. If you are interested in learning more about this product or purchasing this product or even becoming a part of the business of Asiya, please text Bryce Info to<PHONE_NUMBER>. Again, that's Bryce Info to<PHONE_NUMBER>. And Jay or Hillis will get back to you as soon as possible. If you are texting from a country outside of the United States, please make sure that you add plus one.<PHONE_NUMBER> plus one is our country code. And in your text, on top of texting Bryce Info, just make sure you let Jay or Hillis know that you are texting from a country outside the United States so they can arrange a call with you on WhatsApp or Signal or Zoom, any application that's not going to charge you. With that being said, another amazing thing about the Asiya company is that they do offer a 30-day money back guarantee. So if this product doesn't work for you or isn't what you expected after the first 30 days, they will refund you. Alright, back to our show. As you guys know, I am kind of a magnet for spirits and ghosts. There's no mystery as to why I wanted to look at the mystery of Casadaga because I myself, for better or for worse, whether I like it or not, always attract paranormal phenomenon. What can I say? I'm very, very popular with the dead folk. Now again, I've been very honest on my channel about my struggles with this gift, curse, whatever you want to call it. But I will say another added benefit to Asiya is that it's actually really helped me with grounding myself in order to put up boundaries when it comes to the spiritual world. Now, yes, Asiya is a redox system that typically helps the body rebuild itself with cellular signaling and communication. But this is just something I've noticed for me. The more my body, the healthier my body is, the more grounded I am within my body, the better off my boundaries are. Casadaga, Florida was founded by a man named George Colby. In one of the lectures that I listened to involving the history of George Colby and Casadaga, the presenter made the joke that George Colby was probably one of the first snowbirds in recorded history. If you're not from the United States or you are not from the southeast, you probably don't know what a snowbird is. A snowbird is the slang word, a slang phrase down here in the southeast that refers to somebody from the north who comes to the south to escape the hard winters. Florida is notorious to magnet for snowbirds. And with these spiritualist camps, especially the one in Lillydale, New York, which we will briefly speak about, they typically had to have seasons. Of course, if you're up in the New England area or Canada or any type of cold climate in the 1800s, you're probably not going to want to go stay at a spiritualist camp in the dead of winter. So a lot of these spiritualist camps would be open when the weather was appropriate for people to come partake in the festivities at the camps. So as Lillydale, New York would most likely be open in the summertime, a spiritualist camp in Florida and Casadaga therefore was open in the wintertime. Therefore, George Colby definitely was probably the first snowbird in our recorded history. George Colby was born on the 6th of January in 1848 in Pike, New York. Colby was born to a very, very religious and devout Baptist family. Now, if we step back a little bit and look at what was happening in the 19th century in general, we see a lot of chaos, a lot of bluster, a lot of confusion when it comes to religion. We see tent revivals happening everywhere. We see the forming of the Mormon Church happening. There was a lot going on, including the development of spiritualism, which we will get into. George was the middle of five children. He had two sisters and two brothers. According to the history books, his sisters did die young before the age of 10, which is very, very sad, but unfortunately was more common in that day to have to lose a child. At the age of eight years old, George and his family moved to Minnesota. And this became the catalyst of George's evolution of a person. This would be what would kind of turn George into the George Colby that he became. You see, in the Baptist faith, they baptized by dunking. I grew up Presbyterian. We baptized by having a little water sprinkled on our head as young babies. And there's different reasons why different churches decide to baptize at different ages and in different means. The reasoning why some churches like the Presbyterian Church baptize right away, it's because historically a lot of babies did not live very long. They died early. And so parents over the course of time would frantically want to get their kids baptized just in case their life was cut short. Now, in our modern times, it's not really something we have to worry about, but still that tradition has continued. In the Baptist faith, they believe that a person needs to be able to consent and want to get baptized. And they also believe in full dunking, just like the way John the Baptist allegedly baptized Jesus by dunking him into the river. That's kind of like along the lines of what the Baptist still do to this day. Most Baptist Church in our modern times have kind of like a pool behind the pulpit for those who weren't raised Christian. And they open up and dunk people in. I've been to a few Baptists baptism. It is a full body immersion of water. Well, obviously in the mid 19th century, they didn't have the modern technology of a heated pool like we do in 2023. And so George Colby, now some of the records say he was eight years old, so immediately after the family moved to Minnesota. Some records say 12 years old, so four years after the family had moved to Minnesota. Regardless in that time phrase of young childhood, George Colby made the decision to be baptized. And of course, again, as I said, his family was Baptist. So that meant that George Colby was going to be fully submerged and dunked into water for his baptism. Now, if anybody is from Minnesota, Minnesota, or has been up that way, it's very cold in the wintertime. Minnesota is known to be very, very cold state, lots of snow, lots of freeze. And so the story goes that the day that George Colby was baptized, he was baptized in a river that was extremely cold, almost too cold. This means that George was almost killed by his own baptism. They say that he had, was severely injured, I guess, by the cold and definitely had hypothermia and it literally almost killed him. Now, personally, I don't know if that part of the story was added on over time to kind of exaggerate the folklore around George Colby or if it's true or not. Because as you guys know, I'm a huge fan of ice baths and cold showers and cryotherapy. And when someone is baptized, they're literally dunked in and then taken right back out again. And people can sit in an ice bath for up to 10 minutes before they're taken out. If you do cryotherapy, you're taken out at like three minutes. And this is very cold. So again, I don't know if this story is necessarily true or an embellishment of true events. He might have been baptized at this age, but maybe didn't have some near-death experience, although he could have, I don't know. But I just wanted to clarify, I'm not sure if that part of the story is actually, I have my suspicions that might be an embellishment, but whatever. Regardless of the fact, coming to Minnesota with his Baptist family, getting baptized, this is when stuff started shifting for George Colby. Because around this time, some of George Colby's deceased relatives started talking to him. Now I can understand why people would want to say, oh, there must have been a near-death experience to cause this, but that's not necessarily true. Some people are just born with their abilities and as they get into adolescence, they start to understand that they even have abilities. A young child might see grandpa standing in the corner playing with him and not realize that their mother or their father don't actually see grandpa standing there. Young children don't really understand death. And so there is a possibility from my perspective that George Colby was born with these abilities and that they just enhanced when he became an adolescence. And they enhanced because all of a sudden he started to understand that he was seeing things that other people are not. I hope that makes sense, but regardless, around the age of 12, George Colby started communicating with past loved ones. Now of course, mediumship is probably not the career that good old farm and Baptist parents want for their son. However, it goes, the story goes that George's deceased loved ones he started communicating with did tell George that his destiny was to be a healer and was to be a psychic. So as the story goes from the age of 12 to 19, George started to work on his abilities and secrets really honing in his ability to understand the spiritual world and see beyond the veil. And for those that might be skeptical of this or for those who are new to communicating with with loved ones or any type of entity on the other side of the veil, it does take practice. It does take training. And so the fact that he was able to kind of do this on his own is pretty miraculous in my humble opinion because it is kind of scary. Even though I attract ghosts and I laugh about it, it's not it's not the most convenient thing in the world. And it does take a lot to learn how to like put your boundaries up and understand what it is you're being told. But his training obviously worked because by the age of 19, George Colby was a bit of a local celebrity. He was booking people out left, right and center, people wanting to come to him for help. He was what we call a trance medium. So basically what a trance medium is and I'm quoting from the Arthur Finley College. A trance mediumship occurs when through the induction of altered states of consciousness, we allow the spirit world to capture our attention or even place a hold on our minds enabling a closer binding with the spirit world. So basically George would go into a bit of a trance. A bit sounds a bit like our old friend Edgar Casey, who was also kind of working around this time period. You go into a trance and he would use his spirit guides. We all have guides, all of us. We all got guides. So he would use his spirit guides to kind of communicate with other people's spirit guides so that he could speak the information that he was being told. So basically George was like a conduit for the every every day average human to be able to get information from their their team as we call it today. And again, he became very popular. He was making a lot of money. He was selling out.  People are going to, words going to spread that you don't know what you're talking about. But obviously kind of knew what he was doing because he was generating a lot of traction. And so at the age of 19 around this time, he decided to officially leave the Baptist faith, the Baptist church and join the spiritualist movement. So in 1867, George Colby is officially now part of the spiritualist movement and religion. So what actually is the spiritualist religion? Spiritualism was a social religious movement in the 19th century, according to which an individual's awareness persists after death and may be contacted by the living. So as I said in the beginning, around this time period in the 19th century, historically, there was just a lot happening when it came to people's religious beliefs. We had a lot of tent revivals going on. We had the forming of the Mormon church. There was a lot of, you know, we're coming up to the industrial revolution. So people's anytime there's like a huge shift in consciousness, people are probably most likely going to start to question their own mortality. Who are we really as people? And it's weird to me to think about spiritualism as being an actual religion because I feel like most people feel like what's kind of happened in our lifetime is that we've kind of come full circle back. I think most people, regardless of the religion that they were born into, do believe that the soul is an eternal thing and that life exists after death. I don't even think you have to be religious to believe that. After all, from a scientific perspective, energy cannot be creative nor destroyed. It can only be transmuted. So something's going to happen to that energy in the body after death. This is also very, very, very much part of the Eastern teachings, the Vedic texts, the Yoga Sutras, as we've spoken about many times on this channel. And it's interesting now, I feel like in our modern eyes, you can be like a Christian and also be a spiritualist or Jewish and a spiritualist. I feel like we are a little bit more, there's more blurred lines, I guess, within our own modern day culture where we don't see things as being mutually exclusive. But of course, if you think about the spiritualist movement of the 19th century, you've got Blavonsky, you've got the Fox sisters, you've got the massive cultural acceptance of things like seances. People were really, really digging this stuff. And of course, if you've been on this channel for a while, you will know we've spoken a lot about the Hesse Act. And so we're looking at the build-up of what was happening in the 19th century. Almost every human being was touched by this spiritualism. People started to understand astrology again, divination against seances. And it was in the Hesse Act in World War II in the mid 20th century, or early 20th century, where Hitler and the Catholic Church decided to create a propaganda piece making divination of the devil so that we would lose all that education, all that knowledge of being able to communicate with beings that are not within our own physical reality. Now I do want to give a disclaimer here as I've done many times on my show, but if you're new here, I just want to give a huge disclaimer.  That's just communication. To be a spiritual person, that means you're working on your own spirit. But in order to be a spiritual person, you have to actually believe in the dogma of spiritualism, which is that you have a soul and your soul is eternal. We're all eternal beings, right? I hope that makes sense. So as I said, George is now officially a spiritualist. He's already got a reputation for being a good, very good spiritualist, very talented spiritualist. So he's traveling around in a horse and carriages to all these towns in the Midwest and all up and over the country, seeing people, treating people. This is how he is making his living. In 1875, at the age of 27, while Colby was in Iowa, he received a new guide by the name of Seneca. Seneca apparently was a Native American guide, and he would go on to become George's main guide and the leading force behind the Casa Daga Florida spiritualist camp. Now, I do want to point out that this was the age 27. And if you know, that's when you get your first Saturn return is at the around the age 27 to 30. So around the age 27 to 30, if you think back at your life around that age for me, I moved from Los Angeles back to Atlanta. There's usually a lot of really crazy things that start happening to people at their Saturn returns. It's like, you know, Saturn is the planet of Father Time. It's the planet of Karma. And so it's really like kind of a transition for a lot of people is that Saturn return. There's a lot of up people and people's lives. So I thought it was interesting when I did the math that Seneca popped up around Colby's Saturn return. Seneca informed George that he needed to travel to Wisconsin to pick up another medium by the name of TD Giddings. Together, they were instructed to travel by rail to the end of the line in Florida, which was Jacksonville at that time. After that, they were instructed to search out a plot of land by foot that matched the land Seneca described. Seneca told Colby that he would recognize this land because there would be seven small hills around some bodies of water like lakes. Now, I saw some conversations in my research where people who were not from America or were not from the Southeast were very confused by Florida having hills. I understand how that would be confusing for people because I think when we think of Florida, we really see pictures of like South Florida, which is very flat. That's palm trees. But North Florida around Jacksonville around this area is still very much part of the fall off of Appalachia. And so you do have a lot of hills, a lot of pine trees, even though it's very hot and there's a beach there. It's kind of like got some of that Georgia deep wood feel to it. Once they found the appropriate land, they were instructed to create a camp there for spiritualists who all come together and work together. In 1880, Colby files for the Homestead Grant that would become Casadaga. In 1884, four years later, the grant is approved with about 75 acres of land. And then in 1893, the official National Spiritualist Association of Churches is formed. In the same year of 1893, George Colby would travel up to experience the first kind of convention that they would have after being officially formed as a religion. And there he would meet a lot of movers and shakers, people with some money that are going to help him really, really bring Casadaga, Florida together to help him build up the camp. And a year later in 1894, Casadaga was officially, officially ready to go. Casadaga at this point would become the second most populated spiritual camp in the United States, second only to Lillydale, which again was up in New York. And Lillydale itself had a lake called Casadaga. So there is some whisperings that maybe George got the name from the lake, but there's also another explanation as to why or where he got the name Casadaga. Casadaga also means the rocks beneath the water. And it was this particular water at this particular lake that cured Colby of tuberculosis. Because you see, during this time, Colby ended up getting very sick. Tuberculosis was a terrible, terrible sickness that I think most of us are familiar with because it did kill a lot of people. At this point, when he got sick, Colby was once again traveling around being a medium, trying to build up excitement, anticipation about this new spiritualist camp. And it was Seneca that told Colby that in order to heal his tuberculosis, he needed to go back down to the homestead in Florida and drink from this particular lake. He also needed to inhale the pine needle smoke of burning pine needles. Again, this was, this is found in North Florida, not necessarily South Florida, but these pine trees are found in this area. Which pine needles are also a cure nowadays for these things. Interesting, right? Thought it was kind of interesting myself. And we also know in this area around the Jacksonville area, Casadaga area, that there's a lot of folklore around Ponce de Leon and his fountain of youth, the water. There's also many, many healing fountains, which I do, I've been to some of them and I do plan on covering a lot of the healing fountains that are in this area as well. Well, I've been to them, they're actual fountains, so the mystery isn't if they're there or not, they are there, I've been in them. It's just whether they actually have healing properties or not. So all these folklores around Ponce de Leon and the fountain of youth and all that kind of stuff, it's all kind of, you know, everything's adding up. Like there's something here, right? Obviously, that's why I love folklore so much. Folklore doesn't come from nothing. Darkness can't create anything, only the light can create. So where is the truth in this folklore? Is there something very special about the waters and the springs of this area? I think so, because as you guys know, you've been on this channel for a while. I believe that this area is actually the real Egypt. If you haven't been on this channel for a while and you're just now watching this, that might be shocking to hear me say, but stick around for a while. Hit that subscribe button and you over time will probably see a lot of those videos, videos pop up where I talk about this actually being the real Egypt. And as I said in the beginning, allegedly, there's a vortex in this town, the likes of Stonehenge. They still talk about that even in 2023. So there's obviously something very magical about this place. George Colby never married. He stayed single for the rest of his life, but he did adopt a lot of children, seven to be exact, six boys and one girl. When Colby passed away, he was buried in a nearby cemetery that has its own folklore and mystery and magic to it, which we will be covering on Monday mystery. But nonetheless, after his passing, the community of Cassadiga has continued to be in existence. It is a very sleepy small town and it is technically open during the winter time. Although in the state of Florida, you can pretty much go anytime and find a licensed psychic medium there. Just so you guys know me and a couple other people on YouTube are planning a trip down there as soon as we can when it's open and booming. So we can get tours and interviews for you guys to actually see this with your own two eyes. So with that being said, please let me know down in the comment section below. If you have ever been to Cassadiga, Florida or Lillydale or any of these other spiritualist camps, please let me know your thoughts and your opinions. And of course always be nice to each other and be looking out for our Monday mystery where we talk about the cemetery where George Colby was buried and the folklore and mystery surrounding that particular burial plot. Alright you guys, have a wonderful day.


Thank you very much. So far today we've heard the big picture and I've been absolutely fascinated in hearing it because what I need to talk about now is the practicalities, what we're actually doing. What I want you to think about as I go through the practicalities is does that resonate against the big picture that you've heard? Are the things that we're proposing to do, do they sound like the sorts of things that are going to go some way to helping you as organisations, you as leaders in the sector, address the future that you find in front of you. In putting together this program we've tried very hard, as Natalie has said, to listen to what the issues are that the community sector is facing. The community sector reform advisory group, many of whom are here today, work very, very closely with us and we wouldn't be here at all without their contribution. Many of the ideas came directly from them. One of the things that we realised is that we needed to focus on the issues that were common across the broadest range of the sector possibly. That meant we ended up focusing on issues that related to the leaders of organisations, the problems that leaders faced in organisations, the challenges that they had and we're of the view that they were pretty much common across the sector. When we started the NDIS was still an idea. Now that it's nearly here, it doesn't change anything in what we're doing but it certainly speeds the thinking up and speeds the urgency up. As Minister Barr said at the start, we ended up with five modules. This seminar today has been as part of not just the launch of the program but it's also been the first of those modules around sustainability, organisational sustainability and strategic risk. You've heard some of the issues around both of those today. We expect that we'll run events over the next 18 months that will continue to go to that issue. Sustainability of organisations and the things in there that are important. You heard Natalie just a minute ago talk about the importance of mission. Every one of the speakers today has talked about the importance of mission and as far as the sustainability and strategic risk module is concerned, then mission is at the heart of it and organisations understanding their missions and then how they interpret that, how they manifest it on the ground against the challenges that they're facing is going to be the core of that program. You also heard about another module which we actually started delivering in October because the demand was there for it immediately and that's the governance and financial management initiative. It goes to some of the issues that I remember seeing on one of David's slides about measurement, about pricing and those sorts of issues. It's a package that has comprised about $20,000 that is being delivered by a panel of providers, some of them are here today and it's available to organisations in the community sector to help them focus on those things. The governance of the organisation, the financial management, the financial issues, the business planning and what might need to change in any of those areas given the challenges that are coming. Again, depending on what part of the sector you might come from, the challenges will be slightly different but challenges there will be and the program that was designed was designed to be flexible enough to be focused on the issues of individual organisations and not just be a template that you do one of these, one of these and one of these, so to speak. The first 20 of those have been awarded and most of them have already been delivered. There's a handful more and as Natalie said, we've had tremendous response from those of you who have participated in it. One doesn't always get tremendous response when one's in government and running a program and so we've been delighted that it does seem to have met its mark and much and all as I would like to, I can't take the credit for that. I think the credit for that belongs to the many, many people who were involved in tying that program to the actual issues that organisations face, that's where the credit belongs. You heard Gillian Paul when she was talking about sector development for the NDIS, you heard her talk about the same program, Governments and Financial Management Initiative and through the funding provided by the Commonwealth Government, that same program has now been extended to another 40 odd organisations will have access to it. It's exactly the same as the one that we launched in October. The primary difference being is that this next tranche is focused on organisations that are currently delivering services in the disability area or who are working towards delivering services in the disability area for a post NDIS world. So there is a what we call a show and tell next Monday and advice has already gone out on that and I expect that there will be more advice coming out on it. The show and tell is essentially an opportunity for you as organisational leaders and I recommend that you come and not just yourself but bring the people who are most central to you working forward on the direction of your organisation.  They're the sort of people that should come and it's an opportunity to meet the panel. What will happen is that the panel members will talk about how they do their role, how they are carrying out the program and that gives you an opportunity to see which of these panel members sounds like the sort of organisation that I would like to work with. Our experience is that in the previous one is that they spread across different organisations, want to work with different members of the panel and I expect this time will be the same. And the only other thing I'll say about it is that you can expect a tremendous experience if the first tranche was anything to go by. That's two of the five modules that we're doing. I'll now move to the next one. Okay, that's collaboration and strategic alliances. This is the next one that we're going to actually deliver and the first will be later in April, the first element of that. And before we get into it a little bit more, this one again was driven by what we were hearing from the sector and to my mind, but maybe I'm just looking for the things that resonated with me, I was hearing similar things coming out in some of the speakers today. Essentially it's about mission and it's about collaboration. Our view is that the community sector and not just our view, I mean our collective view, including you, is that collaboration and working together is something that the community sector holds is a very important thing, but doesn't necessarily have the experience working together both with itself and with us that is going to be so vital when it comes to the blueprint down the track, when it comes to meeting the challenges that are coming. So we've got a whole module that will focus on that. It will start with a workshop that will look at the different aspects, if you like, of collaboration.  That's one form of collaboration. Different organisations working together on service delivery. Another form of collaboration might be organisations that are sharing back of office functions as a means of reducing their overheads, but for other purposes they may appear to be separate and distinct. So there's collaboration around fundraising, there's collaboration against many, many different forms of collaboration. There's organisations that are merging together and there's been a number of those in the sector over the last couple of years and we wouldn't be surprised to see more. As far as this module is concerned, that's simply another form of collaboration and is just as valid as any of the others. So the way this module works is we'll have that first workshop that will explore the different facets of collaboration. Then what we want to do is develop communities of interest. So we want to, the organisations that are interested in one form of collaboration versus another, we want to see them come together. Our role as a catalyst is to find sources of expertise and advice that we can match with. So if there's a group of people who are interested in back of office working together on sharing back of office, then where's the expertise that we can bring together with that group to explore that? If they're interested in working together on service delivery, where's the expertise that we can bring together for that and so on. And the module from there will go in a series of self-directed sessions, if you like, with those groups of interest until they reach a logical conclusion, which will either be they will come together and collaborate in some way or, having explored it, they'll decide not to. It's not for us to say what the answer should be, just that here's the opportunity to work through different aspects of collaboration and decide which of those might be right for you. One of the modules that came out of the program was working with government. I don't know if that's the next one. Sorry, I've mucked you up there a little bit, but that's okay. The little starburst you saw in that last slide we took from Skyfire as, and we thought it was a nice way of representing groups of people coming together and working and then reforming and working again. Working with government. Again, that's something you've heard about today. You've heard Minister Barr, you've heard David Crosby and others talk about the realities for government from a financial perspective into the future. Fine. That's all true, but that doesn't mean that government is going away. It doesn't mean that even in our more constrained future that we won't still be here and we won't still be working with you and that we won't still need you as partners to deliver the outcomes that we are all sharing. So essentially the program that we're looking at there is got three strands to it. So the first strand you can see at the top, two parts to it. One of it is understanding government and some people in the sector have lots of experience in government. They probably don't need this, but there are plenty of others who've never worked in government and it's, we believed and the working group believed that it would be advantageous for them to understand the sorts of issues that occupy us. You heard Natalie earlier talk about fitting the development of the blueprint in with the budget cycle. If you don't understand the budget cycle, if you don't understand when decisions are made, then you won't have a sense of when it is the right time to talk to the government about something. If you don't understand that if you write to a minister, that the minister will send the letter to someone like me who will write the response, then it's not a bad thing, it's a very good thing in fact, but if you don't understand that then you're at a disadvantage. So one part of the program is about understanding government. The other part is making sure that we understand the sector better and we saw this as a series of sessions that could be run once every six months or once every year that provide an opportunity to look at each other's world and then come together at the end of that session and share something. The next module is an extension of this concept of working with government. We call this undiscovered country because we think there is a fair bit of undiscovered country between the two of us. This is one where it'll take a little bit of time to put the practical details in place. So this component won't be starting for a few months yet, but essentially what we're looking at is the opportunity to provide practical experience for people in the sector of our world and vice versa. I know one of the most useful experiences in my career as a public servant was the opportunity to go and work in a private sector organisation for six months. That was tremendous. I learned a lot that I was able to bring back into government and to take forward. So I'm not saying that this is a six month program of secondments but we are looking at ways in which we can share that understanding in a deep and practical way for the mutual benefit of all of us. The last component is the one that you heard Natalie talk about. We think that Minister Barr and the government introduced some reforms around contracting, procurement and reporting in December. They're quite significant. They will make a real change to the way we do things and in turn that will flow through the system to a real change in the way you do things with the most immediate benefit of that being a reduction of the impact of the relationship with the government on you. In other words the underlying model is that if you were to have as many resources as possible to deliver and put towards the outcome then we should be consuming as few of those as we possibly can commensurate with good governance but we should be consuming as few as possible. So the reforms that the government implemented and a note went out earlier this year about those but those reforms are designed to have a reduction in our impact on you in an administrative sense. If they don't tell us, but that said I'm very very confident that they will have a positive impact. We again sitting in a government sitting behind a government computer it's very easy to think well this would work you know that seems sensible let's just do it like that yep yep that meets all my requirements and out it goes and everyone has to do it that way. Because I have little confidence in my ability to do that very easily then as Natalie said and as we discussed in the community sector reform advisory group on Thursday we're looking at a group of people with operational experience operational experience on your side of the fence of dealing with government to look at the proposals before they actually get implemented. In other words it might seem sensible to do it in such and such a way but we might have missed something obvious or there might have been a clever way to do it so it doesn't cost very much in time or effort to ask those questions but it does cost a great deal in time or effort to change a process once it's gone in and I'd much rather spend a little bit longer in road testing the concepts and making sure we get them right rather than just jump straight in. So that's what doing some work together means that means using a practical example of some reforms that were developed initially through working together and now we'll implement that in the next couple of weeks and then we'll start getting your views as well. Finally the last module of the program is one on tendering and procuring, tendering and procurement. This one again breaks into two components. It's into components because there was a lot of discussion about the relationship between the sector and the government when it comes to procuring and I'll come back to that and there was a lot of discussion about what it means on your side of the fence so we saw the light and we split it into two. On your side tendering and procurement that module will go back to the thing that we've talked about many times today and that's mission and feedback that we got from lots of organisations lots of and by organisations I don't know, organisations that are in the business of delivering services and being funded for those services or paid for those services and it kept coming back to mission. In other words the message we were getting was don't take on a program if it's not core to your mission because it will just hurt you in the long run. That's as much a commercial perspective as a community sector perspective so there's a lot of discussion between funding opportunities if you like on programs that are being funded by the government and mission and around issues around the and it won't be delivered by me because I'm not the right person but there will be people with expertise in doing precisely this that will talk about the decisions that they go through when they decide should they go through it. Is it within our mission to do that yes or no? Is this new opportunity a legitimate area for development for our business and our strategic plan has already identified it or no? Are we being opportunistic or are we being true to our mission? So we'll look at those sorts of issues from the perspective of people who have to make those decisions every day. That's the procurement of the government for by the government of services. You've heard that we're shifting to a more outcome focus and that's not going to change but there will always be procurement and for a very long time I assume depending on whether the NDIS experiment is successful and but certainly for the foreseeable future we're anticipating that there will be procurement and the feedback we were getting from you in the sector was that it is important that you understood how we did our procurement and it is the revised improved procurement that we're talking about for this module so that you understand why and how governments make their decisions that they make about procurement might still be a mystery at the end of it but if it's less of a mystery it will have served its purpose. So in essence five modules designed to address the sorts of things that we heard from you in the sector as being important. Five modules that we felt and we certainly hope resonated with the issues that leaders of organisations have to face as they go forward into a world of significantly more challenges than have been in the past. Five modules that we think will run for the next 18 months or so and I should say five modules that come from the co-development or the contribution that community sector organisations have made. So when I'm asked over time what did we get from the 0.34 contribution that we made well what we've been talking about today is some but not all of what you're getting from that investment because it's not a contribution it's an investment by you in things that we hope are important to you and that prove to be important to you and that's it. Now there's one other thing to say and that is I put around a little card earlier what I'd like you to do is to have a look at that card and just let us know maybe by writing one to five which of those are the most important to you in terms of priority that will just help us with our timing for some elements and for staging things so since we had you all here we couldn't resist getting some direct and immediate feedback I think there's a table there that's short. Thank you. I'm happy to answer questions of course. Given a great outline of some of the things that are to come ahead in terms of building that capacity I can see some hands going up already so just to recap the task at hand is labelling the modules from one to five to help these guys in the process of prioritisation and sequencing to be working with you to meet the most urgent needs and they'll be collected from the tables. I did see some questions already so there's one over here to start with. Thanks Robert. Just a question about who can attend are there two or three members from each organisation or just one or how many people can we have participating in the modules? There's no absolute restriction well sorry I'll come at that another way there will ultimately be an absolute restriction depending on and if you thought that was a neat 360 then it may well have been. So what we intend to do is to do something similar to what we did for the Governance of Financial Management Initiative and have done for a couple of other things so we want it to be as open as possible for the people that benefit. There are some things that have been first in best dressed on the basis that we thought that would best meet the demand. Other things we'll say this is going to work best if we have the decision makers there. There might be three for an organisation I have no problem with that but it might different ones might have different mixes but as we go out we'll talk about that. So for example if a lot of people are interested in collaboration then if that means we have to get additional maybe split a working group into two then we'd look at doing that so that more can participate. So I haven't got a firm answer other than that eventually you do reach a limit but we want it to get to the people who make decisions in particular we think that's who will benefit most.


Hello. Who's ready for SEO? Okay, great. Another minute. Settle in. Okay, awesome. Thank you guys so much for coming here today. I'm very honored and privileged to be here. This is my fifth year attending WordCamp and fourth year speaking, so this is always such a fun time. So I am vertically challenged and I am staying on time challenged, so I get yelled at every year because I go over.  It's a group effort here. So SEO for 2015, when I was really analyzing what to talk about with SEO, this is this is really what I wanted to talk about because everybody has so many questions and really is SEO still relevant in 2015? So that really was what I wanted to talk about today because I really think this is the year where we we stop and we try to get out the misperceptions about SEO in our head and we almost start from scratch. So 2015 is the year to get back to basics. So a few things that I want to talk about over the next 35-ish minutes. These are the goals that I have for you guys. First of all, understanding that SEO is not black magic. I still hear that all the time. And I really think that undermines the work that goes into SEO. So what I call SEO is mostly it's just sweat equity, rolling up your sleeves and getting down to business to do the the practice and the discipline of optimizing your website. So there's really nothing black magic about it. I really want you guys to to understand that as well so you can tell people when they say something. No, it's not black magic. The second thing again, working the fundamentals. The the basics of SEO have not changed in a number of years. So being able to understand that and to stick to the plan of of getting the good solid basics on your website is really important. So when I work with clients it can be, you know, I've got giant national websites that I work on and then small business websites. And the issues are the same across the board is they're lacking the foundation of the basics. So that's really important and we'll cover a lot of that today. And then it's a marathon, not a sprint. So people still talk to me like how do I get up to number one fast or what can I do that's going to give me on the first page fast. And I have to break the news. I mean, continuously that the SEO is definitely a marathon. And if you need quick results or you're about to go out of business, then you need to do paperclip or something else that's more instantaneous because SEO is not a quick fix anymore. But okay, so all of that being said is that SEO is a gigantic pain in the butt. Like I know it. Nobody likes SEO, but I do when she'd understand that it is absolutely worth it. So hopefully those will also be y'all's takeaways and goals to that. Again, it's it's it is a bit of a pain, but it is worth it. And then so my little picture of the matrix.  But if you guys were going to stay ignorant about what it took to optimize your site, to be clear, you guys now being here are taking the red pill. So we're going to face the hard reality truth of what SEO really is because after that, you're golden. We're all on the same page starting to understand the importance of working the fundamentals. So you guys are about to take the red pill. Okay, okay. So what we're really going to cover, though, our little table of contents defining SEO. So everybody has their own definition. And I certainly have mine. And I want to cover again, the most basic fundamentals. Well, what is SEO? The second to understand where we are now, you have to understand where we've been.  Well, what's the purpose of doing SEO because it changes every day? Do you guys feel like that SEO changes all the time? Yeah, so I want to tell you why that is and how not to feel like that anymore. And that's all about the history. And then again, what is in now? So what does SEO for 2015 look like? And again, it's working the fundamentals, and then we'll recap everything. Before I talk about me, I want to find out the just a general skill level in the room. Who are my SEO newbies? Okay, and who is on the opposite spectrum? Who's pretty well versed with SEO? Okay, good.  Okay, awesome. Okay, so then a quick overview about me. I started my freelance business about six years ago. That was me with my very first check. I met a business owner at the Atlanta bloggers meetup and he immediately hired me as soon as I became a freelancer. That was my first networking event. He hired me to write two press releases for $125. I know. And that was it. I thought, okay, I've arrived, you know, come on, start, you know, the people are going to be beating down the door to work with me, right? So I got into my UGA Snuggie. And I set to work becoming a copywriter, but I finished our project pretty quickly. And after that, I kind of waited for the business to keep coming. And it didn't. And so after a while, my husband was like, Oh, your little business is precious, but you kind of need to start bringing in some money. So, so that's when I sucked it up and finally realized I had to do something to make that happen. So I, you know, connected with referral partners and got on LinkedIn and I went to networking events quite a bit. And then I also did two very smart things. I put up a WordPress website like Judy was talking about earlier, do it yourself WordPress website because I'm not technical. But I could still put it up. And that gave me a lot of confidence. And it gave me the showcase. So I put up a WordPress website and that's one of the reasons again, this is my fifth year being here. I love WordPress and I love this community. The second thing I did was I knew without a doubt that people were out there searching for the keyword Atlanta Copywriter. And I wanted to find out what it took to get to the top of Google. And I set out to make that happen. So I just learned SEO on my own. I optimized my own website and sure enough, after a little while, people were finding me. And that really helped drive leads into my pipeline. So that while I was out there trying to get business or talking to referral partners, or I was in my snuggy working on my website projects, people were continuously reaching out to me and it helped me have a stable business instead of a lot of ups and downs and a lot of freelancers experience. So fast forward to today, I evolved from copywriter to SEO copywriter to now SEO strategy and training and consulting and talking like this. So I'm absolutely an open book and I came from the School of Hard Knocks like a lot of you guys probably will be. I guess I better get back. Okay. So who wants to play a little game? Everybody? Okay, good. So true or false? So please just yell out the answers. True or false? Using keywords is still important. True or false? True. Okay. I'm not going to tell you the answers yet. Keyword density of four and a half percent per 350 words of copy is still a good rule of thumb for 2015. Okay. Writing title tags and meta descriptions is still imperative for SEO. True. Okay. This is a good link building tactic. You link to me and I'll link to you. Good. Okay. Guest blogging is a good way to get lots of links fast. True or false? Okay. Okay. I'll come back to the answer. Link building is dead. Okay. SEO is all about content. Okay. Social media is the new SEO. I'll come back to the answer. PR not paid drink public relations. PR is the new SEO. Okay. Okay. So let's go back. So kind of like get to the point. Okay. I purposefully put some ambiguous questions in there because that's the problem with SEO these days. There's nothing black or white right now. So let me go back over the answers really quickly. But this is stuff that it's still, you know, which one is the answer? What is so prevalent? One expert says this. Another expert says this. So using keywords is still important. That's absolutely true because all keywords are, it's marketing 101. Keywords are the language of your customer. And over and over when I ask people, if you guys were here in the last session, well, what's your keyword is because that's what people are using in their minds all too often. I see businesses trying to be way too clever and to describe themselves in this crazy way that nobody understands it. But what I always say is clarity Trump's cleverness every single time. So keywords are just the words that your target market is using in their mind. So absolutely, you don't spam keywords all over the page anymore like people used to do, but they're definitely still important to use. The next keyword density, that's just you no longer need to follow this formula. Unfortunately, there really is no formula. It's a little bit of understanding SEO fundamentals with common sense with marketing applied in there and then whatever your business is, but you definitely do not have to follow any kind of a formula, which kind of stinks. Everybody wants a formula, right? Just give us a checklist and be done. But that definitely is out for 2015 and has been for a while now. Title tags and meta descriptions. So this is something that I drill into clients heads title tags. Absolutely. It's the most important place to put a keyword. Meta descriptions are very important, not for really, I don't want to get too intricate, but they're more so important so that people actually when you do rank, then they click on your website and come back. So those are two of the most important things for SEO and to really master the fundamentals. I want you guys to just not fear the word title tag. So title tag, title tag, title tag, title tag. Okay, don't be afraid of that because knowing some of these core words to SEO is really important. So don't be afraid of it. And we'll maybe go into if anybody doesn't know what that is, we'll go into it. But again, these are core words of SEO that you don't have to be afraid of anymore. So still very important. Link building tactics. So you link to me and I'll link to you. That's reciprocal linking and Google just kind of ignores the links now. It used to be a big practice to try to build up links. And well, you know, we just meet each other out there in the hall and well, here's my business card we link to me and I'll link to you. You don't need to do that anymore. If it makes sense, I get to good common sense reason you're linking to another business and they might link to you then absolutely do it but let common sense prevail, you no longer need to try to, you know, do things like, like that too much. And guess blogging, guess blogging can still be a really good business practice, but the rule of thumb is you do it because it's a good business practice, not just for the link anymore. So you can still get maybe one or two guest blog links per month, but you don't want to get like a past client of mine did, you need to get me Jenny 125 guest blog post links a month. That is definitely out and could get you penalized. Link building is dead. Everything with SEO is dead. Everybody wants SEO to go away. And I don't really blame you for that. Traditional link building is dead, but getting good backlinks that are relevant to your website is still very much alive. And SEO is all about content. I think most of you guys said true. And that's, that's hard SEO is a lot about content, but there's still a lot of other things that have to come into play is your website technically optimal can Google even come in and crawl the back end of the website appropriately. Is it mobile responsive? Is it fast to load? Do you have any links? Do you have, you know, fresh content along with your content you wrote six months ago? There's other things that have to come into play, but content good quality content is more important than ever. And then social media is a new SEO. I think social media people a few years ago got so excited that SEO is dead that I saw headlines pop up all the time that social media is the new SEO. Again, that's only partially true. Social media sends really great signals to Google that people are visiting your website from other places. It's a way to get your content found and out there. And again, if people find you that could be potential customers that could find your content and link back to it. But social media is only a piece of what contributes to SEO. It's not the full thing. So again, these are why SEO is just so complicated because it's, you know, that is the truth, but only a partial truth. And PR is a new SEO. So then I think after social media people got so excited SEO is dead, then the PR pros got so excited to and started proclaiming that PR is the new SEO. And it's true that good PR can net you great mentions and great links. I had a client who paid their PR agency 10,000 a month and they got great links from really high authority publications. So PR could be a way to help contribute to SEO, but it is not replacing SEO. So that's again, just a little thing to demonstrate why SEO is so confusing in people's minds. But the thing is, if you work the foundation, if you stop and you just throw everything out, we don't have to throw everything out. But starting from scratch, if you build that foundational, the basics level of SEO, that will help you guard against sensationalized articles and people that try to sway you to other things and you'll just have a very focused plan. So again, the basics will help you not get so confused. Because once you understand, then you can use your common sense judgment about what all this means. And if it's applicable to you, if it's a shiny object, or if you should just continue on with your plan. So what is SEO? I heard someone asked that in the Google Analytics session. And I forget that people still don't know SEO search engine optimization at its most basic core. And I realize that that's probably hard to see. But with SEO, it's a way to drive traffic to your website. What I always say is it's so important to diversify the way you're driving traffic. So how people get to your website, it could be direct, where they type it in directly. It could be referral. So maybe you have a listing at Kudzu or Yellow Pages, or you have a partner, a joint venture partner, someone mentioned you, maybe a blogger wrote about you, maybe you have your speaker at WordCamp, and someone was at the WordCamp website, and then they saw your listing and they clicked over WordCamp would be the referral. So and then social media, people could see you on social and then come back to your site. SEO is only one piece of that puzzle. So it doesn't replace any of that, it just gets added to it. So again, you should have different ways that people are coming to your site. And that's what SEO is. It's just one way to drive traffic to your website. So when people say, well, Jenny, should I do paper click or SEO? Or should I do Facebook marketing or SEO? It just depends on, well, how quickly do you want to see results? What are your goals and resources? Because it shouldn't be an either or it should be, well, which one is a priority now based on your needs? So again, you just have to evaluate your resources. But again, it's just one piece of the pie. It's not the holy grail. When I get leads into my website, or even business, so evaluating the past few clients that have come to me last month, I think maybe 30% of them came from SEO. So I still have to go out there. I still have to meet referral partners. I still ask for referrals for my current clients, but SEO helps drive consistent leads into my pipeline. And that's what it should just do is drive consistent traffic along with everything else you're already doing. So, you know, when new businesses come to me, should I do SEO possibly, but you should also probably do other things. I build up the foundation of your website and maybe the next step is SEO. And so again, what is SEO? This is something we were talking about earlier as well is that when people type in my name, Jenny Mann or Jenny SEO, that's great. And I want that it shows brand reputation. But that's not true SEO. What I consider true SEO and true keywords are when people type in something that indicates they don't know I exist yet. It's words around a product or a service or solution or information. If they know me, that's great. But that's not true SEO. I want keywords that indicate people don't know who I am. They're looking to shortlist other providers. So does that make sense that people always get so excited when they rank for their own name? And I'm like, well, that's great. I hope you rank for your own name. But that's not true SEO. Oh, that's hard to see too. Let me see if I can magnetize the screen a little bit. How is that? Does that help at all? No. We're gonna get really big. Okay. Well, maybe a little bit. So what that says is SEO for business owners, SEO lead generation, SEO learning, SEO time. There's a few more on there. SEO training Atlanta, WordPress training. Those are the keywords that I'm looking for when I'm talking about true SEO. Again, people don't know Jenny Mann. They just know that that's what they're looking for. And that's the specific type of SEO. And generally, when I start working with a client and I always want to look in their analytics to see, well, what keywords are landing people on your site right now? Generally, what I see are a mix of brand names and the variation of their names. But this is what SEO is to try to help these other keywords come to your website. Okay. So how do you know if SEO is working? Again, the very first thing I do when someone says, well, I'm not getting any SEO results, I open up their analytics and I take a look to see what keywords are driving people to their website. And what I generally see, the keywords that are there are a direct reflection of the content that's on your site. So what I'm telling businesses and looking at their websites, you have to be clear. What is your keyword? What is your noun? Are you a consultant, a firm, an agency, a company, services, consulting? What do people use to describe you? Because if you're not seeing those words, then you're probably not using them on your website. So again, looking at analytics, looking at your keywords, that's a direct reflection of what is happening and how Google is seeing people interact with that. So to get those true keywords, you have to purposely modify your content or write new content around that. And I realize that kind of sounds spammy, is write content around those keywords. But again, keywords are the language of your customers. And if those are the words that people are using and you're not using them, then possibly there's a disconnect. So again, that's the major thing is that people haven't purposefully written in and made that connection between what's in a prospect's mind and what they call what you do versus what you call what you do. And then yeah, if you were in the Google Analytics session, how you would find this, I wish I don't have time in my 35 minutes to take you guys through this, but you go under acquisitions, search engine optimization, and then the queries report, you do have to do a little integration. But that data is free and absolutely like Ken, who was up here talking about Google Analytics, the basics. If you just look at the front page of your analytics to look at the bounce rate and the page is visited, the time on site, that's great. But if SEO is in your mind, the next thing you want to do is look under the SEO report because there's a wealth of information in there. And absolutely, if you're doing your website's SEO or you're in charge of the marketing, this is this is this is my report. This is what I look at when proving ROI and when I need to help companies get to where they want to go. This is the report and it's free and it's awesome. So again, what is SEO? SEO is the practice and the discipline of making your content findable, whether that's a home page, your services page, a blog page, a press release, an article, a case study, whatever is on your site, whatever content is on your site that makes sense for someone to land on it, that's what SEO is. It's making your content findable. And again, what it is, if someone were to Google web design consultant Atlanta, it's just having your website be up there, prominent, standing in front of them at the time that they're looking. And if you just add this in, it helps you be consistent with whatever your website goals are. So in the last website critique session we were in, you know, there was a blog website. Well, why do you want to drive people there? What keywords would they use to look for you? It all has to relate back to the overall goal of your business. And what do you even want your website traffic to do? So SEO will definitely help with that. And again, it's not going to take over anything you're doing. It's just going to be, it's just this wonderful whole other channel that can be added on to the way that people find you and that they, you get awareness and that they discover your business and who you are. So it's, it's not the holy grail. You know, Google and SEO is not magic. It's not going to magically save your business, but it can be a really important way that you drive traffic to your website. It's pretty awesome. Okay. So the history of SEO. So as I mentioned, to understand where we are today, we have to understand where we've been.   So once upon a time, there was the story of what people used to do to get SEO. And it was called meta tag keyword overloading. And this is why SEO used to be a very technical discipline because it took someone technical to go into the back end of the code and put in as many keywords and as many variations as possible. And this is how people used to succeed at SEO. Just take all the keywords and just put them into the back end of the code. And then came, well, we're using keywords on the back end of the code. We should also use them on the front part of the website. So how many times can we work a keyword into the copy? So I love to blog. Blogging is a lot of fun. So I blog a lot. When my friend asked me about blogging, I tell them I blog all day and blog all night. For me, to blog is to live. Blog, blog, blog. That's all I do. And then the other one is about contact lens and discount contact lens and imitation. You know, so that's what people used to do to and for a while that worked. And that was really sad. And then when that stopped working, then came the discipline of the bad way to do link building. And you saw sites like Fiverr, who would put up these little ads. And I will spin and submit your article to 7,400 article directories and get you 500 plus Google backlinks for $5. Or I will manually build 150 high paid drink backlinks for $5. Or Spammy blog commenting. Has anybody ever gotten a Spammy comment on your blog or your website?  So the website would be hyperlink to the name. So this whole business popped up where all Spammers would do would come to our websites and leave these nonsensical Spammy auto-generated comments because it linked back to their website. So that practice popped up. And then I was just talking with some web designers the other day they were like, do you remember that day we would put the keywords and the links and the black code and the black background or the black font and the black background. And this right here, that little arrow is pointing to the words, the hyperlink SEO back to an SEO agency and it's in white font in that white background. So people used to hide their links and that worked for a while.  Again, it used to work and that's why SEO was a very technical discipline. Penguin came along. If you guys have heard a huge update a few years ago called Penguin, it was an algorithm change and it took down sites. It pretty much wiped them off the face of Google if you had a lot of bad spammy links. Now a lot of legit businesses unfortunately did get hit because maybe they didn't know what their SEO agency was doing. They had no idea or maybe they just thought they could get away with it because their competitors were doing the same thing and they just had to do it. But Google said that's not what we intended with SEO and that is no longer going to work. Also came Panda. Panda was another update that happened right around the same time and it was saying websites that have duplicate content or thin which is minimal content or low quality content or over optimized content you're out of here too because it's a bad user experience and that just that never should have worked. That's not what Google or SEO ever intended. It just happened to work for a while. So when people say Google changes all the time, they don't change all the time for funsies. They change to try to stay ahead of tactics like that. Does that make sense? Yeah. So poopers. You can't even see that but I will describe it to you. So does everybody know Mickey Mellon? He helped co-organize Word Camp. He's awesome. He had tweeted to me on a weekend. He was like, Jenny stat, get into this Facebook group and back me up. Help me. Because there was this person who was on this, you know, a good legit business marketing Facebook group and was saying, hey, the first 10 people that chime in I'll build you 3000 links to your website for free. And all these website owners were biting over the clamoring to get into that. This just happened like a week ago.  And he was like, no, I do it all the time. I do it for my own website. You'll be fine. So people unfortunately still fall prey to these easy, quick tactics. And I hope that they don't get penalized one day. If anything, Google will probably just ignore that. But that's why SEO is a little bit confusing because this still exists. And there's a lot of misperceptions out there. Unfortunately, content lives online forever. So people still find bad things. Maybe they just aren't schooled enough to know what works. But now you guys know this stuff doesn't work anymore. And it's actually, can you guys just take a sigh of relief with me like? Thank goodness, it doesn't because that stuff it's too hard to keep up with all the time. So that stuff is is out of here. Thank goodness. But again, this is why people say, well, SEO changes all the time. Why should I bother doing it? That's just not true. But it's when there are Google updates and the general people like us just don't understand why because you're not maybe doing those spammy stuff. And if anybody in here is doing that spammy stuff, I know there's some technical people who used to do that. It's okay that you did in the past. We'll forgive you but come to the new way. And then again, why social is the new SEO? Is SEO dead? Google updates and says press releases now will get you penalized because people then span press releases all over the place. So anything people do in scale, that's what gets you penalized. But again, it's just a little bit confusing for us that maybe didn't understand. That's all the question. Yeah, I don't know. I think I think he I was reading it because I was like, Mickey, I'm not going to go in there. You know, and that's a whole different story because Mickey went in there and tried to say, this is bad.  I'm not going to get it. Yeah, he was he threatened Mickey. And I was like, sorry, Mickey, you're on your end. So I don't know. I think he thought that it was a good thing. And I think he was trying to be helpful. Maybe he was because that is a practice. Did I see another question? Yeah, right. And just because you have the back link doesn't mean anybody is clicking on the back link and coming over. They're just seeing it exists. And if it's not relevant, especially if all of a sudden you're late spike, Google is going to be very system that. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. What was the question? Hold on. Sorry. Oh, isn't it? Wait, what? Isn't it common sense to not have that work? To see that that number of links for that little money? Yeah, it doesn't really. Yeah, it doesn't really make sense. OK, did I see it? Thank you. I see another question. No, OK. OK, so this is just a partial summary of what is out. Because again, people got very creative with trying to manipulate and get their websites up there. I'm telling you, people did some really creative stuff like kudos to them for like outwitting Google until, again, another update comes. But here's just a partial list of what is out. Again, reciprocal linking, not because, you know, I submitted a guest blog post maybe to Judy's website. And then I linked and said, hey, check out my guest blog post. That's OK, because that's a common sense business practice. The reciprocal linking is when people did it at a ridiculous level or they put up all these links that made no sense just because the fact that they were reciprocal linking. Buying sponsored links, if you pay for any kind of a link, you can do that. You know, there's advertising, but you can't do it for SEO purposes. Low quality guest blogging, again, when you submit a low quality article to a low quality site just for that backlink, that's definitely out. Same with low quality directory links. So what people would do is create all these websites that were directories. All these directory sites popped up and nobody would ever legitimately visit those websites and people would charge, you know, again, $50 or $5 to submit your website to hundreds of directories. That's pretty much out unless it's a very high quality, relevant directory. Oh, I feel bad saying overseas link building, but I've never seen an overseas company that understands the real way to do SEO today. Submitting low quality press releases to low quality sites. Again, don't be afraid of press releases if you have a genuine business need for a press release, absolutely do it. But if you're just doing press releases for SEO purposes, then you can forget about that. It's not gonna work anymore. Again, same with blog commenting, same with article marketing.  Then content and duplicate content. I talk about this all the time that when you have, especially for my poor local businesses, when you do business in Atlanta and Dunwoody and Brookhaven and Roswell and Marietta and East Cobb, and you have all these places that you wanna service, but you can no longer put up the same website page and just change out Roswell for Marietta for Brookhaven for Buckhead for Atlanta, that's not really okay to do anymore. And I know it's a struggle to get unique content up for every single website page, but it's just what you have to do these days. And then keyword stuffing. Thank goodness, as a copywriter, I started out six years ago when I started doing SEO copywriting. I couldn't believe what I was seeing out there. Again, I believe in writing for the reader and in turning that megaphone the other way so you talk about them and for them and not just about yourself. So to see the keyword stuffing that was working was very painful. Again, it doesn't work these days. Thank goodness, you can really write for your readers. So in 2015, traditional, the old way of doing SEO, that is dead, and that's out. And the modern way, the happy way, yay, of doing SEO is definitely in. And that's all about back to the basics. So you build this foundational core knowledge of SEO that really, that's the part that hasn't changed in a number of years. And that's fun, because SEO, again, it's the who. It's who is visiting your website and what's in their mind and how can you always make sure your website is meeting that goal. So in the last website critique we were doing, you know, where's your social proof? Where's your testimonials? What about your about page? That's the new SEO is making sure everything on your website is sending the right signals to your target market and then just doing a few purposeful things for Google. So SEO is simpler than ever, but it's still not easy because you still have to put in the work.  That's the part that there's purposeful activities and things that you need to do. And again, is SEO all about content? Yes, but there's also a mesh of other things that have to come into place.  Google wants to rank websites where the answer is definitively yes. I would give that site my credit card. I would trust them in a heartbeat. They look very legit and I'm going to check out and see more what they're about. Google wants to rank legit websites and we have to have those signals showing us that. Okay, so I'll take the last question and it was talking about keyword stuffing. Is there a minimum number of times you should use that keyword? Is that the right question? Okay, thank you. Yeah, so there is a working your keyword into the copy. It's an ardent science and it's a science because we know the correct places but the keyword. You put your keyword in the title tag. You put your keyword in the main heading, the H1 of the page. You put your keyword as is if you can two to three times in the body of the copy. Maybe once in the first paragraph, but it all has to make common sense. So if you had a friend read it and they could pick out immediately what the keyword was, then you should maybe take it out. So again, it's an art and a science because it has to make common sense but you do know two to three times if you can and then use synonyms and variations and just write naturally with whatever the page is about. So yes there is, but again, if it's too formulaic, if it doesn't read nicely, if you can't get creative enough with working it in, then take it out an instance until it makes common sense when you read it. And then your first question. Why would you wanna do that? And are you putting the same article? Okay, so the question was spinning articles. How do you make that work? Are you putting that same spun article on your site or on someone else's site? Right, okay, so you have a personal blog and then you have a cosmetics website. And why aren't they the same? Why don't you just make them into one website? Okay, and again, people in the past, they would have like 10 different sites and they would buy as many domains as possible, like Atlanta Cosmetics, Atlanta Cosmetics expert, you know, and they would buy lots of URLs. You know, I was a coach to do this. Yeah. That's my opinion. Okay, so she said she was coached to do that is to have maybe the two different websites and yeah, these days, the thing is it's so hard to have one super awesome website, let alone try to maintain two. So if they serve the same purpose, you know, I hate saying to merge them into one because I don't know that could be extra work and budget on your part, but that's what you have to do because yeah, it's hard maintaining two sites that are very similar. I would absolutely merge them into one and make it a super awesome website.  Yeah, oh yes, Claudia. And the websites all just redirect back to the main URL. Okay, well if she's doing that for a legit reason because what was the stationary website? Like crap, I don't know, does stationary have an E or an A? I don't know. So anyway, so if it's for spelling, then she is correct to buy it and redirect it back. But if she's, and if it's different spellings, if it's because of that, then it redirects, that's okay. If it's for SEO, Google will just kind of ignore it. She is not gonna get any bonus points for having different URLs with keywords in them and redirect them. Google will ignore it mostly. That's a great, oh, oh so she has like health writer, medical writer, all that and is redirecting it back. I mean, she probably did it for SEO then and it's just, it's not hurting but it's not helping. So just don't buy up URLs just for the sake of it. Oh, that's funny, is that a plugin? Oh, I'm sorry. So her thing is that she's a photographer and when she puts in her keyword somewhere, something is flagging that it's like dangerous. Like you've already used this keyword somewhere. Oh, okay, it's not dangerous. You feel bad? Is it a plugin that alerts you? Is it your Yoast plugin maybe? Okay. Oh yeah, yeah, okay, it gives you the colors. Yeah, that's the Yoast plugin. Okay. Well, so you're putting in your keyword, yay, that's great. Senior portraits, you want every single website page? Oh, oh, okay, good point. No, that's actually another misperception. Now people take a big grab onto this keyword and they just use it on every single page and that's a really missed opportunity. The reason is Google is probably only going to rank one page of your website with that keyword. So if they see you've got multiple website pages with that same keyword, they'll just kind of ignore it and put it in that, have you guys ever seen at the bottom of Google that we've omitted or there's duplicate results in here, they're just gonna probably hide the rest of your pages because they say it's a bad user experience if they're showing five results from the same website. They wanna show different websites on page one or page two. So you should have one core page that has to do with senior photographers or senior portraits and then you can write blog posts about but you don't wanna keep using the keyword senior portraits, senior portraits, senior portraits. Good question, I love it. So the question is, so she does senior portraits and wedding portraits and dog portraits and all these other type of portraits, like what do you blog about then? How do you not keep using the same keyword over and over? You need to do keyword research and find out what are some of the longer tail keywords that people use, like variations. So what I always say is you wanna be greedy, like this is the time to get greedy. You want any and every variation that has to do with your main keyword. So find all the different ways, like senior portraits, like what about high school pictures for my kid? You know what I mean? Like people could Google that, that's like a long tail phrase. So find different ways that people say that and use those. You mean always have something like a keyword? You should always have one page but if you had blog posts that all had to do with senior portraits you always wanna link it back to the main page you want to rank. Is that a confusing topic? Yes, that's the page you want to rank. Yeah, yeah, link it back to the senior page. Yeah, link it back to the core page. That's, that could still rank but it should rank for a variation or a long tail. No, you don't have to make up words. You don't have to worry about the SEO then that much. I mean, just link to your main page that you want to rank. Okay, cool, hold on guys. Let me just check on my timer real fast so Judy doesn't not let me speak ever again. Okay, crap, we have three minutes. I'm sorry. Okay, wait, let me see how many slides I have left. Okay, so sorry. Can I come back to questions at the end guys? I'm so sorry. Let me just make sure I continue to go through. I'm sorry. Okay, so trustworthiness. Would you give this site your credit card? Your site, absolutely, and this is again, web designers. If you haven't updated your site in a number of years, it's probably time. Not only because there is a significant mobile update coming April 21st. Google has sent out the warnings that we will reward sites. You're not gonna get penalized if you don't have a mobile responsive site but we will reward sites in Google if yours is mobile friendly. So maybe it's a good time. You know, again, your meeting web designers here, absolutely, but your site absolutely has to look, feel and act extremely trustworthy where people wouldn't hesitate to give your site their credit card. It has to be that good. That's the type of site Google wants to rank. So again, an updated professional looking design, social proof. I can't tell you how important social proof is to keep people on your page. Clear messaging and persuasive copy. I think that's the number one thing. You have to help your visitors self-identify and take them along this little journey in your copy to help them understand why you're the best person for the job. Engagement, are you keeping your readers engrossed in clicking through? So there was a question in the Google analytics session about does bounce rate contribute to SEO? You have a low bounce rate. Is that gonna help your SEO? Possibly, but what's more important is the number of pages visited. Time on site. Are people coming to your website staying for a second and then leaving or are they staying on your website and clicking through to other pages? Are those the signals that Google wants to see as a good, legit website that's actually helpful? So Google looks at a few different things and it's indirect, but that's what they wanna see is a measure of a good website. And then what also counts big time, again, clean design, intuitive navigation, don't make me think. And then site speed. Site speed is one of the big things. There's very few things that Google comes out and says yes, pay attention. Mobile responsiveness and site speed. Your website, they say they want it to be two to three seconds fast, load time. Most websites I see are five to six seconds, but if you're going eight, nine, 10, 11, you're not gonna get penalized, but another website who is faster will definitely get rewarded. So site speed is just so important. Okay, so what else is there to successful SAO rankings? Again, content absolutely is important, but the technical basics, the links coming to your site and social media signals coming to your site are important. Is your site authoritative? What about your on-page optimization? Have you worked your keywords into the right place? Have you written a title tag? All those basic things, remember title tag, you guys are no longer afraid of that word. The core word, learn it and love it. Content and keywords. So again, are you going after the keyword photographer? Because that's gonna be so competitive. You'd be much better served going after senior portrait photographer in East Cobb. So make sure the keywords you're actually targeting are in your league that you can practically and realistically compete against. That's a big thing. If people say my SEO isn't working and they want the keyword weight loss, well, you're in trouble. Yeah, ooh, good question. So the question is, how do you know if your business is big enough to go after a more competitive keyword? So what I want you to do is, depending on the keyword you're going after, go to Google and log out. Because immediately, Google, if you're logged in, if you're in YouTube or Gmail or any kind of Google account, they will, and if you did a Google search, they personalized, they know who you are, they know what sites, oh, Poopers. Okay. Okay, yes, incognito. They know what websites you've been to, so log out of Google, do an incognito, and do a search. And the websites who are coming up at the top, can you realistically, like, do you realistically have a shot of outseating them, of taking their website to page two and moving yours up? That's how you kind of know. If you're seeing Wikipedia, you know, USDA.gov, it depends on if you're seeing Fortune 500 companies and those are all on page one, you're gonna, you have your work cut out for you. So just do a reality check. Look at what keywords you're targeting and can you realistically outseat the people who are on page one? Okay, really quick. I'm gonna go super fast here, sorry. Two things it takes to learn SEO in 2015. SEO is like tennis. You could watch it on TV, you could freaking love Wimbledon and you could study and read books about it, but unless you actually get out there with a racket in hand, you are never gonna get better at tennis. So you just have to do it in order to understand it. The next thing, build your SEO muscles. So you have to hear this kind of stuff. I'm sorry you guys have to hear me year after year. I love coming up here and talking to you guys, but I like to teach some of the same things multiple times because you have to hear this. It's like building a muscle. You have to hear it multiple times until it finally sinks in. Or I say the same thing three different ways and you finally start understanding these core concepts. So this is a muscle. If this is totally new and it's very overwhelming that you started to build that muscle already. So yay, you can celebrate, but you absolutely have to hear these things multiple times. Okay, so I have some principles of master in foundational SEO. Become familiar with basic terms. Pursue a creative mix of keywords. Know what I say, who is the SEO strategist if there's multiple people in a business? Who is the person who's going to actually do the work? Who is the strategy person? When I work with bigger teams, it's not always the same person.  I work with the blogger and the copywriter and the technical person and the project manager. SEO is a huge discipline these days. So you have to know who are the pieces that are gonna get the job done. Work your plan to ensure consistency. Apply on page optimization best practices to your priority page. Not every single page on your website is a priority. Everybody always wants to optimize the whole website at one time. Pick two, three, five pages and you have to batch it out in phases. So pick your priority money pages. And then I just have some other things. Baking SEO into the process, knowing Google Analytics and what to look for is very important. Looking at links. I have two free reports on my website. If you guys do just go to jennieman.com because I'm sorry I'm running out of time here. Ooh, it was just one of my favorite slides because I get to use Lord of the Rings. So takeaways. SEO is not black magic. It used to be this magical way that a website would rank but these days, again, it's sweat equity. It's rolling up your sleeves and getting the discipline of the foundational elements done. Again, you have to work the fundamentals. So you know, well, is social media the new SEO? Well, I don't know. Well, if you know the fundamentals of SEO, you'll be able to say, okay, you can take that with a grain of salt. Oh, poopers, no, I'm not done. No, hold on, I have to yell at my PowerPoint. Hold on, okay. It's a marathon, not a sprint. So again, I feel so sad for businesses. They're like on the brink of bankruptcy and they need Google results today but I cannot help you because it's absolutely a marathon, it's not a sprint. You have to be more like the tortoise than the hare and just slowly plod along and get things done. Learning is in the doing. Again, it's tennis. You just have to do it to make it all make sense. You just can't hear me speak and think it makes sense. You have to actually do it. And then again, it's worth it.  So a day may come when the courage of SEO fails or when SEO is finally dead but today is not that day. 2015 is not that year. SEO is still very relevant. And then again, I only get a little bit of a chance to talk. I do do a full day boot camp. If you're interested, absolutely let me know because obviously I love to talk about SEO and I can absolutely talk for seven hours straight about it. So thank you guys so much. I don't think I have time for questions, do I? No, okay, thank you.