Episode 37 | Grab our mEat-Commerce Essentials to start making money in your direct-to-consumer business today with $100 off the course with code: POD100 Snag Access Here: https://www.choplocaluniversity.com/meat-commerce-essentials-1

On this episode of the Meat Success podcast, Katie interviews Julia Bocchese of Homegrown Reach about SEO for small farms and related businesses. Julia explains she started serving farms after struggling as a customer to find local compost companies, farmers markets, and CSAs via Google, and now helps agricultural businesses improve search visibility. They cover what Google Analytics and Google Search Console do, why both free tools matter, and how “rankings” work.

Julia outlines basic setup steps, emphasizing that farmers must own their accounts (never let an agency set them up under the agency email) and can add professionals as admins. They discuss what to monitor (traffic sources, location, engagement, key pages, queries/clicks/impressions/position), common pitfalls like Linktree, split platforms (Squarespace + Shopify), site speed and image compression, and which Search Console alerts to ignore versus fix (notably 404s and some no-index issues).

Connect with Julia at https://homegrownreach.com/.

1. 01:12 Julia Origin Story
2. 04:01 Why SEO Matters
3. 05:21 Google Analytics Basics
4. 07:01 Search Console Explained
5. 07:57 What Ranking Means
6. 10:34 Local vs Product Keywords
7. 12:57 Setting Up Analytics
8. 17:27 Reading Analytics Data
9. 17:55 Tracking Pitfalls to Avoid
10. 20:43 Engagement and Site Speed
11. 22:58 Setting Up Search Console
12. 26:07 Ownership and Admin Access
13. 29:11 Safe Account Access
14. 30:17 Search Console Metrics
15. 31:37 Live Search Console Walkthrough
16. 36:25 Boosting Click Through Rate
17. 40:31 Ignoring Scary GSC Emails
18. 41:31 Fixing 404s and Noindex
19. 45:27 Why Google Analytics Wins
20. 47:15 UTM Links and Campaign Tracking
21. 51:20 Wrap Up and Next Steps

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1. https://choplocal.com/
2. https://www.choplocaluniversity.com/