Welcome to Episode 27 of the Website Mastery Podcast!

Hosted by digital marketing gurus Jonny Ross and Pascal Fintoni, this episode is packed with actionable tips and valuable insights designed to elevate your website's performance and enhance your personal brand. Whether you're tuning in live or catching up later, we're thrilled to have you join us!

Personal Branding: To Change Your Domain or Not?

Jonny and Pascal kick off the episode by tackling a listener-submitted question about the pros and cons of using personal names as domain names. This discussion is crucial for anyone considering how to best use their personal brand for business advantage.

Key Takeaways:

• Understand when to use your personal name for better branding.
• Learn the impact of personal domains on future business scalability.

Cutting the Clutter: What to Remove From Your Website Now

In response to "13 Things To Remove From Your Website Immediately" by Andy Crestodina, Jonny and Pascal share their perspectives on outdated website elements that could be hurting your user experience.

Key Takeaways:

• Discover specific website features that should be eliminated to improve clarity and user engagement.
• Hear expert opinions on common website mistakes and how to avoid them.

Essential Tools for Every Website Manager

Explore indispensable tools that can revolutionize the way you manage and create content for your website. This segment introduces Cloudflare for enhanced security and Emojis Wiki for effective communication through visuals.

Key Takeaways:

• Learn about tools that can protect and accelerate your site.
• Get tips on using emojis correctly to enhance rather than confuse your message.

Action Steps to Immediately Improve Your Website

Jonny advises on implementing schema markup to boost SEO, while Pascal emphasizes the importance of refreshing your FAQs with visual storytelling to make your site more engaging and informative.

Key Takeaways:

• Steps to implement schema markup for better search engine recognition.
• Strategies to update your FAQs to address newer customer inquiries effectively.

Why Tune In?

• Practical advice: From optimizing your personal brand to enhancing website security and performance.
• Expert insights: Benefit from Jonny and Pascal's extensive experience in digital marketing.
• Interactive discussion: Engage with the co-hosts live and get your questions answered.

Join us for this information-packed episode to transform your website into a more effective tool for your business. For more insights and to join our community, visit 90daymarketingmastery.com and follow us for the latest updates and expert advice.

Chapters:

00:00:16 - Introduction - Introduction to the Website Mastery Podcast series, live streaming platforms, and the 90-day website mastery program.

Discussion on the importance of personal branding and domain name choices for businesses, including the pros and cons of using a personal brand name in the domain.

00:09:38 - Website Stories - Review and analysis of a video by Orbit Media on 13 things to remove from a website immediately, including a selection of 3 key points from the video.

Recommendation of CloudFlare for website performance, security, and SEO optimization, highlighting its benefits and ease of use.

00:23:42 - Website Call to Action - Discussion on the importance of schema markup implementation for search engine optimization and the review and refresh of FAQ sections on websites with a focus on visual storytelling.

Recap of the key topics covered in the episode and a call to action for viewers to use the episode as an agenda for their next website meeting.

Hello and welcome. It's episode 27 of the

Website Mastery Podcast series. We are

live on YouTube, we're live on LinkedIn

and for the first time we're live on

Instagram as well. So if you're there,

Let us know. And if you're listening to

the repeat on the podcast, thanks for

being here. As always, we love our

listeners and viewers. This is the

companion to the 90-day website mastery

program. We wanted to find a way to

continue to share more advice and

insights about making your website work

harder and for you to feel proud about

your website again. Pascal Fintoni is

with me, my co-host, and each episode we

go through 4 segments. We have the You

Ask, We Answer where we take a question

that's been submitted by the community or

that we've seen online. We've got the

website stories, which is segment number

2. We have the website engine room where

we share an app or a piece of kit that's

gonna make your life easier as a website

manager and content creator to start

feeling proud of your website again. And

of course, we always finish with the

website call to action. What piece of

content can't finish with a call to

action? That's 1 change or adjustment

that you should be making to your website

right now. Pascal, episode 27, what have

we got in store?

Well, you know, what's interesting about

listening to the presentation, you do say

we're doing this with prepare, we

research, we capture this in the show

notes for our audience, but we're doing

it for ourselves. I mean, you know, what

luck to have a profession that is also

your passion. I mean, your week, my week

is spent talking at events, doing

one-to-one coaching. My week has been

about branding a lot, lead generation,

AI, using AI to make good decisions, to

get support with your website decisions.

And right now I'm working on 3 website

projects for clients from brand new

startups to well established companies

who just seem to have everything about

their user experience.

But you make a good point because we are

in the creative industry. I'm currently

reading a book by Rory Sutherland, who's

really got me to stand back and think

about, don't just use logic. And that's a

very good point. We're in this creative

industry where we've got to have the

space to be able to think and brainstorm

and come up with ideas and more

importantly make mistakes. You know we

need to test and try and make those

mistakes because actually the faster you

make mistakes the quicker you can find

out what works and be ahead of the game.

So this space as you say is just as much

for us to be able to be that creative and

move away from the logic and, well, I

don't mean fully, but in terms of just

having that thinking space and yeah. We

should move

on to our first segment, but before we do

so, very, very quickly for our audience,

the way in which we structure those

episodes, it's almost the agenda of a

meeting you should be having with your

colleagues. So what you should do is by

all means is listen to Johnny and I take

away the information, but use what we are

sharing for your next get together with a

team or with your suppliers and so on,

saying I've got a question or I've got

those apps I want to experiment with in

the same kind of R&D department. So yeah,

there are a lot of value to be gained and

we do this in a very compact way. Half an

hour, It's more so unlike us because we

are long form content creators. But the

value you get from just the learning but

also the structure for your next team

meeting I think is very important.

Let's start with you ask, we answer.

Now this is a question from a coaching

session that I had about a week ago and

we were really wrestling with the client.

So here it is. It is obvious to me that

my customers are using my name when

searching for my business online.

Therefore, should I change the website

address and domain name to my first name

plus family name and add .co.uk.com or

shall I leave it as it is? This is

interesting, isn't it, Jonny?

Yeah, I mean, well, I personally have a

marketing agency, Fleek Marketing and the

website, the domain for that is

fleek.marketing. I also have my personal

brand, which is JonnyRoss.com. I think

some of it comes down to what people know

you as, what people know the business as,

and also where you see the future. So Do

you see the saleability of the business?

Do you see the wanting to perceive as a

big business? Or is this about personal

branding? I think there's huge benefits

to changing a domain name or using a

domain name that's got your name in it,

but there are downsides as well. So

you've got to sort of take everything

into account. And I guess what I was

insinuating is that I've cheated by

creating both.

But maybe that's what you need to do to

give you time actually to really reflect

and make the final decision. What I will

say, and certainly that's what I did all

those years ago, that will prevent you

from setting the business if that's part

of your strategy. If you have an exit

strategy that says, I'm going to build

the business, whether it's B2B, B2C or

something in between, no one's going to

be able to buy or there'd be a lesser

value and appeal if it is committed to a

personal brand. But if that's not part of

your plan whatsoever, and you've looked

at the data, you know that that's what's

happening, you do a lot of work, I'm

thinking, Johnny, about putting your

personal brand out there as a speaker, as

a guest blogger, maybe you're on

podcasts, maybe you're writing columns,

intra-publications, who won, then the

argument will be that people will

remember you and they'll make an

association with your services, but they

may not remember the product brand or the

service brand.

Yeah, and what a way to build authority

and to build that personal connection as

well. So if they do know your name and

they associate your business with your

name, you can still build that

professionalism and even in fact, even

more trust by having that personal

connection and the memorability of it. So

there's huge advantages, but yes, as

you've said rightly, a big disadvantage

is the exit strategy, but also perhaps

your name is, what's the word I'm looking

for? Common is, I guess is the word I was

looking for, that John Smith, for

example, perhaps you're not gonna stand

out by using your name and you also need

to do a bit of research to see what

appears in Google already for your brand

name, because you might have some stiff

competition in terms of actually getting

high in the ranks. So there's pros and

cons.

Sure, you reminded me, I'm gonna go back

10, 15 years ago, but that was a similar

exercise with a client. So we did just

punch in first name, surname in Google.

And what came back was a murderer in

Australia. Now in other way you get

based, but that story of the murder with

that name was over dominating the search

results. We could try it again today,

maybe things have changed. So I think,

yeah, do the research, do the prep. I'm

kind of tempted to go back to my clients.

You know, I'd rather think about it. I've

spoken to a guy called Johnny Ross, and

let's cheat and do both. Because what I

like about doing both, that means that

your personal brand website can then

become a signposting website to different

programs and campaigns and different

facets of what you do. And then you can

retain the product-based or the

service-based website at the same time

and give you just more months and years

to reflect before making that final

decision.

And I think 1 of the big points you've

just made there, which is do the research

because forget about personal brand,

forget about name. I've got 2 clients

that I can think of within the last 3

months where they've gone through a

branding exercise prior to engaging me

and at no point has anyone thought let's

Google this new brand name and it just

it's like it beggars belief it's like

you're you are senior leaders you've got

you I can see that you've got lots of

strategy and all sorts of stuff, But no 1

has thought of Googling it. And these 2

significant companies. And I was just,

and in both cases, we've found big

problems. But anyway, there we go.

Let's move on then because we can make

this but into that almost a mini rant

about the lack of research. But I get it,

it's so much more fun to get into action

mode than it is into reflection and

research mode, but you've got to do it.

That's part of your duties as leaders and

marketers, whether that's your full-time

or part-time occupation. Let's move on,

if you don't mind, with our next segment,

website stories. So for episode 27, we've

chosen a video that came from a great

company that I'm very fond of called

Orbit Media. Orbit Media, if you don't

know them, they do some incredible

research and data crunching on website

user experience. They also sometimes

partner up with other specialists. And I

have to tell you, Johnny, I've been a

student of their research papers because

it kind of helps you reflect and keeps

you right on the way in which a website

experience should be crafted. And they

have years, if not decades of... This

video was recorded or hosted, should I

say, by Andy Creston-Dinna, who is the

co-founder and chief marketing officer of

Orbit Media. And the title is that

follows, 13 things to remove from your

website immediately. So sounds very, very

dramatic. I'm very aware of that. And

what I was able to do then is watch the

video, I know you've done it as well.

I've got a list of 13 to go through and I

picked 3, because time is against us, and

1 where I'm not totally in agreement with

Andy, and 2 where I'm like, exactly, and

you're not actually share this advice. So

very, very quickly for viewers and

listeners, I'm gonna go through all 13.

So remove immediately vague homepage

headlines. And actually similarly,

generic navigation labels. Meaningless

subheadings is number 3. Number 4, long

homepage sliders. I mean, everybody's

trying to shove in their information. I

get it, the poor marketing team is being

bullied into having 8 to 10 sliders for

all the different departments, but a

visitor would not go beyond the first 2

or 3. Annul D, but still happens, avoid

stock photos of people, or should I say

nowadays AI photos of people. Number 456

now, social media icons, remove them from

the homepage. Remove the dates on blog

posts, interesting 1. Remove long

paragraphs, think about mobile phone

viewers. Press releases, stop copying and

pasting press releases as is, You've got

to rework them and add more media

content. Question mark on PDF files. Do

they help really the traffic, the

experience that you want? We move on to

testimonial pages. Long list of people

saying wonderful things about you but

unsupported by evidence. Email links,

contact forms are better, or are they?

And finally, the dead end thank you page

or the dead end call to action page where

you do something and then suddenly it

goes blank or there's like a tiny message

on the top left corner saying done or

submitted and you have no idea what's

happened. So please everyone watch the

video, it's great. Here Andy's

essentially a case that he makes for all

those 13 things to remove immediately.

But I wanna go back for the 3. I've got

social media icons, press releases, and

testing on all pages. I can't be sure

that I agree with what is being claimed

that social media icons on the homepage

are a distraction and you can lose

visitors. My position, they are there to

be glanced at, a form of reassurance, but

nobody that I can think of is gonna click

on the social media icons if the intent

is to visit the website and know about

the business. Press releases, I agree,

they are ugly as hell on website. People

are lazy. They copy and paste the press

release as it is written. It's written

for the press. The title is enigmatic.

The first paragraph is usually weird. And

it's just flat on the webpage. This is

not how we write on the web. So stop

doing it. And yes, I mean, my biggest

kind of pay-peave when testing with all

pages, it's like a long, long list of

quotes from people, but without any

reasons, or they're not grouped around

the product, or they're not grouped

around the product or they're not grouped

around the service and so on and and

often it just leaves you thinking where

are they real are they not real and so on

but yeah great great video great 13

things that you can use your next team

meeting or website meeting and these were

my top 3. But did you have any that maybe

you were not sure about or that you are

clearly in agreement with as well?

A great video with lots of really good

advice and some obvious things that over

the years these things do need removing

from your website. I like your point

about the testimonial pages. We love

testimonials. They're keyword rich,

user-generated content, build trust, give

you that professionalism, but let's

integrate them into the content instead

of having just a testimonials page. Yeah,

press releases, you read them and they're

like, yeah, what's this? Write the story

yourself. So whatever story you're hoping

that was going to be produced from the

press release, write it yourself, put it

on the website instead of just copying

and pasting the, the, the, press release

social media icons. I do agree with you,

Pascal. I guess the halfway house is

removing them from the header of the

website and just having them in the

footer of the website is a halfway house

because the danger is that you've got

them there, they click through, and of

course, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,

LinkedIn, they're all designed to keep

you there. They're all designed to get

you looking at those adverts. So the

danger, I guess, is that you do click

through and you start looking at the

stories of cats and dogs and you totally

forget the business that you were looking

at a minute ago. So I guess having them

in the footer of the website is a halfway

house to build that trust. It certainly

do not remove them completely. But in

short, great video, worth watching, and

more importantly, a brilliant step in

starting to feel proud of your website by

removing stuff that just does not work.

That does not work. It doesn't actually

help people understand what you do

sufficiently and particularly when we

talk about the vague homepage headlines

or the meaningless subheadings. Quick

question before we move on to our next

segment, this business or the homepage

sliders. So in a way I kind of align them

as a feature on the website, but Andy's

point about, well, don't put too many,

because someone's gonna spend the time

watching it, and don't put the most

important message at the end of your

slider. Start with that. But I've seen

good execution on the sliders. I've liked

the 1 where actually it's just a text

that is changing as opposed to the image,

but where do you stand with the home page

sliders?

I think the data and the analytics show

that the drop off is very quick. And so

the chance of people getting to slide 3

or 4 is, you know, you've lost I think

80% by slide 3. So whilst as a website

owner and staff within the business want

to spend time and have a look at the

website and they spend time looking, a

user spends less than a second and then

scrolls down. So I think slides is full

stop. There's got to be a real reason and

an obvious indication to the user that

you can slide through to look at certain

things. But if it's just there because

you want to get across your 10 messages

on the homepage, then it's the wrong

reason, I think.

And therefore, you are almost telling us

that they may have a role maybe on a

product specific page, maybe on the

contact. Think it through. And I think

sometime in web design, and that's what

happens, isn't it? People just settle on

the first execution. So, many, many years

ago, came up with a home page slider, and

they really copied as opposed to actually

put the slider where people will take

time. And maybe it's the FAQ section of

your website. Maybe it's the resource

section of the website, but somewhere

where they tend to give you a bit more

time than the home page, which is 0.

Something seconds, you know?

Yeah, Yeah. Let's move on to our third

segment, which is the website engine

room.

Now in each episode, Jonny and I select

an app, a software piece of kit that can

make life easier as a website manager.

And I just remind you that we have also

recently released the ebook, the 50

essential kits that you will need for

your website. And Johnny, remind us

before we wrap up this episode where

people can get their copy of this amazing

ebook. Now what is your selection for

this episode in particular?

Yeah in terms of the ebook I have just

put that onto the screen if people are

watching. For people that are listening,

it's 90daymarketingmastery.com forward

slash e hyphen book. Certainly it will be

in the show notes as well, but that's our

ultimate toolkit, 50 tools that we've

mentioned in the first 25 episodes. But

today's tool from me in episode 27, I'm

going to highlight CloudFlare. So

CloudFlare is designed to make everything

you connect to the internet secure,

private, fast and reliable. It's a great

way to be able to manage the performance

and security of your website to improve

the performance, to improve the security,

but also to what I'm seeing in the SEO

industry is some clever techniques on how

you can inject certain elements onto web

pages very quickly and easily, so

deploying SEO strategies and techniques

without having to edit the code, without

having to edit the website, and without

even having to speak to web developers

because as an SEO agency, we can control

some of those elements within a tool like

CloudFlare. So whilst it's producing

websites that are faster, more reliable,

more secure, it's also opened a door in

terms of actually there's quite a few

benefits in terms of being able to

optimize and change things very easily

without having to go through development

teams, et cetera. So Cloudflare is my

suggested app for this episode.

Listen, everyone, you may be thinking,

well, I'm not technical, that's not

really my area of expertise, therefore

I'll pass. But I think back to my

statement earlier, This is what you need

to take to the next meeting with your

developers or with your colleagues who

understand this element. You should at

least do the research that's part of

being that decision maker and being

control the website want to be proud of.

So My selection actually came out with

something that I needed. Now emojis are

not part of the written form of content.

They will appear on occasion on video as

well. And I will confess, Jonny, I've

always been a little reluctant. I'm a

late user of emojis because actually I

was thinking, could there be

misunderstood? Could you try and express

something by adding a visual icon but

actually it doesn't match the intent,

doesn't match the tone, or you're worried

that maybe it could be misunderstood by

different individuals, different cultures

and so on. So very recently, I needed to

write an article, I needed some very

specific emojis. And I have mentioned in

the past this platform called Yatex,

Y-A-Y-Tex, Yatex. That allows you to do a

number of things including emojis, but

the library is limited. And that's the

point I want to make as well, Johnny.

People are using AI, that's all fine.

Please make sure you edit. But within

that AI, there's also a very limited

library of emojis because it's always the

rocket ship and it's always the explosion

or it's always the flames so please be

careful. But this platform is called

Emojis Wiki, emojis.wiki And not only can

you find a much richer selection of

emojis, the 1 was looking for was based

actually on a film, but also they give

you the meanings behind those emojis. So

it gives you a moment of reflection to

go, I don't want to use that, but

actually could it be misunderstood or

could you simply distract and people say

well there's this disconnect between the

words and the emojis. So emojis.wiki

gives you a richer library to stand out

from the crowd and avoid repeating the

same kind of icons and emojis as

everybody else, but also you get a moment

of reflection because it will tell you

about the likely meanings and

understanding from your audience.

I, emojis, whilst you were talking then,

it reminded me that I do use emojis a

lot. I like using emojis. They stand out.

But that certainly can be an overuse. And

1 of the things that I realized was I was

doing a LinkedIn ad the other day and it

got, I can't think the right word,

refused is the wrong word but you

understand what I'm saying, but the text

that came back from LinkedIn wasn't clear

at all and it was just saying that there

was an issue with the content, it wasn't

very clear. And I ended up on a LinkedIn

chat with 1 of their support. And it

turns out that their algorithm only lets

a maximum of 4 emojis in a LinkedIn

advert. So irrelevant of anything else,

if there's more than 4, it will

automatically get disallowed or whatever

the word might be. So yeah, you can end

up overusing them, but I do love an

emoji. And I think the biggest point

there is make sure you know what an emoji

means when you're using 1 to make sure

that it does fit the context. So that's

this week's or this episode's website

engine room. Pascal was talking about

emojis.wiki and I was mentioning

cloudflare.com. Let's move on to our next

segment, which is the website call to

action.

Now, as our regular viewers and listeners

will know, this is the 1 change, the 1

adjustment that can really make a

difference to your website for you, your

audience, and make you feel proud of that

online experience. Johnny, what is your

call to action?

I'm talking about structured data, schema

markup implementation. So this is about

understanding that Google, Bing, all the

search engines out there are robots,

they're computers and they, you are

relying on a computer or a robot to

understand the data about your business,

about your organization, about the

content on your website. If you imagine

that Google is just actually just a

massive Excel sheet with rows and

columns, you've got the ability to be

able to put your data into the correct

row and the correct column to ensure that

Google uses it at the most opportune time

and the most optimized position. So if

you want Google to feature you more on

search results pages, it's about making

sure your data goes into the correct

column, the correct row within the

massive Excel sheets. That's the best way

to view it. And you can do this by

implementing something called schema,

which allows you to mark the data up to

say, by the way, Google, this is the

official service name, the official

product name, the official company

address, the official name of 1 of our

members of staff, this particular piece

of content is about this particular

subject, this is the sale price, so many

different things. There's thousands of

different schemas. Just as an example, if

you're a dentist, if you're an estate

agent, there's particular schemas just

for you to be able to expand on your

services and to say to Google, by the

way, this is a particular service in our

dentistry. This is the opening times.

There's a schema for every business and

it's about using that schema to put your

data into the correct row or column so

that Google and Bing start highlighting

you way more than you're possibly being

highlighted right now. So this week's

call to action for me is schema markup

implementation. What's yours, Pascal?

So mine is actually linked to yours in

some ways, and AI is the bridge and the

glue because your recommendation is very

important. We've spoken about it over the

years, but people can't delay because the

way in which search results are changing

and where you have different windows and

different ways of things and all that,

but also using AI, you have someone like

Google and Bing would suggest the next

question or the next set of results that

you should be investigating. They will

need the schema marker. But 1 thing that

is obvious to me is that the search

engine want to display your FAQs a lot

more than they have done in the past. So

my call to action is actually to review

and refresh your FAQ section. I would go

as far as saying plan to have different

sections, a different part of the

website. So instead of having 1 almighty

FAQ section, almost like in all the

testimonials, kind of grumble that we had

a moment to go, think about dividing all

those FAQs into different parts of the

website. And then the question is, have

you and your colleagues answered new

questions recently? Because this is

really important and it has to kind of be

carried over to your FAQ session. And

then is it time maybe to introduce more

visual storytelling? You know, typically

when you start with an FAQ to begin with

is very short, so you need to expand on

that or put a link to a longer

explanation of what that might be. But

also, the stats are very clear that

people who can stop for a moment and

watch a very simple kind of almost

cartoon type things with different

scenes, different stages and different

steps, as well as the words. It's going

to be very, very important. So for me,

that's my culture actually. Review and

refresh your FAQs. Make sure that the

newer questions have been added. Expand

on your kind of answers if need to link

into others, but think about visual

storytelling and all this will help with

your search results as well.

And of course, mark your FAQs up using

schema. Make it very clear to Google that

this is a particular question, this is

the answer and it's related to this

particular piece of content.

Smashing.

So what have we talked about in episode

27? Well, it's been about maximizing your

personal brand and website performance. I

think We've absolutely touched on user

experience as well. Thinking about,

should you have your name in your domain

name in your URL of your website? Could

it be the way to really maximize the

personal brand to create that trust, to

create the personal connection? But also

let's get rid of stuff that we've learned

doesn't work on websites that distract,

that doesn't give the right messaging,

that doesn't help users instantly

understand and be able to engage. So

we've definitely covered usability. And

then of course we've covered lots about

performance, whether that be optimizing

content, whether it be optimizing speed,

security, using tools like Cloudflare, or

even just how to use emojis and making

sure you refresh and review your FAQs and

marking them up with schema. So it's been

an episode all about personal branding,

website performance, and for me,

usability as well.

I like it. And everyone just do what we

mentioned when we started, use to this

episode as the agenda for your next

meeting. And literally, there's 13 things

to remove, you know, according to Andy

from Obit Media. That's the checklist for

your next meeting. And then ask the

question, do we need to talk to our, you

know, contacts about the Cloudflare? Do

we need to talk about schema market? The

answer is yes, and get that meeting in

the diary.

This has been episode 27 of our new

podcast series, and I'm afraid that is

all we've got for today. It's the audio

companion to the new 90-day website

mastery program. For more information,

please visit 90daymarketingmastery.com.

You'll be able to book your discovery

call with either myself or Pascal. We'll

be back with another episode, but for now

I'll leave you with a fun video and audio

montage whilst you go through your notes

and actions. And as Pascal says, this is

the agenda for your next meeting. Let's

start feeling proud of your website. We

look forward to seeing you soon. Thanks

so much for watching or listening. Take

care. Thanks for watching!