Rejoice Ojiaku

Host: Areej AbuAli & Sarah McDowell

Guest: Rejoice Ojiaku

This week we speak to Rejoice Ojiaku, SEO Manager & Co-Founder of B-DigitalUK, all about what keyword mapping is and why it is important. We also talk about what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is today.

You can connect with Rejoice through her LinkedIn and Twitter.

Episode Transcript

Sarah: Hello, and welcome to the Women in Tech SEO podcast, where your hosts are myself, Sarah McDowell, SEO content executive at Holland and Barrett, and the wonderful Areej AbuAli, who is an SEO Consultant and the founder of the glorious Women in Tech SEO community. This week, we have Rejoice Ojiaku, who is an SEO Manager experienced in technical and content SEO.

And she's also the co-founder of B-Digital UK, which is a marketing and advertising platform catered to the black demographic to inspire and educate. Good morning to both of you.

Areej: Good morning. I'm so excited to be here and I'm so happy that rejoice is joining us today.

Rejoice: I'm very excited to be here. This is very, very exciting. Thank you for having me.

Areej: We love having you here and Rejoice, you know, that we love involving you in as many projects and initiatives and events that we have to get started. I think it would be great for our audience to learn more about you and what got you into SEO in the first place.

Rejoice: Yeah. So I got into SEO after my marketing master's, and it was meant to be a graduate rotational program, but they sort of left me in SEO for six months, which was meant to be three. So by the six months, I sort of fell in love with SEO. It was ideally where I wanted to sit because. I find that SEO is a good mix of it.

And marketing and this sort of does give me all that, you know, analytical skills and I get to sort of play around with websites. I get to sort of look at coding things that I was interested in. And from there I sort of continued to stick with SEO. There's so much to learn and I guess because it's ever-changing so many things coming in, going out I do kind of like that fast pace thinking about SEO.

So there are so many layers to it, which I like to explore. So that's where I found my SEO love, I guess.

Areej: Yeah, I love that. And I love everything that you do with B-Digital UK. So if you can tell our audience more about what it is and what inspired you to start this in the first place.

Rejoice: So B-Digital UK was sort of started when I, myself and my friend Wilhemina went to the Women in Tech SEO conference. 

And I love the idea of an initiative that was catered to women, but in all things, I guess myself and Wilhelmina, I always look out for how many black people are present in SEO. And we saw that there weren't a lot of black women and women in attendance. And then we were sort of asking questions. Like, do we know any black person in digital marketing, just in general. And we didn't, and we couldn't say who we knew that was involved in digital marketing or someone that was up there. We already knew about the other counterparts, all the white people who are. So prominent within the space.

So that's when we decided we should create a platform that educates and inspires digital marketers who are already in the industry and people who are coming into the industry. So we wanted to show students. That marketing and advertising is a viable career. And you can take all those skills. You have a university, whether you are analytical, or not computer science, you can take all of those and bring it to digital marketing.

So B-Digital was then born. And so far it's been going great. We've received so many you know, So many well done, so many great jobs and every freedom we've collaborated with some people. And we also use it to tackle diversity and inclusion as a topic and what it means to be culturally sensitive, what it means in the hiring process.

And what's good salary transparency, all these topics. We mostly cater to the black demographic because there's I guess not as much education there. And from there you sort of blossomed into this beautiful thing. That's taken up a lot of my time.

Areej: Yeah. And, what can the industry do more to help support you in B-Digital UK and help spread the word more?

Rejoice: I think I will get involved in the conversation with us. A lot of times we try to educate if there's something that, you know, people out there feel like they would like us to talk about, maybe make a post via Instagram and Twitter. Also, we do quite a lot of educational content on Instagram.

So if there's a post to create, let us know if you haven't had conversations about diversity inclusion. Let us know we would love to be involved in any panel talks. We would love to be involved in anything that any outreach that certain companies are doing or for universities or students, we would love to be involved.

Overall we would like to create little programs, for students that can maybe have a taste of the day with someone in the industry, whether it's PPC, just have a taste of them just so they know. Well, it's out there when it comes to marketing. I think people think marketing is, you know, TV, radio, and that's where it stays.

But marketing goes into the digital space. So having to show students, this is what it means or, and also jobs. People are always looking for jobs. So we post any hiring. Vacancies are out there. So let us know. And we always ask in our jobs that we set the salary. By something that we want to be transparent about.

I don't want to sort of say, Oh, it'd be ambiguous about the salary aspect, because we're trying to talk about salary transparency. We would like to state that. So if you have any jobs, reach out to us for us to advertise and it does come with a few but we can get shit with that. So that's a great way to help.

So lots of ways there then.

Sarah: No excuses, no excuses. 

[Quick Fire Round Questions]

Areej: Before we kind of dive into our main topic that we're here to talk about with it being the women in tech SEO podcast, I'd love to learn a little bit more about, you know, what empowers you to be the brilliant woman you are today.

Rejoice: I think for me, what empowers me is I always think about the sort of life I want to live in general and the sort of person I would like to be for my siblings. So being the first daughter and the first child of my parents and we didn't have any boys I've always sort of wanted to be a really good example.

And I think for me that example would come from being kind, being respectful and having some sort of priority for yourself, whether you want to prioritize your career, prioritize home life. I think I want to show that you can be a woman of choice and in those choices, you're able to, I guess, go wherever you want.

And that sort of empowers me to always. Uplifts women in a way, I feel that I love women who are breaking boundaries. I love women who know who they are and are very comfortable and very proud and loud about it. And those sort of things inspire me and empower me to sort of be brilliant in everything I do.

Areej: I love that. And what advice would you give women who are just starting into the industry?

Rejoice: I would say my advice would be to expect the unexpected. And I will always say that because when you enter the industry, the same many things as women you face, and they say many things as women, you might go through that men wouldn't go through.

And I think, you know, whilst you're expecting the unexpected, I think to make sure that underneath all that the roots are you're staying true to who you are. So you are, you know, the kind of woman you are, you know, And you understand who you are in womanhood, and that way don't be afraid to bring womanhood into your role because at the end of the day, being a woman is who you are.

It's not all you are, but bring womanhood into it. And I think a lot of times when we enter male-dominated environments, we try to be like men, and I think it's no like a woman and shows that in my womanhood, I can do twice 10 times as better as my other counterparts and that she doesn't matter my gender, but your woman hits is something she celebrates.

I get to your role. You have a different perspective because you're a woman. And I think that will be great advice when you enter the industry.

Sarah: Absolutely, I don't think that was words then I do apologize. I loved that. And yeah, as you should, you should celebrate your wonderful woman, woman, women hurt.

So I love how you phrase that. Awesome. Right. So let's get into the main topic of today and that is keyword mapping. So what is the main goal with keyword mapping?

Rejoice: I believe the main goal of the key with my pin is to target such as intent. I think ultimately you want to be able to put yourself in your consumer's shoes and think like how, how are they searching?

How are they? Looking for things. What, what words are they using to search? I think the main go-to map those keywords is just to understand, as I said before, the session's intent and understand how to then be able to use our session's intent, use those keywords to now work for you and what for your brand, so that Google can also find you, but also making it organic at the same time.

Areej: And I guess just a big shout-out because I know that you're, you're speaking in BrightonSEO this summer on this very topic. How are you feeling?

Rejoice: Yes, I'm excited. I'm trying to think about what angle I want to come in. And I think maybe I feel as though the searcher's intent will probably be the focus for me.

Cause I do think a lot of brands remove the human side or keyword because yes, we're trying to. Key with Mac for a website, but ultimately we're trying to target humans. So you can't remove the human element out of your keywords. And you kind of has to add that back in, to effectively keyword mapping, keyword group things together.

Sarah: Wonderful. I'm very excited about your talk and hopefully, I'll be on the first row there cheering you on just want to quickly, cause obviously, you said intent. So matching the user's intent. Can you just so for like, people who've not heard of that term before, what do you, what do you mean by intent?

Rejoice: So the tab will be, I guess. I guess for intel, it would be the reason why your audience is looking for certain products. So if you understand the reasons why, and sometimes the reasons can change from they're trying to buy, or they're trying to learn about a certain product. So they might have different reasons for not all users ultimately buying, but some do search for more information, some do for Just those things.

So if you understand why or why your origins or on Sunday intent, you'll be able to, then he would map accordingly and then target that audience better. Yup.

Areej: And I know that your agency side, so what's, how does it feel having to do that for a multitude of clients and what's your current process for it?

Rejoice: I think for me it is the agency side of things. So when I've done keyword mapping for agencies, I used to do it for a BT Brian's and that was much easier for me because I'm a consumer of beauty products. So my process would be when I would do the keyword research and do keyword mapping, I'll always look at it from me as a consumer, not me as an SEO person, but as a consumer, what are the natural terms I search for?

Without actually knowing that this is what I'm doing. So I will also then input all those manually inputs, all these different search terms, and when you use certain tools to find out what the search volume is. And then start looking at which ones are the same, how are things found differently? And then that way you can start grouping things.

Also sort of build this more holistic view on what the brand wants and understanding, the brand's tone of voice, who the brand's audience is. Are they young? Are they old or the older I'm older audiences and stuff like that, that will help you within your process?

Sarah: So you touched on grouping that grouping keywords. So is there any like, sort of dos and don'ts here?

Rejoice: I think the  B would b, definitely not do today, but when you are grouping keywords together do with B use alternative as an alternative. Was that mean? The same thing can be grouped. So it doesn't have to be the same version, but the setting was a half synonym that can be used as such terms that could be grouped.

I think certain people just don't use cinnamon. Right. Thinking, Oh, it's not the same phrase. It doesn't have to be the same phrase, but you can, you can also look at it from you know, different versions of that word that a user can use, and those can be grouped because those would be a similar search intent or similar search query.

I would say. Don't ignore the long-tail keywords. And don't ignore it to be grouped. You can group long-tail keywords because people write long-tail keywords in different conversational ways. That should also be looked at in, in that, in that sense.

Areej: Yeah. And I think it's this idea of long-tail keywords, you know, it's, it's probably less competition, but it's higher conversion.

So that's why it's something that should be, you know, prioritized and considered and not just a big focus on like, you know, your big head commercial terms. Yep. So in terms of what type of data metrics do you focus on the most then when you're doing all forms of keyword research and mapping process, what are the data metrics that you focus on the most?

Rejoice: I look up search volume as a given, et cetera. You have to look at certain search volumes. When I was doing the keyword mapping, I always looked at, obviously, the search volumes are a thousand plus are amazing. But we also looked at the opportunities. So if a search term is maybe, I don't know, 500, one 50, there's still an opportunity there that people are so much in, right.

Not a lot, but you wouldn't use that as a priority keyword, right? But you shouldn't discard that keyword. Another search term competition understands how high that keyword is, intelligent competitors, how you know, how many times good things are, maybe type the keyword into Google, see how many results come up and you can still see how high the competition is. A number won't be relevant.

I do understand with content, the keyword has to be very relevant to you. To actually what the website is about, what that page is about. If this does not have any relevance, it will be very difficult to sort of seamlessly add that, into your method, title description, or the body of the content.

So these would be the three metrics I sort of look at to then decide, okay, these are good things or not so good. Yes.

Sarah: Wonderful. And would you say it's important? So obviously the keywords bring up different night set features. They may. So you gotta always put different things in search engine results.

So is it important to know what Google is showing, like what sort of feature snippets there are and things like that, is that important to know? I think

Rejoice: Africa is important to know because. You know, especially with knowledge cards and stuff. You can, they're very good. Just sort of being able to be seen as authoritative with your content.

And if you can, you know, map your keywords to sort of target those features, feature snippets and stuff that is very useful because. Again, we have things like Zillow clicking the results page. And if you are sort of being ranking for that, people are seeing, you may not even be on the first page, but if Google uses your site, as you know, the zero-click feature or a knowledge card, people are still going to see your face quicker, even though you're not on the first page per se, on the second page, but because you've targeted, featured snippets is a great look for your site.

Areej: And what, what would be your next step at that point? So you've done all the keyword research, all the keyword mapping, you identified the main opportunities. How do you go ahead and feed that into a content strategy that you can give directly to the content team?

Rejoice: I would, how I've done it before was I took all the brands, had the priority pages of your targeting, whether it's a product page or description page, they have the priority.

So I would create a spreadsheet that sort of has all the major pages that they want. And I would assign two or three two or three. Priority keywords, showing the saturation of such volumes and all these things, and then Revit recommended titles recommended data. And then at some point also have a column to say potential content, especially if the page has an article, page or blog page of potential content that they could embed this key with or can be part of a title.

So for example, when working with max factor at the time, They had, you know, I sort of suggested they write about dewy skin and that way they can then embed different keywords onto the foundation. And actually, it linked build by creating a post on your blog page. So that's how I will sort of give the content in that blueprint.

So they can understand the variation of keywords they can use and understand what other topics people are talking about that these keywords are very useful, very relevant in creating any other content.

Sarah: Wonderful. Wonderful. I'm trying. I feel like you give it so really good knowledge. I'm trying to make my brain a sponge here. Okay, so what tools do people need to be using keyword mapping?

Rejoice: I love SEMRush. I think it's great because one, you can see competitors what compressors tools he has, they have done. And also with the gap is understanding where you rank for certain keywords.

I also do, like, I haven't used it much if you don't use it once SERanking which is an amazing tool. I find it very clear. In, letting you know, letting you know the groupings of things and you can group keywords accurately and see what your competitors are doing or what's out there. A good one. It's not necessarily a keyword mapping tool, but it's great to understand such terms. It's also the public that just gives you a variety of searches that people might be doing using.

A specific keyword. You're trying to target that way. You can then go further and look into what the actual search volumes are by maybe using Google keyword planner, just to see what the search volume is, by I think, answering the public. So it gives you a good beginner start for when you're ready to start searching in and then the mapping and then the grouping.

And you sort of has a more clear version or vision of where you're trying to go.

Areej: That's helpful, as an array of different tools can kind of help you get started. I feel like a lot of what you've mentioned initially though, around, you know having a good understanding behind the industry and the website is always going to feed in and tools can kind of help with the data metrics side and the analysis and so forth.

And then just to wrap up than how to do you, people we're still getting started on this and it's not something that they've previously done before. Are there any specific resources or pieces of reading that you'd recommend a firm to help people kind of get started on it?

Rejoice: Absolutely. I would say Search Engine Journal, they have quite a lot of really good blog articles around keyword mapping, the ultimate guide. I would also plug in Aleyda. She created the Learning SEO resource and that has quite a lot to do with content site keywords as well.

Great reading tool, a great place to sort of go looking. I will say most of the great, you know, it has so many, so many different topics we talk about. That's a great place for these resources would be amazing and don't be afraid. Honestly, don't be afraid to go on Twitter and just tweet, look up SEO experts.

Just ask the question. I always say that you know, the best resources can also be social media because people can answer you directly or you can DM them. If you are still stuck off reading, want to just put out a question on social media tweets findings in people are very much able to help.

That's how I've got things answered. I just tweet and say, do they know how this works? And someone explains it and has a better understanding.

Sarah: Wouldn't defer. Wonderful, wonderful. I mean, thank you very much for talking to us about keyword mapping. I feel like, yeah, this is a very awesome episode. That is going to be very useful to a lot of people. So thank you very much.

[Feature Game]

Sarah: If people want to continue the conversation with you, how can they do that? Where are you?

Rejoice: So I'm on LinkedIn and Twitter. B-Digital UK can be found on Twitter and Instagram and we are on LinkedIn as well. We're on Facebook and we have a LinkTree link that tells you every social platform that we are on.

Hopefully, soon we are bringing out a website, which has quite a lot more information about us and what we do so people can keep up to date.

Areej: Yeah. So for Women in Tech SEO, you can find us on womenintechseo.com. You'll find our podcasts there, all of our episodes. They come out every week on Tuesday. And if you'd like to be a speaker or a sponsor, all you have to do is just fill out a form and that's it.

Sarah: Wonderful. And the only thing that I would say is if you do enjoy our podcasts and you are not yet subscribed, why, what, what you do it though, if you do subscribe, you do get notifications of when new episodes are ready for you to listen to.

So, yes. I mean, I could just spend more hours talking to you both, but I think. We're just going to have to say goodbye. So goodbye for me,

Rejoice: Bye from me as well. 

Sarah: And until next time.