Practical SEO and Content Strategy 2021 and beyond

COVID hit small businesses hard across America.  In states like California businesses were all but shut down by the stay at home and closure orders.  All is not lost, especially if you listen to this episode on preparing your business to compete locally.

It's been said to be an expert you need to be able to share knowledge effortlessly.  In a world of SEO experts, Steve Wiideman stands apart and this episode he shares simple, quick, and free tips on how small businesses can survive and thrive during the pandemic.  His love for food and local shops drives his message as he showcases tricks for getting noticed and to return the phones to ringing.

Steve's expertise helps companies like IBM, Walt Disney, Applebees, IHOP, and others put together SEO and Content strategies to help the most popular pages rank.  Even if you're not a small business, you're going to love how simple the strategies are for long term success.  Listen into to find out about the future of SEO, voice search, and where content is headed. 

About Steve Wiideman
Steve drives the innovation of our company’s service offerings, including our SEO Roadmap solution introduced in early 2015. Steve has consulted for various enterprises and well-known brands for over 10 years, while playing key roles within multiple agencies and solution providers in the inbound marketing industry.

Specializing in SEO Strategy, Steve likes to organize search into specific disciplines broken down by business model. For natural search, Steve believes in only three fundamental requirements: Relevancy, Visibility and User Behavior. For local search, Data, Landing Page, Citation and Reputation are the keys to success.

These requirements are organized into our SEO Roadmap system with training videos and documentation by Steve and the team here at Wiideman Consulting Group, making the job of improving search result visibility simple and intuitive.

While serving as an adjunct professor at UCSD and CSUF, Steve’s also building the Academy of Search, while volunteering time to help improve transparency and industry standards as an agency trainer.

When not at work, Steve enjoys traveling with his family, reading historical fiction, and training his Padawan Jedi here in La Mirada, CA.

About Kyle Hamer
A sales and marketing veteran with a deep understanding of strategy, digital marketing execution, and using technology to enhance brand impact. A hands-on leader with a passion for solving business challenges with process, operations, and technology. When Kyle's not tinkering on businesses, you'll find him spending time with those he loves, learning about incredible people, and making connections.

About Hamer Marketing Group
Market growth for a new product or service is often limited by market distractions, unreliable data, or systems not built to scale.  Hamer Marketing Group helps companies build data-driven strategies focused on client acquisition and sales development supported by the technology and operations necessary to create profitable growth.

Transcript

Intro: 0:00

Welcome to the summit. A podcast focused on bringing you the knowledge and insights for industry leaders. I'm your host Kyle Hamer, and I'm on a mission to help you exceed your potential. As a sales guy, turned marketer, I am passionate about building sustainable businesses. And if there's one thing I've learned in my 20 year career, say you won't find an overnight growth scheme, a shortcut to success or way to hack yourself to the top. Nope. Success is the by-product of hard work, great relationships and deep understanding done over and over. We're here to help you unlock that success with some secrets from other people. One conversation at a time.

Kyle Hamer: 0:34

Welcome back to another episode of the summit podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Hamer and today's guest on our show is Stephen. Wiidemann. I say that right? Steven.

Steven Wiideman: 0:43

You got it. Y ou're actually the first person to actually get it right. That was great.

Kyle Hamer: 0:46

Oh man. You know it, if I think it's, cause I went to high school with somebody who had the last name, wait a minute. And once you see it spelled like that, it's, it's hard to ever forget that last name. For those of you who don't know, Stephen, Stephen is an SEO savant. Now he's humble about it, but when he's not training to be a Jedi paddle on he's out there solving the world's SEO problems, one site in business at a time he's worked for companies like Applebee's and IBM and Disney. So when it comes to understanding complex things and making them simple, it's one of Steven's gifts. Stephen is also a professor. So he's teaching the next generation of SEO experts in digital marketers, as well as a husband. Now I didn't get to know if you're a father or not, but I would imagine that you are, is that right? Is it, is it that obvious with the lines under the eyes that I have two teenagers teenage girls? That's right. You told me that I, I spaced that out. You know what I thought that I would have remembered, especially having two teenagers of my own, welcome to the show, Steven, what, what what didn't we cover that people should know about you shared? Well, you, you mentioned the, to me the most important thing is that I've been able to live my dream. My dream has been to one day take what I've learned in my years of doing digital marketing and, and pass it off to the next generation.

Steven Wiideman: 2:12

And it's a little bit the other direction for a lot of professors that want to, you know, to venture off and start a business of their own and, and run this big successful entity. And for me, it's always been the opposite. I, I enjoy teaching and the agency gives me the leverage to, you know, to be able to spend more time with students and to, you know, to, to be a part of that. And, and with that, you know, with, with that experience I'm able to, I'm able to communicate with some folks that are right out of school and take, take that engagement and how they respond a lot of these courses and exercises and fold them into training that we're giving to folks that aren't yet in school that want to learn how to do something, a professional skillset. So let's say you're a Baker, or, you know, you're in another you know, industry that you're not interested in and you suddenly have, have an interest in digital marketing. You're like the whole world's going to go online. And I'm really interested in fascinated with it, but you can't really afford to go to college for taking a lot of those same courses and putting them together in small bite size chunks for entrepreneurs and freelancers that you know, are interested in a new career in digital. And that's, that's exciting. It's not just the, you know, the hundreds of students I get to touch over the year, but it's the thousands of, of, you know, potential future SEOs in the world that you know, may not have the time or bandwidth for college, but can take a small course. And that's pretty amazing.

Kyle Hamer: 3:37

That is pretty amazing if you're listening and you haven't guessed yet, what today's topic is going to be the future of SEO and content marketing 20, 21 and beyond. But Stephen has been generous enough to actually bring up a topic that I think is really relevant for today. And it is what are like, what's going on with the pandemic, like search supposedly is up. Is it down? Is it left? Is it right? Google thinks that they need to apply new algorithms. What, what's something like let's get right into it. What's something that small businesses or businesses can do today to capitalize on what commerce is left online and given the changing demographics and things that are shifting.

Steven Wiideman: 4:16

Sure, sure. I think for some businesses online is the saving grace, right? It's the fact that they have an online presence enabled them to, to keep staying in business, to keep operating for other businesses, you know, they, they, haven't been as fortunate and personal injury law. For example, if people are on lockdown, they're not getting in car accidents, you don't need a lawyer. So I've seen a lot of clients that we've worked with in the legal industry have to do a lot of furloughs and layoffs simply because there just wasn't any, any clients available in that, in that particular industry. However, for a majority of, of restaurants you know, I, I see, especially I would like to patronize our local Cabo taco restaurant here in Rodan and bronc who runs the restaurant is just trying so hard, you know, to, to keep this business going. And what he, when he didn't realize in the beginning was that people were still interested in this, in his food, right. They just look at the site, Oh, it's closed. And then they were done. But if he would have left it on is open, but available for curbside or take out or spent five minutes, just logging into Google my business to let their customers know, Hey, we're still open. We're just not doing any dine-in right now. The other thing that, that I think a lot of businesses need to think about is how their customers are searching for their product or service. Now that their actual brick and mortar stores are closed. Two examples. I have one example, two brands, I hop an Applebee's, both of them you know, have several restaurants that are closed. Others have you know, some that are, that are open, but only for delivery and takeout. And the challenge when we're looking at this drop in and traffic there's still an affinity or an interest for delivery and takeout and people were searching that way, delivering near me restaurant, delivering your meat, a restaurant takeout, restaurant curbside open. Now they're searching for all these search terms, but none of the websites a year ago had any language that would, that would give Google a clue to help them to appear when someone's performing one of those queries. So to address that what we did is we, we rolled out two new pages across every single location, roughly 3,500 locations between the two brands, one page to address delivery. So when somebody is looking for restaurant delivery near me, breakfast delivery near me pancake delivering me, whatever, whatever query they happened to be using, whether they're modifying it with delivery or carry out or take out or curbside or card side you know, we've got content that satisfies that. So now, you know, if you do one of those searches, you'll see all of the delivery services, your Uber eats your Grubhubs, your Postmates, you know, the, it goes on and on. And now you'll actually see IOP and Applebee's and the mix of those delivery services because they addressed how people were searching at a content level. And granted that, that means, you know, having what about 7,000 new pages across the website, but those pages address the needs of their customers. And I think if small businesses take that same approach, maybe it's something simple, as simple as patio seating available, outdoor dining available, right? And so I would say, I would say, step one is, go into your Google, my business profile, go into here, your Yahoo local profile, go into your Yelp profile and make sure if you're open that it States that you're open and that you, you offer these, these difference delivery takeout and off premises services. In fact, Yelp has even upgraded their platform to offer several new fields that you could use to let consumers know we're not just open, but here are the things that we're doing that one to address the pandemic and to make sure your safety is priority, but to the ways that you can still get all the products and the, and the food and the things that you like you know, and, and what those hours look like if you do decide to come in. So I think, I think that getting those profiles up to date and then addressing at the content level on their website, that the different ways that consumers are, are now at the moment, looking for what they offer. I think that's paramount. I think if you could just spend five minutes as a business owner, just do those two things, and it doesn't take much time. And within a few days, you'll, you'll start to see a few phone calls pick up. You might start to see a few more curb sides. Your, your curbside pickup areas might start to fill up, but it takes, it takes the desire and the willingness to actually spend those few minutes, you know, to make those modifications. And unfortunately, all businesses are panicked. They're they're in this mode of, I gotta figure out another angle and I got to figure out, no, you just have to adjust what your customers are looking for now. And I think that's, that's probably the, the end game to this pandemic for a lot of businesses.

Kyle Hamer: 8:58

It, you know, the thing that's fascinating about that, it's twofold. One it's so simple in, in, when you think about when you get panicked, sometimes it's not a big sweeping change or a cataclysmic, you know, life altering thing that happens. It's just a series of small little choices, the small little choice of, well, I'm not gonna allow grub hub or waiter or door dash or whoever to, to deliver my food. Like, I'm not gonna let them, I'm not going to let them have access, but that's where all of your customers went or I'm not going. I don't understand what Google my business is. I don't even know if I have one. What do I do? Like none of this makes sense to me. So I'm going to stay away from it. I know how to cook a great cheeseburger. I know how to make a fantastic bowl of pasta, but I don't know anything when it comes to the website. Right. And why would I invest anything in that? Because all my customers are gone and it kind of gets back, but it gets back to marketing one Oh one, right? It's have something good to say, say it well, and then say it in the right place, like go where your customers are. So I, I love how simple that is for for a small business to, to get after it. Now, if I'm listening to this and I don't have a Google my business account, can you just touch on what it is, why it's valuable and then where I should look in order to get the most out of it, even though I'm not an SEO expert like you

Steven Wiideman: 10:25

Chorus. I think the easiest thing for business to do is just Google their business name and in their business name search, they'll actually see a lot of results that they could be controlling and updating and enhancing to help drive more traffic. The first one is, is usually a Google maps listing that Google maps listing is so easy to edit. All you have to do when you, when you're looking at that listing is click the edit listing or suggest an edit, and then walk through the wizard process of claiming your listing. It'll actually actually ask you, is this your business? And if it is, it'll walk you through how to claim it. Sometimes they'll do it through a phone number where they just verify via phone number. Sometimes you have to wait a little longer for a postcard to arrive, to verify that you own that listing. Once you, once you get that Google maps listing, it's through a service platform that Google provides called Google my business once you've claimed your access and you can go in and edit all the different information, loaded up, loaded up with as much content and attributes, listen to what your customers are saying and their reviews and apply that to some of the language and your descriptions and in your services. You know, if they're saying, you know, the tacos here are amazing. Talk about the tacos and, you know, our customers say our tacos you know, here at our llamado location are amazing. Next time somebody does a search for tacos, Marotta, boom, your listing shows up because that language is available in the review and in your description of your business. I've also noticed that that pictures and Are, are super helpful to improving your, your rankings in that map pack area. So, you know, if you do a search on your mobile device, you'll C3 map, listing show up and then some regular listings below it. And I've noticed that if you, if you add more pictures of the restaurant of the people, maybe even now of, of the, the staff cleaning with their masks on and showing that the safety measures you're taking during the pandemic I've noticed that that users respond to that. And when you go into your analytics in that Google my business account, remember all this is free. None of this costs a dime. Every business can do a search for their business, see their Google profile, as well as their Yelp and other listings, and go in and do this optimization. And if you, if you add those kinds of pictures and look at the analytics in that profile, you'll notice more customers are clicking on your listing. More customers are clicking the call icon in the listing. More customers are interacting with your listing. If you have a menu and you can, you can offer that menu in the maps so that the user doesn't have to worry, Hey, if I click on this website for this local business, am I going to get a virus or, you know, or, you know, excited. I know it's a small business and they probably don't have all the sophisticated security measures. So I'd rather just trust Google that happens. Unfortunately, they don't give the website a chance. They'll just lose that business data. So that's where the opportunity is jump into that profile, fill out everything you possibly can continuously post photos, maybe even once every couple of days throw a new photo in there, a different angle, different thing that the group is doing show, you know, that the culture of the, of the organization that, that brings authenticity, that that inspires click-through when somebody sees your listing, you know, and it, it plays a huge role in, in helping the user note, Hey, this, this business is open, right? This is not a listing that says it's open. And it's closed with pictures that I saw six months ago. It's where the recent pictures and recent information. So I know they're open. So I have more confidence and I'm more willing to call or to take the extra seconds out of my life, to interact with the business.

Kyle Hamer: 13:57

So simple. And, and yet sometimes can feel so intimidated.

Steven Wiideman: 14:01

You just, you just gotta do that search and start, start clicking. Right?

Kyle Hamer: 14:06

Well, and, and not that there's not 10,000 other things for, for business owners or even people who are trying to figure out where their customers went to think about today, but it is something where if you take the time to learn about it over 24 to 48 hours, because I genuinely believe that between YouTube or listening to guys like yourself, teach a 90, 90 minute YouTube video of somebody setting up their, their Google, my business account. And just following kind of the basic blocking tackling will play dividends over the next six to eight weeks. Especially as you start adding reviews, are there any tricks or tips you would have for somebody that's gone through the process of getting there, getting their information all up to date on Google, my business and they at it. And like, but it doesn't feel like it's really ranking is there as it, you know, is there a magic number of reviews to get more visibility? Is there, is it keywords? What, what is it that helps you really pop

Steven Wiideman: 15:00

For Google? Well, we have to remember that algorithms are based on patterns. There's never a set of forget it. You can't just go in, do a bunch of things and then throw your feet up on the desk, right? These are, these are marketing tactics that need to be nurtured and cultivated. And there there's four areas of local search. If you're a local business, if you're a brick and mortar and you have a physical address, the spore areas that you're gonna need to focus on area, number one is going to be making sure your data, your business data is accurate everywhere. It needs to be. And there are services that provide that for you so that you don't have to do it manually. When we're talking about databases, we're talking about like info USA and factual, which is now owned by Foursquare. And you know, there's, there's several of these different databases, the services that that are available that can do all of that kind of grunt work for you are Moz, local, right? Local. there's, there's several of these services. I believe white spark that based in Canada does that as well. So you start with those data aggregators and make sure your business information is always accurate since proximity to a location is still, you know, probably the number one ranking signal and maps. I mean, you search and Google's going to try to show you the most you know, the, the closest location to you. So making sure that information is correct is going to help with that. Number two is going to be the information on your page. So when you go to, if you're, if you have a single location, if you go to your Google, my business and you see all those different fields, what are your hours? What are your holiday hours? You know, what are, what are some of the services that you offer at this location? What's your phone number? All, all of that information should be available on your website. I mean, if it's important to, to Google for how they rank their listings, why shouldn't it be important to your customers to see that same information on your website? So, and if you have multiple locations create a location page for every single location, you can see that when you go to Applebee's and I hop, you can see how they have individual location pages that are optimized for the type of restaurant they are in the city that they they're located in. So I would say that's in a sense, it's called a local page, right? Making sure that local page is fully optimized. Number three is going to be around how visible your business information is off your website. As you know, these search engines use web crawlers, right? These little robots that crawl through the internet and for organic rankings, they're going to look at how many other websites are mentioning and linking to your website. But for map rankings, they're going to look at how often they find your business data. If, if your competitors are in, you know, 22 different local directories and year end one, maybe that other businesses more prominent and more popular than yours is. So you want to make sure that you're in all of those business directories and industry directories, a white spark doesn't have a tool called the local citation finder. Geo rancor also has a similar tool you put in your competitors, or you put in your keyword And they'll show you all the different business directory opportunities where you can list your business. Most of them are free. So that's, that's number three is just growing the number of times that, that Google is finding your business information offline or off your website. The last, and you already mentioned this. Kyle is business reviews and ratings. First thing I do to make sure business is open is I go to their reviews. And instead of starting by lowest to highest, like some people do have to scrutinize, I sort by most recent, because I want to know that somebody go here recently, or am I going to waste my time going someplace that's closed. So so making sure every month you're getting you know, good high quality reviews that you're providing a good experience for your customers, that you're, you're suggesting to those customers who are happy to share their experience online. And, and Google will tell you this. It's so important to respond to reviews, even if it's a positive review, just saying, Hey, you know, we really appreciate your business. Thank you so much for coming in. We can't wait to see you next time and especially responding to negative reviews and not generically, you know, you, you want to try to get them into a private conversation. So you, you respond with, I am so sorry to hear that you had this experience and we want to make it right. Name them by name, don't use a program to auto submit, you know, feedback, but name them by name or by their tagline and say I'd really like to talk to you personally, I'm the manager of this location. Please call me. I promise I'll make it, I'll make this better. And in doing that, you invite them back in. You make sure they have an amazing experience. They change their review. And then over time you continue to see growth. So if you focus, focus on those four tiers of, of, you know, location-based map rankings, your, your data, accuracy, your local landing, page information, your business, data visibility, and business directories and listings, and those reviews. If you're doing something for all four of those areas, every month, within six to 12 months, you should be in the top three. And on the first page of web search results, not just in Google maps, that was like, why did I ask?

Kyle Hamer: 19:52

No, I did not. Not at all actually. Well, I, I, what I was gonna say is that's actually for, for people that are listening, that the, the way you've broken it down is, is really it's gold. And it's gold because you might have to go talk to some whizzbang guru who wants to charge a 300 bucks a month to, to put you on a directory aggregator and to give you some lip service. Three reality is, is that in the situation that we're in with the financial pressures that we have, and the way that small businesses and even medium sized businesses, it doesn't have to be a restaurant. It could be, you know, a local HVAC company, or it could be a, you know, a carpenter the way that they are being impacted by the, the regulations and the, and the shifting of everything that's happening all the time is folks don't know anymore. If they can trust as Bob's, you know, as Bob's burgers is still open is, is Sally's shoe sign or place, whatever, like they don't, they don't know. So they've got to, they've got to have things that they've, and they trust Google following these tips are things that are just, they're really simple and they're really effective. And they don't take a lot of time. Like it's, you don't have to hire a big agency to do that.

Steven Wiideman: 20:59

That's right. That's it lock it down every Monday morning, I'm going to do, you know, these, these three things or these four things, right. For local, and, and maybe I'll even use that, that other free tool that Google offers called Google search console. And I'm not going to feel like I have to do something with it. Instead, I'm going to take all that information and I'm going to delegate it to somebody who's more tech savvy on the team and say, Hey, once a week, can you go in and, and address these things and then shoot me an email or, or text me that you did it so that I know and have confidence that at least, at least we're paying attention, even if it's only 15 minutes a week, Monday morning at eight o'clock or heighten, whatever it happens to be, it's just getting it on the calendar, locking it in and holding people accountable to it. That's I think that's where the real challenge is, is not, not figuring out what to do. Anyone like a convention can go to YouTube and figure out a lot of these things. It's just, it's just locking it into a calendar and making it part of your, your weekly habit of, of growing a business, you know?

Kyle Hamer: 21:56

Yeah. It's just like getting up to make the donuts every day. If, if you make a part of the habit, eventually just becomes a fabric of, of, of your business, right? It's just another operational procedure where your marketing's not on autopilot, but you're now leveraging the world's largest search engine to help people find you. And you don't have to do a lot, right? It's not, I have to go flyer parking lots, or I have to buy big billboard. It's just every week, every day, every couple of days I'm doing these things and I'm being consistent. So I just think that that's tremendous.

Steven Wiideman: 22:27

I think local businesses, mom and pops have an advantage over these bigger brands. I know it feels like the big brands always outranked because they've got so much credibility and they get so much traffic, but mom and pops really have the advantage because they can, they can break out of the corporate rules. Right. And, and do some things. That's that corporate level. They can't scale. I can't ask Applebee's to go out and make sure every single location every month is getting into all the local business directories. Instead we, we, we put a data feed together and we give them to the big websites, the big directories, but the local guys won't take a feed, right? They're not going to sort through that feed to figure out which location is nearest to them. So there's, there's a little bit of that elbow crease that that can be used to help a mom and pop, just stay up late, make sure in every local directory. The other thing you can do that the big guys can't do are local events. Local events are amazing. If you do something as simple as Hey today, we're giving away free pancakes. We want to help local community. We know people are hungry. It's the holidays, it's cold. You know, we want to do something nice. You do this local event. Can you tell all your neighboring businesses about it? And you ask them, Hey, would you like to pitch in and help cover some of the costs of this? Cause we're doing it for the, you know, for the community. Most of the time, they're going to say no, say no problem. I understand. Can you donate your time? No, we're too busy. Okay. So you can't donate money or time, which at least maybe mentioned it somewhere on the website that we have this event happening. Oh, sure. We'll get you a hold of our webmaster and he'll fill out a LinkedIn link for you and talk about the event. And in doing that and in getting those links and in getting those mentions across all those local business websites, Google is going to find and consume all that data. And it's going to move your listing up because the giants don't have that kind of flexibility. They can't go to neighboring businesses and knock on the door and say, Hey, let's support each other, right? Because they're locked into that corporate, you know, legal regulations of what they can and can't do so local business by running some periodic advance, maybe once a month and getting other local businesses. And maybe even the city go to the civic center and say, Hey, we're doing this event to try to help the community. Can you promote it on the city website? Oh my God, that's, that's gold. You know, for, for search engines to see links and mentions on governments and education sites and colleges, there's a huge trust factor there. And that can really boost, you know, overall keyword rankings and overall visibility, plus the referral traffic and the giving back and what you're doing and creating those events. We had an attorney who did a blood drive and then he did a free CPR class, you know, and, and we generated tons of links that helped move our rankings up and tons of, of business information citations, because they were saying here's where the event's going to take place. So so there's something I think too, that we can add on, not just to making sure your website mentions patio and outdoor seating and and all the off premises delivery, curbside, et cetera, but also to do something, even if it's just once a month, once a quarter and really just hit the neighboring businesses and try to get them to participate. That's huge. And that's how the mom and pops can win over the big brands, especially now.

Kyle Hamer: 25:38

And I think that, I think the beauty of that is, is one of the things that we've seen in SEO over the years is there's your black hat. And these guys are always looking for ways to trick Google trick, the trick, the search engine, and crawl up to the top. Well, it's always short-lived and what the search engines have really begun to kind of understand is that for them to continue to scale up and to maintain their level of relevance, they actually have to shrink their perspective, right. It used to be, I'm looking at things from a 50,000 foot view, and these are the best things at a, at a national or a galactic level, but really what you care about is the stuff that's important to you and relevant to you locally. And so we're, you know, local to what you, whether it's your web traffic or where you specifically live hyper-local right. That's that's well. Sure. but when you, when you, when you focus that the level of scale there, that's really where offline and online blend in a way that major brands cannot was the last time you heard of best buy doing something at a, at a local level, my local best buy doesn't ever do anything. My local Nordstrom doesn't ever do anything. Right? Like the, the local mall barely does anything. You're. I mean, I think you're just, you're hitting on something where it's like, if you're giving back to the community and you're leveraging folks that are there in your area, asking for something as simple as a mention or a, you know, a you know, progressing down to where you're getting some of the backlinks again, it's marrying that online and offline to make you to show not only from a web presence, but also your your community presence of the impact that you're having. I just think that's really, really, really powerful.

Steven Wiideman: 27:22

Right? Absolutely. And you know, there, there are a lot of things that are coming down the pipeline that businesses have to start thinking about. We mentioned the future of search and there's all these, these great smart devices now and, and assistance and series and Alexa is and so forth. So I think, I think as, as the year starts to improve as businesses start to reopen obviously we want to sustain some of that online traffic. So we want to make sure those pages stay up and that we're continuing to make sure people who still don't necessarily feel safe about going to a brick and mortar. You know, as we, as we start to, you know, to, to pivot from giving all of our emphasis to that, to what's next, I think, I think the voice assistants are going to be, you know I would say a priority, especially for 2022, as you start getting close to it. I don't think it's, it's a mandatory thing for 2021 yet, but I think it's something that, that business owners need to start experimenting with. And we mentioned the Google, my business earlier for, for the voice assistance and you know, for the Google home and so forth we want to start thinking about something called the Google action console. It's pre just like, you know, Google my business. And at some point next year, put on the calendar, maybe June or July, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to spend an afternoon playing with the Google action console and the Alexa skills. I'm going to spend a day and just play with it. It doesn't take programmers. It feels like it's, it's rocket science, but when you start getting into it, they're all a little walkthrough wizards that'll help you out. And you just want to make sure that your business is there and that you're answering questions that people might have about your business. So when they're using voice search, you know, you can, you can make sure your business shows up and that if they have questions that that voice assistant can solve them for you, you just go in ball, the wizard, punching your, your business information, what customers generally ask your customer service department and make sure those questions are available. Maybe even talk to a web developer or get on Upwork or freelancer and say, Hey, I want to, if I, if I offer appointments, I want my appointments to be bookable through one of these assistant programs and they'll help you set that up. And I think that's, that's really planning ahead for 2022 is making sure as, as people start to un-tether themselves from their mobile devices, and they start to use more interactions with the, the speaker in their car and on the refrigerator, you know, and, and, and within the internet of things that they're still able to interact with your business without staring down at their cell phone, I think that's, that's going to be sort of the, the paramount or future of, you know, what, what should I be focusing on as we get closer to 2022? I would say voice search is going to play a really big role in that. The other thing I would challenge every business to do smaller big is to try to, I used to try to do an interaction on the website, whether it's making a purchase or filling out a form, but try doing it with just one hand, right? If you can do it just one hand and get through the form fields, using an actual Dialpad, if it's a number field if, if there's a way to just click and be done, like on any Shopify website where it takes you to the shop app, and then within a few clicks, without any typing required, you can make a purchase. If you can get your websites. So a place where the user can, can interact with a thumb and a matter of seconds, then you've succeeded at handling how users are interacting with the internet. And Google has addressed this multiple times over the last couple of years, they keep talking about mobile first indexing. And, you know, we're going to rank sites based on our crawl of the mobile experience, not of the desktop anymore, you know, and other search engines are following their leads. So really important as we start thinking about what can I do next year to make sure that I'm still getting more traffic from search engines? I would say, make sure it's like, it's still a place where either you can completely interact with the business without fetching the phone, or you can interact with a thumb and complete a transaction very quickly without the need for a keyboard, maybe just a dial pad push number or a button click that integrates with your Facebook or your shop app and be done. I think those are, those are some areas that, that will make such a huge difference. There's a hundred things you could do, you know, that that will all make an impact to your traffic. But if I had to prioritize two, or it would be voice search and it would be mobile. And if you can focus on those two things next year, as, as a priority and once a month get with your team, you know, whether it's your nephew, who does your website or whatever, and say, nephew, what are we doing right now to address voice search and, and our mobile experience, let's go through it together and see, you know, what it, what it feels like. Let's use usertesting.com and see what you know, a consumer thinks of the experience of our website. And then let's, let's continue every month to try to improve that. So that by 2022, we're available on all the voice devices and, you know, our mobile experience is lightning fast without any thinking required. And we're able to convert more of the visitors who come to our website.

Kyle Hamer: 32:20

No, that w well, it was in what it leads me to kind of, I guess it puts me in this interesting spot where it feels like for you, this is all very, very natural, right? If I'm listening and it's like, Oh, you know, Stephen's just over here and he's over there and it's, this is just coming next. And it's, it's the most effortless in the, in the way that you're thinking about it. Right. And you said that your original website had something on it that I think is very poignant, which is, you know, some people, well, the statement on your website was you think hiring an expert is expensive, try hiring an amateur, right. When we start to think about who do we trust, what are we looking for? What are things that people should be asking as it relates to search? Because it sounds like search is no longer just SEO search engine for, for text or for Google. It's moving into voice and, you know, mobile and, and who knows what's next with, with what we have happening in in the gaming industry and, and the internet of things. So where do you turn for, for insight is to try and stay ahead of that so that you're, you're constantly pushing yourself forward.

Steven Wiideman: 33:33

Great question. I, I have a client of ours who runs a Rolex consignment site. And one thing I've always admired about him, even if he really didn't have the budget for it, he would hire consultants that had a lot of industry experience and had really good reviews and reputation and, and references. And he'd hire those consultants to come in to, to lay out a plan. Here's, here's how you can maximize everything based on our 10, 20 years of industry experience. And then they step away and they allow the business owner to take that action plan and delegate it to a team member, maybe calling upon the consultant now, and then just to make sure it's being done correctly. But for the most part, at least they have, they have a strategy, they have a blueprint, you know, and it's, it's not a blueprint of, of, you know, sticks. And and Hey, it's a blueprint of bricks, right? And so I think, I think that's something business owners can do is just, just, you know, parse out a couple of hundred dollars to, to talk to some consultants, by the way, most of them, most of the consultants that I know anyway in digital are free to talk to for a strategy call. If you're a small business, they want to help they're available on Quora. They're available in Facebook groups, on digital marketing, they're available on LinkedIn groups. We help small businesses all the time for free. What if they call? And they say, Hey, I, I really don't have a budget, but you know, I, I need business. Can you help me? We'll schedule an hour call, we'll go through, you know, the, the tech part of what they could do to improve their website, the content opportunity, looking at what keywords are, driving traffic to competitors and the off page side, where are their competitors getting links and mentions that they should be focusing on? So I think, I think for business owners, that's, that's where you, where you, you have to decide, am I going to hire my nephew? Who's going to try to figure all this stuff out or talk to somebody who's been doing it for 10 years and have them give me a blueprint to give my nephew. I think, I think that's, that's the differentiator between a site that, that sees a lot of success in digital marketing. And one that you spent hundreds, if not thousands of dollars learning and teaching somebody to learn as opposed to, you know, going to somebody who already can give you that blueprint and then have you, you know, delegate that to different team members. I think that's I don't know. I don't know if that completely answers your question, but I think that's, that's where you solve the, what do I do? Where do I start? We also, if you're a small business, you know, on our, on our current website at[inaudible] dot com forward slash learn, we've got a lot of free guides on how to do things, including local search. There's a, there's a whole page. We talk about local SEO strategy and provide a checklist of all the things that you need to do or to delegate to somebody to do. That'll make it a little bit easier. All those areas we talked about earlier that the data, the landing page, the citations, the, the reviews, you know, it gives you a lot of free advice on how to do that. So that's, that's where I would start is. And then if they won't do it for free go to somebody who will write, go to, like I said, mentioned the, I mentioned the Facebook groups and the LinkedIn groups, and Quora is plenty of people that will give you really good free advice. And they like to help at least those who really enjoy what they do. I know, I know we here at Lehman love what we do. We love to help businesses. So if there's something we can do, if you want us to just, you know, take a look at your website and give you some free suggestions you know, we're, we're pretty easy to find.

Kyle Hamer: 36:47

I think that's great. You know, I had a mentor for years and he had two, two statements. His first statement was, and experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. Interesting, true experience is a body of knowledge that can not be taught. And so when you're looking for somebody to help leverage their experience, you want somebody, who's got a body of knowledge that cannot be taught, not somebody who's had an experience. And, you know, it came from, you know, the outcome of not getting what they actually wanted. And in, in what you're talking about, I think is, is really important for, for folks, because there are a lot of folks, a lot of vendors, a lot of people that are out there that will offer free advice, but the free advice comes with you know, we can help you rank on the first page, or we can help you do these things. It's only$149 a month. And, but, but it it's the 2020 version of the, you know you said snake oil, it's the, you know, the elixir salesman, right. He's standing on the corner and it's like, here, this bottle will make you grow hair. And I might've bought a bottle or two, but fool me once, shame on you fool me twice, shame on me, fool me a third time. What the hell was I thinking? So, you know, it's, it's it's important to have those filters in place and to have resources that you can trust. So you're asking good questions.

Steven Wiideman: 38:14

Yep. And, and kind of like, I can tell you, we've, we've felt a lot of businesses that, that are in those same predicaments where they're paying a monthly fee and they're not really sure what they're getting. And then when they ask, you know, they, they get throw out a bunch of big words and technical terms. And they're just like, I guess it sounds like they're doing good stuff, but they don't really fully understand it. So we, we put a site called SEO verified and what it does, it's got a free guide that you can download. And it's basically an audit and you, you use this you, you call your SEO company or the potential SEO company you want to work with. And you ask these really important questions, questions, like, do I own my website? Or do you, you know, when we start working with you, do I have administrative access to all my analytics and tools, you know, that, that we're using are we using an SSL certificate so that we're, you know, providing a secure experience, do we offer up privacy policy? Are we addressing GDPR? Are we handling accessibility for free people who have visibility issues? It's all those sort of paramount, like, like really fundamental questions that you could ask your SEO company about. And when you start to get that hesitation, you start to get that nervousness. Then you should be concerned. Maybe the company you're working with is maybe not doing everything that you would hope they would do to boost your keyword rankings. So while it's, it's probably not you know, an exciting thing to hear for agencies, I think it's a very important educational device that small businesses could use to at least know the, what, even if they don't have the time or interest in learning the, how so having that, what list in front of you gives you something. So when you are on a call with an SEO company and they say, you know, we do this, this and this. Oh, that sounds fantastic. But you mind if I go through my list and then you start at the beginning and you work your way through that, that question and answer sheet that's, that's something we hope will help a lot of small businesses from being taken advantage of by SEO companies that are, you know, taking advantage of the fact that these small businesses don't want to know and don't have any interest in search.

Kyle Hamer: 40:18

No, but they want the, they want the results. And I think that that's the, you know, that's the, that's the rub for a lot of organizations is, is I want, I want to pay somebody with experience that I can trust to deliver deliver an outcome. Right. But because SEO is this weird mystical box that sits on the backside of my browser in a database, and those words are all bigger than what my third grade vocabulary is. Right. I'll give you 150 bucks or I'll give you 300 bucks, just, I just make it work. But they can, they, I really feel like it's the mean it's the, it's the swamp thing of digital marketing right now, because it's the hardest, it's the hardest part of internet marketing to quantify for a small business if done incorrectly, right?

Steven Wiideman: 41:11

Yeah. And there, there's a way for you to, to build a forecast forecast. If you went to an expert and you said, Hey, what's, what's the total opportunity than I have. How much traffic can I actually get to my website from, you know, paid advertising and search networks and organic traffic. You know, those, those forecasts are something that are, are not difficult to come up with. So that way you at least know what the threshold and where you currently Are. If nothing else, January of 2021, create that baseline, where am I right now, based on the potential traffic I could be getting, you know, and then what are the things I'm going to work on this year to, you know, to hit some of these goals right now I'm at, I don't know, 10% of the market share and my location for my service or product, or, you know, restaurant. So by the end of the year, I want to have 20% of that market space. So, you know, I'm going to work with my team to make sure that we're doing things that fall in line with, you know, hitting that KPI angle. I think that's, that's something simple that businesses,

Kyle Hamer: 42:09

So that's, that's actually really valuable, but I think what's would be even more valuable. Stephen is, is tell us what's next, because sitting down with your team and saying, okay, well, I want to go from 5% market share of the traffic to 20% of the share. Like that sounds all great, but what am I actually doing? Like what, what are the elements that I need? Or what are the things that I need to be thinking about in order to get to that next level of traffic acquisition? What w what should we be focusing on?

Steven Wiideman: 42:35

Yeah, so, so fundamentally not, not just the Google maps rankings that we're talking about, which are super important because they do come up before organic listings, but the organic listings that come up beneath those three map pack listings are equally important, and it gives you more of an opportunity to get more saturation in the search results or more real estate of a search results for all the different products and services you offer. So what, what could businesses be doing to get more of that traction, more of that traffic, and actually get some traction on it is going to be, to create content that satisfies what their customers are looking for and have the best version of that. So if you're a personal injury attorney and you handle car accident cases, do a search for car accident, lawyer in the city that you're in, look at the competing pages, look at what they're using in their titles and descriptions of what shows up in the search results. Look at the headings and subheadings, look at the images that the videos, the lists they offer, the references they're making, and then come up with a better page to solve for that. I still see a lot of businesses that have one page listing, every service they offer, if they would just take that one page and then break it down and said, sub pages for each of those things that they offer, they'll start to see their website show up for each of those different topics or keywords. So I would say, take everything that you do, everything that you sell and give it a dedicated landing page, unless it's super similar to another thing with a modification, maybe you sell burritos. And one of them's garnia Sada, and one of them's chicken, you don't need two different pages for those. You just have a burritos available, carnitas, Sada, and chicken, and your page is still going to show up. In fact, Google recently made a change that allows for passages. So if, if if you don't have a dedicated landing page, you still have a chance of having your broader page with all those listings appearing in the search results. They're taking passages from the page and helping to rank that page and showing the passage and the results. So where things are too similar that feel like, you know, the user's intent is still the same. You know, I don't think I need to have a page for every keyword. Then keep it as, as one single page. But if the intense different a car accident is different than a slip and fall accident, create separate pages. Talk about why you're better talk about why customers come to you share testimonials, share case studies, share awards, features anything that you can do to address common sales principles, such as trust, reciprocity, urgency, scarcity you know, authenticity, all those things that that users are going to look for to say, I really trust this business. They took the time to create this very helpful page. They gave me some free advice right out the gate. Here's some things I need to work on. They showed their expertise. So I trust them, you know what? I'm going to try these things, you know, it's actually really complicated. So instead, what I'm going to do is just call them up and see if I can get them to help me. And then, you know, you, you get customers by giving away enough helpful information so that they feel informed. You build trust and rapport with them. And you know, what, if they don't convert the first time they visit, that's what paid advertising sport. Now you, since they've visited your website, now you can serve them ads and say, Hey, are you still looking for this product? Are you still interested in this service? And, you know, through that remarketing, they can come back to the website and hopefully become a customer

Kyle Hamer: 45:56

Again, super simple, broken down into bite sized nuggets, or just, I like, I liked the way that you, you know, you pre digest. What we should be thinking about is as small businesses, as, as owners, as people looking to capture more of the choppy traffic and, and then ultimately turn them into paying customers. I really, really appreciate that for for our listeners. You, you mentioned a little bit earlier, if somebody has questions, how do they get ahold of you? How do they get ahold of this verified checklist?

Steven Wiideman: 46:29

Although there's a way to my checklist is available S E O verified.com and it's, it's free. There's no cost for it to, to reach us. You know, our, my, my last name is Weedman, w I D E M a N. And we have that on all the different social channels, whether you're on Instagram, Facebook, wherever just do forward slash Wiedemann. And we're there. If you want to just talk to me directly, you know, my tag is just SEO, Steve, that was, you know, back back when I was relevant in the two thousands that's the tagline I went with was S E O Steve. You can find me there on Twitter you know, Facebook, wherever wherever you happen to be online or you just visit our website, wait a minute.com. We have a contact form there. There's a whole learning library at Ford slash learn. We have some free courses. You can take courses.wiedemann.com. So if you want to get a little bit more structured training and the same training courses I teach at Cal state Fullerton and UC San Diego, you can get a lot that same content At courses that wait a minute, if you just want to learn a little bit more about search history and that master class is free. So please take it and enjoy it as questions. And hopefully we can help you grow your business.

Kyle Hamer: 47:43

Great stuff, Steve, thanks so much for being on the show. We've, we've just, it's been a delight having you here today,

Steven Wiideman: 47:50

And likewise, it's been fun

Kyle Hamer: 47:52

For those that are still listening and not yet asleep, make sure you like subscribe and follow. You've been listening to the summit podcast with Kyle Amer I'm your host and never stop learning, never stop growing, never stop striving to be yourself, make 20, 21 and also mirror

Speaker 5: 48:13

[Inaudible].