Web Recap: SEO Made Easy + Mother's Day Prep Tips from Ryan Freeman

Episode 122: SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a huge topic. What to do and what not to do. The difference between paid and organic search. Do I need to hire an SEO expert or can I do it myself? So many questions. In this webinar recap Ryan Freeman, owner of Strider SEO addresses these questions and more, including some action items you can do before Mother's Day.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:02

If you want to be in that top section and if you want to push some order gatherers out, especially on mobile, where you've got to scroll for a while to get past those four ads before you get to anything else, um, yeah, I would recommend that for most shops that they invest a little bit and participate in that. But again, that's that is a shop-by-shop decision for sure.

SPEAKER_04 0:25

Welcome to the business and pleasure of flowers. We're your hosts, Vonda LaFever and Lori Wilson.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

And we believe that business and fun are a perfect combination. Kind of like us, Vonda.

SPEAKER_04 0:40

Hey clickers. Thanks for joining us today. We have a special session today that actually is a recap of a webinar we had last week with a search engine optimization specialist, which is SEO, as most of you know, Ryan Freeman from Strider. And he answered a lot of really great questions. So what we've done is edited that webinar a bit so that you have the highlights, but we'll also drop in the show notes the full webinar link if you'd rather do it that way as well. So let's listen to the recap of the webinar. So, Ella, you want to go over our outline today, what we're gonna accomplish here? Sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Yeah, we have three main things. First up is a little fact versus fiction with SEO. The second thing is Ryan's takeaways from the local U Advanced SEO Summit that he recently attended last week, was it?

SPEAKER_06 1:38

Yep, last week.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Okay. And then third, we have three action items for you guys to do before Mother's Day that are easy and attainable. And so we'll get all that content to you. Um, so first up, fact versus fiction.

SPEAKER_04 1:55

Yeah, this one to me is like the myth busters, right? You know, you guys look at it's like, okay, there's so many things out there, and people say this is fact. Well, is it fact? Is it fiction? So we're gonna go through those. And Cammy, these are ones that you usually have people call you and ask you about. So I think I'm gonna have you take the lead on this.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

Yeah, I'll ask the questions and I'll let Ryan answer them. Yes, I'll take the easy part.

SPEAKER_04 2:22

The specialist is gonna give us the answers. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

The first one here. Do I really need SEO for my business? I know, Ryan, that this is multifaceted and is going to be hard to keep quick paced. So yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:34

So the first thing that came to mind when I saw this question is uh SEO is ultimately about trying to be seen, trying to be found, trying to draw attention to your business. So if that's a goal for you, then yes, about 80% of uh product purchases start with an online search. And a lot of that online search winds up in organic traffic, going to websites. So if that's a goal for you, first parallel that came to mind uh for me was just how much florists usually enjoy taking care of their window or doing their window, overhauling their window. I know for our shop, that was always a big point of pride. Our window had to look really good, it had to be uh talkworthy, noteworthy, something that uh you know people would notice. Also, when I was growing up, we had a shop a couple blocks down that survived only by being directly across from the funeral home. And they had the same display in their window for basically my entire lifetime. They had they had a few silk funeral things out of in the window that I kid you not were all literally bleached white by the sun by the time that shop closed. But they did not want to be found, they did not care. So for them, yeah, that was their mindset. But we wanted to be noticed, we wanted to stand out, we wanted people to come and you know experience our shop and further. So, yes, from whether it's your window, whether it's your online presence, your website, and again, getting people to that website, yes, SEO is very important.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

And I know there's a lot of pieces to the puzzle, it's different for every shop, probably, right? When whenever you're assessing someone's needs and what what the plan is for them.

SPEAKER_05 4:03

Definitely. And you know, one of one of the things we hear, and you may hear probably hear this as well, is well, I'm the only shop in town. So do I really need SEO? Well, you might be the only shop in town, but I bet you don't have to go too many towns over to find another shop. And if you leave your window getting bleached in the sun and never really looking like you care about your business, right? Then people will eventually start driving to the next town to get their flowers. So just because you're the only one in town doesn't mean uh you don't need to try.

SPEAKER_04 4:34

There are things you should be doing to try.

SPEAKER_05 4:36

Yeah, absolutely. You still want to make sure that you know you're looking like you care about your business. And you know, SEO is one way to be doing that.

SPEAKER_02 4:43

So I think this next question kind of my mind automatically went there as you're talking. Do I need to advertise on Google? And is that considered SEO?

SPEAKER_05 4:53

Yeah, so the first answer, do I need to advertise? Probably. And that's definitely a case by case, but uh there's generally more benefit to it than not. Uh, but is it considered SEO? No, it's not. Uh, when we're talking about advertising, we're talking about those ads that appear at the top of the page. Uh sometimes they're labeled ads, sometimes they're labeled promoted. All right, Google keeps you know playing with how those are displayed. But uh the point is those are pay-to-play, right? So that's where your advertising you're paying to show up there. And then below, once you get into the local pack and the organic listings, those are the editorial endorsements.

unknown 5:28

Right.

SPEAKER_05 5:28

So that's where it's an actual recommendation based on merit, not just on you know getting into the auction system for those ad slots. So if you want to be in that top section and if you want to push some order gatherers out, especially on mobile, where you've got to scroll for a while to get past those four ads before you get to anything else. Um, yeah, I would recommend that for most shops that they invest a little bit and participate in that. But yeah, that's that is a shop-by-shop decision for sure.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

I feel like you said something, it stuck with me too. Um, about a year ago, you did a little uh webinar for our members. And I think you said even if you are the only shop in town, you need to pay a little bit, right? To make those order gatherers need to spend more to be there. Isn't that kind of something you said?

SPEAKER_05 6:17

Yeah, definitely. So again, with it being an auction system, order gatherers are going to benefit from a lack of competition. You go back a couple of decades, it was the national ads in the yellow pages, right? They it wasn't that much more expensive to just get your ad out nationally. And really, that's what they're doing in this case. But as soon as there's a little bit of local competition, right, those auction prices go up. And there will always be a benefit skewed towards the more relevant local business. So all of a sudden, you know, if it used to cost them $10 to get an order, uh, just if that local competition means that now it's $15 or $20 for that order gatherer to get an order, their business model has changed dramatically. And you avoid that headache of person calling you saying, I ordered this from your website and I didn't get it, or I ordered it and it was horrible, or I want to order this thing from your website that I'm looking at right now. It's 1995 for you know three dozen roses.

SPEAKER_02 7:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 7:13

It's like, no, you're on flowershopping.com. That's not us.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

Every florist is nodding their head right now, right?

SPEAKER_05 7:19

And that's that's such an awkward conversation because now you have to say, no, Miss Customer, um, what you clicked on is not what you thought you clicked on, and you just you really weren't paying attention. And I hate to be the one to break it's to you, but right, yeah, it's true. Yeah, I don't like being the bearer of bad news, but so the next question, um just kind of rapid fire.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

Like I said, if I sign up for SEO, will I get orders right away and show up in the local map pack?

SPEAKER_05 7:47

So it's best to think of SEO as a process. So the question here really is where are you in that process? So if you have an 80-year-old business that's been in town forever, you've never really done anything online, but you probably have a listing because you exist, right? Then you're at least starting from something. You've got that brand reputation already. So it might be a little more of a ramp up before you start seeing the needle move. It will, but um, you might not see the immediacy of that. If you're opening a new business and you're creating your first listing, right? Creating that first Google business profile, then yeah, you're gonna see probably see that needle move a little bit, but sooner because you're starting from zero. So anything you're doing is gonna be a benefit. And then you know, that SEO will build momentum. That that last time round, we talked about the difference between the uh the motorcycle and the Mac truck.

SPEAKER_06 8:41

Yes, right.

SPEAKER_05 8:42

So the paid ads are the motorcycle, you turn them on and they're going, right? There's not the ramp up, but the Mac truck uh takes a little longer to get moving, a lot more momentum once it's going.

SPEAKER_02 8:51

I love that example. It's stuck with me. It's stuck with me. So the next question, I've seen other florists change their name on their Google Business Profile, which formerly known as Google My Business. I actually am starting to get the hang of Google Business Profile, though it makes more sense to me, um, you know, of what it's describing. But anyway, um, rabbit trail, as we talked about. Um, with added words like florist and flower delivery, is this something you recommend?

SPEAKER_05 9:21

Definitely not. We need to remember um these are supposed to be business listings. So just like you would get list in the phone book or any other business directory, uh, it should be something that represents your name. And it's funny just how much this came up um at local use. So we'll cover that a little bit more in some of my takeaways as well. But really, this is not new. I mean, for as long as there's been websites and search, there's been spam. And for as long as there have been local business listings and Google business listings, there've been spam there. This idea of inserting keywords into your business name goes back at least 15 years. You know, it was SEO conferences 15 years ago or more where this was talked about. It's not new, but it is something that's gained momentum over time because there was uh you know some measure of effectiveness to it. But we're also overall seeing a big crackdown on uh authenticity and accuracy, um, not just from Google, but from legal perspectives as well. So this Google's really taking a lot of heat for a lot of their business practices. So they're starting to shift more focus onto uh these kind of accuracy things. So the guideline from Google is this needs to be something that this needs to be your business name. Now, this could be um either your official registered business name uh or it could be a DBA. So um our shop was Gordon W. Martin Florist Limited, right? But we went by Martin's the flower people, right? That was a registered DBA for our business. Uh, we had used that on all of our signs and letterhead and vehicles and everywhere you went, that we were Martin's the flower people, Martin's the flower people. That was it, that was all. And that's what we were known by. If you you know, if you called, that's how we answered the phone. All right, if someone was talking about us, it was Martins or Martin's the flower people. So that was an acceptable uh name to use in a listing like this. If we had said Martin's forest and flower delivery and gifts delivered all throughout Toronto same day as our business name, uh that's not okay, right? That's very clearly spam, and everybody knows that's spam. And you just get into diminishing returns. Well, I'll cover that a little bit later on as well. This is the lightning round, I won't go too deep.

SPEAKER_02 11:41

What else do we have here? Oh, this is a big one. How do I get more reviews? I hear that a lot.

SPEAKER_05 11:47

Yeah, how do you get more reviews? Um, generally asking nicely, asking often, asking sincerely. Timing is good. Uh, timing gets a little more tricky with flower shops because well, probably most of our orders are going to be within the next day or two. But you want to try and avoid asking before the flowers arrive, but you also don't want to wait, you know, three weeks after the fact. If you, you know, you want to catch somebody when they're still in that good memory of, you know, mom's got her flowers and she's thrilled. And you know, yes, I would love to just you know write a review about how excited she was and how happy I am that even though I can't be in town, um, you know, mom knows I love her because she got great flowers. Right. Um, so timing is good. Um, and you know, don't just do the, hey, can you give me a review? Try and personalize it a little bit. Um, even if you're using uh you know a platform to send out those requests, that's fine. But make sure the messaging is branded and make sure that it's in your voice.

SPEAKER_02 12:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 12:45

And don't be afraid to follow up.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

Yeah, love it. The common theme I heard say was ask, right? Ask. Yeah, um, ask for it. I mean, so love that. And people don't do it, they shy away from it. So that's easy enough. We can ask. Our floral members are forwarding it to me and asking, I think I know the answer, but I want you to address it. Um, they say I received a notice that in the near future the Google My Business app will no longer be available and should be managed directly on Google Maps and search. What does this mean for me?

SPEAKER_05 13:19

Yeah, so this is Google being Google doing googly things and in their googly way trying to simplify by confusing everybody.

unknown 13:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 13:28

So yeah. Clearly, clearly, there was a system in place that was working for people for a few years. So that can't be tolerated. This needs to be changed. And you know, we need to ruffle some feathers. So there was an app, obviously, uh, Android and iOS app for uh Google Maps, sorry, for your Google business listing. That's going away. I think they announced that back in December, right around the time that they also uh made the change from Google My Business to Google Business Profile, because again, nothing should keep the same name for too long. That would make too much sense.

SPEAKER_06 13:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 13:59

Um, they're also pushing towards uh having you manage your business listing right in the search results. And you know, for a lot of us that you know manage uh these profiles on a regular basis, we're used to going to you know business.google.com. You'll again, here's your list of businesses, click into one, make those changes. Um I can see how from Google's perspective, they're saying, okay, that's one more place that people need to remember to go. But I bet you every business owner probably Googles himself once in a while.

SPEAKER_06 14:29

Right?

SPEAKER_05 14:30

So you Google yourself and you'll see that in the search results, you'll get that little messaging about here's how your listing's performing. And hey, by the way, did you know that you can make edits right now, right in the search page? So they're making that a little more accessible, trying to surface that interaction a little more. So that could be that could be a good thing. Um the interface that we're used to right now is eventually going to transition more towards being for agencies or large groups of listings. So I don't see that going away, but the app is going away and they really want to try and uh push people into editing straight in the search page. I even got a survey uh popped up in my Google Business Profile Manager saying, Hey, why are you here? Please tell us why you didn't go and do this in the search results instead. And yep, some of the the other choices work as I can do it better in here. I like the layup better here. And so you know, pick those, but at least you know they're asking. Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

We have a good question related to that. Jennifer said, I would get notified when someone reviewed me through the app. How will I be notified now?

SPEAKER_05 15:36

Um, you'll just actually get that through the Google Maps app. So they're they're pushing some of that functionality right into the maps app. So as long as you've got that on your phone, you should still get it.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

So if you're logged in to your your business profile through Google Maps, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 15:51

So as long as you have uh a Google account on your phone that is uh an owner or manager on that listing, then you should get that through the app.

unknown 15:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

Okay. Do you also receive an email if you choose to be notified that way? You could yeah, that's what we do anyway. We we get emails and we like that. We go check it out, make sure it's legitimate. So yes.

SPEAKER_04 16:14

Great information. Thank you. Our next one is we're gonna get into takeaways from local use summit. And before we do that, Ryan, if you wouldn't mind, um, because I know there's some new people on here who haven't listened to you or haven't joined us on a webinar that you've been with us. Tell me a little bit about your history with Google. I mean, and how long you've been doing SEO.

SPEAKER_05 16:37

Yeah, so Tencent version uh started building websites and doing some internet work in 1994. At that point, they were we started to have some directories, search engines came along a couple of years later, Google a few years after that. So just always been involved from uh again, right time, right place, start building sites. Now we need to get some traffic to those sites, figure out how to do that. And then eventually uh Google uh Google AdWords uh comes along. Um, and then they initially launched a program called Google Engage, which later became um Google Partners and Google Ad Partners again, changing names, iterating what it is. So, yeah, it was involved with uh Google Engage right from the start there with the on the ads side. So again, just fortunate to be uh basically from the dawn of publicly accessible internet involved and trying to figure things out along the way.

SPEAKER_02 17:32

Right. And I know you went to this summit, you go often, and that's something I really respect about you and that you're constantly learning and because it is constantly evolving, and that's why we don't claim to be the SEO experts because you do have to be on top of it. Um, so you went and you did your homework. Can you share your notes and let me cheat off you a little bit? Let us talk about it.

SPEAKER_05 17:54

All right. Yeah. So first, you know, quick bit of info. Shout out to LocalU. Um, this is a really fantastic organization. Joy Hawkins is the you know the primary there. She runs uh Sterling Sky. She's a Google product expert. She runs the local search forum and yeah, is the you know owner and primary of uh LocalU as well. So she is just absolutely one of the top minds in local search. And she's put together a fantastic team. So they have uh resources, they have a weekly podcast called uh This Week in Local. Um, they've got pretty much all the top minds in local are involved in this, either as faculty or contributors or uh people in the forum answering questions. So it's a it's a great, great resource for staying on top of all the little changes and advances that are happening in local search and local marketing. And then two or three times a year, they have these uh basically day-long conferences. Uh, they've been have been virtual for the last few years, as have most things. Uh, they do have uh an in-person one coming up in Denver, I believe, uh you know, the next couple months. So it's it's just a fantastic opportunity always to uh kind of get around the best minds in the industry and you know see what they're talking about. And so this one from early April had uh I think nine sessions. So from those nine sessions, I just started uh pulling a few themes that were coming out. Some of it was around uh like getting really deep on content writing and uh reporting and things like that. So some got a little high-level and technical, but again, pulling out big ideas from multiple sessions. Uh, the first one that came out was that spam's a big deal. Like Google local spam is you know, it's a big deal. Joy had a whole session on identifying and fighting spam. Uh Mike Blumenthal talked about it. Uh Colin and Jan from who work for Joy also talked about this quite a bit. So spam basically comes in two categories. So there can be a fake listing. So if I'm if I'm trying to you know gather some, especially leads, right? So we see this in legal kind of locksmiths, garage door repair, things like that, where they're basically they're trying to get your name, like get that phone call, get the name, and then sell it to another company.

SPEAKER_06 20:15

Right.

SPEAKER_05 20:15

Lawyers pay big money for leads, uh especially you know, PI lawyers and things like that. So if you can get into LEGEN, crank out a few thousand uh fake listings and get some leads that way. That's a business model, not a great one. The other type of spam is what we were talking about earlier, where as Bruce Clay would put it, uh you put some lipstick on a pig. Um, so we're trying to you know make something better artificially, you know, by adding in again, the most common form of spam is you know, putting those keywords in. So this is a this is a quick clip from the end of Joy's session. She was doing some QA and you know, someone had asked about identifying spam. So we can go ahead and play that and let me see if the audio comes through there.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

It's also really easy to tell when you're just looking on Google. Like once you start seeing enough spam, you it's kind of obvious, like it sticks out to you. So keyword-rich names are really, really one of the main things to look for.

SPEAKER_05 21:06

Yeah, if you see a lot of keywords um in the business name, either it's a fake listing or it's at least a spamified listing. If people can spot it, Google can spot it. Yeah, they try to solve everything with an algorithm. They don't like manual intervention on anything, they want to solve everything by writing a better algorithm. So, you know, when they start seeing spam, they can identify spam. And you know, as they get more and more legal pressure from the government to deal with things like spam, you know, that's going to be really just key. Just keep your listings clean because you know, people are out there now actively trying to address spam. And you know, whether it's a competitor reporting you, whether it's yeah, you know, Google identifying trends in spam, um, it's it's not a long term winning proposition. So the next thing was the vicinity update. This was uh big update that again, Google conveniently pushed out for us right at the end of November, early December, because hey, Yeah, what's wrong with messing with everyone's shopping during December?

unknown 22:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 22:06

So yeah. Yeah. No, no shortage of heart attacks for retailers when that happens. And shouldn't be surprising, what happens most December that there's some kind of update, but this was the first time they'd done a big local update in a long time. And definitely the biggest update in the last five years. And the reason we call it the vicinity update is how well you rank the further you get from your physical location. For florists in particular, that's a big deal, right? Because we deliver to a big area. Whereas, you know, other industries might be, yeah, it makes sense to keep that a lot tighter. But you know, we started seeing you know shops that were maybe they were on the outskirts of town and they started losing rankings closer to town. That bubble around your shop got a lot tighter and you had to work a lot harder to expand it. But one of the other things that was really impacted in this was the value of keywords in the business name. So uh Google went right after that, stuck a dagger in it. And uh one of the findings that uh Colin and Jan talked about was uh the number of listings they saw that just disappeared, that absolutely tanked, that were basically spammy listings relying on um you know keyword-rich names. Now, that doesn't mean that every business that had keywords in the name disappeared, but the ones that stayed stayed for other reasons.

SPEAKER_06 23:24

Right.

SPEAKER_05 23:24

So they were still being propped up by other factors, like the strength and age of the brand, things like that, good website. Yeah, but uh the value of those keywords in the business name undermined. So there were big, big traffic swings for a few months. We saw you know listings kind of going all over the place. There are companies that produce charts uh showing ranking volatility, and it was a whole lot of roller coasterness for a few months as you know, some uh some businesses really tanked, some took off, and then there were some adjustments. Uh really in March, we saw kind of mid-March. Um, we saw a bit of a pullback on that lever. Google again often do this when they push out an update. They'll be, okay, we're gonna update this, and then okay, we may have overcorrected, we're just gonna come back this way a little bit. So, you know, we saw some of that. So the bubble got a little bit bigger, and it's possible that keywords in the business name are maybe carrying a little bit more weight, but not nearly as much as they did back in November. These are two questions that the ever-awesome David Mim presented to both Colin and Jan Gilbert work for Joy. Yeah, they're all at Sterling Sky, uh, which is a great agency. You can roll that.

SPEAKER_09 24:32

Uh, do you think keywords in the business profile name are being penalized, or it's more that they just don't help as much uh as they used to?

SPEAKER_08 24:41

Yeah, I I don't think they're being penalized any more than um, you know, there's no such thing as a duplicate content penalty per se. There's just things happening that are either suppressing, which you know Yen was kind of looking into, and it's not necessarily fully conclusive, but it kind of looks like Google is sort of applying some sort of filter or suppressing mechanism if there's five uh competitors in the same market that all have the same variation of keywords added to the name. Um as much as it's just Google figuring out a way to uh you know, still allow businesses with keywords in their name to exist in the ecosystem. Um, and and sort of deal with the bad actors, uh, you know, so it's just a really tough enough to crack. And I think it's just their best crack at it at the moment.

SPEAKER_09 25:30

Uh similar question from Ryan Freeman. At this point, would you advise a client to add something like flower delivery to their business name? Uh, either just in GMB or just in GDP, probably not, but across the board. Uh or should they focus on other things like reviews, improving their landing page, et cetera?

SPEAKER_08 25:48

Yeah, I have some thoughts on that. Um what about you, Yan?

SPEAKER_07 25:53

I was gonna say, I mean, if you're doing it legitimately, change a sign, uh, change your do your logo, change your business, you know, change all the stuff. Um at least you're not going to get some kind of problem because you're you're keyword stuffing without, you know, you want to do it legitimately. If you're adding keywords, you want to do it legitimately. But then you have to be careful is everyone in your market adding flower delivery to their name? And now you're competing against 10 other listings that have flower delivery in their name. And Google might say, well, these look all the same. I'm just gonna pick one or two at the top and demote the other ones. Well, you might be one of the ones that got demoted because now you're too similar, and Google wants variety, you know, in its search results. So it it may it may backfire, it might help, but it's one of those things that's hard to know. I'm not saying that you know, typically it's not that hard to do. You can add your name, uh, change your name and test it out and then roll it back. Um, you yeah, you risk suspension if you if you play around with your business name.

SPEAKER_05 26:56

What they were what they're talking about in there too is uh Google is actively trying to deal with the problem, but without nuking a business that might legitimately have some of those keywords in the name. Right. So they want to make sure those survive. Like they don't really want to ever get rid of a listing for a legitimate business, but they also don't want to give an advantage to spam. And so when when Jan's talking about um doing it legitimately, uh, you know, you hear me talking about changing your business name and changing your signage, right? And so that's gonna mean you've got your sign above your store has to change, your van has to change, right? Your letterhead has to change, your logo and your website, all of that have to change. And I love how casually he throws in, and if it doesn't work, just roll it back. Oh, and you're risking suspension. Like, okay, so how much is that gonna cost me to go out, possibly change my business registration? Right? There was um there was a case study done by White Spark out of Edmonton in, I want to say 2020 or earlier, where they had a client that went through this whole process. So they went, they changed their business registration, changed everything, and saw some pretty good gains from it. Right again, that was a few years ago, so that's before this latest update. But they went through the whole like six-step process, uh, which is again not an insignificant thing. With SEO, you know, we've always got that mentality. Oh, you know, let's test something. If it doesn't work, you roll it back, you test something else. Yeah, that that's fine if you're talking about editing some you know, some text on a website. That's a little different if I'm going to a business owner and saying, hey, you know, that $3,000 sign out front of your shop, yeah, that needs to change. And don't worry, if it doesn't work, we'll just put the old one back up.

SPEAKER_06 28:42

Right?

SPEAKER_05 28:42

Hey, let's get some new lettering on your van and you know, and on and on. So when he's talking about doing it legitimately, that's what that means. So and then you get into the diminishing returns because if everybody starts doing it, right, then what is it really? Even if Google doesn't demote, right, you're still just competing against everybody else who's doing the same thing. At some point, you know, your brand means something and your reputation means something. And you know, the thing, the good things that you can control mean something. So, you know, spams it's a bad way out. Uh, permit me a quick rabbit trail. Uh, during the end tail end of COVID, my older son got into pool. So he took his money, bought himself like a little pool table, like kind of a six by four kind of thing. And he'd been you know watching some guys on YouTube, wanted to get in this, never played before, and he went nuts. And so he's been doing that for a few months now. I walked out the other day, I see him, and he's you know jumping cue ball over stuff, doing bank shots, you know, and thinking, okay, you know what, you know, I used to play a bit in my younger days. I haven't played much in a while, so you know, saying, okay, go play with the boy for a bit. Like I'm realizing, no, the only way I'm gonna win now is you know, if I start pulling out the dad tricks, right? You know, I gotta, I gotta cough, I gotta nudge, I gotta distract, I gotta, you know, do some of that. And then I was like, well, great. So now I'm in a position where the my only way to win is to cheat. And I'm like, nah. So I don't play them. But uh, you know, if if the only way I can win is cheating, that just didn't really seem like a good way to go about it. So once in a while I let him throw it, let him thrash me. But uh no, that's the doing that to win just didn't seem uh didn't seem a great way to go.

SPEAKER_04 30:28

Yeah, that's a good good analogy for sure.

SPEAKER_05 30:30

All right, and last takeaway, um, reviews. So you know, reviews are you know, we we've known for years that reviews matter. Uh, they are a good factor in ranking and conversion. A gentleman named Curtis Boyd a few years ago started a company called the Transparency Company. So he actually developed an algorithm that is designed to identify fake reviews and start going after them. So he had a he I've seen him do a couple of presentations and you know, his work's pretty fantastic because reviews are really a hot button thing now. Um, not only are they important, but you know, consumers are getting way more savvy, and there's a lot more legal pressure coming down. So Mike Blumenthal, who was uh again one of the OGs of local marketing, um, amongst other things in his uh career, he founded a company called Gather Up, which is a review generation platform. Uh he did he did a presentation looking at uh you know the new landscape for reviews. And yeah, the FTC is getting serious. They've been getting serious on affiliate marketing and kind of fake reviews that way the last few years. And then uh last year they started uh rolling out some big ticket fines, like six and seven-figure fines to companies that were messing with reviews. And so in this case, he was talking about uh Fashionova, and what they did was something called review gating. So this is where you uh yeah, you send a request, hey Kami, you know, could you give me some quick feedback on how we did? And you come back with, well, you know what, wasn't really that great. And instead of offering you the chance to leave a review, I try and divert you into something else. But if you come back and say, tell me how much you loved it, my system is gonna direct you to leave a Google review, right? Or leave a review on their site or something along that line. So you're basically gating uh access to reviews based on the feedback you're getting. Naturally, that yeah produces a lot more good reviews. And reviewing is basically was uh you know pioneered by Gather up. So this is Mike talking about something that his company many years back uh really kind of made mainstream. But then in 2018, Google banned it. Um so if they and at that and Gather Up stopped offering it at that point because Google said no, this will get you, uh this will get you penalized and shut down. Um Yelp as well um absolutely, absolutely uh forbids review gating. Fashionova was doing it, they suppressed about 250,000 negative reviews, and the FTC said, okay, 4.2 million dollar fine.

SPEAKER_04 33:06

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_05 33:08

Yeah, so that hurts. Yeah, not the first company, but this I think is the biggest fine so far, kind of the biggest headline. And I like the way Mike printed this. Uh you know, the FTC wants your attention, right? They're they're doing this for publicity, they're doing this so that other people see what's going on and stop. And the interesting thing is, how did the FTC get to Fashionova through a platform called Yachtpo, which a lot of people know if you're in e-commerce at all? You know, Yachtpo's a pretty popular add-on for websites. And Yachtpo was the platform that they were using for the review gating. So, first the FTC came to Yachtpo and said, We are going to crush you. And Yachtpo did the puppy thing, rolled over, showed their belly, and said, We'll do whatever you want, we'll stop immediately. And then the FTC said, Great, let's talk about your customers. And Yacht Po served up Fashionova on a platter, and the FTC said, Oh, great, we can make a nice big impression out of this. So yeah, this is what happened. And then FTC has given uh some guidelines on how review management should be handled. So, first of that list is no review gating. Secondly, um, no selective review display. That one hurts, right? They don't want you to only show the good reviews on your site. If you're gonna show reviews, you gotta open the door and show it all. Right. Well, that's a tough one, but true. And then again, positive and negative reviews need to be treated equally across your platforms. They also talked about incentives. That tends to be more on the product review side, not so much on the business review, the local, but yeah, if there's any incentives or if there are any connections between uh the person leaving the review and the company, all those things need to be disclosed.

SPEAKER_04 34:55

Ready to move on?

SPEAKER_05 34:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:57

All right. So the three things that everybody listening can do before Mother's Day to help.

SPEAKER_05 35:05

All right. Google Business Profile listing matters, reviews matter, and what happens on your website matters. Those are the kind of the top things that are going to influence. So a couple of recommendations. Have a look at your profile, especially if you've got uh somebody who's managing this for you. Um just every once in a while have a look at your own profile, make sure stuff's accurate. And you need to be aware that Google has uh announced now that they're using AI to actually update these profiles based on all the information that they can gather here, there, and everywhere. And in their announcement, they you know, that we're gonna pull you know sources from here, sources from there, sources from there, and even in some cases, the business owner. So you know it's nice to be added as a footnote on your own business, but you know, they're they're going in, and in particular, um, business hours are being affected by this. So make sure that you've got that just all your business information is accurate, names accurate, phone number, website, all those things are uh still accurate. If you're gonna have special hours for Mother's Day, you can put those in now, get that set up, right? And then you know add in some products because Google is showing more preference to listings that are not just updated, but that have products in place. And special bonus to ones that are using more of their live inventory systems like Pointy, but that doesn't affect florists as much because you know we've got custom products, we're not you know, barcoded inventory that's coming off a truck and then out the front of the store. But you know, having having these extra things in there uh is going to be helpful in elevating your profile. And I believe, Kami, there are some ways that uh Flower Click members are already benefiting from that.

SPEAKER_02 36:48

Yeah, just from hearing this from you, we were like, well, if that helps, we're gonna do that for our members. I mean, we we have been helping with the Google business profile. We always update and we we stay on top of the hours. Shout out to Leslie, who's always um on top of that. But we're also gonna add the Mother's Day products, like you said. We're gonna add four for all of our flower click members. I did see quite a few that were on this call, and and we're just gonna pick four from your Mother's Day category that's already live on your website.

SPEAKER_05 37:19

That's fantastic. And yeah, it is something I was reading today, actually. Um, searches for open near me are up 400% year over year. So getting your hours right matters because yeah, if you're open, you want people to come. And if you're not open and they show up, they're gonna be angry.

SPEAKER_04 37:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 37:38

So good point. Uh accuracy matters both ways. And then request reviews. Ask, ask, ask. Right? Go back. Um, hopefully, you're doing this regularly. Maybe you've you know had a little slip, right? Maybe you still kind of post Valentine's trying to yeah, had a little downtime. Yeah, back in the habit, go back through people from the last month or two that either you haven't asked or if you've asked and they haven't responded, ask again. It's okay to be a little persistent. You know, two, three asks for people is not terrible. Um, they're generally not going to be offended by it. And if they're really, really offended by it, they can unsubscribe and then you won't offend them anymore.

SPEAKER_02 38:16

And I will also add that I have a little um template that I'm willing to share that we've written. Um, if our members would like, you know, to use that as an email and they don't have time to craft one. Of course, like you said, they should kind of add their own voice to it and brand. But I'm I definitely share that if anybody wants it.

SPEAKER_00 38:33

So And two things. One, if you're in our email marketing program, we do um usually include that in the newsletters and at the bottom, um, not every email, but majority of the emails to ask for a review. And then we had one question related to reviews. Someone asked, we had one negative review that brought down our Google ranking months ago. Since then, we have gotten close to 10 five-star reviews, but our rating has still not gone back up. Is this normal?

SPEAKER_05 39:07

Yeah, actually, it's funny you mentioned those numbers. Part of uh Curtis Boyd's presentation uh yeah, when he was talking about um the fake reviews and fighting that, he said getting rid of one fake negative review has as much benefit as getting 11 positive reviews. But one negative basically is equivalent to 11 positive.

SPEAKER_06 39:27

Oh right.

SPEAKER_05 39:28

So if you went down with one and you got 10 back, you're almost there. Right. So now, if if that negative review was a legit customer, all you can do is try and respond to it well and you know, just be authentic and apologizing, trying to make it right. Um if it's a fake review, there's some other things you can do, try and get it taken care of. But um yeah, otherwise, um just try and get as many good reviews as you can. And uh wait.

SPEAKER_00 39:56

Is it easy to report a fake review?

SPEAKER_05 39:59

Yeah, you can report from within there, and there is also um you know a redressal form that you can go through. Um, so that's something. Uh if you want to email me on that, we can go over that in more detail. Um email is gonna be coming up in a second. Uh, we'd be happy to talk at length and you know how we want to uh go about addressing that.

SPEAKER_06 40:19

Great.

SPEAKER_05 40:19

Number three, um, now we're looking at the on page side. Um, just make sure that your Mother's Day page is you know online as soon as possible and linked from your homepage. The internal link from your homepage to uh Mother's Day page is going to carry a lot of weight. It's gonna help Google discover the page faster. Uh, because we have to remember that Google goes through a process of first crawling and then indexing and then possibly rendering before that page is actually in the index and surfacing. So you don't want it to be like that Mother's Day week when Google finally says, Oh, look, they have a Mother's Day page. I should get back to that and start looking at that in detail tomorrow to make sure that you've got that link coming through. So that's carrying some weight from the most powerful page on your site. Right? And that Google's seeing it, they know it exists. And ideally, you never delete that page. You might take it out of your navigation. Don't turn it off, don't delete it, because you don't want Google to have treat it like a new page every time that the year comes around, right? That page should be accruing links over time, accruing some age and authority over time.

SPEAKER_02 41:23

This is where I'll have people ask if we do SEO. And I say, you know, at a certain level, I mean, keeping it merchandised, keeping it um fresh. And again, like like you said, not turning it off, keeping it, but we don't we don't specialize like you do. There's a difference, but that's on page SEO, which is you know important. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 41:42

I'm going back to your bonus page now.

SPEAKER_05 41:45

Okay, yeah, you asked for three, I gave you four. So it was a yeah, bonus. Um write a blog post on something like how to choose uh Mother's Day flowers, right? Because people will be confused. People will be, you know, if it's not something that they buy often, uh there's some anxiety there. And then you know, try and make it useful. So yeah, publish it early. You can share it a few times on social. You don't have to share it once on your Facebook page, you can do it a couple times, right? Over time. Uh, if you get it out early, you can share it a few times there. Um, turn it into a video if you want to have some fun. Um, send it to if it's a useful enough article, send it out to some local news because you know there's that reporter who's always going to get stuck with that. Okay, it's Mother's Day. I need to do a local story, get some local flavor, stand out somewhere with Mother's Day, so this is then this. Right? So the more you can make that person's life easier by saying, Hey, let me gift wrap this for you.

SPEAKER_06 42:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 42:35

And you know, I'll come on camera and be your expert, right? You can it's not just about cranking out a blog post to be on your site, you can uh really leverage that in a few different ways.

SPEAKER_04 42:45

I love that. That is so true. They're always looking for a story at Mother's Day, and they sometimes sending something like that, then they're gonna bring the camera in the store.

SPEAKER_05 42:53

And you know, that doesn't hurt.

SPEAKER_04 42:55

Yeah, you just and I think this one again is just to say there's so much out there that's about SEO and that plays into all your your your rankings, right?

SPEAKER_05 43:06

Yeah, it's uh definitely very you know complicated process, and there's a lot of uh a lot of different factors involved, but yeah, that's that's kind of what makes it fun too.

SPEAKER_04 43:15

That's why you do what you do, and you because you think that's fun. So we think it's a challenge, you think it's fun and and satisfying, which is awesome. Happy Mother's Day, everybody. And thank you, Ryan, for your time today.

SPEAKER_05 43:28

Thank you for doing this.

SPEAKER_04 43:29

Thanks again. We really appreciate your time and your expertise. And I know everybody who's joining us today does as well. So thank you again.

SPEAKER_03 43:36

Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We hope you enjoyed spending time with us because we enjoy spending time with you. If you did, make sure you hit that subscribe button or add the business and pleasure of flowers to your Google morning routine or your flash briefing on Alexa. We look forward to seeing you next week.

SPEAKER_04 43:57

So please come back and join us and discover how a bit of knowledge and one small change in your mindset can take you to new levels in your life and business.