Transcription:
But let’s pretend you walk into a Walmart and you have your kid with you. And your kid has a quarter and they’re eyeballing that gumball machine. What would happen if there’s another gumball machine next to yours? I’m going to, I’m going to phrase that for a second, right? And you have a gumball machine. You put the quarter in, the gumball comes out ready for the next person to put the coin in the gumball machine to get a reward. Your website is a lot like that. Even if you have a great launch, if you’re not constantly putting gumballs back into that machine, you’re going to lose your audience pretty quickly.
Welcome to another episode of DM Shop Talk! Or Digital Marketing Shop Talk. As always, I’m
Mike; Valorous Circle’s media production specialist. And here with me is…
I’m Jeremy. I’m the senior director of marketing at Valorous Circle.
Jeremy, we started last week, a new series for a podcast called “Myth Understandings.” I know we joked at the end of the last podcast about just things that we’re hearing in the home
service industry, when we’re talking to home service business owners, like a plumber business
owner or a roofing business owner. That as soon as they say it to us, it just has that little tick,
has that, is that just, things that we hear on a regular basis that are just like, “no that’s not necessarily true.” Or it’s outdated. Just some of these things that, that just, they might have this thing that, misunderstanding how they think they should be growing their business online. But with our being experts in the industry, we just want to help clear the air on some of those things. Last week we discussed the notion of “build it and they will come.”
Just like any other famous building, or a big building, you can build this beautiful building, but if
you’re not constantly pointing to different highways or building the roads or, promoting that
business, then no one’s going to be coming. And so we’re taking another step into these myth
understandings that we hear all the time. And this one’s about SEO Jeremy.
This one we’re going to talk about SEO being a one-time task like when you build your website
and-oh I should also say SEO as in “search engine optimization.” For those of you who might not be familiar with search engine optimization, it’s what Google uses to help feed how they’re ranking you in the search results.
When you type in “plumber near me” or “electrician near me,” SEO or search engine optimization, is what they use to kinda rank you throughout. And so just this idea that as soon as you build your website, as soon as you set your SEO, that it’s just a one-and-done thing. Jeremy I guess, I just wanna start with you. Is that true? Why is that a misunderstanding?
Oh, it is so not true. I like analogies and so I’m going to… Let’s pretend you walk into a Walmart and you have your kid with you, and your kid has a quarter and you know they’re eyeballing that gumball machine, right?
What would happen if there’s another gumball machine next to yours? I’m going to, I’m going to
phrase that for a second, right? And you have a gumball machine. You put the quarter in, the
gumball comes out ready for the next person to put the coin in the gumball machine to get a
reward. Your website is a lot like that.
Even if you have a great launch, if you’re not constantly putting gumballs back into that machine, you’re going to lose your audience pretty quickly. You have to realize that if you don’t put stuff into your machine, your competitor may be doing that. And so there may be gumballs for the people to go through and pick through off of there.
So, in my head that’s, an analogy that I’m hoping would click with people. I have to be
constantly feeding the public the answers that they want or the information that they need for
me to look like, or to be known as the expert. And, that’s the basis of SEO. It’s yes, there are
keywords. Yes, there’s terminology that might be out there. But if you look at it at its core essence, we’re providing information to the public and we have to be reputable. And we do that, have to do that consistently. Otherwise, our gumball machine gets empty, quarters don’t even care then. It doesn’t matter. Somebody puts a quarter in, they’re not getting what they want.
Yeah. It’s a lot of business owners think that they can spend thousands and thousands of dollars on building this, the most beautiful website. And then they set it and they’re like. All
right, I’m done. And all power to you. Glad your website is so beautiful. But unfortunately, no
one’s going to see that website. No one’s going to see that website. If you’re just setting it and forgetting it. Exactly what you said with the gumball machine. It’s just, you have a beautiful website sitting there with no roads pointing to it. And that’s exactly what this is, the road, the SEO is the roads pointing to that website.
And it is an ongoing thing. Google wants to see active business. They want to see active
movement. And if you’re just being stagnant, you’re not filling your gumball machine, then
you’re missing out and Google is not going to favor you. You’re going to fall behind. You’re going
to have; you’re going to have a rundown gumball machine, is what it is.
So then, I know there’s, I know there’s a reason behind. This myth understanding is because if
you do launch a website, it’s going to get traction off of the base keywords right off
the bat. Right off the bat. Google will aptly reward you for putting up a fantastic website
that is going to be viewed by everybody.
Same time algorithms always change. And if Google is changing their algorithm, your website
might rank well in the first couple of weeks. That algorithm is going to pretty much stay, like if
you don’t do anything, your website or try to keep up to date, it’s going to start falling on the
rankings.
So, keep that in mind too, when you finish your website. What am I going to do to keep it
active? What am I going to do to keep the longevity of this website and the content to be
something people are looking for?
Jeremy, in your town, when a new restaurant opens up and you just see all these things about the grand opening or you drive past it every day and they have the ribbons out front and it’s, all awesome.
Are you, a lot of times, going to go try that new restaurant right when it opens? Brand new
building?
Possibly. Yeah. That’s a trick question because I don’t like crowds.
Oh, okay. Yeah, that’s fair. That’s fair. A lot of people. A lot of people will check out the restaurant for their grand opening.
But when that excitement dies down, let’s say it’s six months, a year after that brand new
restaurant opens up and the excitement. The excitement dies down if that restaurant doesn’t
offer any daily deals or do anything to promote what they have going on. Are a lot of those
people going to forget about that restaurant?
It’s the same thing. If you were, if you build this beautiful website, exactly what you’re saying,
Jeremy, you’ll get a lot of traction off the bat because Google wants to see…they’re happy that
you built that website. But if you don’t start continuing to feed that Google machine, then
Google’s going to forget about you. If Google forgets about you, then that’s going to make everybody else forget about you as well.
I understand you’re using Google as a base because that’s most of the time the conversations we have with the clients. “I want to rank on Google. I want to rank on Google.” Yahoo and Bing kind of follow suit with Google, just so you guys know.
So Google set the precedence. Yahoo and Bing are like, “Oh, that’s a really good idea.” And then they start doing the same thing.
I do want to push into something, Jeremy because you mentioned when you first build your website Google is going to start crawling it looking for those keywords and whatnot. I want to emphasize keywords in this: with SEO being one and done, do you think the keywords that people are searching for now are going to be the same
keywords that they searched for five, ten years ago or the same key?
No.
The same keywords that we’re searching, for now, is going to be the same keywords that people are going to be looking for even in a year from now?
Possibly not.
So I think that it’s important to continue to do this keyword research and keep feeding this gumball machine with new and updated keywords just because it is. Google’s going to
know-I say Google. So search engines are going to know what the keywords are that
people are searching for.
So you need to make sure you’re doing your own research to see what people are searching for and updating your website to a fit to fit that. So, because of this time period, this roofing FAQ might be relevant. So we’re, in the fall season right now. Cleaning gutters. I know that a lot of people talk about that when it comes to home service business owners. Like that’s going to be topics and keywords are really, that’s going to be a popular term right now on, on your search engines.
But do you think it’s going to be the same cleaning your gutters in the middle of January? No.
When it’s icy. No, it’s going to be different. It’s going to be, maybe some snow prevention stuff
and whatnot. So that’s why the content that you’re putting on your website, has to be relevant
to what is getting what is being searched for at that time. And it’s up to, it’s up to the business owner. It’s up to your team, or if it’s not part of you, it’s not part of your business. It’s part people you hire out. It has to be someone, whether you decide to do that and update your website, or as we said, Google is going to lose favor with you.
And as we always say, your competition’s going to outrank you because I guarantee your
competition will be doing it as well.
Yep. 100%.
Kind of example we work with roofing companies and I know for a fact that there are solar roofing panels on the way, right? People to make their roof a solar panel.
Now in five years, that might be the terminology that everybody’s looking for. Right now, a few
people are looking for, right? People who are up on the news or they understand what might
be happening. So people’s search algorithms are going to change based on the trends that are
happening.
And if you don’t make those trends, if you don’t follow those trends, you’re going to be left
behind. So, a new product comes out that makes plastering walls much more effective. People will be Googling that in the future versus drywall, plaster, whatever have you
now. Products change, and the task changes that dang experiences change.
So we have to make sure that we’re up on top of that throughout.
There’s been a perfect example with one of our decking clients. That’s the same thing for, most of decking history, wood decking was the most popular and everybody was looking for wood decking. Honestly, within the past year or so we’ve been asked to stop using that terminology just because composite decking has completely replaced wood decking for a lot of those cases. And a lot of people are looking for that composite decade.
So we’re seeing a real-world example. We’ve had to adjust our keywords. The keywords that
we’re looking for. Because of the materials, the trends in that industry have adjusted as well in
what people want too. And that can apply, as Jeremy said, to all industries: plumbing,
electricians all these different types of things.
Just because, as we know homes, HGTV, and all of these, home trends are always adjusting what people want. The styles! All these different styles of what they want on their homes are always adjusting. I had a yearly, I would say even monthly basis depending on the season. And so if you’re not on top of those trends, your competitors are going to be.
And I feel bad. I keep going back to that. That’s the biggest thing we hear: “How can I rank better? How can I get how can I beat out my competition?” I’m telling you all of these things right now, that if you’re not doing these things, I guarantee you, you’re not going to beat on competition.
Something to think about too, people from different parts of the country search things differently.
And so I’m gonna give you an example, in New York. They don’t have yard sales or garage sales. Did you know what this Mike? They have stoop sales.
Oh, okay. That makes sense.
The terminology, it’s the same concept, but things change where you’re at in the country. And
so, keep that in mind too. If you’re a national franchise, or if you want a business, you have a
business in Texas, you want to go back up to the East Coast you have to understand that people search things differently.
So even if you have a beautiful website and you do SEO once in Texas, that website is going to
have to be completely redone for the audience up in the Upper East Side of the United States.
So keep that in mind as well.
This is because a lot of it is the home service industry is very locally based. A lot of like most homeowners are typing in: “plumbers near me,” “electricians near me.” And it is a lot of local competitions. Now there are exceptions. There’s, obviously, national brand that will always be in the mix as well. But a lot of it is that local dominance. And so, those local companies can
get a lot of favor with localizing their websites and their SEO efforts writing a blog.
Because as I mentioned, we’re talking, we’re based, Jeremy and I, are both based out of West
Michigan. So we see the four seasons right now, it’s fall. And so our blogs that we were talking
about earlier about cleaning your gutters and getting ready for the cold months. If we’re talking
about a roofer or damage restoration expert in Florida, guess what? Their leaves aren’t changing. So those blogs would be doing next to nothing and people for people in local Florida. because their leaves aren’t changing. The palm trees aren’t falling. The palm trees, but guess what? Like the opposite. They have hurricane season during the summer and whatnot.
So, they can be writing blogs on how to prepare their homes for hurricanes and whatnot. Now,
Jeremy, will those hurricane blogs do very much in Michigan? No, they won’t. So it is depending
exactly what you’re saying, Jeremy, wherever you’re at, depending on the season, what you’re
Not, it is so important to stay on top of what your local area is like, what the season
trends are like. Just because nothing’s universal and you don’t want to fall behind with SEO and
whatnot.
Now, my question is for you, Jeremy, so you’re an SEO extraordinaire. Do you think it’s important with how we’re talking about local changes, but does Google ever change how they run through the search engine optimization? Or how they go through their websites to do their rankings? And if it does change, do you think it’s important for business owners to be aware of that?
Yeah, 100%. So, Google can change wherever they want to. And they’ve changed multiple times this past year. You have to stay up on it. And then if that’s not your job, or if that’s not your
expertise, you have to work with a company that can help you.
And, obviously, we’d like to have that conversation, but outside of that, you have to understand that even when Google changes things on us-like it’ll pull the rug out from underneath us. We have to completely shift the way we think about doing things for future rankings, we have to look, sometimes go back and look at our client’s websites and say, “Hey, this has now changed.” We have to make best practices. We have to have a conversation with our clients on that to make sure they know that the algorithms have changed. And we do that on a consistent basis. But if you are not in the SEO realm, you have to have a conversation with people who are so they understand, yes, this is updated. These are some recommendations we can do on your website.
And that’s an easy thing too. Because, as I said, we can be doing some SEO strategies a certain way for so long. But that is true. Google can rip the rug right on your feet and just go completely do something different. Oh, this is how we’re favoring it now. And if a business doesn’t have people, whether it’s their team members, as we’re talking about an agency like ourselves, Constantly monitoring these types of things, then they won’t know when these changes happen and they’re going to continue doing the same. And then they’re going to miss out on the opportunity that Google has given them. Because it also will favor if you can jump on and be aware of these and make those changes right off the bat, that’ll be helpful as well.
I know you’ll probably agree with that, Jeremy, that if you’re going to be one of the first
companies to adjust as Google says it, I bet there’s favor behind that as well. Wouldn’t you say?
I do 100%.
And so, yeah, if circling back, if your competition sees it and that makes the
adjustment, then they’ll be favored over you. And so it’s important to have someone monitoring, monitoring these changes as well. The moral of the story is, Jeremy, we can keep talking circles of talking strategies about it. But SEO is not a set-and-done thing. There’s things in this world where you can set it and forget it. If I go out back, make a coffee table to put in my living room, guess what? Odds are, I don’t have to touch that coffee table for a while cause there’s not much that’s going to happen to it. But unfortunately, the digital world is changing constantly. Google is changing constantly. Yahoo and Bing are changing constantly. And because they’re changing
constantly in how they’re favoring websites and how they’re favoring businesses, it is important
for you as business owners to be doing the same, monitoring it and continuing to add to that
SEO strategy.
In really updating your website and your digital presence on a regular basis. Do you have any parting words or maybe things that this myth that haven’t talked about yet?
No, I don’t want to, I don’t think I need to keep on circling down the drain, right? Fill it up. We’ll get that drain. Fill it up. It’ll be awesome.
And I’ll leave it. I’ll leave it at this too. A lot of this, a lot of this episode, we’re talking about like the why. The myth has been busted. But a lot of our podcast episode you might be thinking, okay, what are some next steps? What are some next steps? A lot of our podcast episodes that we’ve had so far can help you take the next steps, okay? All right after this episode, hopefully, you understand that we need to, you need to make sure that you’re updating your SEO. And you can go back and look at some of our past episodes to learn how or what you need to be doing to update your SEO. And even at that point you’re like, “okay, that’s helpful but that’s not my expertise. My expertise is as a roofer. My expertise is plumbing and whatnot,” then just a shameless plug. We’d love to help you. We’d love to have that conversation with you. We have the link at the bottom, scrolling through you can go through that. See our website, and get the free resources as well.
Jeremy and I have put together some free checklists; digital marketing checklists and whatnot, that will help you guys coordinate with a lot of the things we talk about on the podcast.
So you can download those for free. Or at least even if you don’t want to look at those, you can
just reach out to us and we’d love to just start and have a conversation with you to see how we
can best partner together to help get you to dominate your local search area. Because that’s
what we want to do and we want to help you do that.
Jeremy, do you have any parting words for everybody?
No, just take care. I appreciate it.
Awesome. We hope everybody has a great day.
Cheers.
