Either way, you want to look at how quickly your site is loading. And you also want to make sure that you're understanding that the best way to do this, as silly as it sounds, is to give it to someone that, you know, give your URL to somebody that you know and ask them what they think this page page is about. That is the greatest way to understand user experience is to get a user to tell you what they think is supposed to happen, and if they're not understanding it, you have a user experience problem, amazing analytics to do it, right. You just ask someone, hey, what is this site? What does this page mean to you? What do you think I'm trying to explain here, and if they can't get it back to you, then you need to go back to the drawing board. That user experience again before we start tying ads in. If it's hard for someone to get to where you're trying to get them to, if it's hard for someone to reach the goal, they leave. They're not going to try to figure it out. They're not going to have mercy on you because you did it yourself or because the design guy is only six days into working, right? Just leaving. So that user experience, in my personal opinion, even if the site loads slow, sometimes we accept it because someone we know sent us the site, and we're just like, Wow. – Wendall Jordan

In this episode, we are joined by Wendall Jordan, a passionate and dedicated professional in web design in the digital market space. He has ten years of experience in sales and marketing. He is currently the owner of Jordan Marketing Consultancy; a digital agency focused on SEO to drive more local customers to your website. He shares how you can optimize your local business website to get it up in search engine results. He also walks us through the basic steps on the importance of SEO and how it can help you grow your business. 

What you'll learn:

→ Jordan’s background in the SEO space
→ Local vs General SEO
→ How local SEO has changed
→ How nonprofits can reach their local audience
→ Google Ads grants for nonprofits
→ Optimizing your website
→ Useful WordPress plugins to boost your SEO
→ Why you should opt-in for Google My Business

Want to skip ahead? Here are some key takeaways

[04:33] The difference between local SEO and general SEO. General SEO can be a national or global campaign, while local SEO is focused on people who can utilize your service product within a radius of your business’s location.
[10:05] Tips for nonprofits to reach the local audience. Focus on location-based content but keep it helpful and informative. Pay attention to what people are searching for and create content around it.
[15:26] How to optimize your website. Improve user experience by improving your website page speed, appearance and generating relevant meta descriptions. The 160 characters for meta descriptions should have a summary of what the page is about.
[26:42] Helpful WordPress plugins to optimize your pages. Yoast SEO, SEO Press, and Rank Math.
[29:18] Why you should opt-in for Google My Business. It’s a free tool that allows you to be found easily and builds trust and legitimacy for your business.

Resources

Search listening tool for market, customer & content research – AnswerThePublic
Google My Business – Drive Customer Engagement on Google
EP 88 | Google Ad Grant and how to Maximize it

Full Transcript

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Hey there, and welcome to another episode of the digital marketing therapy podcast. I'm your host, Sami Bedell-Mulhern. And thank you so much for joining me today, we are talking about how to get more visibility for your organization in your local space online, also referred to as local SEO. So SEO stands for search engine optimization. And really what it means is, how can you get your website optimized in order for it to show up more in search. Now, there's so many different strategies and things to do when it comes to this that it can be a bit overwhelming. But we have some tips for you today on how to get started. And if you started, how to kind of keep things going a little bit. I'm joined by Wendell Jordan, who is going to walk you through some basic steps and kind of help you understand the importance of SEO and how it can help you grow your visibility in search engines, get your eyeballs, more eyeballs on your stuff and really build out your presence online. 

Wendell Jordan Jr, is a passionate and dedicated professional in web designing in the digital marketing sector. He has 10 years of experience in sales and marketing. Currently, he's the owner of Jordan marketing consultants, a digital agency focused on high ROI marketing solutions. Jordan and his expert team promote businesses with compelling digital marketing strategies and deliver measurable outcomes in real time. Wendell started his career as a business development and sales rep for a web design agency. Along the way, he learned some of the basics of web design Wendell began to analyze the current processes he sold and found other ways he could serve his clients to maximize their revenues and visibility in competitive markets. With in-depth, digital marketing strategies and techniques, Wendell now stands out in the crowd for delivering affordable marketing solutions to his clients. I think you're really going to enjoy this episode, and I hope that you take some action. 

If you don't already have the workbook for this month, make sure you head on over to thefirstclick.net/patreon. Become a patron, get the workbook, get the tasks, get action done for this episode. So the episode is brought to you by my Patreon account. So I hope that you'll join me there and join the other nonprofits that are not just listening to podcasts, but getting the work done. So head on over to thefirstclick.net/patreon and I look forward to seeing you in our community. Let's get to the episode.

[INTRO] You're listening to the digital marketing therapy podcast. I'm your host, Sammy Bedell-Mulhern. And each week, I bring you tips from myself and other experts, as well as hot seats with small business owners and entrepreneurs to demystify digital marketing, and get you on your way to generating more leads and growing your business.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Hey, everybody, please join me in welcoming Wendell Jordan to the podcast. Wendell. I'm so excited that you're here for this conversation about SEO. Thank you so much for joining me. Yes. Wow. Okay, so before we kind of hop into some tactical stuff, why don't you kind of just let me know, how did you get into the SEO space? Why is this something that excites you from a marketing perspective?

 [Wendell Jordan] That's such a great question. Um, I got into the SEO space as a transplant into St. Louis, Missouri, coming from the East Coast, coming from New York, and needing a haircut, realizing that it took me three hours to find a barber. So it piqued my interest. It made me think about some stuff at the time, it didn't go into full effect. But it's kind of been that's really where the foundation came from. When I started learning more about SEO and local SEO, and just like understanding why the complication was happening was because it was an entire industry, that peep that no one cared about, right. So here I am in the city that I had only visited a few times trying to get a haircut, and I couldn't find a barber. I couldn't find a barber shop that fit what I was looking for. Although I found lots of hair salons and a bunch of other things, you know, the way these businesses were placing themselves in search, they made it next to impossible for a guy who's not from there to give them their money.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] That's such a great real world example. So you just saw a problem and you're like, you know what, I'm going to learn more about this and, and help some people out. I love that. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about the differences because there are some kinds of nuances between local SEO and just SEO in general. So kind of what are some of the core things that people might want to think about to determine like where they go with their strategies? 

[Wendell Jordan] So the two things that we always talk about is what a client is, how does it affect your search and what, who are you servicing? Are you looking at? I'm located in Houston now. Are you servicing the greater Houston area? Or is this something where, regardless of where your office is located, people can still utilize your service or product? That's really the question between SEO and local SEO, SEO can be a national or global campaign. Whereas local SEO is focused around the people who can utilize your service product, whatever it may be, you know, within a radius to where you actually are located. I think that's really where we start off. Where are you? How far out is your customer, right from your location? And then can someone you know, just using that same barbershop, you know, again, being in Houston, if someone is traveling from Oklahoma to Houston to get a haircut? Absolutely not. So we know that, you know, SEO is gonna be way more important for you, you'd have to be one heck of a barbershop, you'd have to be an amazing barbershop to get them to travel, you know, to get in line to get a haircut.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern]  So I'm also curious, um, you know, kind of what you've seen now, going back to that experience that you had, but then also, I feel like with COVID,local SEO, became even more important because people were then ordering groceries buying, you know, or getting, like restaurants. Like I know, my biggest issue was like trying to find food and get it delivered,first world problems. But,

I mean, how have you seen this kind of local SEO change in the last year and a half?  

[Wendell Jordan] Man? So what's interesting is not all you may disagree with me, I don't know that it's changed so much as people realize that it is relevant, right? Back when I was looking for that barbershop to cut my hair, I had an agency, I was partnered with a guy and we really only did websites. And so we just build websites and put them into the world. And it sparked the conversation with him and I about what local SEO was because at the time, it wasn't really a term, right? Like it was kind of when I would say to people, they'd be like, Oh, right. So I think in this new pandemic, shelter in place, quarantine and chill life that we have, we now have an appreciation for what's local. I think, as you know, all over the country, things have become more lax. You know, you're able to get out into the world. Even if you were ordering food. Previously, you were using an app, right? Like you were probably, you know, using a Grub Hub or something like that. Whereas now, even if you do want to get out, maybe you don't want to travel too far, maybe you want to understand what protocols this restaurant has in place. 

So now you're going online, and you're looking up, you're looking for, you know, Italian food near me, and seeing what comes up. I think the most disappointing part of that, though, is when you know, there's a place that you can't think of the name, and you put that in search. And that place doesn't come up. Right. Like, I could have swore they were only 10 minutes away. And they are but they're just not in the conversation.

 [Sami Bedell-Mulhern] One more question or I guess one thing I want to bring to light before we even jump into some tactical stuff is the biggest difference, I think, for me with local SEO. And some of you know the biggest frustrations on the personal and business side is that it's very much geared toward your physical location. So I might search for something in the house I'm at. And if I'm waiting in line to pick up my kids from school and do that same search, I'm going to get a whole bunch of different answers. 

[Wendell Jordan] Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, that's a conversation I have with clients, when we're talking about using search tools versus using Google, right, because Google as a search is a search engine. But when you're an SEO, you use tools in order to get your information, because you get very different answers based on where you are. If your location isn't turned on, sometimes you get some of the most abstract responses ever. Right. But more often than not, it's using cell towers, right? It's using geo geo geo locations to be able to help you at least the way search engines feel they're helping you find the answer to what's near you, right? Because again, your kids may go to school, 20 minutes away, but the restaurant you're looking for may be 10 minutes in the opposite direction of your home. So it's really 30 minutes from where you are, in theory too far from your current location, you would pass too many items, or too many stores, too many restaurants before you got to where you wanted to go. But I think that you're right, that is probably how I deal with that frustration as well. Right? As a person who searches stuff all the time. I tell people that's what I do for a living. I find things on the internet. So sometimes I get frustrated because I'm like no. Right? Yeah. Not where I am. I need this across the country. I'm looking for something across the country. It’s showing me Bridgeport, Texas. That's not what I'm looking for.  

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] I love that. So as a nonprofit, if you're trying to reach a local audience, what are some things that they might want to consider? Because obviously, SEO is going to work in tandem with your website. So what are some things they might want to think about? Taking a look at their website as they think about where they want to show up in search locally? Whether it be you know, for service, like people that they're providing services to the community, whatever that might be?

 [Wendell Jordan] That's a good question. So the thing I always tell clients, the very first thing you have to think about is content. What kind of content do we have on the site? What, what are we talking about, and who is going to be listening? So with local SEO, you're going to be focusing on things that tend to have some sort of location within the keyword term, right? But the main theme of that content still has to be informational and helpful. So if I'm a nonprofit, or if I'm, if I'm talking to one of my one of my clients, that happened to be a nonprofit, what we're talking about is how, like you said, if you're in Houston, and you are, you know, facilitating winter jackets, right, we want to figure out what keywords are coming up when people are searching for, you know, wearing coats or winter jackets so that we can start hearing some content or or maybe you help with homelessness, whatever it is, I think you should start looking at the content from a near me quote, unquote, context, right, you need to do to start making content that is specific to your location, for example, using Houston, it doesn't really get that cold here, right. Whereas me growing up on the East Coast, you know, 10 degrees, like, here, 50 degrees is cold 50. In New York, you know, some people might have shorts on. So you want to make sure that you understand who you're talking to, when you're talking about the cold, when you're talking about whatever those issues are, you know, you want to be sure that you're addressing the locality in which you're hoping to resonate.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern]  So let's go with your coat example. So it may be creating content around things like where can I donate my gently used winter coats in Houston? Right? And then on the flip side, maybe it's content, like how can I find affordable winter jackets for my family?  

[Wendell Jordan] Right, right. Right, exactly. Exactly. Those are, those are two great ones, I mean, the thing that you're definitely going to want to do, like you said, if you're digging deeper to the technical part of it is making sure that you're using all the free resources, that is a time when you can actually use that Google search. Just see how many people are searching, if you ever type in a keyword, if you ever type in a if you're ever asking Google the question, it always tells you how many other people ask me this question. Friday, right below that search right below the search bar, after you hit the after you hit the search, it will have, in parentheses, you know, 74 million searches. So you know, you're not alone, right? I believe it's and I always get this wrong. I believe the public is another great resource to be able to kind of figure out what questions people are asking and put yourself in a position to better answer them. Because like you said, it may be, you know, purchase, you know, where can I find inexpensive winter codes, or some of those words may be slightly different for you to get more people to or for you to get your response in front of more people. 

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yeah. So I love that. So really paying attention to what people are searching for the problem that you saw, putting those together and creating content around that. And then I think the benefit that you have as a nonprofit is that Google Ad grant, which then can get you automatically at the top of the search results if you're playing all those things correctly. 

[Wendell Jordan] Absolutely. I think using Google for a nonprofit platform, and that grant is paramount. I think it's because I'm nowhere near as versed in the nonprofit space as you are. But I know every nonprofit that I've encountered, has never heard of it. And I don't know how. I wish I knew more about it because I know some really awesome nonprofits that struggle with funding and to be able to have access to free ad money is amazing, right? You know, as long as you got the right credentials in order. But if you're able to tie those ads into content that speaks to the person clicking the ad you are now really living in your purpose and getting it done. 

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Well, and what I love about what you're saying is and I think what I would encourage nonprofits to do is start with what Wendell is talking about creating the content, creating search terms, building that out, because without that the Google Ad grant won't do much for you. Right, you need to have a website working. So starting with that, and everything that we're talking about today, so far, I mean, has been free, right? Like, this is all stuff that you can do for free, but still get more people learning about your stuff. So outside of content creation, is there anything else that organizations might want to just take a look at when it comes to their website as they're starting to ramp up their local SEO strategy. 

 [Wendell Jordan] So when you talk about the on site stuff for local SEO, it tends to be some of the same things that you would find in an SEO strategy. So you know, at the speed of the site, user experience, just a pause right there on user experience, we create content that speaks to people who are DIY’ers and people who are looking for a professional, only because we understand everyone can afford a designer, right? Or they think they can just do it themselves, right? Let's just be fair. But either way, you want to look at how quickly your site is loading. And you also want to make sure that you understand that the best way to do this, as silly as it sounds, is to give it to someone that you know, give your URL to somebody that you know, and ask them what they think this page is about. That is the greatest way to understand user experience, right? It's to get a user to tell you what they think is supposed to happen. And if they're not understanding it, you have a user experience problem, right? Man, amazing analytic to do it, right? You just ask someone, Hey, what is this site? What does this page mean to you? What do you think I'm trying to explain here, and if they can't give it back to you, then you need to go back to the drawing board, that user experience again, before we start tying ads in, if it's hard for someone to get to where you're trying to get them to write, if it's hard for someone to reach the goal, they leave, that's just the way it works. 

 They're not going to try to figure it out, they're not going to, you know, have mercy on you because you did it yourself. But because the design guys are only six days into working, right? They're just leaving, you know, so that user experience in my personal opinion, even if a site loads slow. Sometimes we accept it because someone we know, sent us the site, and we're just like, hey, wow. But then when the site loads, and the menu is overlapping the content, or the menu has 17 tabs, some of them don't make any sense to us. And we're not sure where to get our information, we'll just go, we'll completely abort the mission, and hope that the person who has sent us the link can at least tell us what you know, is there a shorter way for me to do this? Right? Those are the things that, again, to me, user experience is paramount. Because when you start talking about the ads, when someone clicks the ad they need, you need to make sure that you get them to the goal as fast as possible. So those are the two key things, but again, very similar to SEO. The other one, too, is to be looking at if you have meta titles, and meta descriptions on all your pages, those are all the SEO key parts? 

 [Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Well, okay, I have so many things I want to unpack right now, I think are incredible.

Don't forget them. Number one, PageSpeed. If you're like how do I measure my PageSpeed? We love GT Max metrics, you can also use Google for them. You can also use Google PageSpeed Insights, as are both free tools, do you have another tool that you recommend people use for PageSpeed? 

 [Wendell Jordan] So just a couple of things. So JT metrics is awesome. But don't be discouraged. Because when you go to the page, the Google PageSpeed, it's going to be slower, right? often than not.

The metrics are very close to what they're using. But the Google functionality depends on a few other external factors that are, you know, too, too long for one podcast. Lighthouse is another I use, I use Google, I use Google Chrome for my browser. So I have an extension for lighthouse. But you can actually do it directly if you know, on the page and run a speed test, and it'll tell you, it'll give you some some, it'll give you a better read than the actual page speed.Then, excuse me, then the PageSpeed tool. Okay, you can use as far as PSB. Those are really the only two that are my to go twos. But GT metrics is awesome. But again, don't get discouraged into Google itself and the number is, you know, abysmal, because it happens. It does happen. 

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Okay, so the second thing when you are talking about the meta descriptions and titles, yes, I feel like that's something that people get in their own heads about. Get really like, oh my gosh, like this is very formal and I don't know what to write here like they just, I feel like people get stuck there. So could you give people maybe some tips on how to write Titles and Meta descriptions, especially for local SEO that might help kind of get them unstuck?

 [Wendell Jordan] So one, what I tell every client, whenever we're talking about content, we're not submitting this to the Oxford journal, nobody's going to win, you know, any Peabody awards for the stuff that we're writing on these sites, right? At least not not in my experience, right. So we can always, you know, take you down a few notches.The other thing that I would say, is just align with the way that you want people to understand your organization's communication. So for me, I'm very laid back. I'm silly, most times, right. Most of my clients have a lot of fun on our calls, our calls go long for that reason, right? Like, um, my 30 Minute calls really 45 minutes unless it's really a tight schedule that day. So when I'm putting together content, or when my team is putting together content, one thing that I always make sure to impart is, we're never too stuffy. Right? So when we're putting together titles, the title may be a joke, right? Because the but that, that, that speaks to the tone in which they're going to interact with me.  

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] How do you get them to click, it's showing your personality, but it's also not being click Beatty and that, like wasn't going to land on is still valuable content for what they were searching for. Exactly, exactly. 

[Wendell Jordan] Um, but as far as best practices, I mean, it's difficult because when you look at keyword tools, when you look at SEO tools, like on page SEO and off page SEO tools, they always want you to use the keyword in the title and or the description really on both. But it's hard sometimes, you know, it's hard for your target keyword to be naturally put into 60 characters since right like that, it's really difficult. My personal opinion, and I don't know what it's, I haven't heard from any of my clients. Google has most recently put out an update that will actually change your meta title, based on what they think it should be. So I think that this does resonate. Make sure that that meta title really should be that 160 characters summary of what this page is about, right? Because you were talking about content, even if it's just a service page, right? Or if it's explaining why you started to coat drive, you know, or if it's content, you know, just detailing what it means to what to gently coat you know, how do you describe a gently used coat? Right? Like, if it's any of those things? I think you want to make sure that that meta title especially is more of a statement. Right? If you can include the keyword that's prominent on the page? Sure. I don't I don't think that you're necessarily going to lose the world. If you don't know that in today's SEO. 

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yeah. If we go back to the code drive example, though, and if we're talking look, let's see, Oh, would you recommend that organization say something like, donate your gently used winner? This might not be 160 characters bloodshed, just write your Bitly you used jackets, Houston, Texas, like if you have room? Would you recommend a location signifier in a title or in a meta description? 

[Wendell Jordan] In the description? Yes, in the title? I don't I don't think it matters. I think my mailbox may be full with other SEOs who tell me I'm stupid. My personal opinion. And again, I would only back it up with Google has started changing titles based on what they believe the content is about because for years, SEOs like myself have used keywords in titles that didn't make sense. Yeah, right. So we want to make sure that we're marrying the two and sometimes you just can't do it in the title in the description, you have a little more wiggle room, and you can kind of play with it a little bit more. So you may want to throw Houston, Texas in there. Right? You know, I think you can have more characters, so you're not hard pressed to try to make it fit. But at the same time, also accept the fact that when you run some analytics, it's going to tell you that your pages are missing. The title in the I'm sorry, the keywords are missing in the title. Yeah, but again, I think that and I can't think of the guy's name but the gentleman answers a lot of questions for Google all over the internet.

Something that he talks about a lot is the search engines are getting so smart to where the best practices that were five years old, aren't necessarily as relevant and no one wants to say that, hey, we've changed this right because it also changes the conversation I have to have with a client if need be.

And we’ve been doing this together for five years. Now, I'm telling you that everything you've done may be a moot point now, you know, yeah, and that's a really tough thing. And if you are, you know, some of these big search engine tool, I mean, SEO tools like Moz, or, or SEM rush, you know, you, they also have to accept the fact that now their reporting is going to change a little bit, but I have not seen a reporting system reflect that reflect the change of the keywords being in the title of the meta description, being the end of the world. I mean, write it again, from my, from my data, and from the things I've learned from Google within the last year or so, I think it's a lot more subjective. But it's important to have the information in there because sometimes you go to a site, and the page title is there by default, because of whatever CMS system, whatever, you know, WordPress, or whatever they're using, but they don't have a page description, or the page description is, this is where your page description goes. You know, so you got to pay attention to those things. So just make sure that there's something there that's relevant to the content on the page. 

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Well, and I love the whole conversation, I think that you're having, which I agree with is that we are in general, SEO is running towards kind of that customer experience user experience writing for the customer again, versus I feel like, you know, 10 years ago, I was writing for the robots, right? I love that transition. And I think it's harder for people to wrap their heads around because they're like, well, if I'm writing for my customers, how is Google going to understand what's going on but like, right, there's things that are that are happening, so I really love that you're really bringing that to light. Um, you know, when people are listening to this, they're like, Well, I don't know where to put my Titles and Meta descriptions. Do you know if there's WordPress plugins that do that? I know if you're in Squarespace. Wix Weebly. They haven't built into the back end of your page editors. Do you have favorite plugins that you use for this on the WordPress side specifically? Right. 

[Wendell Jordan] Well, I was gonna say we're WordPress pages. Yeah. couldn't speak to you. 

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Okay. Okay, awesome. 

[Wendell Jordan] I was gonna say I can't speak to Wix and Weebly. So the world. Um, personally, we love Seo press. For the sake of fairness, we started off with Yoast. There were too many paywalls for us at that time. You know, I mean, just to be honest, we only had a couple of clients. And it just didn't make sense. We moved over to Rankmath. Rankmath was cool, it was great. And then they created a paywall, but it just didn't align with scaling. But SEO Press has been awesome to us, man. And I'm not knocking any of the other two, I was just telling the client, maybe three days ago, they asked the question, and I said those are the big three, right? I'm not saying that there aren't any other ones. But those are really the big three. In SEO math, I'm sorry, in the SEO press tend to be the top two, with rank math being the youngest, but a tool like SEO price, especially if you get the pro version, man. I mean, so much of it is plug and play and easy to digest. If you're not an SEO, that makes life easy for you, you know, they've actually added a widget to where you can edit the SEO, on page if you're inside WordPress. So you know, I mean, like, you can actually add the they've even gotten to where you can, you can create different page titles for your social, right for social media, when someone shares a link, you can change that image, you can change the title, the all those things that, you know, we see. And we're like you, especially if you're a DIY’er, or if you're a newbie SEO, and someone sends you a link, and the thumbnail is different than the overall for the site. You know, I know for me the first time I saw it, I was like, whoa. Right. But that was years ago. But SEO press. I mean, it's a great tool. What I would say not to say again, that the other two aren't. But the SEO press gives you a lot. For the price point. They give you a lot for the price point they really do even though the free version has a lot of great tools. 

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Yes. Because if you're just getting started with the free versions of all of those. 

[Wendell Jordan] All are great. Absolutely. Absolutely.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Okay, so we can't end a local SEO conversation without kind of at least talking briefly about Google My Business. I don't want to like you know, this could be a whole nother episode all in of itself. But I also feel like this is a completely underutilized, free tool. So could you talk a little bit about what that is, what you love about it, and why you think organizations need to have that as part of their strategy. 

[Wendell Jordan] So I'm going to start with the easy part. I love it. That's the easiest part of the question. I've been using Google My Business for so long. So something that is always tough for me, at this point is

Some of these things again, when I first started using them, they were so deep in the forest and the mystical woods that no one really used them. And then they evolved into this thing that now you have people who've built businesses around optimizing your Google My Business, right? So

there are so many things to it that I can't really speak to just because I know they changed like the verification processes, they've changed them like four times since I first started using them. But

the thing about Google My Business that I love is that it's free. Right? That's my favorite part. The reason why the free is so great is because it helps you get yourself in that conversation. So if you are, again, we'll stick to nonprofit, if you're a nonprofit, if you're a local nonprofit, and you know, your your customer base, or your the people that you serve, are in a locality, having a Google My Business allows for you to be able to be found easily, because people are mostly searching on Google. 

And when they see that Google My Business in the top right corner, it almost brings a level of validity, right? You know, and especially if it's verified, you know, the little verify, check is there and everything looks, everything aligns, they're able to see when you're when you open, what services you actually offer, they may have, they may have even found you from someplace else that has outdated services. But you because you've claimed your Google My Business, you're now able to list your services, you can lose products, if you're a for profit business, whatever it is, Google has that Google My Business tool has so many different layers to it, to where I mean, I like you said we could we could go into all other podcasts just about that. 

 [Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Well, and they, maybe we will. They've also I mean, it's almost like they've turned it into their own little mini social media piece. Like you can book appointments, you can leave reviews, you can post and all of that. And I think it's the same trend that we're seeing, you know, like, now, Facebook doesn't give as much credit to posts that have links away from the platform, right? And Google's doing a similar thing, right? The longer they can keep people in their search platform where they can show ads, the more money they can generate. So like why would you not use their free tool?

 [Wendell Jordan] Like just why would you not write exactly why wouldn't you? The other thing to the to mention is there's some great analytics that come from Google My Business all by itself, even if you don't have anything else set up and you just have a Google My Business, they they give you a ton of information on how people are finding you Google My Business, and what they're doing when they find it. So it is an amazing tool.

 [Sami Bedell-Mulhern]  Well, if you're newer, if your website is newer, and you're not necessarily showing up in search, like that will show up faster than your website. 

 [Wendell Jordan] Yes, yes. It actually shows up faster than like I had one client. And his question was, why is it showing up? You know, it doesn't show up higher. But it always comes up in that top right corner. Right? It always shows up there. And he's like, Well, I don't understand. And I'm like, well, like you said, it's Google's tool. So because we have it there utilizing it. You know, it's not a bad thing, just because we're going to the website, but the website isn't coming up, you know, it's showing up in the search results. But they want them to look at Google My Business, right? That's paramount for Google. 

 [Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Right. Well, and if Google tells us something, who are we to ask questions? It's all about playing the game. Right?

 [Wendell Jordan] Right. Right, exactly. 100% Google, Google's in total control of the internet this way. I forgot the statistics. But they make sure the platform is used predominantly for search again, we don't search things we google them, you know. So yeah, that tells us a lot. 

 [Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Okay, well, we could probably talk about this for a long time. But I don't want to completely overwhelm everybody with like, Oh, crap, here's like 50 things that I have to do. So we may have to have you back to talk specifically about Google My Business because I know there's so much to unpack there. I definitely encourage you guys to hop in there, make sure your account is set up and just start playing with it because it's pretty user friendly. Yeah, back in. I mean, it's really easy to use. 

 [Wendell Jordan] Yes, it is. Of all the things that Google does have is the one that is my one hiccup with Google is for somehow to be so amazing. Some of their user experience is tough. For Google, my business is very poignant. Like you see what you see is what you get. So I would agree with that. 100% Yeah. 

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Okay, so, um, why don't we just do kind of a really brief kind of rundown of what we talked about. So basically, if you're just getting started getting content created on your website, paying attention to keyword terms, making sure those descriptions are on point. So if your Google My Business page, and then the third layer would kind of be that Google Ad grant and driving that really specialized traffic to those specific pieces of content that you've created. And we have another episode on the Google Ad grant that I'll link up in this show in the show notes for this. So if you guys don't know what the Google Ad grant is, or want more information, it's a great one on one on that. So I will link that up in this episode, as well. And Wendell, is there anything else that I didn't bring up that you think is kind of critical to just make sure people that are starting out with their SEO or just trying to ramp up their local SEO that they need to pay attention to? 

 [Wendell Jordan] I don't think you left it out. But I want to impress upon everyone that if you've taken the time to listen to this, because at the end, if you've taken the time to listen to this, just do stuff, right? Like don't be afraid to do things if you are at zero right now. So even if you do a bunch of stuff, and nothing works, you didn't lose, right? So don't be afraid to try some things, and see exactly how far you can get before you may have to call someone that's more of a professional. Well, and I guess maybe one final question then. Because, you know, local SEO is a long game. Yeah. Um, so before, they kind of throw in the towel and are like, Well, wait a minute, this isn't working, like how long do you kind of recommend people be consistent with their strategy before they maybe need to reevaluate or take a look at trying something different? So I always like this when he's loaded with questions. I know. But to give the disclaimer, I do have a stake in this game, right? So my answer may be a little, maybe a little jaded. I think if in the first 90 days, you're not seeing any change at all, you have to start rethinking some stuff, because 90 days is plenty of time for local search to start seeing you a little bit differently. 

 But that's subjective, depending on the keywords you're choosing, right? Because, again, like you said, we could go a million different ways from there. But I would say just as a baseline 90 days is I mean, we have a 90 day accelerator for SEO, right. So like, because we know that there are some things we can do to get some really fast, impactful winds and 90 days that make everyone happy. So you know, 90 days is really that like that baseline so that that will probably be my absolute. Give it, give it three months and see if anything's changed. If nothing changed, you might not have any idea what's going on.

 [Sami Bedell-Mulhern] I love that. It's so true, though. No, I agree with that. Well, Wendell, this was awesome. I think there's lots of action steps people can take from this episode. If people want to know more about you, and how you support organizations in their SEO, how do they do that? 

[Wendell Jordan] You can reach out to me on LinkedIn, something that we're most recently doing is like, like a free audit. Because I know, you know, you and I are in the same industry. So I'll make it specific and make it a local SEO audit for your listeners. I'll shoot you over the link specific to the local SEO auditor. But what we do is we just just help them to see exactly where they are. It's completely free. We just show them where they are as far as searching. And hopefully they have some idea of what keywords are looking for. If not, we can help them with that. But you can either go to the website, or you can reach out to me on LinkedIn.

 [Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Awesome. And we will link all of that up in the show notes for this episode at the first clip dotnet forward slash podcast. Wendell, thank you so much for joining me. This has been wonderful. 

[Wendell Jordan] Yes, ma'am. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] Oh, my goodness, you guys, Wendell shared some incredible tips and resources. So please be sure you head on over to thefirstclick.net/132. To check out the show notes, get access to all of the things that he shared in this episode and the show notes. I really hope that you enjoyed this episode. There's so many good tips and tricks that he shared. And I hope that you'll head on over to thefirstclick.net/YouTube and check out our brand new YouTube channel where we also have our podcasts up there. And starting in January, we will have videos so if you want to see some of my amazing guests in real life, I guess kind of in real virtual life and you want to hang out with us over there. Please do that. But I hope that you'll subscribe wherever you listen, YouTube, Apple podcasts, Spotify, whatever, so you don't miss out on a single episode. And we'll see you in the next one. One more episode in 2021. And we're all done. I can't believe you guys, we'll see you in the next one.