From Data to Design: Smarter Web's Data-First Approach

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Tim Shoop (00:06):
Hey everyone and welcome to another episode of
Nerds On Tap, where we get nerdyfor an hour with some special
guests.
Today's guests come from theworld of marketing and
specifically SmarterWeb, one ofour sponsors.
So we all know each other.
So this is going to be a littlebit of a I think a more

(00:27):
outlandish show, because we'regoing to have a little bit of
camaraderie going on during theshow.
No nerves, right, Kina?

Kina Robinett (00:34):
Not at all, never , you know me.

Tim Shoop (00:36):
So brought to you by our sponsors today Digital
Boardwalk, who rules the worldof managed IT services for
businesses all across thecountry, and SmarterWeb, our
marketing professionals for yoursmall business.
So make sure you reach out tothem if you need a website or IT

(00:58):
for your companies.
So let's go ahead and getstarted.
Let's talk about today'ssegments after we hear a little
bit about our special guests,Kina Robinett and Shelby Payne
of SmarterWebnet.
Who wants to go first?

After you, Kina, I can jump in.
I'm Kina.
It's, first off, great to behere on the podcast the
marketing manager over atSmarterWeb.
So I handle not just theSmarterWeb typical day to day
marketing duties but also ourclient projects where we help
SMBs grow their digital presenceonline.

(01:40):
We do everything from webdesign, seo to Google ad
campaigns, and so I kind ofoversee a lot of those client
projects and my wonderful friendShelby over here helps
tremendously with all of thoseas well.
So Shelby, Absolutely.

Shelby Payne (01:58):
Well, I'm Shelby.
I am marketing coordinator atSmarterWeb, so I get to work
with Kina very closely on all ofthese projects and I would say
we have a lot of fun with those,don't we?
Absolutely.

We're both definitely very passionate about
graphic design, marketing andthen also, I think, the.
You know we want to help growour clients business.
You know we have a verypersonal relationship with a lot
of our customers and so we loveseeing, you know, as time goes
on we've had customers under ourbelt and we love seeing their

(02:32):
growth over time.

Tim Shoop (02:34):
So you guys help make the show for Nerds On Tap,
don't you?

Indeed, we do.

Tim Shoop (02:41):
Who writes the outline for these shows?

I don't know Some girl.

Tim Shoop (02:45):
Some girl named.

Shelby.

Really awesome girl.

Tim Shoop (02:47):
So Shelby came very prepared for today's show.
She has footnotes written onthe back of her hand and she is
prepared to put the show on.
Kina just saw the outline aminute ago, and so did I, so we
are going to wing it, but I amexcited to hear about all the
magical things you do for ourcustomers, Kina, before we get

(03:10):
started and before we taste ourfirst beer.
You do know this is a beer show, right?
Not a wine show.

Oh, I think I have something.
I have somewhere I have to beactually.

Tim Shoop (03:22):
Why don't you tell the audience how you got into
marketing and where that passioncame from, because I think it
rings close to your heart.

Yeah, it really does.
So I actually kind of, I guess,got my first start with
marketing when I was actually alittle girl.
My dad was the marketingdirector for a lot of companies
in the music industry.
You know he worked for a fewdifferent companies over there.
But when I was a kid he had hisoffice, his little studio room

(03:50):
that he worked out of, and heworked from home as a contractor
for a while as well, and as alittle girl I would go in there,
watch what he was doing on hisfancy computer and just be so
amazed by everything, especiallythe web design side of things.
It just amazed me when I was Ithink I had to have been my
seventh birthday.
I think he got me for mybirthday he bought my domain

(04:14):
name, kinarabinettecom, which Istill own to this day.
How?

Tim Shoop (04:17):
old were you.

I was seven.

Tim Shoop (04:19):
You had your own domain at seven.
Oh my God, domains didn't existwhen I was seven.

You're showing your age there.
Hey, but yeah, that was mybirthday present and he helped
me build a website with a giantpink butterfly on it and my name
everywhere.
But watching my dad as I was akid, he was extremely passionate
about what he did and thatdefinitely shaped my passion for

(04:47):
the industry as well.
When I got into high school, Istarted kind of designing blogs
and fun websites, just reallyfor fun.
And then it wasn't until I gotto college that I realized I
have all.
I have these things that I loveto do.
I can actually do that for aliving.
I just never really put two andtwo together and realized I
could do that for a living andit's the best decision I ever

(05:11):
made.

Tim Shoop (05:11):
I love it so much I love it and you're really good
at it.
Our customers at DigitalBoardwalk all use SmarterWeb to
build their websites and dotheir SEO forum and they all
love them.
Some keen.

Do my best.
It really is very rewarding tosee whether it's a website
design project from nothing to acompleted website, or SEO blogs
seeing them their rank onGoogle or Bing, seeing that
gradually climb up.
It's extremely rewarding, soit's easy to be passionate about

(05:51):
.
For me, I guess.

Tim Shoop (05:51):
So, shelby, how did you get into marketing and what
led you to SmarterWeb?

It's actually funny.
My first marketing job was asthe Cal for Chick-fil-A.
All right, that way, yes way Onthe billboards.
No, I was a little bit Cal andI would dance around on the bill
and try to get people to comeeat at Chick-fil-A.
That's awesome.
But I also managed events and Imanaged their social media

(06:18):
campaigns and rolling out newproducts and things of that
nature.
But I always think it's funnythat I started as a Cal and then
I discovered around the sametime I was 14, I discovered that
I really liked drawing andpainting and just being creative

(06:39):
and eventually that led to merealizing kind of with Kina,
like hey, I could do this as ajob and be very fulfilled in
what I do.
And so for me the world ofloving marketing and loving
design kind of came togetherwith Web Design.
I could do both of the thingsthat I love to do and I could do

(06:59):
it for people and bring themjoy out of what I do.
So I came to SmarterWeb acouple months ago.
It's been a little bit now it'sbeen a little longer than that.
Maybe three, four, I don't know.
It's been a little bit.

Tim Shoop (07:15):
Did we warn you that you would be on a podcast?

No, that came after I signed on the dotted
lines, I think I know I wasn'twarned either.

Tim Shoop (07:23):
So, after coming, I got a couple questions for you
before we taste our first beer,because I know you guys are
anxious to try these beers infront of us.
First of all, do you still havethat cow costume?

No, I had to give it back.

Tim Shoop (07:38):
So, jared, can we order a cow costume?
We're going to put a reeltogether for the show and have
her dance.

Perfect, we'll bring back memories.

Tim Shoop (07:48):
And when you came on since you're newer at SmarterWeb
and I'm kind of glad that wehave this contrast here of new
and old see what I did there.
Kina Wow, yeah, I had to do it.
You did it to me.
Tell me about what you seeinside the doors of SmarterWeb
from the terms of how we goabout developing and how we.

(08:12):
Where is the?
Do you see any passion?

Absolutely.
I think you know the wholereason I wanted the job was
after I talked to Kina and justseeing her passion and desire to
do these things and to do themwell, in a way that would serve
our clients well, that made mereally want to join the team.
Honestly, just seeing that wewere both passionate about this

(08:36):
and we could both bringsomething to our clients that
they don't get every day,because we're not just building
beautiful websites, we'rebuilding functional websites
with usability, and we do thisbecause we care about them, and
I think that's the drive for ourcustomers and clients too.
They see the same thing in Kinathat I did.

Tim Shoop (08:55):
And when you lift the hood of one of our websites
we're going to get into thatlater in the show data.
It's all about data, and thatis what makes a website
functional being able to trackdata, being able to know where
your campaigns are going, whichones are working, which ones
aren't and we'll talk about thatlater.
First, let's try a beer.

(09:17):
Ladies and gentlemen, welcometo Nerds On Tach.
I'm your host, Tim Schu, and Icouldn't be more excited to
embark on this nerdy adventurewith all of you.
So grab your favorite brew,because things are about to get
exciting.
Three, two, one go.

Suds (09:43):
Suds.
What do we have first?
All right, our first beertonight is the Light Crispy Boys
American Light Lager from theThree Sons Brewing Company.
They describe it as a fullflavor with less guilt, a
perfectly balanced crisp andrefreshing year round crusher.

Oh, that's pretty good.

Tim Shoop (10:00):
Oh, I like that.

Suds (10:03):
Where is that from?
That is from Dania Beach,Florida, founded in 2011.

Tim Shoop (10:07):
Okay, we're going to have to tag them Shelby, because
that beer, I need to keep thatin my cooler.

I like that one very good, it's refreshing.

Tim Shoop (10:18):
It's not just refreshing, it has a really good
after bite to it that kind ofdrives it home.

Yeah, well, it's not for me.
The reason I am more of a winedrinker than a beer drinker is
because a lot of times beersleave like the I guess
aftertaste is what we're talkingabout.
But this one's very light.
I like it a lot, it's notoverpowering.

Tim Shoop (10:40):
You're not drunk yet, Kina.

I don't know, I'm feeling it.

Tim Shoop (10:44):
I'm feeling it.
So today we're going to getinto three topics.
We're going to talk about theworld of web development.
We're going to dive in andnavigating SEO and digital
marketing.
So if you're a small tomedium-sized business out there,
pay attention to today'sepisode, send it to your friends
, send it to any other businessthat you think can use it,

(11:07):
because we've got some greatstuff to talk about today that
can help you drive net newbusiness.
The third topic will be smarterwebs, projects and the future
of web development through theeyes of our guests and what
they're thinking.
So first, we're going to talkabout smarter web and your roles

(11:27):
inside of web development andmaybe dive into the landscape of
development and design throughyour eyes.
Now, when you start a websiteand tell me about the process,
from the moment the lead comesin to Well, excuse me, from the

(11:52):
moment a customer hires us to dotheir website, tell me, tell me
the flow, what, what happensfrom there?

the first thing, really for most of our projects
not just the web design.
But you know, if we're doingcontent marketing, whatever it
is we may be doing, our firststep is always to learn as much
as we possibly can about theclient themselves, what their
goals are.
If it is a website, you knowwhat's their branding, what you
know what kind of message are wetrying to put out there, what

(12:22):
are there, what is their current?
You know lead generationprocess look like and really try
to get a handle onunderstanding who they are and
what they're.
You know why they hired us inthe first place.
From there and usually you knowthat can be a series of you
know we meet, get real up closeand personal with the clients
sometimes, but Make sureeveryone on the team has an

(12:46):
understanding of what we'retrying to accomplish.
And then from there weTypically go if it's a, if it's
a web design project, we startto Put our ideas together.
Our team puts our our headstogether and says you know, how
can we not just visually Getacross their message, but also
what is their message?
Who?
You know?
Who are they trying to target?

(13:06):
A lot of business, especiallysmall businesses, don't think
Right off the bat about who itis they're directly trying to
speak to.
They're just, you know, tryingto get their name out there,
trying to get their product outthere.
But if you're not speaking tothe right audience, you know
they're.
The wrong audience isn't goingto care about your product.
It's going to just go straightover their heads.
They're going to just click offyour site.
So it's very important to nailyour target audience down,

(13:33):
figure out who it is you'respeaking to and from there, a
lot of the pieces can fall inplace pretty easily.
As far as like design.
What would that target audiencebe looking for at a website?
What would?
What kind of content are theylooking for?
You know what questions arethey going to have before they
sign on with you.
So there's a lot of strategythat goes into a website, aside

(13:53):
from just having it look pretty,and you know work.

Tim Shoop (13:57):
So when they come to you, I mean that's their first
thought.
I want a website that Lookspretty and all of this.
But what they don't realizesomebody told me this one time
is you can have the mostbeautiful website in the world
but without these other thingsTo get people to find the
website.
And we're going to talk aboutthat mostly in segment two.

(14:17):
They referred to it as abillboard in the woods.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

It's kind of like a, you know a pretty brochure
of your services, which is nice,or your product, which is nice,
but is it really achieving whatyou want it to achieve?

Tim Shoop (14:31):
So it's going to be about beautiful design, which
we're going to stay on thattopic, but it's also about being
found and Making sure you canturn it into Hate this term but
a cash register, because it'sabout finding new business.
So let's stay on this topic andlet's stay on web design.

(14:53):
So let's get into the userfriendliness of it.
So when you look at a website,let's say it's a website that
you may not have designed.
You're just looking at awebsite and I know we're looking
through your eyes, so you'regoing to see a website different
than a regular visitor is goingto see a website.
And what are you looking at?

(15:13):
What are you looking at throughyour eye?
What are you looking at?
What are you looking at throughyour eye?
What do you see?

There's.
There's a few different things.
The main, the main thing Ialways look at whenever I look
at any website, is what is themain call to action?
What are you calling yourvisitors to do?
Where does that lead them?
You know, usually it's a, it'sa big button.
A lot of times it says getstarted, or something along
those lines.

Tim Shoop (15:39):
What do they refer to that as a call to action?
Yes, a call to action.

Yeah, usually a button, some kind of you're
literally calling your, yourusers, to some kind of action.
It could be like a downloadable, it could be just you're
bringing them to a contact form.
A lot of websites don't haveany kind of call to action, so
that tends to be you know,people, business owners in
general kind of maybe don't seethe value in it, but if you have

(16:05):
your, you have a user come toyour site and they have no idea.

Tim Shoop (16:09):
But I think every website I've been to has a
contact page.
Isn't that a call to action?

It can be.
It's, um.
You know, a general contactform is a type of action.
It may not always be the mosteffective one.
Some people may not be ready tocontact you.
Some people want, maybe, sometype of Information about you.

Tim Shoop (16:30):
They want to but they're not gonna land on a
contact page when they go to awebsite.
If I go to abc you knowAccompanycom, I'm gonna go to
their home page.
So you want call to actions?
Trickled through that page.
Is that what I'm here?

Yes, the home page.
And you know, sir, if yourservice-based business services
pages you know even the aboutpage, should, should have some
kind of they call it themarketing funnel, it should all
lead to some final action allthroughout your site.
Your site should essentially beconvincing users to take that
action and what is that actioncalled from a marketing

(17:05):
perspective?

Tim Shoop (17:07):
Is it a conversion?

Oh yes, yeah, you're.
You want your website toconvert, so they call that
typically a conversion.
Some people also, you know, inanalytics programs they call it
a goal or an event, buttypically that's a, that's a
conversion.
You're converting that user.

Tim Shoop (17:22):
And then you want to be able to track those
conversions, right?
Yes, so let's talk about that.
I hate that Shelby's not doingany talking over here, but we
really don't.
We're not hitting on On whatshe really does yet and I think
that's gonna be mostly insegment two.
So, but, chime in where you canif you have anything to say.

(17:43):
I so I want to talk about.
So we're talking abouttechnology.
We're talking about theimportance of technology on a
website.
Everybody looks at a websiteand sees beautiful website and
they go, oh, wow, that's a greatwebsite.
But from a, from a owner'sperspective on a website, you
don't want it to just lookpretty, you want it to do the

(18:04):
job for you.
You want to be able to automatecertain marketing processes and
things to drive.
What you mentioned earlier wasa marketing funnel.
So that marketing funnel leadsthem down.
That funnel leads the users acertain way.
Can you track user behavior ona website and what is the
importance of that?

(18:25):
And how do you, as, as a, whenyou collect that behavior, let's
say, across a number of users?
How does that data help youWith the website?
What can you do with thatwebsite?
What can you do with yourmarketing perspective of how you
use that website as an owner,to make adjustments based on

(18:46):
that data.

Yeah, data really is, you know, the number one
thing with with websites.
We, if you have, you know,through analytics such as Google
Analytics, which is definitelythe most you know kind of
industry standard, you know youcan track how much traffic you
have coming to your website.
From that traffic you havecoming to the site, you can

(19:08):
track, you know what pages theyclicked on, how many pages they
clicked on, how long they wereon your site looking through
your different pages, lookingthrough your offerings.
You can track them all the wayto when they actually convert,
whether that's filling out theform or downloading a PDF or
whatever it may be on yourwebsite.
And using that data, you canreally I mean, there's so much

(19:29):
you can learn from the data youcan see where people are
dropping off.
Maybe you have a page thatdoesn't perform well or doesn't
answer questions, so peopleclick off, or even a page that
doesn't load quickly enough andso people click off.
And you can really you cantrack from beginning to end when
people are.
You know if they're a differentperson, they're a different
person.
There are different stages ofthe there what what they call a

(19:52):
buying journey, where you knowmaybe they're deciding, they're
first doing their research todecide, to figure out who they
want to go with for your service.
Or you know they're they'restill assessing different.
You know you and yourcompetitors.
You can really dig through thedata and Find you know kind of
how to steer your not just yourwebsite, but all of your

(20:13):
marketing campaigns.
You know, are there gaps inyour marketing that the data can
tell you there's?
There's so much you can learnfrom the data.

Tim Shoop (20:20):
So smarter web does some pretty incredible things
with data.
You collect data and it's allcurated Into an aggregated kind
of an aggregate under what youcall smart board, right.

Correct.
So smart board is ourproprietary, essentially as an
analytics dashboard.
It pulls in data from alldifferent channels whether you
know if you're, if we're,running SEO campaigns, content
marketing campaigns, it pulls in.
You know ranked tracking onGoogle it pulls in.
If you have Google adscampaigns, that pulls that in
your, your regular Googleanalytics on your website.

(20:55):
It pulls out all into onesingle pane of glass so you can
see you know one one place whereyou log in and you can see all
of this data to Give you areally comprehensive view of how
your online marketing isperforming, and so it's
extremely valuable.
We use it I mean, I, I'm onthere for our clients Multiple
time of day to checking to seeyou know where, where do we have

(21:18):
opportunities, where do wemaybe need to clean things up.
It really provides so muchvalue To any business really to
have a good eye on your, on youranalytics.

Tim Shoop (21:30):
That's, that's great and and so you can.
You can audit this data.
You can make pivots for yourcustomers or recommendations to
your customers.
So so you've got data thatflows in from my understandings,
from like Google analytics soyou can see behavior on Google.
You can see search engineoptimization analytics.
You can see.

(21:53):
So if you have a campaign forinstance a landing page with a
form, maybe that comes from anAdWords campaign where you're
targeting a certain demographic,you're tracking those phone
numbers Can you tell theaudience how you track Kind of
the generalized idea of how andwhy you track numbers, why all
those numbers are different andhow that can lead to

(22:18):
optimization of your salesfunneling right?

So what a lot of especially smaller businesses.
When they're first starting outwith their marketing, they tend
to and we'll use Google adscampaigns as an example they
have multiple Campaigns ormultiple ad groups that they're
running that all lead to oneSingle page with one their main
phone number on it, and so ifthings come in from that page,

(22:42):
that doesn't really give you anyInsight on where that lead came
from.
By creating either individuallanding pages or what we do, we
have individual landing pagesfor different campaigns, but
each landing page also has Aunique phone number tied to it
at forwards to your main phonenumber, and it worked.
You know that process worksfine.
But by having individual orunique phone numbers for each

(23:04):
campaign, if a call comes in,you know exactly where they came
from, like you know, if youhave, if you put a phone number
out For an event you recentlyattended, you put that phone
number on.
You know your, your printmaterials for that event.
If someone calls that phonenumber, you know exactly.

(23:25):
You don't have to ask them.
You know how did you hear aboutus.
You already know that theyfound you through that event or
through that ad campaign,because a lot of people they
will just say oh, I found youthrough Google.
That's not for.
From a marketing standpointthat's not super Insightful,
because you know Google is huge.
It could be just your main homepage, it could be an ad

(23:46):
campaign, but by having thoseunique phone numbers and unique
Contact forms on each page, youknow exactly where the the lead
is coming from.
You don't have to guess.
It takes the guesswork out ofyour marketing.

Tim Shoop (24:00):
Okay, so the first thing I just want to chime in
here.
I have finished my first beer.
We're getting close to segmenttwo, so we're going to have
another beer introduced.
I would recommend you guysmaybe down those Because I have
a feeling that, um, because Ihave a feeling segment two and
segment three might be a lotmore entertaining if you drink
those beers.

(24:24):
No, I kid, I kid.
But so, shelby, tell me how you, before we get into segment two
, I'd like to hear how you workclosely with kina, specifically
on the web design design side ofthe house, and how you interact
on some of the pieces in thosedevelopment, in the development

(24:47):
of those sites.

Absolutely so.
If we're talking about, um,just the design portion, there
is a lot of important steps tothat that people don't really
think about, one of those.
Being someone who's taken acouple classes, you know, on ux
and ui design, one of the thingsthat I find really important is
making sure that you'recrafting a good user experience.

(25:11):
That means those call toactions.
Um, it's really important tohave verbiage that the client
understands, that your customerunderstands.
Um, if you have a call toaction but you you don't really
make it clear what the action is, the customer is not going to
click on that button.
That's one of the things that Ithink we think about when we're

(25:31):
mocking up our websites.
Another thing that I help kinawith is we make sure that all of
our websites are responsive.
So that means if you're lookingat it on your cell phone, if
you're looking at it on youripad, your tablet, your laptop,
your desktop, whatever- soresponsive, responsive design
exactly, exactly.

(25:51):
So we make sure that no matterwhere you're viewing it, it
looks the same generally.
Things will be moved a littlebit for your phone so everything
fits, but in general the designKind of remains intact.
Um.

Tim Shoop (26:05):
Yeah, that's kind of a deal killer for me when I go
on somebody's website for mymobile and it looks and and
operates exactly like when I goto it on a pc.
Because it's not functional ona mobile.
Right, considering you're justtrying to find key pieces,
information.
But if it doesn't scaleproperly and I can't even read

(26:26):
it on my mobile, then we have aproblem, right, I'm not going to
be interested.
I mean, if, if a company can'tGet that right, it kind of it's
kind of a turnoff.

Absolutely.
It kind of sends a message thatthe company doesn't really care
that much about you viewingtheir content.
Yeah, so things like hoveroptions A lot of our buttons
might hover on a desktop, butyou can't hover on a mobile.
There's no way to do thatwithout a mouse.
Um, so that's one of the reallyimportant things that we focus
on when we're designing ourwebsites.

Tim Shoop (26:59):
Got it.
Um, so we're gonna we're.
I want to transition in asegment too, but I'm looking at
these.
If you don't want to drink yourbeers, just tell me, because
I'll drink the rest of your beer.
I'm sure suds will dive in, butyou gotta gotta let us know.
Yeah, suds if he has to hearthat if I must.
So we're gonna dive in to scoand digital marketing after

(27:23):
introducing beer number two.

Suds (27:26):
All right.
Beer number two Uh, this wasnot planned, it's just a
coincidence, but it's a beachblonde ale, american blonde ale,
from three daughters brewery inst Petersburg, florida.
Uh, it's described as a lightand refreshing, with just enough
hops to balance the multisweetness and add a hint of
citrus.

That's pretty good, that's definitely got the
citrusy.

Tim Shoop (27:50):
I'm not a big citrus guy, yeah the aftertaste.
The aftertaste Remind me.
I mean, the beer's good.
I don't want to.
I'm not gonna Discount the beer, especially if you like citrus,
but the aftertaste reminds meof a, a cleaning agent.
But I will drink it.

(28:13):
I will drink it, ladies andgentlemen.

It smells delicious, like when you first
put it up.
It smells so good.

Tim Shoop (28:20):
I will say that our group at smarter web are not big
beer drinkers, because this isthe first show, this is show
number 11 that we're doing andit's the first time I've
actually seen Full beers.
But that's okay, that's okay,you don't have to be a.
You know I, it's fine, drinkyour beer.

(28:43):
I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'mkidding.
So let's talk about sco.
You know a digital marketingand the blend of the two and how
that can help you as a smallbusiness.
So let's take a deep dive intosco.
Um, search engine optimizationand the importance of it and the
significance of it in today'sdigital marketing landscape.

(29:06):
You know, when I first Launchedmy first business was in the
late 90s and, yeah, we all, yeah, yeah, you were supposed to uh
Throw up a website.
But websites back then in thetechnology, you know, google
reviews google wasn't around.

(29:26):
Um, you had, uh, a very Uh,only a few browsers out there
and they didn't do this kind ofreview thing that all the all
these big tech companies aredoing now.
So the lit, the digitallandscape is shifted and in sco
is a big part of what everybodyshould be doing for their

(29:49):
website because it gets youorganically Up in the.
I'm sorry that beer's making mewanna fur.
And I'm trying my hardest not tomic'd up like, yes, I'm an
animal, ladies and gentlemen.
So you guys, I want you tocollaborate here and I'd love to

(30:11):
hear a very collaborativediscussion between the two of
you on SEO and the value itbrings to a small to medium
sized business and how it works,kind of.

Yeah, I will say like when I started and I came
to SmarterWeb, I didn't know alot about SEO.
That was one of the things thatKina has been such an amazing
teacher on and she's taken thetime to really kind of explain
things to me and get meresources to understand, and I
will say it is incrediblyimportant once you realize what

(30:43):
SEO does.

Tim Shoop (30:45):
You realize it's perfect, it's the foundation,
right.

Yes, because, like Kina said earlier, I mean if
you have this beautifulresponsive website, if people
aren't finding it Like, what'sthe point?

Exactly exactly, and a lot of people I explain
this to a lot of, a lot of ournew clients.
When you think about it, a lotof people don't understand what
all goes into SEO.
But if you, you can kind ofbreak it down pretty simply.
If you think of yourself, asyou know, you are Google.
Let's say you're Google andsomeone types something into the

(31:19):
search bar, some question theyhave or whatever it is they're
searching for.
Your job as Google is to bringthem the best results, the best
answer to that question.
So you know SEO, if you breakit down like that kind of
becomes simpler in a way,because your end goal is to
answer that question to the bestof your ability.

Tim Shoop (31:44):
It's really important , the foundation that you build
a website on.
So you kind of have to workyour way out right From the
website that you've built,because I've seen websites now.
Back in the day it was frontpage.
Do you know what that is?
Yeah, that's your dad.
So front page is what everybodybuilt their websites on in the

(32:06):
90s and early 2000s and it wasvery archaic.
And then you know all thesedifferent technologies starting
to come out and you know I'mdating myself here, but this is
important to hear the legacyside of it.
You know we all used yellowpages to drive businesses back
then.
So people didn't all they saw awebsite ask was a calling card

(32:29):
that if someone wanted to findout more information they could
go to it.
So they weren't as prettybecause of the way they worked
back then.
But most importantly, you hadthese different technologies,
even Adobe Photoshop.
People were creating websitesin Adobe Photoshop.
Now the problem and I'm gonnause this as an example Adobe
Photoshop.
What are you creating withPhotoshop?

(32:50):
What is it known for?
What do you create?

Images.

Tim Shoop (32:53):
Images.
So what does Google see?

An image with no I mean no text or anything
really, aside from a title youcan put on it.

Tim Shoop (33:03):
So Google sees words.
Google.
An image to Google is itdoesn't have anything to
reference, unless nowadays youcan alt tag an image right, and
I wanna hear more about that.
But back in the day peoplewould design an entire website
in Photoshop.
Google wouldn't see it, andthen they'd wonder why they
weren't being found.

(33:24):
Nowadays we build them onWordPress.
That's the most popular or aproprietary infrastructure, a
platform.
So tell me if you're workingyour way out.
We start with the website andwe start with the way it's
designed, and we use a termcalled on page SEO.

(33:45):
Tell us about that.

Yeah, so typically when we build our
sites we want to build in, thereare certain things that
Google's gonna look for, notjust on the front end, as far as
your content and what you'rewriting, the words that are
actually on the page but thenthere's also things on the back
end that Google can pick up.
Now alt tags, or something thatwe mentioned a second ago.

(34:09):
Those are basically tags on animage that you can.
It's extremely important foraccessibility because an alt tag
is basically text thatdescribes the image on a website
.
So if someone, say, has avision disability and uses,
maybe, a screen reader to viewwebsites or access websites, if

(34:30):
your website is all images, theyhave no idea.
They can't see that.
Alt tags provide an explanationof what that image is, but they
can also be very valuableSEO-wise.
You wanna describe the image.
That's first priority isdescribing the image for screen
readers, but if you can addcontent in there that's helpful

(34:52):
for your SEO as well, that's ahuge opportunity.

Tim Shoop (34:56):
Content, Content.
Yes, so content on the image,but where else?
I mean, content is king, right?

Content is king all throughout the site and how
you tag things on the back endcode different HTML tags that
you don't see when you access asite but are important on the
back end for Google to be ableto read, even how quickly your
page loads, because Google willsee if people access your site
and immediately click off thatto Google that's a red flag and

(35:24):
that can count against you.
If your page takes too long toload, that can count against you
.
And so there's so many thingswith on-page or technical SEO
that you don't really thinkabout but that can make a huge
difference when you're trying torank higher on Google, when
you're trying to get yourwebsite up there for people's
search queries.

Tim Shoop (35:45):
So on-page, that's where you start right.
So you're designing the websiteand you always have on-page SEO
in mind.
So we're talking about all tags, so tagging all your images.
We're talking about content andthe importance of content.
So within that content, whenGoogle reads that content, let's
talk about keywords.

Yeah, keywords are extremely important.
With Google, keywords are kindof a beast, because sometimes
you can be wanting to rankhigher for a certain keyword and
then find out that's not eventhe right key.
No one's searching that.
So your strategy with keywordsis very important and keywords
are basically just you know,they can be search terms on

(36:30):
Google that you put, that peopleput into their search bar.
But you want to include thatkind of whether it's long form
keyword, what we call long tail,or even short keywords.
You wanna include that in yourcontent so that your website
pops up when people makes thosesearch queries.

Tim Shoop (36:48):
So let's stay on the topic of content, and we're
gonna get into both of you now,because I think you help a lot
with this, Shelby.
So once you get a website up,you've got this beautiful
website, you've got on-page SEOin mind, you've got all your
keywords in the content.
So Google reads it, Googlescans it.

(37:11):
They've got bots that scannetworks.
They bring it up, they rankthem and then it ranks over time
.
So, changing your content goodor bad.

Can be good, depending on the changes you
make.

Tim Shoop (37:27):
Right, and how often should someone change their
website?
When I say change, I meanupdate.
So I think one of the morepopular ways people update their
websites is when a team memberis no longer with a company and
they add a new team member.
Obviously you gotta update theteam member page but on the

(37:48):
homepage adding things.
So I think changing content orupdating a website and keeping
it current, that's somethingSmarterWeb does for all your
customers, Correct, howimportant is that and how does
that chime in to the SEO pieceof it all?

Well, it's definitely important to keep
your business informationcorrect at all times.
If your address changes, youwant to make sure that gets
updated everywhere across theweb.
But it's really important tooif you're going to be either
changing your content or maybeyou're blogging your posting
blogs.
It's important to if you aregoing to do it at a specific, if

(38:34):
you're going to do itfrequently.
I learned something.
It's been a couple of years now, but you can, in a way, almost
train Google's algorithm tocheck your site if you make
those updates at the same time.
So not the same time, but like,let's say, you want to post a
blog and you post it maybe amonthly blog to your website.

(38:55):
If you post it at the exactsame time and day every month.
Once Google starts to pick upthat you're doing that, it's
bots will.
You're kind of starting totrain their algorithm to check
your website at those timesbecause they know you're going
to have new content.
So I would say maybe more sothan frequency is the schedule

(39:16):
at which you post is important.

Tim Shoop (39:18):
Wow, I didn't know that.

Yeah, that's a good-.
I remember I learned that.
I thought it was so interesting.
That was one of the coolestthings I've ever learned.

Tim Shoop (39:29):
So we talk about on page SEO in terms of content, we
talk about updates, we talkabout all tags.
Are meta tags as relevantanymore?
And then how does that?
And explain to the audiencewhat a meta tag is?

Well.
So meta tags, meta descriptions, meta titles those are the.
When you search a website onGoogle and you see the page
title or site title on there.
That's the meta title.
Is that the big text that youcan click on to get to the
website.
The description is the textunderneath it.

(40:12):
So a short little couple ofsentences that gives you a
description of what thewebsite's about.
And it's extremely important notjust for Google when they're
crawling your site to find thatand hopefully find keywords in
there that are relevant to whatyour audience is searching for,
but also for the end user to seestuff that's not just a bunch
of code or you know, becauseautomatically, typically, your

(40:35):
site's going to try to pullwhatever the first text is from
your webpage and a lot of timesfor a lot of web builders that
ends up being just a string ofcode which means nothing to an
end user.
So you wanna make sure you setyour meta description, meta
title.
You can have tags on your page.
I can all help with yourvisibility on Google, but they

(40:56):
are also extremely important forthe end user, and I know Shelby
has helped me considerably witha lot of meta tags, meta
descriptions, so she knows howit can be a little bit time
consuming to put that in forevery single page, but it's very
, very important and for everyblog.

And for every blog too, yes, which gets very, very
tedious, but it is importantbecause then, when they're
searching for a specific topic,they can find your blog and
ultimately, your website, right,right.

Tim Shoop (41:29):
What's an H1?
I've seen that.
What's an?
You like how I'm playing dummy?

Yeah, I know what's an H1 tag, like you don't
know, oh my.

Tim Shoop (41:40):
God.
So what is an H1 tag?
Is this what you're talkingabout when you say tags?

So that is actually different.
The header tags on a site.
That's part of the HTML codeevery site's gonna, whatever you
build it on if you build it onWordPress, it still is made up
of HTML code, which is just acode language that someone
probably much smarter than mecould describe better, but you

(42:09):
want to.
Every page has you wanna set anH1 and an H2 tag.
You can have H3 through H6, Ibelieve, tags, but for sure H1
and H2, those are basically justa way to denote a header in the
HTML code, which the HTML codeis what Google crawls.

(42:31):
That's what Google sees as yourcode, and so by setting an H1,
h2 tag, you can kind of tellGoogle these blocks of text have
more importance than the otherones.
These are headers, and so byhaving keywords in those headers
, that can also help your SEO.

(42:51):
It can help with your searchqueries.
If you have those relevantkeywords in your header tags, at
the very least you want to setit, because that's something you
wanna set your H1 and H2 tagson every page, every blog, which
again can be tedious, butGoogle's gonna be looking for
that when they crawl your site.
So that's something you wannamake sure you set up and make
sure it's still relevant.

(43:11):
You don't wanna just set it anyof this stuff.
You don't wanna just set it andcompletely forget about it.
You wanna make sure it's up todate and you're keeping track of
it all.

Tim Shoop (43:20):
So before we, I wanna talk about the rest of SEO, but
I'm gonna cheers you guysbecause this is great.
Are you not drinking anymore?
It's fine, you don't have to.
I finished all mine, so I guesswhat I wanna talk about now.
So we talked about on-page SEO.
We talked about the importanceof the design elements and how

(43:42):
you have to take all that time,like Kina said, to do the extra
work.
A lot of designers put thepretty website together.
They deliver it to you as abusiness, because you can't see
all the underpinnings thatKina's talking about, and that's
where the majority of the timecomes from.
Right.
So you gotta be careful aboutwho you hire and make sure

(44:04):
that's in the scope of work andin the contract that you sign,
because a lot of designers willjust hand you something that you
think is the most badasswebsite in the world, but it
doesn't work.
Functionally it works, butGoogle doesn't see it.
So that's on-page SEO.
Let's talk about SEO in general, off-page or however you wanna

(44:28):
define it.
So the first thing that comesto mind is Google and Bing and
their profiles that you createon those.
So let's start there and thenI'll chime in and we'll talk
about blogging and theimportance of all these other

(44:48):
things that you really have tobe doing as a small business to
stay ahead of your competitors.
So let's start with profiles.

Yeah, so Google business profiles have just
since I've been here atSmarterWeb, I mean I feel like
every day they're more and moreimportant.
They are the.
When you make a search onGoogle contractor services near
me, whatever it may be, a lot oftimes it's the near me searches
.
We call it kind of the map pack.

(45:18):
The little map will pop up inyour search with a list of
businesses next to it and youclick on that business.
It tells you their phone number, website, about all these
details about them.
That's their Google businessprofile or if you're on Bing,
that's their Bing profile, andthose are extremely important.
You've probably noticed thatthose show up before any other

(45:39):
search results besides Googleads nowadays for the most part.
So it's extremely important tomake sure that not only is your
profile built out, because youcan set all that up and forget
about it if you want, but that'snot really gonna do, that's not
gonna work for you.
The same way that postingregular content to it will,
updating your photos regularlywill, Getting Google reviews

(46:01):
will.
Reviews are extremely importantto those profiles and Google
continues to add features tothese business profiles that you
can work within to help getyour business profile higher up
the rank for those and they'reextremely, extremely valuable
and a lot of businesses aren'treally jumping at that quite yet

(46:24):
.
So I mean we've noticed it hasso far been a lot easier not
maybe not easier, but we can seeresults a lot quicker in those
business profiles than inregular just regular or what
they call organic search results, with the links to your website
.

Tim Shoop (46:41):
And that's what your mastermind product does for your
customers, right?
So if they get a website in thefull mastermind bundle package,
you're not.
You're doing a lot for themunder that program and one of
those things you're doing ismaintaining that and driving
blogs into those profiles.
Correct, no-transcript theblogging into those profiles.

(47:06):
You guys I mean you you custombuild all those blogs for every
specific customer.
That has to be really tedious,since you're working across so
many different industries, right?

Yes, shelby.
Yeah, we can definitely speakto that.

Tim Shoop (47:21):
Chime in Shelby, come on.

It is very tedious .
Like you said, we do have a lotof different industries, so you
do kind of learn to be in allof those industries, which for
me is fun because I get to learnall of these different
businesses and how theircustomers think and what they
want to see.
So the first thing I try to doevery time I start writing a

(47:43):
blog is Kina, and I have alreadydone usually by this point some
keyword research, so we knowwhat the questions their
customers are asking, whatthey're looking for, what
keywords this company is goingfor in Google, what keywords are
working for them, and so I tryto base off of those keywords

(48:04):
and answer the questions forthose clients that have to do
with that, I guess.
So a good I guess a goodexample would be, you know, mold
inspections.
That's a fun one to write about.

Tim Shoop (48:18):
Wow, that, yeah, that's an interesting topic.

It is, but it's important and you know that's
the keywords that you might beranking for, and so we want to
put out content that answersquestions for the client, such
as you know mold inspectors nearme or questions about how to go
about that, questions about howto clean up after you have a
mold infestation.
So we really do tailor thoseblogs to the customer and to

(48:48):
their client base.
How do you?

Tim Shoop (48:50):
curate that data?
Do you leverage AI to do theresearch or do you leverage AI
to write the whole damn thing?

A lot of people use AI for the whole thing, and
why why?

Tim Shoop (49:03):
why is that?
Is that a bad thing?
That's a bad thing, right.

I mean, I wouldn't say good or bad, but I
mean, you know Google.
Google is also an algorithmbased program and it can tell
that you've used AI to writethis blog.
It's not going to give the sameway.

Tim Shoop (49:17):
And they have to D rank based on using pure AI,
because you've got to have humaninvolvement.

Yes, yeah, so it's typically not.
It doesn't actually answer thequestion to, or it's not as high
quality than if you were tohave a human write it, you know.

Tim Shoop (49:34):
So you can leverage AI to do the research, find out
the pertinent facts, but youdon't want to take it word by
word, or or even take the wholething it wrote.
You just want to take the factsout of it and rewrite it
correct.

Right.
I think if you were and I meanI'm sure all of us have played
around with AI to see itscapabilities and what it can do
but if you were to just ask AIto write you a blog, it would be
very repetitive and it woulduse a lot of words that humans
just don't use when they talk toeach other.
So, yeah, for us I think it isvery important to have that

(50:13):
human touch, because you cantell when it's been completely
written by AI.

Tim Shoop (50:18):
Yeah, and so we use AI to kind of.
We leverage AI, let me say itthat way, to kind of build out
the foundation for our Nerds onTap episodes, but we don't stick
to AI on the.
I mean, we've been all over theplace here, but it's not all
coming out of this.
I mean because that's that'sthe importance of it is it has

(50:39):
to be a human driven contentapproach, because your audience
is human.
It is not a robot.

Right, absolutely.

Tim Shoop (50:50):
Well, this is some amazing stuff, ladies.

You're just saying that because you finished
both your beers.

Tim Shoop (50:59):
Why haven't you?

I'm working on it .

Tim Shoop (51:03):
I will say Kina weighs like a hundred pounds, so
you're excuse me if it's not ahundred pounds, but yeah, she's
almost done with her second beer, so let's, let's talk about
that.
So we talked about portfoliosor, I'm sorry, profiles.

(51:24):
Yeah, I had two beers.
We've talked about profiles.
We've talked about theimportance of blogging into that
profile.
What else is involved?
Is there anything else involvedwith ongoing SEO?

Oh, there's, there's a ton.
It really doesn't.
You know, the blogging and thecontent is extremely important.
For sure to have fresh contentand not just blogging too.
It could be maybe you wantlanding pages on your website.
We see that often for, like youknow, a different landing page
for a particular geographic area, if you serve different

(51:59):
geographic areas or for aparticular product.
But there's I mean, there arelots of other ways to bring
traffic to your site.
One pop, not popular, but onepiece that's very important are
backlinks, where this one's alot harder, for this is probably
one of the hardest ones forbusinesses to implement because
it's not up to you.

(52:19):
Backlinks are links back toyour website from other websites
, so a lot of times this can befrom directories like Yelp or,
you know, even Google Maps.

Tim Shoop (52:32):
Technically, so if I sign up and I'm sorry to cut you
off, but if I sign up for,let's say, a chamber membership,
so let's talk about that thechamber is going to link to your
website.
That helps.

That does.
It does help.
And one thing to keep in mindwith backlinks, google does like
to, you know, see backlinks.
It's helpful to have links backto your site, but you want them
to be good links.
You don't want to just gobecause there are services where
you can go and pay a little bitof money for just a large
quantity of backlinks.
There's something called domainauthority, which was actually,

(53:10):
I think, created not created butmooseorg they put that together
to kind of rank domains, rankwebsites based on you know the
credibility of them essentially,and if you're, if you have a
backlink that's not from acredible website, that's really
not doing anything for youbecause Google doesn't trust
that site.

(53:30):
So why would they trust thatlink back to your website?
It can almost count against you.
So you want the right kind ofbacklinks to your website.
The chamber would be a good one, because that's typically a
very reputable website or a goodmagazine, and the better that
magazine ranks.

Tim Shoop (53:48):
if it's linking to you, it can help like.
Inc or even local, local uhtrademarks that that might be
specific to your industry wouldbe good.
Yes, yeah.

And so that's a, like I said, that's a harder one
for a lot of businesses to getbecause it involves, you know
you, you can't really doanything about it.
People are going to put theiryour link on their website.
I mean, you can go out, thereare things you can do to help
with that.
Um, you know link buildingcampaigns that you can go on and
that we do, but, um, it tendsto be a little bit harder.

Tim Shoop (54:22):
So so we talked about design, we talked about the
importance of everything on page, we talked about ongoing SEO
services.
That's your mastermind bundle.
And then we're, we're we wantto dive into the last part.
Obviously, there's more thatgoes into.
You've got ongoing marketingcampaigns that you run for your

(54:43):
customers, that maybe an AdWordscampaign that ties into a
landing page and so on and soforth.
We're going to save that partfor maybe another show, but I do
want to dive back into the datapart of it.
On your website it says you area data-driven marketing company.
Data guides you to help yourcustomers.

(55:08):
So data.
One piece of data that I knowabout on your um, um smart board
, uh, in your data analytics, ishow those campaigns, what
campaigns, are driving trafficto those, to the customer's
website.
So if you have three campaignsrunning for a customer let's say

(55:30):
an AdWords campaign or let'ssay three AdWords campaigns all
going to three different landingpages with Vogue numbers on
them, all running back to youknow, obviously running back to
generate leads to the customerand you see that one of them is
not converting but the other twoare different, what would you

(55:52):
do if I put you on the spot?
What would you do.
If you're sitting down havingyour monthly marketing meeting
with that customer and you'regoing to point out to them that
this one isn't working right,you're either going to shut it
down and you're going to putyour focus on the other two
campaigns, or you're going tocreate a new one to replace it,

(56:14):
or you're going to probablycompare that to the other two
campaigns that are running.
And I'm talking for you at thispoint.

I'm going to let you.

Tim Shoop (56:22):
I'm going to let you go ahead.

Well, I mean, you're, you're exactly right.
Um, those are essentially thethe different options that would
be before us.
We could just discount thatcampaign entirely, decide it's
not worth our time or money tocontinue, or we could create a
new one, um, which I thinktypically wouldn't necessarily
be the way to go Not always, ofcourse, but um.

(56:47):
Or we could compare thatcampaign with the two that are
working, try to figure out what,what it is about the other two
that is that's working and whatit is about that third one
that's not.
And luckily we have lots ofanalytics uh, you know insights
into that in our smart boardwhere we can compare.
You know, is it if they all havethe same budget?

(57:08):
Is it a budget issue?
Is it, you know, a landing pageissue?
Are there are people you cantrack and see with with like, if
we're talking about Google adscampaigns, we can see that
people are clicking on the adand they're getting to the
different landing pages, butmaybe it's the landing page
where they're dropping off.
The landing page is loading soslowly for whatever reason

(57:29):
people are dropping off.
So there's so much that we candive into to see.
There's so many reasons thatone can could be performing
poorly.

Tim Shoop (57:36):
Um, you know, I love that you bring up load times.

Yeah, it's extremely important.

Tim Shoop (57:42):
Extremely important and it's extremely important to
understand the platform that youbuilt the website on Um because
, like, for instance, WordPress,that's the most popular
platform.
Wordpress, I mean, they sit ona database and it takes time to
load that information.
So, putting it on a faster umserver and maybe even a

(58:04):
dedicated server, because inmost cases when you're hosting a
site, you're on a shared serverwith dozens of other websites
and obviously, when you're on ashared server, uh, if one of
those gets hacked, you know,then you're, you're, you're, uh,
your website's vulnerable.
But having that fast load time,that's one variable in the
algorithm that get the Googlesees.

Yes, Um, and if you, you know, you can run a
page speed test using Google'stool, you can.
You can Google page speed testand it can tell you so many
things that could becontributing to a slow load time
.
And I'm sure everyone you know,all of us and everyone
listening has tried to access awebsite and it just took too
long to load and you clicked off, and that can be a huge turnoff

(58:46):
for a potential buyer.

Tim Shoop (58:48):
So it's Google is going to de-rank you a little
bit in their organic listings.

Okay, Google it's not like that.

Tim Shoop (58:55):
So I had a question on here how does a small
business stay ahead in thecompetitive digital marketing
and landscape?
Now, my opinion, after sittingin on the show, hosting the show
, I should say is that theyshould all hire smarter.
Well, um, because you ladiesseem to really know what you're

(59:16):
doing.
Um, uh, I hear you.
You have an amazing boss.

Suds (59:24):
He's okay.

Tim Shoop (59:27):
Thank you for that, um, but no, what, what, what,
what can?
So hiring you if they don'tknow what to do?
Shop around, look at thedifferent.
There's a million gazillionmarketing agencies out there.

(59:47):
So the next smarter web uniqueis you limit your client count
and that way you can give whitegloves support to your customers
.
Correct, so you become.
When they hire you for awebsite.
They're not really hiring youfor a website, they're hiring
you, uh, to have an it.
Basically, you become theirmarketing department, right.

Kina Robinett (01:00:07):
Right, we meet with um, we we either meet with
or at least give the opportunityto every single one of our
clients, no matter which servicethey're on, to meet with us
monthly.
Typically it's I mean, it'swith one of us and um.
You know we go over theiranalytics, we go over how
they're if we have campaignsrunning for them, how they're
performing.

(01:00:28):
But we also we have lots ofclients who need advice with
other marketing pieces thatmaybe we don't necessarily
handle.
But you know, like, like,social media is a big one that
we don't handle in housecurrently, but that, uh, a lot
of people want advice on causeit's not an important piece and
you know we can give themdirection on that.

(01:00:48):
We are almost like theirmarketing consultant.

Tim Shoop (01:00:51):
And that's social media.
Is time heavy.

It's very extremely.

Tim Shoop (01:00:55):
And that's why we choose not to do it, because we
want to do what we really dobest and we don't want it to
pull away your time from whatreally matters to our customers.

And I do recommend that, for you know,
for any marketing service, um,if you have a, uh, an agency not
to call out anyone inparticular for short, but a lot
of places unless they're largeenough, it's extremely difficult
to do everything, especiallywhen you add social media into
the mix.
Social media is such a beast,and so I think the quality can
really suffer if you end up um.

Tim Shoop (01:01:27):
It's hard to find one agency to do it all and do it
Well everything Um.

so that's, I guess, a word of caution.

Tim Shoop (01:01:34):
but so this is the last thing that before our next
beer that I'm going to bring upis give me.
You mentioned, um, we weretalking, you were.
You were getting really excitedand passionate when you were
talking about how you helpcustomers and there's monthly
marketing meetings.
Give me a case study.

(01:01:55):
I'm going to put you on thespot.
I would love to hear a casestudy without mentioning any
customer in particular on theair.
Uh, a case study or a successstory from your portfolio.
Give me a.
Give me a rave.

Well, we do.
We have a couple and I havenoticed it does tend to be the
customers that we meet with regthat take advantage of the full,
you know.
I mean we're basically they'remarketing consultants, so the
ones that take advantage of thatdo tend to be the ones that see
the results either the quickestor the most.

Tim Shoop (01:02:31):
Um, but I know who you're talking about.
I know which one you're goingto talk about, because we're
driving a lot of traffic to them.
Right, they're getting.
Their phones are ringing.

Yes, and actually there's there's two in
particular.
We have one, um, they're, youknow, essentially a contractor
and they, um, they use us forGoogle ads.
We do SEO for them and we builttheir website and their their
website.
They had nothing when we firststarted.
They had no existing anythingon their domain.
Um, they're in a pretty highlycompetitive industry, but by uh,

(01:03:04):
crafting content that's sounique to what you know their
target audience is searching forand, you know, for their ads
campaign ad campaigns puttingthe money into uh effective
campaigns, not just putting themoney into random places,
setting it and hoping it works.
I mean, we saw it for their onthe SEO side.
We saw them climbing Googlewithin a matter of mall.

(01:03:26):
I mean, it was very quick.

Tim Shoop (01:03:27):
That's amazing.

Um, it blew my mind, you know honestly, because
they came from literallynothing.

Tim Shoop (01:03:32):
Yeah.

There was no history on that domain, so that
was it's a pretty competitiveindustry.
Very, especially in our area.
It's very competitive.

Tim Shoop (01:03:40):
You were making them pop.

Yes, yeah, the phones were ringing.

Tim Shoop (01:03:45):
So I want to hear more about your portfolio and
these amazing stories.
Um, before that, I'd like totake a beer tasting break to
refresh before we continue theconversation.
Suds.

Suds (01:04:00):
All right.
So the third beer of the nightis a tangerine wheat ale from
the lost coast brewery in Eureka, California.
It's a refreshing citrus alebrewed with the perfect balance
of wheat and crystal mallTangerine wheat delivers a
perfectly crisp finish for thosehot summer days.

Tim Shoop (01:04:16):
So the first thing I'm realizing is there's a lot
of fruity beer on today'sepisode.

Suds (01:04:21):
Well, I tried to get stuff that people that don't drink a
lot of beer.

He asks us what we might like.

Tim Shoop (01:04:28):
Are you liking?

them.
Yeah, I really like this one.
This one's my favorite.
Yeah, I think so too.
I like this one.
It's very especially when youbring it up.

Tim Shoop (01:04:37):
You know what?

Shelby Payne (01:04:39):
It smells really good too.

Tim Shoop (01:04:41):
This is like um, I don't know.
That's an interesting.

It is.

Tim Shoop (01:04:46):
It's, it's.
It's almost like you're notdrinking a beer.

Suds (01:04:50):
It does almost taste like a seltzer.
Like a seltzer.

Tim Shoop (01:04:53):
That's.
I feel like I'm drinking one ofmy wife's trulies or normal?

Suds (01:04:57):
What is the other one?

Tim Shoop (01:04:58):
Normal, Um, she, we have a whole cooler full of that
stuff and and every now andthen by the pool I break one out
without anybody looking.
Oh, that's say that on air.
Um, no, but that, that is atasty beer.
Yeah, Um, tell us again wherethat's from.

Suds (01:05:18):
This is a.
This is from the lost coastbrewery in Eureka, california.

Tim Shoop (01:05:22):
So everybody we're going to tag them in?
Uh well, let me.
Let me step back, shelby isgoing to tag this when we post
this episode, and she'll tag thebeer companies, specifically
this one as her favorite, soshe's going to probably drop a
reel about it or something.

That's right.
Keep a lookout.

Tim Shoop (01:05:43):
I'm calling her out on air to see if that happened.

No, I can't let you down.

Tim Shoop (01:05:48):
I appreciate you, um, so let's get into your projects
and let's talk about the futureof web development.
Um, I want to get into both ofthose topics to wrap up today's
show, before we drink that verydark beer that I know you guys
are staring at going.
I don't know if I want that.
I am going to enjoy that,unless it tastes like coffee.

(01:06:09):
Oh, you're not.

Suds (01:06:11):
Oh great.

Tim Shoop (01:06:12):
What is it?
Licorice.

Suds (01:06:15):
Uh, we'll get to it.
Okay, all right.

Tim Shoop (01:06:18):
Thank you, Suts.
So I'd like to shed a spotlighton some of SmarterWeb's notable
projects and collaborations.
Um, we don't necessarily wantto talk about names.
Uh, you can find all thosenames on your website, at
SmarterWebnet, under yourportfolio.
But if you would care to talkabout actually, I guess you can

(01:06:41):
say names on here, since it's onour website.
Uh, I'd like to talk about someof these, some of these
projects and what.
What was one of the morethrilling projects to work on
that really made you like justit just excited you.

Honestly all of our web design.
I bet it was?

Tim Shoop (01:07:04):
I bet it was digitalboardwalkcom.

Honestly, digitalboardwalkcom is probably
my favorite one to date.
We just launched that, Uh it'sbecause you're collaborators,
right?
Yes, I had great, greatcollaborators.

Tim Shoop (01:07:18):
Didn't one of them always go?
Is this done yet?

Suds (01:07:20):
Yeah, like every.

Tim Shoop (01:07:23):
I'm about to spit this out.
Um, no, serious in allseriousness.
So digitalboardwalkcom was alabor of love, wasn't it?

Uh, absolutely yes, and you know it definitely
took took some time, but I feellike the best things do Um, and
you know the, everything fromthe content, the design to the,
the funnel.
You know the process of.

Tim Shoop (01:07:45):
You've got two sales funnels in there.
Yes, you pushed all that.
Now I'm a little I don'tunderstand.
You pushed all the the deepinformation down into the footer
.
That's right.
It's not up on the dropdownmenus where people can easily
find it.
Why did you do that?

So we are essentially trying to push
people the direction that wewant them to go, as opposed to
having them jump around to amillion pages that may not
necessarily even answer thequestions they're looking for.
We created, we kind of we tooka very different approach.
We created pages that you know,based on who you are and what
you're looking for, hopefullyanswer all of the questions you

(01:08:26):
may have about in this kit fordigital boardwalk, the managed
IT services.
So, as opposed to presentingyou know, here's our IT support
page, here's our cloud page,here's our cyber cybersecurity
page, which you can still accessthose in the footer Um, we
instead try to push people.
You know, are you a smallbusiness?
What do you need help with?
Are you looking for?

(01:08:48):
Do you need help withcompliance?
So, instead of it's need-based,as opposed to here's what we do
, go through these pages.
It's need-based what do youneed?
And here's a page on how we canhelp you, and then that also
pushes them to.
You know, if this is who youare and this is what you're
looking for, here's something aspecific, either resource or we

(01:09:12):
have our IT maturity assessmenton the site that can help
provide you more direction ormore information based on who
you are and what you're lookingfor.

Tim Shoop (01:09:22):
So okay.
So let's talk about one more.
Um, let's, uh, let's talk aboutanother project, um, that comes
in as a runner up to digitalboardwalkcom, and what you, um,
what, what drove your passion inthis other project.

There is um, another project that, uh, you
know, we started as a web designproject with them and they are,
uh, they provide, um, uh, athome care to, you know, seniors
or, though, you know, thosedisabilities, people who just
need care at home.
And you know, like I said, westarted with the website for
them and that was a veryenjoyable project from beginning

(01:10:03):
to end, because they had a goodhandle on who they were
speaking to, who their, theiraudience was and the message
that they were trying to getacross.
They understood, you know, aswe were going through the
process, if we wanted to, youknow, present certain messaging
or certain visual elements, theyunderstood a hundred percent.
You know what we were trying toget across, um, and it was very

(01:10:27):
, um, a lot of cohesion, I guess, is maybe the word I'm looking
for from the very beginning.
And they after, shortly afterthe website was live, they ended
up signing on for our SEOservices and Google ad services
and have seen you know, I meetwith them regularly seem to have
um phenomenal results from themand, month over month, whether

(01:10:49):
it's their, you know, they lookfor both customers, for their
services, but also employees,and for both fronts.
You know, we're, we're drivingtraffic, we're bringing them the
business that they are, thatthey're looking for, and we also
, you know, I met with themrecently and provided, you know,
a whole list of other ideas forways that they can promote
their business.
So I'm very, I think thecustomers that want to meet

(01:11:13):
regularly and are are asinvolved not involved
necessarily, but are aspassionate about, you know,
their business.
I mean that that's just such agreat relationship that we end
up having with them becausewe're just so much synergy.
I guess is what I'm saying.
They're, uh, we end up having alot of synergy and great
conversations about how they canpromote their business.

Tim Shoop (01:11:34):
So, shelby, you're newer here at SmarterWeb and
coming in from the outside andsitting down.
You mentioned earlier in thisshow about the passion and the
interactions we have with ourcustomer base and how we
approach it and how we love allour customers at SmarterWeb, um,

(01:11:54):
and you have a lot ofinteractions with them as well,
correct?
Since you've been here.

Yes, absolutely, and we're working on our newer
projects that I've been able toum start with Kina, um, so it
has been nice to be able to talkwith them.
I think that drives a lot ofour passion, because we get to
know them and we get to knowtheir passions for what they do
and why they're doing it, andthat really helps us to tailor

(01:12:22):
their, their content and design.

Tim Shoop (01:12:24):
Now, behind the scenes, you guys use a multitude
of tools and technologies.
I don't want to know aboutevery one of them, because I
know you have a tool thatbasically you know you have a
tons of tools that do all kindsof specific things.
How many tools do you guys haveto manage at any given time to

(01:12:47):
not just pull off web design butSEO and creation and content?
I mean there's.
It has to be at least one ortwo dozen.

Yeah, there's a good bit Um that's.
I mean, yeah, at least a dozenand they all.
It's kind of hard to keep trackbecause you know we set them up
but they all funnel into smartboards.
So for for sure, for thecustomer, there's only one thing
that they're one portal thatthey're logging into Um.
But once we have it set up, youknow we utilize smart board on

(01:13:18):
our end too.

Tim Shoop (01:13:19):
So how in the world is can a customer, without any
upfront project fees or anymajor costs?
I know all these web designerscharge thousands of dollars all
upfront, which you know.
I've been a.
I've been an entrepreneur and asmall business owner a
multitude of differentbusinesses and projects for 30

(01:13:42):
years and I know when I'm instartup phase it's really hard
for me to stomach uh, five, six,seven, eight or even more
thousand dollars just for thewebsite piece of it.
How in the world, for $350 amonth, can you do all these
things and give them a fullmarketing department and, and

(01:14:05):
and be able to have all thiscollaboration that solves a
problem for them for only $350.
Should, shouldn't you chargemore?

Maybe it's um.
It is very interesting becauseyou know, uh, typically the the
model has worked where you paythousands upfront for a website
and then every time you want,like an update to the website or
you need to whatever you mayneed through the site, you pay
per update from there on Um, wetook it the you know the monthly

(01:14:38):
model and you know to not onlymake it easier for small
businesses to stomach but alsomake it easier to maintain on,
you know, ongoing.
If we need an update, you'realready, you're on our plan.
We provide unlimited updates toour website customers so that
as your business grows, yourwebsite grows with you.
As we need to change things,because we see things in the

(01:14:58):
data that need to be updated, wecan just update them, and so
it's a very um.

Tim Shoop (01:15:04):
You know, I guess maybe we're doing something
crazy with the numbers to beable to diswing it, but I have a
feeling at the end of this showyou've you have a special
announcement on some sort ofspecial deal that goes beyond
even that great price of $350 amonth.
But I'm gonna, I'm gonna letour, our listeners sit and

(01:15:26):
wonder, uh, as we dive into acouple more quick things before
we close out the show and beforeyou introduce that special.
So you may want to think aboutthat special between now and
then as well, because I'mputting you on the spot, but I
know you can offer themsomething to at least give you a
try, uh, um.

(01:15:48):
So, behind the scenes, tell me,uh, and and I'm gonna try to
get Shelby to talk a little moretell me about some of the
challenges and creativesolutions that you guys have
encountered in anything you dobehind the scenes and under the

(01:16:09):
hood of what you do forcustomers.

That's a great question.

Tim Shoop (01:16:15):
Collaboration maybe.
Um you, so you don't have anychallenges.
Wow, so this is the company youshould hire.

Yeah, I, I mean, I would say I know what the
challenge is.

Tim Shoop (01:16:34):
I'm pretty sure I know I think it's so customers
have to it.
Uh, at number one, designing awebsite it's a collaborative
thing.
It's like making a piece of art.
Obviously, if you're making apiece of art for yourself, you
know what you're going to create, but when you're making

(01:16:56):
something for someone else in awebsite, website is technically
a piece of art.
When it's done, you have tohave input, otherwise you're
going to design what you want todesign.
So is the challenge that I'mseeking a customer that doesn't
make themselves available Duringduring the design phases and

(01:17:19):
the discovery phases, becauseotherwise you're just guessing
Right.

Yes, that can be pretty difficult.
Either they're not availableenough or they're not available
enough I guess I don't want tosay too available but there's
conflicting input, especially ifthere's different ideas on how
things need to either look andfeel or the messaging.

(01:17:43):
People have different ideas.
That's part of what we do istrying to condense, get to the
bottom of what it is that'sactually best for the business,
best for the client and whatmeets the needs People want, the
needs of everybody involved,all of the key players.

Tim Shoop (01:18:05):
For instance, content when you're collaborating with
a customer and you're buildingit for a mold someone that does
mold remediation obviously we'renot in the mold remediation
business you've got to haveinput to create that content.
You can't just spit out contentand go look what I create.
They're going to go mold.

(01:18:27):
What is this section on cheese?
You know Absolutely I'm makinga joke here, but you get the
idea.

I will say too there's some industries in which
there's things that you can sayand you can't say.
Kina and I are not experts inevery field.

Tim Shoop (01:18:43):
It's a compliance area.

Exactly.
That's another thing that Ithink our customers being
responsive with us really helpswith, because we don't know all
of those rules.

Tim Shoop (01:18:54):
Well, so let's dive into a couple of last things
before we drink another beer.
Kina's like no more, no more.
Tell me about the future.
Do you have a crystal ball whenit comes to web development and

(01:19:14):
emerging technologies in theweb arena?
Tell me what.

We were talking about AI earlier.
Ai is definitely only going tobe a bigger and bigger part of
not just what we do, butprobably most industries.
There are so many differentways you can leverage AI to
either get a certain task donequicker or provide value.

(01:19:45):
That wouldn't be possible withjust human, without any type of
AI.
I don't know exactly the futureof how AI is going to affect
marketing in particular, but Iknow it's going to have a huge
impact.
I will say too I don't knownecessarily that we stress the

(01:20:08):
importance we talked about it,but the importance of making
sure your website is responsiveto different screen sizes, like
mobile, tablet, laptop, desktop,whatever it may be.
A lot of times we've been doingsome of our projects where we
build mobile first.

(01:20:28):
We focus on the mobile versionof the website first because
people may not ever even see thedesktop.
They don't go on their phonesso much nowadays, even in B2B,
that mobile is just so extremelyimportant.
Making sure your site functionswell on mobile is one of the

(01:20:51):
most important pieces ofbuilding a website nowadays.

Tim Shoop (01:20:54):
When I look at analytics nowadays it's like I
don't know if it's this far, butpretty close to 80, 20.
80% go into mobile first, 20 toPC, because it's in our pocket.
We had a lot of great keytakeaways from today's show,
before we get into the specialthat Kina wants to talk about.

(01:21:17):
We talked about the importanceof web design.
We talked about how SEO notonly on page, but recurring SEO,
including profiles on Googleand Bing can affect your
placement.
We talked about your portfolioand we talked about the fact

(01:21:38):
that for $350 a month, you canhire an entire team of marketing
professionals to become yourmarketing department, which
includes a website, ongoingupdates, ongoing collaboration
reports that they will discusswith you each month to decide
what the next step might be inyour business to help scale up

(01:21:59):
your business and drive revenue.
With that said, what special dowe have for our audience today?
Do you want me to help you withthat?

I could use a little help.

Tim Shoop (01:22:10):
Let's call in your boss.
Good idea, hey boss.

Suds (01:22:14):
I'm here, I'm here.

Tim Shoop (01:22:18):
I think I'm feeling a little giddy right now and I
feel like if someone haslistened to this show to this
point, they should congratulatethemselves, because I'm not only
willing to knock off 10% off oftheir first year of monthlies,

(01:22:41):
but the first month will becompletely comped.
So you're basically only payingfor 11 months out of the 12 and
you're getting those 11 monthsat 10% off.
But you have to mention nerdson tap and where can they
contact you, Kina?

I mean you can do our SmarterWeb.
net, the contact form we allhave access to.
But if you want to contact medirectly, it's just my name, so
Kina K-I-N-A dot RobinettR-O-B-I-N-E-T-T at SmarterWeb.
net, and just mention nerds ontap and we'll catch you that

(01:23:20):
amazing deal that Tim justmentioned.

Tim Shoop (01:23:23):
All right, and with that said, I would like to thank
you.
Ladies, let's toast with thelast beer suds.
Why don't you tell us whatwe're drinking?
And we're going to go ahead andcall it a day by downing this
like it's a shot.

Suds (01:23:39):
Uh, this is the white chocolate moohoo chocolate milk
stout from the Terrapin BeerCompany in Athens, georgia.
It's a dark brown to black incolor with aromas of dark
chocolate.
It has dark roasted malt flavorwith hints of caramel and
chocolate, rounded out by asweet creamy finish.
Yeah, it doesn't go with theother beers, but I saw it.

I do believe you said you had to down that one.
I know you were going to.

Tim Shoop (01:24:05):
No, I said we have to down Okay.

Why would you say that?

Tim Shoop (01:24:11):
You ready?
Are we going to down it?
Oh, ladies and gentlemen,smarterweb.
net is going to down a reallychocolatey beer that I'm not too
fond of, but we're going to goahead and cheers Shelby, cheers
Kina, cheers Down that baby.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

(01:24:32):
Nerds on Tap you can find us atthenerdsontap.
com if you want to learn moreabout our other shows.
Or go to SmarterWeb.
net, mention Nerds on Tap, getthe special.
If you fill out the form, youcan get 10% off, 11 months plus
the first month free.
And I'd like to mention ourother sponsor, digitalboardwalk.

(01:24:53):
com.
That makes the magic happen.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you so much for having us.
I'm not.

Tim Shoop (01:25:01):
What Did you guys down it?

We did.

Tim Shoop (01:25:06):
All right well you have to.

Suds (01:25:08):
Yeah, you Salute, thank you, Thanks, y'all did great.

Tim Shoop (01:25:21):
Cheers.
My fellow Nerds and Beer lovers.
Stay tuned for more Nerds onTap.
Oh, and one more thing Help usspread the nerdy love and the
love for grape roots by sharingthis podcast with your friends,
colleagues and fellow beerenthusiasts.
Let's build a community thatembraces curiosity, innovation

(01:25:46):
and the enjoyment of a cold one.

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