You Should Have A Functional and Updated Website To Leverage SEO – 172

Jesse Dolan: Just like a house or any other asset that we have that gets outdated and needs repairs, your website needs that continual check-in maintenance too. Things can break and things will break, so you can't keep your head buried in the sand thinking that your website is good. You just redid it a while ago. Odds are some things have changed. There's just too many variables. Welcome back to Local SEO Tactics where we bring you tips and tricks to get found online. I'm your host, Jesse Dolan. You're with Bob Brennan, Sue Ginsburg.

Sue Ginsburg: Hi.

Jesse Dolan: Ready to tackle the tough questions today. Sue, what are we talking about?

Sue Ginsburg: Yeah. Okay.

Jesse Dolan: They're hard getting questions, right? Bob like, "Let's tackle the tough ones here." What do you got, Sue?

Sue Ginsburg: You can do it. Okay, question. This question comes from a trusted colleague and partner of Intrycks. It's a great, great, great question. Why do you need to have a website that is functioning and updated in order to leverage the impact of good SEO? Good question. Quarter of the day is change is inevitable, growth is optional, and that is a quote from John Maxwell, an American author, speaker, and coach who has written many books primarily focusing on leadership. So yes, this question comes to us from a colleague. She asked this a while ago, and I have since had many conversations with business owners about this exact topic as not everybody understands the importance of updating their website. I think that you say, Jesse, that if a website's more than two years old, it's probably considered old in terms of not just website technology, but content, copy, everything that's on there.

And I would assert this goes way beyond SEO. When I used to do brand audits for businesses, checking for their brand consistency online, what I found was that 99% of business owners hadn't looked at their website and they would say, "We haven't offered that in years. We stopped doing that a long time ago. Why is that still up there?" And other such sentiments. "I didn't know that. I haven't looked at the website in years." So I would ask our listeners and our business owner audience, "When's the last time that you looked at your website and do you know what's on there and what might be missing that you didn't use to do and you're doing now or offering now?" Another very successful client of ours who owns several successful businesses recently shared that looking at one of his business's website made him sick.

It made him sick, so he just didn't look at it. Can anyone relate to that? I know when I first started with Intrycks, I wasn't happy with the website, didn't think that it reflected our expertise and our offerings. And when we launched the new website maybe about a year ago now, I am so proud of that website because it says what we do, says who we are. It's everything good, good UX, good demonstration of our services. And I couldn't be happier when people say, "I went to your website." I know how it feels when you don't want people going to your website. Hopefully, none of you out there are in that situation, but probably many are. For some reason, many business owners have a mental block about redoing their website and instead they choose to keep it poorly designed, misfunctioning, misrepresenting their business and turning away customers and leads.

It doesn't have to be that way. Absolutely doesn't have to be that way. Not to get much off the question for today, but in case you don't already know it, in addition to our SEO expertise in getting you more leads in business online, perhaps our lesser known expertise is in website design build. We can crush it in that area, have a very talented team and can make it so easy for you that you can soon and easily have a website that you can be proud for people to go up, go to and see. So with that, can you tell us both of you too as experts, the importance of keeping your website updated and functioning for SEO purposes, for business purposes, and what you need to realize in order to get at that tipping point and redo your website so that it works better on all fronts?

Jesse Dolan: Sue, as you were talking, I was going to put you on the spot and ask you maybe a couple quick inferences where this matters and whatever, but just through your kind of second part of your story there and stuff, I think you had some great examples and some relevancy for people to why this is important, not so much on the SEO side, but from that first impressions and things like that from the human being side, excuse me, which is something I'm going to elaborate on here. So let's start with SEO and I think you're bringing up something. We're talking web design within that conversation. We're also talking SEO and I think a lot of people will miss the opportunity thinking that those are completely separate. If you have a website for your business and you only see it as an online brochure or something that you push people towards, you're completely missing the boat.

Bob, whatever, 20 some years ago, we pivoted to really pushing everything towards SEO, right? And getting found in Google versus outbound, calling everything else, and then providing the website as a second piece of information here, read this or open this or whatever. And then go to the website to learn more. When the best marketing is, when people find your website, see what you do and then contact you. And if you understand you're going to accomplish both of those things, make it look like a good brochure, but then also make it findable within Google, which is what SEO does. Then you hit the apex of both of them together in disjoining those, I think, is a service for most business owners and managers out there. So let's start with that in mind. Talk to you about SEO and why does it matter to have a good functional website, good updated website for SEO.

If Google doesn't trust your website, generally speaking, it's not going to rank it, right? Your effort's going to be in vain. So if you're investing into SEO, but your website is not solid first, you don't have good foundation, you're throwing good money after bad. For us, if people engage with us and hire us as an agency in a firm to execute the SEO for you, that is our very first thing that we do. We won't change any keywords or your website at all until we really look at it from a foundational standpoint. Is it running good, is it operational? Is there anything broken? Things like that. And just like a house or any other asset that we have that gets outdated and needs repairs, your website needs that continual check-in maintenance too, even after we go through it with a fine tooth comb and fix everything, we're still checking every quarter for these things because websites have so many moving parts.

There's a host, there's just a lot of different layers, plugins, people modifying the website. Things can break and things will break. So you can't keep your head buried in the sand thinking that your website is good, you just redid it a while ago and whatnot. Odds are some things have changed. There's just too many variables with keeping that web set up and running. If something is broken and Google cannot crawl your website as in visit it and then kind virtually go through your links and discover pages, if it can't crawl and access your website, Google or any other bot, you're not going to have your content findable in Google. If they can't read it like a human being couldn't read it, then they don't know what it is. And as such, they're not able to serve it up in results. And if your website was good at one point but is not anymore, that can happen.

It can encounter an error and then they're not going to show your website anymore. And I want everybody to understand, like I said, on us personally for our agency on the front side, we do an SEO audit, a technical audit to begin with, but in general, SEO, if it's good, legitimate SEO, not just talking about some keywords or doing a few tricks, this should be an underlying part of what's continually happening. Making sure your website is operational, not broken. Here's some of the ways I'm talking here. So Sue, I kind of took what you said as two different parts. One is the function of it and then the other part's kind of keeping it updated. And I've got a few points here I want to talk about one from the standpoint of Google, like you just said, Google needs to crawl your website. That's how it finds content from what you have on there right now.

It's also how they discover new content that you might publish whatever next day, next week, next month, next year. Inevitably, we're going to have something new we want to put on the website, some product, some service, some event, change of pricing, new team member, whatever it is. If you want Google to find that your website has to be operational, Google has to be able to read, parse that information out, click through pages, things like that. So it has to remain functional and updated just from that standpoint. Google will regularly crawl your website to discover that new content. And also just to check on your website. And let's just say I had a page, maybe even a high ranking page that Google was aware of, that I've had on my site for years, if my site encounters a problem and Google identifies a problem with that page or something that's impacting getting to that page, it can throw an error and it can pull that page out of its index.

So even something that was working good before, if it encounters a problem, doesn't mean it's just going to exist in Google for wherever. So you want to make sure your pages are still functioning. Nothing is breaking, not only to get you new content in there, but also to make sure your existing content stays in. And if you think about all this, Google wants to provide good results to people at its core. That's what it does. We've talked about this many times on the show. They are the number one spot we all go to find things and we do that because we trust it and it gives us good results. Inherently, Google wants to make sure they're not providing outdated, non-authoritative or broken websites up as a result, which is why they care. Well, that's why they care that your website works, that it functions and that it's updated in these ways so they can provide good results.

So we all, as consumers keep going back to Google, they can then charge everybody for ad dollars, et cetera, et cetera. So generally speaking, you want your website to be not broken, to put a very non-technical term on there. But another thing is speed. This is actually one of very few things Google has publicly said is a ranking factor. Sue, you and I do a webinar for a local Minnesota nonprofit here that helps businesses start up. This is one of the core things we always talk about is Google's only ever come out with a few things that it says our ranking factors. As SEOs and digital marketers, we think we have scores or hundreds of things that are important. Google's only ever identified a handful publicly. One of them is speed and part of your website and webpage is loading fast is this function, is making sure plugins are updated, making sure all the code is talking correctly, making sure you have images the right side, things like that.

So whereas it may display properly, if you look at your website and say, "That's fine, it looks good." There may be something that's making it load slow or perform slowly, and Google is not going to like that. They are not going to show you in their search results. If they are right now, odds are as other results come in and other people do SEO and if they're faster just on that signal alone, you're going to lose your momentum, things like that. So speed from a functional standpoint is extremely important. So is security.

Google wants to see secure websites, A, your website itself, but then B, that you're not linking out to non-secure content on other websites as well. A lot of scams happen that way. A lot of phishing attacks, phishing with a PH, malware injections, things like that. So having a secure website is also something that you need to have. And last but not least in this territory is mobile friendly, mobile responsive, things like that, which is maybe a little bit old news for people nowadays, but still we run into websites every month where we're doing audits or evaluations, things like that where they're still not mobile responsive.

Most people, globally speaking within Google's terms here, most people search the web on mobile. And so Google wants to see mobile websites. That's also why they want fast websites as because of mobile. So if you're not constantly making sure your website is secure, your website is fast, your website looks good on mobile, paying attention to the errors and the troubles that Google's have in crawling through your website, keeping it just updated from that function standpoint, then any effort that you're putting into it for SEO and to enhance your website, again, is probably throwing good money after bad because these are the core things you need to make sure you're taken care of before you make it look pretty.

Sue Ginsburg: Sorry, Jesse didn't Google a few years ago in recent years, go so far as to say if it wasn't a secure website and then if it wasn't mobile at a different time that they weren't even going to show it in searches, especially the secure website part?

Jesse Dolan: I would always put a big asterisk on something that's that absolute. You're right in what you're saying, but I forget the topic, but a number of episodes ago, Bob, you had talked about where if you're in a market for a certain niche, maybe you're the only game in town or in that area, it's a smaller market. So kind of in that same vein, Sue, I would say these things matter, but again, if you're in that spot where there ain't nobody else. You could have a website from 1999 and you're going to be number one still. So we're definitely speaking here towards competitive niches, competitive markets, things like that. And these things definitely matter and effectively, yeah, you're not going to get shown. But no, it's not a black and white deal where Google will say, we're not going to even index you if you're not mobile responsive. No, I wouldn't go that far, but it might as well be, just to be honest.

Sue Ginsburg: So on the secure side, I think we've all gone to a website at some point where it isn't secure and then it pops up. "You are about to enter a non-secure website. Are you sure you want to go forward?" Who wants that message scaring people away?

Jesse Dolan: Well, and that gets me to the second part here, still in the vein of functionality here. Everything I was talking about before, we were saying that's all Google in bots, to your point, the human beings though. So it's important to serve Google in these regards because that's how we get our content into Google to then be found. But yeah, now as a human being, if you visit a site and are encountering any of these things, slow, not secure, things are broken. I mean, come on, our attention span is like zilch nowadays. You're bouncing out of there and you're onto the next website. So even if you were ranking decent, that didn't matter. The consumer, the end user didn't hang around, you didn't convert that person. So it didn't matter if you're ranking number one and given enough time and enough actions by users bouncing out of your website, Google will see that and they'll drop your rankings just off that user behavior too.

So kind of a double edged sword on the user side. And inversely, if you're doing things, those things are now positive to you. People are staying on your site, they're engaging with your site and Google sees those too. So yeah, this is not all just about Google, we start there because we got to get in Google to be found in Google, but then after that the human being response takes over and we want to see the same things Google does because, like I let off, Google wants to provide the best results to humans, right? There's definitely a full circle deal there.

So that's all with the function of your website. Your question is kind of two part. Do you need to have a functioning and updated website, right? So now the updated part. Why does that matter for Google? More and more it's looking for helpful content. There was actually a "helpful content update." The industry has labeled it here and Google as well in recent weeks. And the spirit of that is that Google is trying to make sure when people search for something, if the intent of that search is some kind of help advice solution, Google wants to make sure that type of content to the helpful content is what's shown.

And so just off of understanding what Google's wanting, having updated information on your website in that space right there. If you're presenting maybe a how to guide on something, but you really didn't provide a lot of how to, you're not going to rank well. Google wants more how to, more assistance, more help with people. Authority also matters a lot for Google. And if you think about this for keeping your website updated, how authoritative on a topic can you be, if you let's say post an opinion or a article one time years ago and never revisit it? That will wane in its authority. The information maybe come outdated, the opinion may change, Maybe there's new technology, who knows what. I think everybody understands what I mean by that. So you have to continually update your information just to be relevant and be authoritative on that topic.

If nothing else, for new things that will emerge. And also freshness is a factor. New content, Google has tools like when you do a search, you can check for content that's new in the last 24 hours, last seven days last month. Google has tools that show us it can parse out how fresh content is. And if Google possesses tools like that, then it's aware of how fresh your content is and it only has those things to exist if in certain contexts that matters, right? And if that matters in certain contexts, then it matters wherever that context falls on our businesses that we're working on our websites for. So whether this is something that's seasonal, if you have Black Friday, 2021, Black Friday, 2022, '23, whatever.

If it's just a page, a new website that's Black Friday sale, how is Google going to look at that compared to somebody that has Black Friday 2023? Do they think having the 2023 on there is more relevant, it's updated, things like that. I would argue yes, of course. Google's looking to match our searcher intent with what it's finding online. So whatever it thinks, freshness, date, the year, in my example there, matter, it's going to look to websites for that kind of stuff too. So you got to try to parse that out for yourself. This doesn't mean you need to go update webpages every week just to have new, fresh, the latest, greatest content. That is not at all the case because you can overdo it. When Google crawls your website like I talked to earlier, they discover a page and they read the page and they parse out the content and then they decide where you're ranked based off that in simplistic terms.

So if you go and change that next week and then the week after, then the week after that, Google's never really understanding what you do. It's kind of a moving target. So you're not wanting to update your content for the sake of being fresh and being updated and things like that. Just understand the content you're putting out there. You have to understand maybe how often does this change? When will this be out of date? When should I update it? And I revisit those things. If you want to test this out, see if it matters to you. Do some searches for whatever it is you're trying to rank for and look, is the content on there, does it seem to be date driven? Does it seem to be super out of date? Again, like we always say, Google hides a lot of answers in plain site for us. A lot of the tips and tricks we share on here and other SEOs, what we'll talk about are important.

But not everything always applies to all of us as business owners and marketing managers. So in general, do you want fresh content, updated content, unique content, authoritative content on your website? Yeah, all of that matters. Have it functional, have it be updated and accurate, but you only want to do that when and where you need to do that. That can become a little tricky, obviously. Plug for us, that's what we do as an agency, we navigate those waters and help determine that kind of stuff. But out there for everybody listening, running your own business, running your own websites, again, check Google, see what you're up against, how does your stuff stack up. Oftentimes you see dates next to results on SES for when was it published or when was the last updated and just pay attention. And if you're languishing but everybody else is fresh content, well guess what? Let's update some content.

Let's see here. Last but not least, I just want to reemphasize the things you mentioned earlier, Sue, which is the look in the feel of trust. A lot of times we talk on this show about I guess manipulating Google. How do we get found in Google? How do we do SEO to getting Google? If we try to remember that Google's always trying to serve human beings in the search results, what's good for the goose is good for the gander there, outside of technical keywords and things like that. More from a functional website, updated website, things like that. If human beings are going to like it, if they can find the information. But we always talk about these things like, "I'm in the right place." When I hit a website, I should say a web page, it's speaking to me in the words and the pictures, I'm in the right spot.

This feels good that that kind of stuff needs to be happening on your webpage. If there's errors, if there's things broken, if it doesn't look right, all these things as a human being that we could easily pick up on ... I went through a bunch of bullet points here that are pretty technical. This stuff has to pass our eye test and our gut check as a human being visiting it, right? So your feel about our website, previous version about business owners who get sick when they visit their websites, if that's the feeling you're inherently getting by visiting your website, something in there is broken or outdated or these bullet points we're talking, you're probably applying it in some fashion. You need some SEO help, some design help and get that foundation corrected first before you start getting SEO "done to it." So hopefully that helps kind of some rambling stuff, a lot of points there. But for me this is a pretty serious topic that I think a lot of people overlook or don't give it the in depth thought that they need.

So hey everyone, just want a quick interrupt on the show here to talk about Bright Local. If you haven't checked it out yet, go on out to LocalSEOTactics.com/BrightLocal or you can go to our resources page, scroll through that which has a bunch of different resources that we recommend and use ourselves and look for the mentions about Bright Local. There's a lot of things Bright Local does. We use it in-house, it's one of our favorite tools. We mainly use it for their rank tracking for your website. You can kind of monitor your keyword progress, tracking the ranks, fluctuations, things like that over time for specific keywords that you enter in. We also love their local search grid tool for your Google My Business or Google Business Profile listing.

And what that's going to do is show you over your metro area, whatever you select for the size of the grid with seven by seven points, nine by nine, basically you define a certain area and it's going to tell you if you were standing on those spots, how does your GMB rank for the specified keywords? So that's great as well. We also use it for citation building, citation management for all your properties and mentions out there. Would it be Yelp, Facebook, local city pages, BBB, things like that. It's a great tool to help build and manage your citations to make sure your name, address, phone number is consistent and all those other things to really get your digital footprint identified by Google. You also have reputation management where you can aggregate all the reviews that you're getting across all these different portals, see how many reviews you're getting, what your score is, things like that.

And also other tools. Check it out. They've got a free 14 day trial. If you go through LocalSEOTactics.com/BrightLocal or again go to the link off of our resources page, you're going to be able to take advantage of that 14 day trial. It is an affiliate link. We'll get a few bucks if you do that, doesn't increase the price for you at all. Just kind of makes the tide rise for everybody. So if you're interested in any of those applications, like I said, they've got a whole suite of tools that's going to help you out, whether you're an agency or if you're doing SEO for yourself. I should mention, if you are an agency or trying to start an agency, they also have some great white label options. So you can leverage their tools and their products for your clients to showcase the analytics, the data and give a real professional spin on your reporting, which is something we use as well. So check it out, LocalSEOTactics.com/BrightLocal and take advantage of their 14 day trial.

Sue Ginsburg: I think one point that you made, and I just want to hit a little harder on, I think we've all been to a website where it still may have up an announcement of event that was a year ago or their latest blog post is four years ago. And at least for me and maybe I have slightly jaded mind from being in this industry, it makes me wonder what kind of business are you, are you that outdated in your practices? Are you that outdated in your processes? This is what you're showing the world and it's old, it has old dates on it. It doesn't make me want to stay on the site. It doesn't leave me with a very good feeling about the company or representation of the company. I don't think it's very good business practice from a visitor experience.

Jesse Dolan: Doesn't help. If nothing, it doesn't help. It doesn't hurt potentially or yes, worst case. But yeah, it definitely doesn't help. And that's everything we're trying to do is how do we just help. All these things stack up for little bits of help that bumps your rankings and everything else.

Sue Ginsburg: Bob, you have some tidbits of wisdom to add?

Bob Brennan: Yeah. I mean, if you were to go look at my garage right now, it's a mess. And just like all this stuff, I procrastinate or it kind of is psychologically driving me nuts. And there's two times that my garage isn't a mess. That's in about two or three weeks. Here in Minnesota, we got to take everything outside, bring it in, store it, bring out the Christmas stuff, put it outside, you know what I mean? There's a transition there and then my garage gets cleaned up because I'm kind of forced to do that, right? And then in the spring, I have to do the reverse where I've got to bring in ... It's usually right around Cinco de Mayo that I bring in the Christmas lights. Because you can get Cinco de Mayo out of those Christmas lights if you play it just right. So it's about that time-

Jesse Dolan: That's May 5th, right? There's still snow on the ground so you're good.

Bob Brennan: Mow the lawn a couple times but you're holding out for Cinco de Mayo. So you make that transition and the garage gets cleaned back up again, kind of ready for summer for the two seasons. Now, if I'm on the hoarder show or whatever it is where the garage is a mess, then I got a deeper psychological stuff that I got to kind of work through. So the point is, with your website, it's obviously hugely important, but really the deeper question you have to ask is your customers. So I mean, there's the SEO dynamic, there's the mechanical side of it. If you look at it like a car that spark plug's got to be right and every timing's got to be right, everything's got to be tuned and stuff and that's really what Jesse and his team does in addition to looking at things like, "Okay, I got to wax my car, I got to wash my car, I got to polish it, I got to vacuum it, I got to do all these things."

Nobody really wants to do it. Now is that important for a realtor? Is that important for somebody that makes it a living? You know what I mean? Yes. Those things are important. Is it important for a construction worker? Well, they just need the engine working. They don't really care about the inside so much or whatever the case is. So I guess what I'm trying to get at is who you're trying to impress, who you trying to woo. And then you can go out and ask those people and just don't ask your mother. Because she's going to say, "Yeah, your site's great." Talk to people to get feedback. Am I a good friend? I'd like to think I am. But really the people that ask are my friends, all two of them. Am I a good lover? Same thing I think I am, the person I ask is my wife.

Those are kind of the things to look at in terms of your website and again how important it is to you. The misnomer I would tell you is, "Hey, things are going great. We don't need any more business. Boy, you're in a really bad place because the moment you say that unless you're in the mortuary business, you're in trouble. Because basically I guarantee you, there's a day just around the corner where you're going to regret saying that. You can always raise your prices. So you cannot control how many people come through your door, but you can raise your prices if there are too many people coming through your door. So that's simple. What is it the-

Jesse Dolan: I'd much rather ... Go ahead. Sorry.

Bob Brennan: Yeah, what was it? The cronut or whatever that was really big in New York or whatever. At some point in time people were lined up around the block and the guy was charging like an enormous amount. It's a fancy donut. They were charging 10, $12 for this thing and he just kept raising the prices. I don't know if that makes sense, but yes, the website, somebody that says ... Obviously, I'm biased, I'm in the business. But it is common sense. And then as far as content and legitimizing, like Jesse was saying, the best analogy I can use is sports.

Look, the football game is on the radio, it's on TV, it's on multiple channels, on TV, it's probably surely on the internet and then it's in the paper and any other form of communication we can think of. So they're effectively out there. It's the same thing today for business. You need to be on the internet in terms of a website, you need to be on YouTube, possibly you need to have a podcast in some cases. So anything and everything you can to legitimize, Google sees that and says they are the authority.

That's the new game and you better get in that game if you really want to move ahead. It's not fun, it's not easy. Lord knows we all got better things to do. But you've got to get it out there. You've got to wear the right shirt, you've got to brush your hair, you got to brush your teeth if you want to date. If you don't want to date, you want to be a hermit worry about it. But you know what I mean? You got to do those things. And if you don't know what to do in that area, then get a coach in whatever capacity. Does that make sense?

Jesse Dolan: Well, all your deals there revolve back to or have a tinge of, again, understanding your competition effectively, right? Or what you're presenting or how it's looking from the outside looking in and yeah, you got to solicit that feedback. Definitely, like I said, not from your mom or your close friends where it's all rose colored glasses. And do it yourself too. Again, look at the competitors, you don't have to be the number one in the nation while you're coming off. Just who are you competing against and what's your space that and man, did you hit it right on the head for so somebody doesn't need more business.

Well, you're going to eventually, and to turn that faucet on is so much harder than to filter out the excess that's coming in. Like you said, you can raise your prices and people will turn away. Maybe you find a trusted partner, you can push overflow too, maybe you actually expand your business, which is hard. I say that jokingly, but nowadays it is hard with labor. I understand that, but man, it's hard to turn on that marketing machine when you suddenly need it. Much healthier business position to have a steady flow of new business coming in more than you can handle. But find a gracious way to get rid of the excess versus, "Crap you guys, we're not going to make it at the end of the quarter. Our projections are off, we better do some SEO. We better do some marketing, we better do something." Yeah, good luck at that point.

Bob Brennan: Yeah, six months later might get lucky in Harvey, North Dakota population 1200, you'll be able to knock it out of the park. But you're in a major market, it's a minimum three months, usually six months to really get it to a point. And Sue, I think it's okay to be proud about your website, but we're all delusional if we think the Intrycks website is okay. We need to be working on it right now for the next generation, which is in a couple months. Because we need to be listening to that feedback from our customers. Like, "Hey, I'm trying to find this." And when we hear those same questions, that same feedback from our friend or our lover that says, "Hey, you're not doing this right." We need to listen and then make those changes. And that's Business 101. If we can get good at that, we can all grow in our respective businesses.

Jesse Dolan: Like I said, on the front side, that's part of the being updated, fresh, paying attention. You can't throw it up there, like you said Sue, and just leave it for years or whatever. It has to be something that's continually happening. And quite frankly, if you're not updating your website, for us, everything should funnel back to your website. So if we're like, "I haven't touched my website in a few years," it's like, "Well, you must not have done any marketing then because you surely would be wanting to push people back to your website or tie it in or have the same pricing or promo up there."

So yeah, definitely red flag in those situations. So I think for everybody, just to kind of wrap it up, check out your site, check out your competitors, get feedback from people. At the end of the day, you want to build a website that looks good, fresh, updated content that's relevant to the people that are visiting and just keep checking, making sure that you are doing that and don't sleep on it. And your website, Bob and Sue have said many times on this show, it should be your number one salesperson. And if it's not-

Bob Brennan: And just use leading questions, like how would you improve it? Don't ask, "Is it okay? Is it nice?" You say, "How would you improve it?"

Sue Ginsburg: Great point.

Bob Brennan: Because you've asked, you've opened up that door, let them tell you.

Sue Ginsburg: Bob, you-

Jesse Dolan: And be in the mindset too, not seeing if there's a problem, but more of what needs improvement. Something does.

Bob Brennan: By default.

Jesse Dolan: A default, something needs improvement. Yeah, absolutely. Good point.

Sue Ginsburg: Bob, you mentioned, you had so many good analogies and it made me think of one, some of us may only clean, get our car washed inside and out when we know somebody else is going to be in it, right? Well, with your website, hopefully, people are always going to be visiting it and always coming on. You don't always know when it is, when it will be.

Jesse Dolan: Maybe not know people are turning away from patronizing you because they get turned off by your website because you're so busy you don't need new clients. Well, what if you get there a little bit of time and money at your website and suddenly you did get more people knocking on your door. I think that's true for more people than they might realize if they had the mindset. So good topic.

Bob Brennan: Yeah, what was it, Jesse? 10 years ago or whenever it was when we got a call from the Secret Service to come out and fix Obama's printer because he was in town? It wasn't Obama's printer, but you know what I mean? That they were like, "We need you to come out and fix our laser printer," or whatever. And it's like you never know who's going to be looking at your-

Sue Ginsburg: Wait, was that a real call or was that somebody doing April Fool's on you?

Bob Brennan: No, we actually did. We did a repair. It was weird. And we did a repair for the ministry of wild. And it's kind of fun where because they're not going to know who you are from Adam. And then once they find you obviously on the internet, that's when things begin.

Sue Ginsburg: Wow.

Jesse Dolan: And some people have great stories about their business encounters. When you talk about a printer that I fixed at a place somewhere that tells you how sexy this stuff gets for everybody out there. We try to impress our wives with the printer copy repair business. Those are the things we drop right there.

Bob Brennan: We're still working on the lover dimension there. So trust me, they don't.

Sue Ginsburg: Bob, we're on a TMI. We're on a need to know basis here.

Bob Brennan: Yeah, that's true. That's a mental picture people have to get out of their head.

Sue Ginsburg: Well, I think with websites, something to remember and to let all of our listeners know is it doesn't have to be treacherous if that's what you're picturing it in your mind doesn't have to be that way. We can make it very easy for you to have a website that you like, that you're proud of, that you're excited about and that communicates who you are to your prospects. I think most people think, "I just don't want to do this. It's whatever." And we make it easy for you and painless and you'll end up with something that we could be really proud of.

Jesse Dolan: So like I said at the front side, in that same fashion, this is SEO, all this is SEO, if you're doing SEO the right way, because you need all this to be found and stay at the top of Google for any keyword. So good stuff.

Sue Ginsburg: I love it.

Bob Brennan: Sorry, just got distracted here with text because once I mention the lover word, my phone just lit up.

Jesse Dolan: Of course. Good thing it isn't live streamed. Otherwise, watch out.

Sue Ginsburg: Bob, I think it's ... Is it in a Pink song? She says, "If I were you, I'd want to be me too." Sorry.

Bob Brennan: There you go.

Sue Ginsburg: You could add that to your conversations now. Okay. If you remember one thing and one thing only, remember this. An outdated website and/or one that isn't functional or functioning well is holding back a good sales person from doing their job. In order to have your website attract and engage leads and customers at a minimum needs to be updated and functioning well, then you can leave the rest to SEO and us and you'll get more visibility, more leads, and more customers from it. So quote of the day, and its relevance to us here, change is inevitable, growth is optional. Thank you, John Maxwell. If you want to turn change into growth, make sure your website is updated and functioning well, has good SEO and that will get you more leads and customers.

Jesse Dolan: Nailed it. All right, everybody. Hopefully, there's some good stuff in here for you. We went through, gosh, a lot of human stuff, user experience, some technical Google stuff. You got to rewind this, play it back. A lot of bullet points there, but some good stuff. If this causes you to have any additional questions, something we should expand on or some other tangent, let us know. Go out to LocalSEOTactics.com. Scroll to the bottom, click the link to submit a question. You can send it in, in a form, you can call it in with a voicemail. Either way, we'd love to hear from you, know what's on your mind, what kind of questions we can answer, what kind of problems you're having, because if you're thinking it, somebody else is, and we're all here to help each other in this community, give us a shout, LocalSEOTactics.com. Bob, thanks for jumping on. Likewise for you, Sue. Everybody else, catch you on the next one.