Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello, I'm Jeremy Rivera, your unscripted podcast host. I'm here with Darcy Sullivan. Why don't you give yourself an introduction where you're working right now and what's really captured your interest recently?
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Sure.
Well, thanks for having me. I'm Darci Sullivan, as you mentioned, from Propel Marketing and Design.
We specialize in local SEO, which is obviously what we're going to be chatting about.
Our main target audience, we've kind of started to niche down recently.
So we work with a lot of chirop, acupuncturists, physical therapists, really helping them hone in on local SEO and overall SEO.
And I started the company. Oh gosh, I always hate to try to do the math. Maybe like 11 or 12 years ago because of my love of SEO, I've been doing it. I was doing it in corporate before I started this company, and I love it. And there's always going to be a need for it.
So that's what I do and why I'm doing here.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: That's amazing.
That's. I haven't yet talked to somebody who's doing local for that particular niche. I am curious because I have worked with chiropractors in the past. I did some consulting for Dr. Axe, who got his site pretty big before the medic update, and have cross consulted with a couple people who have worked with a few chiropractors.
But I'm curious because in my experience, physical therapists who you also mentioned that you work with sometimes are kind of anti chiropractor. Have you come across that or is that just something that I've seen?
[00:01:45] Speaker B: I think that's just something you've seen. No.
Most chiropractors that we work with, either they also offer physical therapy or they work with other physical therapists or they do something similar. I mean, everybody of course, has their own business, has their own style, has their own offerings.
But I think it's one of our goals, which maybe is something you recognize, is that we work with them to make sure they're using the right keywords and associating with their target audience the right way. Like I like to say, nobody's going to Google and saying, ah, my appendage hurts. But when you start to talk to some of these doctors, they're like, oh, well, we work with a lot of appendages. And I'm like, okay, wow, that's great. But let's use the words that your audience is using.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: That's true.
So when it comes to this particular niche, was that niching down choice Just a function of, hey, we've gained experience with X number of clients doing it this way and so it just became easier. Or is there a backstory there like you were from a semi medical background or did you have a, a really good chiropractor experience once and they crack your spine and just I love them, I'm going to get them to the top.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: No, we started picking up a couple clients that were in that field.
It was more expanded. It still, you know, is.
But we just realized this is a great field. We love the personalities. Sometimes you just find personalities that you jive with better than others. And once you start like getting in it and getting to know their terminology while also understanding what people are searching for, it makes for a complimented resource. And in the same way, I think it's kind of nice that we're not people or our company isn't a company that was like, oh well, we were chiropractors and now we turned marketing. We're more of the, we're your ideal audience and now we're trying to help you market to more of your ideal audience.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: Got it.
So when it comes to cross content strategy for this particular niche, how are you approaching that structurally? Is it.
I would imagine there isn't. There aren't very many mobile chiropractors trying to go around and do chiropractic without a brick and mortar location.
So how does that, how's that approach bent for you?
[00:04:24] Speaker B: So actually you'd be surprised. We do work with some mobile companies.
Obviously that's a different strategy completely. But for the ones that do have brick and mortar, we obviously start with what are the actual services that you offer.
Are you actually including that proper content on your website? What does your Google Business Profile listing look like? We do tons of Google Business Profile listing audits, which we all know how important those are for local businesses.
That's where we start and then we build from there.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: Where's your view on creating sections of content versus publishing blog posts? Is there anything shifting in your practice or what you've seen in competitors in terms of successful content additions?
[00:05:18] Speaker B: So I think first you have a couple different categories. At least with the audience that we work with, it's either they went to one of those one stop shops that like just puts together content and all they do is sub out the name and the location and put it together for everybody else.
And they come to us and they're like, oh, we've seen like things that were working years ago aren't working anymore and we have to come and Say you need a unique approach that actually matches your business offering and the services that you offer versus this copy paste stuff.
So we've got that audience, we've got the audience of people that just never did SEO or they had a designer put together a website for them and we're like, well, you need to actually have specific pages directed towards the services you offer, not just a page that says you do chiropractic care.
So even though that sounds so basic, we have to start with that basic. From there then we talk about, you know, including conditions in your conditions pages and then from there moving into blog post as supplemental content to promote the other core pages on your website.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: That makes sense.
So to like round the next corner topically.
What's happening right now in your view as far as local SEO and citations, local SEO and local link building?
What are some of the challenges or successes or level of requirement there?
Do you need more links and more citations? What's moving the needle?
[00:07:00] Speaker B: So it's never a one and done situation, it's the marker's always moving and you've got different audiences. Are they in nowheresville, some city where there's absolutely little competition? Or are they in downtown San Francisco? Like, you know, so you've got to take that into account.
We like to try to make sure that when they're focusing on link building, that they're focusing on link building in a way that helps them locally and through partnerships, through sponsorship activities, through gathering other people's audiences that actually combine with theirs. And it might sound so simple, but like let's say there's a chiropractor who deals with a lot of running injuries. Well them partnering with a local running group and doing sponsorships and getting a partnership that way. Although it's not the same as maybe some other link equity that you would get from some bigger websites. If you're actually driving links to your website that end up in people booking appointments with you, it's a quicker win.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: So it's more of on the ground looking for referral opportunities, looking for co marketing opportunities as much it is. And in that ensuring that somewhere in there we get a link, right?
[00:08:33] Speaker B: Well, and you did also mention citations and obviously your Google business profile listing all of your online listings matter.
What also matters is we see sometimes that in the example kind of that you gave earlier about like, well what about a physical therapist versus a chiropractor, sometimes people will open up their office and maybe rent out a room in their office.
And then that company is also trying to use the same Address, which can interfere, causing friction on your Google Business Profile listings.
So there's a lot of like, little things also. Like, how do you go about collecting your reviews for Google to make sure that you're not getting in trouble?
So there's, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of little things that go into local SEO. So it's not just like, go out there and get some links. It's make sure you're, you're doing things the right way. It's not just go out there and get some reviews because you have to be doing it the right way.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: What's one of the more disastrous things that you've seen in the last six months?
Like a bad implementation or just a really bad idea that needed to be cleaned up?
[00:09:48] Speaker B: Well, we've seen Google Business Profile listings get in trouble because they're changing their name to not match their actual business name.
We've seen that happen quite a few times. And we have to say, no, you have to do things the right way.
We've seen people go in and suggest Google Business Profile edits that they shouldn't.
That then people are like, hey, all of a sudden it says that our location is in a different state. So if you're not monitoring and staying on top of your listing, you can fall prey to that. Unfortunately, we've seen a lot of people lean on AI too much. I'm sure you, you know exactly what I mean with that. And as much as we lean love AI, we just want to make sure that it's not used to be just taken over for complete content control, which we're seeing a bit of that as well, which doesn't usually turn out well.
[00:10:50] Speaker A: Right.
In conclusion.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: Yes.
Yeah, yeah. In conclusion, don't rely solely on AI.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
So where in your process do you leverage AI and how do you keep it from getting out of control? Or how do you maximize that contribution without becoming dependent or becoming kind of devaluing yourself?
[00:11:23] Speaker B: Yeah. So our team is made up of real writers. We don't rely on AI for the content that we produce for our clients.
When we're guiding our clients and training them on best practices for using AI, we're trying to teach them how they need to teach AI what their brand is so it's not just spitting out generic content.
Also, you know, there are great uses for it. If you are, for example, with your Google Business Profile listing, if you receive tons of reviews but want some responses ready to go for those reviews, you know, you can ask ChatGPT, hey, give me. 40 Responses to Positive online reviews regarding a specific service and then like put them in a Google Doc so that your, your front office person can kind of copy and paste those without just saying thanks, thanks, thanks.
Yeah. So I think there are ways to use it, to leverage it to say, hey, review this piece of content for me. How can I improve it versus just do this for me without any guidance.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: What's your advice for those service area business models? You said you did have some and I could imagine, you know, probably physical therapists might, might be easier to do on a business on a, on a mobile model, or not having a specific, you know, brick and mortar address that they're working out of.
And what way might that shift your advice or your implementation or what you want to look out for to make sure that you capture in the content or in your strategy.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: So I'm sure you've probably had somebody on here before talk about city pages, right? Like when you design and build out a page on your website to get dedicated to a certain city or area.
That's a great approach when it's done correctly, especially for the people that are in the service focusing on service areas.
But when it's done incorrectly and it just looks like it's a visitor's guide page, it doesn't work well.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: So that would be avoiding the trap of, oh, welcome to Oak Glen where a thousand tourists come and Bob Whitney visited in 2013 and there's this plaque on Apple Annie store and oh, by the way, get your chiropractic adjustment in Oakland.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I've actually even seen some where they don't even talk about the services they offer that they thought that they could just get away with just doing a page on the city. And then you look at analytics and, and you're like, well, people are actually coming to it, surprisingly, but bouncing off the moment they get there because it doesn't suggest what you offer.
[00:14:23] Speaker A: Right. So it is still, despite Google's protestations a decade ago of hey, don't make doorway pages or location pages.
Now the game has flipped entirely. And if you want to show up locally for a service, it looks like you gotta make a local service page to make a play for those terms.
But not, not in the 2005 realtor sort of way where you're just like, oh, let's make a guide to Apple Valley. No, you want to make a chiropractor in Riverside page, not a Riverside page. That happens to mention chiropractor.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: Chiropractor. I love it. Yeah, exactly. And so I think that's something to take into account and also for that target audience, really placing yourself in the community and community involvement matters more.
I think we're starting to see, see, SEO was almost used to be thought of in this like little bubble of like the stuff that you do behind the scenes. And now we're seeing it just more as like brand optimization overall and making sure that, you know, it used to be it was just like drive traffic to the website. Well then you need to make sure when the traffic gets to your website that it's set up for conversions. Like, you know, there's all these additional elements and plates and things that go into SEO that maybe years ago weren't necessarily considered to be in that same section.
[00:16:09] Speaker A: That's definitely true. I was just re listening to my interview with Melissa Popp of Rickety Roo and she was hitting hard on the fact that, you know, we need to feel ourselves, feel comfortable in cross channel and be confident in communicating to, you know, if there are other parts of the business that are doing radio ads or are doing TV ads or billboards or direct mailers that there's, there's a, an SEO piece to that. Because if you send out a piece of direct mail.
Well, are they, what, what URL did you pay to print on that piece of paper that'll go to that person's mailbox and is that actually the correct URL or did you send a, a postcard to Riverside and your main page is actually on Pomona? You know, like, because that's going to be a mismatch.
You know, the same thing thinking through, you know, the brand implications of running a radio ad, because obviously they can't click on a radio ad. They're going to search and they're probably going to try to search what seems like the strongest brand phrase and the service. But if you, you didn't line that up and you didn't put the emphasis on the right syllable, then maybe there's another chiropractor with the same name and you didn't do any, you didn't check before and say, oh, there's two Gosling chiropractors.
How do we make sure our ads differentiate? Otherwise they're going to take half of.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: Our ad spend and you know, naming conventions alone could be a whole SEO topic. Right, because the brand name that you choose can have huge ramifications on your online presence. Because we see this with chiropractors. I'll just give that example of like, let's say it was a company that named themselves Redwood Spine and sport versus Redwood, chiropractic care or chiropractic partners. And that's like your area, right, where you're trying to target.
Who do you think is going to show up more for? Chiropractor or chiropractic? The one that actually has it in their name, that's casually mentioning it throughout the site because it's their name.
So that's just, I think, something that sometimes people don't think about in the early stages.
[00:18:40] Speaker A: And you also, you know, you also have redwood right there in the name. And is that redwood because you're in Redwood, California, or redwood because you like the trees, or redwood because your, your primary physician is Dr. Redwood?
[00:18:58] Speaker B: Right, right.
So there's definitely a lot to consider when it comes to branding and how that's going to relate to SEO and rebranding and how that relates to SEO. And then you also have to say, well, am I holding on to this asset of the company for a year, 10 years, 5 years? How does that also play into the naming convention that I'm choosing for the company?
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Definitely. I mean, I had a friend, Michael McDougald, and he was kind of struggling with whether he wanted to, you know, show up as an SEO in an area. But everybody that was showing up had had titles that said SEO expert. And he never said that he was an expert. But when you went to that page, they never said expert, it was just in their meta titles. So you have like this kind of category challenge, you know, dynamic of, you know, how do you brand yourself? Are there, is there an extra layer of how you're going about building links to yourself, you know, and getting those branded links as, versus, you know, like, if you're Michael McDougald, do you try to get a link that just says Michael McDougald, or do you try to get a link saying Michael McDougald, SEO? You know, there's kind of, it's the same with the chiropractor of like, if it's their name and it contains the keyword of what they're doing versus, you know, getting a.
It would be indistinguishable to Google if it was like your, you know, Cookeville chiropractor. All of your links are both branded and, you know, they're categorical and regional already.
So is Google going to count that as a branded query or as a topical query?
[00:20:53] Speaker B: Right.
So you do have those variables. We also suggest to people like, let's just say you're just getting started and you're like, well, I'm with company A right now, but you know, in a couple years I could be with company B or company C. Then you're focusing more on your personal brand versus the company brand, which is also something to consider and something different to go about when, when you're optimizing because you know, it's not just your website, it's your YouTube videos, it's your social media presence, it's your, your overall branding strategy that makes sense.
[00:21:33] Speaker A: So drawing it back to content strategy, have you seen more success in trying to create things like downloadable guides or additional deeper resources versus just throwing every new piece of content into the blog?
[00:21:58] Speaker B: So I would say a lot of people fall short when it comes to that downloadable if it's just missing the connection. So like if I go to your website and you're like download this whatever about back pain, it's not necessarily showing a value add versus let's go back to the example earlier that we talked about with like the runners and partnering with a runner running club locally. If you do something that's a little bit more niche down and like you're just targeting that on the pages that are maybe about your running blogs that you're then like, oh, you know, download these three helpful stretches for before you, before you start your run, you're gonna see more luck than just like a general. But we find like when they do like the basics of like download this really boring basic guide that has a really boring basic name and expect a 12 page PDF that you're never gonna read that people don't take that action.
But if you are like oh, here, get three videos, three helpful videos, whether they're already sitting on your YouTube channel and you're just sending them in three consecutive emails with the three stretches you're more likely to get a lead than you are with the old school ebooks.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: That makes sense. So if you're like trying to help with arthritis, do like three, you know, these are your three arthritis stretches. Or what I'm curious about is like, or what I see as a missed opportunity maybe is there's a lot of assumptions that business owners make about like how the process works.
And I think things like, you know, for, you know, IV drip therapy, just having like what even is this?
Like a, like I'm kind of afraid of needles. So what, what am I getting into?
Like instead of like just a service page for a city, like describe the process, how does this work? Type of pages to like you know, comfort or just provide better illustration of like walkthrough processes even applies to like asphalt, you know, like how does the, like I need a new driveway. What exactly are you doing? And that way I can gauge how are you charging me a fair price?
[00:24:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's a great point. And to like layer on that what we've seen before is, you know, videos, the new rage video. Video video which. Not disagreeing with that. But sometimes what people do is they throw up a video. They invest a lot of time, money and resources into a video but don't include the text that relates to it. And they just assume everybody's going to like push play and watch that video.
Where we have to remember that everybody searches differently, everybody interacts differently and we want that text so Google can see the text. That's actually the juicy goodness of the answers of people are looking for. Even if it's just gonna show that one like little segment about what does this actually do or you know, so.
[00:25:06] Speaker A: Value does your interior designer actually bring to the table like an interior designer? What, what does that mean? Like what does, what do you actually do? Like, like laying out. Oh well, I make the color suggestions, I find the color splotches. I can source this particular furniture, you know, whether it's for your ad, your, your add on your home edition or your existing house. Like we're going to do this, this and this.
[00:25:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:35] Speaker A: Which is different from you know like your typical service page. Right. Because like on a service page you're like oh, these are, we're here, here's our contact information. These are the generic buckets of stuff we can do.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: Well, it should, the specific services pages should highlight your process, what somebody should expect and you know, done. You know, header tags aren't just for SEO. They're for people to be able to scan and find proper content on a page and jump to that section.
So it needs to be laid out properly. But also. Yeah. And there are opportunities to also, you know, create blog posts and video content and email blast regarding just one segment of that as well.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: That's true.
Have you actually worked with any clients that have combined or have found an effective way to use emails captured off of their website or do you find that that's usually spinning wheels on one side or the other?
[00:26:45] Speaker B: I find that it's usually the audience where they had purchased a generic piece of content that they're putting together as a 12 page PDF that nobody downloads? And again I do. We have found like if they really like niche into a specific group and offer a download that's more enticing than a 12 page PDF that nobody's gonna read like the three exercises that they see more leads from that. Now it doesn't necessarily mean that they're all gonna be local and that they're all gonna be people that are actually gonna end up handing over money to these people. But that does seem to work much better than again, the generic content.
Is that what you're seeing?
[00:27:40] Speaker A: I've seen, yeah. I'm just seeing a lot of disconnect between like the, the way that people treat the, the audience capture off of the website of basically like if they, they aren't handing me money right now, then I don't really like, they don't seem to, to connect the value.
Whereas I have seen like individual cases where you know, you have a finely tuned, say newsletter that you're regularly sending out to and have ROI off of that newsletter that you've been able to prove by doing, you know, specific service offers or that something that you're able to prove. It's like there's kind of an idea that newsletters are valuable, but then actually like getting people to have an effective system outside of, outside of just web form submissions seems harder. But I have seen it work really well a couple of times like with, you know, Save Fryoil, like they're, they were able to, you know, kind of create a capture for their email and follow through and pick up leads off of that, that they, you know, they weren't immediately interested. So I guess I'm kind of trying to explore that concept of winning by getting people back or winning by kind of building an audience and not relying solely on the continued fishing expedition.
[00:29:15] Speaker B: So I would say I worked with one company who, I can't name the name of the company, but they had it dialed in and we worked with them on a plan for if somebody hadn't come in to purchase an X period of time, they would run the correct email funnel. Right when people came in, they, they had the correct funnel. But a lot of these small businesses are just on mailchimp and they don't have anything special set up where it's just. You signed up for our email.
Great. Now once a week we're gonna send you an email and you're gonna get a Happy Thanksgiving picture of a turkey.
So I think that it needs to be done with intention.
And when it is, it's, it's usually executed really well.
But it either comes into like there isn't a big enough audience for the bucket that they're trying to fill with like something small or they just have this, this element that Just isn't interesting that, you know, it's just kind of like one of those sign up for our newsletter.
[00:30:38] Speaker A: Why?
I know it seems I just saw one of those earlier today on a packaging site and at the bottom in the footer, it's like, sign up for our newsletter. And it was like five fields. I'm like, why, why would, what, what do I get about what. You're not even saying what you're going to send in the newsletter. Just.
Yeah, I really need a newsletter about my, my cannabis packaging needs.
[00:31:08] Speaker B: Yeah. So it just, it needs to, there needs to be intention behind it, obviously. I mean, email marketing is a whole different can of words, worms, segmenting your email audience, whole different topic. Right. Because you don't want to just do a generic message to people, people that it's not gonna, not gonna resonate with. But in general, we do find that combining email marketing with an SEO plan works really well. You know, if you're taking quality content that's on either your blog post or specific pages and you know, not writing an email blast, that's too, too long. But giving a little insight does help stay top of mind.
[00:31:59] Speaker A: That makes sense as we kind of round out the interview here at the end. What's the most actionable advice you can give to either small business owners in your niche that you're, you're comfortable working with in that, you know, health and wellness, local health and wellness service space, or for SEOs who are working in that space? What's your number one tip that they should go execute on this after they listen to you?
[00:32:30] Speaker B: Well, your Google Business Profile listing. Anyone trying to rank locally needs to keep an eye on their Google Business Profile listing and not just leave it and forget it. Make sure that it's actually optimized and keep up with it regularly.
[00:32:47] Speaker A: Let's talk about optimized real fast. What are some. What's on your checklist of optimized for a Google business page? Because it's nice to like, yeah, go look at your. Go look at your stupid stuff.
[00:32:58] Speaker B: Go look at your stupid stuff.
[00:33:00] Speaker A: Which is good. It's good advice. I want it, but I want. Let's get a little more granular. When you say optimize, what are some of those checkboxes to tick off? Insight can be generic, but let's go through it.
[00:33:11] Speaker B: Okay. So is your name your actual name, business name? Is your address correct?
Have you gone in and added the correct main category for your business and other categories? Because they see if you do select other categories, as long as it aligns with your business that you're going to get more visibility.
Are you including a business description? Have you like, you know they're going to ask about parking? We've noticed if you don't fill out like, it's going to ask for your social media sites. Now we came, we had a couple weeks ago, one chiropractor was like, oh, it's pulling in. Another chiropractor that had the same business name was pulling in those Facebook reviews and showcasing it as that business. So even though you think Google's the almighty and they should know everything, you still have to tell it some things, like what your social media profiles are about your business, that you're including a link to your website, that you've got videos, that you've got photos that you're doing, Google posts that under the Q and A, you can start asking questions as the business and answering them.
And that starts with some of the basics like what services do you offer? What should I know before my first visit?
What should I like? If there's any issue with parking, you want to make sure that they know about it ahead of time so that they're coming in happy, not mad, because they were just driving around for a half an hour trying to find a space to park.
Yeah. And we're also seeing some issues with like review gating when people are like sending out these mass emails to get more, more reviews. But they could be saying, did you have a good experience or bad experience? And if they say bad experience, they're going to a place where they're just collecting that information versus sending them to, to Google to actually leave a review.
And Google's catching on to this. So you've got to go about things the right way.
[00:35:16] Speaker A: Got it. Okay. So that was a big strategy six or seven years ago of like trying to.
So Google's actually trying to smack down for that, huh?
[00:35:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And I would also say if you ever have had an issue with your Google business profile listing, make sure in your listing that you've got a couple different angles from the outside of your building, of your door, of your signage.
Just even if they aren't professional photographer quality, having those images already loaded to your listing will help if you, you ever kind of get in trouble with them or have to work through anything.
[00:35:56] Speaker A: That totally makes sense.
Also, don't forget to add your tracking tag to your URL so that you can know, oh, hey, these clicks came from that. Because it is kind of a little bit of a black box sometimes at agencies because we aren't given. Like.
Like people don't look at the traffic stats and details of the Google business profile.
They only look at search console or only at analytics. But there's some really valuable data as far as how people are interacting with that. So from the SEO side, I think the advice would be jump in there and look at the stats, look at the impressions, look at the actions listed.
What are the. What's the volume of recorded calls off of it?
All of those are important signals that can. And especially shifts in those signals can indicate, oh, something's majorly wrong, or, hey, something's really good.
[00:36:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, hours. We didn't mention hours, but hours. Openness is a ranking factor. So like, if you have your business listed as being closed on Tuesdays and you notice that your traffic is down, phone calls to your location are down on Tuesdays, should you reconsider maybe being open on Tuesdays, that's a business decision that also plays into SEO.
[00:37:20] Speaker A: Smart. I love it. So repeat again where people can find you. Are you on any particular social media yourself where people can interact with you?
[00:37:29] Speaker B: Sure. So Our website is propelleryourcompany.com and you can find us on Instagram at Propel, your company.
And that is only one L.
Okay, Propel.
[00:37:43] Speaker A: Got it. Thanks so much for your time and insights, Darcy.
[00:37:46] Speaker B: Thanks so much for having me. This has been a blast.
