Nerds On Tap

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

• Nerds On Tap • Season 1 • Episode 11

Share episode

Unlock the mysteries of digital marketing as we share a virtual roundtable with Kina Robinett and Shelby Payne from SmarterWeb. These two dynamos take the mic to narrate their individual journeys—Kina from a childhood steeped in web design fascination to a titan of SMB online growth, and Shelby from a Chick-fil-A mascot to a digital designer. You'll get a front-row seat to the magic of their partnership and the strategies that turn a client's digital presence from a whisper in the wind to a resounding echo across the web.

As we swirl our glasses filled with the essence of web development and the nuances of user experience design, Kina and Shelby unfold the tapestry of creating websites that are more than eye candy—they're the digital handshake between businesses and their audience. We untangle the threads of SEO, from on-page essentials to the subtle art of quality backlinks, and dive into the alchemy of analytics that turns raw data into gold. You'll leave with a treasury of knowledge on how to craft a digital domain that both dazzles the user and charms the search engines.

But it's not all about the bits and bytes. Our guests from SmarterWeb emphasize the human touch in the digital realm, from the craft of content that resonates with authenticity to the strategic use of technology that enhances, not replaces, the creative process. You'll hear tales of triumph as we discuss how specialized agencies can give SMBs the competitive edge, acting as an extended marketing arm that navigates the digital seas. So, pop in your earbuds and join us for a conversation that's as rich in insights as it is in laughter, and toast to the boundless possibilities of digital marketing.

Beers:

Lite Crispy Bois by 3 Sons Brewing Company, Dania Beach, FL
Full flavor with less guilt, a perfectly balanced, crisp and refreshing, year-round crusher.
https://www.3sonsbrewingco.com/beers

Beach Blonde Ale by 3 Daughter's Brewery, St. Petersburg, FL
Light and refreshing with just enough jops to balance the malty sweetness and add a hint of citrus.
https://3dbrewing.com/beers/beach-blonde-ale/

Tangerine Wheat Ale by Lost Coast Brewery, Eureka, CA
A refreshing citrus ale brewed with the perfect balance of wheat and crystal malt. Tangerine wheat delivers a perfectly crisp finis for those hot summer days.
https://lostcoast.com/beers#Tangerine-Wheat

White Chocolate Moo Hoo, Chocolate Milk Stout by Terrapin Beer Company, Athens, GA
Dark brown to black in color with aromas of dark chocolate. It has a dark roasted malt flavor with hints of caramel and hot chocolate, rounded by a sweet, creamy finish.
https://untappd.com/b/terrapin-beer-co-white-chocolate-moo-hoo/5078549


Thanks for listening!
Visit us online at www.thenerdsontap.com
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel
Follow us on Instagram
Like us on Facebook

Tim Shoop:

Hey everyone and welcome to another episode of Nerds On Tap, where we get nerdy for an hour with some special guests. Today's guests come from the world of marketing and specifically SmarterWeb, one of our sponsors. So we all know each other. So this is going to be a little bit of a I think a more outlandish show, because we're going to have a little bit of camaraderie going on during the show. No nerves, right, Kina?

Kina Robinett:

Not at all, never, you know me.

Tim Shoop:

So brought to you by our sponsors today Digital Boardwalk, who rules the world of managed IT services for businesses all across the country, and SmarterWeb, our marketing professionals for your small business. So make sure you reach out to them if you need a website or IT for your companies. So let's go ahead and get started. Let's talk about today's segments after we hear a little bit about our special guests, Kina Robinett and Shelby Payne of SmarterWebnet. Who wants to go first?

Kina Robinett:

After you, Kina, I can jump in. I'm Kina. It's, first off, great to be here on the podcast the marketing manager over at SmarterWeb. So I handle not just the SmarterWeb typical day to day marketing duties but also our client projects where we help SMBs grow their digital presence online. We do everything from web design, seo to Google ad campaigns, and so I kind of oversee a lot of those client projects and my wonderful friend Shelby over here helps tremendously with all of those as well. So Shelby, Absolutely.

Shelby Payne:

Well, I'm Shelby. I am marketing coordinator at SmarterWeb, so I get to work with Kina very closely on all of these projects and I would say we have a lot of fun with those, don't we? Absolutely.

Kina Robinett:

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

Tim Shoop:

So you guys help make the show for Nerds On Tap, don't you?

Shelby Payne:

Indeed, we do.

Tim Shoop:

Who writes the outline for these shows?

Shelby Payne:

I don't know Some girl.

Tim Shoop:

Some girl named.

Shelby Payne:

Shelby.

Kina Robinett:

Really awesome girl.

Tim Shoop:

So Shelby came very prepared for today's show. She has footnotes written on the back of her hand and she is prepared to put the show on. Kina just saw the outline a minute ago, and so did I, so we are going to wing it, but I am excited to hear about all the magical things you do for our customers, Kina, before we get started and before we taste our first beer. You do know this is a beer show, right? Not a wine show.

Kina Robinett:

Oh, I think I have something. I have somewhere I have to be actually.

Tim Shoop:

Why don't you tell the audience how you got into marketing and where that passion came from, because I think it rings close to your heart.

Kina Robinett:

Yeah, it really does. So I actually kind of, I guess, got my first start with marketing when I was actually a little girl. My dad was the marketing director for a lot of companies in the music industry. You know he worked for a few different companies over there. But when I was a kid he had his office, his little studio room that he worked out of, and he worked from home as a contractor for a while as well, and as a little girl I would go in there, watch what he was doing on his fancy computer and just be so amazed by everything, especially the web design side of things. It just amazed me when I was I think I had to have been my seventh birthday. I think he got me for my birthday he bought my domain name, kinarabinettecom, which I still own to this day. How?

Tim Shoop:

old were you.

Kina Robinett:

I was seven.

Tim Shoop:

You had your own domain at seven. Oh my God, domains didn't exist when I was seven.

Kina Robinett:

You're showing your age there.

Kina Robinett:

Hey, but yeah, that was my birthday present and he helped me build a website with a giant pink butterfly on it and my name everywhere. But watching my dad as I was a kid, he was extremely passionate about what he did and that definitely shaped my passion for the industry as well. When I got into high school, I started kind of designing blogs and fun websites, just really for fun. And then it wasn't until I got to college that I realized I have all. I have these things that I love to do. I can actually do that for a living. I just never really put two and two together and realized I could do that for a living and it's the best decision I ever made.

Tim Shoop:

I love it so much I love it and you're really good at it. Our customers at Digital Boardwalk all use SmarterWeb to build their websites and do their SEO forum and they all love them. Some keen.

Kina Robinett:

Do my best. It really is very rewarding to see whether it's a website design project from nothing to a completed website, or SEO blogs seeing them their rank on Google or Bing, seeing that gradually climb up. It's extremely rewarding, so it's easy to be passionate about. For me, I guess.

Tim Shoop:

So, shelby, how did you get into marketing and what led you to SmarterWeb?

Shelby Payne:

It's actually funny. My first marketing job was as the Cal for Chick-fil-A. All right, that way, yes way On the billboards. No, I was a little bit Cal and I would dance around on the bill and try to get people to come eat at Chick-fil-A.

Shelby Payne:

That's awesome. But I also managed events and I managed their social media campaigns and rolling out new products and things of that nature. But I always think it's funny that I started as a Cal and then I discovered around the same time I was 14, I discovered that I really liked drawing and painting and just being creative and eventually that led to me realizing kind of with Kina, like hey, I could do this as a job and be very fulfilled in what I do. And so for me the world of loving marketing and loving design kind of came together with Web Design. I could do both of the things that I love to do and I could do it for people and bring them joy out of what I do. So I came to SmarterWeb a couple months ago. It's been a little bit now it's been a little longer than that.

Shelby Payne:

Maybe three, four, I don't know. It's been a little bit.

Tim Shoop:

Did we warn you that you would be on a podcast?

Shelby Payne:

No, that came after I signed on the dotted lines, I think I know I wasn't warned either.

Tim Shoop:

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 in front of us. First of all, do you still have that cow costume?

Shelby Payne:

No, I had to give it back.

Tim Shoop:

So, jared, can we order a cow costume? We're going to put a reel together for the show and have her dance.

Shelby Payne:

Perfect, we'll bring back memories.

Tim Shoop:

And when you came on since you're newer at SmarterWeb and I'm kind of glad that we have 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 see inside the doors of SmarterWeb from the terms of how we go about developing and how we. Where is the? Do you see any passion?

Shelby Payne:

Absolutely. I think you know the whole reason I wanted the job was after I talked to Kina and just seeing her passion and desire to do these things and to do them well, in a way that would serve our clients well, that made me really want to join the team. Honestly, just seeing that we were both passionate about this and we could both bring something to our clients that they don't get every day, because we're not just building beautiful websites, we're building functional websites with usability, and we do this because we care about them, and I think that's the drive for our customers and clients too. They see the same thing in Kina that I did.

Tim Shoop:

And when you lift the hood of one of our websites we're going to get into that later in the show data. It's all about data, and that is what makes a website functional being able to track data, being able to know where your campaigns are going, which ones are working, which ones aren't and we'll talk about that later. First, let's try a beer. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Nerds On Tach. I'm your host, Tim Schu, and I couldn't be more excited to embark on this nerdy adventure with all of you. So grab your favorite brew, because things are about to get exciting. Three, two, one go.

Suds:

Suds. What do we have first? All right, our first beer tonight is the Light Crispy Boys American Light Lager from the Three Sons Brewing Company. They describe it as a full flavor with less guilt, a perfectly balanced crisp and refreshing year round crusher.

Kina Robinett:

Oh, that's pretty good.

Tim Shoop:

Oh, I like that.

Suds:

Where is that from? That is from Dania Beach, Florida, founded in 2011.

Tim Shoop:

Okay, we're going to have to tag them Shelby, because that beer, I need to keep that in my cooler.

Shelby Payne:

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

Tim Shoop:

It's not just refreshing, it has a really good after bite to it that kind of drives it home.

Kina Robinett:

Yeah, well, it's not for me. The reason I am more of a wine drinker than a beer drinker is because a lot of times beers leave like the I guess aftertaste is what we're talking about. But this one's very light. I like it a lot, it's not overpowering.

Tim Shoop:

You're not drunk yet, Kina.

Kina Robinett:

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

Tim Shoop:

I'm feeling it. So today we're going to get into three topics. We're going to talk about the world of web development. We're going to dive in and navigating SEO and digital marketing. So if you're a small to medium-sized business out there, pay attention to today's episode, send it to your friends, send it to any other business that you think can use it, because we've got some great stuff to talk about today that can help you drive net new business. The third topic will be smarter webs, projects and the future of web development through the eyes of our guests and what they're thinking. So first, we're going to talk about smarter web and your roles inside of web development and maybe dive into the landscape of development and design through your eyes. Now, when you start a website and tell me about the process, from the moment the lead comes in to Well, excuse me, from the moment a customer hires us to do their website, tell me, tell me the flow, what, what happens from there?

Kina Robinett:

the first thing, really for most of our projects not just the web design. But you know, if we're doing content marketing, whatever it is we may be doing, our first step is always to learn as much as we possibly can about the client themselves, what their goals are. If it is a website, you know what's their branding, what you know what kind of message are we trying to put out there, what are there, what is their current? You know lead generation process look like and really try to get a handle on understanding who they are and what they're. You know why they hired us in the first place. From there and usually you know that can be a series of you know we meet, get real up close and personal with the clients sometimes, but Make sure everyone on the team has an understanding of what we're trying to accomplish. And then from there we Typically go if it's a, if it's a web design project, we start to Put our ideas together.

Kina Robinett:

Our team puts our our heads together and says you know, how can we not just visually Get across their message, but also what is their message? Who? You know? Who are they trying to target? A lot of business, especially small businesses, don't think Right off the bat about who it is they're directly trying to speak to. They're just, you know, trying to get their name out there, trying to get their product out there. But if you're not speaking to the right audience, you know they're.

Kina Robinett:

The wrong audience isn't going to care about your product. It's going to just go straight over their heads. They're going to just click off your site. So it's very important to nail your target audience down, figure out who it is you're speaking to and from there, a lot of the pieces can fall in place pretty easily. As far as like design. What would that target audience be looking for at a website? What would? What kind of content are they looking for? You know what questions are they going to have before they sign on with you. So there's a lot of strategy that goes into a website, aside from just having it look pretty, and you know work.

Tim Shoop:

So when they come to you, I mean that's their first thought. I want a website that Looks pretty and all of this. But what they don't realize somebody told me this one time is you can have the most beautiful website in the world but without these other things To get people to find the website. And we're going to talk about that mostly in segment two. They referred to it as a billboard in the woods. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Kina Robinett:

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 what you want it to achieve?

Tim Shoop:

So it's going to be about beautiful design, which we're going to stay on that topic, but it's also about being found and Making sure you can turn it into Hate this term but a cash register, because it's about finding new business. So let's stay on this topic and let's stay on web design. So let's get into the user friendliness 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 a website and I know we're looking through your eyes, so you're going to see a website different than a regular visitor is going to see a website. And what are you looking at? What are you looking at through your eye? What are you looking at? What are you looking at through your eye? What do you see?

Kina Robinett:

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

Tim Shoop:

What do they refer to that as a call to action? Yes, a call to action.

Kina Robinett:

Yeah, usually a button, some kind of you're literally calling your, your users, 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 have any kind of call to action, so that tends to be you know, people, business owners in general kind of maybe don't see the value in it, but if you have your, you have a user come to your site and they have no idea.

Tim Shoop:

But I think every website I've been to has a contact page. Isn't that a call to action?

Kina Robinett:

It can be. It's, um. You know, a general contact form is a type of action. It may not always be the most effective one. Some people may not be ready to contact you. Some people want, maybe, some type of Information about you.

Tim Shoop:

They want to but they're not gonna land on a contact page when they go to a website. If I go to abc you know Accompanycom, I'm gonna go to their home page. So you want call to actions? Trickled through that page. Is that what I'm here?

Kina Robinett:

Yes, the home page. And you know, sir, if your service-based business services pages you know even the about page, should, should have some kind of they call it the marketing funnel, it should all lead to some final action all throughout your site. Your site should essentially be convincing users to take that action and what is that action called from a marketing perspective?

Tim Shoop:

Is it a conversion?

Kina Robinett:

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

Tim Shoop:

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 doing any talking over here, but we really don't. We're not hitting on On what she really does yet and I think that's gonna be mostly in segment two. So, but, chime in where you can if you have anything to say. I so I want to talk about.

Tim Shoop:

So we're talking about technology. We're talking about the importance of technology on a website. Everybody looks at a website and sees beautiful website and they go, oh, wow, that's a great website. But from a, from a owner's perspective on a website, you don't want it to just look pretty, you want it to do the job for you. You want to be able to automate certain marketing processes and things to drive. What you mentioned earlier was a marketing funnel. So that marketing funnel leads them down. That funnel leads the users a certain way. Can you track user behavior on a website and what is the importance of that? And how do you, as, as a, when you collect that behavior, let's say, across a number of users? How does that data help you With the website? What can you do with that website? What can you do with your marketing perspective of how you use that website as an owner, to make adjustments based on that data.

Kina Robinett:

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 definitely the most you know kind of industry standard, you know you can track how much traffic you have coming to your website. From that traffic you have coming to the site, you can track, you know what pages they clicked on, how many pages they clicked on, how long they were on your site looking through your different pages, looking through your offerings. You can track them all the way to when they actually convert, whether that's filling out the form or downloading a PDF or whatever it may be on your website. And using that data, you can really I mean, there's so much you can learn from the data you can see where people are dropping off.

Kina Robinett:

Maybe you have a page that doesn't perform well or doesn't answer questions, so people click off, or even a page that doesn't load quickly enough and so people click off. And you can really you can track from beginning to end when people are. You know if they're a different person, they're a different person. There are different stages of the there what what they call a buying journey, where you know maybe they're deciding, they're first doing their research to decide, to figure out who they want to go with for your service. Or you know they're they're still assessing different. You know you and your competitors. You can really dig through the data and Find you know kind of how to steer your not just your website, but all of your marketing campaigns. You know, are there gaps in your marketing that the data can tell you there's? There's so much you can learn from the data.

Tim Shoop:

So smarter web does some pretty incredible things with data. You collect data and it's all curated Into an aggregated kind of an aggregate under what you call smart board, right.

Kina Robinett:

Correct. So smart board is our proprietary, essentially as an analytics dashboard. It pulls in data from all different channels whether you know if you're, if we're, running SEO campaigns, content marketing campaigns, it pulls in. You know ranked tracking on Google it pulls in. If you have Google ads campaigns, that pulls that in your, your regular Google analytics on your website. It pulls out all into one single pane of glass so you can see you know one one place where you log in and you can see all of this data to Give you a really comprehensive view of how your online marketing is performing, and so it's extremely valuable. We use it I mean, I, I'm on there for our clients Multiple time of day to checking to see you know where, where do we have opportunities, where do we maybe need to clean things up. It really provides so much value To any business really to have a good eye on your, on your analytics.

Tim Shoop:

That's, that's great and and so you can. You can audit this data. You can make pivots for your customers or recommendations to your customers. So so you've got data that flows in from my understandings, from like Google analytics so you can see behavior on Google. You can see search engine optimization analytics. You can see. So if you have a campaign for instance a landing page with a form, maybe that comes from an AdWords campaign where you're targeting a certain demographic, you're tracking those phone numbers Can you tell the audience how you track Kind of the generalized idea of how and why you track numbers, why all those numbers are different and how that can lead to optimization of your sales funneling right?

Kina Robinett:

So what a lot of especially smaller businesses. When they're first starting out with their marketing, they tend to and we'll use Google ads campaigns as an example they have multiple Campaigns or multiple ad groups that they're running that all lead to one Single page with one their main phone number on it, and so if things come in from that page, that doesn't really give you any Insight on where that lead came from. By creating either individual landing pages or what we do, we have individual landing pages for different campaigns, but each landing page also has A unique phone number tied to it at forwards to your main phone number, and it worked. You know that process works fine. But by having individual or unique phone numbers for each campaign, if a call comes in, you know exactly where they came from, like you know, if you have, if you put a phone number out For an event you recently attended, you put that phone number on.

Kina Robinett:

You know your, your print materials for that event. If someone calls that phone number, you know exactly. You don't have to ask them. You know how did you hear about us. You already know that they found you through that event or through that ad campaign, because a lot of people they will just say oh, I found you through Google. That's not for. From a marketing standpoint that's not super Insightful, because you know Google is huge. It could be just your main home page, it could be an ad campaign, but by having those unique phone numbers and unique Contact forms on each page, you know exactly where the the lead is coming from. You don't have to guess. It takes the guesswork out of your marketing.

Tim Shoop:

Okay, so the first thing I just want to chime in here. I have finished my first beer. We're getting close to segment two, so we're going to have another beer introduced. I would recommend you guys maybe down those Because I have a feeling that, um, because I have a feeling segment two and segment three might be a lot more entertaining if you drink those beers.

Tim Shoop:

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 work closely with kina, specifically on the web design design side of the house, and how you interact on some of the pieces in those development, in the development of those sites.

Shelby Payne:

Absolutely so. If we're talking about, um, just the design portion, there is a lot of important steps to that that people don't really think about, one of those. Being someone who's taken a couple classes, you know, on ux and ui design, one of the things that I find really important is making sure that you're crafting a good user experience. That means those call to actions. Um, it's really important to have verbiage that the client understands, that your customer understands. Um, if you have a call to action 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 I think we think about when we're mocking up our websites. Another thing that I help kina with is we make sure that all of our websites are responsive. So that means if you're looking at it on your cell phone, if you're looking at it on your ipad, your tablet, your laptop, your desktop, whatever- so responsive, responsive design exactly, exactly.

Shelby Payne:

So we make sure that no matter where you're viewing it, it looks the same generally. Things will be moved a little bit for your phone so everything fits, but in general the design Kind of remains intact. Um.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, that's kind of a deal killer for me when I go on somebody's website for my mobile and it looks and and operates exactly like when I go to it on a pc. Because it's not functional on a mobile. Right, considering you're just trying to find key pieces, information. But if it doesn't scale properly and I can't even read it on my mobile, then we have a problem, right, I'm not going to be interested. I mean, if, if a company can't Get that right, it kind of it's kind of a turnoff.

Shelby Payne:

Absolutely. It kind of sends a message that the company doesn't really care that much about you viewing their content. Yeah, so things like hover options A lot of our buttons might hover on a desktop, but you can't hover on a mobile. There's no way to do that without a mouse. Um, so that's one of the really important things that we focus on when we're designing our websites.

Tim Shoop:

Got it. Um, so we're gonna we're. I want to transition in a segment too, but I'm looking at these. If you don't want to drink your beers, just tell me, because I'll drink the rest of your beer. I'm sure suds will dive in, but you gotta gotta let us know. Yeah, suds if he has to hear that if I must. So we're gonna dive in to sco and digital marketing after introducing beer number two.

Suds:

All right. Beer number two Uh, this was not planned, it's just a coincidence, but it's a beach blonde ale, american blonde ale, from three daughters brewery in st Petersburg, florida. Uh, it's described as a light and refreshing, with just enough hops to balance the multi sweetness and add a hint of citrus.

Kina Robinett:

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

Tim Shoop:

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 me of a, a cleaning agent. But I will drink it. I will drink it, ladies and gentlemen.

Kina Robinett:

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

Tim Shoop:

I will say that our group at smarter web are not big beer drinkers, because this is the first show, this is show number 11 that we're doing and it'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, drink your beer. I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. So let's talk about sco. You know a digital marketing and the blend of the two and how that can help you as a small business. So let's take a deep dive into sco.

Tim Shoop:

Um, search engine optimization and the importance of it and the significance of it in today's digital marketing landscape. You know, when I first Launched my 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 the technology, you know, google reviews google wasn't around. Um, you had, uh, a very Uh, only a few browsers out there and they didn't do this kind of review thing that all the all these big tech companies are doing now. So the lit, the digital landscape is shifted and in sco is a big part of what everybody should be doing for their website because it gets you organically Up in the. I'm sorry that beer's making me wanna fur.

Tim Shoop:

And I'm trying my hardest not to mic'd up like, yes, I'm an animal, ladies and gentlemen. So you guys, I want you to collaborate here and I'd love to hear a very collaborative discussion between the two of you on SEO and the value it brings to a small to medium sized business and how it works, kind of.

Shelby Payne:

Yeah, I will say like when I started and I came to SmarterWeb, I didn't know a lot about SEO. That was one of the things that Kina has been such an amazing teacher on and she's taken the time to really kind of explain things to me and get me resources to understand, and I will say it is incredibly important once you realize what SEO does.

Tim Shoop:

You realize it's perfect, it's the foundation, right.

Shelby Payne:

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

Kina Robinett:

Exactly exactly, and a lot of people I explain this to a lot of, a lot of our new clients. When you think about it, a lot of people don't understand what all goes into SEO. But if you, you can kind of break it down pretty simply. If you think of yourself, as you know, you are Google. Let's say you're Google and someone types something into the search bar, some question they have or whatever it is they're searching for. Your job as Google is to bring them the best results, the best answer to that question. So you know SEO, if you break it down like that kind of becomes simpler in a way, because your end goal is to answer that question to the best of your ability.

Tim Shoop:

It's really important, the foundation that you build a website on. So you kind of have to work your way out right From the website that you've built, because I've seen websites now. Back in the day it was front page. Do you know what that is? Yeah, that's your dad. So front page is what everybody built their websites on in the 90s and early 2000s and it was very archaic.

Tim Shoop:

And then you know all these different technologies starting to come out and you know I'm dating myself here, but this is important to hear the legacy side of it. You know we all used yellow pages to drive businesses back then. So people didn't all they saw a website ask was a calling card that if someone wanted to find out more information they could go to it. So they weren't as pretty because of the way they worked back then. But most importantly, you had these different technologies, even Adobe Photoshop. People were creating websites in Adobe Photoshop. Now the problem and I'm gonna use this as an example Adobe Photoshop. What are you creating with Photoshop? What is it known for? What do you create?

Kina Robinett:

Images.

Tim Shoop:

Images. So what does Google see?

Kina Robinett:

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

Tim Shoop:

So Google sees words. Google. An image to Google is it doesn't have anything to reference, unless nowadays you can alt tag an image right, and I wanna hear more about that. But back in the day people would design an entire website in Photoshop. Google wouldn't see it, and then they'd wonder why they weren't being found. Nowadays we build them on WordPress. That's the most popular or a proprietary infrastructure, a platform. So tell me if you're working your way out. We start with the website and we start with the way it's designed, and we use a term called on page SEO. Tell us about that.

Kina Robinett:

Yeah, so typically when we build our sites we want to build in, there are certain things that Google's gonna look for, not just on the front end, as far as your content and what you're writing, the words that are actually on the page but then there's also things on the back end that Google can pick up. Now alt tags, or something that we mentioned a second ago. Those are basically tags on an image that you can. It's extremely important for accessibility because an alt tag is basically text that describes the image on a website. So if someone, say, has a vision disability and uses, maybe, a screen reader to view websites or access websites, if your website is all images, they have no idea. They can't see that. Alt tags provide an explanation of what that image is, but they can also be very valuable SEO-wise. You wanna describe the image. That's first priority is describing the image for screen readers, but if you can add content in there that's helpful for your SEO as well, that's a huge opportunity.

Tim Shoop:

Content, Content. Yes, so content on the image, but where else? I mean, content is king, right?

Kina Robinett:

Content is king all throughout the site and how you tag things on the back end code different HTML tags that you don't see when you access a site but are important on the back end for Google to be able to read, even how quickly your page loads, because Google will see if people access your site and immediately click off that to Google that's a red flag and that can count against you. If your page takes too long to load, that can count against you. And so there's so many things with on-page or technical SEO that you don't really think about but that can make a huge difference when you're trying to rank higher on Google, when you're trying to get your website up there for people's search queries.

Tim Shoop:

So on-page, that's where you start right. So you're designing the website and 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 and the importance of content. So within that content, when Google reads that content, let's talk about keywords.

Kina Robinett:

Yeah, keywords are extremely important. With Google, keywords are kind of a beast, because sometimes you can be wanting to rank higher for a certain keyword and then find out that's not even the right key. No one's searching that. So your strategy with keywords is very important and keywords are basically just you know, they can be search terms on Google that you put, that people put into their search bar. But you want to include that kind of whether it's long form keyword, what we call long tail, or even short keywords. You wanna include that in your content so that your website pops up when people makes those search queries.

Tim Shoop:

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 SEO in mind, you've got all your keywords in the content. So Google reads it, Google scans it. They've got bots that scan networks. They bring it up, they rank them and then it ranks over time. So, changing your content good or bad.

Kina Robinett:

Can be good, depending on the changes you make.

Tim Shoop:

Right, and how often should someone change their website? When I say change, I mean update. So I think one of the more popular ways people update their websites is when a team member is no longer with a company and they add a new team member. Obviously you gotta update the team member page but on the homepage adding things. So I think changing content or updating a website and keeping it current, that's something SmarterWeb does for all your customers, Correct, how important is that and how does that chime in to the SEO piece of it all?

Kina Robinett:

Well, it's definitely important to keep your business information correct at all times. If your address changes, you want to make sure that gets updated everywhere across the web. But it's really important too if you're going to be either changing your content or maybe you're blogging your posting blogs. It's important to if you are going to do it at a specific, if you're going to do it frequently. I learned something. It's been a couple of years now, but you can, in a way, almost train Google's algorithm to check 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 a monthly blog to your website. If you post it at the exact same time and day every month. Once Google starts to pick up that you're doing that, it's bots will. You're kind of starting to train their algorithm to check your website at those times because they know you're going to have new content. So I would say maybe more so than frequency is the schedule at which you post is important.

Tim Shoop:

Wow, I didn't know that.

Kina Robinett:

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

Tim Shoop:

So we talk about on page SEO in terms of content, we talk about updates, we talk about all tags. Are meta tags as relevant anymore? And then how does that? And explain to the audience what a meta tag is?

Kina Robinett:

Well. So meta tags, meta descriptions, meta titles those are the. When you search a website on Google and you see the page title or site title on there. That's the meta title. Is that the big text that you can click on to get to the website. The description is the text underneath it. So a short little couple of sentences that gives you a description of what the website's about.

Kina Robinett:

And it's extremely important not just for Google when they're crawling your site to find that and hopefully find keywords in there that are relevant to what your audience is searching for, but also for the end user to see stuff that's not just a bunch of code or you know, because automatically, typically, your site's going to try to pull whatever the first text is from your webpage and a lot of times for a lot of web builders that ends up being just a string of code which means nothing to an end user. So you wanna make sure you set your meta description, meta title. You can have tags on your page. I can all help with your visibility on Google, but they are also extremely important for the end user, and I know Shelby has helped me considerably with a lot of meta tags, meta descriptions, so she knows how it can be a little bit time consuming to put that in for every single page, but it's very, very important and for every blog.

Shelby Payne:

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

Tim Shoop:

What's an H1? I've seen that. What's an? You like how I'm playing dummy?

Kina Robinett:

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

Tim Shoop:

God. So what is an H1 tag? Is this what you're talking about when you say tags?

Kina Robinett:

So that is actually different. The header tags on a site. That's part of the HTML code every site's gonna, whatever you build it on if you build it on WordPress, it still is made up of HTML code, which is just a code language that someone probably much smarter than me could describe better, but you want to. Every page has you wanna set an H1 and an H2 tag. You can have H3 through H6, I believe, tags, but for sure H1 and H2, those are basically just a way to denote a header in the HTML code, which the HTML code is what Google crawls. That's what Google sees as your code, and so by setting an H1, h2 tag, you can kind of tell Google these blocks of text have more importance than the other ones.

Kina Robinett:

These are headers, and so by having keywords in those headers, that can also help your SEO. It can help with your search queries. If you have those relevant keywords in your header tags, at the very least you want to set it, because that's something you wanna set your H1 and H2 tags on every page, every blog, which again can be tedious, but Google's gonna be looking for that when they crawl your site. So that's something you wanna make sure you set up and make sure it's still relevant. You don't wanna just set it any of this stuff. You don't wanna just set it and completely forget about it. You wanna make sure it's up to date and you're keeping track of it all.

Tim Shoop:

So before we, I wanna talk about the rest of SEO, but I'm gonna cheers you guys because this is great. Are you not drinking anymore? It's fine, you don't have to. I finished all mine, so I guess what I wanna talk about now.

Tim Shoop:

So we talked about on-page SEO. We talked about the importance of the design elements and how you have to take all that time, like Kina said, to do the extra work. A lot of designers put the pretty website together. They deliver it to you as a business, because you can't see all the underpinnings that Kina's talking about, and that's where the majority of the time comes from. Right. So you gotta be careful about who you hire and make sure that's in the scope of work and in the contract that you sign, because a lot of designers will just hand you something that you think is the most badass website in the world, but it doesn't work. Functionally it works, but Google doesn't see it.

Tim Shoop:

So that's on-page SEO. Let's talk about SEO in general, off-page or however you wanna define it. So the first thing that comes to mind is Google and Bing and their profiles that you create on those. So let's start there and then I'll chime in and we'll talk about blogging and the importance of all these other things that you really have to be doing as a small business to stay ahead of your competitors. So let's start with profiles.

Kina Robinett:

Yeah, so Google business profiles have just since I've been here at SmarterWeb, I mean I feel like every day they're more and more important. They are the. When you make a search on Google contractor services near me, whatever it may be, a lot of times it's the near me searches. We call it kind of the map pack. The little map will pop up in your search with a list of businesses next to it and you click on that business. It tells you their phone number, website, about all these details about them. That's their Google business profile or if you're on Bing, that's their Bing profile, and those are extremely important.

Kina Robinett:

You've probably noticed that those show up before any other search results besides Google ads nowadays for the most part. So it's extremely important to make sure that not only is your profile built out, because you can set all that up and forget about it if you want, but that's not really gonna do, that's not gonna work for you. The same way that posting regular content to it will, updating your photos regularly will, Getting Google reviews will. Reviews are extremely important to those profiles and Google continues to add features to these business profiles that you can work within to help get your business profile higher up the rank for those and they're extremely, extremely valuable and a lot of businesses aren't really jumping at that quite yet. So I mean we've noticed it has so far been a lot easier not maybe not easier, but we can see results a lot quicker in those business profiles than in regular just regular or what they call organic search results, with the links to your website.

Tim Shoop:

And that's what your mastermind product does for your customers, right? So if they get a website in the full mastermind bundle package, you're not. You're doing a lot for them under that program and one of those things you're doing is maintaining that and driving blogs into those profiles. Correct, no-transcript the blogging into those profiles. You guys I mean you you custom build all those blogs for every specific customer. That has to be really tedious, since you're working across so many different industries, right?

Kina Robinett:

Yes, shelby. Yeah, we can definitely speak to that.

Tim Shoop:

Chime in Shelby, come on.

Shelby Payne:

It is very tedious. Like you said, we do have a lot of different industries, so you do kind of learn to be in all of those industries, which for me is fun because I get to learn all of these different businesses and how their customers think and what they want to see. So the first thing I try to do every time I start writing a blog is Kina, and I have already done usually by this point some keyword research, so we know what the questions their customers are asking, what they're looking for, what keywords this company is going for in Google, what keywords are working for them, and so I try to base off of those keywords and answer the questions for those clients that have to do with that, I guess. So a good I guess a good example would be, you know, mold inspections. That's a fun one to write about.

Tim Shoop:

Wow, that, yeah, that's an interesting topic.

Shelby Payne:

It is, but it's important and you know that's the keywords that you might be ranking for, and so we want to put out content that answers questions for the client, such as you know mold inspectors near me or questions about how to go about that, questions about how to clean up after you have a mold infestation. So we really do tailor those blogs to the customer and to their client base. How do you?

Tim Shoop:

curate that data? Do you leverage AI to do the research or do you leverage AI to write the whole damn thing?

Kina Robinett:

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

Tim Shoop:

why is that? Is that a bad thing? That's a bad thing, right.

Kina Robinett:

I mean, I wouldn't say good or bad, but I mean, you know Google. Google is also an algorithm based program and it can tell that you've used AI to write this blog. It's not going to give the same way.

Tim Shoop:

And they have to D rank based on using pure AI, because you've got to have human involvement.

Kina Robinett:

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

Tim Shoop:

So you can leverage AI to do the research, find out the pertinent facts, but you don't want to take it word by word, or or even take the whole thing it wrote. You just want to take the facts out of it and rewrite it correct.

Shelby Payne:

Right. I think if you were and I mean I'm sure all of us have played around with AI to see its capabilities and what it can do but if you were to just ask AI to write you a blog, it would be very repetitive and it would use a lot of words that humans just don't use when they talk to each other. So, yeah, for us I think it is very important to have that human touch, because you can tell when it's been completely written by AI.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah, and so we use AI to kind of. We leverage AI, let me say it that way, to kind of build out the foundation for our Nerds on Tap episodes, but we don't stick to AI on the. I mean, we've been all over the place here, but it's not all coming out of this. I mean because that's that's the importance of it is it has to be a human driven content approach, because your audience is human. It is not a robot.

Shelby Payne:

Right, absolutely.

Tim Shoop:

Well, this is some amazing stuff, ladies.

Kina Robinett:

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

Tim Shoop:

Why haven't you?

Kina Robinett:

I'm working on it.

Tim Shoop:

I will say Kina weighs like a hundred pounds, so you're excuse me if it's not a hundred pounds, but yeah, she's almost done with her second beer, so let's, let's talk about that. So we talked about portfolios or, I'm sorry, profiles. Yeah, I had two beers. We've talked about profiles. We've talked about the importance of blogging into that profile. What else is involved? Is there anything else involved with ongoing SEO?

Kina Robinett:

Oh, there's, there's a ton. It really doesn't. You know, the blogging and the content is extremely important. For sure to have fresh content and not just blogging too. It could be maybe you want landing pages on your website. We see that often for, like you know, a different landing page for a particular geographic area, if you serve different geographic areas or for a particular product. But there's I mean, there are lots of other ways to bring traffic to your site. One pop, not popular, but one piece that's very important are backlinks, where this one's a lot harder, for this is probably one of the hardest ones for businesses to implement because it's not up to you. Backlinks are links back to your website from other websites, so a lot of times this can be from directories like Yelp or, you know, even Google Maps.

Tim Shoop:

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 the chamber is going to link to your website. That helps.

Kina Robinett:

That does. It does help. And one thing to keep in mind with backlinks, google does like to, you know, see backlinks. It's helpful to have links back to your site, but you want them to be good links. You don't want to just go because there are services where you can go and pay a little bit of money for just a large quantity of backlinks. There's something called domain authority, which was actually, I think, created not created but mooseorg they put that together to kind of rank domains, rank websites based on you know the credibility of them essentially, and if you're, if you have a backlink that's not from a credible website, that's really not doing anything for you because Google doesn't trust that site. So why would they trust that link back to your website? It can almost count against you. So you want the right kind of backlinks to your website. The chamber would be a good one, because that's typically a very reputable website or a good magazine, and the better that magazine ranks.

Tim Shoop:

if it's linking to you, it can help like. Inc or even local, local uh trademarks that that might be specific to your industry would be good. Yes, yeah.

Kina Robinett:

And so that's a, like I said, that's a harder one for a lot of businesses to get because it involves, you know you, you can't really do anything about it. People are going to put their your link on their website. I mean, you can go out, there are things you can do to help with that. Um, you know link building campaigns that you can go on and that we do, but, um, it tends to be a little bit harder.

Tim Shoop:

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 want to dive into the last part. Obviously, there's more that goes into. You've got ongoing marketing campaigns that you run for your customers, that maybe an AdWords campaign that ties into a landing page and so on and so forth. We're going to save that part for maybe another show, but I do want to dive back into the data part of it.

Tim Shoop:

On your website it says you are a data-driven marketing company. Data guides you to help your customers. So data.

Tim Shoop:

One piece of data that I know about on your um, um smart board, uh, in your data analytics, is how those campaigns, what campaigns, are driving traffic to those, to the customer's website. So if you have three campaigns running for a customer let's say an AdWords campaign or let's say three AdWords campaigns all going to three different landing pages with Vogue numbers on them, all running back to you know, obviously running back to generate leads to the customer and you see that one of them is not converting but the other two are different, what would you do if I put you on the spot? What would you do. If you're sitting down having your monthly marketing meeting with that customer and you're going 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 put your focus on the other two campaigns, or you're going to create a new one to replace it, or you're going to probably compare that to the other two campaigns that are running. And I'm talking for you at this point.

Kina Robinett:

I'm going to let you.

Tim Shoop:

I'm going to let you go ahead.

Kina Robinett:

Well, I mean, you're, you're exactly right. Um, those are essentially the the different options that would be before us. We could just discount that campaign entirely, decide it's not worth our time or money to continue, or we could create a new one, um, which I think typically wouldn't necessarily be the way to go Not always, of course, but um. Or we could compare that campaign with the two that are working, try to figure out what, what it is about the other two that is that's working and what it is about that third one that's not. And luckily we have lots of analytics uh, you know insights into that in our smart board where we can compare.

Kina Robinett:

You know, is it if they all have the same budget? Is it a budget issue? Is it, you know, a landing page issue? Are there are people you can track and see with with like, if we're talking about Google ads campaigns, we can see that people are clicking on the ad and they're getting to the different landing pages, but maybe it's the landing page where they're dropping off. The landing page is loading so slowly for whatever reason people are dropping off. So there's so much that we can dive into to see. There's so many reasons that one can could be performing poorly.

Tim Shoop:

Um, you know, I love that you bring up load times.

Kina Robinett:

Yeah, it's extremely important.

Tim Shoop:

Extremely important and it's extremely important to understand the platform that you built the website on Um because, like, for instance, WordPress, that's the most popular platform. Wordpress, I mean, they sit on a database and it takes time to load that information. So, putting it on a faster um server and maybe even a dedicated server, because in most cases when you're hosting a site, you're on a shared server with dozens of other websites and obviously, when you're on a shared 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 Google sees.

Kina Robinett:

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

Tim Shoop:

So it's Google is going to de-rank you a little bit in their organic listings.

Kina Robinett:

Okay, Google it's not like that.

Tim Shoop:

So I had a question on here how does a small business stay ahead in the competitive digital marketing and landscape? Now, my opinion, after sitting in on the show, hosting the show, I should say is that they should all hire smarter. Well, um, because you ladies seem to really know what you're doing. Um, uh, I hear you. You have an amazing boss.

Suds:

He's okay.

Tim Shoop:

Thank you for that, um, but no, what, what, what, what can? So hiring you if they don't know what to do? Shop around, look at the different. There's a million gazillion marketing agencies out there. So the next smarter web unique is you limit your client count and that way you can give white gloves support to your customers. Correct, so you become. When they hire you for a website. They're not really hiring you for a website, they're hiring you, uh, to have an it. Basically, you become their marketing department, right.

Kina Robinett:

Right, we meet with um, we we either meet with or at least give the opportunity to every single one of our clients, no matter which service they're on, to meet with us monthly. Typically it's I mean, it's with one of us and um. You know we go over their analytics, we go over how they're if we have campaigns running for them, how they're performing. But we also we have lots of clients who need advice with other marketing pieces that maybe we don't necessarily handle. But you know, like, like, social media is a big one that we don't handle in house currently, but that, uh, a lot of people want advice on cause it's not an important piece and you know we can give them direction on that. We are almost like their marketing consultant.

Tim Shoop:

And that's social media. Is time heavy.

Kina Robinett:

It's very extremely.

Tim Shoop:

And that's why we choose not to do it, because we want to do what we really do best and we don't want it to pull away your time from what really matters to our customers.

Kina Robinett:

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 in particular for short, but a lot of places unless they're large enough, it's extremely difficult to do everything, especially when 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:

It's hard to find one agency to do it all and do it Well everything Um.

Kina Robinett:

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

Tim Shoop:

but so this is the last thing that before our next beer that I'm going to bring up is give me. You mentioned, um, we were talking, you were. You were getting really excited and passionate when you were talking about how you help customers and there's monthly marketing meetings. Give me a case study. I'm going to put you on the spot. I would love to hear a case study without mentioning any customer in particular on the air. Uh, a case study or a success story from your portfolio. Give me a. Give me a rave.

Kina Robinett:

Well, we do. We have a couple and I have noticed it does tend to be the customers that we meet with reg that take advantage of the full, you know. I mean we're basically they're marketing consultants, so the ones that take advantage of that do tend to be the ones that see the results either the quickest or the most.

Tim Shoop:

Um, but I know who you're talking about. I know which one you're going to talk about, because we're driving a lot of traffic to them. Right, they're getting. Their phones are ringing.

Kina Robinett:

Yes, and actually there's there's two in particular. We have one, um, they're, you know, essentially a contractor and they, um, they use us for Google ads. We do SEO for them and we built their website and their their website. They had nothing when we first started. They had no existing anything on their domain. Um, they're in a pretty highly competitive industry, but by uh, crafting content that's so unique to what you know their target audience is searching for and, you know, for their ads campaign ad campaigns putting the money into uh effective campaigns, not just putting the money into random places, setting it and hoping it works. I mean, we saw it for their on the SEO side. We saw them climbing Google within a matter of mall. I mean, it was very quick.

Tim Shoop:

That's amazing.

Kina Robinett:

Um, it blew my mind, you know honestly, because they came from literally nothing.

Tim Shoop:

Yeah.

Kina Robinett:

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

Tim Shoop:

You were making them pop.

Kina Robinett:

Yes, yeah, the phones were ringing.

Tim Shoop:

So I want to hear more about your portfolio and these amazing stories. Um, before that, I'd like to take a beer tasting break to refresh before we continue the conversation. Suds.

Suds:

All right. So the third beer of the night is a tangerine wheat ale from the lost coast brewery in Eureka, California. It's a refreshing citrus ale brewed with the perfect balance of wheat and crystal mall Tangerine wheat delivers a perfectly crisp finish for those hot summer days.

Tim Shoop:

So the first thing I'm realizing is there's a lot of fruity beer on today's episode.

Suds:

Well, I tried to get stuff that people that don't drink a lot of beer.

Kina Robinett:

He asks us what we might like.

Tim Shoop:

Are you liking?

Kina Robinett:

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 you bring it up.

Tim Shoop:

You know what?

Shelby Payne:

It smells really good too.

Tim Shoop:

This is like um, I don't know. That's an interesting.

Kina Robinett:

It is.

Tim Shoop:

It's, it's. It's almost like you're not drinking a beer.

Suds:

It does almost taste like a seltzer. Like a seltzer.

Tim Shoop:

That's. I feel like I'm drinking one of my wife's trulies or normal?

Suds:

What is the other one?

Tim Shoop:

Normal, Um, she, we have a whole cooler full of that stuff and and every now and then by the pool I break one out without anybody looking. Oh, that's say that on air. Um, no, but that, that is a tasty beer. Yeah, Um, tell us again where that's from.

Suds:

This is a. This is from the lost coast brewery in Eureka, california.

Tim Shoop:

So everybody we're going to tag them in? Uh well, let me. Let me step back, shelby is going to tag this when we post this episode, and she'll tag the beer companies, specifically this one as her favorite, so she's going to probably drop a reel about it or something.

Shelby Payne:

That's right. Keep a lookout.

Tim Shoop:

I'm calling her out on air to see if that happened.

Shelby Payne:

No, I can't let you down.

Tim Shoop:

I appreciate you, um, so let's get into your projects and let's talk about the future of web development. Um, I want to get into both of those topics to wrap up today's show, before we drink that very dark 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. Oh, you're not.

Suds:

Oh great.

Tim Shoop:

What is it? Licorice.

Suds:

Uh, we'll get to it. Okay, all right.

Tim Shoop:

Thank you, Suts. So I'd like to shed a spotlight on some of SmarterWeb's notable projects and collaborations. Um, we don't necessarily want to talk about names. Uh, you can find all those names on your website, at SmarterWebnet, under your portfolio. But if you would care to talk about actually, I guess you can say names on here, since it's on our website. Uh, I'd like to talk about some of these, some of these projects and what. What was one of the more thrilling projects to work on that really made you like just it just excited you.

Kina Robinett:

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

Tim Shoop:

I bet it was digitalboardwalkcom.

Kina Robinett:

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

Tim Shoop:

Didn't one of them always go? Is this done yet?

Suds:

Yeah, like every.

Tim Shoop:

I'm about to spit this out. Um, no, serious in all seriousness. So digitalboardwalkcom was a labor of love, wasn't it?

Kina Robinett:

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

Tim Shoop:

You've got two sales funnels in there. Yes, you pushed all that. Now I'm a little I don't understand. You pushed all the the deep information down into the footer. That's right. It's not up on the dropdown menus where people can easily find it. Why did you do that?

Kina Robinett:

So we are essentially trying to push people the direction that we want them to go, as opposed to having them jump around to a million pages that may not necessarily even answer the questions they're looking for. We created, we kind of we took a very different approach. We created pages that you know, based on who you are and what you're looking for, hopefully answer all of the questions you may have about in this kit for digital boardwalk, the managed IT services. So, as opposed to presenting you know, here's our IT support page, here's our cloud page, here's our cyber cybersecurity page, which you can still access those in the footer Um, we instead try to push people.

Kina Robinett:

You know, are you a small business? What do you need help with? Are you looking for? Do you need help with compliance? 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 you need? And here's a page on how we can help you, and then that also pushes them to. You know, if this is who you are and this is what you're looking for, here's something a specific, either resource or we have our IT maturity assessment on the site that can help provide you more direction or more information based on who you are and what you're looking for.

Tim Shoop:

So okay. So let's talk about one more. Um, let's, uh, let's talk about another project, um, that comes in as a runner up to digital boardwalkcom, and what you, um, what, what drove your passion in this other project.

Kina Robinett:

There is um, another project that, uh, you know, we started as a web design project with them and they are, uh, they provide, um, uh, at home care to, you know, seniors or, though, you know, those disabilities, people who just need care at home. And you know, like I said, we started with the website for them and that was a very enjoyable project from beginning to end, because they had a good handle on who they were speaking to, who their, their audience was and the message that they were trying to get across. They understood, you know, as we were going through the process, if we wanted to, you know, present certain messaging or certain visual elements, they understood a hundred percent. You know what we were trying to get across, um, and it was very, um, a lot of cohesion, I guess, is maybe the word I'm looking for from the very beginning. And they after, shortly after the website was live, they ended up signing on for our SEO services and Google ad services and have seen you know, I meet with them regularly seem to have um phenomenal results from them and, month over month, whether it's their, you know, they look for both customers, for their services, but also employees, and for both fronts.

Kina Robinett:

You know, we're, we're driving traffic, we're bringing them the business that they are, that they're looking for, and we also, you know, I met with them recently and provided, you know, a whole list of other ideas for ways that they can promote their business. So I'm very, I think the customers that want to meet regularly and are are as involved not involved necessarily, but are as passionate about, you know, their business. I mean that that's just such a great relationship that we end up having with them because we're just so much synergy.

Kina Robinett:

I guess is what I'm saying. They're, uh, we end up having a lot of synergy and great conversations about how they can promote their business.

Tim Shoop:

So, shelby, you're newer here at SmarterWeb and coming in from the outside and sitting down. You mentioned earlier in this show about the passion and the interactions we have with our customer base and how we approach it and how we love all our customers at SmarterWeb, um, and you have a lot of interactions with them as well, correct? Since you've been here.

Shelby Payne:

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

Tim Shoop:

Now, behind the scenes, you guys use a multitude of tools and technologies. I don't want to know about every one of them, because I know you have a tool that basically you know you have a tons of tools that do all kinds of specific things. How many tools do you guys have to manage at any given time to not just pull off web design but SEO and creation and content? I mean there's. It has to be at least one or two dozen.

Kina Robinett:

Yeah, there's a good bit Um that's. I mean, yeah, at least a dozen and they all. It's kind of hard to keep track because you know we set them up but they all funnel into smart boards. So for for sure, for the customer, there's only one thing that they're one portal that they're logging into Um. But once we have it set up, you know we utilize smart board on our end too.

Tim Shoop:

So how in the world is can a customer, without any upfront project fees or any major costs? I know all these web designers charge thousands of dollars all upfront, which you know. I've been a. I've been an entrepreneur and a small business owner a multitude of different businesses and projects for 30 years and I know when I'm in startup phase it's really hard for me to stomach uh, five, six, seven, eight or even more thousand dollars just for the website piece of it. How in the world, for $350 a month, can you do all these things and give them a full marketing department and, and and be able to have all this collaboration that solves a problem for them for only $350. Should, shouldn't you charge more?

Kina Robinett:

Maybe it's um. It is very interesting because you know, uh, typically the the model has worked where you pay thousands upfront for a website and then every time you want, like an update to the website or you need to whatever you may need through the site, you pay per update from there on Um, we took it the you know the monthly model and you know to not only make it easier for small businesses to stomach but also make it easier to maintain on, you know, ongoing. If we need an update, you're already, you're on our plan. We provide unlimited updates to our website customers so that as your business grows, your website grows with you. As we need to change things, because we see things in the data that need to be updated, we can just update them, and so it's a very um.

Tim Shoop:

You know, I guess maybe we're doing something crazy with the numbers to be able to diswing it, but I have a feeling at the end of this show you've you have a special announcement on some sort of special deal that goes beyond even that great price of $350 a month. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna let our, our listeners sit and wonder, uh, as we dive into a couple more quick things before we close out the show and before you introduce that special. So you may want to think about that special between now and then as well, because I'm putting you on the spot, but I know you can offer them something to at least give you a try, uh, um. So, behind the scenes, tell me, uh, and and I'm gonna try to get Shelby to talk a little more tell me about some of the challenges and creative solutions that you guys have encountered in anything you do behind the scenes and under the hood of what you do for customers.

Shelby Payne:

That's a great question.

Tim Shoop:

Collaboration maybe. Um you, so you don't have any challenges. Wow, so this is the company you should hire.

Kina Robinett:

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

Tim Shoop:

I'm pretty sure I know I think it's so customers have to it. Uh, at number one, designing a website it's a collaborative thing. It's like making a piece of art. Obviously, if you're making a piece of art for yourself, you know what you're going to create, but when you're making something for someone else in a website, website is technically a piece of art. When it's done, you have to have input, otherwise you're going to design what you want to design. So is the challenge that I'm seeking a customer that doesn't make themselves available During during the design phases and the discovery phases, because otherwise you're just guessing Right.

Kina Robinett:

Yes, that can be pretty difficult. Either they're not available enough or they're not available enough I guess I don't want to say too available but there's conflicting input, especially if there's different ideas on how things need to either look and feel or the messaging. People have different ideas. That's part of what we do is trying to condense, get to the bottom of what it is that's actually best for the business, best for the client and what meets the needs People want, the needs of everybody involved, all of the key players.

Tim Shoop:

For instance, content when you're collaborating with a customer and you're building it for a mold someone that does mold remediation obviously we're not in the mold remediation business you've got to have input to create that content. You can't just spit out content and go look what I create. They're going to go mold. What is this section on cheese? You know Absolutely I'm making a joke here, but you get the idea.

Shelby Payne:

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

Tim Shoop:

It's a compliance area.

Shelby Payne:

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

Tim Shoop:

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 when it comes to web development and emerging technologies in the web arena? Tell me what.

Kina Robinett:

We were talking about AI earlier. Ai is definitely only going to be a bigger and bigger part of not just what we do, but probably most industries. There are so many different ways you can leverage AI to either get a certain task done quicker or provide value. That wouldn't be possible with just human, without any type of AI. I don't know exactly the future of how AI is going to affect marketing in particular, but I know it's going to have a huge impact. I will say too I don't know necessarily that we stress the importance we talked about it, but the importance of making sure your website is responsive to different screen sizes, like mobile, tablet, laptop, desktop, whatever it may be.

Kina Robinett:

A lot of times we've been doing some of our projects where we build mobile first. We focus on the mobile version of the website first because people may not ever even see the desktop. They don't go on their phones so much nowadays, even in B2B, that mobile is just so extremely important. Making sure your site functions well on mobile is one of the most important pieces of building a website nowadays.

Tim Shoop:

When I look at analytics nowadays it's like I don't know if it's this far, but pretty close to 80, 20. 80% go into mobile first, 20 to PC, because it's in our pocket. We had a lot of great key takeaways from today's show, before we get into the special that Kina wants to talk about. We talked about the importance of web design. We talked about how SEO not only on page, but recurring SEO, including profiles on Google and Bing can affect your placement. We talked about your portfolio and we talked about the fact that for $350 a month, you can hire an entire team of marketing professionals to become your marketing department, which includes a website, ongoing updates, ongoing collaboration reports that they will discuss with you each month to decide what the next step might be in your business to help scale up your business and drive revenue. With that said, what special do we have for our audience today? Do you want me to help you with that?

Kina Robinett:

I could use a little help.

Tim Shoop:

Let's call in your boss. Good idea, hey boss.

Suds:

I'm here, I'm here.

Tim Shoop:

I think I'm feeling a little giddy right now and I feel like if someone has listened to this show to this point, they should congratulate themselves, because I'm not only willing to knock off 10% off of their first year of monthlies, but the first month will be completely comped. So you're basically only paying for 11 months out of the 12 and you're getting those 11 months at 10% off. But you have to mention nerds on tap and where can they contact you, Kina?

Kina Robinett:

I mean you can do our SmarterWeb. net, the contact form we all have access to. But if you want to contact me directly, it's just my name, so Kina K-I-N-A dot Robinett R-O-B-I-N-E-T-T at SmarterWeb. net, and just mention nerds on tap and we'll catch you that amazing deal that Tim just mentioned.

Tim Shoop:

All right, and with that said, I would like to thank you. Ladies, let's toast with the last beer suds. Why don't you tell us what we're drinking? And we're going to go ahead and call it a day by downing this like it's a shot.

Suds:

Uh, this is the white chocolate moohoo chocolate milk stout from the Terrapin Beer Company in Athens, georgia. It's a dark brown to black in color with aromas of dark chocolate. It has dark roasted malt flavor with hints of caramel and chocolate, rounded out by a sweet creamy finish. Yeah, it doesn't go with the other beers, but I saw it.

Shelby Payne:

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

Tim Shoop:

No, I said we have to down Okay.

Kina Robinett:

Why would you say that?

Tim Shoop:

You ready? Are we going to down it? Oh, ladies and gentlemen, smarterweb. net is going to down a really chocolatey beer that I'm not too fond of, but we're going to go ahead and cheers Shelby, cheers Kina, cheers Down that baby. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Nerds on Tap you can find us at thenerdsontap. com if you want to learn more about our other shows. Or go to SmarterWeb. net, mention Nerds on Tap, get the special. If you fill out the form, you can get 10% off, 11 months plus the first month free. And I'd like to mention our other sponsor, digitalboardwalk. com. That makes the magic happen. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Kina Robinett:

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

Tim Shoop:

What Did you guys down it?

Shelby Payne:

We did.

Tim Shoop:

All right well you have to.

Suds:

Yeah, you Salute, thank you, Thanks, y'all did great.

Tim Shoop:

Cheers. My fellow Nerds and Beer lovers. Stay tuned for more Nerds on Tap. Oh, and one more thing Help us spread the nerdy love and the love for grape roots by sharing this podcast with your friends, colleagues and fellow beer enthusiasts. Let's build a community that embraces curiosity, innovation and the enjoyment of a cold one.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Tim Shoop

Host