143: SEO Strategies for Local Businesses with Samantha Mabe

Dolly Delong: Welcome back to another episode of the systems and workflow magic podcast. I am your systems and workflow BFF and guide, Dolly DeLong. Today, I’m excited to introduce Samantha Mabe, another fantastic contributor to our SEO series or the summer of SEO. So Samantha is the creative director of Lemon and the Sea, and she designs thoughtful websites for consultants and health and wellness practitioners who want to find more right-fit leads and book more clients. With her signature framework, Samantha has developed and customized websites for all types of entrepreneurs. When she’s not digging into design and strategy, Samantha loves reading. Her goal is to read 200 books this year. I, way to go. You got this girl. I know you can do it. Adventures with her kiddo and trying to keep up with her Netflix queue. So, Samantha, I’m so excited you’re here. Welcome.

Samantha Mabe: Thank you. I’m excited to be here.

Dolly Delong: I’m thrilled you’re here. As you may know, we are doing this series this summer to help you dip your toes and become more confident in setting up systems, processes, and workflows for the back end of your business, especially when it comes to. So we’re calling this series the summer of SEO because, as small business owners, we all know we want to be the Google answer to our ideal clients’ inquiries. Whether online or local business owners, we should be on page one of Google. We should be searchable without spending much money on Google ads, meta ads, or whatever type of ads we should work on in organic marketing. This is where the power of SEO comes from. I am so excited to have Samantha on the podcast today.

We will be talking about SEO for local businesses, and I knew my listeners would want a little strategy session about this. Samantha and I are excited to jump into these juicy details, especially since I know a lot of my business owners who listen in are either in the beginning stages of their business or in the process of setting the stage. Like they’re learning how to run their own business. They’re learning how to wear all the hats and realizing, Oh, systems and workflows are essential, and I need to know, or they’re now in the messy middle, so they’re, you’re. Three, four, five, and then they’re realizing, Oh, I need some system and workflow to organize the back end of my business. So we’re meeting two different types of business owners, and I don’t want the listener to assume SEO is just for you. Whether you run an online business or have digital products, SEO is for everyone. And so I want you to listen in. Again, I am. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for a while, Samantha, because I have a local business. I wear two hats: Dolly DeLong Education and Dolly DeLong Photography, a local business. So, I’m excited to dig into Samantha’s points. So take it away.

Samantha Mabe: Yeah, I’m super excited. And your audience, even if you’re at the beginning, SEO is important to start now because it’s a long-term strategy that grows with you. For example, I have people finding my business from posts I made seven years ago that have just sat on my website.

Dolly Delong: That’s amazing. I love that. That’s just like the power of good content paired with the power of SEO. I love that so much. So I know you have three points you want to share with everyone, like how to get started with SEO and pair it. If you have a local business, how does one get started? I know SEO can seem and feel like a beast, but it’s very attainable.

Samantha Mabe: Yeah, so I think the first thing we have to recognize is a lot of local businesses, especially whether you have an actual brick-and-mortar location or just serving people in your area. We depend on referrals, so You post in the Facebook group; I need a chiropractor, and Everybody replies with Here’s who I like, And that’s how you pick, but I just looked up this stat this morning. Half of Google’s trillion searches everybody’s local questions, so no matter what your business is, people are looking for people locally, whether a doctor, a chiropractor, or a photographer. You know, whatever it is, because when you work with somebody, you have to find someone in your location, so You’re missing out on a lot of traffic if you’re not doing SEO for your business. You’re just depending on your inquiries and queries or doing something like the mailers we still get in my junk mail folder. I would also like to tell people to think of Google as another excellent reference for their business. It’s just another referral source. So you’re putting in some work, which will give you long-term results. People are searching for businesses near them, whether they type in. So here’s what people think I type in: I need a photographer near me or in this location. But even if someone were to type in a family photographer or chiropractor, Google would first give them results that are local to their location. So it shows you results based on at least where it thinks you’re located when searching.

Dolly Delong: Gotcha. No, that’s so good to know. So that kind of leads in to the other point we would discuss: How do we set up our websites? And how do we lay them out? Serve our area locally, like where, which is like a twofold question. I’m throwing this at you as a curve ball. Sorry, Samantha. I did not send you this question, but what if somebody is technically a local business and wants to serve clients worldwide? If that makes sense, how do they tailor their website to fit? Oh, I am like, let’s say we’re based. I don’t know why Cincinnati came in, but the word Cincinnati came in. So, let’s say we’re based in Cincinnati, but we also serve clients in different areas of the world or the United States. How do we do that? How do we make that possible?

Samantha Mabe: Well, I think the first thing to remember is that you can have your location on your website as far as where you should put it in all of the SEO stuff we will discuss. And if somebody wants to work with you, they will still reach out. Many photographers, especially in the wedding industry, travel for destination weddings. I want to say we’re located in this location, but we also travel worldwide. Many of my clients are in the health field, so we will focus on a specific state where they’re licensed and say they offer telehealth. While they can be location-specific, we also want to include the more significant area they serve, whether that’s everywhere or just a larger specific area.

Dolly Delong: Gotcha. Samantha, that’s an excellent example of your experience helping your clients. Be specific if you have clients who want to serve the whole state. Do you put the particular city or several cities? Then, in the meta description, we also serve the entire state. Like how does one break that down?

Samantha Mabe: I think it depends. You have to know how people refer to your area. So, I’m in Richmond, Virginia. Technically, I’m outside Richmond, but I would use Richmond, Virginia because everybody knows this area is Metro Richmond. People are going to drive 45 minutes. So you have to know how far people are from everybody to see you if they have to come to you in person and be what they call that area. So then I would include the location, whether it’s a specific city or if I should include everybody in the Chicago metro or Cincinnati area. Then you can also say all of Ohio or all of California. Sometimes, you would say licensed for these specific states for the people I work with.

Dolly Delong: Gotcha. No, that’s good. Okay, another question. I’m throwing curveballs at you. I’ve heard that you should be specific, and again, I am still learning and growing in so many ways with SEO. I will defer being a self-proclaimed SEO expert by any stretch. I have learned that putting keywords in each page descriptor on your website is essential; you don’t want to do keyword stuff too much. So, let’s say you’re sharing a page of your website, and then it auto-populates Cincinnati, like a health practitioner or a Chicago wedding photographer, whatever. So, then, what would you say to the growing business owner? Who’s yes, but I like, what do I prioritize first? What should I prioritize first?

Samantha Mabe: I always like to include some location when I write somebody’s site description.

Dolly Delong: Okay.

Samantha Mabe: If you are only going to see local people or people in a specific area, I would just put that—for example, Lemon in the Sea, Website Design, Richmond, Virginia. Then, I will list more specific areas in each page’s description. And I kindled it up as far as okay. What are the words people are searching for in this area? So, do we say California? Do we say worldwide? Do we say telehealth? Do we say destination weddings? Each page can have a slightly different version so that you can hit a wider area. But I always put that as the last part of the description. So first talk about what you do, and then you can say, you know, we serve clients in these areas.

Dolly Delong: Gotcha. No, that’s good. And then what would you do? Okay, I don’t know. I don’t think this is part of the questions. Again, Samantha, I throw so many curveballs at people. This popped into my head. How do you recommend to a business owner who says they’re finally getting started with SEO? How do they begin researching these critical terms, and how would people search for them? Because sometimes what we assume we are known for, people have no idea what, like how to search for; I live, part of my world is in photography, and nobody is typing in, no mom is typing in organic photos like because like I’ve seen like Photographers describe their style and. I tell my style as organic and joyful, with no mom who is tired out of her mind and is Google searching like I need a family photographer. They’re not typing in organic, joyful photographers like they’re not typing in those words. They’re typing in particular words like Middle Tennessee photographer and family photographer near me. How do you start searching and researching those key terms to put on your business pages, especially if it will be a local, locally sought-after business?

Samantha Mabe: The first place I usually go is to chat with GPT

Dolly Delong: Oh!

Samantha Mabe: Yeah, I will type in this, which is what the business does. If there’s a photographer and they have a particular style, how would you describe it? What would you say your location is, and then have it come up with a long list of about 30 keywords? You can’t just take those and put them on your website, But that’s a perfect way to get in the mind of somebody else, especially if you can tell it like, these are the clients that I want to work with and then what I do is I will go to Google. I have a plug-in called Ubersuggest on Chrome, so I’ll just type in some of those phrases that chat GPT gives me, and I’ll see, okay, A, does anybody close to what I’m doing come up? And B, what does Uber suggest regarding how much traffic those keywords get? And it will also give you a list of similar things people might be searching for, which I think is the most helpful. If you were to say organic family photography, Uber suggests just saying Light and airy. I don’t know if those are the same thing, but it’s going to give you terms people are searching for, and then you can use those because it’s a lot more essential to use the terms people are looking for rather than how you would describe your style or how you would describe your business.

Dolly Delong: Those are all excellent suggestions. I just have a feeling that, as we’re talking about the strategy, I’m sure there are going to be listeners who are like, okay, I know the importance of setting up SEO to be found locally for my clients, ideal clients, but then how do I look up those keys? Terms and keywords. And I love that you are utilizing AI tools to help you out. I also love what you mentioned, but don’t copy and paste it to your web browser or website; use those. Do further digging, like using other tools Uber suggests, and see how it compares. I love those suggestions so much. Thank you for letting me throw those

Samantha Mabe: Yeah.

Dolly Delong: questions to you. I appreciate it. Okay, so let me know. We very lightly spoke about how you need to include your location and website, but where do you include your location?

Samantha Mabe: Yeah. We discussed it in your site description, and you always want to have it there. Then, you should be able to edit your site and page descriptions separately; that’s the back-end piece. Then, you need to have it on your website or footer when designing it. That’s helpful for people. That’s one of the first places people look to have it on your contact page. You can have your address on your contact page, but you can also say I serve people in this area. You would like to have it in at least one of your headlines. So I wouldn’t say I want it to be on your homepage headline where you say like Tennessee photographer because that doesn’t help you stand out. But have it somewhere above the fold section on your homepage so people can find it. And then maybe on your about page, you could say, like serving couples in Tennessee, as part of your headline. So those are really. The most important places to have it, and then, as you blog, which everybody should be doing; I know we don’t like to hear it, but that’s a perfect place.

Dolly Delong: Be faithful, you all. We need to blog at least once a month, not every week.

Samantha Mabe: But that’s a perfect place to get those more comprehensive terms, as you can discuss. If you’re a photographer, talk about the specific location where this shoot took place. I’m sure all my clients are chiropractors, but they can discuss it. Sir, it’s allergy season, so come in to get an adjustment to help with that. You can mention your location there, so find ways to work it into blog posts. That is an excellent way to expand a little bit further. They’re not specific to this exact city or this precise location, but you can find ways to be location-specific in those posts.

Dolly Delong: I love that so much. When you say, okay, so I’ve been asking all of them, the guests, the podcast guests who are part of this SEO series, the summer of SEO, how often Do you recommend your clients to, have, some cadence for either blogging or creating, long-form content through, again, written form, blogging, YouTube, or podcasting? What is your recommended cadence for seeing the long-term benefits of SEO?

Samantha Mabe: If you’re starting, once a week is a perfect cadence—even if you batch them and schedule them out. If you’ve got a lot of that catalog of posts, which I do, I will try to put something out at least once a month to get Google to look at my site again. Something has changed. Let’s, let’s take a look.

Dolly Delong: Yes, I love that note. That’s a perfect reminder, and listeners like me, if you think I will stop talking about pillar content and its importance and how it adds to your SEO and strategy. I’m not going to stop talking about it. I will not stop talking about this podcast as long as I have this podcast. It’s so important. So, finding cadence and letting Google know something new has been updated is essential. Okay. So, we go back to our conversation: SEO for local businesses. You shared some great points about where to put it on your website, especially the location. What talk do you have from your perspective? Why does user experience matter for your local business, like your website? I’m probably not phrasing this correctly. Why does user experience matter?

Samantha Mabe: The user experience is like a whole field of study, which I did not study, but I think about it for businesses if you want a website where people can figure out where things are and what to do next. And it makes sense. And what I have found from all the businesses I’ve talked to, but even just conversations with people, is even if somebody gets a referral to your business from the mom’s Facebook group or their neighbor down the street, they are going to come to your website before they reach out to hire you. My mom did this the other day. She was looking for a new chiropractor. She asked in her neighborhood app group. And then she went to their website and texted me, and he was like, these websites are all terrible. I don’t even know if they’re still in business.

Dolly Delong: Hi Samantha, you have to do something about this. Send them your business card. Okay.

Samantha Mabe: So it’s essential not only that you have a website but that it’s up to date. It should also look straightforward to use and not like it was made in 2002. We want to make sure that it’s all ready to go. The other important thing is that Google and other search engines consider user experience in ranking factors. So, if you have a website that’s just a total mess, they won’t rank you as highly because they know that people want to go to a good website. They know that Google ranks websites higher if people stay on it longer or click from one page to the next because their job is to get you results, so your website has to measure up to that.

Dolly Delong: I do want to insert myself to listeners who now may be panicking and thinking, Oh great, I just started my business yesterday, so I guess I need to hire a professional website designer and gra, Like, all these things, I want to, like, Ease your mind. You do not like right out of the gate. You do not need to hire somebody professionally. I would say hire somebody to Do that again. This is my perspective: once you get to know your business, who you serve, and your ideal clients. Precisely what you want to do, then it would be a good time to invest in those more prominent investments for your business, such as hiring a web designer, hire, like branding photos, and all that stuff. But right now, you can still have a perfect layout with a template, and there are templates for everything. There are templates for every type of website host, like Wix and Show It, Kajabi, and WordPress. They are perfect templates, and they’re perfect layouts that will work with Google. And so I don’t want you to hear us say, well, I will hire somebody to charge me 20,000. Even if I haven’t made money for many clients, I will go in the red. We don’t want you to be in the red. so, know that you can do this with a template as well.

Samantha Mabe: Yeah, I agree. That’s exactly what I tell new business owners. You and almost every platform we think of make this pretty easy, whether it’s Squarespace, which is us, Kajabi, Wix, WordPress, or something like Divi or Elementor. All you have to focus on is the top thing you can control that Google is looking at, which is how fast your site loads. So, ensure your images are optimized—that’s the most significant factor. Hit the accessibility standards of high enough color contrast—that’s when everybody misses. Make sure your mobile design looks good. And then, make sure your call-to-action buttons are easy to find and transparent about the next step. As long as all of that’s in place. Everything else can come in the future, or, you know, we can work around it. Sometimes, if you go and you are like, my website’s not 100 percent what Google wants it to be, some of those are out of our control. So, we want to focus on what we can do.

Dolly Delong: That’s excellent advice. Is there anything else you want to discuss regarding user experience with SEO?

Samantha: I don’t know everybody about user experience. I think the biggest thing is to make sure. It’s obvious what your website is about, so what you do is make your location clear and make it easy. If you can sit down with somebody like your mom or partner and watch them use your website and see if they click on something that’s not a button, maybe that means you need to change the design. That’s a rapid and easy way to understand whether things make sense to where they’re located and what they look like. Yeah,

Dolly Delong: I am in the middle of separating both of my brands because I have Dolly DeLong under the umbrella. I have Dolly DeLong photography, but I also have Dolly DeLong systems and workflow education. Those don’t correspond at all. There’s no overlap. And so, I am in the middle of separating them and having two separate websites. It was getting to the point where I would have users come in with Inquiries for family photography, and they’d be like, I don’t need. What is the system and workflow? I guess I’m on the wrong website. This isn’t very clear. Or, people would come in for education systems and workflow education, and they’re like, is this like photography education? Is this? I don’t need photos. I need it. Like it, it was so confusing. And even like you said, Samantha, have your spouse, mom, or somebody sit down and click around. And even my husband was, yeah, I’m a little confused, too. And he is, like, sharp. He’s a very Sharp, intelligent man. He works on this because his background is in computer science. And so if he’s confused, I’m like, okay, I need to do something about this. And it’s not you all. It’s not fun. This is like backend work; sometimes, it can be draining for me, and I love backend systems workload, as you all know how passionate I am about it. But this has been like. It’s a very significant project for me, and It’s been eye-opening to see the importance of Samantha sharing user Experiences. It is substantial, and it’s like.

When you are confused, you lose, and I’ve been myself in the past two. How many people have I potentially confused and lost? Let’s not confuse people. Let’s have an excellent user experience and tell them precisely what we do, who you serve, and how you can get them from point A to point B. So, Samantha, these are all excellent points. I know we’ve been teasing this entire summer series, like about the systems and workflow magic bundle and the SEO edition, but do you mind teasing out just what you want? The resource will explain why people should consider investing in this bundle.

Samantha Mabe: My resource is an SEO audit specifically for local businesses. It will walk you through your website back and forth to ensure you’re hitting all of those SEO pieces, including the user experience and the design elements that are so important. However, giving you a checklist of good things and things you might need to work on can also be beneficial. But I think this bundle is so powerful. I saw the list of people you have submitting stuff and the topics, and I was like, this is so helpful because Everybody is covered here. Every topic you think you might need to know about SEO for most of us will be included. So I think it’s a really Everybodyource for people.

Dolly Delong: I’m selfishly excited for myself, too. Little did I know while I was planning. So, for every user, if you’ve been an OG listener since the beginning, I love planning a systems and workflow-related event at least once, if not twice a year. SEO, like this topic, came up. Way before, I knew I was going to separate my website, and now that I’m in the middle, I’m like, wow, this was all providence. Like no, I feel so giddy seeing all these resources. I’m having them, and I’m digging into them. I’m excited about it. Samantha, thank you for sharing this mini-strategy session with the listeners. Would you mind sharing how people connect with you, work with you, find you, and get you outside of the podcast?

Samantha Mabe: I am at Lemon in the Sea on TikTok, Instagram, and everywhere else. It’s a unique business name. So it’s easy to find me. My website is Lemon in the Sea, where you can learn about everything I do with websites and helpinhelpSEO.

Dolly Delong: Yeah. This is a random question, but since you work with clients on their website and brand design, do you offer templates, or do you do one-to-one work?

Samantha Mabe: I am working on some Squarespace templates right now. They will launch before the bundle comes out, so I’m getting some templates. That is my project right now.

Dolly Delong: Awesome. I love that so much. I’m excited for you. I will be sure to link your website to the show notes. So, if you are a Squarespace user, and as we mentioned earlier, don’t feel like you have to start your business right out of the gate with a professional brand design when you don’t know your business yet. So, grab a template. That’s a perfect place to start. I’m so excited. I asked that question, Samantha because I want people to templatize their businesses early on, make it easy, create a system, and then go from there. It’s awesome. I will be sure to link that in the show notes. So. If you want to learn more about the Systems and Workflow Magic Bundle, the SEO edition, that link will also be in the show notes. There is a waitlist. The week before the bundle goes live, something enjoyable and exciting happens. It’s a free event, and it talks more about SEO. It will be an incredible event, so I encourage you to get on the waitlist. And until then, next week, we will have a brand new episode for you. Again, it’s part of our SEO summer of SEO series. So, I’m excited for you to learn more about SEO and how to apply it to the back end of your business. So, until then, have a streamlined and magical day. You are a fantastic muggle, and I will talk to you all next week. Bye.