E197–Keeping Your House in Order - a podcast by Mat Siltala & Dave Rohrer

Oh sorry, we know Google has the wrong hours - so why not fix it? Oh sorry, that schedule/PDF on the site was from Spring Break and not Spring 2021 - then why is it still on the site and why wasn't the dates clear? Why are there no hours or photos (mini golf course on hotel's website) - hotels are awesome examples of doing this poorly. Dave found so many "bad" examples while on a recent trip.

Outdated Info = Loss of Business

You could be losing short and long term business based on how people react with your site, social profiles and more. It can be a pain to keep things up but for a user the goal is to make it easy for consumers to spend money with your business.

Photos, addresses, hours, etc. - this isn't about Local SEO. This is about having someone trust the information and understand what is open, where you are, and just what is going on. People want to get out, they want to travel but if they go out of the way to visit you and you are closed. Why would we try again?

Make it Easy

Show photos on your site. Let people see the seating, hours and just the most basic information. Hotels and Casino's are notoriously horrible about this. They tend to have one page "microsites" that give no information or help. Think about what questions visitors have and make sure your pages answer them.

Be customer service without having to be customer service!!!

Plan out Profiles

For whatever websites and profiles you have for your business, create a list. Not just one of social profiles but anything that has your hours, information, and reviews that you care about. Have a list and keep it updated so that you can easily go through a checklist to update hours, menus, and so on.

Full Transcript:

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt  and Dave roar. Hey guys, uh, excited to have you join us on another one of these business of digital podcast episodes. Yeah. I know that you have a, uh, you know, you have a reason why you came up with this one, but, uh, as we were chatting, as we tend to do before we wrap up.

Uh, it got me thinking about how important this topic was. And basically, um, it may be tedious for business owners to go in and make little updates, uh, to Google with the correct hours, or if they have wrong hours and fixing it, you know, you know, what are your hours for spring break or this or that or whatever.

And I know that, you know, this idea came to you from a recent vacation that you were on, but it got me thinking Dave, about how, you know, I recently. Uh, took a trip to the big island and, uh, um, this was like, uh, uh, towards the middle of may I think. And, um, you know, there were still a lot of COVID well, I mean, there's still to this day, a lot of COVID restrictions going on on the Hawaiian islands.

And so it was no different when we were there. And so this was a big deal because, um, when we were going to make, um, reservations or we were seeing if certain things were open, Um, you know, it, it made a difference of where we booked or where we ate or what we did or who we called, because, um, if I could see that a business owner hadn't really touched their accounts in a while, or didn't give any kind of COVID update or is there any kind of outdoor seating area?

Are we still open for outdoors? Uh, take out or we, you know, like exactly how are we doing it all? Um, you know, those businesses got passed up and they got overlooked. And then also it was frustrating. Cause there was some where, you know, they would say one thing on the website and then, then we did get to their place and, um, it was completely different or you had to have a reservation, but they didn't say anything on their listing that you had to have a reservation or you'd be turned away.

And so that's the kind of stuff that frustrates people and that's kind of stuff that gets negative reviews written, uh, about you. And so that's kind of just was, was my intro to this and my experience, uh, with this Dave and I just found it so much easier. We are, um, to be, you know, to what I've gone through Google.

And when I'm looking at, uh, you know, where we're going to eat and all this kind of stuff that I was talking about, I just found it. So. More refreshing when these businesses, uh, we're taking that time and going through that a little bit of extra effort.

Dave Rohrer: [00:02:47] Well, and it's part local SEO. You could say it's local SEO, but it's also just making it easy for me to give you money and to shop there, to support your business.

Matt Siltala: [00:02:58] Exactly. I'm trying to

Dave Rohrer: [00:02:59] give you money. People I'm trying to come and, you know, visit your, your, your restaurant, your business, your miniature golf. Uh, you know, water park, whatever it is, you know, and if you don't have hours listed on your website, or like you said, I would notice that I would have to go to.

Different places to find a pictures and different places to find hours. And then the hours would be different and the address would be different. And there's no consistency. This isn't just for, you know, your Google. Okay. You know, to be in the map pack and your local SEO. This is for me, the user who's like, where the heck are you?

What are your hours? Are you even open

Matt Siltala: [00:03:47] well and, and making it easy for the thing that you just said that made me think of it. Is, if you have multiple locations in overlapping areas or certain areas make it, like, make it very clear on your listings, which area this is that because there were several of them where we made a reservation and we, we did everything.

We did our due diligence and we tried to figure out the address and things like that. But the reservation that we made ended up being in the town that was like 15 minutes north, that location, you know what I mean? And so it's like, that's the kind of frustrating stuff,

Dave Rohrer: [00:04:24] but yeah, we, we needed a coffee one morning while my wife did.

And on the way somewhere, it was like typed in Starbucks. And as we're about to pull into where it is, she was like, yeah, this Starbucks is in that hotel. Not go into that one. She was like, I want one with the drive-through and I want one with blah, blah, blah. Because the hotel was. Don't have whatever, they don't do something.

The

Matt Siltala: [00:04:50] good news though, Starbucks. Right? So you found one on the other corner? No, just kidding.

Dave Rohrer: [00:04:54] There was one, two or three miles down the road somewhere, and it wasn't actually out of the way. And it was actually the one we sh it should have taken us to because this one was out of the way, way to go. I don't know what if it was apple maps or Google maps, whatever, whatever maps we were using bad didn't work.

It didn't help us that morning too much. But yeah, there's like knowing if it was in. A hotel was something that would have mattered. Um, there was one place where we were trying to play miniature golf, and we were like, I had five different miniature golf places. We were trying to figure out one where's the location?

What are the hours? How much does it cost? You know, um, how busy do we think it is? Is it even on the way from where we think we might be going? And some of the places just didn't have a lot of information, you know? And it's like, you're not making it easy. Why do I have to go. To your Google page, you know, look you up in your Google

Matt Siltala: [00:05:52] and I find it

Dave Rohrer: [00:05:53] very hard for your people listing to get your hours when it should be on your website.

Matt Siltala: [00:05:59] Well, yeah, and I find it very hard to give my money to people that make it, you know, or not very hard to, it's very annoying to give my money to people that make it hard for me to give it to them is

Dave Rohrer: [00:06:10] what I've tried to say. And what's funny is the worst offenders of this. Yeah. Casinos and big hotels. Like they don't treat each of their little restaurants and you know, the little sundry place, the little deli or, you know, place, you can get coffee or like they don't treat them as separate entities or separate businesses.

They just treat them as one page. And you can't find anything

Matt Siltala: [00:06:34] for me. Yeah. I'm so glad that you said that because that was one of my biggest frustrations at the resort that we were staying at, trying to find any information. On Google maps about, you know, there was like seven different types of restaurants or cafes or whatever in the resort, the resort wasn't giving me any good information.

And I was trying to go to Google and yeah, exactly what you were saying. Like, that's a, that's a very good point. And it's something that I guess if any, um, SEOs or any marketing people that are doing this kind of work for major resorts or hotels, you know, that's something that they could, uh, Probably the content sucks.

Dave Rohrer: [00:07:14] Sucks, sucks, sucks.

Matt Siltala: [00:07:18] But then again,

Dave Rohrer: [00:07:20] anything on it, you create such limited crappy pages for them. Um, well, and the other thing, throwing hotels under the bus, but also businesses in general, how old when's the last time you updated that piece? Yeah, that menu from 2017, even though you've upped prices and you've dropped five things off the menu.

Well, especially

Matt Siltala: [00:07:42] when you call up trying to do takeout and you're ordering some they're like, um, we don't serve that. Well, it says on your menu, that's on your web. Oh really? Oh, we haven't updated that,

Dave Rohrer: [00:07:51] that hotel. The based on me doing some research on some of the activities on the weekend, because we were debating about what we were going to do on the first day there.

And it was a Saturday. I'm like, well, we could go see movies. We could go to a theme park. We could do. And I was like, oh, there's all these activities going on around the hotel on that Saturday. Oh, okay. I get there. And I start asking them about it that night and like, whoa, we were looking at for this and this.

And we wanted to see what time they were like, well, where did you find that I'm like on the website? And I scroll to it. And eventually I find the PDF and they're like, oh, well that was from spring break. Well, let me look at the page on the website. It doesn't say anything about spring break. Doesn't say anything about spring break in context around the PDF.

Doesn't say anything about spring break or dates on the PDF because I looked, it just said spring at the hotel didn't have dates, didn't have any sort of context that it was not, you know, during spring, not spring break, true things like that, where they just completely didn't update and drop them.

Matt Siltala: [00:08:55] Well, now I know why, when you were telling me how much you loved, um, quote, unquote, love.

Your theme park, theme park experience with universal. Now it's all making

Dave Rohrer: [00:09:07] sense. Well, this was a hotel. This wasn't even that place. Well, I know that. And

Matt Siltala: [00:09:10] that's why I'm saying it's just adding to

Dave Rohrer: [00:09:12] a reverse stations and your last there was supposed to be sorry. And then there was some things like, there was some of those things, they're like, oh, well we do do this and this on the web, you know, where did you find it on your website?

Wayne last week? It's still there now look at my phone. Oh, oh, well, that's wrong. Well, it's been wrong. It's like spring break, according to you was a month ago. So this is over a month old. Oh, well, yeah, we should probably take that down. No kidding.

Matt Siltala: [00:09:40] Okay. Well, and a lot of them too, and I've noticed like, especially in Hawaii, um, they were allowed to be open, but they could only be open like certain days or something like that.

I can't remember exactly how it worked, but like, so you wanted to make a reservation on a Sunday or you get there on a Sunday. And it shows that they're open. And so you're trying to call, and then anyway, long story short, you Fe you find out that that's one of the days that they're closed because of COVID, but they haven't said anything about it.

And so like, that's the kind of stuff that needs to be addressed. That's the kind of stuff that's frustrating.

Dave Rohrer: [00:10:11] And just think about any, any place you keep your hours, you know, if depending on what type of business you are, if you're a restaurant or, you know, even some sort of accountant and you, you know, have different.

Um, restrictions or rules or days open. Yeah. Or, you know, um, or even if you, you know, you know, you're going on a vacation or, you know, the event that there's something that happens where it takes you away unexpectedly and you need to leave town and you're the only person at your company or your, your, your accountant agency or whatever it is.

Um, you know, short of emailing people. What if someone else wants to come and give you business and you have an updated things in your club? Yeah. Make a list of everywhere you have profiles. Keep that list somewhere. So if you have a Yelp profile, a TripAdvisor profile, you know, a G2, um, you know, again, app Facebook, Twitter, anywhere, you know, your Google, my business, your website, keep a list of sites and places that are relevant to you and your business.

So that in the event that you need to update something for COVID or update something for an emergency or update something for whatever reason, you know, seasonality, maybe you change, you know, you have different like certain restaurants around here have different hours. They're open a little bit later.

Or, you know, during the holidays you can change things back and forth, keep a list so that you know where to go and what to update when you need. So you can keep up with the Joneses and keep us from, you know, whining about you on everything and saying, well, we tried to go there and I've actually seen a lot of reviews that aren't, some of them are nitpicky about, you know, they didn't have staff.

It was a bad experience. And it's like, come on, people are just reopening. They don't have full staff, give them a break, but I don't give a break on the, we went, their website said there are open. Yeah, no, that's all on you. Well, I was

Matt Siltala: [00:12:15] going to say we've been, you know, we have been doing a lot of the whining part of it, but, uh, let me just, you know, a couple of things that I noticed that we're good.

I know that when, um, we were recently in California, um, we would do research, same thing to figure out. No, cause again, they, this was before more restrictions were let let up. And I know that certain days they, you know, couldn't be open or they had to restrict that. Something to that. But anyway, we were doing our research and I, and I would really appreciate those that, you know, and their Google listings that will go and take the time.

There's an area where you can make a note, like a message from the business owner or whatever it might be, where, Hey, we have outdoor dining, we can keep this much people. Usually these are the busy times, or, and then I liked that they would include pictures and showing like what they would do for keeping separate sections.

Yeah. Anyway, you could, my point is you could see those business owners that took this part of it that we're talking about serious, and it made it much easier on people like me or people like Dave that are on vacation or that are looking, um, to go to places, get food, do things, whatever it might be made it so much easier for us.

And it made it so much more of a, of a pleasurable, you know, more pleasurable experience. And, um, you know, those kinds of places I tend to tip better too. Those are just my thoughts on it. Final thoughts.

Dave Rohrer: [00:13:41] It's just making it yeah. For travelers in general, if I don't know the space or even if around here, you know, it's like, if I want to go somewhere new or if we're not sure what's going on, like it should just be common practice to update those things.

Also. Why don't you have that basic information on your website? Why don't you have it everywhere? So whether I'm looking at your website, if I can't find misses, you know, back to. The hotels and those types of places, if you have multiple like, locations like that, or if you just have multiple locations, period, do you make it easy for people to understand what the hours are for each of the locations?

I I've come across websites that have like two or three restaurant locations. And it'll just say the address or the hour, it'll say the addresses for all of them and then the hours. But then you come to find out, especially with me and my. One is a taproom and they only serve food until this time, but it really wasn't mentioned on the website.

Well, yeah, that's the kind of stuff I'm talking about. All three of their locations have food. Great. Or this one has food, but it doesn't say that they stopped serving food one or two hours earlier. And not when they close, I'm like, oh, well I get there, you know, 10 minutes after the last call for food thinking I can get food and oh, look, I can't yet.

There was nothing on the way. The only reason I noted is because as I walked up to the door, it says it on the door. Well, why wasn't that on the website? Like anything you would have on your menu and on your store front, you know, those questions that Google asks you and that, you know, Facebook asks you, it's like, what are your hours?

What's your address? What's that stuff make all of that consistent and easy to find.

Matt Siltala: [00:15:28] Now, listen to everybody too. So people don't yell at us. Just so people don't yell at us like, and also we understand there's staffing shortage issues right now. Like we get it, you may not have time, but we're just trying to help you understand and make some time for this because it is super important.

Eventually things will get back to normal. Eventually people will want jobs. Again, people will be staffed again, things will go back to how they were. And so, you know, even if you remember this conversation that we've had right now, then make sure that you're doing. You should have

Dave Rohrer: [00:16:02] a list of all of the places that you need to monitor anyway.

So if you don't monitor your Facebook, your Yelp, your Twitter, your whatever, you don't ever think about that one. Why do you have them? Yeah, but you know, just think about the different places that in the event of, you know, you having to close or change hours, where do you need to change it? How do you change it?

Um, and I'm not saying, you know, I expect you to go. Every single website that takes that, you know, scrapes from the data centers, that there are from four square and there's four different through four different or three different, I think one got bought. I think there's three different ones differently.

Yeah. Uh, data sources that you can use, like a bright, local, Moz and stuff, and, you know, spit it out there. And your ex does it too. Um, But I'm not expecting every single one of those to get propagated immediately. I'm talking about the big ones that most people and you. Yeah.

Matt Siltala: [00:17:02] Most people are going to either look at Google

Dave Rohrer: [00:17:05] or Yelp TripAdvisor type place.

Matt Siltala: [00:17:08] Probably 99% of it is Google and Yelp.

Dave Rohrer: [00:17:11] So yeah. I mean, if you change it in the big ones that you regularly monitor and get business from interact with. Yeah. Just update those, but have that look. So, you know where to update things in the event that you do need to change your hours in the event that you do need to change something.

We have it, and you're not going to do it and update your PDF

Matt Siltala: [00:17:34] there. What Dave says

Dave Rohrer: [00:17:37] context to it. Darn it. That was, that was the thing that when, when they told me that, oh, that was spring break. I was like, literally nothing on this thing. So spring break, nothing on that page set during break, it was like activities for the school.

Matt Siltala: [00:17:50] So please guys stop frustrating date myself.

Dave Rohrer: [00:17:56] And now I'm like, uh, hold in my hands. I'm going. Sorry. They suck at marketing. Like how do you explain that to a seven year old? Sorry. They lied

Matt Siltala: [00:18:08] for Dave Roth, Northside metrics I met. So it's a little bit avalanche media and thank you for reals guys for joining us as always reminder, we were.

Um, iTunes go and give us a five star review. Um, it helps. We love it. And, uh, speaking of reviews and all that stuff. Right? Yup. See you guys later. Bye. Bye.

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