Small Business Websites Need to Do More Than Exist

Matt: [00:00:00] Small business websites need to do more exist. What do I mean by that? Of course, they have to exist to benefit said business, but the small business website formula has changed over the years Very, very roughly, very, very briefly, 'cause we're gonna dive deep in this episode into this. We used to recommend sort of a five-page, what we call the standard small business website.

Get your About Us page, your homepage in there, Contact, et cetera, just those basic pages. And then slowly but surely, SEO changed. SEO started to become a different animal, and so we'd recommend things like blogs and writing content and things like that. And now we have all this AI SEO or AEO, [00:01:00] GEO, all that nonsense. I'll probably just say A- AI SEO to make it easy. Maybe I'll use some of those other terms here and there. But the point is, is that the landscape has changed, and I think that with that landscape change, a lot of people think, "AI overviews are here, it's over, we're gonna throw the baby out with the bathwater, small business websites are dead."

And I think that we're just at yet another stepping stone. We've been at a coup- we've already had a couple, at least in the, the, throughout the course of Mike and my career, and I think we're just at yet another step. And so I wanna share with you what I'm recommending w- to our customers, what other people have already mentioned, such as we had an episode with Nat Miletic not too long ago, and I've also had several conversations with other people, and the list goes on and on, about what we should be doing.

So if this sounds interesting to you and you wanna support the show, you can go and check us out on our Patreon, leave a review or rating in your podcast app, join us in our Discord server, or share this with your friends. And if you would like to learn how to code and take some courses to do so, you can learn how [00:02:00] to code on Scrimba. There are... They have some free courses, but they also have a pro plan to allow you to access some more premium courses. In that pro plan, you can get up to 20% off of that pro plan if you use our link. That link will be in the show notes, as well as the show description with full details on how it works in the show notes on htmlallthethings.com. And so Mike, I got... I'm just gonna dive right into this topic, but I'm excited to share a little golf thing that happened to me recently, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that. so I, uh, my, my l- the latest club that I've learned is the driver, so it's my weakest club right now, to the point where I, I bought a modern driver and broke it 'cause I was miss- like, just towing the absolute crap out of it. And so I was like, "Okay, I'm going back to a '90s club where I can dent it," 'cause '90s drivers are, I believe they're aluminum, and so it'll, it'll just dent. And let me tell you, that thing, that thing's dented and all chipped up. That's good. That's the point. I literally paid $2 for it and then [00:03:00] got it re-gripped, and it's a training club.

That's what I call it. I started getting better and better with the driver, but still inconsistent. It's still my most inconsistent club. But I started this thing where I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna just go..." I've, I've never messed with tempo. I've always messed with the setup and the form and all these technical things, but I've never messed with the tempo. And so I was going out with a friend, a couple friends And I was like, "I'm gonna, I'm gonna work on my tempo today." I don't know why I thought that. And there's a really nice course near us called Dragon's Fire, I, uh, won. I beat them all for the first time ever, and my drives looked terrible. They were super consistent though.

And what I mean by looks terrible is they're not this PGA nice little curve, whatever. It's just like get onto the fairway, get onto the fairway, get onto the fairway. And what I was trying to say to the guys there, 'cause they were like, "You used to hit it further," but I was like, "Yes, but I used to also hit it into the woods." And I was not in the woods quite literally all day on the driver. I never lost a ball off the, off the tee box. And I, what I figured [00:04:00] is as I do the same tempo, I will get... That will become mundane to me naturally, and I will naturally do it faster, and that's exactly what started happening just in the matter of two weeks. But, and this is the little fun fact. So I was watching TikTok, and I got this clip from Bryson DeChambeau, and he used to always say something like, hit it as hard as you can. That's the, that's the most important thing in golf." But there was a clip of him clarifying that, and what I got from that, and I'm not a pro, so I might be misinterpreting it.

But what I got from that is you grip the club as hard as you possibly can. That's something I'm not doing, you swing as hard as you possibly can, but it's not about rushing, 'cause that's gonna mess everything up. you do is you go as fast and put as much force effectively as you can on the same plane that is working for you, so on that same sort of curve that's working for you. so I've never really gripped a club so hard that it, my hands hurt, but I did it uh, drove... Didn't, didn't hit the green, [00:05:00] 'cause my aim was slightly off, but drove the distance of the green on a par four. And it sounded like a gunshot, and I wanna be clear this is a '90s driver, like a dr- '90s $2 driver that I got. Um, so I'm, I'm a revolutionized man now. I'm gonna try that. I tried it with a, a similar method with a, a five iron as well, and it, uh, it kinda worked. But, uh, I don't know if I like it for the irons, 'cause my iron work is actually okay. So anyway, just a little, little golf tip for, tidbit for you there

Mikhail: I, I, I thi- I think it'll become a thing if you can do it like three or four times in a row, three or four golf, like golf sessions in a row. Because for me, whenever I was driving and I was learning how to drive, and I suck at it now because I pretty much don't golf, but there was a time when I was playing more golf.

I, I would have a really good driving day, and then the next day would just be garbage. Or I would have even a good driving week, and then the next week I couldn't get it consistently up. Because like I, I, I don't know what it is with me and driving, but it's a [00:06:00] feel thing and it's a me- it's a head thing.

Like it's in my head. It's always in my head. It's 100% in my head, and as soon as I have one bad drive, I think I just falter and I start to question myself, and that was, that was it. So I'm hoping that you're past that point and now like next n- you know, next few times you go out you're gonna be the same place.

But God, driving was such a pain for me

Matt: I, I'm at a point where, like, ob- obviously I'm still an amateur. I'll still

Mikhail: Mm-hmm.

Matt: and things like this, but learned that the only shot that matters is the one that's coming up, so I've, like, learned to, like, shake off bad hits. Not perfectly, we're all human here, but, not perfectly, but I, I've learned that.

And then I've also learned ways to my swing even when I'm out there. I notice this is happening, I know to change this. If I know this is happening, I know to change this. And oftentimes I have a fallback. be like, "Okay, I gotta go back to this. Even though this is a worse method or less potential distance, I need to hit this straight," or what have you. So I have enough of a tool set now, and I [00:07:00] understand... Like, I understand things to the point now where I'll look and be like, "Okay, I've never actually hit this type of shot, but I know I need to do it this weird way to get the shape," and I can actually kinda do it. I'm not shot-shaping scratch golfer, I wanna be clear. Um, like, I'm still shooting, I'd say... Well, I'd say, like, between 90 and 105. Like,

Mikhail: Okay

Matt: there's a 15, there's a 15, uh S- stroke difference, which is kinda crazy, but n- yeah, like that-- I'd say that- that's where I'm at, especially when I'm at an unknown course, and then also depends if, uh, beer is involved. but, uh, moving on from golf, you're here for the, for the coding stuff.

You're here for the small business stuff. And, uh, I mean, let- let's, let's jump in here because I, I wanna talk about small business websites and, and what I'm, what I'm recommending for, for clients now. So like I, I've, I said, if you're new here, I've, uh, said this a million times, but I'm, uh, I'm, I'm the guy who deals with most of the small to medium businesses that we [00:08:00] deal with.

So I've kinda become a small business specialist, I guess, to an extent, I basically take their, their needs and their wants for a website and translate it down into, you know, what it, what will hopefully work for them and work for their business. And for years and years and years, I'd say approximately ten years ago, it's probably more at this point, maybe 15, uh, something like that, I would say that it was really, really standard to have what we would still call a standard small business website. And this would be something that's very foundational. You have your homepage, you have your About Us page, and maybe your team on that page as well, where you, you know, show all your team members. have your products or your services, and then you have, like, your contact page. And sometimes there's, like, another page in there, like a, a landing page that you reuse, and you change the content on for a sale or something like that.

So it's about four to five pages, that's, you know, generally what we used to build and still build for some clients. And then you could, you could build on that idea [00:09:00] a little bit. So maybe you would add e-commerce as that started to get more popular. Maybe you would add something like a store locator, um, if you're big into brick-and-mortar locations, and you're with a bunch of bun-- with a bunch of partner loc-- uh, retailers.

So say for example, you sell at Canadian Tire and Home Depot, and those type of things, you would list the retailers that you're in. Uh, maybe you would list your distributor list if you're more B2B, and so you might be like, "Oh, you can buy my products at this IT distributor," because maybe you're selling some sorta computers or something.

And then if you yourself have a, a storefront, you would list your hours, directions, location information. Now, this sounds very mundane, and you're probably like, "Matt, why are you mentioning this?" The reason why I'm mentioning this is because having a really kinda clean, easily readable and findable website like this where things are nicely labeled, and they're accurate, up to date, and it works, it's responsive, so it works on mobiles through desktop, mobile screens through desktops. is, this gives you a professional enough website to give [00:10:00] you credibility. And that's, that was the case back then, and that's the case now But I would say this is sort of like the baseline now of just existing, and the point of this webs- or the, of this episode is that a small business website needs to do more than just exist. And it's been this way for a while now. So what we started to do, I wanna say, like s- I, I'm just throwing out years that are off the top of my head. These aren't gonna be necessarily accurate. I'm gonna say, like s- five to seven years ago, something like, something like that, we started recommending, like, a different layer.

So I'd say, like, layer one is the website's kinda largely a digital brochure. It's that, it's that small, you know, it's that small business standard website, very utilitarian and all that. then you want this, this, this second layer is you want the website to evolve. So we started to recommend that people start using their website as a discovery engine. basically, what would happen is, let's just say you ran [00:11:00] a hosting company. It's something on the top of my mind. So a hosting company. You might write a blog post, and this is in fact what we'd largely recommend is, hey, you need a bunch of content, and you need to start doing some keyword research, or we can help you with that, and you need to start writing in a way that, I don't wanna say exploits, but works with, let's say, the SEO of the day 'cause those Ethio- SEO methodologies change. And basically what you're doing is we're, we're telling you to have your static five to six pages still, but now you have this ever-evolving blog that's constantly has content, and people are gonna discover you. So for example, you're a hosting company. might look up and say, "What is a VPS?" might have the best article on there.

You show up in, within the first few results on Google. You click on... Someone clicks on that. You write some facts about what a VPS is, how it works, what the cost is, all that stuff, and then you have a little recommendation for them to use your [00:12:00] services or sign up for your newsletter or whatever, and you're kinda funneling them in. So you're using that website as a discovery engine. You want people to discover you online. come in, and you convert them into leads. technical SEO is a big part of that, you know, using your clear titles and your, interlinkings, and you're trying to get some backlinks in there going. You're making sure that you, you have good keyword research.

You're making sure that you're updating articles that need to be updated. Uh, you're making sure that answers are, hopefully, although many websites did not do this and still do not, have the answers above the fold and things like that, clear answers, making sure you have accurate information, all these things. So again, like, having all your T's crossed and your I's dotted, you're at this second layer. are Again, g-gain-gaining that cr- that credibility again. Just like that small business website, it's like baseline credibility. Now it's like you have another layer of credibility. You have another way for people to discover you, and they're not just [00:13:00] seeing sort of a five-pager, like a quick five-pager. And I think that this is still important, and I feel like this is actually the layer, 'cause I'm gonna talk about a new layer soon, but I think that this, this, this second layer is something that a lot of people are actually questioning right now because of, 'cause of AI tools. AI Overviews have come in, and it'll explain what a VPS is. They'll come- it'll come in and it'll, it'll explain what a VPS is and to build one yourself, or maybe it will suggest a few different places, and you will maybe get a click. But as we've talked to va-various SEO experts and different guests on the show and done our own research, we're kind of moving toward a zero-click future, or at least a less-click future. And now you're no longer necessarily getting the click every time on your VPS article. Someone might be getting a snippet from your VPS article right on Google, right on the SERP. And so that discovery is still important. [00:14:00] But I would like to say that a part of this discovery engine part, like you, like you, you want the click, you're not necessarily gonna get it, but now the platform, so Google itself, is actually delivering stuff.

And so as a part of this discovery part, and this was pre-AI Overviews as well, but it's still important today, we would also recommend that people with appropriate businesses would sign up for the Google, Google Business Profile, or commonly known as Google My Business. I think that they may have retired that name. But the point is, is that you want to show up in as many places as possible, and y- we're trying to bring people in. So now you have your SERP, have your AI Overview on your SERP, you have your Google Maps, you have your Apple Maps, and you're still using that layer two. You're still using the website as a discovery engine.

You're trying to bring as many people into your business as possible to see what it is that you sell, what it is that you have, what do you [00:15:00] offer? 'Cause some places will offer, let's say, industrial equipment. they only fix it. Maybe they only sell it. Maybe they do both, right? Maybe they have a licensed partner that does the maintenance, and they're just the salesperson. And your website is your source of truth. the one that can kinda set the record straight there, let everyone know, including the AIs With the Google, the, the Google My Business, I'm probably gonna keep calling it that 'cause it's been called that forever, but with the Google Business profile, with the Google, Google My Business, extremely important, especially if you have a brick-and-mortar location. you want to make sure that people know where you are, and people are g- people use Maps as a search engine. They'll look up food near me, car repair near me, you know, coffee shop near me, and if you fall into any of those categories, you wanna show up there too. It's not enough n- now to just say, "Oh, I, I wrote an article on, on, on the best espresso, and I sell all 10 of those best espressos in my [00:16:00] listicle.

Why aren't I getting customers?" Many people are just typing in coffee near me in Google Maps or Apple P- Apple Maps, and they're just showing up there, and so that's again, part of this discovery engine. And so you wanna make sure that the name of your business is on there, it's accurate, your phone numbers are good, your opening hours are accurate.

You wanna make sure that the pin is accurate. That's really key. We fixed that for a couple customers, where they had a large, large amount of land, and the pin was going to, like, the official property line or something. But because it was a large amount of land, they were literally being led, like, an acre away from where the actual entrance was.

There was no sign. It was just, like, a tree out in the middle of nowhere. So you, like, move the pin. You make sure everything is all properly, like, hey, like, lead the customer to your proper entrance, lead the customer to where you're actually conducting your business, lead the customer to where they now know how to navigate. The GPS takes them to your sign. Now you have signs for where your parking is and where your s- where your [00:17:00] storefront is and things like that, right? And so we then, th- that's phase two is we, is we, you know, we started to, like, okay, like, like kinda get out there and, like, make, make YouTube content is another thing, right?

People are using YouTube to search. Make YouTube content and, and get discovered on there. That's kinda phase two. And I think it's still very important. I think it's, I think phase two is still very important. I think many people are trying to throw this out now, especially since that blogs, since blogs are not necessarily getting the clicks. There's many people out there now that think, "You know what? AI has absolutely killed this sort of discovery layer." They've destroyed it. I, I, and they, I think that they believe that it maybe should be tossed out just because they're no longer getting the clicks, and I think that they're discounting, they're discounting the, uh, not appropriateness, but the, um, [00:18:00] uh, what would you say?

The credibility, I guess. I'll u- reuse that term. You're, they're, you're discounting the credibility that having, like, a good, populated, updated, well-maintained, well, good-looking website. There, there, like, that credibility still matters in layer two

Mikhail: I, I 100% agree. And, like, I think it's because of the sensational headlines that we're seeing about, you know, traditional websites are going out of business and all that. The reality from what I've seen, I can't remember exactly the statistics that I saw, but from what I understand, we've-- we're seeing about a 20% drop in traditional traffic results from s- from Google Search, like 20 to 30%.

I... And, and those-- I, I believe I saw that somewhere in the last three months, so those end statistics might be different now. But that still means that there's a significant amount of traffic coming from traditional sources, like search results and trad- like, you know, just, uh, having a website out there. So I think having, you know, someone saying that we should just throw out that [00:19:00] idea, that, that concept is really, really bad.

What I think is the, is a strategic advice is, "Hey, maybe we shouldn't focus as much on it." If, if the blog was, you know, 100% of your focus because it was driving all of your traffic and now it's only driving 60% of your traffic, uh, or, or your traffic went down by 40% or something like that, you know what I mean?

Like you're seeing a significant drop. Then yes, you probably should be spending a portion of your time in other verticals. But that's not to say you should throw out the blog. Like you should-- Like instead of writing, you know, one blog post a week, maybe you should go down to one blog post every two weeks or three weeks, but you should still keep it up because it's still bringing you con- like traffic.

You just need to give yourself time to figure out the other parts and not give up on the traditional parts at all. Like I think people tend to overreact a lot when they see drops in traffic. They'll just like abandon the, the traditional methods right away and just start, you know, going on TikTok [00:20:00] or doing whatever.

Um, but that will lead to your business failing faster 'cause you, you wanna continue at least the traditional, the, the, the at least like the, the core product, uh, funnels while you experiment with the other stuff. You need to pay attention to all these analytics to be even aware of this happening. But as long as you're there, then you're, you have the ability to pivot

Matt: And, and like, I, I think that's a, that, that's a good point to bring up is, like, getting rid of the traditional just because another thing might be working for you, maybe your TikTok is bringing you a bunch of business and that's great. There's gonna be tons of people listening to this and just t- tons of people out there that say, you know, you don't necessarily need a website. And you know, th- that is, that, that is true to an extent. I mean, if, if I was, let's say, a solopreneur and I was trying to do affiliate marketing and I was, um, really, really amazing at TikTok and really, really amazing at Instagram and things, uh, and I was, you know, getting tons and tons of views and selling tons of products, and as an [00:21:00] individual I've

Of course, like that sounds great. And if my cashflow goes up and down through the n- natural ebbs and flows of social media, which you will have, you'll have months where you're mega viral, and then months where you're way down, and then months where you're doing okay, and then months where, like, the algorithm changes and you don't get it, and there's all

E- everyone's kind of running around with their heads cut off kind of thing. I think the thing is here is that, like, all of these things, like the social media, the YouTube, the Google My Business card, all that stuff, is adding to the dis- this discovery phase, if you will. And this discovery phase, I think you need a website. Like for me, I think you, I think you do need a website With some exceptions, like I mentioned, the solopreneur, and I'm sure there's other examples of places that generally do not. But the thing with the small business website is, is like what you're... I think what you're describing, Mike, and correct me if I'm wrong, is it's like the, it's like the foundational rock.

Like, not everyone is like, when they go into your house, they're looking at the rooms and how you've furnished it and things. But, I mean, if the basement walls are all cracking and the foundations are all, are all, you know, busted and things like that, [00:22:00] that house still sucks. Even if the house's rooms are cool and you have a movie theater in your house, this is crazy, but hopefully the roof doesn't come crashing down on me, right? I think personally, like, having the... Like, having a, a website, having a, having a small business website, having a blog on there is still important because it is that traditional funnel, but it is a place where you can... It, it's, it's your place. Like, you're not worried about the platform. You're not worried about an algorithm that's changed necessarily.

You're not worried about this and that. If you have a sale on, that's the one place where almost 100% guaranteed you can announce it there, unless the registrar for some reason has a problem with you or your, like, hosting, uh, company some- for some reason has a problem with you. Barring that, which is extremely, exceptionally rare, you can go onto your website and say, "I have a sale today."

You can go onto your website and say, "I now have a new business partner. I, I, I'm, I'm, I'm starting new services. I'm doing this. I'm doing that." And it's your source of truth, and people can quickly go to the website and be [00:23:00] like, "Okay," like, "I'm getting clarified." 'Cause here's the thing with the, with the, like, the TikToks and the, the Instagram reels and things of the world, that information is very ephemeral. If, if some- Like, I, I'm seeing, uh, TikToks for people that are like, "Oh, man," like, you know, "Put your order in now for my merch or whatever. Better put it in before, like, May 31st." And it's like, hey, man, it's end of Ju- end of July here, right? It's very ephemeral. It, it comes and goes. You're getting it in a random order.

You're not really being able to, like, tell your full truth. You're not being able to tell your full story. And a lot of the stuff that we advise people to write in their blogs, if possible, is evergreen content or stuff that needs very minimal maintenance. Something like how quick does grass grow for a landscaping company or what type of grass is this? Uh, what, what type of maintenance does this grass need? I mean, unless new methods come out, unless a new grass grows somehow, a new type of grass comes to be, [00:24:00] like sure, like then you need to upgrade that article, but that's ever- you know, that is evergreen content that you can keep up there, and you can change your recommendations, and it's y- again, your source of truth.

If you say, "Oh, you know, you should be doing two cups of water on that grass every day," but then you find out, you know what? Actually it should be three. You can update that and you can say like, "Hey, I've discovered this thing," whatever. But if you make a TikTok about it, if you made a TikTok about the two cups, and then made a Ti- two TikTok about the three cups, it's all great, people might be, you know, going, going into your funnel and they're finding you and things like that, but some people might think that you still recommend two when you actually now recommend three, 'cause the information is random.

It's ephemeral. It's going through people's for you pages. It's coming into people at random, and so you're not getting that sort of solid like, this is what I'm doing now, this is what I think now, these are my prices now. You're, you're, you're missing out. And, um, my, my, my whole point is to say the [00:25:00] discovery engine, which is your website, w- with its SEO of course, your Google My Business/my Google- your Google business profile, your, uh, all your social media stuff, any of your YouTube things, right? Any of your content and that type of thing, I think is all part of this layer two like website as a discovery engine. what, what, not necessarily website as discovery engine, but your business is in a discovery engine, and I think that the website is a part of that discovery phase as well. It absolutely because of the blog, and I think it should still be in there And the reason why I even mention this is you're probably like, "Okay, like we get it, you know, layer two, layer two, layer two," but what's this third layer?

This is the new thing that we've been talking to customers about. So the new thing that we've been talking to customers about is small businesses have been coming to me and asking and saying, you know, "We're, we're concerned, let's say our traffic is down." Or let's just say they're just getting started and they're like, "You know, I'm, I'm [00:26:00] concerned because I, I hear that like the traditional way of building a website is, you know, joining that discovery phase, if you will, by adding a blog and writing a whole bunch of stuff and, and, and doing the keyword research and things and like should I even do that anymore because there's AI overviews?" what they're asking is like, "You know, am I still gonna get the same amount of clicks more or less? Like if five years ago I was getting 100 clicks, am I still gonna get 100 clicks?" Obviously every blog is different, but chances are no. Chances are AI overviews, depending on what it is that you, you're doing, are probably gonna steal some of that. You might only get 50 clicks to where you got 100 before. And so this is where your website is a place where you can build something that is not ephemeral, that is useful, that si- that sidesteps the AI overviews is, is actually like a sincerely useful tool, and that is using the website literally as a tool. So I've been talking to people and I've been-- and I've seen success with my own clients where I've been saying, "You should make like a, [00:27:00] like a tool page or like a, a micro app page," I like to call it, where the AI overview is not gonna be able to come in here and just sorta say, just sorta like do what this page does. Somebody could maybe prompt it into existence, but yours already exists. Well, what do I, what do I mean by that? Something like a converter or a generator or a calculator, recommend- like recommendations. Like so for example, I run a sports website. That sports website has a bunch of rosters for the different players in the sports, and the number one page is not the blog posts. is not the history posts, although those pages do fine. The number one page is a rankings page. The rankings page is a leaderboard that's up kept. It's, it's completely fan-driven, completely fan-driven, but it's constantly up kept. new information is pouring into there. They use it to like interlink between all the other blog posts and things, but people check that rankings all the time.

People talk about the rankings on Reddit. People talk about the rankings on Facebook. [00:28:00] They talk about the numbers. They talk about what they think the rankings should be. That's like a little tool It's a little tool where someone's coming in and an AI overview, I guess you could ask an AI overview to make a leaderboard, but it's not exactly like a, a social activity.

So that is like a little micro app. And to take it a step further, he also has a schedule page, a schedule and results page. And again, yeah, you could ask an AI overview for that stuff, but it's so much simpler to just go to this guy's website, click the schedule, and just see this, see the calendar. See the calendar, see who's doing what, all this, and then of course it interlinks with the rankings.

Oh, by the way, this person is, this person is, is involved in this. This person is ranked three. Oh, what does that mean? And you keep the person on the website. the blog still exists. That discovery engine phase still exists, and the About Us pages still exist. My point is, is that what we've done is we've gone from like that phase one to phase two, but we're not throwing things out necessarily.

Maybe some things we'll like kind of shed, [00:29:00] like were doing bad, now they're doing good again with AI. So we might shed and, and, and re-add things and, and kind of do it. But the point is, is that we're, we're, we're, we're going up like a staircase, in my opinion right now. knows what the future brings, but we're go- you know, phase one, phase two, and then now we're at this, this third phase or this third layer. And I think that it's, I think that this website as a, as a tool is a, is a really important thing for, uh, small businesses to embrace. Uh, we had Nat Miletic on the show. I, uh, had a conversation with him, and he was mentioning that too, where he's like, get, you know, get some utility o- out of your website, build like a little like kind of like micro tool or, you know, like a tool page.

I'm, I'm paraphrasing what he said. I'll link to that episode in the, uh, in the show notes, of course. But, um, like that was mentioned. And then just recently I got, uh, I'm on the Keysearch, which is a keywords, keyword researching tool. I'm on the Keysearch newsletter and they mentioned the [00:30:00] exact same thing.

"Hey, you know, try to get- try to build something where your app or your website is not just sitting there giving information anymore. Have it have a bit of utility." And just this, just now, like, I mean just today I was on a conversation with a, a, I'd say a medium-sized business, and I'll anonymize some details, um, just, you know, to not give away identities and things, but this person has a ton of products, like 100, like 100 products, but they're used for specific use cases. I said, "Why don't you have like a calculator to have somebody..." Because it- it's a hobby and you can do all these different things in this hobby. And I said, "Why don't you have a calculator and so, that, that says, you know, 'Are you a consumer? Are you an enthusiast? Are you a professional in this hobby? Okay, what's your budget?' You know, 'Are you a, are you, do you want a pallet of this stuff? Do you just want one of it, like one bag of it? What do you want?' Right? "What, what's your, what's your, where you are?" And I was like, "That would allow you to not only bring in your [00:31:00] product pages where someone goes through this calculator or goes through this quiz and it tells them which product or products they should go to, but if you have articles, you've written blogs where you're like, 'Hey, the, like this is the...'

Like I'll, I'll just say, uh, I'll, I'll, I'll make something up. So let's just say it's, um, gaming companies and like someone goes through a quiz and it's like, 'Hey I, I think you would like Nin- like Nintendo. Like Nintendo's the platform for you. That's what you wanna do.' Okay, fantastic. don't just have to then lead them to the Nintendo product page. do that, but you can also have your blog post show up where you do a comparison of Sony versus Microsoft versus Nintendo. 'Cause someone might, might think, "Oh, this, this, this quiz is telling me specifically to go to Nintendo," but why is that? Some people are gonna be more inquisitive. you might have some Nintendo content that is content and you wanna drive traffic there and drive, drive traffic to those [00:32:00] links and things like that. having a bit of utility, something where you're, you're not gonna get it out of the SERP right away. You're not gonna get it out of that AI overview. You can kinda sidestep it. I think this is the next level, at least right now, uh, for small business websites because information only websites with nothing to sell are absolutely struggling.

We've had that discussion with Matt Diamante, we had that discussion with Nat Miletic, and now we're starting to like straight up see it. these tools I am straight up seeing results. I'm seeing literally thousands more hits on this one guy's rankings page than on his blog posts

Mikhail: It's it's always been a good idea to get down this path, but I think this never been prioritized as much as it is now because of what you're saying. Now it's like, okay, how do we get people to come back to the website? I think that's the rankings and leaderboards thing is, like, the perfect method, 'cause [00:33:00] people just check that on a day-to-day or a week-to-week basis, so that's a perfect thing to get people back.

So the mentality that you have to have is how do you keep people on the website? How do you get people back to the website? 'Cause those are the two things that are going to impact your rankings a lot, and your credibility, which is the number one thing that you need to be appearing in those AI overviews, by the way.

And to a- y- you want to appear as-- in those AI overviews, especially if you have something to sell, right? Or if you ha- So that is a really, really key thing. So you're all-- You're driving your website to be more credible by doing these things, by keeping people there, to then appear in the AI overviews to take advantage of them, right?

It's, it's not a straightforward, "Hey, I'm just gonna be in the AI overviews. I'm just gonna have a bunch of information." You need to force yourself to be in those AI overviews o- on top of your competitors. So you need to be doing something better than them, and one of the things you could do is a utility, is some sort of a tool, and there's plenty of other things you could do.

You could have better SEO, et cetera, et [00:34:00] cetera. Um, I don't know, like it's-- There's a lot of different steps you need to take now. You need to be more creative than you were six months ago, 10-- like a year ago.

Matt: Correct

Mikhail: just need to be-- step outside the box. AI helps with that as much as it h- hurts us. You need to use the tool to help you.

Like, if you already have a website, maybe you could plug in something into AI and ask, "Hey, what kind of tool can I offer my customers on the website?" And then get AI to build it for you potentially. Whatever. But, like, try to think outside the box in a lot of different ways. Traditional stuff still works.

Like, that's the point of this episode is that you still need to do it. You still need the contact page. You still need the, you know, the information pages.

Matt: on it. We're not

Mikhail: Correct

Matt: things out, and I see people tossing them out, and it's like, no, like, you're losing all that link equity and all that, like, credibility that you've built

Mikhail: Yeah. And you still need to maintain that to a certain degree, maybe with less emphasis, but [00:35:00] you need to spend some time right now. We're in a transitionary period in, in, in, in everything that's going on. This is where you don't sit on your laurels. This is where you s- put your hat back on, put, you know, get going, and try different things, and analyze them.

Use stat- use analytics. Make sure that you're looking at that on a, on a consistent basis. Doesn't have to be every hour, right? People get, people get too in-depth with the analytics, too, so that's another thing. Like, look at it over a span of time and see how it works, you know, week to week or something like that.

Find, find a cadence that works for you. But make sure you're on top of it so that you know your actual ideas are working. And continue to pivot, continue to adjust, because the people that are gonna be doing that are the ones that are gonna succeed. Whereas the people that are gonna, again, either throw everything out and try s- random things, like try to just like, you know, uh, run around with a chicken, like, with its head cut off, like that's not gonna work.

You need to slowly but surely continually work towards something that will support your current [00:36:00] website and help you bridge the gap while this transitionary period is going on

Matt: And, and I do wanna say too, like, we're absolutely gonna have people in the audience that are like, "This is starting to get ridiculous," like, "This is too much," especially when we're talking about small, small businesses, small, medium businesses, that, "This is too much for me to do. It's too much for me to maintain." And that's why we do recommend things like in that discovery phase, have evergreen content in your blog, right? Have evergreen content go into your social media as well. And so that way, let's just say you do one thing a week, like let's just say it's one blog a week. That's what you used to do, one blog post a week.

Maybe instead of that, you rotate it, so you do one, blog post a week, social media post the next week, although social media, you have to look into that. You're probably gonna have to do more than that. But I digress. The point is, like, you do one blog post, you know, week one. Week two, you're doing a, a social media post.

Week three, you, you do a [00:37:00] micro app Week four, you go back to a blog post. know, week five, you're going back to your social media, and then the next week you're not necessarily building a new micro app, although you could, but you're maybe checking on the statistics of the existing one, adding, fixing bugs, uh, making small changes because maybe people are asking you.

Like, I have a list here that I'll include in the show notes of suggested micro app ideas, and these are just sort of been brainstormed. But, like, for example, an accountant here. So an accountant's office, you could do something like a tax deadline calculator or maybe an incorporation cost estimator. And let's just say for the incorporation cost estimator, that can get pretty, that can get pretty complicated. And even if you sort of say it as clear as you can inside of the, inside of the calculator, somebody might go through the calculator and then call you, and now you've got them on the hook, right? Now you've got that lead, and someone might say, "Hey, I u- was using your incorporation cost estimator, and it says, like, 5,000, but it says this [00:38:00] weird little, this little, like, fee, and I'm not sure what that is."

And you can explain it and show off your expertise. You're showing off your expertise not only with the creation of the incorporation cost estimator and all the things that it does and hopefully does well and accurately, but also people are gonna bring that in. Heck, you can bring it in. Like if you're, if someone comes in, you're a brick and mortar location, you can use the in- your own incorporation cost estimator if it's useful enough to have that, those initial conversations with somebody before you get into the weeds with them. Uh, another cl- another one would be something like a wedding venue. A wedding venue, maybe a guest capacity calculator. Things like that where you take a look and you go, "Okay, like I have this many guests. Like, where can we sit?" Like, well, m- many, many venues will have different options. So it'll say, you know, 50 can be inside, can be on the s- on the second floor, 25 can be on the outdoor patio, weather permitting. The, is the outdoor [00:39:00] patio, like, covered? Things like that. Like, allow the person to sort of like put, you know, put in their guest number, and then it will estimate, like, where those people should be. Like, do they wanna have AC? Do they not? Do they care about w- winter? Do they care... Or do they care about winter?

Do they care about the weather? Do they care about, like, does everyone... L- like for example, if everyone is very averse to the heat and you're in a hot climate, okay, unfortunately the outdoor parts of your venue are not gonna work well, and have that be part of the, the calculator, right? A paint store might have a, a, a product selector, might have a surface preparation list where you say, "What did you buy?"

"I bought this type of paint." "Okay. What are you painting?" painting a car. Hey, don't do that. Or, hey, like I'm painting this... I'm painting wood. Okay, make sure you scuff the surface, make sure you sand it, make sure you clean it, make sure you... And you, you get those, you get those utilities instead of someone necessarily [00:40:00] prompting the AI. What we're not doing is we're not replacing the AI, what we're doing is we're making it too convenient for someone to go through the prompting process of prompting an AI overview, and then you can continue to prompt that AI overview in the AI mode in Google or just go to ChatGPT in general. We wanna make it so convenient that they're using your little micro app.

That's why mobile apps still exist. I mean, I could have ChatGPT track all my golf scores, but I still use Golf Canada, 'cause Golf Canada is all in one. It's right there. I just go in, boom, boom, boom, type in 18 numbers. There you go. Done. There's my round. Done. It's fast, it's simple, it's easy, it's all right there. That's what makes Golf Canada irreplaceable to me, at least at this point, over just telling an AI, "Hey, I got this today. Make sure you write that down and remember." Okay, you know, go along its merry way. And there's a ton, there's a ton of these things. I, I have a ton of examples. Fitness studios, I'll maybe just go through a couple. Uh, restaurant or bakery, classic. Something like an [00:41:00] allergen filter. If somebody is, uh, like l- like literally allergic to gluten, like a celiac, uh, or gluten intolerant, whatever, you could go in and be like, "Here's my menu. I don't want gluten. Here's my menu. I don't want sugar. Here's my menu. I'm allergic to peanuts," and it filters it out and tells you... And then quite literally, it should tell them maybe even, "Hey, I don't, I don't have something for someone for like, that's not gluten-free." Okay, then that person's not gonna show up and waste their time. They're aware right away. And if you hook up your analytics right, you're gonna see how many people click that gluten-free button, and if it's hundreds or thousands, then you know you should probably have a couple gluten-free products. This can work both ways. You're discovering things about the c- the customer themselves as well. This, this third phase, this sort of like This like website as a tool can be a tool not only for your customer, but it can also be a customer, or it can also be a tool for you as well. [00:42:00] Manufacturing companies or like car part companies have been doing this for years, something like a part number lookup. if I know I'm gonna go to Princess Auto, or I know I'm gonna go to some part manufacturer and I know that there's like an ID number of some sort, or some of them even allow you to scan a barcode, perfect. Look it up. Where is it in stock? You got three locations near me. It's here. Okay, let's go. I know friends who use this not for car parts, but for, um, uh, carpentry jobs and contractor jobs where they look up and be like, "We need this tile. I know it's at Home Depot. Which Home Depot is it at? It's here? Okay, let's go." And they drive out there and go get it right away because they want that job done as quickly as possible, and that is them interacting directly on the Home Depot website. Maybe they're reserving it as well. They're telling the store, "Hey, reserve these three," and then you're, you're also cross and upselling them. Well, if you like tiles, maybe you want some grout. Oh yeah, we do need some grout. So it would so happen that we do need some grout. You see how like we don't have to [00:43:00] throw away all the old stuff. We can use the new stuff and still use the old stuff as well. golf, golf stuff. We already talked about golf today. Golf course website, league standings, handicap related tools, because many of them are actually paid, like you have to pay for those things. A tournament schedule, live results and rankings, things like that. These are things that you're just not gonna get, and you're probably not going to ask AI for

Mikhail: Yeah. I, I, I think we're at a point in time where

again, you need to consider what you need to-- you, you bring to the table to your clients, how you can make their lives easier in any way, shape, or form. And one of the ways you could do that is giving them these tools for free, right, on your website. I like the idea that [00:44:00] you had, Matt, where you build almost tools for yourself.

Like let- if- let's say it's a quote generator or a quote, a quote calculator for whatever. You provide that on your website so people can do it themselves, but when you talk to a client, you bring up your own website and go through the tool yourself, and they're like, "Oh, is that your website?" Maybe they do it themselves later, or maybe they offer it to someone else.

That's a good way to do it. You have to start thinking more one-on-one, like what your typical client, what could they possibly do, rather than this kind of like different thought process that we had before where it was for everybody, for the millions and millions of people. I think going back to basics and just thinking one-on-one conversions and how do I get that one customer?

'Cause a lot of people are gonna bounce off your website no matter what.

Matt: Of course

Mikhail: But if you can get that one customer to spend X amount of more time there, you're progressing. You're going-- You're, you're doing better, right? So any of these tools that can do that, that can just have that one extra customer and then two and then three, and then it [00:45:00] could snowball a little bit more, you're going to get a better response rate.

You're going to get more, more views. Like you're gonna get more transactions, conversions, whatever you wanna call it. It's, it's time to start going back to that methodology of how do I get my next client? How do I get my n- the next person in line, right? It's-- That's gonna become more important as AI progresses because these automated methods of different like, you know, automated funnels and all the tools that you have around automated funnels, that, all that stuff is gonna be botted by AIs.

It's already being done. We're already seeing like a massive amount of AIs being used to go through websites, scrape websites, and do all this other crap. The dead internet theory is starting to come into reality at this point. You should be focused on real, tangible clients on a website, whether that be through blog posts, these tools, whatever.

You could think of other methods, but that's the mindset that we have to [00:46:00] start having

Matt: And, and I think, I think the thing here too is, like, it, it is... Like, I know a lot of people are gonna say, like, you know, it's just yet another thing to do. We've mentioned that. But what you're really doing is you're building credibility, not, not even for the search engine, although yes, there's an authority rank, an authority score, whatever, and all that stuff. talking about is you're building credibility with those real people, like you said, Mike. If someone is, like, really interested, like they're like, "You know what? Like, I have a big old piece of land and I want a landscaping company to come in," might go into your, into your website and maybe they, maybe you catch them with your sod calculator.

How much sod do you think it'll need? Okay, that, that's cool. And then they're like, "Okay." And they keep going through. Maybe you have a couple other tools, a soil calculator, or they... y- you provide planners with them, like a seasonal lawn care planner. Like, "Hey, print out this PDF," or whatever, right? Maybe use this fillable PDF type of thing. y- y- you catch them. Now they're like, okay, and they kinda have, like, they haven't met you, but they still kinda have a relationship [00:47:00] with you a little bit. peop- some people are gonna get into that, and some people are gonna go like, "Oh, okay, like, type of soil should I use?" Maybe they'll Google it.

Maybe your website shows up, one of your blog posts And then they're like, "Oh, I've, I've used this guy's soil calculator to de- to determine that that's the type of soil I needed. Let me go and look at his... Like, let me go look at this guide." They look at the guide. They keep seeing your name, they keep seeing your name, they keep seeing your name, and then they call you, or they sign up for your newsletter, or they text you, or whatever it is that you're trying to get them to do. super important. But here's the thing, if you're missing one of these stages, you might still get a bunch of clients, 100%, but that person may have used your soil calculator. You threw out all your blog posts because you thought blogs were dead, 'cause the traffic went down en masse, like, fair enough, so you got rid of them all.

Okay, great. That person Googles the soil. find somebody else's blog, and they might now see their name now. So you've put them onto something else. You're building credibility at every single stage. And when [00:48:00] you are at the small to medium business level, obviously time is money at any scale, but r- like, certainly at the small to medium business scale, you wanna make sure you are making good decisions with your time.

Like Mike said, do not spend all your time on the blog. But make sure you do have those blogs. Make sure you do have those tools, split the time. If you have three things, like, if you have your Facebook, blog, and then a micro tool, split your time among them. Make sure that they look good. Make sure that somebody that goes to the Facebook doesn't go, "They haven't posted in six months.

Are they still open?" what's going on here? And we... I've absolutely seen that where, like, it- it's even weird when somebody claims all the usernames, then, like, if they never post on Facebook or something, it, it's like, okay, whatever, they just claimed the username. But if they were posting, like, a few weeks ago, and now they're not, it's sort of like, oh, this is kinda interesting. I followed a, an Instagram page the other day, and they had, like, an automation where they sent me a thing, and they said, "Sign up for our newsletter." And I was like, I'll, [00:49:00] I'll bite. Let me just look. up for the newsletter. Okay, cool. Then the automation was like, "Hey, join our Telegram group." And I was like, I just wanna see the automation.

Let's see where it takes me. Yeah, I'll bite. Take me to the, take me to the Telegram group. The Telegram group they haven't posted in months. And it's like, is the automation still taking me here? You guys still around? Even though I know you're still on Instagram, that's still weird. And so to me, it's like you're building credibility at every step. So don't overstretch, like, don't go to 14 different networks and try to do everything. But if you choose three, if you choose four at your scale, do those four really well. Make, make sure it looks good. Make sure it looks active I think that's it. I think that's the episode. You know, if you're looking to, if you're looking to, like, you know, raise your blog traffic, or you're worried about whether your blog is, is useful anymore, or if you're thinking, "You know what? I should delete my, my contact page. I should only have my social medias. I should delete all my, like, frequently asked questions," 'cause, like, FAQ [00:50:00] schema is not a thing, although it's kind of been a wishy-washy thing for a long time. Like, b- we've had that question. I've had people say, "Should I get rid of my FAQs?" I'm like, "No, it's still a, a valid FAQ. Like, just 'cause it doesn't bring in 100 people, do you still want 25 people looking at it?"

Like, it's still there. You're not changing it. If it's, if it's costing you a bunch of money to keep up that FAQ, then sure, do the costs benefit analysis. But if it's just evergreen, and it's sitting there, and it's costing you nothing, you upgrade the FAQ once a year, so it's costing you $5. Is a, is a $5 client rolling through that FAQ?

Probably. We're building on what we're doing. SEO, we had an episode. I'll... Actually, I'll link that. We had an ep- ep- episode talking about how SEO went from just on Google and Bing and things into, like, YouTube and TikTok, 'cause people are searching everywhere. Now, it's also like, hey, people are also needing tools everywhere, and you're trying to side-skirt the AI, but also get into the AI.

How do you do that? How do you look professional online? And i- it's a... You know, the... It can be a difficult [00:51:00] process. But I think we're building on top of the old layers more than we're completely crushing them or restarting every time, myself. But that's it. That's the episode. Hopefully, you the episode, if you wanna support episodes like this, you can do so on Patreon.

That's patreon.com/htmlallthethings, just like these $3 tier patrons did. Tim from The Web Hacker on Jason from Geek Life Radio via geekliferadio.com. Garrett Segall, Level Up Financial Planning via www.levelupfinancialplanning.com. Magnus from Yes Web via yesweb.se. Syntaxify from the HTML All the Things Discord server, and Stacy Mosler from the website swoonworthydesigns.com. remember, if you wanna take some coding courses, you wanna learn how to code, can do so on Scrimba. And if you wanna upgrade to their pro plan, we got a discount for you. You can get up to 20% off their Scrimba Pro plan. Link will be in the show description and in the show notes with details on how it [00:52:00] works in the show notes on htmlallthethings.com. And last but not least, with that, we'd like to give a shout-out to Michael LaRocca, contributing author on htmlallthethings.com. is the author of Self-Taught: The X Generation blog at selftaughttxg.com. Feel free to leave a comment or review on the platform you're listening to this on. And in fact, I would love to hear from you if you're like, "I think the blogs are stupid."

Like, tell me that, or, "I think, I think, like, this advice is great." Tell me that, 'cause we all have different businesses, different niches, uh, I wanna learn more. But that's it. We're signing off