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Small Business Bestie
Entrepreneurship is hard, and sometimes we could use a friend to walk a mile in our shoes. Small Business Bestie is here to provide that friendship, support, and inspiration that small business owners need from time to time.
Small Business Bestie
41: Bestie Bites- Digital Savvy is SEO and Digital Marketing with Savannah Harover
Savannah Harover, better known as Digital Savvy, joins us to uncover the latest digital marketing and SEO trends that are transforming the online landscape.💻🌎 You're probably like the rest of us, wondering how AI is reshaping SEO into what Savannah calls "search everywhere optimization"? Get ready to learn how making your website content effortlessly digestible and searchable can set you ahead of the curve as the new year approaches. Savannah shares her secret to balancing ambitious goals with avoiding burnout, offering a fresh perspective on intentionality and goal setting.
Our conversation takes a deep dive into the world of social media and its surprising influence on SEO. With a focus on on-page and off-page optimization, discover how local business listings, voice search, and platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest can enhance search engine performance. Savannah emphasizes the importance of alt text and meta descriptions, sharing her insights on when to bring in professional help.💪 The episode underscores that SEO is not a quick fix but a long-term investment, requiring structured timelines and a strategic approach to truly make an impact.
Venturing into entrepreneurship, Savannah opens up about her transition from corporate life to fostering a supportive community for solopreneurs. Learn how overcoming challenges like earning Google certifications and forming networks like Love Club has helped her empower women entrepreneurs. By creating authentic networking opportunities, these events encourage turning "one day" dreams into "day one" 1️⃣ actions. Whether you're battling isolation as a work-from-home professional or seeking a space for collaboration, Savannah's journey offers inspiration and practical advice to fuel your entrepreneurial spirit.🗣️🩵
Check out Savannah and Digital Savvy here!
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Hey, besties, welcome back to another episode of Bestie Bites, and today I'm extremely excited to be talking with my good friend, savannah Harover. She is digital savvy and she has so much expertise and wisdom to share with us about all things digital advertising and marketing and all the things that are so scary and overwhelming to most entrepreneurs. So, savannah, take a minute, tell us about yourself.
Speaker 2:Hey guys, thanks so much, michelle for having me. I am Savannah, also known as Digital Savvy. I am based out of Lexington, kentucky, but I am basically speaking of small business besties, just your all-around digital bestie when it comes to online marketing, starting your business, creating your brand, launching your marketing campaigns and basically just getting you set up and preparing you for ongoing success. I've been doing this for a little over. I'm about to hit my five-year anniversary. Actually, it feels crazy that it's our bats, especially since that's COVID, you know. So it's like that's how long it's been since we've been in COVID.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, oh my gosh, that seems it seems, seems wild, but it's flown by and, yeah, I've just loved every second of it, working from home just doing my own thing and working with amazing clients that I, you know, choose and get to work with locally or around the country, and soon to be globally hopefully, so.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's exciting. Is that something for 2025?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was one of my goals just to keep pushing, and I have certain industries that I really wanted to get back into or open up to a little bit.
Speaker 1:So yeah, awesome, this is a fun time to have a conversation because I know that you're big into like intentionality and goal setting and things like that, and so to be able to chat with you at this point of the year where you're kind of looking forward and deciding like what's next is really it's a busy time for all business owners and even just humans, I guess, in general.
Speaker 2:You know are coming around that other rotation of the sun and spring is coming, lots of big plans, you know, just for the year. So I think it's always an exciting time and I used to not really be a resolutions person, but yeah, I think there's so much power and intentions and manifestation so I'm just really grateful and excited for the future for me and all my clients.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree. One of the things that I'm working through right now with my small business is like setting the goals of like I know that we want to grow, but I also don't want to burn myself out, because I have a tendency to just shoot for the moon. And then I get halfway there and I'm like, ah, I didn't really want to go that far, did I, you know, and I talked myself out of it. So that's, that's like. My big challenge this year is to really like see that for what it is and try to say what's a realistic goal. You know that I know I can reach, but I'm not going to be just so dog-tired by the end of next year.
Speaker 2:That was a hard one for me too, because I have. I won't show you my brained up situation going on over here in the corner, but I had so many things on my list as well, so what I ended up doing was writing them all down and then like ripping them up into little pieces of paper and then, as it came to the new year, every night I would like just toss one out, not even look at it. So now I have like two like one personal one work that I'm like okay, like this is what I'm really going to focus on.
Speaker 2:Oh nice, I love that, let me know how it goes, cause it was two things I really didn't want to focus on. Also, cool the universe, give it to me.
Speaker 1:Great. You know, oftentimes it's the things we don't want to face are the ones that we really need to. I just went for a midday workout, which I never do, but I've just had a lot of low energy.
Speaker 1:Thank you. But I walked in and she was like you know, you can do the treadmill and the rower if you want to. And I was like I hate the rower, why would I do that? And I was like, oh, I should probably do it because I hate it, because there's some resistance there I really need to work through. But I just did the treadmill, soy's next time Maybe, okay. So we kind of went on a little tangent there. That was a lot of fun. I love that. I want to get to kind of the meat and potatoes, because you have so much wisdom about something that is very overwhelming and intimidating for a lot of business owners, and that is the three little letters that a lot of people don't even know what it means, what the heck is MEO?
Speaker 2:Well, michelle it's currently known as search engine optimization, but recently, with all the changes in the just online world and how AI has impacted things, I feel like a lot more people are doing search everywhere optimization, which is something that my team is kind of bringing into the new year Again. Just because AI and the search results like when you go into Google, you know a service or restaurant near me or the specific place that you already know you just maybe need to get directions or whatever it is you know, those are the search engine results that come up. But I feel like like even myself I will go to TikTok to look at something, to get a video instruction on how to do it, or go to chat GPT or Gemini the Google version to do that. So it's really spacing out the different tactics that we've had these days. So that's kind of something new that we're doing. But the way you really do that is through two separate things.
Speaker 2:I'll try to keep this as simple as possible. So doing the work on the back end of your website to make sure that all of your content is digestible and searchable by the search engine and people that are finding your website, stumbling upon it coming from social media, however, they're getting there so that we can do certain things on the back end make sure the page speed is easy. You know, nobody likes to wait too long when you're coming to a site to get the stuff you want to. You know, digest and then making sure that Google can talk to the website as well. So all those different pages, all the different text that's on your website there's a lot of keyword research and if someone's, you know, doing the website in a way that's going to be best for SEO, those are kind of the steps they're going to take on the back end.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I'm going to stop you for a second, because my mind is blown when you talk about search everywhere, optimization. Okay, as you were explaining that, I had this epiphany that, like we don't use Google for things that we used to use it for. Like just today I was talking, we got a bearded dragon for Christmas in our house. We've never had a mentor. We don't know what we're doing, so we have a lot of questions and instead of saying like, oh, let's Google blah, blah blah, I said let's hashtag GPT. And instead of saying like, oh, let's Google blah, blah blah, I said let's ask ChatGPT, which is, you know, it was a problem or a situation that even just six months ago, we would have said oh, let's go to Google for that. We said no, let's go to ChatGPT because it's going to have a better answer for us. And it didn't even occur to me until this moment, when you started talking about it, that our businesses have to adapt to that new consumer trend. Wow, I feel terrified. Now, what can you do to help?
Speaker 2:us. There's an addition to all the backend work that you can do on the website right, like the what your website should be the top of the funnel, like that's where people should go to get all the information to finish their research and to contact you or get whatever they need from your services. So on the other side of that is like the off page optimization, which is like local business listings, which that's where the search everywhere comes into hand and you can manage all those on your own right, like you can create a Yelp, you can do a Google profile, you can, you know, get an Amazon and all these different ones, because, as you know as well, voice search comes into play and optimizing social media for search, that's going to be like the biggest thing to do this year, I think.
Speaker 1:Okay, optimizing social media for search, and so you're talking not just like. I mean, I'm old, so when you say social media to me, like once my brain kicks out my space it goes to like Facebook, instagram, maybe like X and TikTok. But when you say social media, are you talking beyond those kind of like old school ones? Are there more?
Speaker 2:I'm more digital savvy than social savvy, so I don't really do it. Yeah, and you, you know I do marketing on all those platforms, but when it comes to the search engine, there's a lot you can do with the keywords that are in your profile and your username. So those are the top ones that I'm thinking, maybe also, I think, in Pinterest. Those are other two that are really super important, especially depending on what industry you're in. You know, if you're more in the home space, maybe Howl's and those types of Angie's those are all more important maybe than if you are an aesthetic travel blogger. Pinterest and Instagram or whatever you know, you just have to find what's best for our niche, I guess. But doing some keyword research this would be some things that you can maybe do on your own would be some keyword research. Hashtags are still very relevant to seo just helping other people find your business, and then, of course, tagging people and maybe even doing some tags on the photos themselves okay, and I think you know I've built a couple of websites myself.
Speaker 1:I'm sure they are not very SEO-ish, you know. I'm sure they're not performing as well as they absolutely could. But one of the things that has always tripped me up is, like, in the settings for like the photos and things like that. I see all these places where you can create tags and all of this and I have no idea what I'm doing there. So do you have any like tips or tricks for that, or is that like way beyond no?
Speaker 2:yeah, I have a whole checklist actually for each platform, because I built pretty much a website in each one and I have certain things that you know. If you were to get a score for your website which I also do free audits of websites so if you're wondering your SEO score, I could actually take care of that, like and get you a report. Basically and when I say the technical side of the, you know the website, that's what I'm talking about, like the meta descriptions and titles for each page, the heading descriptions and then the like alt text is probably what you're thinking of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah yes, I have all of that in a big checklist that I'd love to share with any of the besties that need it. It's really exciting to be able to look at that stuff on your own and see what little improvements can be made.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. So kind of pigeon tailing off of that, like I know there are. I'm sure that if I had the checklist and I looked at it I could 100% do it For me. You know, I'm at a point in my business where, like, I prefer to just like okay, that's more than I want to take on. You know, other than like hitting that ceiling of like time capacity, are there other like situations where business owners may just want to say like hey, it's time to call in a professional? Like when would we know, other than just like time capacity, that it's time to get someone?
Speaker 2:I mean, I think the biggest pain point that most people have is like when I type in my services, I don't show up. I mean that's a huge one. Or my competitor shows up ahead of me, like what are they doing to get to the top of the results? Right, so we actually have. I have another program, like where I'm in in the SEO industry. Obviously I have a lot of programs that I have acquired or know about. So I also have another one that you can type in a competitor's website and see how much they're spending on ads. You can see their SEO score and where they are.
Speaker 2:You can see different, I guess, benchmarks of where you could maybe improve or how things are. Just, you know, that's how the world is with the algorithm right now. So there's just little things that maybe you don't even have a Google profile or maybe your meta description. You know, maybe it is a quick fix, but SEO itself is not a quick fix, it is a long game. So, yeah, I guess just that pain point of like if you're not showing up, there's work that needs to be done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And when you say it's not, you know a quick fix that it is a long game. Is there like a specific timeframe that you usually tell your clients like, hey, you know, don't expect to see a direct return on this investment for X amount of time, or kind of what?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have a whole timeline that I go through because there is like so much to kind of check off on the list and so my SEO packages and, as you know, like SEO is just time going in and, you know, doing those things manually. There's not really like an AI fix yet for it, so it does just take like, yeah, I'm to do it. So me and my team have like a timeline checklist that we go through, but really six months minimum would be like where you would kind of see a little bit of a lift. But I've seen some of mine. Within three months they'll start to lift off with some of the free apps and tools that we can use, you know, just to make those updates. But really a year would be ideal for every single SEO client of mine, just to take the time to do all of that and get all of the work done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and kind of an off the wall question that just came to me. Like when you work with clients, do you find that it's easier to improve, I guess, like if you have a client who has an existing website that you're having to go in and kind of rehab, is that easier or do they see better results than if you're just building a new site from the ground up and helping that way?
Speaker 2:It's a little bit of both. A new site can be hard to get ranked because it's so fresh, right. It's like you're throwing a seed in a forest and hoping that magically it'll be pink or bright yellow and we'll get everyone's attention. But honestly, it is better for an older domain and a site that's been around maybe to go ahead and do that.
Speaker 2:If there's been SEO work done on the back end, a lot of that can be pulled over, especially in WordPress. That's like the ideal platform for me and my team to get that done, because there is so much customization and SEO abilities on the back end to do that. But if it was a new site, what I always recommend and what is just the best thing to do would be to do a couple of paid ads as well. So if someone types in those services, you know you might show up first because we're paying to be there, but then you know they work together in a way that you'll show up multiple times on that page and not just, you know, at the bottom, because there's not even third pages or beyond on Google anymore. It's basically just one big long page and if you're not there, you're nowhere.
Speaker 1:It's crazy. And something else that was brought to my attention. I don't know if it was a conversation I had with you or someone else, but they were saying have you noticed that on Google? Now it's like there's, you know, the sponsored results and then a couple of organic responses and then a lot of video.
Speaker 2:And AI, like AI at the time. Yeah, the AI Like that's what I mean by everywhere, like YouTube, optimize it. Yes, I don't know if that was mentioned earlier, but yeah, I mean, short term and long term videos are still so important and that's how a lot of people are doing their searching, connecting, as we know. So, just yeah, making sure that all of that and then your top of the funnel, your site, is getting that traffic and ultimately, you know, getting your customers or clients what they need to know.
Speaker 1:So, following up on that, can you walk us through like kind of how Google decides where people are on the search results, Like how do you get to the top of the page or how do you get up in that AI generated response, you know? I mean like how does that?
Speaker 2:all. Well, it's not by paying, it's a little bit of both when I'm paying the most, basically. So the sponsored ads that come out at the top, those are. You know, if this, if Google was a magazine, they would be a top paid position, you know. But also, as we know, Google doesn't go by that, because if they did, the Walmarts of the world would be at the top and it more goes by local.
Speaker 2:So, as you might also notice, when you go to Google it will say do you want to use precise location or do you want to?
Speaker 2:You know, keep it more general. So it really almost is more location-based these days of what's gonna be closest to you, what is the site that's most easily digestible, what brings you up to the top? Because there's actually many different positions that you could be in in the Google results page. So that little box that comes up on the right-hand side, that's your Google business profile and then you have the ability to come up at the top as a paid position and then your organic position. So there's many different ways to kind of get up there, but it does have a little bit to do with the algorithm, a little bit to do with paid and then, a little bit to do with just SEO and the work and consistency you do on those profiles and on your pages, Because, as we know, all these sites like they want you to be Instagram, all that. It's like if you're not being consistent, you're not updating your content every so often, they might ping you for that a little.
Speaker 1:That is a great segue, because I was once told that one of the most important things you can do to come up on that right hand section and that they call it a map.
Speaker 2:Yes, I've heard it called that because it has all those different links like website call, get directions, even order online, all that.
Speaker 1:So someone told me and I'd like you to either verify or debunk this that in order to come up over there, the best thing you can do is to use the updates on your Google my Business Like. Use it like you would. A social media feed. Yeah, absolutely Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's bad. Yes, I mean, and that's like it's a great.
Speaker 1:I know one more thing, one more thing that I have to create content for, and post.
Speaker 2:Some of the schedulers really do come in handy or any type of software you can do, because and they say, I'm again not the social savvy girly but that posting different content for different platforms is going to be the best, but I honestly just say the more platforms the better. So, yes, like if I were to post a new blog, that would be like an update that I would put in for some of my restaurant clients. If there's a new menu item, a change in the time, you know, anything that you're like, I would love for my customers to know about this. Like that's what's coming up when you look for other and it allows you to post a picture, a link, like all the juicy stuff, so awesome.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you know a lot about Google because you're a Google partner, or you're a Google partner because you know a lot of the chicken or the egg situation here. So what is, what is a Google partner? What does that entail?
Speaker 2:Whenever I left my corporate position, it was still a small business, but it was more of a larger business that did marketing and advertising. Obviously, I left kind of right before COVID, so I was doing a lot of just training online. I knew I wanted to learn more about analytics. I wanted to be a little bit creative. I still wanted to be able to provide organic and paid campaigns and strategies for clients. So I started by just basically diving into all Google's resources, and that includes video search of tons of different things, analytics, obviously.
Speaker 2:So I got a couple certifications within Google and that was the first step that kind of sent me like hey, you're doing this. If you want to start running ads, you know this, you could get this accolade. I guess I think it was. January of 2021 is when we first got the partner badge. So that was super exciting. We'd be able to keep that throughout the four years at least. So that's been really exciting. But there's three different things that come with that, and the first one is the certifications making sure you're doing continued education and, you know, keeping up with the times and all the changes that dual rolls out like every two to three months. So fun, but that's why I do what I do, and that's why we're here.
Speaker 1:Right, it's terrifying to me, but I'm glad that you do it.
Speaker 2:And then the second one is spend. Glad that you do it. And then the second one is spend. So I believe it's about $10,000 every two or three months, a 90 day spend. So if you hit that for that amount of time and I'm doing multiple different clients, my own spend things like that so we're able to hit that, no problem. And then the third thing is optimization score, which is, I think, the most important. I think you have to have it above 85 for through all accounts. So that means my all of our accounts are have an optimization score, you know, a rating basically.
Speaker 1:OK Overall. Wow, I am so intrigued to find out what my score is. I kind of want to like just put it out there and show everybody so nobody can feel like embarrassed A lot of people.
Speaker 2:If you're running ads on your own, you'll feel this pain because there's again a lot of changes and a lot of suggestions that Google might make to keep your optimization score where it is. So we just work with the search engines, social platforms, all these things to make sure we're doing all the right things for our clients so that they feel taken care of.
Speaker 1:I love that. Well, I'm definitely sold on the idea that 2025 is going to be the year that I'm handing all of this stuff, because it is so overwhelming to me and I've got you know more interesting things for me to to work on. But I want to circle back to kind of like in that same vein. We're talking about like not burning out and not overdoing ourselves and setting realistic goals and like when is the right time to hang things off? And your journey brought you to working from home and opening your own business and becoming an entrepreneur, and that is how or what inspired you to create the love.
Speaker 2:That's correct. Yes, and that's been its own like special journey to me as well. Yeah, because it is. So it's kind of hard. You know, going from I'm, I guess, a social butterfly, I really enjoy talking with people and hearing their journeys and stories and seeing how I can help, whether that's through digital or like stopping by to feed your cat or something. You know, I just become friends. I just like meeting people.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I guess I just really miss that connection of people swinging by the office or, you know, going out on group meetings and not having corporate Christmas parties anymore, like things like that. So I just wanted to create a group that would be like a safe space to kind of talk about little things and kind of be a support group for one another. So we've branched that out into now doing some like monthly co-working. We have happy hour meetups, just kind of a group on Facebook and like a group thread that we can ask questions and basically just be there to support each other and other people's events. It's a lot of solopreneurs like you and me and people that work from home whether you're an artist or maybe like starting your marketing or business journey just a resource to have a group to come to something, to get out and connect with other people in Lexington and hopefully expanding to Louisville and Northern Kentucky here soon as well.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's exciting.
Speaker 1:I love that I've only been to two Love Club events.
Speaker 1:I don't think I even knew about it until last summer, so but I'm just gonna like my own experience with it so far and like what I take away from it is I love the fact that Love Club is like a little bit hippie dippy and a little bit like serious professional women, you know, and it like blends those two sides of us so well, cause I think there's so many of us who like like if we were just going to these like uber professional networking events day in and day out, like it doesn't really speak to who we really are at our core, and like it almost feels like you have to hide that part of you a little bit to fit in.
Speaker 1:And I love that love club gives you that space to just like. You know, when I walked into the very first event and you were like take an intention out of the bowl, and you know like, and I was like what? Okay, I just, I love it. I think it does such a beautiful job of of like giving that free space to just be the like creative humans that we are, without the fear of like fear of dodge totally, and that's what I was.
Speaker 2:I just can't stand to go to another manly like people all in these stuffy suits and having to come right after work and like not even really want to be there, like I just I have never felt like that with this group and that was the intention to feel when you leave. You feel supported and you feel like you have a community and you feel like I can handle this because, yeah, like we're professional but we're also creative humans, so we need that space and that time to yeah, just connect and have someone to lean on. Like how do you do your invoices? What do you do about this situation? You know just little things like that, and just building friendship and community is just always been really important to me.
Speaker 1:Well, you're nailing it, I think from the couple of events that I've been able to attend, and like being a part of the Facebook group, I think you've really created a great community of entrepreneurs who are there really to support you, and you have too, with Besties.
Speaker 2:I love it so much.
Speaker 1:I love being a part of that group and I love being a part of different groups that may are similar vibes. You know, like one of the reasons that I haven't been to more of the love club events is that they don't line up with my schedule and if I miss your like monthly event, you know then like I need other options, you know, to still connect with people, and so I think that having multiple groups and events and different styles are it's just a wonderful thing and that's one of the reasons I love our area so much is because I think we're really killing it.
Speaker 2:There's so many great like visionary leaders out there, like you know, helping, so you think, for what you do, it's always interesting meeting people that have that like analytical or you know, business minded brain, but then also can be really quirky and fun and creative.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, absolutely All right. Well, is there anything that you would like to leave everybody with something we didn't cover? Or, you know, word of wisdom, piece of advice? I should have prepared for this, but no, I did not.
Speaker 2:You know doing what you have in your brain, if you have something that you've been thinking about for a long time, one of my kind of slogans for some startup businesses is always turn your like one day thoughts into day one, Because that's the only thing you can do is like take that first step.
Speaker 1:I love that I'm going to have to make another dog Stitch it on a pillow. Oh, I love that. Okay, well, we'll make sure to link to your website all of your socials, all of that in the show notes. This has been very enlightening for me and motivating. It's a great way to start off 2025, to look forward to. Like I can. I can offload some of it.
Speaker 2:Or take it on yourself and feel comfortable and prepared, you know to do that. I'm just here to help out people, Absolutely.
Speaker 1:You know, we're all just here to help each other Absolutely, and y'all don't sleep on the offer for her to do the complimentary audit. That is incredible. That would give you so much insight to be able to start taking those first steps yourself. So that's, that's such an amazing offer, all right, well, we will finally end it there. Sorry, I've drug it out so long, but I was having so much fun. So, savannah, I will talk to you later and to all the besties, thank you, michelle.
Speaker 2:Thanks besties. See y'all next time.