Organic SEO Tips: How to Create Problem Solving Content [Featuring Guest Hosts Celeste Gonzalez and Melissa Popp]

In this guest-hosted episode of The Simple and Smart SEO Show, Celeste Gonzalez (Director of Roo Labs at Rickety Roo) and Melissa Popp (Content Strategy Director at Rickety Roo) dive deep into local SEO strategies. 

They explore the power of problem-solving content for small businesses and how local companies can stand out against larger competitors. The discussion covers how to identify local pain points, create community-driven content, and balance SEO with engagement-focused strategies.

Key Takeaways:

✅ Problem-solving content builds trust: Addressing real-life local issues makes your brand more credible and relevant to your community.
✅ Go beyond keyword research: Your own team, customer inquiries, and community forums are valuable content sources.
✅ Multi-location businesses must localize content: Even national brands need to engage with community-specific challenges.
✅ Community engagement fosters long-term brand awareness: Covering local issues—even those indirectly related to your business—helps position you as a trusted resource.
✅ Diversify beyond SEO: Businesses that rely solely on organic traffic risk losing visibility. Multi-channel marketing is essential.

Episode Highlights & Memorable Quotes:

📊 On balancing SEO and branding:
"Too many businesses focus only on SEO content. But content should build trust first and rank second."

💡 On social media’s role in local SEO:
"Why are SEOs suddenly ‘discovering’ branding? Multi-channel marketing has always been vital—businesses need to go where their customers are."

Listener Action Items:

✅ Audit your content strategy: Are you focusing too much on generic SEO content? Find ways to localize and address specific pain points.
✅ Mine insights from your team: Ask your customer service reps and technicians what common issues they encounter. These real-world problems make excellent content topics.
✅ Tap into local community discussions and Expand Beyond Organic Search: Monitor Nextdoor, Facebook groups, and local news to identify trending topics that relate to your industry.
✅ Balance SEO with engagement content: Don’t just chase keywords—focus on building relationships through helpful, trust-building content.

Connect With Celeste and Melissa:

🔗 Rickety Roo
🔗 Melissa Popp & Celeste Gonzales

Chapters

• 0:00 You don't even have to look at keyword research and long tail keywords
• 0:02 and questions and even things like Google Trends and websites like that.
• 0:06 You don't even have to start there.
• 1:05 Understanding Local Problem-Solving Content
• 2:05 The Importance of Addressing Pain Points
• 2:50 Example: Home Services Business
• 4:21 Identifying Common Local Issues
• 5:11 Leveraging Employee Knowledge for Content
• 5:46 Using Customer Interactions for Content Ideas
• 6:44 Beyond Basic SEO Content
• 7:43 Community-Specific Content Strategies
• 9:00 Engaging with Community Issues
• 12:22 Balancing SEO and Community Content
• 15:32 The Importance of Multi-Channel Marketing
• 19:04 Using Data and Gut Instinct for Local Marketing
• 21:33 Starting a Local Business with Limited Data
• 24:18 Examples of Successful Local Content Strategies
• 26:00 Conclusion and Wrap-Up

Transcript

[00:00:00] Melissa Popp: You don't even have to look at keyword research and long tail keywords and questions and even things like Google Trends and websites like that. You don't even have to start there. 

[00:00:08] Which is where, most agencies and most contractors start. Is they look at the data from keyword tools and stuff like that. 

[00:00:15] And it's no you're gonna have a wealth of knowledge right at your fingertips for the people who work with you. 

[00:00:19] Welcome to the simple and smart SEO show podcast, where we talk all things, brand building SEO. Helping you connect with your audience, elevate your visibility and grow your business. 

[00:00:29] I'm your host, Crystal Waddell, here to bridge the gap between SEO strategy and real world business success. By bringing you insights, stories, and conversations from the SEO community and beyond. 

[00:00:39] Whether you're an entrepreneur, marketer, or SEO enthusiast, this is your place to learn, share, and build a brand that stands out. 

[00:00:47] So grab a coffee or your favorite tea, and let's dive into Smarter SEO for your business. 

[00:00:52] Celeste Gonzales: Welcome to the simple and smart SEO show podcast.

[00:00:55] I'm your guest host for Crystal Waddell, Celeste Gonzalez, the director of Roo Labs at Rickety Roo. 

[00:01:01] Melissa Popp: I'm Melissa Popp. I'm the content strategy director at Rickety Roo. 

Understanding Local Problem-Solving Content

[00:01:05] Celeste Gonzales: And today we're going to be talking about local content. 

[00:01:08] But specifically building a local brand with problem solving content. 

[00:01:14] So Melissa, you had recently written an article all about this. And I don't believe this is really a topic that you can just find everywhere. 

[00:01:23] So would you mind explaining what local problem solving content is? 

[00:01:28] Melissa Popp: Absolutely. One of the biggest misconceptions we have when we create content, whether it's for local businesses, enterprise level businesses with national reach. 

[00:01:36] Is that we're so focused on generic content and evergreen content that kind of encompasses everything someone might be looking for. 

[00:01:44] That we're not really deep diving into the nitty gritty of the problems our potential customers or clients are facing. 

[00:01:50] At the local level in particular, when you're working with small, medium sized businesses. 

[00:01:54] That connection they have with their potential customers is so much almost more important than the brand building these larger companies can do. And get away with kind of skirting the type of content they create. 

The Importance of Addressing Pain Points

[00:02:05] Melissa Popp: So when these local businesses are looking to really connect with their audiences and convert. 

[00:02:09] They have to do more work to be able to prove that this smaller business should be chosen over someone larger, someone who might have a bigger footprint. 

[00:02:18] You think of companies. Is. Like Amazon, Home Depot, those, household names that really, they don't have to really do much of anything to convince you to buy from them.

[00:02:27] Like they're already so ingrained in our culture. 

[00:02:29] But smaller businesses, they don't have that luxury. And so they really have to look at what pain points and problems their potential customers are facing. 

[00:02:38] And really show them that they have not only the solutions, but the expertise and knowledge to really Build that trust. 

[00:02:46] And then convert them to a paying customer. 

[00:02:49] Celeste Gonzales: Okay. 

Example: Home Services Business

[00:02:50] Celeste Gonzales: Are we able to do an example for a home services business ? 

[00:02:52] Melissa Popp: Yeah, definitely. 

[00:02:53] All right. Everybody has a kitchen sink pretty much in their home, right? 

[00:02:57] And at some point that kitchen sink will always get backed up, clogs, who knows. 

[00:03:02] You might have a garbage disposal and not quite know how to use the garbage disposal. Which causes issues. 

[00:03:06] Now these are very common household problems, but until they're a problem you don't actually realize they're a problem. 

[00:03:12] So what happens is, your kitchen sink starts backing up. 

[00:03:15] And you have that initial panic of, oh no, what am I going to do?

[00:03:18] Most homeowners, they don't have a handyman or someone on call to come help them take care of that problem. 

[00:03:23] So what do they do? They go to Google, they go to Bing, they start searching. 

[00:03:27] And they're trying to figure out, okay, what do I do with this clogged sink? They may not even know what the issue actually is of why the sink is clogging.

[00:03:34] There could be dozens of reasons for that. 

[00:03:37] And so as they start Googling and searching for answers, they're going to come across. All sorts of content out there. 

[00:03:43] That some of it, which is going to be very basic knowledge, some of it's going to be more in depth of, how do you do it yourself? Why should you call someone to help you? 

[00:03:52] And, it's, you start at that problem where a homeowner or renter has no idea it's a problem until it becomes their problem. 

[00:04:01] And so from there, that's where Those pain points of what they're facing as a person, not necessarily as someone who's looking to pay someone to fix it. 

[00:04:09] But just as a person trying to fix that problem in the immediary. That's where you start with an example of that, and then you build, as they're searching, they start finding all this content that fills in gaps. Hopefully. Sometimes it doesn't.

Identifying Common Local Issues

[00:04:21] Celeste Gonzales: And then with the local business, they know what issues typically like customers run into and stuff like that. 

[00:04:29] But in addressing local issues, how could a business tap into that? Or know more about that? Do you have any recommendations? 

[00:04:40] Melissa Popp: Yeah, definitely. One of the first things any business should do is, they look at their services and they understand why they're offering those services.

[00:04:47] And that comes from a place of understanding. 

[00:04:49] That in this case, a home service business would understand that homes are going to have plumbing issues. 

[00:04:55] Like this clogged sink, right? So they already understand that. And most of the people who work for these companies that are actually doing the work and going out into homes and fixing it. 

[00:05:04] They face Everything under the sun.

[00:05:06] They've seen the worst of home problems. They've seen much smaller home problems. 

Leveraging Employee Knowledge for Content

[00:05:11] Melissa Popp: The people actually the contractors and the people actually working for these businesses already have an idea of what common pain points homeowners or renters are going to face. 

[00:05:19] Right there.

[00:05:20] You have a wealth of knowledge. to be able to ask questions about those pain points. 

[00:05:25] Find out, what are the most common, just like kitchen sinks back up, toilets back up too, right? That's a very common thing, one of the most owned simple things you have in your home is a plunger for when that happens. 

[00:05:37] And these right away, the people doing the work already have what those pain points are, and you can tap them for that.

[00:05:43] The next part, you can tapping at content ideas. 

Using Customer Interactions for Content Ideas

[00:05:46] Melissa Popp: to address those pain points at a smaller level. 

[00:05:49] Is just from the calls and the forms that are coming into a website.

[00:05:53] People immediately, it's, you have a problem. And that's like the first thing you say when you're calling a home services business or other type of business. 

[00:06:00] It's Hey, my, my garbage disposal is not working. It just won't turn on. What do I do? And so you already without even having to talk to customers, you already, the people working for you already have an idea of where these pain points are. 

[00:06:12] And you can start data mining that. To create content from there. 

[00:06:16] And you don't even have to look at what your competitors are doing. You don't even have to look at keyword research and long tail keywords and questions and even things like Google Trends and websites like that. You don't even have to start there. 

[00:06:27] Which is where, most agencies and most contractors start is they look at the data from keyword tools and stuff like that. 

[00:06:34] And it's no you're gonna have a wealth of knowledge right at your fingertips for the people who work with you. 

[00:06:38] Celeste Gonzales: Yeah, that's really important to just use the resources you already have and to tap into that. 

Beyond Basic SEO Content

[00:06:44] Celeste Gonzales: Going back to that local problem solving content article that you w rote a little while ago. You'd mentioned something about using community issues as a place to write about content. I was wondering, exactly how can you do that as a small local business? 

[00:07:03] Melissa Popp: Definitely. When you're creating content as a local business, you're creating a lot of different content.

[00:07:08] And one of the easiest ways to just build your organic side of your business with search engines is to write about problems like we just talked about. 

[00:07:17] And, it's very easy to write articles like how to unclog a garbage disposal, how to plunge a toilet. That's really easy. Everybody does that.

[00:07:23] I think Rickety Roo can close our eyes. And just write that content. We don't have to look at anything anymore. That's how much of that type of content we write. 

[00:07:29] But beyond that, that's great content for driving in search. And building trust and working through a funnel. But. It doesn't always build the kind of trust and connection in a community that other forms of local content does. 

Community-Specific Content Strategies

[00:07:43] Melissa Popp: For instance, hard water is an issue in a lot of communities in America. 

[00:07:47] And there's varying levels of that. A lot of people will use filters in their home for water filtration. And pull out different things in their water. 

[00:07:54] As an example of this is, for a plumbing business to talk about hard water issues in the communities they're in. 

[00:08:00] Now, people, this is another type of problem that people don't necessarily realize it's a problem until they realize it's a problem. 

[00:08:07] But building that content on their website, even though it may not drive a lot of organic hits to their website. 

[00:08:14] Or even possibly conversion to start, it shows that these plumbing companies understand water issues. That then lead to other plumbing issues in a home down the line. 

[00:08:23] We know that hard water, not only can be bad for our immune system and our health. But it also can, have cause issues with our pipes and the plumbing apparatus in homes. 

[00:08:34] And by looking at an issue like that in a community where it's let's say a particular city, a rural city. Maybe using water or something like that has hard water issues. They can start talking about that and then integrating that into other content they're writing about. 

[00:08:47] To show that they understand how that issue specific to that one place is impacting potential services they're offering across the board. 

[00:08:58] That homeowners wouldn't necessarily understand. 

Engaging with Community Issues

[00:09:00] Melissa Popp: Every community is going to be different depending on their infrastructure, how old homes are. Even like you look at the water crisis that happened in Flint, Michigan, right?

[00:09:10] There, how that is a very nuanced terrible issue that the Flint community is still having to work through. And figure out. But even something like that seems so like extreme could be having an impact on plumbing. Now, I don't know for sure. So nobody hold that to me.

[00:09:27] I'm not a plumber. 

[00:09:28] But that's an example, an extreme example of something very nuanced happening in a community that could be impacting something locally. That a business could be talking about from their area of expertise. 

[00:09:39] And Finding those issues and being able to talk about it not only shows the expertise of the business correlated to what they do. 

[00:09:45] But it also shows that they're engaged in what's happening in the community. 

[00:09:48] And that builds trust that down the line, someone may not be ready to use that business now, but may down the line. 

[00:09:54] Because they remember that. And they say, hey, this business is talking about something really important. We should pay attention. 

[00:10:00] We should, investigate. Is this the right business for us because of the problem we're facing? 

[00:10:04] Celeste Gonzales: Thinking about that. Okay. The small like local business, they're more in tune with what's going on with the community. They're able to know the problems because they likely live in the area and those problems affect them as well. 

[00:10:16] Let's say these multi location local businesses, maybe they're based in a different state, but they have locations in another one. 

[00:10:23] How can they tap into those community issues?

[00:10:27] Melissa Popp: It really comes down to the kind of the same sort of strategies. 

[00:10:30] Every community is going to have forums, news websites, community groups. 

[00:10:34] Facebook blew the lid on creating how groups work in these smaller communities.

[00:10:38] Nextdoor is another example of that. Sometimes it really depends on how active the community is. But typically every city, big or small. 

[00:10:46] Where a multi location business might have different areas of service. Is going to have these community resources that they can tap into and listen to the concern. The good, the bad and the ugly of their community.

[00:10:57] We all want to pretend that our communities are Only good things happen, right? And there's a lot of different ways people communicate in these cities. 

[00:11:04] And finding where people are communicating, where are they most active and what are the most common issues that they're talking about?

[00:11:10] And not just the good things. 

[00:11:12] I know in my area here in Denver our next door pretty much 90 percent of the next door community of where I live is people who have lost their pets. 

[00:11:21] Their pets have gotten out and, but, I have friends who live 10 15 minutes from here. 

[00:11:25] And, they're talking about porch pirates. They're talking about, gutter issues, to bring it back to a business. 

[00:11:31] And so it's tapping into that and understanding what these local communities are talking about. 

[00:11:35] And how could that potentially correlate to your business. 

[00:11:39] And, sometimes you'll find things that, yeah, you can talk about, is a plumbing business or home services business particularly going to particularly talk about lost pets? 

[00:11:46] Probably not. Could they find ways to be able to talk about pets in general? Probably. 

[00:11:52] How many cats get lost in walls because plumbing they don't always cover where the plumbing pipes are coming from the walls? 

[00:11:58] So there's holes in the walls and cats will get in there because Cats will be cats, right? 

[00:12:01] So there's ways to find information to talk about that's local to the community. 

[00:12:06] But then it's connecting the dots and thinking outside the box. If how do you take some of these issues that maybe not exactly relate to your business. 

[00:12:13] But are of interest to the community that will put you out there as someone who cares. 

[00:12:18] Celeste Gonzales: And I guess, how would you find a balance with that? 

Balancing SEO and Community Content

[00:12:22] Celeste Gonzales: Like, how do you find a balance between writing this type of, community driven content? And, the SEO stuff? The basic, that we were talking about earlier. 

[00:12:32] Melissa Popp: That's always the issue, right? Is trying to find the balance.

[00:12:35] Why are we in such a hodgepodge of terrible content on the internet? And of what Google's surveying that we see keeps getting worse and worse? It's because we're so focused on this SEO driven content. 

[00:12:46] That we forget that there's so much more to it. And, we're starting to see the downfall of that.

[00:12:52] In the last, six to eight months, Lily Ray has shown so much of what AI overviews and other search results where it's just what the heck is this content? 

[00:13:01] Why on earth is this ranking compared to something here on page 345? that is actually what should be in position one, right? 

[00:13:08] And she's not the only one who's doing that research and showing that. 

[00:13:11] A lot of the examples she's shown is because of this concept of we're gonna write SEO drivel, we're gonna write keyword focused content, and not to say that's bad. 

[00:13:19] I think everyone's pretty clear on how I feel about the phrase SEO content and only focusing on that. But at the end of the day, Content needs to build trust, no matter where in the funnel it is. 

[00:13:30] No matter what you're putting out there. Whether it's a press release, whether it's something to push for digital PR efforts. 

[00:13:37] Whether it is that evergreen content. 

[00:13:39] And the problem is we're pushing everything from an SEO perspective. And forgetting from an holistic content strategy that actually supports conversion for our businesses.

[00:13:50] It's getting so much harder to be able to convince people with the drivel out there that a business should be trusted. 

[00:13:57] And even harder for small and medium businesses. 

[00:13:59] And so really, this comes down to how are we positioning ourselves as the experts when we're working with our clients? To explain the importance of content in general? And not just content in the lens of SEO efforts.

[00:14:12] What is the goal of every piece of content? 

[00:14:14] What is the ROI that we're going to get out of this piece of content? And how does content tie from one piece to the next? 

[00:14:22] And I think really we have to be advocates for this. 

[00:14:25] Whether we're working for an SEO agency. Whether we're working for a content marketing agency. Anybody who's touching content. 

[00:14:30] Really has to take the time to understand how each piece is actually adding to the puzzle. That these businesses are trying to earn business for themselves. And You know finding the balance is hard. 

[00:14:42] Because you have clients especially in the local space, their budgets are much smaller than these enterprise level. 

[00:14:47] There's only finite Level of resources that they have that they can spend. 

[00:14:51] And so that's why every piece of content we create and we recommend Has to be highly focused on what the end goal of that business is usually to drive leads conversion, etc. 

[00:15:01] Celeste Gonzales: So, when we're talking about content here. And yeah, but the ROI that's what's most important to these small local businesses. 

[00:15:08] And We've mainly been discussing is just like blog posts or like content on the website. 

[00:15:13] What, like how important now, or is it more important? Is it less important? This content elsewhere? Like you mentioned going to next door to find those like community issues. Should local businesses be posting on there?

[00:15:26] Should local businesses be posting within those Facebook groups? How important is diversifying the content? 

The Importance of Multi-Channel Marketing

[00:15:32] Melissa Popp: So the problem with this idea of should businesses be doing this? 

[00:15:36] Is that the answer's always been yes. 

[00:15:38] And why all of a sudden not just SEOs, but digital marketers in general are seemingly discovering the importance of branding, of multi channel marketing, of even direct marketing. 

[00:15:49] All these different efforts and everyone's acting like this is like some magical thing that just all of a sudden came to be. 

[00:15:54] And it's no, like businesses should have been doing this for so long. 

[00:15:57] But SEO became such a focus in the last decade. 

[00:16:00] Of how quickly someone could build a website. Whether it's a business, whether it's an affiliate marketer. Whatever. 

[00:16:06] Look at cooking bloggers, look at fashion bloggers, health influencers, those sorts of things.

[00:16:10] People saw how quickly organic, specifically traffic from Google, could drive business their way. And that became everybody's focuses. 

[00:16:18] And we're starting to see the downfall of that, we saw all of the feedback from the creator summit in the fall. 

[00:16:24] Of people who have lost their entire incomes because of the helpful content update and other algorithm updates Google's had in the last year and a half.

[00:16:31] And these are a lot of these websites have focused on one or two channels of their marketing. And have lost everything. 

[00:16:38] And we and businesses tend to forget, is that Google is a. They're only, their number one goal is to make money now. 

[00:16:44] It's not to save the world, it's not to serve the best results like the original, mission statement was. They're trying to make money. And organic doesn't make the money. Ad revenue does. 

[00:16:54] And it is mind boggling to me how many websites. How many marketers, even people we follow and listen to every day. 

[00:17:02] Still think organic is the only channel that matters. 

[00:17:05] So, I laugh at your question, because this has always been important.

[00:17:09] This is marketing 101. Go take a marketing class in college. 

[00:17:13] Even 20, 30 years ago, before SEO or Google or Yahoo or any of that was a thing. 

[00:17:20] And you were told, yeah, you need to go where your customers potentially are. Wherever those channels are. 

[00:17:26] And that's where you focus on. And I think we're seeing that. The downfall of so many websites and losing their livelihood. I think a lot of this could have been saved, if organic hadn't been the only thing they were focused on. 

[00:17:37] And so to me it's, where are your customers? It's you look at the demographics of Facebook, it's older people, it's boomers, it's, it's, Is that where your customers are? Are those the Facebook groups they're in?

[00:17:47] Yeah, you should be posting there. 

[00:17:48] Same thing with Nextdoor. 

[00:17:50] If your potential customers are there, you should be posting there. Are, younger demographics, right? Instagram, TikTok, okay, are you there? 

[00:17:58] And you have to start going where your customers are, and we're starting to see in the last probably five, six years how quickly new channels are expanding.

[00:18:06] You look at the downfall of Twitter and how many alternatives have come out to try to replace Twitter. 

[00:18:12] Are your customers there? Should you be building profiles there? And it's I want to shake people who still think organic is the only channel. 

[00:18:20] Especially when you are missing out on a whole bunch of people who potentially could be your customers. And add to the lifetime value of what they bring to your business.

[00:18:30] Celeste Gonzales: Love that. Thank you. You kind of, Tore into the question, which is exactly what I was hoping for. 

[00:18:36] So with being anywhere that your customer is, and I'm knowing that these local businesses, just when we're talking about like the blog type of content what is the ROI of this piece?

[00:18:45] Because, budgets are finite and stuff like that. Is there a best guidance? 

[00:18:50] We can just stick with the home services example. 

[00:18:53] How can they really try to decide which channels are worth the most investment for them? 

[00:18:59] We're talking like small local business, maybe not like multi location, multi state. 

Using Data and Gut Instinct for Local Marketing

[00:19:04] Melissa Popp: It's much harder for local businesses to be able to do this. 

[00:19:07] Because, again, it comes back to resources, in a traditional marketing cycle, these much larger companies and brands have marketing teams that are building buyer personas. 

[00:19:16] Building out buyer journeys. They have the market data and analytics to be able to understand the nuance of multiple demographics that might do business with them. 

[00:19:25] Because, that's also a misconception with smaller businesses that they target more generalized audiences. 

[00:19:31] Because they don't have the resources to actually get into that nuance. 

[00:19:35] And that is an approach that I recommend for smaller businesses who may not have those resources to truly build out buyer personas. And even have access to the market data.

[00:19:44] I'm sure people watching this or who work in local. 

[00:19:47] How many times do we get into GA4 search console and other analytics and they're set up completely wrong. 

[00:19:53] They don't actually have the data we need to make true decisions without trusting our gut because of the lack of data. 

[00:20:00] And when it comes to things like that, sometimes you do have to fill in the gaps and trust your gut. 

[00:20:05] To be able to say, okay, I think, this home service business, the average person might be 35 to 45, more male than females. And make snap judgments to find that target audience. 

[00:20:15] In some cases you might have enough access to data in GA4 alone to again, have a big picture idea of who that customer is. 

[00:20:23] Who those customers might be, playing around with the audience insights and things in GA4 and universal analytics in the past. 

[00:20:29] You were able to make those conclusions.

[00:20:32] And they aren't perfect.

[00:20:33] They're not going to be the buyer persona data that you would see from an actual the research involved in that. 

[00:20:37] But it would be enough to get started. And because it's a local Cool slice of the world. You can get away with using that. Versus having true data. 

[00:20:45] And I think, one of the things as marketers in general is not just SEOs is that, there's there's a divide of who wants to use true data all the time to make all their decisions.

[00:20:54] And that's it. If they don't have the data, they can't make a decision. 

[00:20:57] And then on the flip side, you have people more like me, who I'm like, okay. 

[00:21:01] You know what, I've been doing this long enough that I trust what my gut's telling me of how to run with things. And I'm not afraid to take those leaps. And I think on the local side, we have to be a little bit more, kind of jumping off the bridge into the water. 

[00:21:13] To fill in those gaps to try to target the right audiences at a local level. And I think that's not something I think marketers talk about a lot, is more the gut instinct and the gut check than just solely relying on the data side of it. 

[00:21:27] And I think in local, because, just the lack of data, sometimes. We have to be more willing to trust our gut.

[00:21:32] Celeste Gonzales: Love that a lot. 

Starting a Local Business with Limited Data

[00:21:33] Celeste Gonzales: With, let's just say I am going to start a local business. We talked about like the balance with the community issues versus, general issues. 

[00:21:44] And then, figuring out where the audience is. And using what data you have, to be able to know where to go, to put that. You're brand new, you don't have the data.

[00:21:55] Is it? Can you just go based on gut instinct then at that point? Let's say like they hire you and it's just we don't have the data. We know we wanted to open a storefront. We wanted to start our business here. I don't know, service area, storefront, whatever. 

[00:22:06] They have, their own experience with what they've seen in the past, but nothing like absolutely nothing to work with.

[00:22:13] You can just go based on gut and their expertise? 

[00:22:16] Melissa Popp: Yeah, how many businesses started that way? You look at something like Amazon that started as an online bookstore. 

[00:22:21] Where you had at the time you had Borders books and Barnes and Noble who barely had a web imprint. 

[00:22:27] None of them. I don't think Borders is around anymore. Barnes and Noble still is. And they adapted to the web. But when Amazon decided to start as a bookstore, nobody had any idea how that was going to work. People are going to order books online, and that was a foreign concept to people.

[00:22:40] They had no data. They had an inkling this is where the internet was going to go. And it worked out, right? Look at Amazon, so far beyond, and then streamlining the idea of digital books, right? And ebooks. 

[00:22:51] And so I think, most businesses, when they start out, unless they've worked for another business, they're not going to have the data necessarily like the hard data or facts to start out. 

[00:23:01] We'd have so much less innovation and businesses at the local or national level. 

[00:23:05] And so I think, the world we live in now, there's access to data everywhere, whether it's your data or not. Our SEO tools alone, like SEMrush, A Refs, et cetera, can give us insight into what competitors are doing and what people who have been successful.

[00:23:19] So like in the home services, area, we can go to Google, search for plumbers near me. 

[00:23:23] Find 10, plug them in one of these tools for a new business, and we can get an inkling, right? And most likely that data will be similar to what a new business would start with. 

[00:23:33] So we're in a much better place where we can start a new business without having data specific to that business.

[00:23:39] And of course, I do want to You know, disclaimer that, like the more nuanced your business or service offerings. 

[00:23:44] That easy of being able to use your competitor data may not actually work depending on how nuanced you are. 

[00:23:50] But generalized, we have a leg up that we can use data like that to make decisions for that.

[00:23:56] If you have a new plumbing business that wants to start up, most likely the service pages, the location pages, et cetera, that's going to be very similar. 

[00:24:03] And then, to tying it back to those pain points, they're going to face the same problems any other plumbing company is, trying to solve for other businesses.

[00:24:10] So I think, it's, it is trusting that, you may not have everything you need, all your ducks in a row to get started. But trusting that you can figure that out along the way. 

Examples of Successful Local Content Strategies

[00:24:18] Celeste Gonzales: And then lastly, I just wanted I don't want to put you on the spot with this. 

[00:24:21] But do you have any like specific examples of local businesses that kind of do this well? 

[00:24:26] With the balancing of just like typical SEO content. And then more of the community engagem ment, community involvement type of content?

[00:24:35] Melissa Popp: Yeah, actually, in the plumbing space, I think gosh, I feel like all of Ricky Rue's plumbing clients are going to get mad at me for saying this, but Roto Rooter does a great job at this. A national multi location business.

[00:24:46] I believe Roto Rooter, I think they're franchise? Some of it's franchise owned. I might be wrong on that. They've expanded across the whole U. S. They have a beautiful website. 

[00:24:55] And at the local level, they're also involved in charities and community outreach and that sort of thing.

[00:25:00] And I think that they not only get to be involved that way, but also showcase it that way. 

[00:25:04] And it's not, just because they're this giant business doesn't mean that every time they're doing something, they're talking about it. But they tend to do a good job of showing that. 

[00:25:12] I can give an example of companies also that don't. And I'm gonna go back to Amazon for that, for all the problems Amazon has that the evil Amazon concept, right? 

[00:25:21] Amazon does do a lot of community outreach as well however, they don't really talk about it very much.

[00:25:25] And not that they need to being. The brand that they are, but that's an example of, they could be building more trust. 

[00:25:32] That from a PR aspect could push out some of the negative out there if they talked more about their community initiatives. And the things they are doing. And so I think, it's interesting, even a big company can get it wrong. 

[00:25:44] Compared to Roto Rooter isn't necessarily a name brand in homes.

[00:25:48] Unless you live in an area where, you know I see Roto Rooter just in my apartment complex all the time. That's who my apartment complex uses. That's how people, I see them all the time. And but they do a good job of showcasing that balance. 

Conclusion and Wrap-Up

[00:26:00] Celeste Gonzales: Thank you so much, Melissa, for sharing all of your local content insights. And thank you viewers for joining us for the special guest hosted episode of the simple and smart SEO show podcast. 

[00:26:12] Crystal will be back next week. 

[00:26:14] ​