Google Trends and What's the Best Website for Your Small Business?

The Small business show episode 344 for Wednesday, September 8, 2021. Greetings, folks and welcome back to the show where we are small businessing every week. That's right here at BusinessShow co. Small businessing is a verb. And, and we like to do it. I say we do it every week. We do it every day. We come talk to you every week. We talk with you every week and you can talk with us. Feedbackusinessshow.co. we'd love to hear from you. You know how else we'd love to hear from you is our small business show listener survey. I think it's running for another week. Here you have a chance to win 50 bucks of an Amazon gift card. But mostly the most important part is you have a chance to tell us what you think about the show and what we might be able to do to improve. So please go check out that survey. We would love to have it. Also check out our. We would love to have your answers. Check out our sponsor, Bambi b a m b e-e.com small right now to schedule your free HR audit. We'll talk more about the how and why and all of that in depth in a little bit here. But for now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

In Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How do they find that survey, Dave?

They find it. Oh, right. So it's linked right here at BusinessShow Co in the show notes for the episode. But it's also at BusinessShow Co survey. So we make it real easy for you.

Yeah. Cool. Yeah, it's really good. Yeah, very good. So today we're going to talk about two of my favorite subjects that can be frustrating, but they can also be massively rewarding. One is Google Trends and the other one is what kind of website? What's the best small business website for your business?

Oh, yeah, I like it.

I've spent, you know, I, I can't even fathom how many hours I've spent working on websites and developing this and that for one business or another and tweaking things. And so it's a, it's a huge opportunity and. But it can also be a huge distraction.

Massive. So, yeah, yeah. So we're going to talk about even worse of a distraction. If you're a nerd, the more you know how to do, the more of a distraction it will be for. Could be for you.

Could be. Could be. Yeah, exactly. So, but let's, let's talk about Google Trends.

I like it.

Yeah. If you're not familiar with Google Trends. It's a tremendous tool to help you find out what people are searching for related to specific topics. We use it here on the Small Business show and we recommend you use it for your business. We're going to dive into, excuse me, different website software and services here in a little bit. And one of the things that you need to do is keep that website updated. It's not a static, you know, you put it up there and it just sits there. You want to produce content on that site that people. That is going to come up in search results.

That's the key. And what I was going to say is if you are producing any kind of content, you need to be using Google Trends and it's at Trends. T R e n d s.google.com and as Shannon said, you can go and search for a topic. You get to narrow it down to your local area or beyond or, and or the time range you can look. What did people search for in the last year? What did they search for more recently? It's fantastic.

Yeah, it is. So you know, for example, if you're, I don't know, pick anything, let's say you're selling roses. Well, you could put that trend, that, that term up there, roses, and it will come up with the top trends with that search term over a given period for a certain demographic. And you could create a blog post or a news article on your website that incorporates those keywords and things that people are searching for and that's going to help increase your ranking in the search results and it's going to drive more people to your website.

Yeah, yeah. For example, I searched for roses and I narrowed it down to United States past seven days and I left it open as all categories. But it starts showing me interest by sub region. And I can see that the state of Oregon has a, the highest interest in roses right now. So let's narrow it down to Oregon. Maybe that's where I am. Maybe I'm. And I could narrow it down to, you know, Portland or Eugene and get in there. And of course one of the things I see on there is the Guns and Roses set list and. Yep, yep. So you know, you get a, you get to filter through, I guess Guns and Roses maybe played in Portland recently and that's why that's coming up. So you need to narrow these things down. Maybe I need to look for roses, flowers and narrow it down that way. And then, you know, you start to get an idea of what people are looking for and at that point you Say, okay, so I looked at roses, flowers across the United States and over the last week and the query do roses need full sun? Is up 450%. That means that compared to the week prior. 450%. As many people are looking for that, the answer to that question. And so you could write a blog post answering, do roses need full sun?

Literally, that could be the title.

That should be the title.

Yes, yes. And that. That keyword phrase should be throughout your article.

That's right.

And it's going to help get, you know, more people, you know, are going to come up when people search for that and they're going to come and also helps you become an expert at that. And you can also use the Google Trends data for your advertising. If you're buying Facebook ads or things on Instagram or stuff, it just kind of can help you tie in a campaign. Whether it's you're creating content or, you know, buying advertising. It's just a great resource and it's something that I look at all the time. And I would recommend that it, you know, be bookmarked and that you look at it as well.

Yeah. We tell all our writers here at the Mac observer, you know, when. When you stop and say, I don't know what to write next, well, let the people tell you what they are interested in. Like, that's really what this is, is you are letting your future readers tell you what they want to hear about. What better? I mean, like, that's a free focus group. We literally just had a free focus group on what people who are interested in rose flowers want to know. And we got that information. And it is accurate. It's a. And I did it for free.

It's just a. It's a huge. It's one of the keys to the kingdom.

It is.

And I don't hear enough people talking about it. And it's, you know, we'll certainly need to probably do an entire show on Google Trends and the ways to use it in creative methods in the future, but right now you should start paying attention to it and, you know, integrating it into your work. Social media. Yeah. And your workflow for social media and content creation on your website.

I like it. I like it. You know what else I like is a service that helps take my headaches away. Because when running a business, Shannon, HR issues can kill you. Things like wrongful termination suits, minimum wage requirements, labor regulations, and, you know, HR manager salaries, they're not cheap. They come at an average of 70 grand a year. Well, Bambi spelled B A M B E, our sponsor for today was created specifically for small business. You can get a dedicated HR manager, craft your HR policy and maintain your compliance, all for just $99 a month. I know, I know it seems crazy, but it's true. With Bambi, you can change HR from your biggest liability to, to your biggest strength. Because your dedicated HR manager is available by phone, email or real time chat for things like onboarding all the way to terminations. They will customize your policies to fit your business and help you manage your employees day to day, all for just how much? $99 a month. And it's month to month. There are no hidden fees. You can cancel anytime you didn't start your business because you wanted to spend your time on HR compliance. So let Bambi help. Get your free HR audit today. Go to Bambi. Right now to schedule your free HR audit. That's Bambi.com/small spelled BAM to the B E-E.comsmall Our thanks to Bambi for doing what they do and for sponsoring this episode.

That's a huge service, boy.

Huge.

I tell you. That's fantastic.

It's. Yeah. 99 bucks a month, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anybody who's done HR stuff just be jumping up and down for that one.

Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. So let's talk about websites, man.

Yeah, yeah, let's do this. You know the question, Nick, what kind of website do I need for my small business? It kind of reminds me we talked about phone systems a couple weeks ago. It's kind of similar. It really depends on what kind of business you're in.

Right.

If your focus is E commerce and you're selling a product, there's going to be certain things that you want to look for. If you're creative person that's creating content, maybe a little different. If you're a service provider providing services, your local area, that could be a little different too. Or you know, I know, Dave, you own a business that, you know, generates content news.

Yeah.

So everything's.

That's radically different, right? Yeah. And, and the costs of this are interesting. We, we had an email from listener Scott who wrote into us to tell us about this article at Elegant Themes. If you do anything with WordPress, you will eventually run into the folks at Elegant Themes. They do some great work. In fact, for a period of time we were running some of their themes on businessshow co. And the article is all about how like the all the costs involved in a website, not just here's what you pay to host your website, but Things like, you know, domain name pricing and buying themes. Like you might want some of Elegant Themes stuff right, to, to do this and you might need some plugins for your, you know, E commerce and things like that and maintenance on it. It's a fantastic piece that walks through a lot of these things that you might not think about until the day you need to implement them. And it's nice to have a budget ahead of time. So this, this article, you know, we were talking in the, in the prior segment about creating content that's truly valuable for people. Elegant themes, yes, they sell themes for WordPress, but they also create content that's valuable and this is one of these things. So we'll put a link to that in the show notes too, just so you can start to really get an idea of what it might cost you for to run a, you know, a store or your website or whatever it is online.

So yeah, yeah, it's a great article and I. It's going to cost you more than you think.

It will cost you more than you think. Yeah. One person in there is saying, you know, I just run a simple WooCommerce store and it costs me 12 to 1500 dollars a year, $100 a month. And that's for, you know, the hosting and the domain name and the plugins that you need and the theme that you want and all that stuff. And so you're paying 100 bucks a month and that there's nothing wrong with that. Like, no, no, that's, you know, worth it.

And. But the other cost that you need to, I think, think about when you're looking at these choices is time, right? How much time you're. You're spending. So the first thing, you know, talking about like E commerce, which is what I've been involved in my whole life, ask yourself, you know, especially if you're getting started, maybe we can just go out and sell on marketplaces. Maybe we don't even need a website like on day one. Maybe you can sell on Amazon, maybe you sell on ebay, a Facebook marketplace if you want to ramp up very quickly. That's a great way to do it. There's also incredible a B testing on those platforms that can help you define your product better. Figure out what customers you know, oh, do we bundle two or three of these together? What price points really work? I mean, there's a tremendous amount of data that you can get from these types of platforms that may be a little more difficult and take a little longer set up on your own. The problem with these Platforms. The main issue that I see is the customer does not belong to you.

Right.

The customer belongs to the marketplace. If you're selling an Amazon or ebay, they consider that their customer, they handle a ton of stuff, but that customer. So I think it's a great part, a solution, but partway, the huge benefit.

Listen to last week's episode though, about fulfillment. The fulfillment piece from last week's episode where you might be able to start converting Amazon's customers or ebay's customers into your customers.

Correct.

But in order to do that, you probably want to have a website.

Yeah, that's right. You definitely need it. The big benefit those marketplaces have is traffic.

Right.

Of course they're spending millions, maybe billions of dollars to drive that traffic to them. They're pushing all their content out to Google Shopping and all these other platforms. And so you do get that benefit, you're paying fees for that, but I would argue you're going to pay the fees one way or another. But one of the best sites I like, the best services I really like for e commerce is Shopify. You know, they're just, it's an unbelievable platform that has a ton of depth to it. It's a great place to build your product business. Tons of tutorials and thousands of people that can help you get started quickly selling via Shopify.

Oh, I've never used Shopify. I mean I've never run a business like that would need Shopify. It's not like I've chosen something else but I, you know, I hear so many good things about it and it's.

Really phenomenal tools they put at your hands, in your hands and the value they add. Like we'll put a link in the show, notes for their tutorials. You know, they, they just have a tremendous depth of assistance and help you get started and understand the fundamentals of how to do it as well as just also general business concepts. They will teach you as well. But I mean if you go up to get help and you want somebody to help you build the store out, like if you go to our friends at Fiverr, which we'll link to the show and search for Shopify, you come up with over 23,000 results of service providers that will help you get started on Shopify.

Oh, just people to coach you through or even do some build it up process for you. Wow.

Build it for you. So if you wanted to. I wanted to build, I needed a new site just earlier this year and I was like, man, I just don't have the time here's. My data. Here's this. And it was just in a spreadsheet actually. Here's my data that was on ebay. I want you to pull all that data, build the Shopify store. Here's all my creative content and create this, match the categories up and do it. And the whole thing cost me less than $200 to have it built in a Shopify store. And my concept was like, well, I want to convert those people that are buying on ebay. I want to put a link inside the box, give them a coupon and get them to come shop at my store so I don't have to pay those fees and I can gain the customer data for myself. So tons of, tons of ways to build these things out inexpensively, quickly. The other thing I really like is Shopify has really pushed their payment, the shop pay and they're sharing across other Shopify merchants. So once you buy something from a merchant that is using Shopify, you can, you're ready. You can share that registration across different companies and share your payment method across different businesses.

Oh, so it's kind of like the App Store, right? Or like what Amazon's doing, right? That's right. Yeah. You have your one profile that you as the customer use and you trust Shopify, you trust Amazon, you trust Apple. You don't have to worry about trusting some merchant you've never heard of before.

That's right.

That's huge.

Yeah, huge thing. And as a Shopify, as a merchant that it's your customer, even though you know they're sharing this, this data across, if the customer agrees to it, you get that customer data, you get their phone number, you get their email, you know the address.

So it really is the best of. Oh, they, they know what problem they're solving. I get it now. Okay, Absolutely.

So I highly recommend, I highly recommend you take a look at Shopify. There's other, you know, other solutions and I've used them both of these that I'm going to mention, self hosted solutions. You know the benefit of a self hosted solution like an X cart or a bigcommerce where you pay, you get all the software and you have a service, service provider that, you know, you're hosting it on a server somewhere. Very robust, crazy versatile versatility and you know, crazy modifications that you can make to, you can make the thing work exactly the way you want it to. However, there's a price to pay for that and that is in your time, in the money. And like we talked about a few minutes ago, if you're a geek and you're into it and you want it to work a certain way, man. It's a deep, deep rabbit hole that you can go down to, to work on these websites that you're hosting yourself.

I have, I have been caught in that rabbit hole more times than I am proud enough to admit. But it's, you know, it. And what I finally learned was watching people who aren't geeks get their sites, you know, whatever it is, up and running quickly and it's like, oh. Because they don't know what they don't know and you know what, the product that they are putting out there is great. They aren't interested in the little nitpicks that I'm interested in and they just launch. It's that whole. Perfect is the enemy of good. You know, perfect is the enemy of release. So. Yeah, yeah, I agree.

So, you know, we'll link them in the show notes, you can research them. The people at Xcart and at bigcommerce are incredible. And you can build just, you know, your masterpiece if that is what you want. But if you want to get up and running quickly and start generating revenue and cash and, you know, ultimately profit. I love the Shopify solution. And these are, you know, Shopify is used by massively large companies as well as small businesses like, you know, like we're talking about here today.

Interesting, interesting. That's cool.

But let's talk about WordPress. That was kind of one of the things that, you know, WordPress hosts over 40% of the websites on the Internet.

Yep. They host us. I believe it. I absolutely believe it, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I love WordPress and it's very simple to set up. If you want to build a simple content site or, you know, site to share news or information, I think it's quick and easy and there's all kinds of themes. And I do think it's a little bit more complicated when you start. If you want to build an E commerce platform on WordPress using. I think they just. They just bought WooCommerce.

They did, that's right.

Yeah. And I've used it and I love Woo and it's super versatile. But there is a definite learning curve. I think Shopify is quick and easy, but you can't really modify it as much as you can with WooCommerce.

Right. We built our. You know, I have a long history of building things that other people then, then just market out as things including a content management system. Right. Like in 1999, I built our content management system at the Mac observer from scratch, like whole cloth PHP and MySQL because, you know, WordPress and anything else like it didn't exist. If I was smarter, then I'd be doing, I would have sold it, you know, as a content management system and not just used it in house. And then, and then we could be doing my podcast from my private island, but I don't have. Yes, but we used WordPress and WooCommerce to build our, we call it our premium system, but it's effectively our pre Patreon type of system for Mac Geek Gab. Again, if I was smart enough, I would have, you know, marketed that out as like, you should do this for your podcast. But I'm not so Patreon, you know, all other business. Well, that's the thing is it's hard to see that another business exists when you're just trying to solve a quick little problem for your business. That's, that's really the trick that I need to get better at. And I have actually over the years gotten better at that. Sure. You know, yeah, that makes sense.

But you know the thing, WordPress again, it's a massive ecosystem that you can get help with. You know, if you go on Fiverr and search for WordPress it's over 94,000 results come up to people that can help you build something, integrate it. Lots of service providers. I mean my, my host for My server is bluehost.com.

Oh yeah.

And then. And they have just a great tutorial and they just will walk you through. Oh, I'm going to build this new website. Okay, here's the domain. Let's register it. Oh yes. Do you want to add WordPress? Yes. Okay, great. Boom. They manage the installation of it, help you get things set up. I love it. You know, we talked about tutorials for Shopify. Same up on WordPress. If you go to WordPress.com go G O. Just a ton of tutorials that you can learn from. And you mentioned Elegant Themes. You know, I'm still host at my, my personal website@shannon jean.com I use WordPress and I use Elegant Themes and their plugin called Divi Divi that I really like. And it's a great Solution. It's like 99 bucks a year to manage the site. It works out really good.

Awesome. That's great. That's great.

Yeah. So the thing I think you need to think about or the thing I think what to think about when you're looking at these different sites is, you know. Yes. How much it's going to cost in money, but also in your time. And it's not a static solution. You're going to be creating things all the time. Think about who's going to manage it, right? Who's going to update it, who's going to fix problems, who's going to post your privacy policy, your return policy like we talked about in the last episode, you know, who's going to do blog posts? Is it going to be you or are you bringing somebody in or going to hire a, you know, outside contractor and it's going to be easy for them to jump in and out. It's not a static solution, I always call it. It's an ever changing beast of opportunity.

I like that.

But it can be a beast. I mean, it really can be all encompassing. So you, you want to think about how we do it and it's got to be simple in my opinion, to make it very effective. The more layers you build upon it and the more people you're going to have to have involved and, and that's fine if that's. You're building your company out like that. We certainly had at Mac Rescue, at Rescue Systems, at Tech Restore, we, you know, we had full time people on staff that were programming the website full time people that were creating content, listing products, taking photos, I mean, all that kind of stuff. So, you know, an ever changing beast of opportunity.

I like that. That's a good, that's a good term. Yeah.

So let us know what you do for your website. You know, send us an email to feedbackusiness Show. Put the, the term website in the subject line so we know what show it's regarding and we'd love to hear from you. Tell us what we got wrong or what solution you use that works for you and we'll share it here on the show.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. That's feedbackusinessshow. Co. We'll put a link to that in the show notes too, to make your life even easier. It's, it's what we do, you know, it's how it works, man. You got anything else for us today or we good?

No, I think that's it, man. All right, get him started.

We'll get them started. That's right. Make sure to check out our sponsor. That's bam. B B A M B e dot com. Small to schedule your free HR audit and keep living that charmed life. We'll see you in a week and we'll hear from you sooner, I hope. Go do that survey for us, would you please?