How much of a typical ad budget is wasted on bot traffic and fake clicks + Google Isn’t the Only Place Customers Search Anymore

OPENING - EPISODE 37 PAUL WRIGHT Hello everyone, and welcome to the Link Thru Social podcast. My name is Paul Wright, and welcome to episode number 37. And on today's show we have two guests Vi Wickam, and he'll be telling us how much of a typical ad budget is wasted on bot traffic and fake clicks and what you can do about it. And also Tyler Henn, and he'll be discussing why Google isn't the only place customer search anymore, and so much more. Those two guests will be joining us right after this short message. SPONSOR MESSAGE - TICKETPORTX SPONSOR MESSAGE You've worked hard to build your audience. So why send your customers somewhere else? Introducing white label digital storefronts from TicketportX. Now you can process tickets, registrations, donations, merchandise sales, and collect valuable customer data directly on your website or custom landing page. Increase brand visibility, create a stronger connection with your customers, deliver a seamless user experience, and monetize your brand with high-converting pages powered by TicketportX's secure hosting, payment processing, and event technology. Perfect for festivals, conventions, classes, retail storefronts, charity events, sporting events, and even free events. But that's not all. Introducing TicketportX multi-day events. Hosting a festival, seminar, conference, tournament, or event series. No more manually sending tickets 24 hours later. No more scrambling to issue comps and catch up with attendees. With TicketportX, everything happens in real time. Sell tickets for multiple events on one page. Create ticket packages across different dates. Manage entire event series from a single storefront. And spend less money marketing multiple links and event pages. One platform, one link, endless possibilities. TicketportX, powering your brand, your events, and your growth. INTERVIEW 1 - VI WICKAM / WIZARD OF ADS ONLINE PAUL WRIGHT & VI WICKAM And welcome back to the Link Thru Social Podcast. Well, we have a really good guest for us today, Vi Wickam. And he has been since 1997 helping businesses grow using digital marketing strategy, web development, search engine optimization, and Google Ads Management. He understands human psychology and business strategy as well as he understands the internet. He holds a solemn vow to make sure your website and data are firmly within your control. A rare promise in the digital world. Welcome to the program, sir. Thank you so much, Paul. It's a pleasure to be here. Likewise, very excited to have you on. And I want to get into some of the things that you you have been doing, but before we do that, just tell us a little bit more about your background. Well, I have I made my first website when I went to college in 1995, and it was kind of an eye-opening experience to get to connect to a Unix server, and I spent most of that year, you know, like learning everything I could about both the internet and Unix servers and how they all work. So I I am a serious hardcore nerd. and in 97 I started an IT business and we did IT and web development. I I ran that and grew that until the point we had 10 employees. and in 2009, I I decided to leave that business and move back to Colorado, which is where I grew up. And I love Colorado. I was in Indiana. I went to Indiana for college and ran that business in Indiana, and then I started up a new business just doing web development because I realized I don't really want to be on call 24-7 for servers going down. Yes. And so the web development world is far less urgent than the hey, we've got a manufacturing facility where we've got you know a hundred people working and they can't work now because the server went down, or you know, the you know who knows what it was. You know, we're we're losing ten thousand dollars an hour, that the server's down. So I decided that I was kind of tired of being in that adrenaline state all the time, and decided I was gonna go back to just doing web development and and digital marketing. So that those were the things that were changing and always new, and I really enjoy being in a situation where I'm being challenged constantly and I have good problems to solve, which is what attracted me to the IT stuff from the beginning. But when you grow a business to the point that you have 10 employees, you're no longer doing those day-to-day problem-solving things. I was mostly selling, which I I'm good with selling, but if all I'm doing is selling, that gets kind of boring for me. So I I sold that business. I you know, started just doing web development and digital marketing about seven years ago now, I guess. yeah, it was end of 2019, I think. I I joined Wizard of Ads as a Wizard of Ads partner. And since then, my web development side of things has been in service of marketing efforts. and so instead of being a developer first and a digital marketing guy second, I'm a digital marketing strategist first and a developer second, which you know, since I'd been doing both for 25 years at the time, it wasn't a hard switch. Sure, of course. But I've really, really enjoyed helping these small businesses grow, you know, and seeing, you know, their top line grow by a million or two million dollars in a year, sometimes even more than that. and you know, getting to see them hiring new people because we've created more opportunity, more opportunities for them is really rewarding. Yes, absolutely, yeah. It it it feels good. It's a wonderful feeling to it does to to show to see that they've progressed because of some of the work that you've done to help them get to that point. And very gratifying, absolutely for sure. Yeah, no, absolutely it is now. I I want to get into this because it's it's a very interesting subject that we haven't really touched on too much here on the podcast so far. So I I'd like to talk about Google Ads and SEO. When should a business invest in Google Ads versus SEO? And when is it too early for either? So if you don't have the budget to spend on either, it's too early for either. If you have a product that has a big return, so if you have high margins and and enough enough of a pad that you can you know manage three months of spending without breaking even yet, that's kind of what I look at as a good opportunity in Google Ads. So, you know, I had a client once who came to me and they were like, you know, I really want you to do Google Ads for me. I think it's gonna be great for me. And they had a product that sold for like a dollar or two per per item. And you know, you can't buy a click for a dollar or two a click in in most markets, you know, for most items. And I was like, you can't run Google Ads if you're selling your product for a dollar, you know, like I it's just not a good fit, but you know, that might have been a good fit where she could have written a bunch of content around that specific topic of what she's selling, built an audience, created some connection. I mean, social is a great way to build an audience as well, or social ads because I really don't like I find Facebook sucks me in and I can't get out, so I stay off Facebook most of the time. But when it comes to like the meta-ad suite, I find it to be kind of a maddening interface as well. So, you know, between those two things, I don't do social media management or social ads management. But if you're looking to build an audience organically, social is a great way to start. You know, in fact, in 2012, I did a project on YouTube where I recorded a fiddle tune every day for a year, and I did that as a thing to get me out of my comfort zone and to do something cool and provide some value to the fiddling community. And I had no idea that you know, 15 years later, people would still be watching those videos and learning my versions of these fiddle tunes and things like that. I'm like, it's kind of a little bit of a something like that can have. when you you aren't doing it for that best, you're doing it because you know, you think it would be a fun to do. Sure. It's a pleasant surprise, isn't it? It really was. I thought, you know, maybe some people will be interested, maybe some people will follow, but it it was great. Sure, and you had a good time doing it. Now I have always had a lot of inquiries about this. And hopefully you can shed a little bit of light about the concern a lot of potential clients might have about how much of a typical ad budget is wasted on bot traffic and fake clicks, and and what can you do about it when you're setting up these ads? That's a very good question. Well, the first thing I would say is that if you're doing Google ads, you should always start with the just Google target. So you can run Google, you can run Google search partners, and you can run display network. And when it comes to bot traffic or fraud, the display network is fraught with it. You know, you're you've got a lot of garbage in the display network, and you have less garbage in the search network, and Google itself is very, very low garbage. So if you're buying Google only, you know, you might be at like one and a half percent garbage traffic, you know, which I think is perfectly acceptable. You know, like that's acceptable. You're not going to get lower than that. in on Microsoft Bing, you have to consciously block the display network. It turns the display network on by default. You know, Google also will recommend that you turn everything on because you know, Google will say, Oh, you're missing all these opportunities. You could double your amount of opportunities if you just turn these things on, if you turn on your AI expansion, if you no, no, no, no, no. You know, let's start with the best quality traffic we can. And on Facebook and LinkedIn and all of those, they all have audience expansion of some sort. And when you expand your audience outside of that primary platform is when you end up multiple times increasing the amount of junk. So like I don't remember the exact stats, but say, you know, on LinkedIn it's 10%. I'm making these numbers up, but you know, if you if you go from LinkedIn to the LinkedIn expanded network, it becomes like 30%. You know, so you've tripled the amount of garbage traffic. So that's your like that's your baseline easy button. Don't expand the don't expand the audience. You know, I know that like from what I've read, TikTok is the worst in terms of audience expansion being garbage. you know, but like all the other platforms, the more you expand the audience, you know, the look-alike audiences are never as good as the real audiences, you know, audience expansion leads to more garbage. The the second thing is you can install fraud fraud blocking software. You know, I'm I'm not going to endorse any specific fraud blocking software, but you should do your research and pick one that blocks both by IP address and by behavior. So you want to make sure those bots that did click on your ads don't get added to your remarketing audiences. So when we're running any kind of digital ads, remarketing audiences is kind of stock and trade that if somebody comes to our website, if they clicked our ad, we add them to an audience so we can serve them and add it again later. Well, if you do that to a robot and you serve it more, you're gonna just keep serving more ads to robots. And that's the last thing we want. So you want to make sure that you keep bots both from getting added to your remarketing audiences and from clicking on those ads again, because every time a bot clicks on your ad, it costs you money. So those are kind of your your first two steps to keeping your traffic relatively clean. there's a guy named Dr. Augustine Fu that has an analytics platform that shows the like the amount of bot and fraud traffic that's coming to your website. and it separates bad bots from identified bots from likely humans and definite humans. And we use that as an analytics tool to say, hey, you know, what percentage of traffic to this site in the last week has been quality traffic. So we've we've already got two layers of you know protection here, and we've got some additional layers that we've built that are proprietary to us that I won't talk about, but that protects you from recording conversions from bots. So we don't want the bots to be able to convert on our website either, because that sends Google a strong signal that this is the kind of person we want on our site. So if we let the bots convert, then we're really going downward spiral fast. So so we've got those three layers of protection first, and then we're also on a weekly basis looking at that traffic and saying, hey, you know, does this does this traffic that the client had for the last week look good? What percentage of that traffic was you know suspicious, bad bot kind of traffic? you know, what I can say is when, you know, when you start a new campaign, especially in Google or Microsoft, they go into what they call learning mode. And learning mode is when it spits all the spaghetti at the wall, and you're definitely going to get garbage traffic for two weeks when you start a new campaign. There's no helping it, it's gonna happen. Just don't spend too much in those first two weeks. You know, keep your budget high enough that you can get momentum, but not so high that you're just blowing a bunch of money. Because you need to you need to give it enough data that it it can start the algorithm. And that's what learning mode is. It's you know, all of the algorithms on Google and Microsoft are and you know, Facebook's in that same game. They're all machine learning driven, which to the layman, that's AI. You know, like machine learning is they are now this is where measurement comes in next. So we all know in the computer world the phrase garbage in, garbage out. And so if we're not feeding good measured conversion data back to our advertising, we're not it's not going to send us the things we're looking for. So the further down the funnel I can measure well, the better I can buy that that traffic, and the better I can teach that machine learning algorithm what kind of visitor turns into money for me. Because it's not that Google or Microsoft or Facebook are evil necessarily, but their incentive is to make as much money off of you as possible. And if you tell them I'm only spending money when I get money back, I will spend money on every click you send to me. Yep. So so correctly measuring and correctly feeding valuable, accurate, measured data back to the robots on the ad platform side is the next way to get better traffic, which ultimately it's not just about blocking the bots or or keeping the fraud away. That's only part of the equation. You do that as your foundation, and then on top of that, you block the conversions, on top of that, you measure the traffic quality quality, on top of that, you measure every step along the way so that I can say, Hey, here's how many clicks we got. Here many, here's how many of those clicks turned into an add-to-cart or to a click-to-call, or you know, whatever that first tier conversion action is. Here's how many of those continued to check out or made a phone call that lasted 60 seconds, or were qualified as a lead by our AI phone call analysis. And then here's how many, you know, completed the shipping information on the checkout, or you know, became a booking, and here's how many of those checkouts completed. Here's how many of those bookings became a sale that turned into revenue. You know, so if you can follow that strategy all the way through to revenue, and then we can follow that all the way back to Google or Facebook or Microsoft. We've created a clean chain, a chain of custody of your data, so that you know who your visitors are, you you know who you want them to be, and you're telling your you're telling your ad platform, and you're gathering measured accurate data all the way through and posting it back. And there you have a complete system to keep your ad budget intact and spend it efficiently. Amazing advice there. yeah, a lot of people are reluctant at first of how these ads are gonna work and some very good points about about doing the different steps. And like within any business, what do they call it in the bar business, spillage? You know, you're gonna have a little bit of that when it comes to potential block traffic and that. So yeah, absolutely. Now we talk a lot about on the show about AI, of course. And how is AI search changing the way customers find local businesses as opposed to through Google, just the traditional Google search or Bing or one of the search engines? That's a great question, and I think the answer to this is going to be surprising to most people. The way that AI search is changing the way people find local businesses is mostly through Google and Apple and Microsoft. So people expect that it's all chat GPT and perplexity and Claude, but most of the the most important AIs out there are Microsoft Gemini, or sorry, Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot, which are built, you know, like Gemini is Microsoft's AI, but all those AI summaries on Google, which Which is 90% of the searches on the internet still are using Gemini to power them. And same thing, like Microsoft Copilot, formerly Cortana or maybe still Cortana, is is powered by Chat GPT. It's a custom ChatGPT implementation. So those are the ones that really, really matter. That's where the action is. That's where things are really happening. When it really comes down to it, though if it it has also changed the way that we're going to be able to do that, the searches end up in an ad click on Google. You know, so they clicked on the the local service ad, or they clicked on the Google Maps ad or they clicked on the regular Google ad. but they clicked on an ad. The most likely scenario is they did a Google search. It was a very general search like HVAC repair near me or or more is people will have a conversation with the AI summary before they click on click searches have gone through the roof. there's an estimate that by the end of this year, we read this maybe three to six months ago, that 70% of searches on Google would become zero-click searches. because 85% of Google searches were going to have an AI summary. I don't have like to the minute data on what those were, but six months ago it was like 55% of searches had had had AI summaries, and we'd gone from like 5% to 35 or 40% of searches were having zero click situations. So it's not as dire as it sounds because it's not that these there's less people in the market to buy the thing you're selling. There's the same amount of people who want to buy, but when they go to Google, they go to Microsoft, they type in the search box, they they say, I'm wanting restaurants around here for pad thie takeout. And and it replies, and and then they say, I would also like it to have a vegan gluten-free option. Which which restaurants offer vegan and gluten-free? And you get a response back that says, Oh, this one restaurant has reviews that say both gluten-free and vegan options exist, and you know, it's five miles away. And would you like directions? So then they click direct click the directions link instead of you know, it it may be three or five clicks to look at the different menus in the different restaurants. So it looked like five opportunities before, but it's really only one opportunity wants to get Thai food. And it may have resulted in five. It still that results in one click for they stayed on Google the whole time, which is what Google really wants. Right? Google wants your money and they want your attention. They want you to stay on Google, they don't want you to leave. And and this is the game that that all of these companies are playing around AI is keep them on our site, keep them interacting with our products. This is why Google Business profiles are more important than ever. This is why Apple just launched the Apple business profile upgrades like two months ago. I think this is why Google's making some dramatic shifts in their structuring of things like local service ads this month. the landscape of search has changed so dramatically in the past nine months. There's been more change in the last nine. Yeah, you just froze for a second there. Yeah, it says your bandwidth is slow. Yeah, I I'm not sure. I'm strange. Hello, Internet. I'll make I'll make a bookmark of that. We're gonna wrap up looks like you're back. Okay, we're back. Little technical difficulties here, but I I really appreciate you coming on the show today. And why don't you tell us a little bit about your company and some of the services you offer and where you can be found. So my company is Wizard of Ads Online. I'm a Wizard of Ads partner. We do digital marketing strategy for owner-operated businesses that are usually in the three to fifty million dollar kind of ballpark in revenue. I focus on creating results. Our incentive pay you know, the way we get paid is tied to growing their business. So we never ever take a cut of their spend, which lots of digital agencies take 10 or 20 percent of your Google ad spend for managing it. And I think that misaligns your incentives. I want my incentive to only be tied to creating growth for my clients, and I am committed to that. So I I love helping small businesses grow and become bigger. to that end, I offer a 45-minute audit of your digital marketing. So like anybody can come to Wizard of Ads Online and fill out a form, and I will do a digital marketing audit with you and review the results of what's going on with your Google Ads or with your website or with your your brand identity and consistency online. and outside of that, you know, I've just like to help people grow their businesses and be successful and make more money and have more fun. That's wonderful. No, that's that's all life should be. Indeed. Indeed. Well, you've been a wonderful guest. I really appreciate you coming on the show, and my pleasure. Of course, we'll provide all the links in the description, whether you're watching on our YouTube channel or listening on wherever you find us, we'll put those links in the description. Sir, I really appreciate coming on the show, the Link Thru Social Podcast. And we'd love to have you back again. As you said, in the last nine months, things have changed so dramatically, and it's just gonna keep changing and getting quicker and quicker and quicker for sure. For sure as the next couple of years go by, but appreciate you coming on the show today. It was my pleasure, and I would love to come back. Thank you so much for having me on your show. Wonderful. Well, the Link Thru Social podcasts will be back right after this short message. SPONSOR MESSAGE - SMART POST APP SPONSOR MESSAGE Tired of stressing over what to post on social media? Meet Smart Post App, your all-in-one solution to create, schedule, and grow your content effortlessly. In just a few taps, you can generate engaging posts, stay consistent, and keep your audience coming back for more. No more guessing, no more burnout, just smarter content faster. Whether you're a business owner, creator, or entrepreneur, SmartPost offers both premium and pro plans. In addition, we have new features that have been recently added that include instantly viewing public links to your posts on any network, weekly view allowing you to plan hour by hour, account groups, group your accounts to save time and simplify your workflow, and a desktop version which offers a simpler way to stay consistent. Start posting Smarter Today at smartpostapp.com. Smart Post App, because your content should work for you. INTERVIEW 2 - TYLER HENN / HENN HOUSE DIGITAL GROWTH STUDIO PAUL WRIGHT & TYLER HENN And welcome back to the Link Thru Social Podcast. Well, we have a special guest today, Tyler Henn. And his website is Henn.House, that's H-E-N-N. And Tyler is the founder of Hen House Digital Growth Studio, a local SEO agency that helps contractors and service businesses get found on Google, Maps, and AI platforms. With a background in user experience design, Tyler takes a practical, whole picture approach to digital growth, connecting websites, content, local visibility, reviews, and brand authority. He is also the host of Hen House Podcast, where he speaks with entrepreneurs and marketing leaders about what it really takes to grow a business online. Tyler, pleasure to have you on the Link Thru Social Podcast. Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, we're excited to have you. before we get going here, maybe you can provide a little bit more about your background and how you arrived here today. Yeah, sure. So it all started in college. like you said, my background is in user experience design. so I have a degree, a bachelor's degree in interactive design from Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia. and I live here at Marietta. I basically was about halfway through the program and decided that I don't I didn't think that I really wanted to work at a cubicle, kind of nine to five style job for my whole life. And so after graduating, I was really reluctant to apply for jobs. I was working at a Toyota dealership at the time, and I worked there for about eight years total. and I just did I just didn't want to work in a cubicle. So I was very stubborn. I was kind of pretending like, yeah, mom, I'm applying for jobs. It's you know, nobody's calling me. but I was probably applying for like two jobs a week. I moved up a couple times at the dealership and got comfortable. and then my at the time girlfriend, now lovely wife, started kind of encouraging me, like, what do you want to, what do you really want to do? And I was like, Yeah, I I gotta figure something out because this this dealership isn't cutting it. and so my stepdad owns still owns a roofing company, and he was always pushing me, you should come try to sell roofs, you should come try to sell roofs, it's really good money. And I finally made the jump. I was always reluctant to do that too, because it's it's a hundred percent commission. So if you don't if you don't sell any roofs, you don't make any money. Yeah, but my wife was extremely encouraging and and kind of pushed me to take that dive. And we ended up kind of coming to the conclusion that worst case scenario, I could go back to the dealership because they would have hired me back the next day. and so I had that cushion. but I started selling roofs in a time where in Georgia there was a massive hail storm, it was probably like a record-setting hail storm. it was March 26, 2023, and there was three to four inch hail in Noonan, Georgia. Oh my gosh. And so, yeah, it was it was crazy. I mean, there was, you know, windows broken out, gutters ripped off of houses, cars totaled. and so it was it was a good time to get in. And so I sold about 86 roofs all in the same neighborhood. We kind of got really blessed and were able to take over a whole neighborhood. And so 2023 was great, 2024 was pretty good, but Georgia is not a hail storm state, so we don't get a lot of storm damage. And so getting into 2025 started getting a little bit shaky income-wise, and I started thinking about do I need to pivot? And so I started kind of going back to my roots. And so this is all to say I kind of came into what I'm doing now on my own terms. people started asking me for websites, I started doing websites, and I started getting really interested in SEO, studying it like crazy. And I'm now at a point where I'm probably consuming three to four hours a day of SEO content, whether it be through podcasts, videos, Reddit, any source that I can to stay up on what's going on. Because as I'm sure you know, the algorithm, Google's stuff and AI, it's changing every day. And so it's really important to I think keep watching stuff. And so that's where I am now. So I help mostly local service contractors, local businesses, kind of with that contractor background as well. So I can especially speak to roofers where I know how to how to set someone apart on their website. So that's where we're at now. Wonderful. Yeah. Noah, you you mentioned just just now that you you're keeping up with all the all the trends, everything is happening so quickly and changing so quickly. So it's it's really important to to keep abreast of all the latest innovation and all the changes to algorithms and what have you in this type of business. So that that is wonderful. So let's get into it. AI, my friend, how is AI changing the way customers find and choose a local business? Yeah, yeah. So it's it's an interesting space right now. And the short answer is that it hasn't changed too much. the the way that SEO has been done traditionally for years is still the base. and so what I promote at my agency is let's first of all, if you're a local business and you don't have a Google business profile, you're on step negative one. Yeah, like having a Google business profile is step zero. So we got to get you that first because that is the majority of the leads that you're gonna get in from local search. So I say, if you don't have a Google business profile, let's get you that ASAP. The next thing that we do is we build a website that very strongly mirrors the content on the Google business profile that gives Google a ton of trust. And then from there, we start talking about what are the extra steps that we can take to put on the internet as much about the business as we can. So then we get into social media with specific captions because you can actually target a specific keyword in any social media post. we get into podcast appearances. So I'm pushing a lot of my clients to either start a podcast or try to get on podcasts now because we know that any of these podcasts that go on YouTube, Gemini then has that transcript and that compounds like crazy over time. And so just trying to get people to talk like a real human being about who they are and what they do and why somebody should go with them and the experience that they have, which usually in an hour-long conversation ends up being a unique experience. And so that's a great way to set yourself apart. So that's all to say. What I try to tell my customers is how can we do more to let the internet and let these agents know who you are and what you do and why they should why you should be picked. Now, there is also gonna be an aspect of I've been talking about this on my own podcast a lot because I think it's a really fun topic to explore. Is I think there will come a point when someone asks Chat GPT for a recommendation on a business, and the quality of service will almost be an afterthought. And so an example of that would be let's say that you have a really cool car, maybe like a 1970 Pontiac or something, and you take it to all the car shows and everyone loves it, and you're a real big car guy and you appreciate other people's cars, and then one day your air conditioner goes out, and you are just sweating, it's summer, it's hot out, and you go on Chat GPT and say, Hey, Chat GPT, I'm sweating, you know, my wife is angry, and we got to get someone in here to fix this thing. Who do you recommend? Well, Chat GPT knows because you've talked to it about your Pontiac for months and months and asked what wheels you should buy, what exhaust you should put on it, that you're a Pontiac guy or that you're a classic car guy. Well, it also happens to know that John's HVAC down the street owns a similar year Pontiac. So right there, it can say, hey, this guy does a good job, but more so than that, you are gonna be able to have a really cool conversation while he fixes your AC. And I think that we are coming back as a society to that because we're kind of getting displaced right now with the amount of slop and the amount of just AI generated, which is regurgitated content, by the way, at scale, where people are gonna want that human connection back. And I think that's why podcasts are so popular, and I think that's why I think that's why that will be happening. so you might pick that guy, and yeah, he'll do a good job on your AC, but you're gonna be excited to talk to him about your Pontiac. And so it adds this whole extra layer of relevance of besides the service that's being provided, I this guy's gonna be my friend. And so we're pushing that kind of content as well on websites. Like when I ask somebody what what is special about you, not so much Bob's HVAC, and they say, Well, I'm in a motorcycle club and I like to read, I like to golf and fish, I put all that stuff on the website because it just gives extra unique context to that business and that person. And everything that you mention about yourself anywhere on the internet is a chance to get picked now. Right. No, I absolutely love that analogy. And and you know, it personally, I don't know about yourself, but when I'm in a certain town and I want to explore the town and and get a feel for the town, I like to go to the local businesses, not necessarily the chains, you know, the the franchise chains of of restaurants or or any type of store or that type of thing. I like to immerse myself in the local culture, and I I think a lot of people feel the same way. And this is comes similar along the lines of what you were saying about have your air condition fixed and you have a nice conversation with the gentleman about cars and type of thing. That's what people really gravitate to because we're you were you were quite polite. You said this lot, there's a lot of garbage out there, and people want that that human contact and and social interaction. I think that is very, very important. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Now, for for business that wants to improve their visibility in cities where they might not necessarily have a physical location, what advice would you give to them? Yeah, I mean the best answer is always going to be if you can get a Google business profile in a second city, 100% do it. That's the easiest way to do it. now I know that not everybody can afford to go, you know, rent a second office or or get a second location. And so it's really hard from a Google business profile standpoint to rank in cities that you don't have a Google business profile in. But the good news is now with AI, we are able to expand that that relevance a little bit more. And so I would expect, let's say you're in Toronto, maybe someone in the next town over, or or you wanted to show up in the next town over, we can create content for that on the website and post about it and talk about it in podcasts. sponsor events in that city can help a lot too. that's something that I'm trying to do a lot right now is sponsor events with causes that I agree with. maybe sponsor a high school soccer team or something like that in that city, and that can help on the AI front. another really cool tool that Google just put out on Google Maps is called Ask Maps, and that actually goes a lot further than just the city that you're in because you can get specific. So, for example, I have a roofing company client who he's a newer roofing company, and there's about 3,000 roofing companies in my metro area, and so it's a very competitive market. And I've got him hovering somewhere around 10th or 11th place on average, which is a lot better than you know, we were probably in 200th place when we started, so we're doing pretty good. Now, if I look up roofing company city name. For the city that he's in, he shows up about 10th or 11th. But he happens to be from Ecuador. So he's a Latino-owned business. Now I've given the context for that on both the website. We talk all about it throughout all the content. And also you can check that checkbox on the Google Business profile. So if you ask ask Maps, the the new Maps AI, Latino-owned roofing companies in my area, then he's like number one or two. And that's that's gonna be further down the funnel anyway. So somebody who wants a Latino-owned roofing company over a roofing company, they kind of already know what they want. and so it's gonna be higher converting anyway. And so it kind of goes back to getting specific, like I mentioned earlier, where we wanted if you're just targeting roofing company, it's really hard. But if you can get it specific into what you do, the way you do it, your background, it makes a big difference. Right, right. Now, a business is, you know, they're they've hired a company or perhaps they're doing SEO on their own. how can they tell whether SEO is actually producing meaningful results? Yeah. So that's one thing that I'm really big about at my agency because what we what I've heard from people, and the and the reason that a lot of people have come to me is because they say, Well, I was with this company for three years, and every quarter or or biannually, I would call them and say, Hey, what's going on? I'm not seeing much progress. And they would say, Well, SEO takes time. Yeah, and that's not a good answer for someone spending thousands of dollars a month, right? That's really frustrating. And so I start from the beginning and I sit down with someone. I always try to meet in person for for onboarding meetings, and I say, or or for just initial discovery meetings, and I say, I'm gonna show you today exactly what I do, how I do it, and why it works. Every month I'm gonna send you a report, whether it's good or bad, and I'm gonna explain what I'm gonna do about it. So if we have a bad month, I'll say, here are the steps that I'm gonna take that work within my framework to actually get the progress that we want. And I think it just comes down to transparency. but to answer your question, I mean, as far as local SEO goes, you you'd be getting more inquiries than you were before at, you know, I would say within a c a few months for for most companies. roofing companies are a different story unless you have just a lot of money to spend on links and sponsorships and press releases and all this stuff. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, in general, just being transparent. And then yeah, I would just say more leads. For sure. Now, your podcast is called the Hen House Podcast. tell us a little bit about your podcast and where it can be found. Yeah. So we're on YouTube, we're on all major podcast podcast platforms, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, all that good stuff. And over there we just covered digital marketing in general. But I like to tell all my guests that I like to explore the way that all other marketing channels can affect SEO in some way, because they all 100% do now and in 2026 more than ever. so even like going to a networking event and telling someone your company name, if they go home and Google your company name and find you in on page one and click on your website and scroll around for five minutes or something like that, that's a really positive signal for SEO for Google. And so I like to explore and look at examples of of all the ways that that can help that marketing can help SEO. So we've had email marketers on, we've had people who swear by networking and are trying to get people to not spend money on SEO. but then I was like, well, let me challenge you, because it does it absolutely affects it. And so so we just really explore that concept, and I think it's really ever-changing and just a really fun and definitely fix that. just maybe to wrap things up, you can tell us a little bit more about all the services that you provide for the Henn House Digital Growth Studio. Yeah, so our main offerings would be website, Google Business Profile Optimization and Local SEO. kind of like I explained at the beginning of the episode. We start with the Google Business Profile and the website, and then we look at what are kind of how can we cast that web bigger and bigger over time. So we get into social media strategy, we get into podcast guesting and hosting, we get into sponsoring local events. joining chambers is huge for SEO right now for local relevance, any other local business clubs. And so we just look at the strategy that's gonna get Google to recognize you as a prominent figure in your area. Wonderful. Well, Tyler Henn, thanks again for joining us. And I encourage everyone to visit Henn.House. And the Link Thru Social podcast will be back right after this short break. SPONSOR MESSAGE - TICKETPORTX SPONSOR MESSAGE Introducing TicketportX multi-day events, hosting a festival, seminar, conference, tournament, or event series. No more manually sending tickets 24 hours later, no more scrambling to issue comps and catch up with attendees. With TicketportX, everything happens in real time. Sell tickets for multiple events on one page. Create ticket packages across different dates, manage entire event series from a single storefront, and spend less money marketing multiple links and event pages. One platform, one link, endless possibilities. TicketportX powering your brand, your events, and your growth.