575: Avoiding Google Suspensions: What Every Pet Sitter Must Know with Amy Toman
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How do you keep a Google Business Profile working for your business? Amy Toman, owner of Pet Sitter SEO, explains why “almost anyone can get a Google Listing, but few can keep one.” She dives into the essential steps for setting up a listing correctly from the start, why compliance with Google’s rules matters, and how regular updates like adding photos, responding to reviews, and optimizing services can keep your listing thriving. Amy also shares tips on avoiding suspensions, the importance of having proper business documentation, and how interacting with your listing helps Google see you as relevant and trustworthy. Her insights are a must-hear for any pet care business owner looking to stay visible and competitive in a digital world.
Main topics:
Importance of Google Business Profiles
Avoiding Suspensions Through Compliance
Photo Uploads and Content Relevance
Consistency in Reviews and Interactions
Best Practices for AI Usage
Main takeaway: “Almost anyone can get a Google Listing, but few can keep one.”
Your Google Business Profile is more than just a checkbox—it’s a powerful tool for attracting clients and growing your business. But here’s the catch: simply getting your listing isn’t enough. To truly succeed, you must set it up correctly from the start and maintain it over time.
✅ Follow Google’s rules for your business name and address.
✅ Regularly update your listing with photos, reviews, and services.
✅ Ensure your paperwork and business details match your listing.
Failing to comply with Google’s guidelines or neglecting your profile can lead to suspension—shutting off a major source of new clients. Take the time to set it up right and keep it active. Your business depends on it! 🚀
About our guest:
Amy Toman is the owner of Pet Sitter SEO, a business dedicated to helping pet sitters and pet care professionals optimize their Google Business Profiles and websites to attract more clients. Since founding Pet Sitter SEO in 2017, Amy has become a Google Business Profile expert, earning the prestigious Diamond badge for her contributions on the Google Business Profile forum. She combines her extensive knowledge of SEO with practical advice tailored to pet care businesses. Amy is also the co-founder of the Digital Pack Leader program, where she collaborates with industry professionals to teach the latest in digital marketing and website optimization.
Links:
Episode 120: https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/120
Episode 267: https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/267
https://digitalpackleaders.com/meet-the-pack-leaders/
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SPEAKERS
Collin, Amy Toman
Amy Toman 00:01
Almost anybody can get a Google listing, but not everybody can keep them. Welcome
Collin 00:06
to pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Today, we're brought to you by our friends at tying to pet and the peaceful pet music, calm music for pets YouTube channel, Google, as a business owner is one of the most important factors of getting our names out there. And there are good things that we need to be doing with Google, and there are some things we need to make sure that we are avoiding, both from an SEO perspective, as well as the Google business profile. And so to cover these topics, we are super excited to have Amy toman, owner of a pet sitter, SEO, back on the show to talk about these topics and how we can be implementing some best practices. Amy, I'm super excited to have you back on the show and talking about these because it's more important than ever these days for those who haven't listened to your previous episodes, I'm gonna have links to those in the show notes so people can just stop listening to this. Go listen to those and then come back to this. But could you tell us a little bit more about about who you are and kind of what you do?
Amy Toman 01:08
Sure. I started in the pet sitting world in about 2015 I started my own business, pet sitter SEO, in 17, I've been doing that. Wow, that me makes it almost eight years of doing that, and I, I have also, during the last like five years, I started volunteering on the Google Business Profile forum, and now they kind of, as you move up in levels and knowledge and in participation, you get badges. And so I've got the, I've got the top badge right now, which is diamond, and which also, which means not only that I've done a lot, but also that I have a lot of knowledge on a lot of different topics. So here I am,
Collin 01:55
and you got a cool google jacket too, so that,
Amy Toman 02:00
yeah, now I'm waiting for what the hat I got? I've got a couple water bottles. I could use those, but I just love the jacket well,
Collin 02:09
so yeah, let's, let's dive into the Google business profile there. How I see this word a lot about as far as, like, optimizing the profile from your perspective, what does it mean to optimize? And then how can we be doing that for the hyper local searches that we need as a business? That's,
Amy Toman 02:28
that's, it's an excellent question, and I love the term hyper local, because there's just so much that goes into that. The answer to that Google listings, and I'll go specifically, I will target your mention of hyper local at this point, Google listings are essential for businesses these days. People can go on about which platform you know, politics and social and whatever,
Collin 02:54
but to be honest, Google's the elephant in the room. You can say that
Amy Toman 03:00
you disagree with certain things, but the end result is, if you're not on, if you don't have a Google business profile, you're you're missing out at least half of your audience who could be contacting you. Localization. Local optimization the best, and what you said about hyper local that specifically refers to Google listings because of the way they promote businesses. A lot of people don't realize that whether your address shows or not, then most pet sitters it doesn't, and it shouldn't, just to comply with Google's rules, most Google listings will only recommend you in a small area around your address. So like, for me, I live about
Collin 03:52
about a mile, maybe a
Amy Toman 03:53
little less, maybe maybe about half a mile from the ocean. So going east, they don't recommend me that much. Going west, north and south. They recommend me a lot. But again, they only recommend you within a really like, if you imagine you're you're at the centroid. I love that word, the centroid of a circle.
Collin 04:13
You're only going to be recommended in
Amy Toman 04:16
the areas anywhere from like two to five miles. People usually say, and that's all depending on your on the population in your area. Okay, so if you live in an area like mine, which is New Jersey, there's there, we're, we're, I think we're number two in in population density. We just have a lot of people. And it's not, it's just it's nice in my area, but still, because of that, you would not find a business that is based, let's say mine, in my town, you would not see them. Recommend three miles away. You just won't, because there's their Google, you know, they adjust it to the area. Now, if you live in an area, say, out in I don't, I'm, I'm guessing, like the. Cotas or Colorado or Utah, where there isn't a large amount of population, Google is going to recommend you further that circle is going to be further out so that they can catch people who are who are in those kind of lesser populated areas. Optimizing your Google listing is something. It's kind of almost a definite a second like, it's not necessarily connected with what I just said, Google listings to be optimized. The best thing you can do right now is follow the rules and interact frequently. When I say follow the rules, there are specific guidelines that if you don't follow them at some point, somehow they're going to figure that out, and they're going to suspend you, or they're going to ask you to verify yourself, to to verify usually means they want you to do a video. And if you've not followed the rules and you don't have a legit address, that usually ends up being problematic. And I see, I see questions all the time. You know, I did this at this place. Can I verify? No. Can I, you know, I set myself up at a co working space, and I'm at a community desk. Can I do it? No, post office, box, no mailboxes, etc, up. No, you can't use those. So it's good to look at Google's Google's guidelines on how to set up a Google listing. Okay, because setting them up, and it's usually has to do with both the title and the address. If you set those up accurately and and comply with Google's rules, you got a great head start. And then after that, it's just optimizing different things like putting up nice photos and getting reviews and, you know, making sure the services that they add actually that you add and they add actually pertain to your business. For example, I had an attorney who was being seen from medical Mal, medical malpractice. There was only one problem. They didn't do medical malpractice, but Google had added that in in the services. So you have to keep an eye on when Google makes their helpful updates, because often they're not. So just looking in on your listing and being like I said right now, Google loves interaction. They want it. They want to know that your business is alive and well, and so set it and forget. It is no longer a thing. It
07:33
just isn't
Collin 07:35
well. And I want to touch on the video to verify, because I think many of us set up our businesses and verified when they would send little postcards and so, but, but what I see, yeah, okay, so, but what I'm seeing, what I'm hearing, is, if you trigger something, they may ask you to re verify, and that that's the point that catches a lot of people, where all of a sudden, not all of the ducks are in that Row, and they're kind of left scrambling.
Amy Toman 08:01
That's, that's very cute, yeah, scrambling and ducks and eggs. Yeah. I was very impressed by that. Yeah. See what happens. This is what I was saying about the addresses, because I have had, I have seen, you know, every or read every kind of question you can think of about, you know, I can't do it, you know, I provide services that the general thing is, I provide services at my clients locations, and then people say things like, and so I recorded a video at today's
Collin 08:33
client. It's like, No. Or
Amy Toman 08:38
I had one woman who was who was lovely, but she sent something along, and I felt so bad because she obviously didn't understand. She had said she had used a PO box. So she videotaped herself going, walking, showing the outside of the post office, the sign, walking in through the door, going to her box, opening her box, taking her and I was like, No, the way it's supposed to go is now first assuming that you are using a legit address. Okay, if you're using a legit address, which is one of two things, it's either a storefront, like a leased office that has, you know, signage, something like that, or you're using your house. There's nothing wrong with using your house. Google's cool with that. Obviously, you know you're cool with it, but
Collin 09:25
totally fine. So what would happen is you need to
Amy Toman 09:31
in most cases of a video verification, and I'm going to assume that your address does not show on your listing because you did it at your house. What? How, what you do most of the time is you stand outside. And I hope people are taking notes on this, because this is seriously how it goes. You stand outside with your phone. You are going to make sure that you have a workspace set up in your place, wherever that is that. Your office. So maybe you'll have your laptop up, you have maybe insurance paperwork, your LLC, things like that. You'll have a leash, you'll have a dog crate, you'll have things around that make it look like you know, this is a workspace, and this is a job you do also. And I had a great conversation with a gentleman from Germany today, apparently I just changed with with something I mentioned, I apparently just changed how the all of the German product experts approach this topic, which is, you can use your iPhone or you can use your Android, just make sure that Google is able to wherever that you have location services on right. That's something people don't think about. But you have to have location services on when you start this. Then when you start the video, you're going to look left, you're going to look right. If there is a, if there's a street sign, Google wants to see the street sign when you then you're going to slowly turn around, and then you're going to look at your location.
Collin 11:07
If it's your home, sorry, if it's a house. Let's just follow from
Amy Toman 11:12
that. But if you look at an apartment, you know, adjust from this. So you walk in, you're going to show first off before you walk in, if there's a sign that shows your, your house number, you want to show that if you have a vehicle that is wrapped,
11:30
and I will tell you
Amy Toman 11:31
some things, some tips. Remind me at the end, some tips on this. But if you have a vehicle that is wrapped in any way, just has your, your business name on it, or whatever that use frequently. You also should go over to that before you walk in the house. Go over to that. Maybe show the front, show the signage, if you keep the things in, either in the way back, as we call it, lift the hatch. Show that on camera. Show the tools of the trade, right? Okay, so close that up, you've done that. You want to walk over to the front door, or whichever door, to get into the house. You want to let them see you opening the door. Okay? And when I say that, I mean with a key or a code, but the camera should go down and you should see
Collin 12:16
your hand doing it. Walk in, walk to your place of business, and,
Amy Toman 12:21
you know, show them the computer. Maybe you have your scheduling software on there. Maybe you have your other documents sitting around again, leashes, crates, things like that. And then once you show that, you just kind of skim everything. And that would be end things to remember. And these are, I give these out every day. Keep it two minutes, no more than two minutes, which I know some people will say, I can't do that. Well, try the next one is no
Collin 12:52
narration, no narration.
Amy Toman 12:56
You sit you do not sit down, you do not talk. You just, it's just, should be the video. And the other thing that people don't know, which I was shocked by which I was like, you know, those you see, like, yeah, she was shocked by this revelation.
Collin 13:11
Don't show anyone's faces.
Amy Toman 13:14
I have heard, and I don't know if it's still true, because these things are these things evolve day by day, that if Google sees a face, they will automatically reject it. I don't know if that's still true. Maybe that was just true last year when I first started from Google. But I'm just telling you two minutes location services on
Collin 13:35
no narration and don't show faces. Wow. So those
Amy Toman 13:39
are videos. But again, this is presuming a couple things. This is presuming that you are using the address correctly, meaning that you're using a legitimate address within Google's guidelines. And that also assumes that that you don't have your address. Sorry, your address doesn't show on your listing. If your address shows on your listing, meaning that you and that should only happen when you have a storefront, right? You you maybe you have something in a strip mall, maybe you have an office upstairs somewhere, maybe you have it on On Property somewhere. Well, then what you need to do is you need to make sure that there's a sign there. The address may be totally legit, but it cannot show on your Google listing unless there is a sign. And I've seen tons of people like, ah, you know, I can't get verified. I can't get this. I can't get that. Well, the first, the first thing is, do you have a sign? No. Does your address show on your Google listing? Yes, that's why Google wants to see your sign in the video. So if you don't show your address, they're not going to ask to see your sign. If you do show your address, you need to show the sign. If you don't have a sign, you need to turn off the. The turn off the address in the settings on your Google listing.
Collin 15:05
That's the that's the video. Yeah. Well, you don't need to know anything
Amy Toman 15:08
more. Don't talk to anybody else. We're done on
Collin 15:12
that topic. Well, it is one of those things of because there it is. It can be pretty opaque to the to get that kind of detail. I think that's why a lot of people get frustrated when it's like, you know, okay, I set it up one time, and I'm busy doing my business and my work, and then something happens, and then we get thrown into trying to figure this stuff out. And that's again, where I see a lot of people's frustrations come from. Well,
Amy Toman 15:36
I've got I've got one that I completely forgot, and this is a biggie, and it's funny, because once I mention this, people never come back to me. So I'm hoping it means that it's that it's legit, and it helps avoid, especially if you found yourself having to do things two or three or four times, like keep uploading and it doesn't upload, avoid US East Coast working hours during the week, avoid 8am to 6pm New York City time. Huh? I have heard people. It's funny because I at first thought I was the only one doing that. Like I said, people don't come back to me. So my assumption is it works well, I started seeing another product expert who has a lot more experience than me, and he says the same thing, avoid East Coast us working hours, you know, during during weekdays, because, for whatever reason, maybe that they
16:36
but the servers are in
Amy Toman 16:38
or in that time zone for whatever we and Maybe everybody tries to do it during those hours, and that's why the uploads are sometimes problematic. Again, I have no way of no one way or the other, but I will tell you that most people, when I tell them that they don't come back, it's like, well, that must have worked. Then I don't know. You know. Fine.
Collin 16:57
So you mentioned, so you mentioned the importance of interacting on your Google profile there. What does that mean? Is that just uploading and commenting, or what other kind of interactions can we have on our on our profile? Well,
Amy Toman 17:11
uploading and commenting are the best things commenting would be.
17:15
Would be
Amy Toman 17:18
responding to reviews. See, I always say go in at least once a week, but it's responding to reviews. It's services, looking at your services, editing them, you know, adding some taking some away, refining the ones that are there, that sort of thing. Google products. You want to make sure that you have Google products on. That's not really an interaction thing, but and posts, posts are something that don't get a lot of respect. And every once in a while, somebody will tell me, Oh, they're going away. And I'm like, No, they're not. Google will tell you know, Google has not indicated that at any time. They just haven't. So um, but that's that's one thing, but honestly, the two things that I think are the best are pulling in new positive reviews on a regular basis. There's literally a tool that I that I have added now to my Google Business Profile audits, I give you a diagram that shows you what your when you've received these so it's like recency or consistency shows you when reviews have come in. So if I see, like, a whole bunch of reviews, then I see nothing. And then if you're about, no, you really want to have them come in on a on a consistent basis, because, again, that shows Google that you are legit, that you are still operational, you know that you haven't just kind of walked away. That's a big thing. And then the thing that I like that, I think, is the easiest, overall,
Speaker 1 18:45
is photos. I've talked
Amy Toman 18:49
about a lot about photos, and I will continue to do so, because I think that they're not I think they're small, slowly starting to get there. I think they're getting more appreciation Google right now, not not 100% but Google can really tell what's in an image right now. Okay, like if they were looking if I uploaded a screenshot of you right now, and your shirt, for those who are listening but not watching, your shirt says, dog
Collin 19:17
person. Love that. If I were to upload that, Google would know exactly what the words are. They would but they would also know that it's on a t shirt. If there were other words on your
Amy Toman 19:32
sleeve, they would know what those are. They would know that there is a brick wall behind you. They will know that you know that there's this, that there's that, that there's a microphone in front of Collin, and they would know like, what is his? Is he? His face? Happy, sad, full of joy. That's one of the words I saw showing and they will look at all of that. So think about if, if I uploaded a photo of you that also had a dog in it, i. And that dog was running around like crazy, and it was kind of maybe even blurry. Well, you know, Google also knows that. It knows that it's a dog. It usually can even tell you the breed, and it can tell you kind of what it's doing. And if you think about that, what sort of things do you want Google to know about your business, if you only deal with cats, and you know, you're basically like a cat sitter. You do cat gear, whatever. Have you phrased that you want to show? I mean, if you think normally, if I don't tell you anything about what Google can see or not, you say, Well, I'm only going to show photos of a cat. Why? So humans can see that cats are what I do. Well, it's the same thing Google, because they can now tell if you have one page and you're with your services, you don't even have like specialty pages. You have one page with your services, and you have both dog walking and cat care. If the majority of the photos you upload to the Google listing are dogs, they're probably going to give you more attention for that, but if you do dog walking, but tons of cat care and tons of cat photos, you know, they might give you more attention for cats, even though cats is not a Google
Collin 21:13
primary category. So what I'm saying
Amy Toman 21:17
is, because Google can tell what's in your photos, it's good to upload them on a regular basis. A, just to be, you know, just to have more information going in there consistently. But B, because the content of those images is going to educate Google and other people about the services you provide. And when I say the services, I mean, if you walk dogs, don't just show photos of dogs. Show photos of humans walking dogs. Maybe, if you have special vehicle, maybe you take them somewhere, show the vehicle, show the vehicle, like the contents of the vehicle, then show the vehicle with the dogs and cats or whoever inside. You know, if you do, say, if you do wedding attendant, show the dogs and cats, but, oh, I should say the dogs, for the most part, show them before, show them after. They're all if they, if they get dressed up for any reason, if they have maybe a special bow or something, right? Um, and make sure that you're kind of, you're kind of giving Google an idea, like, maybe you have a little bunch of photos of you sitting there caring for them, you know, getting them all ready, grooming them, putting this on and smiling, you know, looking this way, looking that way, but showing illustrate the services that you provide. Because Google learns from them. People learn from them, obviously, but Google is now learning from them. And if they can sit there and they can classify what you're doing there, that's going to add to this big ball, like, you know, if you think of like a word cloud, the word cloud that Google creates, they call this an entity. And just think the photos are going to add something into that, right? If you're showing only photos of cats that Google now knows, even if you didn't tell them in words, that what you do is deal with cats. If it's only cats, they're kind of wondering, what about cats? Do you do? But if it shows you, you know, like putting down bowls, doing this, doing that, then you have a really good example for Google, you're giving them a good portrayal of what you do, what your services are. So photos. If you're going to go into something like every week, I would say, add a couple photos every time would win.
Collin 23:31
Have you heard of time to pet Chris and from raining cats and dogs? Has this
Speaker 2 23:36
to say? Becoming a time to pet client has been a game changer for us, we can give our pet services clients real time, cloud based information they never imagined they'd be interested in. And most importantly, to me personally, I can better manage my company and look forward to more and not a small thing. Time to pet is responsive to my request for new features and modifications to existing ones. If
Collin 24:01
you're looking for new pet sitting software, give time to pet a try. Listeners of our show will save 50% off your first three months by visiting kind pet.com/confession I love you that phrase when you said the images the content, is helping to educate Google. And I think often we forget kind of what the heck is going on here? Google is a product, and its job is to surface relevant information for people searching it. Google wants to make sure that when they provide those little blue links, that it is exactly what that person is searching for, and they don't know anything about my business, right? I'm the one who has to go in and say, This is what I do now, like you've talked about it, it tries to infer and kind of guess and read between the lines, but it's using data from your website, from the profile, from the photos, from this stuff, from what we're adding, to build that that what you call the entity, so that when somebody searches, what are we going to show up or not? Right? Feeding it good information is our responsibility. 100%
Amy Toman 25:04
100% because AI, it's funny, because a lot of people talk about this with AI, you need to. It's helpful if you use an account with AI, because what you do is through your various searches over time, and they will do, you know, they'll give you a thumbs up, thumbs down, whatever, so that you can rank kind of the their output. Because you are teaching, you're teaching this algorithm that they have to give you the answers that you're that you're looking for. It's the same thing with Google. Google, the more you tell them, the positive information you tell them about your services, your location, you know where you again, the things that you do, the more information that you give them, the better, because they want to recommend the best person in the area. They're not going to recommend somebody whose website was put up 10 years ago and never touched SIDS. They want to recommend people who are, you know, alive?
Collin 26:08
Step one, yeah,
Amy Toman 26:09
I tell people this occasionally, but in 2017 I actually got a call from somebody who said that they're listing when they they were told by somebody that when they went to their not the Google listing, but their website, that it had a funny message on it. So I looked at it, I saw the funny message. I said to the person, can I can I call that the it was GoDaddy, can I call them on your behalf? And she said, she said, That's sure. That's fine. I just want to get this fixed. And it turned out that the website had been uploaded to godaddy 10
Collin 26:39
years prior and had never once been updated in the prior in the following
Amy Toman 26:45
10 years. So I said, I went back to her, and I said, Look, I found out what it was built on. It's something that's it's kind of old now people don't really use it. Do you want me to find you a developer? She was like, you know, she took care of it. And she basically said, No, but that's what I'm talking about. You don't want to set it and forget it. That may have been the thing when you set your Google listing up initially, but, but you can't these days. You have to go in there at least once a week, and, you know, interact with
27:15
it somehow. Well,
Collin 27:16
let's talk about those reviews, because I see a lot of people who's just purely obsessed about the number of reviews, but you said something that's a little counterintuitive, of the consistency of getting those reviews, what? How? Best Practices here, Amy for, you know, getting those reviews, and kind of how we, how we bring those into our business without, you know, violating any policies. Yeah, let's, let's
Amy Toman 27:41
start with that. Don't offer anything. Do not offer anything. Don't offer anything in a group. Don't offer anything on your social just don't offer anything, because if Google finds out about that, that's called incentivizing, and if somebody reports you, then you will have those reviews removed, maybe not all of them, but a good chunk. So you don't want to do that. Yelp, you can't google. You can ask for reviews. Yelp, you cannot even do that. So you can say to people, you know, hey, you know, I would love it if you would leave me your review on, you know, whichever platform. And could you mention? I always tell people to ask people to mention their services or their location, where they provided it. Those are usually the most helpful. And just in terms of bringing in reviews, you can ask people for them. It's totally cool. Like I said, if I have my way, I would kind of coach people and mention those things, but Google looks at things like sentiment. Again, there's two, there's only two diagrams I have in my the new version, because I completely updated my my Google list of audits. And the second one is,
Collin 28:58
is keyword analysis. And I keep thinking, you know,
Amy Toman 29:01
if I can do this in a free tool, well, it's not free, but if I can do this in a tool, you really don't think that Google's doing this. So you want to have reviews on a regular basis. You know, maybe you get one this week, two, next week of two, two weeks after that's cool. You don't want to just have great stretches where you don't get any because Google, again, wants to make sure that you're a legit business. And you know, it shouldn't be that hard to get them. I know people tell me all the time. You know, I work with senior citizens, which to me, I, to me, is no excuse anymore. Because, you know what? Everybody has a smartphone. Everybody does, even if they're, you know, 85 they still have a smartphone these days. But I know they're hard to get so I know how much like I appreciate them. I will say that. So you do make it you need to make it a priority. Because right now, other than the three top things. If anybody asked me the three most important elements of a Google listing,
Collin 30:04
title,
Amy Toman 30:07
number of review in this order, title, I would say location, title and number of reviews. And again, it's not the number. You want to have consistency and you want to have positive sentiment, right? They should they, you know, I've seen some that, again, I put recently in reviews these photos where people will and make they'll mention things like love, you know, loved my love my dog or my cat or my, you know, pet. And those are things you want in there to show that you know you are, you are treat these people perceive you as treating their pets well. So it's, it's a mix, like with everything with Google. It seems very simple, you know, get more reviews than the next guy, yeah, but no, if you get, if say, if they have 100 reviews and you have 80, but 15 of their reviews have no con, have no text. Guess
Collin 31:01
who might win? Not them. Yeah. There's a lot of Yeah. And so yeah. And, like you said, it's it's building in that habit. As the business owner, if you have a manager, if you have a team member, like, once a week, sit down, look back through who you serve that week and see if they've left your review. It does take tracking on our part, but you can have a script that you develop, and you send it out to them and say, Hey, wonderful clearing for fluffy. We're always looking, you know, for you know, support. If you have time, please leave a review. X, Y, you know. Thank you very much. And
Amy Toman 31:35
provide the link. Keep, provide the link, right. Do make it as easy as possible. Don't have anybody have to work to do what you're asking them to do. That's a big thing on, on, you know, I would think,
Collin 31:49
yeah, from, from the ease of use of your customers there, they just want to click a blue link and go over there, type it up and send and it's just, it's just consistently asking, and eventually you do start to accumulate them, and it's just kind of being diligent in
Amy Toman 32:03
things that I know sometimes is pet sitters, will say, especially if it's a pet sitter, I guess, I guess dog walkers too. But people who stay over a few days, you know, you leave a piece of paper and just, you know, whether it's a flyer or something, that's a good space to leave
Collin 32:19
a QR code too. Hmm. Make it
Amy Toman 32:24
easier, because it's just to say, you know, hey, by the way, and then you have the QR code over there. And those people who come back from vacation or work or whatever, they just scan that puppy, and your listing comes up, and there you go.
Collin 32:37
Well, not to get scary here, but I think there's a word that we haven't mentioned yet about Google profiles here, and it's, it's the suspended word for these. What are some of the most common reasons that you see people getting getting suspended? And I think importantly here, how do we avoid Okay,
Amy Toman 32:56
I have mentioned them before. I will, I will be put them in this context, your title and your address, yeah, don't add words on into your title for which you do not have business documentation. If your name is Bob's dog walking, and you decide that you also want to be known for pet sitting in your city, and you add those Google if you're reported, well, two things will happen. Either somebody will just go in and suggest an edit and get rid of those words, which often is the case just and they won't even tell you. It'll just happen, or you get suspended. You can get suspended for that, for address, for address. That's a big Hawking issue. That's the one I see, more than anything else. Um, you want to make sure that your address, if your address shows you have signs so you say, How's Google going to know if I have that Street View. Kids, Google will look at Street View. And even if the Street View is, say, three years old, if they don't see a sign, and you didn't post your sign in the photos on your listing, guess what? Somebody reports you the chances of you're going down are, you know, pretty, pretty strong. So if you have a location that has signage, you know, with your business name, one of the best things you can do is you put that into your photos, so that if people are looking they're going to see that, and they're going to they're going to say, oh no. They're, you know, they're legit. They're legit. Best thing to do for your if you have an issue with your listing title is if you want to change it. And I've advised this, it's funny, because I have a different opinion now about this than I did when I first started. When I first started, it was like, just be careful. You know? I just stick to the business name. Now my line is, but if you found a better one, like, say, you went in and you added some stuff and you're like, wow, more people are seeing me. I get better visibility.
Collin 35:11
Well, guess what, if you're in the US, go and get yourself a DBA, alt name, fictitious
Amy Toman 35:18
name, whatever, so that if you ever get suspended, if everything else is in the name of your registered business, which is usually an LLC, and
35:27
you have a DBA, you're golden.
Amy Toman 35:30
The problem is, if you haven't registered your business at all and you get suspended, then you're screwed. Don't do that. But, and also, if you're listening outside the US, just do the equivalent. Okay, I
Collin 35:42
know some places you don't have to register your business name,
Amy Toman 35:48
but make sure that you have the business name registered on paperwork. As long as you have that, or can get that again. You can use whatever title you want, but just make sure that you have paperwork for that. Yeah, those the ones I see most frequently. I
Collin 36:05
often see people who say, Well, do I really need to get the LLC Do I really need to get these things right? And and some just, I'm glad Amy was sitting down when I said that, because, but it's, it's, and so yeah, well, like, yeah, sure, it's, it's a good just basic business practice to have all of your paperwork. But as you start to want to add these things and do the Google business profile and do like, you need all of that back end support and paperwork to prove it, and I think what happens is we get by with it one time, and we think, Oh, where I'm golden. They'll never come back around if I got verified that one time, or if they're not going to look at me. But they're, they're, they're trying to categorize the global data every second of every day. They're a bit busy, right? They may take a little bit to get to you, so just be ready. Right as professional pet sitters and dog walkers, we know that some pets struggle with anxiety, whether it's thunderstorms, fireworks or just being home alone for the first time, but did you know that calming music can actually help them relax? That's why so many pet pros turn to peaceful pet music, calm music for pets on YouTube, this channel is packed with soothing melodies and nature sounds designed to create a peaceful environment for pets. Sitters and walkers use it during visits to help calm anxious pets, and it's perfect for your own furry companions too. Want to help your clients share the channel with them, or just start playing it on their TV before you leave. And don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell so you never miss a new, relaxing moment. Give every pet, including yours, a little more peace in their day with peaceful pet music. Call nuclear pets on YouTube. You
38:04
Well, here's the thing, okay, I say this.
Amy Toman 38:09
I will say this to everybody. Almost anybody can get a Google listing, but not everybody can keep them. And here's why Google you just used to sign up for it. They'd send you a parse car, you were done. But then this, then the spammers and the scammers enter the picture. Okay, so now it's if you register for Google listing, they then want you to either do a to verify it. They either want you to do a video or a phone call or an email. The two at the bottom, the phone call and the email you those are rarely options, even for for existing businesses, they're very rarely options. You usually have to do a video and they get then again, going back to which address you used and how to do a video or
38:56
but
Amy Toman 38:59
you have to have paperwork, okay? Because Google does not want to recommend you. If you're just like a hobby, you know, I've heard this term a lot, hobby sitter, okay, if you're a hobby dog walker, if you're somebody who doesn't do it that frequently, well, guess what? This is, what kind of separates, what, what the men from the boys, the puppies from the big doggies, you need to have a legit business to have a Google listing. This is why all those like rover people, who used to be on there, they're not on there anymore. You know, because Google asked them to verify they couldn't. And there you go. So what I recommend every pet sitter to have before you start the Google listing, okay, is you get. And again, I'm doing this for people in the US, but I know people in Canada, Australia, England and wherever, please just get the equivalent, especially in the UK, because y'all don't have business registrations. So again, just. Kind of do the equivalent here. What you generally need is you need paperwork from authoritative bodies. And when I say that, I mean things like
Collin 40:11
tax authorities, governments, banks, insurance
Amy Toman 40:17
agencies. In the UK, I've had luck with um digital phone contracts. So what you want to do, and the ones I standard, say, for the for the US
Collin 40:29
are an LLC, an IRS ein letter, not just the number of the letter, um insurance certificate, licenses,
Amy Toman 40:43
if, if they're applicable. Meaning, it could be a business license, but it could be, it could be something else, but it has to be, you know, from an authoritative body bank statement, credit card statement. Sometimes it could be a utility bill. If you have the utility bill in the name of the business, speaking of which, whatever you present, 100% everything has to be in the name of the business. It cannot be the name of a human. The human can be on there. But the the most important part in the name of the business, and it has to have the same address that you use to register for the Google listing. So I like one thing I know that people sometimes come to me about is they say, Well, I used a registered agent from my LLC.
Collin 41:31
I say, okay, can't
Amy Toman 41:35
it has to be your home address. And they're like, Well, I mean, that's at the Registered Agent. So Mike, doesn't matter. Google wants these papers, paperwork to support your name, your business name,
Collin 41:46
and your address. So, you know, I will get, I will get kick feedback. And I'm like, Oh, well, you know, I'm sorry you
Amy Toman 41:54
can't use that. Or if you have paperwork that is sometimes registered to the business, and some of it's registered to you, like your personal bank account, things like that doesn't matter. They want you to have, have one to all be in the name of the business with the the same address, and that address like I just so. So you know, because this is something that's come up as well, people have said to me, if my address doesn't show, does it matter if I use any of those that are not legit? Yes, it does, and this is the time when it's proven. If your listing is suspended, they're going to look at the address that you say you use. They definitely don't want those ones that I mentioned. Homes are great, offices are great, but not the ones. And this at this stage with your paperwork is when Google really sees where you are. So suspensions are not fun, I realize that, but the thing that's going to expedite you coming back is having enough paperwork and having it all in the name of the business and using the same address that you used to create the Google listing. And I will point out too, if the address didn't show on the Google listing, and you if you entered it in the Google list, you have to do that. Start a Google listing and you turn it off. When you turn it back on, that address is not there. So you have to make sure that you remember what address you used,
Speaker 1 43:15
because Google, I gotta tell you I know Collin Collins, Collins, like, you know, his chair Well, you know, and
Collin 43:25
I see a lot of people who are concerned about, I'm going to say, like, messing with their listing too much. I know you said, kind of once a week. Do we run the risk of triggering this kind of, you know, review of our listing when we are messing with the services or adding a bunch of things or changing things at all, or is that kind of just that's that's something we shouldn't even worry about, just make sure that those are taken care of.
Amy Toman 43:52
That is a really, really, really good question. Should we have, like, red flags about that? What you do not want to do is you do not without doing prior like laying groundwork. You do not want to touch the primary elements. So if you're adding photos, totally cool to me. Even changing your cover image, again, totally cool. Adding posts, looking at at services, answering reviews. That's all good. What's not good is if you decide to go in and change your title and your address and your phone number and your Google and your website, you do all of those in quick succession. You are taking the train to suspension land, and it ain't stop until you get there, because if you change too many things in a row, that does set off Google's trigger. But what you don't, it's not for what you think. They're doing that to protect you, because that's what spammers do. They can sometimes get into your listing or claim your listing, and then the first thing they do is.
Collin 45:02
Excuse me, is they try to change those elements. Yeah. So, I mean, that's kind of a okay. I'm going to go in and change one one day, or change it, you know, every couple hours, kind of thing. But at least, or just not even that fast. Okay, now slow down here. Nope,
Amy Toman 45:16
no. And here's the thing, you don't make those changes until you make them elsewhere first. So you say to me, wait, what? Okay, first, say, if you're going to change your title, say you went out and you said, No, this, this is better. I want to have, I want to
Collin 45:31
have, and dog walking. Okay, the way you do that is that you go out you first, you get your DBA. And I'm sorry, I know this isn't specifically what you asked, but you get your DBA, you go and update every
Amy Toman 45:48
directory that you're in. Okay, you're for your insurance company, for psi, for naps, update them all to the new title. Update your social accounts for the title. Last thing you update? Well, it doesn't have to be but your website, all of those get updated to the new title. If you need to. Sometimes you may need to update your logo, but anyway, do all of that first and then go in and update your your Google listing, because they're going to go out and verify. They usually say it'll take, you know, anywhere from 10 minutes to, like, you know, forever to verify. But what they're doing is they're going out there and they're making sure that the information that you have posted is public elsewhere, because they, again, they want to make sure that somebody hasn't stolen your listing.
Collin 46:41
And when we have that proof again, it sounds it sounds very weighty. And I think people don't, I think they discount like that. And you said that phrase earlier, of almost anyone can get one of these. It's hard to keep it because the rules and regulations, the policies around these are actually really strict and specific when we're doing this, and we do have to abide by these. And if we don't have all of that backed up, they're not going to, you know, let you pass and, you know, and they're not going to lift that suspension. So I think that's just a really important thing to remember for us when we go about these things. Oh yeah, because Google is very
Amy Toman 47:16
if you think about it, they're making these. First of all, everybody has to remember. They're making these rules globally. So like I was saying before, about about paperwork in the UK, Google is asking for the same paperwork for reinstatement. It's that they ask everywhere else, except for one thing. In the US, they ask for LLCs or C corps or something like that, to
Collin 47:37
to support the title, but they don't have business
Amy Toman 47:42
registration like that in the UK, and they don't have licenses the same way. And it's not just there, it's also Eastern Europe. I know there's somebody in I want to say Ukraine, Poland, places like that. Business Business registrations are not a thing. A lot of times, businesses are registered in the owner's name, and that's it. So you have to remember that a lot of times, the rules may not make sense to you, but they are trying to apply these on a global level, and also, they're also trying to protect people to some degree too. Like I said before, if you change four things in a row, that trips the trigger, but the trigger that it's tripping is this may be somebody who just stole this listing. So that's why you don't do for them in a row, because that's telling Google this is a sign of, you know, suspicious activity. So in their in their corporate amazingness, they are trying to protect you. Well,
Collin 48:44
I know one thing that a lot of people are turning to to try and be more consistent with their listings, and it's also just really popular right now, is the use of AI in running our businesses from your perspective. Amy, how should we go about using this guide rails, any you know, kind of advice that you can give us in implementing AI and those tools in either the listing itself or on our website. You know, you can take it from there, because it's a big topic
Amy Toman 49:16
before. The first thing I want to say, in general is AI should be, sorry, not AI like chat GPD. Let's just use that as a generic at this point.
Collin 49:24
Um, you don't, generally, you don't take
Amy Toman 49:28
their text straight from that. You should use that text as inspiration and then go in and person personalize it. Um, a few of the things that I well, I should say the one, biggest one that I will say I use it every week on is creating Google Business Profile posts. I have a really good prompt that I'm happy with. And, you know, everybody needs to kind of get that prompt again, teaching the system to output what you want. And I use it for that because I have gotten it to the point where I have gotten it where. Um,
50:02
it's, you know, it's using
Amy Toman 50:03
the business name in there, and it's using a service in there, and it's referring to, I give it a page that it goes to, and it kind of creates text from that, using that page as, like a basis.
Collin 50:17
And excuse me, when I look at the output,
Amy Toman 50:21
I make sure that the output has the specific terms either that I asked for, that should be in there, and then I will load them up. And you can, you can, if you have a social media scheduler, they this. They could be used for that as well. You know whether you're doing it on your Google listing or elsewhere, but I that's what I use it for. I use it for Google Business Profile posts. That's something that I think would be interesting, because you could do like, 24 of those. You could just sit there and do yourself a marathon and, you know, change the hat, maybe use different pages, you know, so it's sometimes it'll go to your home page, then it'll go to your services page, then it'll go to a specific services page, then it'll go to your service area page. Then it'll go to the different service areas location pages that you have, and then we start over again, or then we go to the contact page, or we go to the About page, and then you start over. You've just created 24 boom. You did it twice a week. You just posted twice a month,
Collin 51:19
for 12 months, you win. And how long did that take? An hour, maybe an hour and a half.
Amy Toman 51:25
So for that, for that, use it, I haven't seen, I haven't seen other uses for it yet, but the one thing I will say is, if you are using something like chat, G, P, T, just make sure that whatever it outputs you don't just cut and paste, you make sure that it is specific to what you are either talking about or linking to. Because some of these people don't understand things just look really bad sometimes, and they look unnatural. But I mean, you have to understand what the basis of of chat, G, P, T, and the others, is they are coming up with this based on what has already been published. So it's not new. It's just a kind of a, just a giant ball of, again, like, like a salad. So you have to make sure that that salad actually makes sense. It has the right dressing, it has the, you know, red kind of tomatoes on all this, you have to make sure that what is coming out is appropriate for you to be using, and doesn't look like it's been created by, you know AI
Collin 52:32
well, and I've heard people discussing whether Google was going to be downgrading or down regulating AI generated content and to whether avoid it completely, entirely, or to use it just a little bit. Sounds like, from your perspective of going, you know, that content, idea generation, that ideation, that thinking, then the processing of making it your own kind of envoy, avoids that entire conversation entirely.
Amy Toman 52:57
Yeah, because they've, I mean, they've said that they do not mind it on there. They've, they've said that flat out. I hate to say it. I can't remember if they've said it publicly or privately, but they don't mind it. But I think, I think what they're doing also is just making sure that, like, you're not posting the exact same thing in, you know, 11,000 places. They also, yeah, I think they're also looking to see how the public takes it, you know, if you're posting, if you're posting content that was created by, you know, AI generation engine, and you're not customizing it, you're not personalizing it, it's probably not going to go over as well with with humans. And that's what I think Google's looking to, you know, before they make any grand statements, I think that's what they're looking to see what the reaction is.
Collin 53:45
Because again, they're trying to anticipate what the humans are going to be doing and what they're actually interested so they can surface that. And if it's turning people away, Google has to say, Never mind. This is not what people want. So we've got to find other stuff to elevate that for
Amy Toman 53:58
Exactly, exactly. Because, again, Google is, I think their goal is to promote the best answer for a query, and whether that's surfacing a local business or a resource page to learn more about a topic. You know, is it transactional? Is it informational? And to do that, you need to make sure that the information, if you want to be surfaced, you need to make sure that your information is the best, and it's not something that is just pumped out of an AI generation. I mean, people are talking about it for blogs. No, you can use that as a basis, but then go in and personalize it page content, same thing, I've seen these things spat, you know, spew out some real, true garbage. And I had, I actually asked, it was pretty impressive. I actually had a LinkedIn post, and all I wanted was, what was buttons that said, Just say, no. It created an entire How hard is that? Right? It created this great thing. Because my husband has some of them somewhere. He has a he has a button from, like the 80s or whatever that was with, with Nancy Reagan that says, Just say no. And I say, Can you find me one? No. Okay, fine. So I went in, I got this done, and it's like this whole thing of, just say no, buttons, of which only two are correct. And there's got to be, there's got to be 100 of men there. No only two of them are correct. So, yeah, you just have to. You just cannot use AI to use to do this right now. You can use it to inspire you, but not to, not to do the whole thing. Well,
Collin 55:36
let's say somebody's listening to this and they are concerned, or have concerns about their listing and what it may or may not, whether it's healthy or not, walk us through what audits look like and why those are so essential to us.
Amy Toman 55:52
Okay, I audits are important because they do two things, or at least
Collin 55:57
mine do I look at suspendable elements, and
Amy Toman 56:02
I warn you of those if you're having issues, and also optimization. So it's two things, it's like, it's like protecting yourself and also enhancing your listening. So what I look at, usually, is I start with the title, if it's questionable, I will look you up. If you're in the US, I will look you up in your state's LLC. Usually, recently I haven't been because people have been very cool about it, but I will, I will often do that, then I look at your address if, again, if your address is showing I 100% of the time, will go in and I will Google your address. And if your address does not stay within Google's guidelines. I will let you know, because there's a number, there's a number of reasons, but you know, the biggest one is suspension. But and I will go, I will go through every element, my my recent, I recently reformatted my reports so that I have, you know, I have a priority list of like, three or four things that you should do first, be aware of first. But I literally have an entire page, and all it is is every over here. I list every single element. Then I go from good to like, I will say this, but uh oh, where you know this is good, but you need to, you know, you need to do this. Should add
Collin 57:19
that, take this out, and I don't know
Amy Toman 57:23
it's like, I want to say this, like maybe 25 or 30 individual elements, and I go through each one. The reason why you would want to do this is you want to protect your listing, and you also want to learn about what areas should you be optimizing. Most people don't think that they can have products for services. At the moment, you still can, who knows how long that's going to last, but that's, you know, that's something that I'm, you know. I'll tell you other people like, oh, you can't do that. Me. I'll tell you, I've been doing it. I've been doing it for years. I've sat in rooms where people ask Googlers
Collin 57:55
about this. For now, it's fine, but
Amy Toman 57:59
I go through, I go through all of that, and I let you know because
Collin 58:05
you need to protect yourself. A lot of
Amy Toman 58:07
businesses get more than which is not good, but a lot of businesses get more than half their business from their Google listing. And you need to protect yourselves, especially if you live from this. I mean, some people, it is a side gig, but for other people, you live off this, other people live off it, and your first priority should be to protect it.
Collin 58:27
Yeah, I think that's really at the end of the day. You know why we should be paying more attention to this? Because it is so incredibly valuable, like you said, kind of Better or For better or worse, it is where we are, at least, right? Is the elephant in the room. It continues to drive over 50, 60% of our potential client contacts to us. If that's the case, we should be investing in and making sure that it is as best as possible. And that's it's just one of those things where, where you find people, and how people find you, is where you need to be investing more as a business like that. Just is business sense of I getting the most of my ROI on this. So that needs to be the best possible outcome for me, and I need, I need to invest more in that. So yeah, 100% 100%
Amy Toman 59:10
you have to protect yourselves, because if you don't, nobody else will. And I will also say, just kind of as an aside to my comment, if you're getting, you know, like 60% of your leads from Google. Just remember, Google is an unstable platform. They will sometimes suspend you and they won't give you the reason why, other than something still vague, and so that's one of the biggest reasons why, I think just make sure you're getting leads from multiple channels, right? Make sure you're doing other you're doing social media if, and I'm not a marketing person in this respect, but all I'm saying is, you shouldn't be getting all of your leads from one channel, because if that one channel goes down,
59:55
you're stuck. So just just, you just
Amy Toman 59:56
remember to vary your efforts. You know, be active. In, say, social media, in local groups, maybe you volunteer, maybe you just, you know, maybe have a child in school. Just make sure that you're varying your you know your channels, because
1:00:12
you call them your funnels. I guess because
Amy Toman 1:00:14
if your Google goes down, it could be down for weeks. I have somebody currently, right now, who's who's enduring an attack, and they've been contacting Google, and Google's just not acting. So they will act, they just haven't done
Collin 1:00:26
it yet, and nobody wants to be in that position. No, no, not at all. That's, uh, that's terrifying. So have your ducks in a row. Uh, Amy, I really want to thank you for coming on encouraging us to make sure that we go about doing things in the right way, and that we have everything in order. And the critical importance of having that paperwork, having the it's set up correctly, and maintaining it so that it can be returning that investment back to us. I know that this continues to be a massive topic, and like you've said, this is always changing. So Amy, how best can people get in touch with you start learning more about this and digging deep into this topic for their business? Excellent.
Amy Toman 1:01:08
Well, there's two ways, actually, pet sitter SEO on Facebook. You can contact me directly. I have my DMs open. I mean, I have my own account, which is Amy toman, T, O, M, a n, or pet sitter, SEO, three words and you reach me through those. I have a website. I have a form. I will tell you, Yes, I know I need to update the website. Sorry, kids, if you don't hear back from me for on the form within 24 hours, then you can nudge me on social. I'm also on LinkedIn. I'm also on blue sky. But also the other place where I can also be found is I have a group with a friend of mine. We're doing this together, Erica from Godwin, from marketing. We now have a group which has really, really been great so far, called digital, digital marketing. I always forget digital.
Collin 1:02:04
It was digital pack leader. That's it. That's
Amy Toman 1:02:07
it, because I need to have, like, the logo right in front of me. It's terrible, but, but we sit around the campfire a couple times a month and we have conversations about marketing. So far, we've had the we had one recently about about Google ads, what they are, how to manage them, things like that with Google Ads expert, because neither Erica nor I are experts in that area, and we've talked about things like location pages, what how to why to have them, what should be on them, how To optimize them and different things like that. They're usually hour long conversations, and you get a lot more depth to them. And we're just talking about how to, how to optimize your business, usually, usually via Google listings and the website. Erica builds websites, so she will, occasionally, she will, it's really cool. She will have say, we're talking about a certain type of page. She will create one, and she will be like, here is a great example, which is funny, because then I'm sure she then uses her business, yeah, but she will also share them in the webinar, and she will also have that as like, an attachment. So if you have, like, she she decides, WordPress websites. But you can look at that and say, if you you know you work on your own, on, say, a Wix site, you can use that as an example of what has really been shown to work well. So we this is, this is a group. It's a it's a subscription group, and it's, we don't publish the the videos on YouTube or anywhere else you the only way to see them is within the app. There's actually a mobile app as and as you can also get it into it in desktop. And if anybody's interested, it's digital path leaders, I got that.com or we're also on Facebook. And if anybody's interested, like I said, it's, it's a monthly it's a monthly payment. But if you see one or two of the videos, you will really, I mean, there's, there's one, there's always one. We record them, and we tell people and we're going to record them. There's always one or two people who's just constantly sitting there, like, Oh, she starts writing it down. And then, you know, everything will be calm, and then she'll, you see her go, oh, wait, hold on. You know, I love seeing that, because that means that it was something that the person didn't know before, and having taken a note, they're going to see if they can go and implement that so well,
Collin 1:04:28
yeah, I'm really excited about this, Amy, because I think it's an area where we need to be learning more about and because it's constantly changing, and many of us are coming in this from with such a deficit of knowledge of best practices and How to do this. It's very complicated, so to see this come up and have you and Erica working together on this, it's really, really fun to see that. So I will have links to digital pack leaders.com and to pet sitter SEO in the show notes and on our website, so people can get connected and start checking both of those out. Amy as always an app. An immense pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing with us. And thank you
Amy Toman 1:05:05
so much for the invitation. I know we've done this a couple times, but we've spread these out enough so that things are a little different as we move forward. Um, I will mention one more thing, just like a little bonus thing, recently, uh, yesterday or so, Google rolled out that you can, you can add your texting or WhatsApp to your listing. Of course, I did that, and now it's gone. So keep an eye out. I did. I had my whatsapp. My friend sent me a message few hours later, gone. Anyway. My point is, these things are things that we will be talking about in our group. I'll try to talk about them on Pet Sitter SEO, but they you need to keep up on these, because if you don't, and your competitors do, they're going to get the leg up on you. So just gotta sign off with that. Keep an eye out for anything new in marketing. Sometimes it's really, really an easy thing to add in, and you can test if it doesn't work for you. Turn it off.
Collin 1:06:03
Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much, Amy. This has been fantastic. I really appreciate you. Thank you. Take care. Collin, nice. Talking again. I always enjoy my conversations with Amy, but today, when she said, anyone can get a Google listing, few can keep it, it reminded me of just how particular some things are in business. It's easy to get started. Few can keep going. That's why the failure rate of most small businesses is so high. If it was easy, more people would continue to do it day after day and year after year. It was a reminder of the importance of having all of our ducks in a row, doing our research, vetting the process, going about it the right way. It's easy to get started, to cut corners, to cheat the system, but that always comes back to bite us in the end, which hurts us. It hurts our business. Hurts our clients. If we have a team, it hurts them as well. Do things with integrity, do things the right way for lasting success. We want to thank our friends for sponsoring today's episode at time to pet and the peaceful pet music, calm music for pets, YouTube channel, and we really want to thank you so much for listening. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your week, and we'll be back again soon. You.
