The Brushing & Flossing of Marketing: Reviews, Local SEO & Getting Found with Maria Sandy

In this episode of The Thriving Podcast, Kate and Sam sit down with special guest Maria Sandy from Bits Web Design to unpack what really makes a small business visible, trusted, and profitable online. Maria shares how she went from designing buildings in her previous career as an architect to “architecting” websites through design, local SEO, and reviews that actually work for real-world businesses.

Maria explains why a website has to be both beautiful and functional because if it doesn’t look good or doesn’t work, it’s costing you leads both ways. She dives into the “brushing and flossing” of marketing: getting consistent reviews so Google and future clients see you as a real, active, trustworthy business. Maria also demystifies local SEO, Google Business Profiles, and how AI tools like ChatGPT actually use your reviews and authority signals to decide who to recommend.

This conversation is especially helpful if you’re a local or service-based business owner who feels overwhelmed by websites, SEO, and all the noise about “AI replacing everything.” Maria shows that the basics, clear messaging, solid foundations, reviews, and an alive-looking online presence still matter more than hacks or tricks.

Episode Highlights:

• How Maria pivoted from traditional architecture to digital “business architecture” for local businesses
• Why aesthetics and functionality must work together on your website
• Reviews as the “brushing and flossing” of your marketing—and why asking 3 times matters
• How Google Business Profiles, reviews, and local SEO work together to get you found in the map pack
• Why AI recommendations (like “best X near me”) still rely on solid SEO and reviews
• The role of blogs, FAQs, and ongoing content in building real authority over time
• Why “no website needed” advice can be expensive in the long run
  
  

If this episode gave you an “aha” about your own online presence, take one small action today: choose one thing, update your Google Business Profile, ask three past clients for a review, or refresh a key page on your website so it’s clearer and more human. Then, share your win with us:

• Send us a message about what you changed and what happened next.
• If you enjoyed this conversation with Maria, follow The Thriving Podcast and leave a review so more local business owners can find these practical, no-nonsense conversations.

Find Maria Sandy here - https://bitswebdesign.com.au/

Connect with Your Hosts:

Kate De Jong, PhD | Inspired Business 🌐 Website: https://katedejong.com/ 📱 Instagram: @katedejong.inspiredbusiness ✉️ Email: kate@katedejong.com

Sam Morris | The O8 🌐 Website: https://www.theo8.com/ 📱 Instagram: @the_o8crew ✉️ Email: sam@theo8.com

Thriving Business Podcast 🌐Website: https://www.thrivingbusinesspodcast.com/

Transcript

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome back to The Thriving Podcast.

Hello, Sam. Hello, Kate. We're very honoured today to have a special guest with us, Maria Sandy from Bits Web Design.

Hi, Maria. Hi, everyone. Really good to have you with us today.

Excited to hear all your wisdom in the realm of websites, SEO and digital marketing. Thank you, yes. I'm looking forward to chatting with you both.

Yeah, so you are like Sam and I in the fact that you have pivoted your career quite significantly. We were just saying beforehand how you started out in architecture. You're actually an architect by trade.

Yes, that's my real job. And with doing something like that, it's always you look at things through that particular way of doing things. So how you design something and how it's built.

You go, it's sort of like ping pong. Think, okay, this is how I want it to be. And this is how I want it built.

So you always have to think of things from two different ways. How it looks and how it works. How it looks and how it works.

Yeah, so you've gone from being the architecture of buildings to being the architecture of businesses. Well, yeah, and digital marketing. Because you need to design things so that they work.

And if they don't look good or they don't work, then what are you doing? Good question. What are you doing? Yeah, because things can always look good, but they also need to work. But if you're going to make something work, you might as well make it look good at the same time.

And work. So that's the architecture coming in. You've got to be functional and pretty at the same time.

Yes, yes. Otherwise, why would I do it? Yeah, because I think so many people struggle to get that balance right, don't they? Well, yeah, there's so many ugly things around. And why would you add to them? And if you're going to create something, it's the same work to make something ugly as it is.

It's just a bit more thought to make something beautiful. Yeah, but I think sometimes people put so much effort into making things look pretty, but there's no substance behind it. Yeah, that means there's a lack of understanding of what you're trying to achieve.

But that's all it boils down to is what are you trying to achieve? And the opposite is also true. You've got the real techie solid people that make real, you know, they work functionally, but are not very aesthetically pleasing, right? Yeah, yeah. And that's the thing.

But the thing is, it depends on what I suppose technical people, sometimes like how they code stuff is probably the most beautiful thing in the world. But you just don't get it. Yes.

Yeah, because there's art in that as well, where it's done so beautifully and it just works well. But yeah. There's beauty in that.

It's just not pleasing to the eye. Yeah, yeah. Okay, beautiful.

So let's start. So you are really passionate about helping businesses get the basic fundamental building blocks in place so that the business actually works, right? Yes, yes. So local businesses, I like to focus on local businesses, businesses within certain areas that operate within certain areas.

I'm not looking for national, I don't like generally help with national companies, big ones. I like to help the ones that operate locally. And a lot of them are missing the basic things like a proper website, a professionally built website that is actually easy to find.

And your business needs to be found in the areas that you operate in. So that's the local SEO aspect that I help with. And then the third aspect that I like to help people with is getting reviews from their clients so that they don't have to.

Getting reviews is such a basic thing for businesses. It's like the brushing and flossing of marketing. It is so simple.

People think, oh yes, I'll get to it. But then years go by and they've lost that traction because it's all about building trust and credibility, not just once, but on an ongoing basis. Yeah.

And that's so important to a local business. Yeah. Well, we all know how much we rely on reviews ourselves to choose businesses, right? So yeah, if they're not ranking in the top, you know, companies that you're searching for in terms of reviews, yeah, you always go to the one with the better reviews.

Yes. And that's the thing. The reviews do so many good things for you.

They make you more visible than your competitors. And when people look you up, they want to see that you're a business that's active. And if you don't have reviews, it tells Google that you're not a business that's really operating at all.

And it tells potential clients that, hey, they don't really exist. So why should I trust them? Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So getting those reviews is really fundamental. And that's something you can help businesses with.

I know you've got a monthly retainer fee that you basically reach out on behalf of your clients to ask for the, and as we all know, you don't generally get the review on the first ask. You have to ask two, three, four times. Yes. 

Yes. Most people, yes. It's generally quite hard to get a review on the first ask because most people are busy and they're involved with what they're doing.

So the top of the priority list is not giving you a review. However, people are generally good at giving reviews because if you ask them more than once, you have to ask them at least three times. And more than that is a bit much because they are your client and they are busy doing other things, but you should be asking.

And because you've done a good job for them, they should be more than happy to leave you a review and they know that it helps you. And you need to let them know that by leaving your review, it's helping you get other clients and help people that were in the same boat as them. So it helps everybody.

Yeah. And I find that when I put that in, it really helps me grow my business. Yes.

Then yeah, people are more, they want to help you out. Yeah. People do want to help.

It's just, they sometimes just so rushed and they have so many things, so many computing priorities that they get distracted because I find people are very distracted. And if you make something easy to do, then they'll do it. Yeah. 

And how do you go about making that easy? Because I know in the past I've set up surveys rather than write a testimonial. I just ask very specific questions and say, can you answer these? And then I build a testimonial out of their answers and then say, do you mind if, you know, could you post this for me since it's, you know, that seemed to work for me. Do you have a process that makes it easy? Well, it's how I ask.

It's how I ask the questions of a particular service. It's how it's structured and when I ask it. It's always good to ask a client when they've just gotten a great result from you because that's the emotion that's actually helping them do what you want them to do.

If you leave it too long, the excitement wanes. I think, oh no, okay. Yeah, that's fine.

But as soon as they're super happy with something, then you should take advantage of that and ask them then and there. Yeah, strike while the iron's hot. If you're B2B, would it work if you were offering to do reciprocal reviews? Well, the thing is, if you've done a service for them, they should be more than happy to give you a review and vice versa as well.

So yeah, there's no reason why you shouldn't ask each other for reviews if you've actually done work for each other. Yeah, because they need to be real reviews. They shouldn't be like, I'll just do a review for my friend.

They should be real reviews because then you can write the story of how good someone has been and what they have done for you because that's what makes the difference. It tells a story. It's a little story of how they've helped you.

And that's what people are looking for. They're not looking for perfection. They're looking to see how you actually helped someone and they want to be helped in the same way.

Yeah, yeah. Great, yeah. So reviews is obviously really important to build that social proof and that trust and credibility.

And then the other part you said is important is that getting found locally. Yes. The local SEO, which you help businesses get all the ducks in a row there.

Yes, so with local SEO, you have to make sure that you've actually got a Google business profile and that you optimise it as much as you can. And because people want to find you, when you do a search for a particular service, you want to show up in the Google map pack in the top three. Yeah.

Because then people will go, oh yes, that's where people click. And that's above the search. That's above the organic searches.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point to note, isn't it? That the first thing people say is the businesses with the most reviews and then you get the ones that have invested in their SEO, organic SEO. Yes, yes.

Okay, and Sam, you had a great question about AI. Yes, about getting your business recommended by AI tools such as ChatGPT, because I know that there is a lot of, as you said, fear mongering out there by perhaps marketing companies, that you must do specific things separate from SEO. There are other things that you have to do in order to get AI to recommend you.

Yeah, the simplest thing you can do to get AI to recommend you is to do the absolute basics correctly is get reviews from your clients. Because if someone's looking for the best dog door installer in Perth, you have to show that you've got, I don't know, however many reviews that there are more than all your competitors. Because AI is not going to say you're the best dog door installer if you have like three reviews.

So that's super important. And everything needs to tie in. You need to, like all the basic things that you do for SEO, you need to do correctly.

So that when AI looks for what your business does, it's easy for it to put all the information together and spew out the recommendation. Yeah. So what you're saying is the AI part that now appears at the top of the screen when you type a search prompt, AI is the first thing that comes up.

And you're saying that getting all the, rather than what some people are saying, oh, that's going to replace SEO and everything. What you're saying is, no, actually that's building on, it's drawing from businesses that have done the SEO groundwork to- Yes. Yes. 

It's exactly that. Because where do you think AI gets this information from? Yeah. It's got to be able to find you.

Yeah. Yes. It's got to find you online.

Yeah. So you make sure that you, yeah. And see that you have authority as a term you use in SEO, right? Yes. 

Exactly that. And so what comprises authority from a Google perspective? What reviews is the thing? Well, there's something. Reviews is the main thing for authority.

And the thing is you need to be in the places that your clients are looking for you. So, yeah. And you need to like building, writing blogs with the information that builds your authority is very, very important in creating that authority.

Because that's the information that Google draws on and AI would draw on. Yeah. Because I have been working with an SEO colleague who I've known for many years in Sydney.

He runs a business coach directory in Sydney and his expertise is SEO. And he was showing me my website authority, even though I've had my website operating since 2014, my authority wasn't great. And he was suggesting that that's things like backlinks and yeah.

And backlink, citations. And yes, just building. You've got to keep on adding to your website to build the authority in the particular areas of expertise that you have.

You can't like build your website once and just leave it for years and years and years. You have to keep on increasing the different sort of areas of expertise. For example, for business coaching, there may be five different ones and building that within your blogs themselves.

Yeah. You want the authority in those particular areas. And it does work, I've noticed.

Because we've been doing things like, like you say, that regular fresh content of blogging and then the FAQ seems to be helping a lot as well. And things like that. And so over time, the SEO is starting to work because people are coming, filling in the lead form, the contact form more regularly, which is, is SEO the only thing we actually need to focus on to run a good business? Do you know what I mean? Well, yeah.

The thing is you need to become trusted online so that when people are, all SEO is matching someone's query with what you offer. And if your answer is the best answer that can be found by both SEO and AI, then yours will be the one that's recommended. That's all it is.

Search engine optimisation. Yeah. Matching what they're looking for with what you offer.

That's it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And it is an interesting thing, that balance of aesthetics with technical SEO, isn't it? Because I find as a, you know, with a strong copywriting, you know, my, my, my sort of angle with clients is always to get the message right. Make sure it's a really clear, powerful, punchy message.

It hits the pain points and, you know, it takes a lot of journey, but you've got to balance that with good SEO so that it's actually hitting search terms that people are looking for, right? Yeah. And as long as you, because you should always speak to people first. And if people understand what you're trying to say to them, then Google will understand as well because people will be clicking on that.

And it sends a message to Google that this is actually what people are looking for. So it works both ways. You should always write first for what people want to know and how they'll understand it.

Yeah. Thank you for saying that. Because I've had some digital marketers just, they don't care about the messages.

They're getting this, you know, keyword stuffing or making sure they're right. Oh, no, no, no. You can't keyword stuff anymore.

Google's much smarter than that. Yeah. And that's been out the window for a long, long time.

Yeah. So I came across this dirty trick once and I found it really infuriating. I was doing a Google search on something and the first page was all results from the same website.

But when I clicked through, what I'd actually searched for and what had come up on Google was there was nothing about that on the page. And because I did a bit of fiddly stuff, I found that those search terms were embedded on the page, but in white text on a white page. How long ago was this? Because Google doesn't look kindly upon doing that at all.

No, no. It was last year. Okay.

Yeah. Interesting. And it made me so mad because I'm like, this is not helping me at all.

And this is such a dodgy practise for them to be doing this. Yeah. It's not really how you should be doing it.

And anyway, if someone actually finds that page and it's not what's going to help them anyways, what's the point? Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, I know.

I was very confused. I was like, no, it's not going to help me at all. All I'm going to do is bounce.

Yeah. And that's not good either. But Maria, when you say Google is onto those sort of things, they are getting more clever at picking up tactics, are they? Yes.

Yes. Are they doing that? Well, not really. They never tell you how they do it, but they are always crawling people's websites.

And yeah, so they do know. But they can't be crawling everyone's website all the time because I don't know how many websites there are, bazillions of them. So there's always someone trying to do something the wrong way.

And at some point they will get caught. Yeah. Can I switch the conversation back to the Google business profile that we all should have? Yes.

So on my social media scheduling tool, my Google business profile is one of the things that I can schedule posts to. Yes. I have literally no idea what you are supposed to post to a Google business profile.

And when you do post, how does that show up? Like, is that helping SEO? Or I'm a bit lost in connection there. It makes your business look alive. So if you've got offers or special events or anything happening, you add those.

So that's the one place you can just stick the promotional and sales posts all go to that profile. Yeah. Yeah.

You can do that. And you can also add pictures of what you sell on there on a regular basis. And where does that show up on Google? On the business profile.

And the thing, because if you're feeding information into the Google business profile, it's telling Google that your business is alive and kicking. So the more information you can keep on feeding it. There's also frequently asked questions that you can add there, which is really good.

And that adds to the information that Google has about you. So Sam, I quite often just cross post whatever I'm posting on social media onto Google. Yeah.

And I've done that, but I didn't know what I was doing it for. I didn't know what purpose it served. Yeah.

It's making your business look alive. That's what it's doing. It's telling Google that your business is alive.

Because it is quite... Sorry, you go. So if you just let it sit there and, I don't know, grow cobwebs, then Google doesn't think it's alive. So, but the best way is obviously doing it with reviews because that's what other people are saying about your business.

And that keeps your Google business profile alive as well and makes it more searchable and findable within your local area as well. But it is quite off-putting, isn't it? When you go to a Google business profile and it's empty. Like there's no content, there's no descriptions.

Maybe even if there's a few reviews, you still don't, it's nice when you see a profile that's alive with imagery and things. Because, and then it just, when you scroll down, Sam, or you can click on it, I think, and it opens up all the posts that are there. It just gives you a snapshot of what this business is up to.

Yeah, it looks alive. It's like going into a city and you're the only person in there. You sort of start to feel a bit uncomfortable.

It's like, oh, is it closing time? What's going on? Why am I the only person here? Yeah, I cannot believe how many businesses pop up in local search. I was in the city on the weekend and we were looking for things and I was dumbfounded at the amount of businesses that popped up and they had no website or anything on their profile. And I was like, what do you do? Like you popped up in Maps, but I am nowhere now because I want to look at a website to see if you're going to give me what I'm looking for.

Because Google sometimes creates a Google business profile for you and you don't actually know that it exists. That's why you need to claim your Google business profile. Really? Yeah, there's a way it says, is this your business? Are you the owner of this? You can click on that.

And if no one else owns it, then after however long, then you can get access to it if it's your business. But that must be for brick and mortar businesses, right? Yeah, yes. And they want to know because they've got Google Maps.

They need to ask for everything. Yeah, I was looking for restaurants. Interesting.

Yeah, whereas people like us that are service providers often working from home, they don't know that we exist. So we have to apply and getting verified can be challenging. Have you got yours verified now, Sam? No, no, I kind of, I always feel like digital businesses, you know, online businesses and, you know, people like us that are working from home, I feel like Google's kind of dropped the ball in looking after us for getting verified and things.

So I remember when I was originally trying to get my business verified and I was working from home and I'm like, I don't want a photo of my house as the profile picture for my business. But in order to get verified, like I live out in the country. So in order to get verified, it wanted, Google wanted a photo of my house with a photo of the street sign where you could see the house and the street sign.

And it, like I want, and I was like, I live on a road with farms and the street sign is two kilometres that way. And I'm like, there's nothing here for me to show you. So I was like, I just don't know how I'm supposed to manage this.

So Sam, I get around that with having a virtual mailbox. Is that something you see? Yeah, I know you do. But yeah, what do we do? Yeah, just follow the instructions as best you can.

Yeah, well, like I said, I came up with a big fat fail on that front. I am here. Or do you try and register a physical address in the nearest town? What is the nearest town? Oh, well, yeah, that's how, I don't know how that's going to work.

There aren't any sort of virtual, like I'd have to register as a Melbourne business. But it still begs the point, what about, you know, Google is digital, support digital businesses by allowing us to verify in ways that we can as a business that is operating from home without having your private residence plastered all over the internet. It doesn't do that though, does it? Like you can select, I think it needs that for the verification.

Yes, you can change it. You can change the images of your home and put something else. Yeah, but it was keeping me up because it was putting my, it was listing my address on the Google profile.

I don't want everyone to know my home address. Well, you can make it invisible. You just have to change the settings.

It's a setting and you can specify and that's a way to get around it. Yeah, not easy though. Yeah, no, but we've got to get on to this, Sam.

Because as we know, these reviews are the bloodline. I know, I know. And because I've changed businesses, my old reviews have all disappeared.

Ah, well, if you still have a relationship with those customers and you have done stuff for them recently and maybe they can use your current services, it would be worth asking them because they've used your services before. I'm just going to give you a review, Sam. Thanks.

And if they haven't given you a review, it's a golden opportunity for you to, for them to use your services again and leave you a review. So it's a win-win. There we go.

Win-win, I like a win-win. See, there's a reason to call them. That's the natural marketer coming out in Maria.

So there we go. Yeah, you want to win. Yeah.

So Maria, what drew you to digital marketing coming from the architecture world? Well, it just, it's sort of, it's project-based, which I enjoy doing projects and I enjoy talking to people. And it's just like, we get to design something and build something and talk to people. So yeah, I like designing stuff.

That's what I really like to do. And doing it digitally is fun as well. So it's something that you find relatively easy that a lot of people struggle with.

Yeah, it's not, yeah, I really enjoy it because I've solved bigger problems and digital problems aren't as difficult to solve. Yeah. Yeah.

And yeah, so by that, you're saying in architecture, you're working on big problems. This is lots of little ones. Yes, yes, yeah.

No one's going to die if you design it wrong. You can fix it. Yes.

In construction, people can die. And I was always looking for the dead body in this industry and there isn't one. So I thought, thank God.

That's funny. Yeah, it's a lot of responsibility in those professions. Yes, so yeah.

Maria, on your website, I love where it says, websites don't exist by themselves. And the part that I want to talk about with you is that if you don't understand how they fit in the bigger picture, you'll end up wasting money on things that don't do anything. Yes.

I'd like you to expand a little bit on that and just where websites do fit into all of this. Okay, so your website is the foundation of all your marketing because you own it and you can say whatever you want about yourself and what you do. And that's the authority on who you are and what you do and who you help.

But things like Facebook, Google Ads, any LinkedIn, the space that you own on there is never yours. It's rented. So that could disappear overnight.

So you need to make sure that your foundation of who you are is set up correctly. And the thing is, you've got different types of people looking for your service. So you've got your active searches and your passive searches.

So you need to make sure like the next level for your active searches, people that are looking for what you do right now are your active searches. So you need to be found easily. So you need to make sure you've got your local SEO set up properly and you need to be findable online.

And that's with SEO as well. So that's that. The thing is, you also need to do some sort of advertising on platforms where people are actually existing.

And that's for your passive people. Say, if you wanted to build a pool in your back garden, you wake up this morning and then you search up pool builders in Perth, for example. And then there's a whole list of that.

You're an active searcher. But then at some point, you want to increase the amount of people that know who you are. So you need to create awareness of what you do on social media platforms.

So you put like, for example, Facebook, Amazon, like where you build swimming pools. So those are your passive people that know that you exist because they're not going to need you now, but they need to know that you exist so that when they need you, they know that you exist and they come and find you. So yeah, there's different levels of customer.

You always want to make sure that the people that are looking for you can find you and ask you for your services. But then you also want to tell people that don't need you now, but may need you in the future, actually know to look for you when they do need you. So yeah.

And that's the key. That's the key. Yeah.

And don't they say something like only 3% are actively buying at any time? Yes. You've got to warm up your customers. Not everyone is looking for what you do the moment you meet them.

So you've got to make sure that when they need you, they know where to find you. Yeah. And that's why that consistency is important.

Because I've had recently someone asked for an ADHD expert and not ADHD, autism. And oh, I know someone. And then I couldn't remember because I haven't seen her on Instagram in a while.

She used to be active. And yeah, she missed out on a referral there just by not being visible. Yeah. 

Yeah. You need to be visible for when people are actually looking for you and when they're looking for you in the future. Yeah. 

So you need to make sure you get people's details before you need them. So you're warming them up. So when they need you, they know, oh, Maria emailed me this week again.

But I know who Maria is. So yeah. Yes.

You've got to build, you've got to warm people up because only a small percentage of people are ready to buy and the rest of them will buy at some point, but just not today, but maybe tomorrow, the next day, six months from now, a year from now. But they'll find you because they know you exist compared to everybody else. You've built that trust.

Yeah. So the Google site is for those that are actively searching social media. So that's more about brand awareness.

And you deal with both sides. Yes. Yeah.

And then when they look you up, they look at your reviews and they look at your website. So you have to have that correctly. So you don't want to spend lots of money on Google ads and Facebook ads and all the rest of it.

And then when they look you up, you look horrible. So they go to your competitor. You don't want to waste your money like that.

Yeah. Yeah. And it is interesting, isn't it, Sam? Like you said, you looked up this business and they didn't even have a website on their profile.

Yeah. I've seen a lot of restaurants. They just post their menu as an image on their Google business profile, but they don't actually have a website, but it does reduce your credibility.

Yeah. Well, yes, because I wanted to see the menu and all of that sort of thing. But yeah, when there was nothing there, I was like, well, it's not around the corner.

I can't just walk past and see. Yeah. Yeah.

So that's interesting that you're saying, Maria, websites are fundamental and critical because there are on Facebook, coaches out there that advertise you don't need to waste your money on a website. Yeah. Oh, I think that's bad advice.

That's because you can say, why is someone saying that? Because what are they trying to sell you instead? It's Facebook ads or a landing page set up. Yeah. Yeah.

But there's nothing wrong with landing pages and all the rest of it. It's a whole system that works well. It's just you need somewhere where you put all the things that you've created that creates that trust that people can trust that you are who you say you are.

Yeah. Because there are people that say your email database is the only thing you need to worry about. So if you have a mechanism to build your email database contacts and you're growing that and you're communicating with them regularly, then the website doesn't matter is a theory I've seen quite a bit.

Well, the thing is, there's different ways of doing it. That's why people are attracting leads and they create these funnels because I've seen those adverts as well. But then they're only capturing a small percentage of those people that are interested now.

What about the 97% that want to do it later? So they'll look you up, have a look at your reviews, have a look at your website. So you can't be missing out on that 97%. Yeah.

Because you're just trying to capture that. Emailing them. Yeah.

Emailing. But then. Yeah. 

But not everyone's going to opt in. No. And I unsubscribe if they email me too much.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It is that.