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Is Your Pet Business Website AI-Ready? 6 Things AI Checks Before It Recommends You / Ep. 473

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AI ready website pet business structure means your site is built so ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews can read it, trust it, and recommend it, not just impress a human scrolling on their phone. For pet sitters, dog walkers, and pet care business owners, that means schema markup on the back end, an owner bio page loaded with real credibility, deep service and location pages instead of one generic page, and clean site structure so nothing breaks behind the scenes. Bella Vasta saw her client Becky Lea of Paws Around Motown jump in rankings on a new Bloomfield Hills dog walking page within one month of Barketing Solutions building it out this way. In Episode 473 of Bella In Your Business, Bella sits down with web developer Erika Godwin of Barketing Solutions to break down what AI actually checks before it will recommend you.

Picture a pet parent standing in their kitchen asking ChatGPT who can handle their diabetic golden retriever, not typing “dog walker near me” into Google anymore. If your website was built to impress a human years ago, it is answering the wrong question, and AI is quietly skipping right past you to a competitor who built theirs for this moment. This episode is for the pet sitter, dog walker, or pet care owner who has not touched their website in months and has a sinking feeling about it. By the end, you will know exactly what AI is checking for and who to call to fix it.


 

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • How AI decides which pet business website to recommend, and what it skips over
  • What schema markup actually does, and why your site needs it
  • Why a generic services page keeps you invisible to ChatGPT and Perplexity
  • How raw server data shows AI traffic Google Analytics cannot track
  • What to do first if your website hasn’t been touched in over a year

What an AI Ready Website Means for Pet Sitters and Dog Walkers

In Episode 473 of Bella In Your Business, Bella Vasta talks with web developer Erika Godwin of Barketing Solutions about what actually makes a pet business website AI ready. They cover the trust signals AI checks before recommending a business, why schema markup and real service pages matter more than a pretty homepage, and how raw server data reveals AI traffic Google Analytics cannot see. This episode is for any pet sitter, dog walker, or pet care business owner who has not looked closely at their website in the last year.

How AI Search Changed What Pet Business Websites Need

Erika Godwin put it plainly: “Even like six months to a year ago, the big thing on your websites was optimizing for keywords. But the issue now is people aren’t searching keywords… somebody a year ago would search dog walker near me, and people aren’t searching that anymore. They want those answers to their specific questions.” Now a pet parent is telling ChatGPT their golden retriever has diabetes and asking who’s a good fit, and your website better answer that specific question or you’re left out.

Erika was clear this doesn’t throw out everything you’ve already built. “If you’ve been doing a really solid job on SEO, it’s not much different, it’s just more information and more details. So you’re in a good position. But if you haven’t kept your website up to date in a while, the longer you wait, the more you’re gonna fall behind.”

What this means for pet sitters and dog walkers: stop writing one page that says “dog walking in Scottsdale” and start answering the actual questions clients are asking, medications, hot weather walks, specific breeds, specific conditions. That’s the difference between a page AI skips and a page AI cites.

What Trust Signals AI Actually Checks on a Pet Sitting Website

“Before you needed a website and your marketing was to impress and gain trust with your clients,” Erika explained. “Now you need to gain trust with AI. Your website is that trust engine now.” AI is looking for the same trust factors a human would: a real bio page for the owner, separate from the rest of the team, with certifications, training, education, podcast appearances, news features, and conference speaking all linked out. “Anyone can go and say, hey, write me a blog on this topic and pretend I’m a professional pet sitter. But you need to prove that you are credible… using examples and your experience and your training to back up what you’re writing.”

That’s where schema comes in. Erika described it as “back end code pulling the information from these pages and websites into machine readable content” so AI doesn’t have to guess. Without it, AI might still find your information, but you’re making its job much harder. On top of that, Erika flagged proper heading structure, title tags, meta descriptions, and a real service area page. “I’ve seen so many websites with no service area page,” she said, and that alone is a signal AI reads as unfinished.

Why Raw Server Data Matters More Than Analytics for Pet Sitters

“There’s so much gold under the hood of your website,” Erika said. “Raw server data is something that can really help you understand your website, and it’s information that you cannot get from Google Analytics.” AI tools like ChatGPT cite pages without a human ever clicking through, and clicks are what Google Analytics needs to log anything. If ChatGPT cites you and nobody clicks, Google Analytics never sees it. It’s sitting in your raw server data files instead.

Bella called this out directly: “Google Analytics used to, in the olden days, be great. You could go there and get a hundred percent of the picture. The picture has changed. It’s only showing you maybe 50% of the picture now because those server logs are telling you the bots. Your website now has humans and bots that you need to accommodate for.” Erika’s team pulls that raw data into a dashboard for clients so they can see exactly which pages are getting cited by AI, how often, and where competitors are winning instead.

If your website builder locks you out of raw server access, that’s data you can’t get back. WordPress, Erika noted, is one platform that usually gives full access to it.

Resources Mentioned

Connect with Bella

About Bella Vasta

Bella Vasta is a business consultant, keynote speaker, and the host of Bella In Your Business, one of the longest-running podcasts for pet business owners with over 470 episodes. She built and sold a nationally award-winning pet care company and now helps pet sitters, dog walkers, and pet care business owners grow their companies using strategy, systems, and AI. She is also the host of AI For The Busy Human and has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Fox News, NPR, and NBC. Bella lives in Scottsdale, Arizona and runs the Jump Mastermind, a community for serious pet business owners who are ready to stop doing everything alone.

Guest Bio: Erika Godwin

Erika Godwin is a web developer and the founder of Barketing Solutions, where she builds and manages websites for pet sitters, dog walkers, and pet care business owners with a focus on AI visibility, schema markup, and site structure. She has worked alongside Bella Vasta for years as a trusted referral partner, and previously joined Bella on Episode 79 of Bella In Your Business back in August 2011, making this conversation a fifteen-years-later return to the show. On this episode, Erika breaks down what AI actually reads on a website, from trust signals and schema markup to raw server data, and what pet business owners need to do now to stay visible as AI search keeps growing. Find her at barketing.co.

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes a pet business website AI ready?

An AI ready website pet business needs schema markup on the back end, a real owner bio page with credentials and press mentions, deep service and location pages instead of one generic page, and clean DNS and hosting so nothing breaks. AI is looking for the same trust signals a human client looks for, reviews up front, real experience, and answers to specific questions like medication administration or hot weather walk policies. Erika Godwin of Barketing Solutions calls this building your website as a trust engine, not a brochure.

How do I know if AI can find and recommend my pet sitting website?

Start with Google’s schema markup testing tool to check whether your pages have the code AI and search engines read behind the scenes. Then look at whether you have a dedicated page for each service, dog walking, pet sitting, overnights, each with its own FAQ and pricing detail. If your site only has one general services page and no service area page, AI has very little to cite when someone asks a specific question. A visibility audit, like the one at jumpconsulting.net/audit, will also show you exactly where you stand.

What is schema markup and does my pet business website need it?

Schema markup is back end code that pulls the information already on your pages, like your services, reviews, and location, into a machine readable format AI can scan instantly. Erika Godwin explains it as making it easy for AI instead of making it guess. Yes, your pet business website needs it. Without schema, AI might still find your content, but it takes more work to trust it, and AI tends to favor the site that made its job easier.

Why isn’t Google Analytics enough anymore for tracking AI traffic to my site?

Google Analytics relies on JavaScript executing when a person clicks through to your site. When ChatGPT or Perplexity cites your website without someone clicking, that visit never shows up in Google Analytics. It only lives in your raw server data. Bella Vasta says Google Analytics used to show close to 100% of the picture, and now it is closer to 50%, because it cannot see the bots. Pet business owners need raw server data, not just Analytics, to see the full picture of who is finding them through AI.

What is the difference between a website built with AI tools and one built by a web developer?

AI has made it easy for almost anyone to build a website that looks good, but Erika Godwin points out that looks are not the issue. A developer handles the schema markup, DNS setup, email authentication, and page structure working correctly behind the scenes, the parts a pet business owner cannot see and AI is reading closely. A pretty website built with AI alone, without that structure, is like hiring an uninsured, untrained pet sitter instead of one with real training and pet first aid CPR. It might look fine on the surface, but it is missing what actually matters.

Timestamps

  • 0:40 – Cold open: pet parents are asking ChatGPT, not Googling
  • 1:25 – Welcome back Erika Godwin, web developer and referral partner
  • 2:40 – How search behavior for pet businesses has changed in 2026
  • 4:40 – Why an AI-built website still isn’t enough on its own
  • 7:10 – What AI actually reads: trust signals and schema explained
  • 10:40 – The raw server data most pet business sites are missing
  • 13:40 – From static brochure to trust engine: how site design has shifted
  • 17:40 – Building real service pages, location pages, and FAQs
  • 20:10 – Hub and spoke content: the Becky Lea Bloomfield Hills case study
  • 22:40 – Predictions: what happens to pet businesses that wait
  • 26:40 – Citations, directories, and getting featured in the news
  • 30:10 – How to check your own website’s AI health today
  • 32:40 – Closing thoughts and where to find Erika

Full Episode Transcript

Bella Vasta: Google entirely. They’re asking Chat GPT right here on their phones, as you know, and they’re saying, who’s the best pet sitter near me that can deal with a difficult dog or that can pill my cat? They’re not just doing the basic pet sitting Scottsdale anymore. And they trust the answer that they get. Your website was built to impress humans a long time ago, but now there’s more bots than humans. And today I’m really excited to bring Erica Godwin on because We met a long time ago and she was doing websites and I was like, girl, you need to get a business going. She’s been on back at episode one five, one six, one seven, one ten. And as you know, I do a lot of solo episodes. So the fact that I’m even like having Erica on today, sound all the alarms because I’ve been trying to get her on here. Erica, welcome to the show. I’m so happy to have you on. How are you?

Erika Godwin: Mm-hmm. Thank you so much for having me. I am great. yeah, AI visibility is definitely keeping me busy and throwing a lot of curveballs that we’re trying to work on to stay ahead of it for our clients. So it’s crazy times.

Bella Vasta: It’s amaz why don’t we just start there right now? Like, why don’t you give us a quick overview of how things have changed? It’s 2026. And if our listeners are l are looking at their websites the same way they were even two years ago, it’s outdated, right? And the the function of a website is a little different. We were talking about that in the pre-interview. Why don’t you explain that to the listeners?

Erika Godwin: Yeah, so the big thing is even like six months to a year ago, the big thing on your websites was optimizing for keywords. But the issue now is people aren’t searching keywords, like Bella was just saying. So somebody a year ago would search Dog Walker near me, and people aren’t searching that yet. They want those answers to their specific questions. So they’re literally saying they’re talking to AI and they’re saying, like, hey, my dog is a golden retriever and it has diabetes and it needs this, this, and that. Who’s a good fit? So it’s going really, really specific and you better answer those questions on your website or you’re gonna be left out. So that’s the difference where yeah, before you just needed to have Dog Walker and Scottsdale on your website. Now you need to talk about what do you administer like medications and do you walk when it’s really hot out? Like like literally there’s so many questions that you need to now To your website, so it’s completely changed. the fundamentals are there. So if you’ve been doing a really solid job on SEO, it’s not much different, it’s just more information and more details. so you’re in a good position. But if you haven’t kept your upside up website up to date in a while, then you’re the law the longer you wait, the more you’re gonna fall behind, and yeah, it’s a very big content strategy. Which is also where I could see Bella. I know she’s kind of pivoting towards dealing with that big content strategy as well.

Bella Vasta: Yeah, there’s so much to unpack there. So I want to first go over like, I think when people think about websites, like you and I, I mean, I’m marketing, you’re like the developer, for lack of better word, right? Like, and I think when we think about our websites, we’re like, yeah, I did it a while ago. I’m just gonna stick my head in the sand because it’s just so overwhelming. And I think it’s overwhelming because correct me if I’m wrong and add to this to have a proper website, you need someone who knows development, which is all of that like coding. Weird, hard understand stuff. You need a designer, someone to make it look pretty. You need someone to do the words. You need a strategy. You need what else am I missing? Like there’s so many things that go into a website, and people think that they can just have AI do a website for them and it looks pretty to them, and they’re like, yes, but why, what other steps are they missing there? Like, I I want people to understand that just building a website isn’t something that looks pretty to you, like a pretty brochure. There’s so many more elements that go into it, which is why you help a lot of my clients.

Erika Godwin: Mm-hmm. So yeah, like nothing to hide. AI has made it easy for virtually anyone to build a website. But that’s where the butt comes in. There is so even what Bella mentioned, there’s so much more. There’s the schema markup on the back end. And there’s a bunch of different types of schema that you may not have heard of that we can touch on later. But then there’s also all the DNS.

Bella Vasta: Yeah.

Erika Godwin: All the DNS setup and all of that to make sure that it’s not just your website’s working well, if you have landing pages and funnels and your email and all of that’s all working properly and authenticated. So that’s all there’s a lot of back end stuff and if you don’t understand kind of like how it works, AI is not gonna do a good job for you. AI’s only as good as the human behind it. And I’m sure you agree with me,

Bella Vasta: Absolutely.

Erika Godwin: on that Bella. So I mean there’s so much more to yes, you can just have a website, but you can also have just a dog walker. Right? Like I mean you can go hire someone that’s doing it as a hobby. It’s cheaper. It’s easy, but that’s the difference between that and someone like our listeners who have proper insurance and training and pet first aid C PR and yada yada yada. Like there’s a big difference there. So yeah that’s kind of There’s a lot behind the websites and also just throwing generic information out there is not helpful. So having ex you need that strategy and you need to use data to figure out what questions to ask, not just go to Chat G BT and say, What are some good questions? Like there’s ways where you can get actual data to find out what people are actually asking and build your content around that. So

Bella Vasta: Without a without a strategy. Preach it, woman. And I wanna break it down for the listeners so like it’s not just like overwhelming jargon. It’s the difference, and you guys have seen this before, between someone writing an AI description or an AI Facebook post, or dare I say, an AI sloppy flyer, and you’re like, that was AI. And you can tell that because you’re just a regular human reading on your feed. But it’s the same concept when it comes to your website. And I think that people throw websites up there or Try to change things, thinking that they they they they feel the relief because we’re all burnt out. And we’re like, yes, it looks good. But you this this episode is dedicated to giving you the knowledge so that you can’t be, dare I say, ignorant, which means ignoring the information. Okay, I’m not calling you ignorant, but it’s a strong word here. You can’t ignore it anymore because we’re giving you this information today. So, Erica, I want you to go a little bit deeper on.

Erika Godwin: Mm-hmm.

Bella Vasta: what AI actually reads on a website? Are you saying that just because it looks pretty to my eyeballs doesn’t mean that like ChatGPT, Google, Perplexity, Grok are all going to use it? And well, I put my my prices on my website, but what do I need to is it is it simple enough to just list my prices, or does that also need a schema? And what the heck is a schema? Break it down for us, girlfriend.

Erika Godwin: Mm-hmm. Alrighty. So, yeah. So if you think of it, before you needed a website and your marketing was to impress and gain trust with your clients, now you need to gain trust with AI. So the whole thing you need to think about is your website is that trust engine now. It’s not like your flyer. It’s literally your home base where you are building trust and credibility to not

Bella Vasta: Yes.

Erika Godwin: not only your clients but to AI, just as to regular traditional Google search. Like everything that you do needs to be built around that trust. So and that’s what AI is looking for. They’re looking for those trust factors. And that could be this is where your your bio is really important. Having each owner should have their own page on their website, not just have it like stuck in with the rest of their employees. You need to have that page and you need to literally put everything that gives you any sort of credibility on there and link back to those websites. So like you were on a podcast, you were on the news, you were at a you spoke at a conference, you went to a conference, you any certifications, training, education, like literally anything that gives you credibility needs to be on that page. so when you go and you’re creating the content, you now have that to you have that. like profile to back it up. So yes, anyone can go and say, hey, write me a blog on this topic and pretend I’m a professional pet sitter. Okay, great. Here’s a a blog, but you need to prove that you are credible to give that information and using examples and like your experience and your training to back up what you’re writing. Because AI doesn’t just want the same regurgitated information that everyone else is putting on their website. They want to see, okay, this person knows what they’re talking about. They’ve been in the trenches. I trust them. And that’s basically it, that’s the mindset that you need going into your website. To help AI get that information, that’s where schema comes in. And if you think of schema, it’s literally back end code pulling the information from these pages and websites into machine readable content. So it’s just easier for them to read it, essentially. They might come to your website if you don’t have schema and get that information, but you’re just making it really easy for them and they’re gonna go easy. So that’s a big thing. And then the other thing is the structure of your website. So just throwing up a sloppy website that looks pretty is not helpful because it’s not that structure that makes it really easy to understand. Plus, that well-structured website also makes it really easy for your potential clients to find what they’re looking for. goes both ways. And yes, you want to make sure you focus on your clients, but then you also want to make sure that that the places where your clients are finding you can also understand it. That’s having proper heading structure, title tags, meta descriptions, the proper page structure. Like I’ve seen so many websites with no service area page. so there’s a lot of like

Bella Vasta: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Erika Godwin: Right. There’s a lot of yeah, there’s a lot of elements that go into it. And this is why it’s important that you can really have that pro have that proper structure so that yeah everybody can find you. and another thing is like there’s so much gold under the hood of your website. raw server data is something that can really, really help you understand your website and it’s information that you cannot get from Google. Yes. So for those of you that aren’t aware of what it means, so raw server data, it’s all the it it so when it comes to AI, they give fingerprints when they cite you. But AI or Google Analytics doesn’t get that information because they require JavaScript to be executed. So basically somebody clicks.

Bella Vasta: Google Analytics. Mm-hmm. Yep.

Erika Godwin: Okay, Java scripts executed, it goes back, it’s in your Google Analytics. But if like ChatGPT is just citing you and they don’t click, you can’t get that information, but it’s in your raw server data files. So that is where for our clients we actually extract all that data and put it into a dashboard so our clients can see what kind of traffic they’re getting from the citations and which pages and how often. So they can see what what type of information is working and getting traffic and then we also build off that where you can find out, okay, so if for certain topics, if you’re not getting cited and your competitors are, who and why. So that is the that’s that really gold gold information that and there’s a lot of builders out there, I won’t say names that they lock it just it’s an under lock and key and you can’t even access it. So WordPress is something that usually gives full access to that, but there’s a lot of builders out there that you can’t get that information.

Bella Vasta: Yeah. I love this. So I want to take this to a higher level to the person who’s out walking a dog right now, or maybe they’re they’re driving around or sitting in the kid pickup line and they’re listening and they feel overwhelmed and they’re like, my gosh, there’s so much to know. My point of this entire podcast is to educate you. And as as Erica was just saying, you know, Google Analytics used to, in the olden days, I like to say, they used to be great. They used to be good enough. You could go there. A lot of people didn’t, but you could go there and you get a hundred percent of the picture. The picture has changed. It’s only t showing you maybe 50% of the picture now because of those server logs are telling you the bots. Your website now has humans and bots that you need to accommodate for. And then going back to the website, like what you were saying, you know, a a personal story here, and I’m gonna throw this in, and this is why like you and I have like really kind of tandemly worked together really well. Since 2018, I’ve been doing better marketing with Bella. And about two years ago, I decided to flip it on its head because I don’t care about Instagram and Facebook anymore. I don’t care about your graphics. I don’t care about your social media. What I care about is the right content and schema and headers and signals for your site. And what that looks like is is all of the reviews. And I’ve completely changed the marketing program because this is now what matters. This is all what we’re talking about today. So I love that you brought up, you know, the third party sources in any conference that you’ve gone to, and a lot of people are sitting on gold themselves, but they’re not accessible, they’re not, they’re not putting it on their their website. They’re still thinking of their website as a brochure, a static brochure that is never updated. And this is a this is a I I always say, Erica, I want to know what you think about this. I say there’s a difference between your website being like a tricycle in your driveway and you can ride around the block. And a yellow Lamborghini that you can drive everywhere and it goes vroom vroom and like and it gets the the the the vision of people. Like people look at you. what do you how do you can you touch upon more about how people’s just mindsets should shift about what their website is doing for them and why what worked before? I know you just upgraded all your templates too and you added a bunch. Can you touch on that? Just on the evolution of

Erika Godwin: Mm. Mm-hmm.

Bella Vasta: Where we need to be focused and why it’s not just so simple and easy anymore.

Erika Godwin: Yeah, so it’s like all it’s it’s really heavily focused on content and then the sign the trust signals. So yeah, all of our like all of our designs have changed a bit. We’ve upgraded them because now what we’re learning is that AI wants those trust signals up front. So when we may have like reviews down at the bottom of the website, well now they need to be in the header. So you yes, you want them there, but you also want a little snippet in the hero that says like Hundred plus five star reviews that clicks to your Google listing. so like those are some little things. You want to have that trust factor where they see a picture of the owner and a pet or like a human and the pet. You can take a good enough photo with your phone now that you can use instead of like stock. So that’s really helpful. we’ve made some changes where We also want to make sure that we touch on like having those trust factors in there so it’s not like you scroll down and find out they’re insured and they have pets first aid and there used to be a vet tech and all that. Like we wanna make sure all of that most important information is at the top because that’s what’s found first. And sometimes we don’t know, maybe AI won’t even scroll. They just will look at that section. So having it all there and then everything else kind of backs it up. And that’s how we’ve changed a little bit there. Some other things is making sure that you have it super clear on what your process is to manage expectations of clients. So when someone’s looking at your site, they see step one is book a meet and greet. Step two, create an account. Step three, book. Like having that super easy flow, that’s also a way for you to stand out to any of the apps, just showing, yeah, you know what, we’re super quick and easy too. Like it’s it’s so there’s there’s things like that, and then The big thing that’s changed is breaking out the owner from having to have their own page. I mean we’ve we started doing that a little while ago, but now it’s even more important. and then the other big things like all around content is where a couple years ago just having one services page and one location page is fine. Now we need to like break it down and build it out. So instead of just having

Bella Vasta: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Erika Godwin: Your services page, you need a page for dog walking, a page for pet sitting, a page for overnights. And then that needs to be like content rich details. So what you were just talking about adding your pricing. So yeah, just having your pricing’s not enough because I don’t know. Like I’m even I’m coming to your site, I don’t know what I don’t know what one I need. So like you have a 30, a 60, a 90-minute walk. Okay, so what do they include? And who if I have a dog, how do I know which one? So you talk about, okay, so this is what each one includes. This is who it’s good for. Then when people are asking, you asked a question at Chat GPT, this is saying this is who it’s good for. well, I this is what you need. Like it says it on your website. So having an FAQ on each of those pages. So you have your general FAQ page, but then you have a dog walking FAQ page with the schema specific to dog walking, and you’re asking those questions that people are. asking Chad and AI so that you’re just building this really like solid resource. Yeah, it’s all

Bella Vasta: Spider web. Spider Web. So also talk about, you know, if we have dog walking in Scottsdale, but what if we also do Fountain Hills and Phoenix and Anthem, right? So those are now we need all of those too. And I call it like hub and spoke pages. So when I build this content for people, we build these hubs and we build a spider web. Because a blog post by itself isn’t gonna Do anything for you. I mean, it will, it will do something for you, right? But like having it interlinking and interconnecting on your website so it all links together and it’s not just hanging out on its own. It’s the whole strategy that will really help. I had one of our mutual clients, and she doesn’t mind if I shout her out, Becky from Pazeral Motown. within one month, we built out Blooming Blooming Bloomfield Hills dog walking for her, and she already jumped in ranks. On all of the search engines. Like we just gave her her report yesterday. It was so exciting to see. But it was, but she has a website with you, Erica. And before she was doing it on her own. And it’s because she has that support structure that allows all of the hard work and the strategy of building out this stuff to actually work. Right. And so it takes, it takes a village. It’s your website is not just a brochure. I want to kind of

Erika Godwin: Mm-hmm. amazing. Yeah.

Bella Vasta: Transition into predictions here. I predict, and I well, and I’m not gonna, I’ll I’ll let you predict first. What do you think is gonna happen? When do you think, you know, the behavior is changing so much with AI and business and how we integrate it personally and in business? What do you think is gonna happen with business owners? when do you think that they’re gonna realize just how big of a shift this is with Google and with? Their website being a tool for them to get in front of clients? Is it gonna take them realizing that all of a sudden they just start dipping and they start freaking out and wondering what’s going on? because they don’t have the full information? Is it because their, their, their client list is gonna start going down or their signups are gonna start going down because they’re not showing up in citations? Like, what do you see this causing? Like, predict the future for me.

Erika Godwin: Hmm. man, it’s moving so fast. Honestly, I think it’s people are seeing it now. I have clients who they actually they tried the AI website and it just wasn’t working. And then they’re like, okay, I made a mistake, I need help. but there’s I I see a lot of people coming to me. It’s like, yeah, we’re not getting the traffic anymore. So I don’t think I mean that’s happening now.

Bella Vasta: Yeah.

Erika Godwin: Yes, I I know we didn’t talk about citations quickly. It’s really important to get listed in directories that and that could be like for if you’re Canadian, any Canadian listeners, there’s Canadian pet care professionals, there’s like any of the national associations, there’s like even fear like fear free certified, they have directories and some of the like training certifications have directories. Like those are really important. AI loves directories because it’s vetted information. but yeah.

Bella Vasta: Also getting on the news and stuff. Like I’ve gotten two clients on the news in print in this week alone. In the mastermind, I teach how to do that and give a whole playbook. It’s actually a lot easier and it’s it’s easier because of AI, but to get yourself out there because you don’t have to do it yourself anymore. And all of these signals help so much. Cause it’s not just you saying you’re great, it’s other people vouching.

Erika Godwin: Absolutely. Mm-hmm. Yes. Right. No, exactly. And that’s that trust that everything needs to match with your website too. So like yeah, you’re in these directories, you better make sure the information is exactly the same everywhere because AI is going to cross reference and cross check. Like this is what you say in your website. Okay, I’m gonna go check Google and I’m gonna check the news site that you are mentioned in to make sure it all aligns. So yeah,

Bella Vasta: Yeah. So, so let’s let’s let’s do the positive side of this. So, like I I love that you’re seeing this because you’re on the front lines. I I predict, because I feel like sometimes I’m just yelling into this echo chamber. I think that it’s gonna be like by first quarter next year that like everyone will be like, shoot, like, you know, my my holiday season wasn’t as good as it was before. And then you can have other people that are like, my God, I’m doing so good, because they actually are doing the right content and they’re doing and they’ve they’ve overtaken, right?

Erika Godwin: Yeah.

Bella Vasta: Be but because as I think the general population’s behavior changes to talking to AI more than Googling something, right? it’s it’s the difference between going to Blockbuster and streaming from your bedroom and your pajamas to Netflix. Okay. Like when that shift really happens globally, I think a lot there’s everyone’s gonna be on it. So right now is a really cool time to get in on it, right? how can someone know what their health is of their site? And

Erika Godwin: Mm-hmm.

Bella Vasta: What is what is the good news right now? If someone’s listening and they’re like, they’re ready. They’re ready to take their hat out of the stand. They’re like, you know what, I really need a good look at my website. I need to find out what I’m lacking, what is possible, where what do you suggest they do?

Erika Godwin: Okay, so one thing I’m going to backtrack before I get to that, just to add to what you said. what my so what I think is going to happen is those that are taking it now and getting AI to trust them now are going to be way ahead of everyone else because well, I think it’s because like so if you think of a person, you work with someone and you really, really gain to trust them, if someone else comes in

Bella Vasta: Please do. Yeah, I just gave you a ton. Compounded.

Erika Godwin: Well, okay, well, why would I trust you? I already trust them. So that’s what I think is going to happen with AI is these webs these companies that are really working on building the trust and credibility and gaining this like rapport. And now AI is citing them and this and that. When new people come in, it’s kind of like, okay, well, prove you’re better than this person that I already trust. So that’s kind of what I’m thinking. And I mean, we don’t know what’s gonna happen with AI, but that’s just.

Bella Vasta: Yeah. Right. That’s a good

Erika Godwin: From what I’m seeing, that’s what I’m thinking is gonna happen. Just like when you have a client and they trust you, but then someone else comes in and they’re cheaper, it’s like, well, yeah, they’re cheaper and whatever, but I trust you, I’m not gonna bother gonna cite anybody else. So I think getting right now is a good time to get in. And once people start really getting on like the bandwagon, it’s gonna be a lot tougher to get to break into AI. And right now is kind of the time to do it. so yeah, that’s

Bella Vasta: I love that’s exciting. That’s exciting. Like everyone listening, I want you to see like this is exciting. This is something you really should dedicate to learning the next couple of months so that you can be the captain of the ship, hiring and steering the right people. If you are just dumping time and money and energy into reels and carousels and just still so focused on social media, but not realizing that your boat is leaky.

Erika Godwin: That’s what I’m thinking.

Bella Vasta: And it doesn’t matter how great your social is if your boat is leaky and it’s not being recommended on AI, I will be bold and I’ll say abandoned ship. And that’s why I literally stopped doing that kind of marketing for people and jumped over to this because this is how important this is. And and straight from Erica’s mouth right now. Like I I love that. I I love what you just said about okay, you get in now and you’re trusted. And now it’s like, okay, well, why should I trust someone else? Keep feeding me, keep educating me, keep keep the beast fed, essentially. And if you don’t have the right structure for the Lamborghini to drive around, it’s gonna break down a crown the corner, you know?

Erika Godwin: Yep, exactly. and yeah, it’s if you if you don’t have a website, well the first thing you wanna do is make sure you you get a website. Google Business Reviews, focus on that. Get at least one a week, answer them. the big thing people do is with Chat GPT, they’re gonna go ask a question and they’re gonna go verify it. So they’re a lot of times they’ll go check the Google reviews to make sure they align. So that’s really, really important.

Bella Vasta: Get a website.

Erika Godwin: there is Google has a tool that will show you schema markup, run your pages, make sure you have that. I know Bella also has a has an audit. What is that your audit program there, that visibility checker.

Bella Vasta: Yeah, yeah. If you go to jumpconsulting.net forward slash audit, we’ll run a 12 page audit and like literally go to the to chat GBT in perplexity and then also check the scheme. We’ll give you a whole rundown of everything that like you need to look at and understand from SEO and AIO. and it’s it’s it’s what gets the clients like the results that they have, you know? we do Google business updates too. What do you think about that? Like weekly. I’m always like hammering in, guys, like every single week. So when we deliver our packages, I give weekly updates that they can copy and paste. And then usually it goes there’s a link back to their blog on their site that we had just published that month for it. So it’s feeding the beast because I think this is like another little element and it comes down to a workflow and knowing you’re like, my gosh, there’s all these things. There are all these things, but that’s why you need a strategist.

Erika Godwin: Absolutely. Yep.

Bella Vasta: And you need the foundation and you need the content, the right content, not how hot is too hot to walk my dog. Okay, great. in DC, you mean? And DC specific things? Yes, that’s what I mean, you know? Erica, I could talk to you about this for all day long. I mean, literally. I I we’re at 28 minutes. I I could do this for two hours with you and just really chat. We’re trying to fit a lot in here.

Erika Godwin: Mm. I know, I’m gonna

Bella Vasta: How can people go and you put out really great content on your on on both your profiles? You have the paw visibility, what it was it?

Erika Godwin: Yeah, we have the AI visibility. that one is more focused on just it’s more hyper focused on like the AI visibility stuff. As we learn more, as we learn more about what AI is looking for, we will we post kind of tips there, what you can do. Some kind of like bite sized t tips that are actionable. And then the marketing Instagram and Facebook is more

Bella Vasta: Yeah, it is I love that. People should go vi follow that.

Erika Godwin: kind of just general. It could be AI specific. It could be like just website structure. It could kind of just a lot and also keep up to date with what we’re doing. Because we are we have an AI visibility scanner built in. We have a question explorer built in that will help you understand you put a question in and it will pull data saying okay so these are the this is the question these are some similar ones this is

Bella Vasta: Website. Yeah.

Erika Godwin: how often it’s being asked in AI and how often it’s being cited in Google. We have that. And then we have the bot monitor. So I mean a lot of this right now is just for our clients. We are working on building a tool that non-clients can access, but some of it we need server data, so we can’t really work with non-barking clients for the bot monitor. But this is actual citation data and it will give you a r the full picture between this

Bella Vasta: Mm-hmm.

Erika Godwin: and the Google Analytics combined, it’ll show you the whole picture on how much you’re getting cited from AI, how many are clicking through, and it’ll give you that kind of whole idea, give you content and and yeah, help you. Right.

Bella Vasta: Invaluable. Absolutely invaluable. So how can people find you, Erica?

Erika Godwin: So you can find me at barketing.co and all of our information’s there.

Bella Vasta: That’s awesome. I I highly recommend you guys go follow Erica if you haven’t heard about her already. you really do do a great job and I I really commend you for that for pumping out really good information to educate people. I want everyone to if if you do want an audit from me, you can go to jumpconsulting.net forward slash audit and just fill out that form to see where your website lays. And then if you want, we can get on a call and I can show you how to get out of it. Sometimes it ends up with go to Erica first and get your website up to par because if I create content for you and your website isn’t gonna hold it, then that’s a waste of your time and my time. And I’m very upfront about that. And last, I wanna just leave you guys with AI is a tool. AI is not the actual end all be all. And I think that, you know, we’re in this this this era of life right now where we’re all just so burnt out and worked out that we are just so excited to get an answer.

Erika Godwin: Mm-hmm.

Bella Vasta: But you have to remember that you’re still a human and that AI is a tool, none other like your cell phone or the computer or you know, whatever else you might use in your business. And you have to be surrounding yourself by people that are using AI as a strategic tool in every area of your business right now. Because whether you love it or hate it, it is here and it’s all only gonna get more. And the people that learn AI enough to Delegate or make choices to build their business using the AI tool in the right way are gonna be the ones that win. And the ones that keep their head in the sand, regardless of how you feel about it, are going to be outdone by the people that are your competitors doing it better than you. So you have a choice. And you have two great experts here, if I do say so myself. Erica, I’ve known her for 10 years. And I highly recommend if you just think that, you know, you’ve been doing your side on Wix or you’ve been trying to do it yourself or You have a a website person who you haven’t talked to for six months and they haven’t checked in with you. You really need to figure out where you’re at right now because this is the tipping point and it’s gonna start getting really real. And I encourage you to reach out, go to barketing.co or jumpconsulting.net forward slash audits. Erica, thank you so much for being here today. I really, really appreciate it.

Erika Godwin: Thank you so much for having me, it was lots of fun. There’s so much more we can talk about, but we covered enough.

Bella Vasta: Okay. my God. Maybe we could have you back again and again. You guys let us know what stood out to you on this one. And if you want me to have Erica back on and there’s a specific topic we see, I’m putting Erica on the spot now, but I’ll have her back on. I’ll hound her until she says yes. All right, you guys, this has been another episode of Bella in your business. Remember, when life gets you down, always keep jumping. Bye now.