SEO: Listen First, Optimize Second

Interview by Rachel Stewart, Co-Founder & Content Director

First in the series, Digital Marketing in the Age of AI, focused on search engine optimization (SEO), marketing and digital sales funnels, and customer retention for online ventures.

Shannon Littke left public administration for digital marketing in 2022, and built a business on a simple idea: Build your local economy, support your neighbors, and give small businesses a real digital marketing foundation to grow from.

From Human Services to Digital Marketing 

Rachel: You spent years in human services and public administration working with people with disabilities. On the surface, these fields couldn’t feel more different from digital marketing. What was the moment you knew you needed a change?

Shannon: Long before I was building marketing funnels or optimizing websites for search engines, I spent years studying behaviour, psychology, motivation, active listening,and person-centered planning – helping people navigate some of the hardest moments of their lives. 

Working in human services taught me to ask better questions, listen before offering solutions, and understand that every decision begins with trust. Those same principles now share the digital strategies I build with my clients.  These are not just skills for working with people,  they’re the building blocks of  modern marketing and sales.  And every business needs sales to be successful. 

My story really begins around COVID. Everything felt uncertain, and I kept thinking about all the conversations happening around me – investments disappearing, businesses struggling to sell, restaurants shutting their doors. Somewhere on a drive to a medical appointment in Edmonton, it hit me: buy local. Not just as a sentiment, but as an actual answer. That idea became my business: Keep Your Money Local. It’s about helping the people already looking for you in your own community find you before landing on a national chain.  

I bought the domain that week, started the business plan, connected with lawyers. A year and a half ago, the trademark went through, and it still lines up exactly with what I do today. If you strengthen the businesses and people already in your community, they’re able to do better work and serve more people. It’s not about cutting anyone else off — it’s self-care for the community, and for yourself, at the same time.

My shift into business gave me something the public sector couldn’t: working with people chasing their own dreams, on their own terms. And my core beliefs about listening carried over directly – marketing isn’t about getting people to listen to you. It’s about proving that you’ve listened to them first.

Three Components of SEOs 

Rachel: Small business owners have probably heard the term “SEO” a hundred times without really knowing what it means. How do you explain it to someone hearing it for the first time?

Shannon: SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” Essentially, it’s the practice of improving a website’s content, structure, and technical elements so it ranks higher in search engine results. SEO is often the highest-return marketing investment because a well-written article can continue bringing visitors months or even years after it’s published, unlike advertising that stops the moment the budget runs out.

Basically, the goal of a successful SEO is to increase the quality and quantity of free, organic traffic to a website rather than relying on paid ads. How it works is your SEO acts as the answer to a Google search – when a real person (anyone!) asks Google a question, Google looks to your SEO as the answer..

Learning SEO prompts a business owner to better understand who your customers are and what they are actually searching for.Really, it’s just listening at scale before you spend a dollar of your marketing budget trying to find and connect to them. 

You might be wondering: Can SEO still work in an AI world? Absolutely. Whenever you see a Google AI overview or ask a question to Chat GPT, you’re seeing the results of what’s called Answer Engine Optimization. This takes the basic elements of SEO and bolsters it with speaking in answers versus only facts, meaning helpful content still wins. Authority matters even more today than it did even just a year or two ago.

SEOs have three main components…

On-Page SEO

On-page is your content – whatever you’re making and putting out into the world, combined with headings, keywords, and meta tags that help search engines actually understand it. Your page copy has to genuinely answer the question someone’s asking, not just contain the right keywords. 

Imagine someone searches for “best physiotherapist in Edmonton.” If your website clearly answers that question with helpful content, descriptive headings, client questions, and location specific information, Google has a much easier time understanding that your pages deserve to appear in the AI overview.

Tip: Answer just ONE customer inquiry completely, every week. Add to your sites FAQ’s, Blog, Social, or Reddit.

Technical SEO

Technical is the backend structure of your website, including things like loading speed and mobile-friendliness so search engines can crawl and index it accurately. Think of technical SEO as the foundation of a house. Visitors never see it, but if your website loads slowly, breaks on mobile phones, or has broken links, both your viewers and search engines lose confidence quickly. 

Tip: Test your site using Google’s PageSpeed Insights, it’s totally free and provides an in-depth analysis of what’s working and what’s not.

Off-Page SEO

Off-page is your website’s (and your business’!) authority and reputation. It’s where what other people are saying about you online shapes your search results. It’s things like your specializations, credentials, local listings, and backlinks – basically, how many websites  are talking about you and linking back. It’s also how people are actually talking about you – on Reddit, on Instagram, in comments — and whether your own words match what real people are saying. That’s listening, too – paying attention to what your community is already saying about you, and making sure your own voice doesn’t contradict it.

Imagine five respected organizations all recommend the same accountant. Google views the backlinks similarly. Every reputable website linking to yours acts like another vote of confidence. 

Tip: Don’t forget about the real results! Ask every happy customer for one Google Review.

Going in the Right Order

Rachel: In this series, you’ll be covering SEOs, marketing funnels, sales funnels, and customer retention, in that order. Why does this sequence matter?

Shannon: All four are required for a successful business, but the order follows affordability and readiness. 

Imagine this, someone is searching for “best cake designer near me” which is super common. Your SEO helps them find you. Marketing is what helps them trust you. Sales funnels help them become customers through a simple step by step process that removes decisions and distractions. Retention then helps them stay as customers, and refer their friends. 

SEO comes first because it’s free, and because it forces you to get clear — on your business, your service, your customer, and the problem you’re actually solving — before you spend a dollar. That clarity only comes from listening to what your customers are already telling you they need.

Marketing funnels come next, built on that same customer clarity, to get attention and visibility. Sales funnels follow closely, because once you’re directing traffic somewhere, you need to be intentional about where that traffic goes.

Customer retention comes last, but not because it matters least, but because it’s the piece people forget. Business owners get caught up thinking they need new customers, new content, a new product. Meanwhile, they’re not talking to the people who already said yes. They’re not talking to the people who already said yes. Those people get lost, forgotten, shelved. But following up and keeping the people who already trust you engaged is one of the most overlooked parts of running a business. Retention, at its core, is just continuing to listen after someone’s already decided to trust you.

Rachel: For someone trying to figure out their online presence, whether they’re just starting or they’ve been at it for years, what’s one thing you want them to take away from this series? 

Shannon: Business owners often feel like they’re behind. They are not alone. Most aren’t missing another social platform or another AI tool. They are missing clarity. The tools and the landscape have shifted enormously in the last three to five years, but the underlying strategy hasn’t. Getting clear on what you’re actually delivering, and who you’re serving, is still the work. 

This series walks through those four pieces to help business owners self-diagnose where they are, and figure out where to focus next. Really, I want them to take away empowerment. Not because they’ll suddenly know every marketing strategy or AI tool available. But because they’ll realize they already have the most important ingredient. They understand their customers. Marketing simply gives a better way to communicate that understanding. That understanding is just listening, at every stage – that’s the thing that doesn’t change no matter what tool or platform comes next. 

In the next part of this series, we’ll explore why visibility alone doesn’t grow a business. Once someone finds you, what happens next matters even more. We’ll unpack the difference between a marketing funnel and a sales funnel, why most businesses accidentally create leaks in both, and how thoughtful customer journeys turn curiosity into long-term loyalty.