Kike Santamaria lives in Orihuela and is dedicated to web design and SEO for local businesses. At kike.pro you can take a look at his services and contact him. Or you can just dial his number telephone 641 33 45 66.
He had a moment and we had a chat with him in a popular Orihuela cafe nearby the Town Hall.
OCS – Hello, Kike, first of all welcome.
Thank you very much, a pleasure chatting with you.
OCS -Tell us briefly about your career so far.
My name is Kike Santamaría, I live in Orihuela Costa although I was born and grew up in a village near Bilbao. There I graduated in business studies after which I moved to Madrid where I worked as a computer scientist for 15 years for some of the most important companies in Spain.
OCS -What do you do nowadays?
I design websites and help businesses with a local presence, usually small ones, to appear in Google searches when people in their area search for the products or services they offer. This is called Local SEO and has application in a multitude of businesses operating in our neighbourhoods and cities.
OCS – Websites of this kind have been on the market for some time now, or am I wrong?
Very true but as in everything in life you have to know how to offer what others are not offering. By this I mean that a simple website with hardly any analysis is not going to help your business in practically anything. If you knew the amount of work that needs to be done before even starting to build a website, you would be surprised.
OCS -What work do you mean?
I am referring to tasks such as competitor analysis, carrying out extensive keyword research to identify what people are searching for and a few other things. And be aware that when you finish building the website, a lot of other equally important tasks start outside of it.
OCS – This is in terms of web design. What can you tell us about Local SEO?
Well, it’s something that all local businesses should be practicing. It has endless applications and proven effectiveness. I always say that a bad and late website is not going to solve any problems or, in other words, it’s not going to help your business. But a good website and continued Local SEO work can make your business well worth the investment.
OCS – A practical example of this?
Yes, let’s take the example of an English language school in a city in the centre of the country. The owner came to me knowing that his website had a lot of room for improvement and that it was a long way behind the competition. Not long ago we redesigned it and indexed it in Google and we are already seeing the first results.
But as I said, we should not stop there, we have to work on local positioning so that my client’s English language academy appears in searches carried out by people in their city or surroundings from their computers or mobile phones.
It is a matter of having the necessary breadth of vision to classify it as a very wise investment that will surely bring us a return in the form of benefits. Good for him, in this case hahaha.
OCS – Web and local positioning working together.
That’s right, I was recently asked by a client who owns a gardening business how much she would like a website. After clarifying how many services she provides and in which locations, I gave her a price she was happy with. I then commented on the suitability of not only staying there but also working on the local positioning and she replied with a resounding negative.
I told him that I was not interested in taking his project.
OCS – And why is that?
Well, it is very simple. You build a website 20 years behind your competition. And you intend to stay there, not to go further, not to work on local SEO.
Now I become the interviewer …. Do you know what will happen if you work like that?
OCS – Hehehe no
Well, the client is going to spend the money to almost certainly not get anything and is going to put me in the centre of the target, questioning my work.
OCS – From the outside, you would think it would be clear.
At least I do.
OCS – Soups without slurping can’t be.
That’s what I think. In the business world you are not going to achieve profitability in any way without assuming some risk, without investing a certain amount of capital, however small it may be. People who offer websites at 200 euros have done a lot of damage to the industry in general.
That’s what I think. In the business world you are not going to achieve profitability in any way without assuming some risk, without investing a certain amount of capital, however small it may be. People who offer websites at 200 euros have done a lot of damage to the industry in general.
Kike Santamaría
Consultor SEO
OCS – What kind of business is local SEO for?
Well, I usually say that it is for all those businesses that receive their clients in some premises such as a shop, premises or workshop and for all those who have to travel to where the client is in order to provide the service.
OCS – Do you have any examples of companies in either group that could benefit from working on positioning?
Well, in the first group of businesses we would have restaurants, mechanics, academies and a long etcetera. In the second group we would have businesses such as gardeners, plumbers, locksmiths, renovation companies and many others.
OCS – Is local SEO for everyone?
No. It is for most but not for all businesses on the street. It would hardly be profitable for businesses like a bakery, a coffee shop and a stationery shop to name a few.
OCS – Thank you very much, Kike. I think this is more than enough. It has been a real pleasure.
The same to you. Thank you for the invitation and until another time.
Kike knows what he is talking about and people who need a good designer would do really well to use kike an honest true gentleman full of help and Advice .