Local SEO

MICHAEL:
Hi guys, Michael here. Do you want a second opinion on your SEO? Head to theseoshow.co and hit the link in the header. We'll take a look under the hood at your SEO, your competitors and your market and tell you how you can improve. All right, let's get into the show.

INTRO: It's time for the SEO show where a couple of nerds talk search engine optimization so you can learn to compete in Google and grow your business online. Now here's your hosts, Michael and Arthur.

MICHAEL: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the SEO show. I'm your host, Michael. And as always, I'm joined by my trusty, reliable companion, Arthur. Hello, happy Friday. Happy Friday. What you got planned for your Friday outside of shooting a podcast?

ARTHUR: Not much, to be honest. I've got a few things on this weekend, but I might watch some footy tonight. Good to have footy back on TV.

MICHAEL: Yeah, so last night was the first round of NRL. I found it pretty boring to be honest, the game.

ARTHUR: Well, yeah, it's, I like it as a background TV. Yeah. It just gets me. I like winter. I'm a winter guy. So it just, it's like the initiation of winter for me when footy starts. It gets a bit cooler. It gets a bit crisper. Days get shorter. I like the crispness right now. Yeah. I'm definitely a winter boy. Winter boy. Winter man. Anyway.

MICHAEL: Definitely not a boy. Yeah. We're not here to talk about whether he's a boy or not, or even talk about NRL. No. What are we here to talk about?

ARTHUR: We're here to talk about SEO. Well, more importantly, not importantly, but more specifically local SEO.

MICHAEL: We haven't, we've done 30 odd episodes. We haven't spoken about local SEO.

ARTHUR: No. Oh, we've touched on it in some episodes, but we haven't done a dedicated episode to local SEO.

MICHAEL: No. So today is the day. Gather, gather, gather yourselves, get a drink, get comfortable. Cause we are about to go deep on local SEO, but let's start with something really obvious. What is local SEO?

ARTHUR: Is that a question for me? Are we just opening up the conversation? Local SEO is, I guess, optimizing your GMB profile or Google My Business profile. So your business appears for local searches. So this is probably more relevant for service-based businesses. So if you're a, like a cake shop, a, you know, an air conditioning dealer, electrician, you're probably going to want to have a optimized Google My Business profile.

MICHAEL: And so basically with those types of businesses, it's where someone is searching for electrician. Suburb generally.

ARTHUR: Yes.

MICHAEL: Location based searches. Yep. So with local SEO, what makes it different, I guess, from normal SEO, you know, where will people be spending their time to me? It's all about GMB, isn't it? It's about the profile optimization.

ARTHUR: Yeah, exactly. Setting it up. Yeah. So not too worried about people visiting your site. I mean, it's a plus, but it's more about having a super optimized GMB profile and being prominent when you're searching for local, I guess, businesses.

MICHAEL: Yeah. And by prominent, we mean you're showing the map pack, the local pack, the snack pack, the local pack, Google maps, whatever you want to call it. Yep. And what a lot of businesses will do is, you know, you, you get your Google GMB, Google my business. So we're going to call it GMB to be quick and easy, but you get your GMB profile set up and verified, but then you let it leave it to gather dust. Exactly. Gather cobwebs.

ARTHUR: Most businesses will just do the bare minimum. So name, phone number, website, that's it. And just lays dormant there. People that search for it have a bad experience because they don't get much information about your business at all. And it could potentially be a deterrent as to whether or not someone does business with you.

MICHAEL: Yep. So what, what should people be doing? Cause there's quite a lot with the GMB profile. Let's start with the profile and then we can go into a bit about how, how Colessio works. Sure. Or do you want to do it the other way around? Um, it doesn't matter really. Yeah. Let's say we're on the GMB tangent at the moment. It is a central cog in local SEO. So let's talk about the GMB profile. Then we'll talk about what you should be trying to do to please Google from a local point of view. So with your profile, let's say you've created it. You've got your name, your phone number, your address, but it's just laying dormant. What are some areas like, you know, what, what do we like to optimize or even just set up on a profile to make it, I guess, stand out more. And, you know, if a person comes across it, it looks like an active.

ARTHUR: Yeah. So I guess the first thing to do would be make sure that you're filling out as much information as possible. So giving Google all the information about categories and subcategories. So that can be very important, making sure that you are targeting the right categories, making sure that you've got all your information up to date.

MICHAEL: So just on the topic of categories, that's like for your business, for your business.

ARTHUR: Yeah. So whether or not you're a, I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but electrician, electrician, exactly a plumber to electrician. Correct. Yes. Yeah. So making sure that you, you are targeting the right categories and making sure that you have filled out all the information correctly. So not just your business name and phone number, but your address, opening hours, um, you know, having a little bio, basically giving enough or as much information as you can to anyone that's searching for your business.

MICHAEL: Yep. And this is important because when people search your brand, a lot of this stuff is going to display on the right hand side and the little panel there. Yeah, exactly. So I filled out profile and it's not just all that content. It's things like photos, right?

ARTHUR: Yeah. Well, that's the next point. Yeah. Photos are huge. So most GMB profiles will be lacking high quality photos of their business. Yep. I mean, users can upload photos, but they're often not going to be great. I mean, you can approve them and remove them, but you really want to have some high quality professional photos of your business. If you are trying to drive people through the doors. Yep. So definitely invest in, um, you know, you don't have to have a professional photographer, just make sure you're taking good, clear photos of your business that you want people to see.

MICHAEL: Like a high quality iPhone shot, just thought about and shot the right way is going to be more than sufficient. But you need to, you probably want a mix of photos as well. So like showing in the office, the team, out the front. Yeah. If you've got vans or cars on the road, photos of that, just stuff that show that you're a real going concern. You know, you're a trustworthy, real business.

ARTHUR: Yeah. I have a fun little stat. So business listings that have photos are doubly more reputable and can drive 35% more clicks.

MICHAEL: Nice, you've come with the stats this week.

ARTHUR: Yeah, I came prepared this week. Beautiful, I like that stat. Another one, the average GMB profile has 11 photos. Really? Yes.

MICHAEL: The average? Yes. Because we see a lot with none.

ARTHUR: Exactly, yeah.

MICHAEL: There's people out there that are going to town with optimizing them.

ARTHUR: Well, there'll be people that, like I just said, there's a restaurant, there'll be a lot of people, users adding photos to that profile. So I think across, you know, like, Your own photos and users photos, there's an average 11.

MICHAEL: Yeah, but you as a business owner should definitely be uploading really high quality shots, not leaving it up to your users. Exactly. And you can control what actually then shows in the search results. So if you set someone searches your brand. On the right hand side, there will be like a cover photo, I guess, or a profile pic or a thumbnail for all of the photos. So you can pick the one that looks the best for your business and make sure that that shows in the search results. Yeah. So again, if you have a team of like 20 people in cars and vans, some sort of like, you know, wide angle shot of everyone would be cool to show at that point. Um, but yeah, I guess the general gist there is don't just let your profile sit dormant photos, fill out every aspect of, you know, all the different fields that you can. Um, what else should people be doing with their GMB profile?

ARTHUR: Well, there's a thing called Q and A. So this doesn't actually show up in your GMB profile, but on maps. And it's when people ask questions about your business, you can take the opportunity to answer them and they'll start showing up on your GMB profile. So it's always good to have a look and have a look at your listing and see what sort of questions are being answered, because it might be super relevant to your business or very helpful to someone else that's searching for your business. So yeah, another missed opportunity. A lot of people don't look at and kind of just sit there unanswered.

MICHAEL: Yep. Yep. Another thing that I think a lot of businesses don't do is setting up your what's known as products, product catalog. It doesn't have to be products. It can be services. But it's another opportunity again, coming back to the search results. When you search a brand on the right hand side, if the business has set up their product catalog, it will have the name of the products and an image. And if you click on it, it will pop up and you can have a big description of that product or service. So fill that stuff out. Get some images, custom design that stand out in the search results. Colorful, attract attention, that sort of stuff.

ARTHUR: You can add services as well. So if you all like a carpet cleaner, you can have your different packages or whatever in your GMB profile.

MICHAEL: So very helpful. Even for our agency, we have the SEO show as a product in our product catalog. So that when you look in the search results, it's just another call out for the show. And if you click into it, it will offer you the link to go check out the show's website. It's surprising how few people do that. That's a big one, really big one. Most, a lot of businesses don't do it. And another thing they don't do, and we're pretty guilty of this ourselves, is post on GMB. Yeah. You know, we post on Insta, we post on Facebook, LinkedIn, but GMB, you should post because it shows that you're not a dormant business.

ARTHUR: It gives you an opportunity to announce, you know, offers, events, whatever may be happening with your business. It's like free advertising basically.

MICHAEL: Yeah. So again, it should be part of your, like as a business, you want to be active on all your social profiles showing off that, you know, what you're doing, you're trustworthy, you're good at your craft, all that sort of stuff across all of those profiles. So that at any given moment, when someone comes across them and is assessing your business, you're putting your best foot forward. All of this needs to be done on your business profile. Yes. It's not in most cases. No.

ARTHUR: And look, it's not that hard to do.

MICHAEL: Let's be honest. Yeah. So what is the steps? How did people even do this?

ARTHUR: You know, like we're just assuming people know how, how would they go about doing it themselves?

MICHAEL: Yeah. Like if, if I'm going to assume most businesses should have claimed their profile and like verified it.

ARTHUR: I'm pretty sure Google kind of runs you through the whole process. It tells you how optimized your profile is, whether you're sitting at 60%, 75%, it lets you know whether or not you've added images. So I mean they make it super easy for any business to fill out the profile well enough.

MICHAEL: Yeah. It's just a time investment in writing it all and getting the graphics design basically. Yeah. But if you, if this is all totally foreign to you, the first thing you should do is search Google my business and go to the first site and log in and just see if your business is in there. If you have it under your control, if not, you're going to have to try hunt it down. It will be, if it's on maps, there's a GMB profile for it. So you need to get control of that and then optimize the hell out of it. Basically what we're saying, the other big thing. with reviews. Very important. We did a whole episode on reviews recently.

ARTHUR: I was going to say probably don't need to go into too much depth there, but very important to get legitimate reviews from customers that have had a good experience. Anyone that has had a negative experience, make sure that you address the issue. I think it just makes your profile look a lot more legitimate. And there's ways about getting reviews. So, you know, if you've worked with someone, you know, having a little link in your invoice, email invoice, or having it in your signature or just sending it out to X clients and just trying to get reviews that way, but building out, you know, a large list of reviews is.

MICHAEL: Very helpful. Yeah, the old social proof, very important. And coming back to the topic of local SEO, reviews are a ranking factor, positive reviews. So if you can cultivate more positive reviews, not even more, just as many as possible, it's a good thing from a local SEO point of view.

ARTHUR: Yeah, it can be tough though. It can be. We know firsthand it can be tough, even though clients will rave about how much they love working with you, trying to get a review sometimes is,

MICHAEL: like pulling teeth.

ARTHUR: Yeah. Easier said than done.

MICHAEL: But let's maybe move on to talking about actually local SEO ranking factors in the light. So how does Google even figure out local rankings and how, who to show, you know, if, if, if I search for I Dr. Brisbane, there's going to be in the maps, in the search results, there's going to be three businesses that make it to the top.

ARTHUR: Yeah. How is that happening? So three things. Yup. relevance. So we touched on that, making sure that you are targeting the right categories in your GMB profile. You could also, you know, insert some keywords into your title that will definitely help you appearing or your business appearing for a, maybe a more generic search that isn't your brand. So making sure that your profile is geared and relevant to whatever search you want to appear for. Yep. Would be the first thing. proximity or location. So obviously if you're in the Sydney CBD and you're searching for an optometrist, you're not going to see results in Parramatta or Penrith or, you know, Campbelltown, you're going to see results, which are in your proximity or in your location. So that's another massive ranking factor.

MICHAEL: And so sometimes people will be like, I want to be in the maps for like electrician Sydney and they're based in Penrith. Yeah. And you're just not going to be no, like there are ways in the past where people would use virtual addresses or have heaps of different Google GMB profiles in different locations. Yes. That stuff can work here and there, but then Google's always trying to stop that stuff from working too.

ARTHUR: Yeah. You can, you can set a service area. So if you're an electrician and you serve a Sydney, you set the service area to Sydney, you can hide your actual address. So no one knows where you are located, but I'm not sure how well that would work. It would still be very much dependent on where your, I guess your bases or your addresses.

MICHAEL: That's the way you show where your address is and what the person is searching for and where they are actually located themselves. The person searching Google's looking at all of this stuff. So it's very hard to, trick Google these days into showing, I guess, you fill out these really big high value location terms when you're out of area. But so anyway, that is important, like obviously your location and the proximity of you to the person searching. What's the other part that Google's looking at so that, you know, they look at your location, they're looking at keywords in your profile, they're looking at reviews as we covered, but what else?

ARTHUR: So I guess prominence as well. So making sure that you are a legitimate business. So making sure that you have, you know, directories on, sorry, directories and citations set up all with the correct information or with, you know, your right address, your right phone number, all the information matches up. That is a, you know, Google can crawl that and see all that information and then it gives you legitimacy. Basically Google knows that you're a legitimate business. Having social profiles set up. Reviews, like you said, are very important. So making sure that you have all that social proof running in the background. So Google knows that you are legit.

MICHAEL: Even things like structured data, like the schema in your code that says you're a local business and it says what your address is and what your phone number is and what your social profiles are and all that stuff. Google can crawl it and understand it. All of those things together go into influencing ranking in the maps. That's pretty much all there is to it from a local, I guess with local SEO as well, there is the onsite side of things.

ARTHUR: You mean like having location pages set up? Yeah. That's sort of a thing. Yeah. I mean, it depends what type of business you are. Cause you might be a business that has multiple locations. So having those locations set up on your website and having those linked to the Jimmy profiles, cause you're probably going to have multiple profiles, super important, making sure that you have one account and managing all your locations under that account. Yep. Cause there's been situations with clients where, you know, they have dozens of listings and it's so hard to figure out who owns what listing and it's all like, there's no consistency. It's just a mess. Yep. So making sure that if you do have a lot of locations, it's all on the one login and you can manage it really easily and there's consistency.

MICHAEL: And I would say with coming back to the onsite, um, Certain types of businesses. So like, let's say a electrician franchise business where it's got one brand, but locations all across New South Wales, they might build out our pages for regions in New South Wales. So like, you know, the Hunter Valley and the South coast and Sydney, and then within there have pages for the main, I guess, areas that people will be searching for. That is a valid local SEO. I would call it a local SEO tactic in that you're not necessarily trying to show in the maps, but you're trying to show in the organic results for those suburbs. So that sort of stuff combined with link building and all the stuff that we always bang on about is also important. And from a ranking in a maps point of view, having a strong domain, links to your domain, that sort of stuff. Links from .com.au if you're in Australia, .co.uk if you're in the UK, that sort of stuff plays into it as well. Definitely. Yeah. But really, that's, I think, a pretty good introduction to local SEO.

ARTHUR: I think so. It's really not that difficult to set up a profile and manage it. Like you said, all you need is to invest your time. And for a lot of businesses, it's a massive missed opportunity, I believe anyway, because there's millions of businesses out there that don't have a proper optimized profile.

MICHAEL: Yeah. So think about it from your customer's point of view. What are they looking at when they're out there hunting down a business to help them with their need? What do you look like compared to the competition?

ARTHUR: I do it all the time. Hey, you know, when I'm looking at buying any sort of product, I always check out the store, the retailer, have a look at their GMB profile. If I see one that's neglected, it's, it's a massive deterrent for me because I don't personally, maybe it's just my perception, but they don't seem like a legitimate business.

MICHAEL: Absolutely. Like to give you a concrete example, I looked up someone to work on pavers, outdoor pavers, like restoration for them. The companies I was looking at, some, they would just be a name on a webpage, so they might rank organically, but their GMB doesn't exist, no reviews, no customer testimonials, no photos before and after and that sort of stuff. And then the company I went with, every little dot was ticked or box was ticked. You know, like their GMB was awesome, reviews before and after photos. They just had a brand and that's what I went with.

ARTHUR: Similar example, I guess maybe a bit flipped, but I bought a new PC recently and I was considering buying one from a retailer, like a computer retailer. And I had a look at the GMB profile and there was so many negative reviews. Basically delivery time and how long it took to put together the PC, people were just complaining and it took forever. Then I found one which had a lot of positive reviews, which looked legitimate, cost me probably about $200 more. But I went with those guys just because I knew that they would deliver. They had a lot of legitimate reviews, had a proper profile. So, you know, I'd rather spend a bit more and have a better experience. Exactly. Working with a business that I know is going to deliver.

MICHAEL: And that's really massive, that point, because we'll often have, clients in our agency come to us and say, well, I'm not the cheapest. I want to charge more. You know, I'm, I'm more up market. I want clients that are happy to spend a bit more, but what are you doing to actually deserve that or earn that or get clients, I guess, comfortable with spending more. Exactly. Cause there are people out there that don't want the cheapest. They want a good experience and we'll be happy to pay more, but if you're not, if you're not true, I'd prefer cheaper and good experience, but. Of course. But in your case just there, you went with a bit more expensive because you didn't want the headache of waiting around for this thing to turn up. And you knew with these other guys, because they'd put their best foot forward.

ARTHUR: Exactly. That's stuff they're not going to tell you upfront. That's stuff you need to kind of dig for. Yeah. That's where the GMB profile is very powerful.

MICHAEL: Yep. So I guess, yeah, if you want those higher spending clients, if you want to be a bit more upmarket, then you need to earn that. You need to show people you deserve that by having really well optimized GMB profile as just one of the, I guess, um, strings in your. Strings? I was going to say strings in your arsenal.

ARTHUR: Cogs in your SEO wheel. Okay.

MICHAEL: Yeah. We'll go with that. So look, hopefully that's been a good little introduction to local SEO. We are all done for this week. We'll be back next week with another episode of the SEO show, but until then. See you later. You got to say happy SEOing.

ARTHUR: Happy SEOing. Happy Friday. I hope everyone has an amazing weekend. There you go. See you later. Bye.

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