12 Proven Local SEO Tips To Dominate The SERPs And Map Pack Ep. 567

Hi, and welcome to the SEO podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burrows, one of the owners of EWR Digital. And my name is Matt Bergstrom. I'm the SEO strategist for today. Your SEO strategist for today coming to you from the Bahamas. The Bahamas. Well, I got to be honest, I'm a little disappointed we don't get the view out the back. I know that you're in the business office so you can optimize the connection. I was hoping to see a little like, I don't know, Bahama Mama drinks in the background or something. Uh, here we are. I'll have to post those in the show notes. Oh, that's a great idea. Uh, so this is another fun filled edition of our podcast. We are covering an article and the article is 12 proven local SEO tips to dominate the SERPs and map pack. We know that when you do a search and when Google says that it's relevant, that there's a map up there and that's a high, uh, a value location. And this article is about how do you get into that high value location? Uh, so you don't want to mention, uh, miss it. It's, uh, by Winston Burton, Patif to Winston. First, let's jump in with a review. The review is from Anna Grogan, Anna Grogan. Uh, it is of course five stars. If we can syncopate that way. Um, I had a great experience today with EWR digital shout out to Adam Gregory. He's one of our internet marketing specialists. Uh, as a veteran, it was great to work with individuals that care and support the veteran community. It's well appreciated. Kudos to you. Um, Patif to Anna for taking the time to send in that review. And this is typical and we'll talk about it at the end. If you want to get, you know, increased revenue in your business, what do you need to do? Uh, we can help you with that. Adam helped Anna with that. And so there's more of that to come. Um, I'm

going to jump right into the article since you're in the Bahamas and probably want to get back, uh, to the beach or I don't know, something a lot more fun than a podcast as much fun as this is. All right. So 12 proven local SEO tips to dominate the SERPs and map pack by Winston Burton. If you're not optimized for local search, you're missing out on a tremendous opportunity to reach potential customers in your area and drive into incremental revenue, traffic and sales. Amen to that. We've always been a big local search believer. Uh, here are the 12 proven local SEO tips. Number one is get on a local search platform. So many local search platforms are out there and available. And, and let's just, let's just first talk a little bit about the con. If you're not going to get a local search platform, then you're going to do this manually. Or blind. I like to say it's kind of, you're blind a little bit. You're yeah. Yeah. You're, you're blind or you're doing it manually. And that is extremely painful. I do not recommend it. There are lots of services out there. Uh, there's one that's Moz, Yex. We've heard of those. Uh, you may have heard of one and they're actually a sponsor of this podcast, bright local. Uh, you're familiar with them doing citation, managing those citations. And we'll talk a little bit, uh, after we, we kind of segue here. Uh, but bright local does a lot more, Matt, you want to talk a little bit more about what bright local does. Yeah. Well, bright local, everybody knows that they do citations. Anybody that's been in the internet marketing space. Um, they focus on enterprise brands, uh, businesses, agencies across the board. Right. But what I don't think people know, and I think that it's time to revisit bright local. If you haven't like investigated it, they have like an Academy that teaches you everything there is to know about like local, they have tools and listening tools. So you've

heard of like SE ranking or, uh, AH refs. Um, they do that for local, right. For the maps. It's a whole different search engine. I don't think a lot of people know that. Um, there's a really big focus. They help you audit, uh, your, your G B P or G M E right platform. They do, um, you know, the citation building, but they do the management review. Um, they do everything like local building those like little grids to see in a geographic area, how you're located. They do a ton of stuff and they're continuing to add, um, new features all the time. So I would just encourage you to go check it out. So, and there is a, they, they have offered a little something to our audience. Um, I'm, what is that? Yeah. It's basically, if you sign up for a plan, they'll give you a $75 credit. If you mentioned best SEO podcasts, right? So if you just missing your one hour listeners, it's a free 75 bucks, just sitting there, right. Worth of citations. And, uh, and just go to, uh, bright local.com to get that. We'll probably have a link, uh, set up notes about it. Yep. And they, they do have a landing page and all that, but we will get you that stuff in the show notes, but it's 75 bucks. I would encourage you to go, uh, get those citations, get on a plan, uh, check out some of the things that they're doing. If, if you haven't, um, revisited them in a while. So, yeah. Awesome. Yeah. So go check out bright local. Yes. And remember Winston's number one tool was get a local search platform. There it is. Bright local using a platform makes it much easier to manage all your listings. That includes getting your name, address, and phone number consistently and accurately listed across hundreds of local search engines and directories while also removing duplicate listings. They're just, they're just, you know, we talk about nap name, address, and phone and how exactly accurate

they need to be. We've been talking about that for years. It's important that, you know, if, if in one listing, your address says sweet, and then the next one it's ST period, like that's a problem. You don't want to have those types of mistakes and using a platform. And there's, there's lots of platforms out there, but using a platform like bright local, uh, really cleans that up. And, and imagine having to go to, cause we're talking like hundreds of potential local search engines that you want to really manage. Imagine having to go to them individually. Like, don't even imagine that. Don't imagine that just like go to bright local.com and, and mention best SEO podcast. Um, and he mentions managing this manually is extremely time consuming and can result in inaccuracies across, uh, the local search ecosystem. Well, Chris, one of the things too, is you, you do want to have somebody monitoring it, especially if you're like an enterprise business, because people can make suggestions and edits and, and change a lot to that. And it's great to like have one place that you can oversee all these things happening. So, um, there's not all kinds of crazy stuff that people are doing to your profiles. Yeah. And there's a bonus tip. So if you're, if you've got a brick and mortar store, uh, and your e-commerce take advantage of Google's new feature. See what is in your stores. It's Swiss. See what is in your stores. This is done by integrating live inventory into your get Google business profile. Um, like take advantage of that. If you've actually got it. And so that's the thing that I don't think people understand is the G and B listing. GBP. Transition to that. They're adding new features all the time. And if you're a brick and mortar business, you have different needs than maybe someone searching for information online. You, you know, that there's a lot of changes going on with AI. Um, there's a lot of changes going on, um, to deliver the best

search, uh, experience for the user that's looking for local, local services. And then you even mentioned online services, right? So you have a feed that comes in that shows you all the products available. I mean, the whole user experience or even the whole shopping experience, I think is going to change. There's a lot of things that are happening. Chris, I know this is a little bit of a tangent, but, um, there's these kind of pop-up, uh, experiences that are happening where, you know, you can go try on stuff and then they'll ship it to you. Yeah. And so, so, so just knowing what's there and, um, there's, there's just so much happening right now in the, um, you know, uh, retail space, I would tell you retail and internet space. Yeah. All right. Number two for proven local SEO tips, use structured data. We all know the structured data can help increase clicks, impressions, and conversions because you're really helping Google to better understand the content, implement structured data types like local business, geo coordinates, postal address, and reviews to help improve performance. Yeah. I I've just seen schema having, uh, such a big impact. Um, really it's, it's just sending more trust signals to Google on what the page is about, right? If you have a, you know, you have a blog, you have a video, you have an image, like there there's all kinds of scheming that you can add, but certainly the ones you listed are the, um, staples when you're doing local search. Yep. All right. So tip number three, proven local SEO tips to dominate SERPs, tap into Google business profile and optimize for it. When optimizing for Google business profile, ensure you feel out all the information you can, including photos, menu items, descriptions, and service lines. High quality photo content in particular can increase user engagement with your listing. It is best practice to add new photo content constantly and to include images of the interior and exterior of the building. Um, one of these is if you're

updating content, then if somebody reports that that business is closed, Google is like, yeah, it's probably not closed because they keep uploading content. Uh, and so you can make sure that some user or nefarious person isn't kind of getting your business listed as closed. Yeah, no. So high quality images are certainly making a difference and search engines are certainly preferring, uh, high quality res images, um, making sure that certainly they're compressed. Um, you know, web P seems to be like the, the preferred, uh, one, uh, I want to double check that as far as like uploading. Cause you know, a lot of times they like JPEG. So, uh, I'm curious about that. That's something we need to actually go look at, but what I will tell you is, um, they keep changing, uh, Google business profile and he outlined it there in the article of the interior, the exterior. Um, typically they wanted to see, uh, brand images, uh, images with customers, images of your team, uh, all those sorts of things. Now they don't have all those categories. They just kind of have a bucket where you upload them and you need to know to do those things. And then certainly, um, when you're utilizing, uh, the images, you want to name them properly, all that sort of stuff. And so, uh, also know that, well, at least the last time I was uploading images, cause we have a team now that does a lot of this stuff, but, um, don't worry about uploading them in any particular order. Uh, Google just mixes them up. Right. And so don't, don't think that you're going to get them uploaded in the preferred fashion that you want. Uh, Google's just going to pull the data set that they feel is most valuable. And if certain people are interacting with more images, those are going to show up more because they're trying to personalize that experience and they're using data to do it. Very cool. Uh, also you can include short video content in your listings. Uh,

make sure Matt was just talking about this cover and follow Google guidelines when adding photo and video content. It is always a good idea to check to see if new categories have been added, uh, that your business could utilize. Uh, if you're stay ahead of it, if you're following these GBP new categories and you get your business listed there, then you can have a significant advantage over your competition who is probably not looking at this. Frankly, if you're not looking at it, they're not looking at it. And if you start looking at it, they're probably not going to start looking at it. So always keep your information up to date. Yeah. I would say make sure it's always been, uh, a standard practice to fill out all the fields, fill out the information as much as possible to give Google and give these other search engines as much information as possible. Uh, and that is one of the things that we've absolutely seen. Uh, if you stay on top of what's going on and you utilize these tools early, they, uh, amplify what you're doing in the algorithm to give you, uh, even more exposure and visibility. We've seen that consistently across all platforms. And so, uh, listening to this podcast is a great start to continue to stay ahead of what's going on and making sure you're, um, optimizing as much as possible to continue to, uh, grow your business and generally leads. Yeah. And, and, and Winston continues to say it is important for businesses to update local search results, to clearly communicate to potential customers that they are closed. He gives the example, like if a business is closed, but it looks like it's open and somebody drives there, you may have lost that customer for life. Uh, Google has started displaying store operating status attributes within the maps. Um, and then as appropriate, use the features below to, and he's got this list. So, you know, maybe it's department store hours, maybe it's because there's pharmacy hours, right. In, in your

local pharmacies, maybe it's senior hours or drive-through hours, delivery, takeout, visiting hours, pickup hours, just make sure each of those, uh, is filled out where it's, where it's applicable. And holidays, right. Holidays and specials and offers and all that sort of thing are, are really important. Um, I think people need to develop a standard operating procedure of when things are happening, what needs to get done and what needs to get updated. And someone on their team needs to start thinking that just like you're closing up a store or you're opening up a store or you're running a special, um, depending on what type of business, if, if you Google traffic, local traffic's important to you, you're online and you're in-person need to, uh, be mirrored, right? Like your, your website, uh, and your GMB listing are kind of like your virtual showroom or they are your virtual showroom. And so just like you're opening up your showroom floor at home, or you're sending out updates or flyers or emails, this needs to be part of, um, the steps and, and which you need to think about what to do online. So it's kind of, I think you're trying to say it's kind of the first shop window that people might see. So have the right stuff there. Yeah. Yeah. This is interesting. Restaurant listings can now add separate hours for lunch, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and brunch. Uh, so that's kind of cool. If you do close, you know, in between, or if you want to highlight that, uh, where, you know, where, where you might be dropping off in between meals, like you can do that now in the GBP listing. Absolutely. And that's the thing that Google wants to do, right? They want to even show the menu, uh, on the website. So you default to Google for everything that you're doing and you can certainly fight that trend. But if you know that that is where they're going, you want to embrace that as much as you can and know that, um, it's

becoming de facto knowledge base is Google. Yep. Don't forget to update Q and a within your Google business profile with a pertinent or timely details. He gave some examples of, you know, maybe closures, canceled events, um, when things are, when you've got lots of calls and things might be delayed, uh, any changes in the service offerings, uh, you can update that and Q and a and really just update, you know, it's a good place to post some of your frequently asked questions. That's so important, right? If people are searching in Google and it ties into one of your questions, you're going to pop up at the top. And then you have an opportunity to bring that in that, that new prospect to, to, uh, know and learn about your business. I think, uh, frequently asked questions are something that's super, uh, underutilized right now. And if you're a brick and mortar that this tip number four could be for you, depending on if it's something you do update event statuses, always make sure you're using the event schema event status is a new schema type that will let users know the current state of their scheduled event. And here's some attributes, uh, in case you're thinking about using the, you know, having events and, and if you're having them, you definitely need to be using this schema. You can say, has the event been canceled. There's a event canceled tag, event moved online tag, event postponed, event rescheduled, event scheduled. So that you can see something is happening down the road. Uh, again, make sure if you've got events rolling that you're using the event schema. So Chris, I would also just as a pro tip and a little bit, a little bit of a, um, you know, off topic comment, but events are one of the absolute best ways to promote a business and you're going to get more engagement on social channels and across the internet if you're promoting an event. And so if you're not utilizing events and certainly the reason Google's

adding it is because there's so much opportunity there, you should incorporate the online offline kind of strategy and having an events is a great way to connect with potential and existing customers. Yeah, absolutely. And, and I think also coming out of pandemic, everybody wants to get back to events. I had a conversation with one of the soccer dads just the other day. He was like, I hadn't, hadn't been to an event in so long. It felt like you, you, he kind of laments going to them. They're not his thing, but it felt really good to be back at an event. So, um, now's a really good time to do that. Yeah. All right. Number five, audit your listings, always audit your listings to identify the following, maybe auto updates to the operating status. Again, temporarily closed. If some user or competitor decided to kind of throw that in there, uh, pending or suggested changes to operating hours, pending or suggested changes to attributes, the same to business details, any other indicators of pending or suggested updates, uh, and disabled listings. You've got to spot check those and just make sure they're up like added to your calendar, whether it's monthly or make it part of your content calendar that you go check your GBP Google business profile. Well, I think one of the biggest areas is when you've moved businesses, um, you know, bringing all those citations over how to update those strategies. If you can't pull all those over. And again, there are services out there that will watch that stuff for you and, and give you a quick audit to, to get those cleaned up. Um, but it is really important to have like one single source of truth or, you know, really through kind of a collective of, okay, this is the most true. So this is what Google's going to go with. And that's why listings are, are so important. I think, I think listings in general, at least as the internet starting to evolve, there's some really big, uh, review

type sites out there that certainly generate a lot of traffic, but these general listings are starting to, you know, just be, uh, um, a, a point for Google to, to pick up trust and for you to generate links. And I think a lot of people, uh, dismiss them right now because they're not as relevant from a referral traffic standpoint, but some of these sites that have been around for a long time have a really powerful link and you can get a profile link set up. And one of the things Google is looking for is brand exposure. And you know, that, uh, Google typically doesn't do more than two callbacks for a particular search. Um, and so, uh, if you can utilize some of these other platforms, um, you know, some of them have where you can add content or you can do different things too. It's another way to, um, you grow your footprint or your exposure, uh, online. So, so I think these all things should be part of the strategy that you develop and there is a place for them, even though you may not think them as relevant anymore. And certainly, um, if you've seen those gifts and I've posted some of them on LinkedIn over time, things fluctuate and change and you've got to be fluid to, to move with those changes. And, um, you know, you should be monitoring what's going on and you should have a strategy, uh, for, for the broader market. And then there's maybe some specific ones that you, you might want to get more involved with. There's a lot of opportunity there that I think's left on the table many times. Excellent. So he continues in terms of auditing your listing, uh, and mentions what we said, like Google values, the feedback it receives from users. Sometimes it'll make changes to your listing based on their feedback. Unfortunately, Google users do not always get it right. Or, uh, like I said, in the case of maybe a competitor, you know, setting this business is closed.

Uh, number six is manage your reputation. Having positive reviews and good customer experience is critical to ranking high in the local map pack, a pack. People trust reviews and bad reviews are worse when the owner does not take the time to respond. I would actually say they're even worse when the owner takes the time to respond and then provides a snarky, um, condescending, um, you know, uh, response, you know, that's, that's the worst. Uh, and, and I'll talk, we'll talk about that here in a second. Uh, if they do, that is if the business owner does respond, that response potentially builds up more trust from other users and could also possibly help generate more business. Um, yeah, the, the, the value of, of responding to like, I love the phrase and, and, and I share it with the team, uh, here regularly, the phrase people are familiar with the phrase. The customer is always right. Realistic people are aware that that phrase is not true because nobody is always right. There are customers who are not right. Uh, it is our job. I believe to make sure that the customer feels right. Right. So you can point them in the right direction. If somebody submits a, a, a bad review, and again, you're just snarky and negative and, um, and condescending, it just makes you look bad. It's really important to take away all emotions. I mean, I've written responses to, to reviews or responses really more in, in kind of a ticketing system to, to really belligerent customers and just rewritten them three or four times to pull my own emotions out of it. It's really important to do that. Yeah, no, I, I would like to piggyback on that and say, absolutely don't write that response when you're emotional. Uh, also write that response. Like you're responding. That's going to go on the front page of whatever news, uh, news where you pick up news that this is a public statement in a public forum on how you want to respond. And it

wants to, you want to certainly be professional. Um, and you know, I've, I've changed my viewpoint on this a couple of times. Um, certainly sometimes people know that there's just going to be unhappy customers and you're going to get bad reviews, but I do think it's important to respond to all of them because it gives you the opportunity to one, make things right. And then two is to, um, let everybody else know how you're going to respond to it. If they had a bad experience, right? Like, so, so there's all kinds of trust building, uh, that can happen. I would also tell you that, um, depending on the target persona, uh, users go to different review sites, right? And so we've started to build it in our process to pick up reviews from different areas because different customers go to different places. And, you know, there, there's always going to be customers that, um, well, I feel like people tell sometimes, well, the negative stories, okay. That are, are, uh, very much, I don't know what the data says, but it's a much higher likelihood that, uh, they're going to get a bad review versus a good review. And so reputation management is important and having a process to really pull those good reviews and those good experiences to match against those negative experiences. Um, and so, uh, and reviews is one of the only ways that, that some new prospect is going to be able to understand what's going on with your business and give them a frame of reference to how to interact with you. And so getting those reviews are like one of the most important things you can do to build trust online with your business and really understanding how to get your story told out there, having a process to, to pull up those reviews is critical. Yeah. And we've, we've had that experience at EWR. Um, I just pulled something up. It says customers who have a bad experience are two to three times more likely to write an

angry review, uh, than customers who had a great experience. So, uh, it is important to have, to be focusing on good reviews. I do remember at one point we had a customer who was threatening us with writing a bad review and we're like, we have a hundred, right at a hundred good reviews. Um, like if that's what you think you need to do, we're okay. Okay. With it. Cause we're going to respond, uh, and we'll do it, you know, a measured response. People are, people are interesting. Um, and they'll, they'll make all kinds of threats. And, and I think you were even referencing, so we used to do, we, we, and we still do these private consulting sessions. Um, and we would say, Hey, your money back. And, and before we got really clear on our terms of service, when we first started doing it, there were people coming back a year later, like a year later and going, we're going to leave you bad reviews. If you don't give us their money back and it was like, so you were happy for the last year, we haven't talked and now you're coming back and you want to charge back and you want like review. And really, I don't think we knew how to handle it in the beginning. And we gave, I think two people their money back a year later, like when was a pair selling company or something like that. I don't remember what the other one was, but I was like, I was in shock that they were doing it one. So I didn't know how to respond, you know, and, and it's just really interesting. And, and I think it is a good thing, right. That people have the freedom to say what they want to say. And that, um, you can, you can get that type of dialogue online. I think that there are certainly sometimes malicious actors, but someone needs to have the ability to speak their mind and to share their version of reality of, of what

happened. And then it's really important for you as a business owner to share your version of that same experience in that public forum. And then you put it out there to the prospects and customers and you let them decide. And so, yeah, reputation management, I think gets, um, brushed aside sometimes. Um, but your brand is ever evolving and constantly being, being developed and evolving based upon the feedback that's out in the marketplace. I mean, I think that that's really what a brand is, is what people say about you when you're not in the room sort of thing. And so it's, it's really quite important. Yeah. And I think you, you think about it, the, here's a person who, you know, 12 months later wants to, you know, threaten to write a bad review. If you're a business and you're not being diligent about getting positive reviews, then that could like, that could, you know, take you from a five star to a three star just like that. And so it really is important to cultivate that in that situation where a customer might, customer might not be happy. And, and also as you're doing that, it's good for business anyway, right. To have, uh, you know, a hundred, I forget where I was talking with somebody the other day and he was talking about looking at a particular, uh, uh, product and it had, you know, I think it was a restaurant actually like something like 4,000 4.5 star reviews. And then another restaurant had like 300, you know, 4.8 star reviews. It was like that other customer has delivered a lot more value, gotten a lot more people to leave reviews. That meant, meant something. The pure volume meant something. So Chris, I don't know what the word's called, but it's basically people don't have a lot of time and they're looking at reviews and aggregation to, to make faster decisions without doing all the research. Uh, certainly you see it on Amazon. Um, you see it across the board with, with restaurants, like

you're pointing out and, and people are looking at, and I think the number, the minimum number is like seven to 12 reviews before people can actually really trust the review. But certainly when you're trying to compare options, you're taking into account the volume, uh, how many reviews maybe you're reading and the algorithms are trying to show the most relevant reviews and they're trying to, um, show the least and the, the, the best and, and to give the most contacts to help someone make a better decision. But we are taking shortcuts because I mean, I remember when I used to buy stuff, I mean, the process to like a big screen TV was like this massive process and it was a little bit more of an investment at the time, but now people, you know, point, click and buy. Right. And, and they're, they're probably sometimes not even looking at the reviews. They're just looking at the aggregate of the score is. And then they're like done because we're so overloaded with decisions, time and, and, um, options that you can't help, but do that. So. Yeah. You've got to take that shortcut. All right. Number seven is use hyper local content. Be sure to include hyper local terms in your on-page optimization strategy. This includes in the headings, titles, metadata, image, all tags, and text. In addition, always have COVID related content. That's just the era we're in right now. Um, this will build up trust from an end user perspective and also help you get great reviews. I can tell you just an interesting story. We had, um, one client, one potential client who came in and saw a photo and we had taken the photo as a company with, with the mask on, right? Cause it was in the middle of COVID and he was not happy that we still had a photo that there was a mask on. So not that we really care about this one individual's opinion, but it also, it did date the photo, right? So that wasn't a

current photo, got new team members. Uh, so it did drive us to take new photos. So, uh, maybe go back and, and review your photos and make sure that they look up to date and, and upload new ones. You know, Chris, I do have to wrap it up. I am running a little bit late here. Um, but I do want to highlight that, um, again, this analogy or this like way to view the world of your online website, um, your Google business profile as an extension of your existing business is really, really important. And, um, and there's my phone call right there. Um, and so, uh, you know, you, you, you got to view your online business as, uh, an extension of your existing business and you've got to, um, treat it that way and update it that way. And if your, your, your showrooms not up to date or your products are not up to date or your business is not up to date, like you need to be looking at your website. You need to be doing this stuff because this is the first, uh, interaction that people are having with, with your business. And, and I, and I think a lot of people skip over that and they, they get on to like running their business and, and you need to, you know, think about all aspects of your brand. Uh, and I'll just, I I'll leave it there. Um, let's, let's wrap this up, Chris. Uh, okay. Yeah. All right. So I'll just read the last, uh, if you connect with customers via always on messaging, that's a feature that you can turn on, uh, make sure you're monitoring trends. Like, so Google trends can give you ideas of where hot topic, uh, keywords are optimized for voice search and mobile. Matt and I have talked about and debated that for quite some time. Um, and number 11 is track rankings and build out local landing pages. So yeah, you always want to track data. Uh, if this is an effort

that you think's working on, uh, and then finally don't forget links, they are still very important. That is absolutely true. And really to wrap this up, uh, um, Winston says keeping on top of the changes in local search and optimizing your listings and content can help your brand dominate the local search results, reach more customers and drive into incremental performance year over year. Make sure you take care of that. Um, reach out to us, make sure you go check out bright local and I'm going to wrap it up unless you've got anything else to say until the next podcast. My name is Chris Burris. My name is Matt Bertram. Bye-bye for now.