5 Ways to Stay Ahead of Hyperlocal Marketing by Jim Yu #363

Hi, and welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebResults. I am Charles Lewis, your client results strategist. Welcome back to another fun-filled edition of the podcast. This is podcast number 363. And as always, we have a tip from our previous podcast. This is the symbol for David that we are about to do a video. He'll probably have plenty of time this time because I've got to actually pull up the tip. And the tip is, coordinate local events with link building to increase local presence and generate quality links. Anytime you're dealing with a local event, like something with a chamber or some BNI or something like that, coordinate that with your company so that way you can actually build links about that event from that company to your site. Great way to build local events, build a better local presence, and also get links. Boom. Please remember, Charles and I, we are your friendly local neighborhood top position snatchers. And our mantra is, do not be a douche. Also remember, we are filming live here in Houston, Texas. We've got a great article for you. It's going to be fast today because we've got things to do. And what's that article? So shout out to Jim Yu. I'm sorry, did you say shout out? I said punch in the face. Yes, you did. Punch in the face. To Jim Yu and the good folks over at Search Engine Land. He posted this article, Hyperlocal Marketing Will Soar. Hyperlocal will soar in 2017. Five tips to stay on top. Yeah. We'll look at those five tips and see if you can stay on top of your hyperlocal marketing. Really important. Very, extremely important. All right. If this is the first time you've listened to the podcast, howdy. In fact, howdy is really appropriate because here in Houston, we're having the rodeo. Rodeo time. We actually had one of our team members took an extra two hours or something to get here. She was actually held up in

the big seat of Houston, fourth largest in the country, by horses and wagons. Because of the trail ride. I know that just skews your whole perspective of Houston back to what you thought it was and what it really isn't. And that's just kind of fun, us Houstonians. Because it's both. It really is that and then it's not. But like it really is. Because if you go by my house, you will pass up cows and horses. Yeah. You just will. Yeah. So, you'll notice that I don't have a tear tattoo. I was able. I actually had to dig pretty deep to get a review. And I found one on SoundCloud. So, thank you for that. SoundCloud review. That's what's up. We did not. So, we have a contest. If you've listened to the podcast before, you know what. We're not going to skip this time. The way the contest works is if we get 10 shikos. A shiko is an eWebResults branded term for social engagement. It stands for shares, likes, and follows. If we get 10 shikos on any one of our profiles on the platforms, that makes sense. We'll name them in a minute. Yep. And we get a review, then we don't tell you how to leave us a review. This time, we didn't get 10 shikos. You didn't have to follow them. Man, I feel like I followed at least eight people. And then I just stopped. We had to start. So, unless it was like followers who you followed and then they unfollowed, the total count is... Possibly. You know, people be... Pretty even right now. So, yeah. So, we're going to tell you how you can leave us a review. The first way you can leave us a review has three steps. All you need to do is go onto iTunes, create an account, and write a review. Hopefully, you'll make that review five stars. And if you do write that review on iTunes, go ahead and send us an email. Podcast at eWebResults.com. And we'll hit you back. We'll

make sure to read your review on air. And we really appreciate it. The next place that you can leave us a review is on Google My Business. And if you are in SEO, and we're assuming you do some of it, you know it could be really hard to find your Google My Business page, especially where to leave a review. Yeah. With plus gone, local gone, and yeah. Yeah. And it's been renamed like eight times. It's like, okay. We've made it really easy. All you need to do is go to eWebResults.com slash Google plus. Or slash. Google plus. Or slash. With a plus symbol. G plus. With a plus symbol. Or slash. G plus. Spelled out. And all of those will take you to a screen that actually has a pop-up that is, hey, leave a review right now. Click that five-star review all by yourself, all by myself. Yeah. That's all right. Sorry. I did not give it a cue. Or not in time, right? Make that review. Five stars. There you go. And we'll read that on air. Another place that you can leave us a review, and we would really appreciate it, is over on Stitcher. Yeah. The best way to go to Stitcher is just to go to eWebResults.com slash SEO podcast. There you go. When you get to that page there, in the sidebar, you'll see the Stitcher logo. Click the logo. You get to the Stitcher page. Over on the left, there's the five stars. Click it. Leave a review. Please. And then finally, on Facebook, our Facebook page is Facebook.com slash eWebResults. Which we will re-mention here in a second. Go there, press the stars, and leave a review, and hopefully you'll make that review. Five stars. All right. So, speaking of ways to connect, of our Facebook page, there are many ways you can connect with us, and we'll review those right now. Please, while you're in this, whatever you're doing right now. Did we do the hashtag yet? I don't think. Did we? Maybe. Maybe. So, we

may be skipping that this time, but here's how you can shiko us. All these profiles. Well, I did it there before sound checks. Okay. Facebook.com slash eWebResults. Twitter.com slash eWebResults. YouTube.com slash eWebResults. Instagram.com slash eWebResults. LinkedIn.com slash company slash eWebResults. All of those will take you to our profiles on those platforms, and please leave a review. Shiko us. Connect with us. Shiko us. Exactly. Matter of fact, and while I was debating on doing this article, we chose to go a different route. Give us a reaction. Right? If you're hitting us up on Facebook, what I've kind of learned and been studying is that reactions, and we'll get into that a little bit more in my news, but leave us a reaction on Facebook. Love it. Hate it. Thumbs up it. Like, all of the above. Yeah. Well, however you feel. Give us a reaction. I don't know why we would be sad. It's more than just that thumbs up. Yep. Take the like, but I want the reaction actually has a little bit more power. Interesting. Very good. That sounds like a pro tip. If you're a PHP genius or a WordPress guru, we're probably looking for you. Go ahead and leave an audio resume, 713-510-7846. If you would like a free, comprehensive website profit analysis, what we would like you to do is go to ewebrezults.com, click the green button. It's a really comprehensive process and analysis on what kind of profit opportunities do you have in your business. Do we have any AlgoCat today? No AlgoCat today. We do not have any AlgoCat. I have just a little bit of news. I thought this one, I got one that we might consider as they went down. Is that in your what news? No, there's not what news. We'll add that to what news. Elon Musk is taking advice from a fifth grader. Did you see that? Basically, a fifth grader was like, I know you don't do commercials, but there's a lot of people who are doing commercials for you. Why don't you

have a contest and the best one, you'll actually air. Duh. That's it. Genius. Great social experiment. Yep. Snap is more valuable than Twitter. Snap was released this week. That may even have been in your news. What was the valuation? It was a lot. It was a 20-something billion dollars. The two founders were both worth $8 billion each. Yeah, so they came out and it was literally double what Twitter's was. Yeah. Marissa Mayer has said she's going to forego her bonus and equity for 2016 due to all the hacking. Well, you should. Yeah. I'm just saying. And I got that for what news. So, what do you got? I got a little bit of news. I just was alluding to it earlier. So, Facebook news feed, right? They're giving more love to reactions. This is based on Search Engine Journal. They say that Facebook's algorithm is now rewarding posts that get more reactions, whether it's love or ha-ha or wild, sad, or angry, with more visibility in users' news feeds. Getting more reactions, all five of them are weighted equally, will give your content a slight edge in the news feed than just likes. And I get it. Let me tell you why. Makes sense. Well, and consider the marketing channel Facebook is creating. Right. Right. Imagine being able to like the people who loved it or people who hated it and send them a different message. Yeah. People who wowed it, I'm going to send them a specific messaging. So, I totally see Facebook waiting the reactions just so they can get more usage and then turn around and market to us better. Last piece of news, man. Do a quick moment of silence for D-Moz. You know what D-Moz is? Yeah. It's gone. Peace, D-Moz. It was good while it lasted. D-Moz used to be that go-to source when you first started doing SEO. You'd like, submit to Yahoo directory, submit to D-Moz. It was the big manual, you know, human edited directory, and now they're calling it quits. So, it's been a long

run. Peace. Gone. Out of here. I do have a question, and I actually... I have a question, too, from Twitter. Okay. I'm going to grant that this one. I did have... So, I dug this out of SoundCloud. I was actually able to find a review. And really, our pet portrait artists, they like and comment on our SoundCloud podcast uploads regularly. Their comment was, brilliant podcast, fantastic rap ending. That's one that you did, the So Gone Challenge. Okay. Yeah. So, he got that one. That was... I hadn't forgotten about that. It was pretty good. So, punch in the face to you, pet portraits. That's what's up. It's pet portrait artists. Yeah. On SoundCloud. So, obviously, do some pet portraits. You want to do yours? Yeah. So, I got a question. This question... I got to put Tiff in a question. The question comes from Tim... No, I'm sorry. The question... Yeah. The question comes from Tim. He'll hit us up on Twitter. He's at Stoneham Press. He hit us up. He says, at eWebResults. Love the podcast, guys. I have a question. What is your view on podcast transcripts from an SEO point of view? Well, Tim, we love podcast transcripts. If you visit eWebResults.com slash podcast, slash SEO podcast, you will actually see an archive of all of our podcasts, like all 362 of them. Right. And three after next week. Right. But more importantly, once you visit each one of those individual podcast archive pages, you will see a written transcript. You'll see the audio version. You'll see the video version. And the reason we had that written transcript, because we're talking marketing. We're talking SEO. And so, literally, everything that we could have possibly discussed on the podcast is somehow relevant to our website. Right. And so, therefore, we get them transcribed so we can have that written content on our website. So, to answer your question, we believe podcast transcripts work. They work really well. They help people who may be finding that podcast read some of it. But what we also

notice is that in a situation like ours where we've got a huge international listenership, my kind of Southern dialect and things like that make it difficult to understand a lot of times when they're listening to it. And so, that transcript actually gives them a visual that they can read and kind of understand what's going on. And that transcript does get posted with the YouTube video. Yeah, with the video also. So, you could actually kick in the closed captions to run. I think it runs at the same time. Yeah. So, we believe in podcast transcripts. Absolutely. Punch in the face to you, Tim. Stoneham Press. Appreciate your question. Speaking of punches in the face, this punch in the face goes to Smith Social. Hit us up on Twitter at Smith Social W-A. We answered his question last week. Right. He says, big ups to the fellas at E-Web Results for answering my AdWords question on episode 362. Five stars. Yeah. P.S. I'm from Perth, Western Australia, not Washington. So, we saw W-A. We assumed Washington because of, you know, Smith Social W-A. Ah. But he's from Western Australia. So, punch in the face to the international audience. Yeah. That's what's up, man. Cool. Thank you for tuning in. Love it. And then I've got one question. Do you want to save that one for next time, just for expediency? Yeah. Because I think you could go in-depth on that one pretty easily. It's about band and promotion. Oh, yeah. I read that. I think. We'll catch that one next week. All right. So, that is the potatoes of the podcast. It is time to get into the meat. Yep. Thank you, sir. So, punch in the face to Jim Yu and the good folks over at Search Engine Land. He posted this article, Hyperlocal Marketing Will Soar in 2017. Five Tips to Stay on Top. And so, we'll look at these five tips and see, you know, if you can stay on top of your hyperlocal marketing. Matter of fact, he says, hyperlocal targeting or marketing

to customers within your area based upon their location has the potential to help brands answer the immediate needs of their prospects. Understanding how to optimize your content for these users can provide brands with an excellent opportunity for success. He's right. Look, at the end of the day, every search is local. Almost every search. You know, when you consider the increase in searches happening from mobile devices and increase in searches of voice searches happening in places like Cortana and Google Home, literally Google Home is by default a local search because it's doing it from your home location. And so, you just consider all of these different types of searches and the way people are looking now, everything is hyperlocal. Matter of fact, I bet money here. In your last three searches that you can remember. Yep. I can remember. What percentage are more local? A hundred. Not a hundred percent. About where I'm going or something I'm about to eat or something. Yeah. Every search has become a local. So, the more you can cater your market to a hyperlocal result, the better. The better you are for your customers, the better you are for yourself and your business. So, let's get into these five tips on how you can do that. Number one. Number one, he says, master the basics. Right. He's talking about the basics of like local SEO. Right. He says, master the basics. He says, for your marketing strategy to succeed, you need to make sure that you have your Google My Business page ready and optimized. He says, fill out every relevant, every field relevant to your business. Ensure that your page has high quality and appealing pictures and verify that your business is listed in all the correct categories within Google. That's the basics, right? Now, he's right about that, but he only mentioned Google. So, I'll say, go ahead and rinse and repeat with that same information, those same images, those same categories, that same short description and long description, that same video. Take that same information and then

make sure your Bing Places page is verified. Take that same information and add it to Yelp and Facebook. Make sure you do, at the very least, those four when you talk about mastering the basics. Google, Bing, Yelp, Facebook. Now, once you got those four done, depending on your industry, what type of service or product you provide, there are a few others you may want to do. Like, if you're a restaurant or something like that, then you want to do a Foursquare so people can find you. You're going to want to do a TripAdvisor so you can be recommended. These are great places to have your NAP information and build links. Or maybe you're a remodeler, right? Something like that. You're remodeling homes. Then you're going to want a page on house, right, to display the work you've done with the correct name, address, and phone for your business. Your photographer, you're going to want a page on wedding wire if you specialize in weddings with the correct name, address, and phone. So, not only the Google, Bing, Yelp, and Facebook, find your niche directories that's relevant to your business and make sure that you have the same category information over there. Your images, your descriptions, your categories, and so on. Master the basics. It's important. Number two. Number two. He says, focus on your city and the things of interest in that area. So, focus on your city and the things of interest in that area. Remember, we're talking hyper-local marketing and five tips to stay on top of that. So, he starts off by saying, develop localized website content that would interest people in your area, right? He also says, your content can also focus on local points of interest like landmarks and destinations that people might use when looking around the area. For example, in Washington, D.C., people might search for restaurants near the White House, right? And so, what he's doing is talking about catering your content to your locality, right? You really want to cater to the locals and people who

may be searching in that area and making sure that you had an appropriate content on the site that speaks directly to them. So, for example, in the city of Houston, we got a highway called 610. Right. Right. It does the inner circle of the entire city. Yeah. Right. And then, we have the Sam Houston Tollway, which does a bigger circle of the entire city. Right. They're working on another one. They're working on another one, Grand Parkway. Grand Parkway. Yeah. But the locals, we don't call it Highway 610. We call it the Loop. Right. Right. We don't call it the Sam Houston Tollway. We call it the Beltway. Yeah. And so, if you're writing content in Houston and you're in a restaurant or something that's off of 610, then on your site, you may want to say... Just off the loop. Spanish restaurant off the loop. Yeah. Right. Italian restaurant near the Beltway. Something like that. You want to include those that local lingo. It's actually what I wrote down here. Use the local lingo. Right. In your content. Here. Give you a pro tip. Here. Take advantage of your star power. Ooh. What does that mean if it's a pro tip? Well, if you're talking about ranking locally, use Houston for example. Maybe you got a restaurant and James Harden visited. Take that picture. Snap that photo. Post it on the site. James Harden visited this restaurant on this day. Maybe you may want to write up an article about how he's having an MVP season. Or maybe you got some artists, some entertainers, or people like that who are in your area. Even if they haven't visited your service or used your product, if you're a fan, blog about them. Write about them. They may have PR people who will come across that and who will link back. And if you don't have that content there, then you can't take advantage of it. Maybe an article about how much food he ate out of his beard. Exactly. The point is, the point is create

content that leverages the local industry, everybody in your locality. The local high school, they want a title or whatever it is. Somebody went to college. Go sponsor them. Go donate. Go help. It's a great way to bolster your local presence. Absolutely. Number three. Number three. If you have multiple locations, create a local landing page for each. I was actually going to bring this up last week because I had three clients that we need to do this for. Right. And so, I was taught today. I was like, okay, here it is again. But yeah. Thanks for the reminder. Exactly. But yeah, create a local landing page for each of your locations. He says, to maximize your appearance in search, you want to have a local landing page for each of your destinations. Right? Now, the reason you should do this, and here's my tip. Once you create this page, don't just put the page there and say, yeah, we also serve this area. Truthfully, that page should almost mimic a Google My Business listing. Yeah. So, if you have a local listing, I mean a local address, from one of your multiple addresses, then on that page, you should have like the name, address, and phone, a map, maybe a picture of something. Of that location. Of that location. Right. Then another picture of something in the area, like a water tower or some building that people tend to recognize. All that local ningo we were talking about on the previous point, this is the page where that goes. Yeah. Right? You want to optimize this page for the zip codes in that area, the little communities in that area, the cross streets that are famous in that area, and then you have a local page that's extremely relevant for your product or service that everyone can find because it's truly optimized. Not only that, yeah, okay, so now I said that, yeah, make sure it has everything on there, the images, the map, the same stuff you have on your business listing, the video, especially

get that on that local landing page. It's important. Now, after you've done that, take it a step further. If you're running any ads, like paid ads or things like that, those local pages like that are great landing pages for local type searches. You're running a Houston campaign, then land them on that Houston landing page that you've already created. It's already optimized, so you know your quality score will be good. Kind of indirect pro tip. Yep. Number four. Number four. Include any structured data markup that relates to your business on all your content pages. Jimmy, you have a good point. A lot of people forget that. We tend to forget it only because we've built it into our framework. And so now, every address that gets added in a site we build automatically is marked up. And so, you know, we kind of got spoiled in that fashion. But he goes on to say, in order to provide Google with as much information as possible about your business, you may want to consider incorporating structured data markup, also known as schema, on your website and pages where appropriate. Mark up everything. I keep referencing name, address, and phone. But look, markup menus to be a restaurant. Mark up your navigation. Or you are an entertainment venue. Mark up any events you have coming up. You can mark up pretty much everything. Like, you've got products for sale. Mark those up. Yeah. In regards to what they are and what category they fit in. Like, take advantage of all of the tools Google has released via schema and mark up your content. It just helps. Absolutely. And in a super competitive landscape, any competitive advantage you have works. And from a local perspective, it's start with the address. Start with the address. Name, address, and phone. Make sure you've done that. And then go back and kind of add others depending on what your resources allow. Five. Last one. Number five. And I like this one because we're always talking about testing and measuring. He says, track

your progress on a local level. Right? He says, once you begin to optimize your content for hyper-local targeting, you need to make sure that you track your progress within the right location. Right? So, it's more than just creating these pages and optimizing and then, you know, seeing some increase because that's what should happen. But he's saying, go back and track it. Figure out where this increase is coming from. How relevant it is. Which one of your tactics, which one of your pages is actually ranking and generating this increase. Matter of fact, here's how you do that. I'm a big reports guy, right? And so, two reports. One from Google Analytics. It's your geo-locations report. Go there. And then from there, use your secondary dimension and really kind of figure out some stuff like which location is hitting which page the most. Or what time of day these locations visit your site. Or which locations are using what type of source. You may learn that people on the north side use mobile devices and people on the south side come on desktops. Like, that's kind of extreme. But that type of information is there. And if you take advantage of the tools, then you can make the right decisions. Second report, I would say, is your Moz ranking tool. Punch in the face to Moz. I love Moz. Not D-Moz. Not D-Moz. The rest in peace. But Moz. M-O-Z. Former SEO Moz. Exactly. Their ranking tool, you can obviously segment it by location. And so, that way, unlike the analytics report where it will show you which locations are bringing what traffic and what that engagement looks like, the Moz tool will show you where you actually rank in the Google search results for the specific location or local phrase. And so, in using both of those, you can learn that for this local phrase, in this local area, we rank here. And then you look at your analytic report and say, and that generated this much traffic for us. And this is what that traffic

did. And then you'll know what you need to go back and do for your other pages that may not be performing as well. Jim Yu. Punch in the face to you, man. Great article. Hyperlocal marketing will soar in 2017. Five tips to stay on top. I can dig it. Yeah. It'll be pretty good. Boom. Punch in the face to you. Hey, a punch in the face back to Tim at Stomahan Press. He hit us back already saying thanks for answering the question. Oh, punch in the face to you. Pretty cool. He's tuning in live. I don't know if you're catching it on Facebook. Or on YouTube. Make a comment so we know you're on Facebook. Or if it's on YouTube on our eWebResults.com. We should probably add comments to the webpage. Yeah. YouTube comments so we can see them here. Because, yeah, then they'd show up. That'd be cool. All right. So that way, if he is watching on YouTube, he could comment and we'd actually know that he's watching. Yeah. All right. So we do have a little bit of what news. Did you have any what news? Nope. I didn't other than what? No. That's good. For that one. So AWS went down. A bunch of servers went down. Amazon Web Servers. Yeah. This is like one of the biggest server forums. The biggest. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody's using, like any, think of a company. There's a 50% chance they're using AWS. Quora. You've heard of Quora? Yeah. They're on there. It's AWS. Slack. You've heard of Slack. They're advertising all, I mean, their marketing's pretty good. I-F-T-T, if then, if this, then that, which is a app. Yes, the programming kind of. It goes on your phone and is like, if I'm in this area, then I can do that. Or if I fire up Facebook, then turn it off. So that you can stay on track. But those three sites, those were some of the three sites. Amazon made a typo. It took down one server. That ended up taking down like

three more. They ended up having to reboot all sorts of them. So, yeah, it was a pretty monumental outage. Come on, Amazon. A little bit crazy. Yeah. Hey, if you like this podcast, maybe it's your first time. Maybe you've listened to our podcast before. If you like it, we're going to ask you to do something real simple. Go ahead and share this podcast with three people. With three people right now. Add your reaction to it. That's what we're looking for on Facebook. I'm hoping you share this podcast with preferably business owners, people who could benefit. Or even other SEOers. Yeah, other agencies, the people interested in digital marketing. But we're looking for people who can really benefit from the content. It's not really a numbers game for us. We'd rather have relevant people instead of high numbers, right? Exactly. And so, share this with three people who you know could benefit from knowing about how to rank hyperlocal or some of the other content we've been bringing. Just tag them in it. Tag us if you want. So, appreciate it. Do appreciate it. If you're looking to grow your business or maybe the business of one of your clients with the largest, simplest marketing tool on the planet, call eWebResults for increased revenue in your business. Our phone number is 713-592-6724. And one of the things that's important, we have a program that we've recently created. It's called Instant Leads. Leads, leads, leads, leads. Guaranteed. T, T, T, T, T. T, T, T, T. I like it. So, all you need to do to take advantage of that is just go and get started with your website profit analysis. Go to eWebResults.com and click that form or give us a call. We gave you that number just a second ago. If you are doing networking in Houston, if you're doing SEO in Houston and you are like, Hey, I wonder how I could get some inexpensive content, maybe a $300 video that is focused on the right content, that is an interview of the business

owner or you, if you're the business owner or the marketing person, then go to UpSocialNetwork.com. So, please, anybody else who follows it. I mean, we actually have people who have followed it around the country. When we broke the Guinness World Record, a lady flew in from Arizona to help us break the record of her own accord. Just pretty awesome. UpSocialNetwork.com. If you're local, if you're in Houston or surrounding areas, you know, Woodlands, Pearland, KD, things like that, take advantage. There's a chapter near you. Yeah, take advantage. All right. So, just want to let you know that this was filmed live at 5999 West 34th Street, Suite 106, Houston, Texas, 77092. If you'd like a transcript, video, or audio of this podcast, they're available on our website, eWebResults.com. We want to thank you. You guys have made us, you guys and gals have made us the most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes, seven years running. We just finished 363. That's pretty exciting. Thank you. Please make comments. Please share. And until the next podcast, my name is Chris Burris. Bye-bye for now. Balance check. Balance check. 3-6-3. It's your podcast 363. Uh. It's your podcast 363. We're doing it early because me and Chris got to leave and Chris got to meet and so, you know, we're moving fast. We're going to put a little rush on the podcast. Let's go. It's your podcast 363. Boom.