ChatGBT writes a blog post on Local SEO for small businesses by Search Engine Land Bot (Part 1) Ep. 587

All right, howdy, welcome back to another fun-filled episode of the unknown secrets of internet marketing, the best SEO podcast. I am your host, Matt Bertram. Today, we're going to actually be going through an article. I wanted to do an article for a while on local SEO. So I went to the internet and searched, well, best blog for local SEO to see what came up and something kind of interesting came up. It was an article written by ChatGBT on search engine land. And I thought that this might be a good article to break down and provide kind of my thoughts on and kind of a omen back to the way we used to do things. So hopefully, the last couple episodes didn't deter you too much. We are going to start a speaker series. So I'm going to be doing the normal podcast consistently or trying to be as consistent as I can. I got a lot going on right now, which I'll actually go into in a minute. Oh, sorry for coughing into the mic there for anybody's ears. But yeah, I'm going to do a speaker series. I'm going to try to be doing it another day in addition to what I'm doing. And if people like that, maybe we spend that off. I don't know. But there's a lot of great people that I've been connecting with on different kind of topics. I'm going to try to organize those topics and then bring you into the conversation. So yeah, so the title of the article for today is the best of the bot. Write a blog post on local SEO for small business. A human asked search engine lands chat bot to create a blog post on the importance of local SEO for small business. Here's the answer. Right. I thought that was pretty interesting. So one more quick note that's kind of interesting what's going on with me is I've raised a bunch of money to start some lead gen sites, and I'm going to need some help. And so if there's

anybody out there that may be interested in something like that, hit me up. Let me know. We can talk about it. All right. Let's jump into this. All right. So best of the bot showcases search engine lens bot response to prompts submitted by readers. The language model is based on the content from search engine lands layered on top of chat GVT. The editors of search engine lands select this response for its usefulness and have supplemented with additional relevant content. Okay. So what this means is they took all the articles from chat. So from search engine land, they trained their own chat GVT model on it to provide answers that are most like answers that they would say. So this is not just like chat GVT answer, but it's trained on their data. So pretty interesting stuff, right? I am a first generative AI chat bot for search markers. I'm trained with search engine land content. So there we go. Um, here's something that someone asked me, write a prompt on the importance of local SEO for small business title, the importance of local SEO for small business. And then here's something that you, uh, if you're not using chat GVT or haven't used it, but is a telltale sign, it's written by it. It typically starts with like in today's digital age or something similar to that. That's something that I can start to see very clearly now. And, uh, if I can see it very clearly algorithms can very clearly see it. I would tell you the last month's update, um, if your site got tanked, uh, it was probably because you had a lot of AI written content. AI content is okay. Google said that you can use AI content to support what you're doing, but there needs to be a human behind what's being said. Uh, there's a degradation of models. If, if AI is really talking to AI, there's, there's no uniqueness in what's going on. Um, and they're going to be able to kind of rule that out because what

the AI does is it just gives you what the most common or most likely answer is. It doesn't take a ton of opinion, uh, either way that, uh, creates any kind of deviation from that. So, so you really want to have, you want to use AI to help you write what it is you're trying to say more eloquently, maybe is one way of looking at it. But, all right. So in today's digital age, local search engine optimization has become critical aspect of any small business online marketing strategy with the majority of consumers turning to search engines to find local products or services. Optimizing online presence for local searches can significantly impact your business visibility, credibility, and ultimately its success. Uh, in this blog post, that's another key indicator that not a lot of people used to do, but AI loves to do it, uh, in this blog post, we'll explore the importance of local SEO for small business and how it can help you attract more customers in your target area. All right. One of my pet peeves with a ton of articles, and this is not at all specific to this. I'm just kind of ranting here for a second is, um, all the stuff that's out there about SEO, um, that I've been reading or is easily found in the search engines is well regurgitated content. It doesn't provide any real value. I mean, I've stopped reading like Forbes altogether cause they, and I've stopped writing for them too, by the way, uh, cause, well, they, they hacked my articles down and they, they want it to be, uh, within a certain threshold. And then they really don't want any kind of discord, uh, in what you're saying. You got to say very commonly said things, and then you got all these other kind of scraper bots rewriting, uh, what I write immediately. And, you know, there's just a ton of watered stuff, watered down stuff out there. Uh, and everything's repaired at what, what, what else, what else someone else has said

is guess I couldn't finish that Senate. Um, and why is that? And, and there's some things that we could actually go pretty deep into on this podcast. Now I know that there's different kinds of audiences, those learning, uh, SEO, and then there's maybe some more advanced people that want to understand the theory, uh, behind some of this stuff and, and what's going on. And then there's, well, there's small businesses and, um, CMOs and, you know, people at enterprise that are just trying to find a provider, uh, and, uh, you know, they're, they're looking to, to maybe outsource it or bring in some corporate training. So we're speaking to a lot of different people in this podcast. Um, and so sometimes when I say things, if they don't resonate with you, uh, I might not be speaking to kind of your subset specifically. And, and that's why I do want to break apart this podcast into some different areas. So, um, you know, with a certain group of people, I can totally geek out on like, uh, oscillation theory and, um, you know, everything that we think that the search engines are doing that we don't know and, and trying to uncover that. Um, and then there's the more practical side of like teaching the DIY, DIY, uh, SEO. And, and I am going to be, I've been doing some trainings and I'm going to be rolling out, uh, some of those videos that you can, you can jump on webinar. Um, we're going to do, we doing some small business coaching, uh, and agency training, et cetera. Uh, all right, let's get into this. Uh, increased online visibility, local SEO strategy, such as optimizing your website, creating local business listings and managing online reviews can significantly improve your business's visibility in local search results. When potential customers search for your product or service in their area, appearing prominently in the search engine results, increasing the likelihood of them discovering and choosing your business over competitors. Okay. So that's a great point. And everybody already knows

that. Um, you, you want something more to that, right? So when I look at that, I want to know, okay. Uh, citations, nap listings, local business listings. Certainly, um, some people want you to pay for them monthly. What is my opinion, uh, on that? Do local business listings matter? Okay. Managing online reviews. Tell me a little bit more, um, you know, significantly improving your business, local visibility. Okay. I'm just going to breeze through this cause okay. There's four points, five points, and then it jumps to a conclusion. Okay. So here's some of the craziest stuff. And for you that listen to me, I want to give you some pro tips out there. Um, for local SEO, one of the things that people don't talk about is it's really built on top of like a GPS system. It's built on top of like how to find a specific location. And then now you're interjecting into that, um, business storefronts. Um, and then if you have a service based business, or even if you don't, what is local SEO mean, uh, to you? Well, how do you generate those loads legally locally? And then I would tell you too, um, how the search engines are really driving towards ads, uh, and then where maps or a Google, my business or Google business profile falls into it and, and where SEO, um, you know, what SEO catches, right? I've heard a lot of different things. Here's a crazy thing. Um, heard that, uh, you know, in some new studies, 37% of all searches go to the first position in Google organically, right? That's up from about 32.5 or something like that percent. Um, you know, these search engines are optimizing for the best answer. And so there's kind of this separation of the, was it the wheat from the shaft? Is that what it is? I don't know what it is, but, uh, basically like there, even there's a polarization at me. And like, if you're searching for this, they're trying to give you the best answer. We're

all moving to like singularity of, of one answer, but also, you know, that's why they put the ultimate scroll or whatever it's called unlimited scroll. I don't know what they call it. Um, they named it something else, but basically you keep scrolling. So there's no more pages. So while they can throw in more ads, cause they want you to click on more ads. You're also going to see more images coming into it. See, I go off on these tangents. I apologize. All right. Let me get back to 0.1. All right. 0.1 nap listings. Okay. So here's the deal about nap listings. They're links. They're important, but they got to get indexed and most of them don't get indexed because they're all well, the same information over and over again. There's like one tier of really important, uh, nap citations that, that get indexed, but you need to be active on there. You need to be, uh, populating new content because if you're just using it as a link, as a listing, it's not really helpful. It's not really relevant. So it's not going to get indexed. Google's undernexting things like crazy, another topic. Um, but the local business listings really, really are important and they're easy links to pick up, but you've got to be active on those platforms. That's what I would encourage you to do. You need to get reviews. You need to respond to reviews. If you can post anything on those platforms, you need to do that. And I would tell you the, the listings in which you're active on are more important, not just having the listings. Now there's these aggregators and things that kind of like if you move locations or something like that, you want to have consistency. Google is looking for that trust level, right? The eat, the trust level, and those are really, really important. So you don't want to have a bunch of listings with different names, but how many listings do you really need? How relevant is that to you? Again, if you're a

searcher and not a search engine, how relevant is that information? And that's how you need to value it. Um, so I think people go overboard, but you know, again, I think the caveat with the local business listings is yes, you need to build them out. Um, they need to be full, but you need to be active on those listings. Cause I, I mean, there's data even by like white spark and, um, bright local and all that, that like 62% or I don't remember what the numbers like don't even show up because they're not relevant. Right. So I don't know. That's the kind of information that I wish someone would tell me when I'm researching like local business listings, like what's someone's opinion on something. Right. Uh, managing reviews. Okay. Reviews are probably the most important thing to get somebody to buy. Um, they're very important for the search engines. They look at, uh, what type of review, right? Like is, is the keyword of the product or service in there? Like, is the review helpful? Who is the person leaving the room at review? Are they a real person? Have they left reviews before? Are they in your industry? Um, you know, what is your response to them? How often are you getting reviews? What is the context of, of what they're saying? Is it generally positive? Is generally negative? There's all these different things that you can find out with reviews, but reviews are probably one of the most important things. Cause think about it. Um, if someone's not clicking on the, uh, Google my business profile, they're just seeing your name and they're seeing reviews. So how can that not be important? It's the most important in my opinion. And again, the breakdown of what's more important than something else. And, you know, they come out every year and tell you, um, you know, the, the, the things that move the needle are the things that you should focus on. You shouldn't try to, you know, click all the signals. Um, if, you

know, I would go with the Pareto principle, the 80, 20, uh, certainly get some, some listings, uh, focus on a process to getting reviews for you and your client. Um, what was the other thing I was going to tell you? Oh, schema schema is never brought up at all in local. And I think it's critical. Um, it's just incredible. All right. So this is basically saying blah, increase your online visibility. That's important with reviews, listings, and well, it doesn't tell you much else. All right. Point two, targeted traffic and qualified leads by, uh, focusing on local SEO. You can attract high quality traffic to your site. Local search coalition, uh, often indicate strong customer intent as users are actively seeking products or service for their, and their immediate vicinity like restaurants, right? Uh, by optimizing your website and content for local keywords, you can drive qualified leads to your business, increasing your chances of converting them into high paying customers. Okay. Targeted traffic purchase intent. Okay. This is all well, basic stuff. I think we all know. Um, I would love if this article provided citations to some, maybe examples of that, uh, that would make this more useful. But the craziest thing is that search engines actually like to serve the easiest content for them to consume, not necessarily the best content. Um, and then over time, the content starts getting better and better. Um, I need to back this up more with what I'm saying with citations, but, but check it out. This was a bland article so far, and it's on the first page of Google, right? And I would really like to see, um, some more work put, put into something like this to be really useful to be, be on the first page. But here's the thing. If you create that useful piece of content, it will outrank it over time. Right? All right. Enhancing online reputation. Okay. Uh, online reviews and ratings play a critical role in shopping. You're shaping your business reputation. Local SEO includes managing and encouraging

customers on platforms like Google, my business. Okay. So this article was written in November, right? Right. November 8th, 2023. Again, it's pulling from the bot, which is using, um, Google, my business, not Google business profile, Yelp and Facebook. Okay. These citations are important. BBB, you know, it's debatable if the price is worth it or not. I am on the marketing committee for the visa. I don't want to go into it too much, but does Google look at it? Yes, it is a valuable link. It is expensive, right? Uh, based on the size of your business, uh, you shouldn't be doing it just for the link. There's a lot of other value associated with the BBB and you should look at everything like that. Not as just a link, but how are you involved in the community? What is the value of the organization? Um, it shouldn't just be very one-sided with SEO Yelp same way. Um, I don't want to, I won't go into my thoughts on Yelp or Facebook at this time. Uh, but, uh, positive reviews, uh, not only improve your business's credibility, but also influence customers in the, uh, decision-making process by actively monitoring and responding to reviews. You can build trust and establish a positive review, a positive online reputation. Sorry. Um, okay. So that's interesting. Um, it talks about increased visibility. It talks about it. Then it talks about traffic. Then it talked about online reputation, all not bad things. It also sounds pretty good if you read it without any kind of critical thought. Um, okay. For competitive advantage. How are we doing on time here? Okay. Um, competitive advantage for small businesses competing against larger corporations, local SEO levels and local SEO levels and levels the playing field. Oh, levels the playing field. Sorry guys. I can't read. I'm actually doing this Monday morning. I had my dad come in this weekend. It was like a, uh, boys weekend with my kids. Uh, wife was on, uh, you know, a girl's trip sort of thing. So, uh, and

it was veterans day and, and thank you for all the veterans on the team. And also that have served really do appreciate it. Um, you know, so it's been a long weekend wanting to get this out to you, trying to be consistent. All right. Uh, by targeting specific, uh, geographical areas, I don't know where my brain is going. All right. Optimizing your online presence. Accordingly, we can compete effectively within your local market. Local SEO allows you to showcase your unique value proposition, connect with your target audience and different differentiate yourself with larger competitors who may not have the same local focus. Now, if you look into that a little bit more, there's some really, really good stuff in there that I would love to kind of punch out your unique value value proposition. I think that this is the number one thing that I see when we do a free consultations and pay consults, state paid consultations is the thing that we focus on is unique value proposition. How are you different than somebody else? I've seen like 10 businesses, uh, in the same niche and that could be because their marketing agency is all the same one and they're using a template to make their website or their ads. Um, I've seen that in the lawyer space. I've seen that in the dentist space. I've seen it in a number of different spaces, but you know, your business should look different than another business and having diversity, uh, in results is something that Google optimizes for. Um, and you should really look 75% of the buyer's journey happens online and they want to understand who they're engaging with, who they're buying with, especially kind of with the economy, the way it is, right? People are a little bit more hesitant to spend money. They want to make sure that it's a good fit. Well, if your business looks like every other business online, well, why would they go with you over somebody else? Right? Well, they're going to look at the reviews maybe, right?

Or they're going to talk to you, but you want them spending quality time on your site with your content, with your resources. And you know, that's why SEO and, um, well inbound marketing or content marketing, uh, all different sides of a coin, uh, you want to be doing it and people, you want people to understand who you are and what that process looks like and why you're better than somebody else. And you want them to be able to find it on their own. You want them not to be sold, right? You want them to discover it for themselves. Again, another whole podcast. All right. Connect with your target audience and differentiate yourself from the larger competitors who may not be in your local, your same local focus. Here's what I'll tell you. If you're competing against a big brand, don't worry. Okay. They're probably not focused on the exact same strategy as you and as much money as they have and as big as their team is and all the content that they're producing. If you go after those long tail key phrases and you're really focused on one thing, you can be the expert in the niche. They're typically painting with the broad brush and they're, um, you know, trying to hit those core seed words, qualify for long tail key phrases, and they're going to catch what they catch unless their, uh, strategy is, is very robust and is, is very advanced. They're not going to be going after those long tail key phrases, which you can win in. And really, if you do a lot of good research, um, keyword research on the front end, see, we, we do a lot of these audits for companies, help them find the keywords that just absolutely crush it. I call them little honey holes. I don't know if that's the right terminology, but I call them honey holes. And, um, basically it's, it's keywords that you can rank for that are long tail key phrases that absolutely convert and no one's really going after.

Uh, here's a, another pro tip, uh, Google keyword planners, fantastic. Right. And it's real Google data, which is super important, but they only show you data that Google is bidding like that. There's a bid market on. Right. So there's little, these honey holes that no one's going after, and you're not going to find it, uh, with Google keyword planner. Cause no one's bidding on it. Right. So, um, I would tell you too, that there's a lot of opportunity if you're engaged in the local community to blog about that and to connect with local businesses and build a local network and really map out what you're doing locally. A bigger company can't do it. One of my pet peeves right now is there's a bunch of agencies that don't have a local presence, um, that are national companies that are ranking now nationally. This goes back and reminds me of, well, how SEO was back in the day. Like if you had a private, uh, what is it? Personal injury, uh, lawyer or something like that in California, New York, they would rank across the country and maybe they could only operate in California. Right. But because their SEO and they were dumping so much money into their ads and everything like that was so strong, they would rank in somewhere that's not relevant. So, um, I do see more focus on, on this to be optimized, but you can compete around it and you can create those signals and, and you can certainly win in your local or, uh, regional area. Um, a lot of this comes down to your strategy and it seems like everybody's just throwing paint against the wall. I don't know if that's the best analogy right now, but I would tell you if we're talking about, um, you know, uh, AI writing, yes, they are. Yes, they are. And it, and that was this last update, the helpful content updated. It took a lot of websites down by 50% by 30%. And, uh, if you had a site that went

down, that's probably what was going on. Uh, you really need a human driving, uh, what you're doing. And there are people 24 seven creating massive amounts of content and it's raising the bar, but well, it needs to be useful. It needs to be sifted out. Right. Uh, and that will take some time with the search engines, but it will turn over. So just, you know, certainly stay the course. And there's definitely some signals that you can send to, uh, speed that up. All right. Mobile optimization with increasing use of smartphones. Local search has become even more prevalent. I would tell you that the Google bot is only mobile. Uh, that's pretty important to know. It's about the only thing that matters. Most, uh, searches, if not all searches start, uh, with mobile typically, unless it's like a business, um, maybe some things are still purchased on, uh, a desktop, but man, I'm just seeing almost everything's going mobile. Everything is in the palm of your hand, right? A mobile users often searched by nearby businesses, uh, while on the go making local SEO critical for businesses, optimizing your website for mobile devices, ensuring accurate information and utilizing, uh, location-based, uh, keywords can help you create attention of mobile users and drive foot traffic to your physical business. So they're saying, you know, optimize, I guess, for a location-based keywords. I would tell you optimize for even, um, like driving direction, kind of like landmarks, um, stuff like that. Cause again, uh, all the local is a different search engine. A lot of people don't understand that than Google it's wrapped together in universal search. They've done that with YouTube as well, but it's a whole different search engine. So, uh, the things that it's built on are, are totally different. All right. Conclusion in today's digital landscape. AI, uh, local SEO is no longer optional for small businesses or is no longer optional for small businesses. It's necessary. I like that by implementing effective local strategies, you can increase your online visibility, attract targeted traffic,

enhance your online reputation, gain a competitive advantage and capitalize on the growing treads of mobile searches. Investing time and effort into a local SEO can yield significant long-term benefits, helping your small business thrive in the local market and connect with customers who are actively seeking your products or services. Um, and then it goes in, uh, how this prompt could be improved. I love this. Uh, you are a trusted and successful digital and marketing SEO professional that specializes in small businesses. You are expert and local blah, blah, blah. It's basically feeding the prompt, create a detailed response. And, oh man, we got, uh, um, we got to read the second half of this. I am out of time today. I got to get going and this is running a little bit long, but we will do the next half of this, of the improvements in the prompt. I didn't see that when I was reading that. That's pretty cool. And, and what it spits out next. And, um, this is kind of like on the fly training, uh, with like, like chat GBT here. Okay. This, uh, article, you know, was assisted by AI. They make it really clear if you're writing with bots, you need to, uh, tell them you're bots, but as by, uh, Nicola Agnes, I think, um, November 8th, 2023 best of the bot, right? A blog post on local SEO for small businesses by search engine land. I thought this was super interesting. We'll go into the other half of this, uh, next episode, but hopefully you enjoyed this. Um, uh, and you know, until the next time, if you want to grow your business with the largest, best, most powerful tool on the planet, the internet. Do it, right. Um, you know, use Google, use online marketing, use SEO. Uh, it's super powerful. Uh, we are going to be doing some, uh, classes, courses, webinars, uh, speakers, uh, and also got some other projects going. Um, you know, been doing SEO for a long time for a lot of businesses

and we still have a great team that does that. Uh, me personally, I am still doing SEO on a few accounts. Um, but I am trying to, well, start my own projects, uh, at this point and I would love to recruit some people to help me. So if you're interested in that, reach out, we are going to start a community soon. So, um, long, well, we've had them kind of off and on, but we're gonna, we're gonna bring back Facebook group and, um, really kind of, uh, get, get a lot more involved. Uh, really excited about that. Have a little bit more bandwidth, uh, to do that now going into Q4. So, um, hope everybody's well, uh, have a great day. Uh, bye-bye for now.