Part 3: 45 Local SEO Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them by Miriam Ellis #387

Hi, and welcome to the SEO podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebResults. Matt Bertram. What's your title? PPC specialist. I don't know. I'm storm prepared. Storm prepared. I think I am the storm prepared today. I got everything ready to go. This hurricane's coming, and that's really what I am today. Just storm prepared. I think that's a good thing to be as Hurricane Harvey is approaching. I think that's a good thing. We'll get that video started here for a second for our tip. As always, this is actually podcast number 387. As always, we have a tip from our previous podcast, and that tip is... When you're making major website changes like changing domain names, hire an expert like us. So we're covering a wonderful article, 45 pitfalls, SEO local pitfalls, and how to avoid them. And it talks about if you're going to make major changes like a domain change or maybe an address change, more specifically like a domain change for your website, make sure you hire an expert. There's a lot of things that can go wrong. And if they go wrong, your business from the web can stop. Subscribe, follow, boom! All right. So we are broadcasting live here from Houston, Texas. We are internet marketing experts, Google certified partners, and we're here to bring... Bing partners. And Bing partners to bring you... We are here to bring you SEO, internet marketing information. I had a review. I just wanted to jump into that review real quick. Great. This review is, of course, five stars. It says, I've been listening to these guys for years. They have a podcast that deals with search engine optimization and marketing. They're really fun on their podcast, and they cover really good information. I just got off the phone with Chris, one of the guys from the show, and he went over some ideas with me regarding my site. I'm looking for them to help me with some work. I haven't worked with them yet on a fee basis, but

whatever he did over the phone was excellent. Really nice people. Can't wait to work with them more. Punch in the face to you. That was a Yelp review. I didn't get his name in my little document here, but punch in the face to you. Great conversation with you. We're looking forward to helping you get things rolling with your website. Absolutely. If you're interested in a little treat or a little trick, tricks, tips, and treats from us, we can get those to you. We have 17 very important SEO tips, the best tips from our podcast. You can get a document with all 17 of those trips. It's links to the videos, links to the memes, links to everything you could want about those tips, and you can get that for free. Yes, absolutely. How much is it? That's free. That's really free. One, two, three. Free. There we go. All you need to do is go to ewebresults.com slash SEO tips and fill out the form, and boom, you will have your awesome document. Awesome. We are continuing to cover a great article by Miriam Ellis today, 45 local SEO pitfalls that you could fall into, should try not to fall into, and how to avoid them. Miriam, it's a great article. She's actually already reached out to us on Twitter. We're getting her links, and the goal will be to have to interview her at the end of this. That's going to be the goal. Let's see. If this is the first time you've listened to the podcast, howdy. Welcome to the podcast. We're glad you're joining us. This is called the potatoes of the podcast. We will get into the meat here shortly. If you've listened to this podcast before, then you know what we're going to skip. We run a contest each and every week. If we get one review, which we got, and we get 10 shikos. Matt, what's a shiko? Share, a like, a follow. Yes, a share, like, or follow. If we get 10 shikos on the social media platforms

and one review, then we skip telling you how to leave us a review, so we're going to skip that today. What we will do, though, is tell you how you can shiko us, right? Share, like, and follow us. Those are our profiles on these platforms. All you need to do is go to, I don't know, places like facebook.com slash ewebresults, youtube.com slash ewebresults, twitter.com slash ewebresults, instagram.com slash ewebresults, and linkedin.com slash ewebresults.com slash ewebresults.com slash ewebresults.com slash ewebresults.com slash ewebresults.com. Yes, all of those will take you to our profile on those platforms, and please shiko us while you're there. Hey, if you're a PHP genius or a WordPress guru, it's funny watching the delay. Um, uh, we are probably looking for you. Go ahead and leave an audio resume. You can leave that at 713-510-7846. It may sound complicated. You may be going, what's an audio resume? Well, call the freaking number and find out, right? It's pretty easy. We explain it to you. Next, if you would like a free comprehensive website profit analysis, we can get that for you. All you have to do is go to ewebresults.com. We're almost through all this stuff. We're almost through potatoes. ewebresults.com slash nothing. Land on that homepage. Click the green button and we'll get that analysis for you. All right. So, yes, sir. So, I was thinking about maybe putting that green button to be the lead magnet. Okay. Or the 17, so that might change. Okay. Okay. That's cool. So, it might be up in the right-hand corner. Okay. Okay. Oh, yeah. So, as we're moving forward with that, that might actually get moved. I did have, oh, that's a document for some petiffs that you might want to read through. As I'm going through, I got a couple pieces of news. Samsung's biggest phone yet, the Note 8, is approaching. It's going to have a 6.3-inch screen. I think that's bigger than my first computer. I don't know. Wow. It's not. But it's, wow, you had a really small computer, Chris. So, it's

kind of cool. I'm a big, I actually, my phone right now is an LG phone and I'm really happy with it. But prior to that, I've had Samsung's. I'm an Apple guy. Apple guy. Yeah. Google is now showing a, I thought this was interesting, right? So, how do you take a search engine and kind of make it a kinder, gentler search engine? If you search for depression-related terms, it used to just give you information about defining what depression is, etc. Now, it actually sends you directly to, well, one of the initial options is to send you to a, do you have depression test, right? Or hot. So, that's kind of cool, right? That's cool. So, and it's a PHQ-9. So, they kind of looked at the result. Just cool. I'd like to see those things. And then finally, the piece of news I have also about Samsung, a little bit different. The vice chairman of Samsung, his name is Lee Ja-yung, or Young, he is going to jail for five years for perjury, embezzlement, and bribery. And apparently, he is no longer the heir to the Samsung throne. He's on his way to jail. Only piece of news I have right now is, there's a hurricane coming! There's a hurricane! Hurricane Harvey is attacking Houston. It's interesting because we're about to close our office. That's why we're doing our podcast a little bit earlier today. And it's not raining yet. So, there's part of me that's like, the business owner is like, why does everybody want to leave, including me? So, anyway, we'll be shutting our office probably about 1 o'clock. We want everybody in the Houston area or anybody who knows somebody in the Houston area to be safe. Stay dry if you can and all of that good stuff. Make sure you have canned foods just because they're good for a podcast. All right. So, I think that is, oh, we got a couple of patiffs, right? You got some patiffs there? Oh, yes, I do. This is from the Eagree team. Started

listening. You guys have great points. Keep it up. Boom. Punch in the face to the Eagree team. Yep. Miriam Alice reaching out. She wants more. And so, thank you so much. And we'll give her some links. Yep. And that's the author of the article that we're covering today. Yeah, no, she's reached out to us a few times. And then... Got a question, right? Yeah. So, Google, okay, Google is super hyper-local focused. But what if your business is not a storefront and your service is an area? For example, like a roofer, right? You know the answer to that? I do. So, okay. Shoot. Well, so, I mean, anything in home services, PPC is going to work excellent for. We've done a few roofing campaigns. You know, the return on investment for a lead is great. You can drop geographic areas over your campaigns. Also, we're going to talk about something that is geographic focus in the podcast today. Yeah. As far as... NAP. NAP listeners, right? So, I think that this is a great podcast for... Who is it? I didn't copy the name, did I? We didn't get the name. Yeah. So, but yes, roofing is excellent for PPC campaigns. So, part of the answer is PPC. And we recommend that you do PPC for anything from a very SEO perspective. And you're really talking about Google My Business, right? For Google My Business, there is an option where you service areas. And I believe you can define those areas. We'd actually have to check with Sammy on that. Bing, Apple, everything. You define the areas. So, there's an option that says you don't service customers at your location, although you do have a location, that you have what geographic area do you service those in. And that's the right strategy for that particular situation. So, punch in the face for you, sending that in. And we'll get that response. We'll let you know that we responded to that on podcast number 387 here when we get back to you. All right. I think we're

ready. I think that's the potatoes of the podcast. All right. So, you could do us a small favor. And if you wanted to, you could tweet. And what you should tweet is make sure you include hashtag SEO podcast. That's what's on the screen behind us. Also, include at best SEO podcast or tag us. And then also tag at eWebResults. We'd like you to also tag Miriam Ellis. And that's at Miriam, M-I-R-I-A-M underscore Ellis, E-L-L-I-S. And then there's an extra underscore at the end. If you missed that one, you will send it to the wrong person. So, go ahead and tell her that you're listening to the best SEO podcast. Talk about her article. So, very cool. We've already gone through, again, this is the 45 local SEO pitfalls and how to avoid them. We've already jumped through. How many did we jump through already? We've jumped through 21 of them. And we're really going to jump into your local business listing. So, let's, should we jump in? Let's jump in. Let's jump in. All right. This is the meat of the podcast. So, number 22 is a guideline noncompliance. So, you want to hear to your local business platform's guidelines. So, if you've got Google My Business, make sure you're following their guidelines. If you're in Bing, make sure you're following their guidelines. The worst that can happen is you could get suspended or public shaming. Probably not too concerned about that. Mostly concerned about suspension. Just remember this. Google can read street level signage and can tell the difference if where you're saying your business is, is actually like a business park or like your friend's apartment complex. Right? So, they can see that just from the images, from street view. So, make sure you're conforming to what you're supposed to. Yeah. So, when I was investing in real estate. Right. Instead of actually going out to the location. Right. Using Google Maps. Street View. Right. Or Google Earth to really zoom in and look at that stuff. And it's pretty scary. Right. Like

what you can see and you can look at the streets. So, they can find out if this is a legitimate business front or not. Yep. And they've even been, at one point, I don't know if they're still doing it, they would actually make a phone call, like a Google Hangout call, and then you would show them around your office to make sure like it's a legitimate office. I know that that's happened in the past. Yeah. All right. So, number 23. NAP inconsistency. How many times have we talked about consistency in NAP? NAP stands for name, address, and phone number. I think it's ad nauseum. You're probably tired of it. But make sure that your listings on your primary sources are consistent. She actually listed that the fifth most important local search ranking factor was this NAP consistency or NAP in general. It's actually the fourth. So, I went to the link that she provided and I think they just did an updated report for this year or this next 12-month period or whatever it is. And it's actually fourth. So, you want to make sure your name, address, and phone number, your local citations are up there because it's the fourth most important factor in determining where you place on that we call the Google 3-pack. Make sure your data is accurate on the major info listings like Axiom, Factual, Local Ease, and End Group. And then on the powerful platforms of Google My Business, Facebook, Apple Maps, Foursquare, Yelp, and Bing. So, inconsistency is where we can search engines. The next three points are about NAP. Well, no, that's one of the first things that we recommend to all clients coming in is setting up all the pixels and the tracking, the analytics, and then also the NAP listings. And so, making sure that if people are trying to find you in the online directories, they can. Yeah, absolutely. And I'll talk about some of the tools that can help you with it. Obviously, this article was on Moz, so they're talking about Moz

Local. It's a good tool. We'll talk about some of the other ones. It's free. Moz Local? Yeah. Well, no. For Moz Local, for actually managing it, you pay for it, but the report is free. Yeah. So, number 24, listing incompleteness. Right? So, make sure all the fields are filled out. We used to talk about, you know, back when it was Google Local, you've got to have your profile 100% filled out. That means if there's room for five photos, put five photos. If there's room for three videos, put three videos. Those were the minimums. So, make sure that you're still doing that. Remember, I like this phrase, missing data equals missed opportunities. That's true for PPC, too. Yeah. They recommend you fill out every character. Yeah. Every single spot. And then, really, number 25 is duplicate listings. So, duplicate listings. What are the impacts duplicate listings can have? Right? So, some of our misdirected consumers, it actually can violate the guidelines. Right? So, that goes back to number 23. Excuse me. Yeah. Number 22, where you're having non-compliance. If you've got duplicate listings, that can be a problem for your business. It can divide your ranking strength. So, this is very similar to when we talk about having the proper 301 redirects. Right? If you've got multiple pages that are the same content and people could link to those multiple pages, you're actually diluting the value of the rank factor that's happening on that particular page. And it's the same as true with duplicate listings. So, people could be linking to those listings and they're different and so you're losing some value there. If you're not sure that you have duplicates, she kind of recommends that you go to Moz Local and enter your name and your zip code and begin your search. There are other services that you can use and that we've certainly used in the past. UBL is one. Bright Local is one. Yext is probably the biggest player in this space. So, you can check those out and find out which one's

the right one for you. Next. All right. So, what are we talking about? We're talking about local business listings and up to 45 pitfalls that you could have for Google Local. I mean, for local SEO. Number 26 is the wrong focus. All right. So, don't waste effort getting listings on dozens or hundreds of low-level directories. So, you may be tempted on Fiverr or something to go pay $5 and get you listed on a thousand directories. Don't waste your time. Don't waste your $5. Send the $5 to us to support our podcast instead of wasting your money there. We potentially... Who's done that before? I have. I'm sure people have done that. Lots of people, right? And actually, it did have value at one point, right? Before Google tightened up the guidelines of what they feel is a valid link coming... Not valid, but a valuable link coming back to your website. And then, make sure you respond to your reviews. This is really important. In fact, Miriam created a whole section about reviews. So, in the next podcast, we'll talk about reviews. But make sure you respond to reviews. And make sure you respond to your reviews. And we'll cover this again in the next podcast. When you're not emotional, right? So, when somebody critiques your company, maybe they're lying. Maybe they're misinterpreting. Maybe whatever it is, just make sure you're not emotional. We actually like to put together responses for our clients so that we can get them, hey, here's something that you can respond with that's unemotional and is a valid response to a potentially viable critique. The nicer, softer, gentler, gentler internet, like with the depression. Yeah. Yeah. We can also... Apply that here. Nicer, softer, gentler. Absolutely. And really, what you want to do is kind of address them, apologize to them, make some sort of offer. Maybe make some sort of, not defense, but your understanding of what happened and then make some sort of offer. Acknowledgement and gesture. Yep. Yeah. And do it when you're unemotional, but don't not

respond. Yes. That's the worst thing you can do is not responding just like... Well, I think the worst thing you can do is respond emotionally. The second worst thing you can do is to not respond. So, you really do need to respond. It's kind of the thing like, once it goes out on the internet, it's out there forever. Yeah. Right? And so, it's like, don't say anything or do anything that you wouldn't want in the newspaper front page the next day. Right? So, here's a pro tip, right? If you're kind of prone to being emotional, write up the response you really want to send and send it to your spouse or somebody on your team or something. Just get it out. Right? Just to get it out there. Let them come running into your office going, please tell me you didn't post that, right? So that you get it all off of your chest and then go ahead and post the unemotional kind of version that's going to add value to your business. All right. Number 27 is poor photos. Right? So, this says that good, some stat that she has here, Miriam has here, is good photos on your Google My Business listing will earn you 35% more clicks to your website and 42% more clicks for driving directions. All of those are valuable. In our case, we don't really care about people driving here. In general, they don't drive here. So, the photos aren't good for that. But it just represents, you just want the photos there to represent the value and quality of your business and the value and quality of service that you provide to your customers. And you want it to have some personality. We really hammer home with our customers. We need real photos, right? And one of the things that you really want to have in photos are people. People. Yeah. Make sure you've got people. And if it's got your team members, that's better. If it's got your happy customers interacting with your team members, even better.

Make sure there's people there. So, even if you sell screws, right? There couldn't be anything more, like, mechanical and unemotional. It should be, like, people holding the screws. And, like, we have great customer service when we deliver the screws to you. It's much better than just shots of screws. And, you know, no stock photos. Yeah. Like, everybody can notice stock photos. Don't try to move away from stock photos if you can. Actors, real people, you get a better response. Also, where they're looking. Right. That's actually, like, an advanced tip, right? Pro tip. Yeah, pro tip. Wherever they're looking, have them look at the CTA. And, actually, you'll follow their eyes to where it goes. It's human nature, right? So, if your CTA is over on the right of the site, when you're taking the photo, have them look up to the left, right? And then they'll look over to the CTA. That is a pro tip. I'm not sure you should have given that away. Next is number 28. Your map marker is in the wrong place. Okay. So, she points out that, at some point, Google has put map markers in the middle of oceans and seas. You want to make sure that that's not done. And misplaced pins can actually cost you customers. If they're trying to get driving directions, they can get frustrated and not show up, right? So frustrating. One of my UpSocial Network events is in a place in a suburb down south from Houston. And her Google My Business listing is at an old location. And I had gone there a couple times, like, just from the address that she gave me. Then I tried to search it from her business name. And I was like, that's the wrong direction. You need to fix that. All right. Number 29. This goes directly into what we were talking about. Driving directions are wrong. So, maybe the pin is in the right place. But sometimes there's little glitches and the driving directions can be wrong. Make sure you're listening to your

customers. So, if they arrive and are like, Google sent me to the wrong place. Don't go, oh, Google. Like, let somebody know. Figure it out. Get Google on the phone. And she actually says, get on Google's forum and figure out what's going on. That, I think, is one of the biggest things that I've seen small businesses do. They're like, oh, yeah, we've got to get that fixed. Eventually. Eventually. And it's like, no, stop. Take the five minutes, ten minutes. Get it fixed now or get it moving to get it fixed. Because it will ultimately cost you customers if they get frustrated, wrong place. You might just look up another one or if you're near a competition. So, I think that that is truly important. Making sure all the information you have on the internet in general is right and updated and all that. Absolutely. Yeah. So, next is lack of monitoring. Right? So, data flows a lot. Citations aren't a one and done situation. You may have team members who are in photos that need to be changed. So, you want to change those on your Google My Business listing. You may have a location change. You may have redone the front of your store. You know, there's all sorts of things that could and need to be updated. So, it is on a regular ongoing basis. And, again, we've got this in the next podcast. But, reviews are something that are really important. And, those are effectively a part of your citation. So, you want to make sure that you're taking care of those. Yeah? Anything to add? Well, those are starting to get weighted a lot more. Yep. Right? So, yeah. In fact, in that same report that she mentioned, where, what was that? That was where she mentioned that how important your citations are. It talked about reviews. And, I think in both the situation of your Google My Business listing and how prominently it shows, and in your organic listing, that was included. So, reviews are included. So, really an important

thing. Make sure you're monitored. Make sure you're replying. Even if they say something good, say, you know, thanks. We love it. Great. Make sure you grab me next time you're in the office. And, I'd love to shake your hand and say thank you. Whatever it is. Yeah. More communication. Better. Yep. Longer chains. Yep. All right. So, finally, in our kind of local citation, local business listing section, and, again, this is 45 SEO local pitfalls and how to avoid them. Finally, is mishandling changes. And, we kind of touched on this when she was talking about websites. This is where we're talking about, what if you're changing your phone number? What if you're changing your website? Right? That's a big one. What if you're opening and closing different branches? So, you've got different locations and you open and close them. How frustrating of it, you know, who gets the brunt of the negative energy associated with a particular branch being closed and Google sending them to the branch even though it's closed? It's you. Like, your brand is the one that's like, ah, they've got to update this or whatever. So, make sure you're taking care of that. She also mentioned bringing a new practitioner. So, if you're in medicine and you get a new doctor on staff or a new dentist on staff, make sure you get those people updated. Or, if a dentist goes off staff, right? So, yeah, you can answer the phone and kind of shift people off. But, if they called looking for something, you're starting a bad experience when that person is still on the website but not available at your office. Just keep everything updated. Yep. Like, you really need to keep everything updated. The internet is real time, right? Yep. It's real time. And then it says, mishandling changes can result in lost visibility, lost transactions, lost revenue, lost reviews. How about that? So, make sure you take care of all of the changes that are handling. Miriam Ellis, this article continues to be an amazing one. I tweeted

her today and I said, your one article has turned into a five-part mini-series, but it's all great information. So, punch in the face to you, Miriam. That's really good stuff. One of the things that was a standout here of one of these old articles, just while we were one of these old bullet points that we were over today, I guess, was some of the statistics that she threw in here that we didn't talk about on 27 with poor photos. We'll earn 35% more clicks to the website when you have good photos, 42% more clicks for driving directions. And then this was something, I didn't know that there, like I know with real estate there is, but Google, there's trust, Google trusted photographers. I never heard of that. I didn't know of that. I'm learning new stuff in your article every day. So, thank you. I had actually heard of it from our programmer, Jay, right? And he actually has, he's kind of an amateur photographer and has gone and done the 3D photos. So, you can actually do the, you know, set up your office and people, you've maybe seen it in Google My Business where you can tour the office. You know, it's like a... Yeah, but then it moves throughout the office so that you can do a virtual tour of the office. I think with like real estate and stuff, that's going to be... Paramount. Yeah, it's going to be... Well, with real estate, you've got to have drone photography and then have a 360. Yeah, it's getting really cool. It'll be virtual reality eventually. Yeah. Just put on the goggles. You don't have to leave the house. Can you have somebody come and move me into my new house? We'll have meetings. It'll be like, go to meeting. Oh, yeah, yeah. And it'll be putting them on and everybody's sitting around the table, you know. Your hair's a mess today. All right. So, that is, brings up the end of our podcast. What we're going to say is, if you like

this podcast, please share this podcast with three people. Also, go ahead and tweet. Remember, at Best SEO Podcast, at EWebResults. Also, do at Miriam Ellis. So, it's Miriam underscore Ellis underscore. And let her know we're talking. You're listening to us talk about her article. And go check out her article. You can find it in lots of places. We can also do Punch in the Face. We've got Patrick Lopez, Punch in the Face to you. Roberto, Punch in the Face to you. And Nolan is watching as well. Good. That's my favorite. That's my favorite Davis there. And that's saying something because there's a Davis in this office. So, that's just saying something. Hey, if you're looking to grow your business with the largest, simplest marketing tool on the planet. The internet. The internet. Call EWebResults for increased revenue in your business. Our phone number is, you know the first three? 713? Yes. 592-6724. Go ahead and give us a call. We will help you out. If you have a referral. So, that's somebody who's interested in a website or social media marketing, pay-per-click, SEO, whatever it may be. You send them to us. They pay their bill. We pay you. That's our referral program. We're getting that going. Like, we had some people in this week. Yeah. Talking about that. Networking in Houston. If you're in Houston and you're doing networking, first, be safe this week as Hurricane Harvey is going through. And then next, make sure you go to UpSocial Network. We do have a program called Instant Leads. Leads. Leads. Leads. Guaranteed. I really like this program. I like the name of it, too. Really, you should listen to that and go, huh? I wonder what that's all about. Go ahead and hit us up. Go to our website, ewebresults.com, and you'll find some detail. Well, reach out to us and we'll kind of tell you more about that program. Please remember, we were filmed live at 5999 West 34th Street, Suite 106, Houston, Texas, 77092. Was that a hook'em horns? No. So, this

is H, or H-Town, right? Oh, okay. Okay. All right. I was taught that. I was like, what? I was taught that by, yeah. Because I think the hook'em horns is wider. Oh, okay. Right? I'm guessing. I don't know. So, if you'd like a transcript video or audio of this podcast, you can get it on our website, ewebresults.com. That's it. Do you have anything else? Hey, you guys have made us the most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes. We appreciate all of you. Thank you so much. You downloaded in more than 100 countries, downloaded about 9,000 times per week. Thank you so much. Until the next podcast, we'll be surviving Harvey, so we'll see you in about a week. We might be a little foot-soaked, if you will. But until the next podcast, my name is Chris Burris. Matt Bertram. Bye-bye for now. So, you have like a can of Campbell's Chunky, what is that, and Progressive Soup. What does that have to do with internet marketing? What is that? What does it have to do? There's a hurricane coming. Have you not heard? There's hurricane coming. I got some hot cocoa, too. Hot cocoa is good. And the honey pot with popcorn for, what is, I don't get it. All right, all right. I don't get it. I'm just getting prepared.