Part 5: 45 Local SEO Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them by Miriam Ellis #389

We have all kinds of tips. Hi, and welcome to the SEO podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebResults. My name is Matt Bertram, the alien intruder. The alien intruder. Welcome back to another fun-filled edition of our podcast. This is podcast number 389. And if you could get a little video of this, Javier, this is going to be our tip when you are ready. Let's get a little video of Javier. So, go over there. Javier. And here is our tip from our previous podcast. Tip from previous podcast. Complaints give you a chance to act, but silence show you don't care. So, we were talking about responding to reviews. Yes. You need to respond to reviews. I asked Matt a trick question. I apologized for it later. What level of stars, if somebody gives you a one star or five star, should you respond to? All of them. All of them respond to every review, every time, because it shows you don't care if you don't respond. Subscribe, follow, boom! Excellent. All right. So, we are broadcast live from here in Houston, Texas. And we are your test and measuring gurus. Yes. I like it. I wanted to read this. We had this review. Just to throw it in real quick here. The review was, of course, five stars. And it was from Stoid Nuga from the United States. It says, I've been looking for ways to improve my SEO PPC skills. I usually don't have time to read, but I can always listen to something while I'm doing my work. Glad I found you guys. Great information and very entertaining. You guys earned another subscriber. Punch in the face to you, Stoid Nuga. That was a pretty awesome review. So, thank you. Hey, you know, we give tips in our podcast. Pro tips. Pro tips. And if you'd like, say, I don't know, 17 of them, 17 of our pro tips, you can get them in a beautiful PDF, all laid out for you, easy to consume. All you

need to do is go to ewebresults.com slash SEO tips. And that's an ode to Charles. Yes. Ode to Charles. All right. If this is the first time you've listened to the podcast, howdy and welcome to the podcast. If you've listened to this podcast before, you know the section that we are going to skip. Here's how it works. Every week we run this contest. If we get a review and 10 shikos. A share, like, and a follow. That's exactly right. If we get 10 shikos on any one of our profiles on the platforms and we get a review, then we don't tell you how to leave us a review. So, we'll be skipping that section. We will tell you how to give us a shiko. Again, share, like, and follow. You just find our profiles on these platforms. The way you do that is you go to places like, I don't know, facebook.com slash ewebresults. YouTube.com slash ewebresults. Twitter.com slash ewebresults. Instagram.com slash ewebresults. LinkedIn.com slash ewebresults. He's an early arriver. Sorry. All right. Sorry, guys. I get excited. All of those will take you to our profile on those platforms. And there you can shiko us. So, please do that. If you're a PHP genius or a WordPress guru, we are probably looking for you. Go ahead and leave. We are definitely looking for them right now. Yes. We are actively hiring. Yes. So, all you need to do is leave an audio resume. Leave that at 713-510-7846. If you don't know what an audio resume is, don't worry about it. Just call the number and you'll find out. Hey, Manny. Punch in the face to you for tuning in on Facebook Live. If you would like a free, comprehensive website analysis, you can get it. All you need to do is go to ewebresults.com and... Click the little box. There's a little box that says get a free website analysis. It's a blue box. Click the blue box. All right. So, I gave you a sheet with some... Yeah, shiko or shout outs. Patiffs.

Patiffs. Patiffs. So, let's do those next. All right. I'm going to like... Soon, you'll be able to make Amazon returns at select Kohl's stores. I don't know if you knew that. So, sometimes you don't want to return it through the mail. Not at Whole Foods? Not at Whole Foods. Not yet. Okay. All right. The first drone delivery network will fly above Switzerland next month. And it's going to deliver... Awesome. That was great. Focus on the camera work. I believe that's how they filmed Quentin Tarantino's movies. What it's actually going to do is like blood samples. Uh-huh. So, that's kind of cool, right? So, you can do blood samples and things along those lines. That's crazy. You know, now that I think... Now that you... Like they get into the... Draw your own blood. Draw blood. You stick it in the drone and send it off. So, it's actually delivering it like from one location to another. So, like where they might collect your blood and then deliver it to where they're going to test it. But now that I'm thinking about it... That seems really secure. Like a chain of custody. Yeah. For sure. All right. The next is John Gian... Gian Andrea. Gian Andrea. He's with... He's with Google AI. I think he's Google AI. He says that AI scare stories are stupid. You shouldn't be worried about all these AI scare stories. Like... I've seen a lot of those. Yeah. Like Elon Musk and the head of Google. And there's really some chatter out there about it. He says that they're unwarranted and borderline irresponsible. So, I don't know. Maybe he's going to throw down the gauntlet and whatever 15-year-old is actually controlling our world may go after him. I don't know. Who knows? Time to... Yeah. Pretty funny. All right. So, you've got some petiffs. I do. Stuart Marlin retweeted us. They re-mentioned us. Yeah. So, that's awesome. Punch in the face to you, Stuart. Yeah. And then, PVG positive... And this positive vibes gang. Gang. Yeah. And Lily Dorsett retweeted what

we said and liked us. So, thank you. Punch in the face to you. Thank you. All right. So, we're about to get started with our... Final chapter. Final chapter. So, we've been discussing the 45 local SEO pitfalls and how to avoid them. This is an article by Miriam Ellis. Miriam is awesome. In fact, if you're in a position right now, you have some sort of ability to tweet. What we'd like you to tweet is say, listening to Miriam Ellis. So, at Miriam, M-I-R-I-A-M underscore Ellis, E-L-L-I-S. And then, there's an extra underscore. Make sure you add that last one because you'll get to the right person. And then, reference hashtag SEO podcast. Tag us at bestSEOPodcast at eWebResults. And let Miriam know that you're tuning in and enjoying the content that she created and we're kind of reviewing. So, we've covered, I think it's the last four podcasts, right? We covered... It's been awesome. ...a business plan. We covered the website. Things you need to be careful in terms of local SEO regarding your website. The local business listings related to your local website. Reviews, right? That's why the tip... So, we're on track. I think that tip was right. Yeah, that's awesome. And then, finally, we're getting to social media. And so, she, you know, social media, we feel kind of collectively can be very misused. I think that some people will readily sell your social media and say it's going to drive a lot of leads. If it's social media in general and just kind of managing your social media accounts, we kind of feel that that's not true. If you want to do targeted ads on social media, that's a different story. If you're just making sure that posts are going out and that you're getting responses to people who are there, we're not convinced that'll drive a lot of sales. Yeah, well, I mean, I think... Good branding. Well, yeah. And I think when people jump into social, it's the new, it's the next thing. It's just another medium. And one of

the things that I really see is people think, if I just post a lot, I'm going to drive sales. And there's a lot more things that happen behind the scenes to it. And also, if you want to boost the post or something like that, or if you want to drive a remarketing campaign, there's ways to use social. Yep, that can drive sales. That can drive sales, but not just posting a lot. Do that. And I think that the social media strategies that a lot of people have are very, like, siloed, I guess. You know, and they're not... Very brand focused. Yes, brand focused. Yeah. And what Miriam did really good, we kind of both agree in this article, is had the right focus of what's the purpose that social media serves. And of course, this is related to local SEO pitfalls. So, in terms of social media, what we're going to say is modern customer service must include social media listening and responsiveness. That's probably our tip for the next podcast. I mean, I think that that's kind of the main emphasis on what social media should be. Yep. Clients want to be able to reach out to you, connect with you, and you need to respond. Yep. So, through that medium, and that's what people are expecting now. Like, if you're doing business, they expect the communication and an easy way to get a hold of you. Yep. Absolutely. All right. So, number one, poor social skills is the first one she lists, right? And again, we have a hard time weeding through her article and, like, cutting out words because she does such a good job. But, you know, somebody who's tasked to represent your brand really should be familiar with the infamous social media fails, right, to make sure that they can avoid them. One example she gave, some guy who had the Chrysler Twitter account actually tweeted, like, a curse word and was, like, how ironic it is that Detroit is the motor city and everybody is effing horrible drivers, right?

Right. And that was on the Chrysler Twitter page. You guys just got to make sure that if you're using a company, they've got a handle on how people interact with your social media, guard against things like poor typos, poor wording, poor timing. I think you just need to think about it. You're, like, branding yourself, broadcasting news, and you're representing a company usually to do it. So, the independent social media managers need to be really careful and know it's not them. Right. They're representing, it's actually the company's. Right. And that just really goes to show you how much you need to be in sync with your social media strategy so some of this doesn't happen. I mean, there's some significant examples we don't need to go into that have happened recently where other people are managing accounts and they like things they shouldn't like or they follow things or they say things. And, you know, I think the biggest example right now with Twitter specifically is Trump, like access to famous people. That's where, that's why you're on Twitter. Yep. You know, and that's a way to communicate and voice your concerns in the now. And so, her last point was make sure that they're not insensitive to any audience. So, next, this is number 42 of these 45 ways to local SEO pitfalls and how to avoid them, guideline noncompliance. So, we've mentioned this multiple times throughout this article as it's referenced to reviews, as it's referenced to like Google My Business and all of the local profiles that you can be on. And, in this case, she talks about your local business decides to run a promotion. As an example, Facebook forbids the use of personal timelines and friend connections for the event. Right. So, those are the types of things you need to make sure that you know or that your social media knows because you just don't want to get banned. You know, some of these social media platforms are really hard to get a hold of, meaning you can't ever. All

right. So, that was guideline noncompliance. Next is wrong platform. Somebody's at my door. So, this is you're on the wrong platform. And, we're actually going to extend this details. You've got to know your use of statistics. Where should your business be? Should be utilizing social media? On what platforms? In broad swaths without even kind of giving away some of what we're going to talk about. If you're business to business, be on LinkedIn. If you're business to consumer, be on Facebook. And, then you can get more specific. And, we're actually going to talk about that. So, we're pretty excited about bringing some more than just this article that Miriam wrote. All right. Next is to neglect, right? To neglect your social media. So, remember that your social media is a component of your customer service. Don't neglect it. We have a rule. And, this is really kind of in social media in general. When you identify the platforms that are right for your target market is you should always be social on your social platforms. If you don't have time to be social on your social platforms, go ahead and make the profile and see rule number one. Right? Rule number is be social. Well, yeah. I mean, it's also your kind of, your app listing. Right. Right? But, yeah. Adds value to your SEO in that perspective. Yeah, that's where we can start talking about automation. That's where we can talk about some other things. But, yeah. I mean, social media is a way to engage just like all the other things that's come before it as far as advertising platforms. All right. Next. And, this is the final one. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Number 45. Selling versus sharing. Right? So, you kind of alluded to some of this about how you're managing your social media platform and what are you doing? What are you pushing out there? Because if you're really out there and you're just putting sale after sale after sale after sale, it's a problem. You don't really want to do

that. So, imagine you had a group of friends and you own a business and you walk up to your group of friends and you're saying, Hey, you want to buy this? Right? And then you go away and you come back like 20 minutes later. They're still there. And you're like, hey, you want to buy this? Right? You go away 20 minutes. You come back and you're like, hey, you want to buy this? That's the equivalent of what you might be doing on your social media platform. Right? Is irritating those group of people who you consider friends. Contribute value. Almost the 80-20 rule in a different setting. 80% bring value. Engage in the community. 20% sell. But give first before you ask. And here's what she said you should learn. You should learn to be helpful, generous, entertaining, empathetic. And with all of that, you can win loyalty for your brand. So I know for some, it's a really big task. Helpful, generous, entertaining, empathetic. I mean, that sums up this whole section for me. Yeah. Like this whole podcast. That's what it sums up. But, you know, don't think about it being if whatever you said is going to be on the front page of the Wall Street Journal or whatever your main social media thing. Be comfortable with it. Yeah. Be comfortable with what you're saying because it's written in stone for the most part. Once it's out there, it's out there. Like this podcast. And one thing that she kind of wrapped up this with was it's her hope that this article is one that you'll share with clients and team members so that no one gets tangled up in the errors that are easy to avoid with a little quiet thought and a great deal of good planning and five podcasts to cover. Yeah, Miriam, check her box. We did it. We did it, girl. We checked that box. Punch in the face to you, Miriam Ellis. Again, you can hit her up on Twitter at Miriam underscore Ellis underscore. Don't forget

that second underscore. Really, really great article. Really proud to discuss that article. And like I said, most of our articles we're going through and like it's real easy to pull the nuggets out of. We're like, oh, that's a great, that's great. With her, you're like, that's great. Oh, and that's great also. Oh, and that's great also. We can't just read her article. We've got to actually discuss it. Yeah, I mean, like if y'all can see here, it's just like riddled with just great stuff. Highlight after highlight after highlight. So again, punch in the face to you, Miriam Ellis. So we wanted to add a little bit more. Social media is so important. What was the statistic that somebody said about how much they're going to spend on social media or how much time? Oh, I think that was the website magazine that I was reading. Oh, it was a great magazine, yeah. And it was something like 35 or 45% of ad spend for, I think, 2016 was going towards social. Earmarked for social. Yeah, and I was like, well, where is that going to fall? What is that bucket going to do and what is it going to drive and what that intent is? Right. And I thought that that was really kind of interesting. I mean, one of the things that I did bring in, too, I don't know if you brought it here, but I printed it off of Moz. If you were to look at that. If you were to look at that. And since you're listening. It talks about the different categories for. Factors. Factors. For ranking on Google. Yeah, so I'll just, you know, I'll put on my Google hat there. My Google hat here. All right. So now you're a Google alien guy. Yeah. Google alien guy. Where do you think Google came from? I like you. Literally. Who do you think owns Google? Of course. The government. All right. Anyways. Next. So, yeah, if you look at this pie chart, again, social, if you're looking to drive

rankings and you're trying to get that organic traffic and you're spending 45% or 35% of your budget for it, you're only getting 7.24% juice. Yeah, because that's what the social media factors only had about a 7% impact on your ranking. So interesting. You've got to think about what you're using it for and how you're trying to drive it. And I think that those are all those strategies that we come up with and develop for clients. So it's really important to understand that. And the debate that we also had was, so if people are spending 46% on social media, is that actually where in terms of online, right? Is that where they're going to get 40%, are they going to get that weighted value out of social media, right? So I think our consensus is probably not, but there's certainly some industries that can do really, really well on social media, without a doubt, right? So anyway, that's it. So this is something, this is an interesting statistic too. How much do small businesses spend on social media? They spend six to eight hours a week on social media. 43% spend more than six hours a week on social media. So this is what, this is where businesses are spending their time. Is your time effectively spent, right? How are you breaking it up? Something to consider. Maybe it is. We just have serious kind of, with what we've seen, we have serious reservations about that. It's new, it's shiny. Everybody is going after it, right? So we wanted to get some stats because we've had some clients ask us this week, like, so is that the right platform for my business? And the answer is, it depends, right? It depends on who your target market is because maybe it's the right platform. Maybe it's not. And in big swaths, yes, if you're B2B, well, really, if you're kind of a business owner, you should have a LinkedIn account. That's what we believe. And then if you're specifically B2B, that's LinkedIn is where you need to

be more social. If you're B2C, business to consumer, then Facebook is like probably the right starting point. There may be others. And so we wanted to go into some statistics about Facebook. I thought this was pretty cool. Like it talks about what the gender is, what the users are. And this is a really good article you can find on track X, T-R-A-C-X.com. And so like first, like Facebook is the place to reach millennials and Generation X, the age is 18 to 49. It's predominantly female. 83% of online women use Facebook, 75% of online men. That's not that big of a discrepancy. I would say it's pretty even. And then 1.9 billion unique monthly users. I think the biggest fact for me is 75% of users spend 20 minutes or more on Facebook every day. Every single day. Every day. Like if you're trying to get in front of people, like, you know, text message, Facebook, right? So. It's a shame they didn't have the same stat for all of these. YouTube is the next one, right? So Facebook was 1.9 billion users. YouTube is 1 billion. It's predominantly male. It's, I don't know, 65, 85. I think it's probably similar statistics as the other one just swapped. This could be a little higher. Yeah. So, and a higher age group. I think, you know. Oh, Facebook probably does go a little bit higher. I would agree with that. Yeah. Well, yeah. They say kids don't go on Facebook because they, unless they want to talk to their grandma. I think I'm over-advertised, really, right now. So people wanting that community. Yep. YouTube reaches more 18 to 34-year-olds than 35 to 49-year-olds than any cable network in the U.S. That's pretty interesting. That's the most interesting fact I see there, yeah. Yep. The YouTube for younger. And about two, what is it? Two million video views per minute. Oh, my God. Wow. Is it called YouTube Red? Is that what the thing is? Yeah. That's where you can pay for it. No commercials. Yeah. And, I

mean, cable, sports, all that kind of stuff. Yep. I think YouTube's going to transform, you know. Yep. I think Netflix, watch out. Watch out. You know, I just read an article about Netflix and how YouTube, as it was coming out, was kind of the launch. It was kind of, Netflix was already going down the path of being able to distribute or, you know, targeting distribution online. And it was kind of YouTube that really pushed them over the edge and said, okay, yeah, we got to go after this. Next is Instagram. 600 million unique monthly visitors, predominantly female. It says 38% of women who are online use Instagram. 26% of men who are online use Instagram. The age is less than 35. 90% of Instagram users are under 35. It says 53% of Instagram users follow brands. That's where the branding is, right? Yep. The imagery, the quotes, the pictures, no stock photos anymore, guys. Right. Three times better response when you post real photos. Real photos. From a phone or something like that. Yep. But Instagram's where you keep up with your brands. That's where you can be introduced to a lot of people. Excellent. Next is Twitter, 317 unique monthly visitors, 17 million, predominantly male. It says mostly 18 to 29-year-olds. That's interesting. It says 53% of Twitter users never post any updates. So they, like, just follow the feeds on a regular basis and follow different people. So one of the things that someone told me that's big into SEO now is what a lot of people used to do and a lot of people on Twitter are just waiting for a celebrity to say something to be one of the top two posts or whatever, like, in the chain to get the backlink or to just say stuff, you know, to contribute in that way. That makes sense. So Twitter, yeah, it's 18 to 29-year-olds. Next is Pinterest. It says it's the most evergreen. It's got 317 million unique monthly users. 45% of online women are on Pinterest. 17% of online men

are on Pinterest. I would agree with that. It says it's fairly evenly distributed among 18 to 64-year-olds, right? So if you're targeting women 18 to 64, you should be on Pinterest, especially, and we talk about this with some of our clients, if what you sell is very visual, then Pinterest is a place that you should be pinning and creating boards and all of that good stuff. I think Pinterest and the algorithms and everything like that is going to be the number one marketplace for shopping. Right. Right? Like, I mean, Amazon is out there, but man, I'll tell you, Pinterest is going to be the future. I really think that. Okay. Cool. Very cool. Next is Reddit. 250 million unique monthly users. It says predominantly male, less, under 30. 64% of Reddit users are under the age of 30. Again, if you want to go after them, after that younger crowd, you go there. And interesting about Reddit, sales content is discouraged. They're savvy and fiercely protective of their community. So don't go on to Reddit, you know, this is about following the policies, don't go on to Reddit and start selling stuff. Don't try to shortcut on Reddit. Yeah. If you build and contribute to the community, you know, people will respond, but I wouldn't just go in for a quick sale and try to push your brand. Not going to, you're going to get banned. Any kind of clout, credibility following you built is going to go away. And then finally, LinkedIn, 106 million unique monthly visitors, slightly male, 31% to 27%. And then it says 45% of people making 75K or more are in LinkedIn. Just an interesting tidbit about this platform. I used to be on this platform for years and years and years, 10 hours a day. Every day as people were joining it, in the uptrend of it, like LinkedIn was huge. And now they've started to put up a lot of paid walls for some of the stuff you can do there. But I love this platform for B2B,

for account-based selling. We've mixed in some Facebook with some campaigns, but do love LinkedIn. It's just becoming harder and harder. And now with Microsoft buying them, I think the CRM strategy they're going is pretty interesting. Pretty smart. Yeah. Just interesting, LinkedIn users are some of the social media users who are less likely to use anything else. So there are quite a few people out there using LinkedIn and nothing else. So that's some pretty interesting stats. Keep those things in mind when you're deciding where you want to spend your time on social media. Where is your target market first? Where is your target market spending their time? So that is the meat of the podcast. Sure, sweet. Let's start wrapping it up. So what we're going to say is if you like this podcast, we really ask you to do us a small favor. Go ahead and tell three people about this podcast. Let them know you listen to it. If they're business owners, if they're marketing directors responsible for marketing, we're a great resource to them so that they can stay up to date on the latest trends in the industry. If you're looking to grow your business with the largest, simplest marketing tool on the planet, it is the internet. Call eWebResults for increased revenue in your business. Our phone number is 713-592-6724. If you have a referral, that is somebody who's interested in internet marketing. So social media, which we just talked about, citations, right? So that's local SEO, which was the last five podcasts that we talked about. If it's just SEO in general, national SEO. If you're looking for PPC, if you're looking for display ads, remarketing, all kind of under the umbrella of PPC, we can help them. If you send them to us and they pay their bill, we pay you. So we've got a great referral program in place. I would say that we do everything under the sun except e-commerce right now. We're kind of putting the brakes on e-commerce, but everything else, direct response, B2B, home

services, account-based selling, professionals, those type of things we have done excellent work for, but e-commerce, when you've got to get in and manage their whole platform, larger accounts are better. Small business, we can provide insight and coaching, but that's an interesting thing to tangle. Yep, absolutely. Let's see. If you're doing networking in Houston, make sure you go to upsocialnetwork.com and come join us. We actually have an event tomorrow in the Houston area. Indiana, please remember, this was filmed live at 5999 West 34th Street, Suite 106, Houston, Texas, 77092. Houston Strong. If you would, yeah, Houston Strong. If you, and our thoughts and prayers, last time we talked about, it was about to go into Florida. It went through Florida. And then Maria's going through, I mean, and then earthquakes in Mexico. Yeah, when the dolding's falling. Wow. Oh my gosh. Yeah, so thoughts and prayers to everybody out there who's under duress right now. Yep. If you would like a transcript, video, or audio of this podcast, you can find it on our website, ewebresults.com. We are the most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes. That is because of you all, all of y'all. So thank you so much. We actually have a couple of tips. We've got Conrad, Randy, Abdiel, he was here. Manny, punch in the face to all of you. Thank you guys for tuning in on Facebook Live. Anything else? I got an ID while I was in Mexico. You're going to maybe make a... Until the next podcast, make sure you check out our bloopers. Until the next podcast, my name's Chris Burris. I'm Matt Bertram. Bye-bye for now. Bye-bye for now. Testing, testing, one, two, testing. Testing, testing, alien.