The Perfect Local SEO Landing Page by Marcus Miller #329

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 advocate. Welcome back to another fun-filled edition of our podcast. This is podcast number 329. 329. You can say four-something. We'll be there soon. It'll be sooner than we think. 329, you can see that right behind us, actually, if you're seeing it. If you're watching it. If you are watching. As always, we do have a tip from our previous podcast. And our tip is plan and execute your content strategy. Look, after you figure out that content plan on it, how are you going to promote this? Maybe some paid posts, maybe some paid social, or even some email marketing. But execute your strategy after you plan that content. Excellent. All right, please remember, we are filmed here in Houston, Texas. And we are your friendly local neighborhood top position snatchers. And our mantra is, do not be a douche. Don't be a douche. It is not a good look. We got an article today. Yeah, I got a good article, man, from Mr. Marcus Miller. Good folks over at Search Engine Land. He posted this article, the perfect local SEO landing page. So, the article kind of combines some local and some landing page best practices. So, we'll get in and see what he's talking about. Very cool. Hey, if you're in a position to, you have some sort of device that enables you to. Yeah. We're going to ask you to. Make contact with us via Twitter, right? Use the hashtag SEO podcast. This is number 329. And tag us in it at the web results at best SEO podcast. That way, we can follow you back and do all of our social networking stuff. Excellent. Hey, if this is the first time you've joined us in this podcast, howdy. Glad to have you. Thanks for joining us. If you've heard this. Appreciate you. Absolutely. If you've listened to this podcast before, then you know what we're about to

skip. The way this works is if we get at least 10 shikos. Yeah. Shares, likes, or follows. On any one of our platforms. And we get a review, then we don't go through the process of how you can review us. Exactly. And if we don't get those, then we tell you. This time, we're going to skip that. What we will do, though, is tell you how you can shiko us. Share, like, and follow. And those ways are, I don't know, say facebook.com slash. E-Web results. Twitter.com slash. E-Web results. Instagram.com slash. E-Web results. YouTube.com slash. E-Web results. E-Web results. And linkedin.com slash company slash. E-Web results. All of those will take you to our social media profiles. Connect with us. Shiko us. Hey, ask questions. If you want to, submit a question. We'll ask that on air. We'll answer it on air. And, you know, that's how you connect with us. Yep. Very cool. Hey, if you're a PHP guru or a WordPress genius, we're probably looking for you. Go ahead and submit a WordPress audio resume. That works. Yeah. 713. Probably could do that. 713-510-7846. We do have a free website analysis. It's a comprehensive website analysis for you or one of your customers. Go ahead and submit that. All you need to do is go to ewebresults.com. You will find a green button. You can't miss the green button. No, it's like this is our black background with a green button. Yeah. Basically, that's it. Click that button. Fill out the form. We'll get that started. That does require a phone call. Yeah. Don't even glaze over that. It requires a phone call for a good reason, right? We could go through this webinar and just mark up what we feel it should be and go through and crucify your site, but that won't have much value. Right. Right. Instead, we'd like to talk to you first, figure out what you're trying to accomplish and what you've done already. And so, as we begin analyzing your site, we can highlight what you did right

and what you need to work on and then we can even include how we can probably help you. Absolutely. Take advantage. It's free. Do we have AlgoCat? No AlgoCat. We do not have the favorite segment of our show, the Algorithm Cataclysm. So, we are going to go right on to, you got a petiff or something? I do got a punch in the face. I got some news also. This punch in the face goes to Peter James Tompkins at Peter J. Tompkins on Twitter. He hit us up on Twitter. He says, at EWebResults, listening to your cool and informative podcast on my lunch break here in Jersey Channel Islands or Jersey Chanel Islands. Okay. Yeah. Or Channel. I don't know which one it is. Yeah. But he's in those islands. How about Chanel? Punch in the face to you. Yeah. Thank you for tuning in. Appreciate your support, man. I've got it. Let's do your news first. So, my news is, okay, Amazon. Right. Go on Amazon News. You know Amazon Echo. Right. Right. A little device you can talk them to. So, now Amazon enabled product orders through Echo. At first, Prime members, they could order, but it had to be stuff they already ordered before. Right. Now, if you're a Prime member, you can order whatever Amazon has to sell through Echo with your voice. Wow. That's a little scary, right? Very scary. Because if you logged in and I walk in like, right? Because I don't think it's recognizing voice. It's just recognizing the device. Of the voice. Right. And so, you're logged in your device and I come in and order me the Midnight Blue join 12th that just dropped. And shift those over. Yeah. And shift them over here. Yeah. And build the card on file immediately. Yeah. And I don't need a notification. Yeah. And cancel all notifications. Yeah. So, yeah. You make sure you turn off Echo when you have visitors. You can order stuff and there are different packages, right? There's maybe a package that comes with a

couple of extra things. And so, you're like, yeah, I want a remote controlled vehicle. And that shows up with like, you know, awesome camera and extra remote controls and a cell phone. You need none of that. Yeah. Yeah. That just seems a little crazy. We'll see how that's going to work. My other news is Angelus. I think this is kind of big. This is almost Algo Cat worthy. Angelus is free now. Wow. They remove the paywall. They open it up so all the reviews can be seen by in the public. Anybody can go in and create your own profile similar to Yelp. And so, for all my service providers out there, these roofers, those electricians, you're going to have to get on it. That's some work for us to do, obviously, because we're going to have to go back in and add people there because it's just going to be one of those profiles that you've got to have. You've got to have. Absolutely. Good decision. Great decision. I mean, well, then they looked at the numbers. It was less than 1% of people, what was it? It was less than 1% of people actually even logged into the service to use it. And so, while they have all these great reviews and everything, no one could see them. Yeah. No one could see them. Yeah. And so, the advertisers that actually dropping out because they were like the public. No one's using it. Yeah. Yeah. And we had places in the country in certain industries that were doing really well on it. And frankly, most of them were not. Were not. Exactly. So, I'm not surprised with it. Yelp got a new competitor. And, you know, and that's a good thing. Yeah. And so, yeah. Shout out to Angie's List for not being greedy. Absolutely. My news is just mobile ransomware is also a problem. So, we've talked the last couple of podcasts actually about ransomware. And that's where a piece of rogue software or virus or worm gets on your computer and then

encrypts all of your data. And then wants to charge you a certain number of bitcoins in order to get it back. It's happening on phones also. So, just be leery about what you install. I'm clicking all those links. Click what you, yeah. Oh, man. If I don't get ransomware, that sucks. Yeah. That's like, I can't live for a minute. Yeah. It's like, my life is over. My life is over. You go straight. I can't even call for help. Yeah. You're like, wherever you are, you're like, yeah, we're going to T-Mobile right now. Or Sprint. Or where. And you can't even find the next one. I'm going to T-Mobile and I have Sprint. Yeah. And you can't find it because you can't. You can't even say. You're like rolling down your window asking bums if you can borrow their cell phone. Yeah. Just look out the window and say, Sprint store near me. Zoom right there. Teleport right there. That sucks, dude. Facebook adds secret conversations to their platform. So, these are for encrypted conversations. So, you can now have one-to-one encrypted conversations between you and somebody else through Facebook. Kind of like a direct message. Yeah. Except it's encrypted. So, and then finally, I just wanted to mention, and I know we're going to talk about it a little bit later today, too. Also, is kind of Facebook's role in the shootings that have been happening here in the country. In the country, yeah. You know, we've got, obviously, significant challenges and hurdles that we can go over. And we were talking about it kind of as a team this morning. And I'm kind of excited that these things are coming to light. Because it, I don't, I think you'd be a fool to believe these things weren't happening before. Just weren't happening, of course. Like, ooh, now there's video. So, let's have all of these horrible things happen. And so, now those are coming to light. Well, I think what you're highlighting is the value of technology. Yeah. Right? At the end of the

day, these things. The equalization of that technology. Technology has leveled the playing field. I didn't say leveled the playing field, but it's made, it made stuff more accessible. Right? It kind of has, it just hasn't worked yet. Right? Like, so, the playing field is, it's not fair, but it's starting to be level. Right? More visibility, more eyes on it. There's work to do, but the field is now level. You can't get away with that shit anymore. Well, that's the, that's the part I disagree. Because these dudes are getting, getting, they are getting away with it on video. I think that's going to stop, too. I think that, and that's because the field is leveled. So, shout out to Facebook. Shout out for not, for not, you know, bringing all these videos down. Yeah. They took something down. They realized the severity of it. And Zuckerberg put them videos back up because it was worth sharing. He actually commented on the message. The lady, she said, she said, I'm doing this on Facebook Live because I don't want the media to change the story. And I need the real story to go viral. That's the purpose of social media right there. Like, unfortunately, it's a horrible, horrible circumstance. Yeah. But that's the purpose of social media is to make, to connect my life to everybody I'm affecting with socially so they can see what's going on really, really quickly. Man, kudos to her for having the composure to do that. I don't, like, my brain probably would have just shut off and. And then, yeah. Because it was that horrible of an event. I mean, anyway. Anyway, well, I think Charles is going to bring it up again. Yeah, we'll talk about that a little later. Anything else? Any more petifs? Any more news? Nope. All right. I'm going to get into, we've actually got two short, one short review and one medium review. The first one is from Dave Parkhurst. He gave us, and it was on Facebook. He says, been listening for a while.

Really enjoy the good balance of personality and info. Petif, back at you. Dave Parkhurst. And he's out of Tacoma, Washington. Washington. Tacoma. That's what's up. Mr. Parkhurst. And next is from Roger from the UK. What a resource. It doesn't matter what level you are or what level you think you are. There is always something new to learn here. Chris and Charles make SEO interesting and relevant. They give you actionable stuff to do in bite-sized chunks. They cleared up a lot of confusion I had when I first got to look at SEO. I'm by no means an expert, but my SEO is a lot further on. Thanks to these podcasts. Yeah, punch in the face. Hey, that's what's up. I had the fortune of talking to Chris today, and he quickly got to some key issues that should make a big difference. I'll keep you posted. Great job. You get a big thumbs up from me. Actually, we get a punch in the face from you and one back at you, Roger. Yeah, it was a great conversation with Roger. And by the way, he was like whiskey tours in Scotland. Yeah, whenever you're ready, we'll be glad. Send the tickets, and we'll be there. All right. So that's the potatoes of our podcast. Time to get into the meat. Yeah, so like I said, Marcus Miller posted this article on Search Engine Land, the perfect local SEO landing page. And his article is really just a combination of some of the things you should be doing for a great local page that you want to rank and search, and then the things you should also be doing for a great landing page. And most of the time, especially in today's age, you need that happy medium between local optimization and landing page CVO kind of conversion optimization. So he kind of talks about both. Matter of fact, he starts off by saying a common issue we come across is the lack of well-optimized and well-performing landing pages for local businesses. He says there are two

key elements to consider here. One, local SEO ranking factors, and two, landing page conversions. So let's talk about his local SEO ranking factors first. And he got them numbered A through I. We'll skip through some of these. One of them I think is kind of questionable. The first one, he says, having the city and state in the landing page title. I totally get having the city in that title, especially for a local search. What I'm on the fence on is the state. I don't think state is all the way necessary. Depends on your city, because maybe if that city is repeated multiple times in different states. And that's kind of rare, though. At the end of the day, there's more. There's like three different Houstons in the United States. But if somebody searches Houston, you're going to get a Texas result. I don't see you getting another result unless you're in that city. Or next to it. And by the way, then you don't need it because Google's hyper-local approach really fixes that. I don't know if mentioning the state is necessary there. I like to see, frankly, a target term and then the city, right, in that page title. So if this is AC repair Houston or, you know, hard money loan Dallas or pool resurfacing Orange County, whatever it is. I like to see that in the title instead of the state. He goes on to say you should also have that city and state in the landing page H1s and H2s. I agree with that. I understand that state, I'm still on the fence there. Because really, and all of the keyword research I've done, I can't tell you how many times I've actually seen the state include it. Most people don't search state. Now, it's easier to rank for the state. I can include the state and then give you a keyword that says I can make you rank for Houston, Texas, AC repair and do that immediately because there's not many people. I've been going after it. So I don't

know if going after it here is going to be the right value, but I understand the concept and I agree with the concept. But rather than put these city and state in the landing page, he says an H1 and H2 tags in these headers. I think as long as you maybe got your main title in your main, you got your main target area in the title and that should probably be sufficient. You really want to say those H1s and H2s for describing this content that they're supporting and getting some good keywords in there. He also says in letter H, an HTML name, an HTML version of your name, address and phone that's matching your location that consistent that right needs to be across the board. And rather than an HTML version, I'll mark it up and say you schema for that. Like it's more than just having a text version is what it mean by HTML version. He's saying don't have an image, don't have it flashed, don't make it a PDF because then it can't be indexed. Right. Or on the site, he's saying making it HTML. I'm saying code that HTML with schema so Google can quickly and clearly identify what your name, address, or phone is. I just read a good article that said that there's no correlation to position and schema utilization, which is interesting. So I'd still do it. It's not that much. Well, yeah, it's not about, it's not about, it's not about, and he even says that here in letter J. He says this is one of those 1% ranking factors. Yeah. But if you can mark it up, then do so so Google can use it and display it confidently. Yeah. And so at the end of the day, you want to mark it up. It ain't just Google, like it's all search engines, they use schema markup. And so you just want your address displayed correctly, then go ahead and mark it up with schema, that way you don't have any problems. Right. Furthermore, what I

also learned is a lot of these directories that kind of import data, that pull data from other places like InfoUSA and all this other stuff, they use schema markup to determine the correct name, address, and phone and directory, you know, categories of each business. Mark your stuff up. So that was kind of his local stuff. Let's talk about the perfect landing page, right? Then he gave us several numbers, several letters for those as well. He says the perfect landing page should have a ad copy and context, right? He says landing pages allow for super tight messaging between the ad and the page. He also says align the language to pump up your conversion rate. And what he's saying is making sure that your ad has the continuity with the page text that they're going to read. Continuity alignment. Yeah, we talk about continuity starting from the search, right? So wherever they search that, the ad they need to see needs to be relative to the same term they searched. After they click, the page they need to land on should be relevant to the ad that they clicked. Right. Right? You want continuity across each step goes down. He says product benefits. Maybe your landing page is selling products. He says really explain how your service will benefit the client, how you will take away the pain and what they will gain. This is the emotional component to your sales copy what pushes the user to get in touch. Look, we all know emotion sales. We all know people make decisions driven off emotion. So I'll add this. Tell stories, right? If you're going to highlight the benefits and the features of your product, tell stories about this product. Use some testimonial, use some video, use some product demonstrations, highlight the benefits. He's absolutely correct of how this product can work for people. Right. This is what you want to do on a page, a landing page when you're trying to increase conversions. You want to speak to that pain that people may be having.

He says on a landing page for local, include a location map. Right. He says ideally this map should provide driving directions so users can be guided in. We built it into our framework where every contact page has an embedded map to the, not only the location but the actual Google Maps location that's consistent with their Google My Business account. And so that way we can kind of help rank that way. But the reason we do that is so that map can be tapped. And so if you happen to be on a mobile device, you can easily go for, get directions by just tapping it. Assuming it hasn't been ransomware. Assuming it hasn't been ransomware. Exactly. Because then you, then you, then you just put your head out the window and go spread store near me. Smell, smell for the electronics. So, so, so I totally get having a map, um, or especially on the location specific page. Uh, he last one he got on here is, uh, F having a call to action. Duh. He says we need a strong and clear call to action. We want to, we want to allow folks to get in touch via a means that best suits them. Look, at the end of the day, you must have a, have a CTA. This is a landing page we're talking about. That means you're either sending some paid traffic there. You're doing something for this page. This page may rank. At the end of the day, if you're not telling people what to do when they get to the page, then they will not do it. Then they will not do it. Exactly. And so you want to give a call to action, but I'll add to this, give it a call to action with some, with some substance. So it's not just call, not just call or not just call now or call today or call tomorrow. I won't say that, but, but it's called now for a free consultation or call now for a free quote or call

now and receive 10% off or whatever it is, but, but fill out this form and get contacted back in five minutes. Like, like you have to add some substance to your call to action in order to make it stand out and encourage people to take more action. Right. Let me see. I think I had one more. Okay. Yeah. He also says, add social proof. It's a great one. Add social proof to these pages. He says, prove to your audience beyond a reasonable doubt that you can do what you say you do and do it well. And he's right. Social proof is necessary, especially in this day and age. People trust social proof. People trust your reviews. They trust, you know, um, um, Google reviews. They trust these things. They trust video testimonials, especially for a product they're going to buy because that's the only referral they can really get. And so I want to encourage you to try different widgets. If you're going to use social proof, maybe it's a, a Facebook widget that shows you how many people have liked this page, how many people have shared this page, how many, some of the thumbnails of the people who have, right? That's personalizing that. Well, and then, you know, you use a WordPress, you begin to see that. Oh, my friend actually liked this page and there your conversion can go up. I'd also suggest maybe some plugins, right? Like maybe we, uh, we offer, for example, uh, depending on which package you're on, we can put a, a, a widget on your homepage that just randomly displays your Yelp reviews or whatever reviews you have. This is a great way to show people who land on your site, the latest review you just got. It's all about social proof. Last one he says is, um, your team. I like this one. He says, humanize the landing page and show Tom, Dick and Harry from the office who will be answering your phone call. Look, anytime you can show people a real person, the

person they're going to be dealing with, that automatically starts that kind of, uh, yeah, that relationship building. Yeah. I mean, we, how many podcast people do we talk to who, when we finally talk to them, they, they feel like they know us. Right, right. They're like, oh, dude, I feel like I know you because I listen to you so much and they've watched us. Well, that's, that's because we've humanized it. It's us. You know who it is. When you call, you get us. It's like, oh crap, that's the guy. I recognize your voice. Right. You got, you're awesome. And that immediately lowers the defenses. Now we can engage and you a little bit more open to my sales pitch and so on. And so, so I want to encourage you to, to humanize your landing page. Like if you don't have to use stock photos, don't use them. Like use a, use a real photo. It has that much value. Absolutely. Well, he says at the end of the day, um, uh, you need a great combination of, of, of local ranking factors and stuff put in place. So this page can rank. And when that page ranks, you want to have the right stuff in place to make the same landing page convert users. Also, dude, Marcus Miller punching the face to you, man. Great article. The perfect local SEO landing page. My one issue is that I'm just not big on using states, especially in like page titles and headers. I don't mind putting it in a footer somewhere, maybe in the content, uh, maybe even in the meta description, but I just don't know if it's worthy to have it. It really only be, I mean, there are some cases where you need it, but you need it and not the city. So like if you wanted to have content about state, Texas state parks or Oklahoma state parks, you know, you need to have Oklahoma parks, you know, that's where you're focused on the state. Only other time we've been doing

that is we got a client who, who's, who offers service across the state. Right. Right. And so rather than optimize for specific cities, we've been kind of just captured statewide traffic. Right. And so from that perspective, um, I could see you being used. Boom. The perfect local SEO landing page. All right. Do we have some, uh, yeah, I got some blank stare and some, and some moment of silence news. This is blank stare first. Not what news. It is what news. What news. I like it. The three levels. This one was three levels deep and they deserved it. This one goes to Viacom. Right. All right. So Viacom, not Google is on the hook for dig this tracking kids behavior online. Right. So under the federal federal video privacy protection act, only parties that disclose protected information can be sued, not those that received information. So at first, uh, uh, uh, of all these kids in the UK were trying to sue Disney. Right. Right. Because they felt like when people were visiting Disney.com and all, and, and, and, um, Nick at night and all these other sites that their video activity was being tracked. Right. Well, Viacom owns all of that. Right. Right. And so Viacom, they kind of, the lawsuit included Viacom and Google. Right. Right. Well, Google got let off the hook. Right. Google's like, we ain't tracking nothing. Yeah. Right. We don't have any, we don't have any of that. And if, um, unfortunately they do have it and not only do they have it, Viacom was tracking it and gave it to them. Oh, wow. And so, but the, the law, the law said only parties that discloses information. So that kind of eliminated Google could ain't disclosed anything. Viacom is, is, is on the hook. And, um, yeah, they explicitly came out and said they weren't doing it and they were. Wow. That is new. Blank stare to you guys, Viacom, stop tracking kids and what they watching. I totally get it. That's some great information to have, but

you, you know, you ain't supposed to have it. Yeah. That's my, that's my what news. Now, do you want to give a moment of silence in lieu of the things that is happening this week in our country? Um, I think it's definitely red alert is we, everyone needs to, I believe, show a little bit more love and a less hate. Violence never solves anything. Matter of fact, uh, the late great Dr. Martin Luther King said. That, uh, the only thing you can't solve violence with more violence, you end up going down a spiraling path that ends to more violence. Yeah. You got to solve hate with love. This moment of silence goes to Alton Sterling, um, out of Baton Rouge and Philando Castile in Minnesota. This moment of silence also goes to the five police officers in Dallas who lost their lives due to more violence. That's Patrick, uh, Zamoripa, Brett Thompson, Michael Cole, Michael Smith, and Lauren Harenz. Uh, we, we, we keep your families and your loved ones in our prayers and prayers. Mm. Yeah. Let's stop the violence. Yeah. I saw a great, uh, is it Trayvon? Trayvon Martin? No, I'm thinking of the, it's Trevor something who does. Oh, oh, CNN guy. Um, um, he had a great Trevor. Uh, yeah, he had a great response. The South African dude, right? Yeah. His response was just, just awesome. Yeah. So go, go check that out. That was a, what was that? MSNBC? He was on something. I seen it. I thought it was his late night show and there was a, he had like a three minute, I think it was even a five minute and it was, it was just awesome. Like how can you deny video what's happening? It's video. And then anyway, it was, it was very good. So, so go, go check that out. And yeah, let's let may cooler heads prevail. Let's get this thing right. Uh, all right. So if you are interested in growing your business with the largest, simplest marketing tool on the

planet, the internet call e-web results for increased revenue in your business. Our phone number is 713-592-6724. If you have a referral, so that's somebody who's interested in some sort of internet marketing from website design down to traffic driving, PPC, SEO, uh, go ahead and send them our direction. When they pay their bill, we will pay you. We have a re a good referral program in place. I am still doing a network and we'll continue to do networking here in Houston. It is broadcast live. Uh, if you're in Houston, make sure to go to upsocialnetwork.com and join us at one of the next events. It is, uh, video networking, like new age video networking. Get on board. I promise. It's going to explode. It's going to explode. Remember, we were filmed live here at 5999 West 34th Street, Suite 106, Houston, Texas, 77092. Uh, if you want a transcript of the video, a copy of the video or audio of the video, you can get that at our website. Or video. Or the video. You say copy. Or copy. Copy of the video. Or the video of the video. Copy of the video. Yeah. No, you can't get a copy of the video. You can download it. You can watch it. And then download it if you want. Anyway, you can get all of those at our website. EwebResults.com. And, uh, thank you guys for tuning in. You guys have made us the most popular in-app marketing podcast on iTunes. Uh, thank you very much. Until the next podcast, my name's Christopher Rose. Charles Lewis. Bye-bye for now. Balance check. Balance check. One, two. Three, two, nine. Uh. Uh. SEO Podcast 329. Running behind. Sometimes we can't start on time. But that's okay, because we still gonna get to it. Chris and Chuck, man, bringing you some more. I was going to say music, but it's not music. It's content. SEO Podcast. Let's go. Boom.