Local Visibility System

The Last Local SEO Guy You'll Ever Need

Phil

Why Is This [BLEEP]er Outranking Me in the Google Maps Results?

by 16 Comments

https://www.flickr.com/photos/vansero/8161390751/

If you’ve made any effort to get your business more visible on Google’s local map, you’ve seen competitors whose visibility there surprises you.  Either they’re deadbeats and you have no idea why they rank well, or they’re hardworking and you’re not sure what part of their work has paid off.

In either case, you want to know why they’ve put the squeeze on you in the local search results.

I don’t know your situation, and probably couldn’t say with 100% certainty what’s going on even if I did know.  But I can tell you what I’ve observed over the years.

Here are what I’d say are the 7 most-likely explanations – some shoes to try on:

1. They’ve got better links to their site, or more good links. Not necessarily more than you’ve got, grand total.  Quality over quantity.  In either case, the best of their links are highly relevant to their industry or local area (or both), or were included in write-ups in the press.  How they got those links and how you can get similar (or better) links is a question for another read.  For now, I’ll just say that the overall quality of the link profile is in my experience the most common reason one business outranks another and stays ahead long-term.

2.  They’re using a landing page URL with a link profile that’s better than yours. Maybe you’re using a subpage or subdomain on your site as your landing page URL for Google My Business (because maybe you’ve got multiple locations).  That’s nice as far as the on-page optimization goes, but your location-specific landing page probably doesn’t have as much “link juice” as your homepage has – or as your competitor’s homepage has.

As I’ve written, I’ve found that you’re more likely to rank well in the Maps results if you use point your Google My Business and other local listings to the linkiest page on your site – which is probably your homepage.  I call it “economizing your links.”

(“But that’s a bad user-experience,” you say.  Nah.  Add a blurb about each location, and link to each “location” page.)

3.  They get consistently higher click-through from the search results. For instance, if their name is more relevant or they’ve got more or better Google reviews (or both), more people may click on your competitor than on you.  That seems to affect your rankings, if Google observes enough behavior to conclude that searchers clearly prefer one search result over another.

4.  Their business name – real or fake – is more relevant. Maybe it shouldn’t be that way.  Maybe it’s not really the name of your competitor’s business – and he or she is just spamming.

In any case, it’s a factor in your rankings, and it influences click-through (see point #3), which in turn also influences who outranks whom.

(Thanks to Darren Shaw for reminding me of this point.)

By the way, if it’s a fake name, do a “suggest an edit” and tell Google what the real name is and where they can see the business’s real name.  Recently I’ve had good luck recently in getting those anti-spam edits approved.

5.  They’ve got a longer track record of being a relevant search result. That’s often a byproduct of having an older Google My Business page, but not always.  If your competitor has been in business for longer, or has had an online presence for longer, or has more name-recognition, then Google has more data on who clicks, where they’re from, and what they typed in before clicking on your competitor.  To Google, your business is a giant bucket of data.  Google never empties the bucket, because it cares about what’s in the bucket.

6.  They’re being tested. Sometimes Google just flies a business up the flagpole to see who salutes it (see point #3).  Google often throws a “new” business into the search results with the businesses that more deserve to be there.  If the new kid seems popular with searchers, Google will keep it around unless and until searchers seem to lose interest.

7.  Google’s black box. If none of the above is a plausible explanation for why your competitor outranks you for now, then it’s probably for a mish-mash of reasons that only one pocket-protector-toting Google engineer might know.

That may sound like a cop-out on my part, and maybe it is, but Google’s local results are mighty deep seas.

Which specific search terms does one competitor vs. another outrank you for?  How close are you to that business vs. to your business?  What did you type in previously?  What device did you use?  What do your customers see?  Exactly what did they type in?  Where were they located?  How long have the rankings been like that?  And so on.

—

Just a quick word on what are, in my experience, the unlikely explanations for why that one [BLEEP]in’ competitor outranks you:

  • “They’ve got 170 more citations than I have.”
  • “Their site is mobile-responsive.”
  • “Their site is so optimized!”

Those things are easy.  Sure, they usually factor into your rankings, but they won’t separate the sheep from the goats.

Any questions or observations?  Leave a comment!

The Ridiculous Hidden Power of Local Reviews: Umpteen Ways to Use Them to Get More Business

by 22 Comments

Even the obvious benefits of great customer reviews are almost too many to count.  To wit:

  • They take a little pressure off your site to “convert,” because visitors arrive largely pre-sold.
  • They can help you eat up more of page one of Google.
  • They help you cultivate non-Google Maps or non-Google sources of visibility.
  • They take some of the pressure off your local SEO and other online-marketing efforts, because they build your reputation online and offline.
  • You’ll be a little more attuned to customer-service if you know you’ll ask for a review eventually.
  • Even if your rankings stink, they help you land more word-of-mouth referrals. (Those people probably Google you, too.)
  • Whoever sees your reviews in the local search results is more likely to pick up the phone.

Those are just the beginning, though.  You can squeeze many other benefits from customers’ reviews and from the process of earning and encouraging them.  As AJ Kohn said about commenting on blog posts, the hidden power of reviews is ridiculous.

Here are some of the less-obvious ways you can use your reviews to help your local SEO and marketing even more.

1. Use them to research keywords. You might not call your services what your customers call them, and you might not search for them in the way they search for them.  Where appropriate, try to incorporate those phrases into relevant pages of your site, or create separate pages on them.

2. Mine your reviews to learn exactly what kinds of customers have reviewed you, and why. Use those insights to determine who are the other customers most likely to review you (and ask them), and to make your services better.

3. Study your competitors’ reviews. Ask the same questions as in points #1-2.

4. Use a freshly-written review as an excuse to contact the customer who wrote it. Say thanks.  Ask how he or she is doing, or just say you’d like any further feedback.  That’s good to do on principle, and sometimes you’ll get repeat business out of the deal.

 

5. Use a new review as an occasion ask for an additional review, on a different site, if the customer is willing.

6. Write owner-responses in a way that makes you look great to anyone reading your reviews.

7. Copy and paste the reviews onto your site. (Google doesn’t seem to mind, and neither does Yelp, and other sites surely don’t care.)  I suppose this isn’t such a hidden benefit of reviews, but I have to mention it because it’s so important.  Your customers’ reviews are copywriting rebar.  Your selling points are stronger if you’re not the only one touting them.   Also, if you cite the city the reviewer is from, they’re semi-“local” content you don’t have to write.  They’re particularly useful on city pages.

8. Put them on a “Reviews” or “Reviews & Testimonials” page on your site. It might even rank for keyword + reviews local search terms.

9. Use them on a “Why Choose Us?” page.

10. Add reviews badges or widgets to your site to showcase the reviews. The badges serve as third-party “trust” symbols, if you use the badge(s) provided by the site where you’ve got the reviews.

11. Create your own badge, if none is available on the site where you’ve got a pile of good reviews.

12. Allude to your reviews in your AdWords ads.

13. Include them (or excerpt or link to them) in your email signature, possibly along with a link to your “Review Us” page.

14. Use them as seeds for blog post topics. You can expand on certain selling points (or other points) a reviewer brought up.

15. Use them to reduce surprises and customer-service issues, by encouraging visitors to read your reviews before they call you. Even if that means they have to open up another browser tab and take their eyes off your site for a minute.  Say something like, “We want you to know how we made other customers happy, and we want you to be our latest happy customer, so please take a minute to read our reviews.”  When they come back, they’ll be more likely to call you, and less likely to eat up your time with questions your past customers already answered.

—

Any non-obvious powers of reviews I didn’t mention?

How do you leverage your reviews (the good and even the bad)?

Any great real-life examples of one of the points I mentioned?

Leave a comment!

Your Google My Business Page in 2017: How Hard Is It to Mess Up?

by 31 Comments

https://www.flickr.com/photos/51764518@N02/14550044470/

Google’s local-business pages of yore offered many ways to blow up your rankings – in the good sense or the bad sense.  Lots of customizable fields you could stuff full of keyword powder and watch go “boom.”

In recent years, though, Google has childproofed businesses’ pages.  Usually, when you don’t fill out your page quite the way Google wants, Google simply changes your info for you.  In that way, with the glaring exception of not keeping an eye on what you put in the “business name” field, Google has mostly eliminated the ways you can hurt yourself.  The edges are rounded, the paint doesn’t taste good, and the candy doesn’t make you look cool.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/pandora_6666/3079557294/

That’s why I say the term “Google My Business page optimization” is a misnomer at best and deceptive at worst.  There’s very little to “optimize.”  Generally, it’s very easy to get your Google My Business page(s) squared away and then to move on.  (That’s not a good reason to hire a local SEO person.)

In the days of Play-Doh-knife Google My Business pages, getting your GMB page right is mostly a matter of not messing it up.  To that end, here’s my 12-point quasi-checklist of things you should look into:

More-obvious stuff

1. Basic eligibility. Are you taking liberties with the Google My Business guidelines (like using a fake address, or using employees’ home addresses)? If so, you’ll probably get away with it in the short-term, if not longer-term.  But even if your scheme works, you’ll check your rankings every morning to make sure they’re still there.  It’s not worth it.  Play by the rules – and remember that there’s plenty of local SEO without the “map,” and that most of it is just organic SEO anyway.

2. Correct and complete info. Don’t be concerned about minor formatting quirks in the “address” field. Do use the real, official, legal name of your business.  Do make sure your hours are listed on there.

3. Claimed page. An unclaimed page can still rank well, but you want to be able to make changes easily, and you probably don’t want other people’s public edits to be approved easily.

4. No duplicate pages. What constitutes a “duplicate” Google My Business page – especially one that’s harming your rankings – is tricky. Generally, my rule is that if you can (1) pull it up on the Maps tab and (2) it’s not a page for a specific licensed professional (e.g. doctor or lawyer or agent) in your organization and (3) you don’t want it to be the page people see in search results, you should mark it as “permanently closed.”  If you really want to bury it, claim the page and strip out as much of the business info as you can (particularly the phone number and site URL).

5. Categories. Which categories you should pick is a tricky question, but I suggest you pick as few as possible and don’t include any that seem to be a stretch or seem broader than other categories you might pick. Note: Google may change your categories for you if they don’t like them.

6. Accurate service-area settings. If you indicate to Google that you always travel to your customers (rather than meet all of them at your place of business), Google won’t show your address on your Google My Business page. Google used to be touchy if you owned a service-area business and didn’t hide your address for any reason.  Now, whether or not you “hide” your address is not a big deal.  If Google doesn’t want your address showing on your page, they’ll simply change it for you (rather than whisk your page off the map).

7. Map pin in correct place. It should be on your building, and preferably on the specific part of the building your business is in.

Less-obvious stuff

8. Best landing page URL. In my experience, you’re more likely to rank well if your Google My Business landing page is your homepage, rather than another page on your site. If you’ve got multiple locations and want to point each to a city-specific landing page, that’s fine, but you’ll probably need to rustle up some good links to those subpages.  If you’re not willing to go to that effort, you’re probably better off using the homepage on all your Google My Business pages and on most or all of your other local listings.

9. No overlapping service areas. Let’s say you’re a contractor with two valid addresses 10 miles apart. Both locations probably serve customers in some of the same cities, because those locations are pretty close together.  Fine, but don’t include any one city in the “service area” settings of both your Google My Business pages.  Google has a strange rule about that.  You’ll want to carve up the service area between the two locations, or simply not “hide” your address on one of your pages.

10. Google Street View indoor photo shoot. If you’ve got a bricks-and-mortar store or office, it’s bigger than a closet, and doesn’t look like hell inside, consider hiring a Google-trusted photographer to shoot a virtual tour. If you’ve got multiple locations, consider getting a photo shoot for each.  It’s smart marketing and may be a ranking factor.

11. “HTTP” vs. “HTTPS” in the “website URL” field. If you’ve got an SSL certificate for your site (not necessary for most “local” businesses), it’s probably a good idea to update the “Website URL” field of your Google My Business page and maybe your important other listings (e.g. Yelp, Facebook, YP) to point to the “https” version.

12. Transferred Google reviews. Do you have Google reviews showing on an old page, or on an otherwise incorrect page? Ask Google to transfer them.  (In my experience, they’re pretty good about it.)

—

Did I forget any important checkup points?

Any points you learned about the hard way on your Google My Business page?

Any questions?

Leave a comment!

Dumbest Reasons to Hire a Local SEO Company or Person

by Leave a Comment

I’ll never say you need to hire me or anyone else.  If your goal is to reach more customers/clients/patients in the local search results, you may or may not benefit from a third party.  I often tell clients and others that they should farm out as little of their local SEO as possible.

Still, if you feel you must hire a third party to help on your local SEO, at least do it for the right reason.

You should trust them to do a few things: to sniff out problems, to fix them, and to find missed opportunities and help you take advantage of them – all in a way that doesn’t risk putting you in Google’s doghouse or scaring away customers.  To do that, you’ll have to work together long-term to do things like build a better and more informative site, create and fix your local listings, earn links that take a little work to get, and earn glowing reviews.

“I trust them to help me plan the work and work the plan” is the right reason to pick one local SEO person or company over another

But that good reason is outnumbered by a mangy pack of bad reasons.

If you pick a local SEO-er chiefly because of any one of the following reasons, you’re doing your business a disservice:

“They’re near me.”

A “local SEO company” does not mean “an SEO company near you.”  Rather, it refers to what they should specialize in: helping improve your business’s visibility in the local search results.

Now, maybe both points are true of them; maybe they are a local local SEO company.  Fine, but who cares if you can sit in their office and shake their hands?  You can do that at the local used-car lot, too.  Does that mean you should buy a car from them?  Only pick an SEO company if you have a way to determine whether they’re any good.  If they’re good, it doesn’t matter whether they’re even in your country.

“I just don’t want to handle it anymore.”

Which do you care about more: convenience or good results?  Effective SEO takes teamwork – whether it’s time to write good content for your site, or to earn links, or to get more and better reviews.

If you’ve done your own SEO so far and have gotten poor results, you’ve set a low bar for your SEO company: now all they have to do is not make things even worse and not pester you!  If you’ve gotten good results by doing it in-house, you may be handing it over to shakier hands.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/rikkis_refuge/15320584918/

I’m not saying you should micromanage whomever you hire.  Do your research, find someone you trust, give that person opportunities to earn (and to lose) your trust, and then let him or her work for you.

But you still need to be in the loop, and need to help on steps that may require you.  If you’re” too busy” to be bothered now, what makes you think you can handle more business if your SEO effort actually works?

“They can optimize the Google My Business thingy!”

That’s the easiest part of all.  There is no “optimization” to be done.  Years ago, arguably.  These days, no.  Your Google page has had all the sharp edges beveled and sanded off.  It’s been mostly childproofed.  Descriptions are gone.  Custom categories are long gone.  If you fail to “hide” your address when in fact you’re supposed to, Google will simply hide it for you.

As long as you remove or “mark as closed” any unnecessary Google My Business pages, enter a valid address, your real business name, and the most-accurate category (or a few of them), you’re all set on Google My Business.  Very quick and easy.  Hire outside help only if you need help on the real work.

 “They can optimize my meta tags!”

One sure would hope they can – though often the worst title tags and description tags I’ve seen were written by so-called SEOs.  Your metas need to be relevant to the guts of the page, of course, and they need to be compelling enough that searchers want to click on your page in the search results.  Still, it’s not hard to get them right, and getting them right doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll rank well.  Don’t have that be a major reason to hire an SEO company (though you should reconsider anyone who writes crappy title tags).

“I want them to handle all the link-building.”

Oh, they’ll handle it, all right.  They’ll build worthless links on worthless sites.  Either it won’t help your rankings a pinch, or it’ll help you temporarily – until Google drops its boot.  But hey, the company “built” links for you, which is what you wanted.  You need to be at least a little involved in planning the work and working the plan.

“I need help on my local listings.”

Real yeoman’s work.  Also, it’s one-time work, for the most part.  Only a few dozen listings seem to affect your local rankings and overall visibility in any way.  After your business (or each location of it) is listed on those sites with generally correct info on your business, you won’t get much or any benefit from creating listings on even more sites.  If you hire an average local SEO company chiefly for help on listings, they’ll bill you for busywork citation-building until you fire them.  If you hire a good local SEO company largely because you want “help on local listings,” you’ll overpay and not put their expertise to the highest and best use.

Citations should be part of what your local SEO-er can help you on, but not the focus.

“They handle my website and ads, and I just want one-stop shopping.”

They may do a great job on those other things, but what makes you confident they can help you on local SEO?

“I need someone to take care of my site.”

If that’s the main thing you need, then hire a dedicated webmaster.  They’re out there.  Your local SEO pro should be able to sniff out problems on your site and fix most or all of them personally, but a crackerjack local SEO isn’t necessarily a development whiz.  (And if he/she is, then that person might – might – be too narrow and might not be good at helping you put all the pieces together, on-site and off-site.)  Largely separate disciplines.

“My friend recommended them.”

Sure, give more credence to what a friend says than to what a stranger says.  But you need to draw your own conclusions, too.  Who or what works for someone else may not work for you.

“We’re friends.”

What will they say at the country club when you fire him?

“I need more customers NOW!”

You can probably get them now, but probably not solely from the work of an SEO company – even a good one.  “Free” local visibility takes time – time not only to do the work, but also for Google to digest it and to rank you accordingly.  The time to dig the well is not when you’re parched, cross-eyed, and thought you just saw Elvis.

“They’re cheaper than my current company.”

And they may be even worse than your current company.