Episode 212 : Local SEO For Contractors

Paul:
Hi everyone and thanks for joining us today. I'm Paul Barthel from ChangeScape web in St. Charles, Missouri. And joining me today are Ian Cantle from Outsourced Marketing in Toronto, Canada and Jeff Steck from Telerica Systems in Austin, Texas. And Ken couldn't join us, but he did provide us with some answers to the questions. So today's topic is local SEO for contractors and why it's so important. Contractor Lead Partners conducted a study recently that analyzed over 9,700 contractors and their Google business profiles and found some interesting results. And so I'm going to start with Ken. Study found that 14%, that's a lot when you think about it. 14% of the contractors they looked at didn't even have a website. So my question for Ken is why is that a problem? That should be obvious, but if they don't have a website, I guess it's not obvious. And what is the role of Google in local SEO?

Ken

So the reality is every business needs to have a website for a whole variety of reasons. One is let's just start with trust and professionalism. People are going to check out your business online and if they don't see a website for your business, your business doesn't look real. Even if they're referred from the strongest possible referral source. If they go look for you to just go check out, learn a little bit more about the company and they see nothing, that's a huge problem. So not having a website is a massive, massive, massive mistake. Now not every business needs to have, you know, a super powerful SEO website. It just really depends on what you're trying to accomplish. But you have to have a website that's step number one. Every contractor especially needs one and they also need a Google Business Profile. The reality is that about Google owns about 93% of all searches on the web. Between image based searches, video searches and then just regular typical Google searches which those alone account, the Google searches account for over 60%, almost 2/3 of all searches. Then you add YouTube and you add Google Image searches and it rounds it up to 93%. So it clearly is the platform that dominates. And one of the ways that you get a presence on Google is through a Google Business Profile. It's really kind of the cornerstone of local SEO because this is what's going to help you show up on the Google Maps result. You want to make sure that you claim your Google Business Profile listing and that you optimize it. You fill out everything that it allows you to fill out. You do it in A way that with search engine optimization in mind, so that your profile is going to be as findable as possible. Now that's not, that's not necessarily sufficient Google Business Profiles, because they show up on Google Maps, they typically only help you in a three to five mile radius. And if you're in a very densely populated area, like downtown Manhattan for example, there are going to be a lot of competitors packed within that space. So showing up in the 3 to 5 mile radius is simply going to be really difficult. Um, but the other thing is your Google Business Profile is what allows people to write Google reviews about your business. And if people are checking you out online and they can't find any reviews about your business, there's no social proof of what other others have had experientially with your business, you know, then that's a real problem. So getting your Google Business Profile set up is really important. Now how does Google optimize for local search, especially around your Google Business Profile? Well, it really comes up with three basic concepts. Relevance, proximity or distance and then prominence. And so distance, I've talked about three to five mile radius. Again, always got to take into consideration how densely populated an area you're in or how sparsely populated area you're in. If you're the only remodeling contractor in, you know, a suburb of, you know, 2,000 people, that's three, three to five, 10, maybe even 10 miles away from the rest of the other metro area. You're probably going to be able to dominate that with a little bit of work. It's going to take some work, but not necessarily a ton if you do it in the right way and in a strategic way. So distance is always going to be kind of that bounding factor. There are ways that you can overcome that, and those two ways are with relevance and prominence. So obviously relevance and prominence play a big factor in how you rank within that three to five mile radius. The proximity or the distance dimension of Google Business Profiles. But relevance is really everything that Google can find out about your business online, you know, which means if you link your website to your Google Business Profile and you have content for each and every service that you offer on your website, you know, as a separate page, blog posts that reinforce the work that you do, the location pages that reinforce the areas that you serve, all of that factors in to relevance. And then when Google looks at what do other sites think about your website, do they link to your website, do they send signals in any way, shape or form, you know, then that factors into relevance and Also to prominence to a degree. So you really want to, I mean, it's not just done in a vacuum. Building a website's not necessarily sufficient. Having a Google Business profile is not necessarily sufficient. Especially now that Google has removed the ability for you to turn in turn your Google Business profile basically into a website. They allowed that up to about six to nine months ago. That's no longer a feature of Google Business Profiles. You have to have a separate website and you should launch it on a domain name that's easy and meaningful for people to remember and, and so super, super important. Now let's talk about prominence. So prominence is really where you're talking about volumes of signals that are coming in. So there are these things called citations. And I know, you know, we're going to probably dig in deep more deeply into these things, so I won't get super deep into that. But the more signals that are out there across the web from other websites that are sending, you know, messages back to the search engines about your business and how other websites and other platforms are viewing your website, those are all signals that and mentions of your business. All of those things are important. Most importantly though, in regard to prominence, we're really talking about Google Reviews. Google reviews are king. They're just flat out king. If you have no other place to ask people to go write a review, have them go to Google. And the reason is because it's going to help you show up on that Google Maps result absolutely critical. And you want, so you need to have a really solid review strategy in place and respond to each and every review. Google wants to see a constant steady stream of reviews. We call that review velocity. If you just go get a batch of 10 reviews from your 10 best customers and then don't worry about it for three months, six months, a year, you're going to see a diminishing impact of those reviews over time. Because Google also places importance on recency. And also not every review is rated equally. If somebody is very active in writing Google reviews that can have an impact. If they use SEO friendly words to describe the services that you did for them, that's going to have an impact. If you respond to each and every review, that's going to have an impact. This whole concept of prominence really is driven around getting reviews and building social proof. Ultimately, SEO is about expertise, experience, authority and trust. And so the experience is going to happen on your website. So that's why you have to have a website. Authority can happen both on your website and your Google Business Profile. Trust has to happen in both places and expertise, experience, authority and trust. And so the expertise can be conveyed in part by what other websites are saying about you. How are you listed? Excuse me, what, what services do you say you offer on these different websites that you can be listed on? What do you say about the services and the locations that you serve, you know, on your website? Sorry about that, had to sneeze. So anyway, the two are intertwined. You know, there's a symbiotic relationship and this is where most marketing agencies honestly are going to fail you. They don't get the symbiotic relationship between your Google business profile and your website. And it's really critical that you work those two in conjunction with each other to build a fantastic opportunity for you to show up well in local search, which really means showing up on the Google Maps.

Paul

So one thing I would add to that when he was talking about the website is, you know, we live in a world where a lot of people, you know, people get younger. I mean people get older, they don't get younger. And your clients seem younger. You're, you're, it's, your prospects are going to be younger and they want to either self book a lot of times or they want to at least request a time for an appointment on what we call a booking request calendar. And if you don't have a website, it's rather difficult to, to offer that. And that's just the world we live in. So that's another reason you really need a website. Anyone have anything to add to that?

Jeff

Yeah, I'll jump in a little bit. I think we talk about Omnichannel or at least multi channel a lot. And that really says claim all of the properties that you can online that matter to your audience. But the website particular to me, I still think of it as the central hub of the online presence. If you don't have a website, you're missing a huge, huge opportunity. Take it back to your Google business profile. There's a lot you can do in there and a lot you should do in there. We're going to talk about that later, but it's still somewhat limited. They just took away the chat capability from the Google business profile. Right. So if you want, and chats are huge right now, chats are a great way to start to draw people in to move them down your funnel. You can't do it on a business profile anymore, so you got to do it on a website. Right. You do it on Facebook still with messenger. But the website is a huge, huge opportunity to totally control it's. The one place that you can totally control everything in your business and how it's presented and how you lead people from one place to another. So you absolutely gotta have a website.

Jeff

And I'd add to that the, you know, the one way I try to explain it to prospects and clients or just businesses I'm talking to is your website is the only property you actually own. It's, it's essentially your brick and mortar online, right? You, you do not own your Facebook, you don't own your Google Business profile. All of these properties are valuable to you, but your website is the only one you can control. And in a well thought out strategy, marketing strategy, just as you said, Jeff, everything should be pointing to your website because that's what you can control. You can guide people through their buyer's journey much more effectively on your website than anywhere else because you can lead them through it through multiple means. You can enhance your website with all sorts of great things like the chat, like video, you know, all sorts of things. And just to reinforce something Ken said, you know, he, he talked a little, he kind of talked. I think he misspoke a little bit when he was mentioning the Google reviews. Google reviews are the most important reviews you can possibly get. And it's because people are searching for your service, right? And statistics show that if you can have more and better Google reviews, not only will they show up in your listings, but they help tremendously from a social proof standpoint and people's buying decisions. So those are really valuable points. And everything Ken said was dead on good stuff.

Jeff

I think the Google Business profile also gives you the opportunity to, to pick up some of that social proof and move it over to your website. I mean, there are ways to put widgets on the website that automatically pull in the reviews. And again, cautionary note, don't cherry pick, right? If you're a business owner building website, just don't go out and Cherry Pick your 3 best reviews or testimonials and you get in trouble with the FTC if you do that. But moving, you know, the automated ways of showing your Google reviews on your website kind of strengthens both, right? And it's that, that social proof that, you know, people have worked with you before. Are they sharing their experiences and presumably they're all good, but if not, then, you know, strategies for dealing with that too.

Ian

But don't cherry pick one because we're talking specifically about the construction industry too. I, I wanted to mention I was preparing a presentation for one of my clients who's A remodeling business out west. And one of the things that we're talking about today is just their, their year over year results. And what's interesting because I know remodelers locally to me as well as clients that we have, is that that whole industry is in decline right now. Like this has been a horrible year for most remodeling companies because you had the boom of COVID you that kept going for a little while and then with all of the economic pressures, it's been down. So a lot of construction trades where it's like home improvement type stuff, they're feeling the pinch right now. And why that's really relevant to this conversation is if you're in the construction industry, if you're in the remodeling industry and you want to maximize the number of leads that you're getting, good quality leads, you got to be maximizing your Google business profile or you're just leaving money on the table. You're paving the way to prospective clients going to your competition. And that just doesn't make sense.

Jeff

Yeah, that's a good point. And you need everything, every competitive edge you can get. And the Google business profile is certainly a big competitive edge if you can optimize it well, if you can get the reviews up on there, if you can start showing up in the, in the Google, that, that section of the Google results, search results I think, you know, so we're talking about local SEO. That also brings us back to the. There's a lot of different ways to show up on a search engine results page. A serp, pure SEO content on your website's one of them. The Google profile is another. Ads even show up on SERPs, right? And now the AI generated content's coming in. Google has a lot of different features for types of snippets they'll put on showing products. You know, there's a whole lot of different ways to do it. But what I'm getting to is the more of those you can claim, the less places you have for your competitors to show up. So take every competitive advantage. You can have as much thorough content. Ken talked about the relevance. Make sure it's relevant, make sure it's prominently out there and you know, claim that space, work that space, make it your own. And then also going back to the website and the local SEO aspect of the website, the website gives you a little more granularity. Again, that control that you're talking about, you can optimize for long tail keywords or maybe long tail is not going to show up on the Google Business profile as readily. But certainly with all the possibilities you have on websites, all the, you know, length isn't an issue, number of pages isn't an issue, types of pages, types of content aren't an issue. That's the place to go to town and really get your stake in the ground for everything that you possibly can.

Paul

Yes, definitely. So, Ian, Google has made a lot of changes to Google Business Profile lately. We've talked about some of them and even how you claim your listing. So can you kind of walk us through some of the things you should do and should not do when claiming your Google Business profile? How, how you, how one would go about that for sure.

Ian

Yeah. And, and first of all, it shouldn't even have to be said, especially after all of the, the, you know, the reasons we just gave you as a listener why you should care about your Google Business profile. But I can't tell you how many businesses I run into who either haven't claimed their profile or spend absolutely no effort on it year over year on their profile. So I'll just give you a quick anecdote. Friend of mine has a home service business. I learned that he didn't have a Google business profile because I was going to run a report for him just to say, hey, you know, check this out. And he's a fairly new friend. And so I was like, man, you got to get this up. Three months later. I, I've told him every time I've seen him over that three months, you got to get this up. It's easy, do it. And then finally, like I had to have a serious conversation with them like, this is not a big investment in time or effort. Yes. To optimize it, which Jeff will be sharing in a little bit. It does take time, it does take effort, it does take expertise. But to get your profile up and going for most businesses, like you can have it done in a maximum of 30 minutes, like just put the effort in. People get this up. It's a huge signal to your business and very quickly it's going to help you from a visibility standpoint. And I can say that even from this particular anecdote of this, this friend I know and him get, finally getting it up, like immediate results. He was able to ask people, past customers to do reviews and stuff like that. And so it's given him immediate exposure in the industry.

Paul

Yeah. If, if I can jump in real quick. Your Google Business profile is your Google Maps listing.

Ian

Yeah.

Paul

So if you don't have a Google Business Profile, you're probably not going to show up on Maps. And like you just said, well, you won't. Yeah, you cannot get Google reviews and studies show that people, they trust Google reviews as much as a referral from a friend. So just thought that was important to, to mention.

Ian

But yeah, and he, he had a website, it wasn't an SEO driven website so it wasn't getting any traffic. So but he wasn't giving Google that key signal of we're a business, this is our website. And just that connection has already provided him with some greater traffic to his website. So point number one, if you don't have a Google business profile, get one. If you're not sure Google your business go. And the best place to do this for the Google business profile is go into the maps. It's google.com maps or go to your app on your phone. If you have a Google Maps app on your phone and try to find your business. Many people do. So try to find your business, put your business name in there, see what comes up. If you're not coming up, the chances are you don't exist in Google business profiles and you need to go through the process of actually creating your business in there. So follow the on screen instructions, it will tell you how to do it. Google's refined this process and I think it's actually quite easy now. Way easier than it used to be in order to get your business listed and, and to go through that process. One of the key big things I would say that businesses get wrong and it's partly because it's been this moving target like Google has not made this very easy for businesses to understand. But that's the difference between a service area business and a pin drop business or an actual shown address. So it actually shows the pin on the map of where you're located as a business. This is a very easy discussion for brick and mortar businesses like if you have a restaurant, if you have a store, absolutely don't do service area business, do a pin drop show address business. This will help tremendously from what Ken was talking about, which is that proximity signal. If you do a service area business and I'll explain what that is. So you have your pin drop business, which is we are here. Google shows the PIN of exactly where you are. You also have the option of choosing a service area business which is to say, you can say, hey, we serve all of these areas but we don't want our address shown. And so Google will show like if you click on, if you, if you claim it and if the you set it up this way. Google will show your business with kind of this dotted boundary of this business serves this area. This is tremendously unhelpful. When people are searching locally for you, you will never rank better than the people that show are showing their pin. That in the past this used to fluctuate because Google had done lots of different algorithmic changes and stuff like that. But where we are today, pins will always outrank so service area businesses in that geography, like if you're closest to that person with a pin, you're going to find that person with that service with a pin. So think about that seriously. What's cool though is as a business, so if, if you're a local business, but you also serve regionally, nationally, globally, you can also add service areas to your address shown shown address location. So that's what I would recommend to businesses. If you can show your pin, show it and then choose the geographies that you serve because that will also help you show up into the broader areas. And then there's lots of other strategies related to that. But that's going to help you tremendously. And that's kind of at your initial setup and you can change that after the fact as well. One of the other tips is don't try to scam Google. All sorts of businesses that have, you know, I've talked to over the years have tried to game the system. And the system used to be able to be gamed easily. You used to be able to do keyword stuffing. You used to be able to fairly easily set up multiple locations of your business in different towns or cities surrounding you in not real addresses to some degree. Right. You, you know, maybe an employee lived there, but it wasn't really a real address for your, for your business. It, Google's gotten much smarter at this. So I'll be curious what you guys have to say about this. But my advice to businesses is just don't scam the system. Don't try. Like the worst thing that can happen to you is that you'll, you'll get some momentum with your Google business profile. You'll start to show up on maps, it'll create good signals to your website. People will be calling you more, you'll be getting more leads and then all of a sudden Google's algorithm will penalize you. Even though Google says they don't penalize you, they just don't send you traffic, which is the same thing. Or show you don't, don't do that. You can get your Google business profile suspended. You can get it removed if they think you're trying to scam the system. There's also a verification process once you set up your Google business profile. During that process, Google will want to verify that you're a legit business. And Google does this in. In varying ways. I don't know if they still do the postcards. They used to do postcards all the time where you would sign up. Google would send you a postcard in the mail with a code or a mailer and. But that used to take two, two weeks to three months sometimes.

Paul

I haven't seen that for months.

Ian

I think they still do it, but it's like the last resort verification process because Google doesn't want to pay for postage either. But there's lots of other processes you can go through. Sometimes it's uploading a document with your business address and name on it. Sometimes there's even verification processes where you actually need to record a video on your phone. As you walk up to your business, it shows the signage. You walk into your business showing it's a legitimate place of business or a store. So there's different ways that Google will ask you to do this. Sometimes it's just a phone call. Google will actually send a call to your place of business to see if it's a legitimate phone number. And you know that kind of stuff. So you need to do that though, because if your Google business profile isn't verified, then it won't show up on map listings. I didn't know this because I've never used this. But Paul, you, you shared this in the notes that there's also this Google Business profile advisor that if you go to business.google.com advisors that there's people that will help you set up your account. Now, I don't know how good or bad that is. Google has a tendency of not being extremely good from a support standpoint. But I'm curious if you've had any anecdotal evidence of how that works.

Jeff

Yeah, it's.

Paul

It's actually not bad. And I think part of the reason they did this, because you were talking about the difference between a service area business and a brick and mortar, is that we've run into some situations. It's really not the fault of the business, but profiles, business profiles that have been around for years. It used to really not make much difference how you set it up. You know, if it was a service area business brick and mortar. And as things have evolved, we have a client that they were set up, their address was showing, but they're actually a service area business and when this was originally set up it didn't really matter. Then they went in there and went to change their address but it was a co, the address was a co working space and now you can't do that. And Google's not stupid and they recognize that. And they suspended the Google business profile and required re verification. And this goes back to now especially with service area businesses and certain industries like locksmiths for one where they want you, you were talking about the video. Now they want you to do that. You log in to your Google business profile and you take the video on your phone with, with the app and then you say you don't record the video and save it and then upload it. You have to do it right there from within the app. They're moving towards that and they're starting to require it and it's, I've had.

Ian

To do that once. It was pretty easy actually. But yeah, it's a, feels like an invasive step.

Paul

Yeah but they, they're starting to require and hey, blame the scammers. You know that's one thing I have my issues with Google but in this case this is people trying to scam the system and Google trying to crack down on it.

Ian

Yep, yep. And, and that, that's to our benefit, right? As consumers, as businesses like the, the more scammers that can get booted off the system, the more it helps legitimate businesses. So I don't think we, and, and as consumers it certainly helps us as well. So it does.

Jeff

I, I agree with you on that point Ian. But I also think my opinion probably shared by a lot of other people, Google goes a little bit too far. I mean let's acknowledge they're the 800 pound gorilla in the space they own search. Google's going to do what Google's going to do. However, my experience and, and I can address several of the points you made is they've really tilted the table away from smaller businesses. You know, this whole notion of brick and mortar location versus service area business. I mean their intentions are good. They're really trying to think about the customer experience, the buyer experience. What they really want is if you publish a location, somebody can drive up, walk in the door and sit down and say hi, I'm here, I'd like to meet with somebody to the point of co working office spaces that Paul made. You can't use those anymore. You used to be able to, but now you can't. And it's like well why not? If I'm a Small business operating out of a coworker working space. Even if my hours are by appointment only if I can meet somebody at that space, why is that a problem? Why do I have to be a big business that has their own building, essentially is where they're going now. Co working spaces. I, I have a networking colleague and friend that, that owns one. He said, yeah, you had two clients that at the same time applied for Google business profiles. One got it, no problem, the other got it shot down. So there's a little bit of art arbitrariness in there. But they could not get Google to understand. Google said, oh, you have to have a building with your permanent sign on the front of the building. So not a co working space, not a rented space, not a shared space. So you're talking about now a painting contractor that's, you know, doing maybe a million dollars a year has got to go buy a building to have a sign on it to get listed in the Google business profile. To me, that's Google going too far. But Google's gonna do what Google's gonna do. That doesn't mean say, screw it, I'm not gonna have a Google profile. You still gotta do that. You gotta do whatever you can. If you can get the listing at a co working space, do it. But you probably won't. But then your choices, you'll have to be a service area business.

Ian

And the truth is, right, Jeff, that like, we've all been doing this long enough that we know that what Google decided yesterday could be reverted, you know, a month from now. So don't, don't just, yeah, I agree with you. Don't give up on it and do.

Jeff

Whatever you can is the point. Right. Take advantage of whatever Google has to offer to the extent that you can. Don't just say, oh, I can't, you know, I can't get my address, so I won't even bother with the profile. Profile is still important. Even if you're a service area business, you can still get reviews on it, you'll still get some local SEO juice out of it. But you are at a disadvantage. And my opinion, that's something that Google's got to address, especially as the gig economy gets to be bigger and bigger and you've got more smaller businesses. They can't have everything tilted toward big businesses.

Paul

Yeah, well, and Google does allow. See, there's different types of co working spaces. And if you're in a co working space where you, I think it pretty much comes down to if all you have is a desk, they don't allow that. But if you have an office within a CO working space and you have a sign on that office space, then.

Jeff

And when they got shot down, they wanted a video, and they specifically said, we want to see your sign on the outside of the building. We don't want to see a video of you walking up to the directory that has you listed in a suite and then getting on the elevator and getting off with the, you know, the door having the name of the co working space. It was. It was just crazy. I mean, it's like, if the intention is that customers can meet with you there, then even if it is just a desk, you can rent a conference room for an hour if you're by appointment only. But they specifically said no. You got to be able to have normal business hours where anyone off the street can walk in, go to the desk. I want to meet with somebody, and then sit down and meet with somebody. That was just too, too far.

Paul

Yeah, I, I don't disagree. Like you said, they're gonna do what they want to do.

Ian

Two more things I wanted to mention about when you're setting up your account make. I see this all the time. This usually has happened over time, or Google pulled in the URL, you know, somehow, but make sure it's HTTPs because it's sending to an unsecure URL, which will help you. And then this leads into what Jeff's going to talk about. But absolutely. Max out all the areas Google's giving you, all sorts of signals you can provide Google with within your profile. You need to max every single one of those out to its highest capability, because again, you're creating signals. If you want, you know, a single string to a can kind of telephone signal, that's what you'll get if that's all the effort you put in. But if you maximize and optimize all of the signals, you're creating a pipeline of, you know, fiber optic cable to your business for Google. That's gonna help you tremendously.

Paul

Yeah. So that will segue into the question I was going to ask Jeff. What are. What are some tips for optimizing your Google business profile, and how does the accuracy of the business information affect local SEO outcomes?

Jeff

Sure, sure. And again, I want to be clear, even though Google can be frustrating and what they allow you to do, don't allow you to do kind of seems arbitrary. And at their whim, you still got to do it. You still got to have the Google business profile. Absolutely. And then once you create that, catch.

Paul

Up with Facebook on being a Pain in the ass.

Jeff

Yeah, they're at least their interface, I will say their interface for managing the Google Business profile is pretty decent compared Facebook wins as the worst meta is just three layers of band aids on top of each other. So yeah, once you claim that Google Business profile you can go like I think Ian said, business.google.com is where you can go to manage it. You do need, I think you mentioned it, or maybe Ken mentioned it, you do need to have a Google account. Doesn't mean you have to use Gmail, but you have to have an email address registered as a Google account holder to be able to set up the profile. And then, you know, once you're on there, then you can go in and you know, upload pictures and change descriptions and change hours and all that stuff. But you want to basically go and everything they allow you to do, there's a question and answer section, there's a post section, there's an images section. You want to go everywhere you can and fill out everything you possibly can. It starts with a detailed description of your business and make it written for somebody who's looking for it. You not just keyword stuffed, but use relevant keywords. So talk about your business using terms that people would be searching for. Don't just take, you know, the profile area and just keyword phrase comma keyword phrase comma keyword phrase and think you're going to game Google because you won't. But write a description about what you do. But make sure you're using the language that people are using when they're searching. We talk about this a lot. Oftentimes businesses get in their own heads about their jargon and that's not necessarily the jargon people are using. So write your business descriptions as comprehensively as possible around what you do in the terms and the language that people are using. A search, because that's going to match it up as a local search result. Right. If you are able to list an address, absolutely. Make sure your address is in there correctly and then make sure it matches the address on your website. The address on your website, the address on your Google Business profile should match up completely. Any other properties as well. But for sure, the website, if you want your website to rank in local search and the signals that come from the Google profile are part of that, then make sure the address matches up. That's one more way Google can tie them together. So make sure you're, you're as I think Ian said, make sure you use the HTTPs version of your website when you put In a link to your website.

Paul

Website, make sure you have an HTTPs version of your website.

Jeff

That's a good point. Yeah, good point. Not everyone does these days, which is. But yeah, and there are free by the way there are free ways with most hosting companies to get free HTTPs. That shouldn't be a barrier. And then make sure you have the hours listed correctly. Make sure that you have contact information listed correctly. All the things you can do. Again that's about the user experience. Right. And, and make sure it all is correct back and forth across all the properties. But build out that description with keywords. Upload photos. If you do have a physical location, upload a photo of what it looks like. Now the address is going to let people see it. You know, if they go to the map and drop the camera, what the guy's name is that little walking around, the little orange guy that you drop on the street, then you can get a street view. Street, yeah, street view is the name. But that little guy is a nickname. But that's, you know. Yeah, they can see it if they do that. Call them Waldo. Where's Waldo? But also it doesn't hurt to upload an image of your location and then upload other relevant images to your product or service. Maybe some of the staff, you know, treat a little bit like social media. I'll get to that in a minute too. But just show as much as you can that people know when they're looking at your profile that they're in the right place. They know what you do, they can see what you do, they can get a sense of how you do it, who you are and that you're somebody they want to do business with. The side note, talking about addresses and the map view, I'm not a fan of using a home address and I think Google is. If they're not at the point they will be soon where they're not going to allow allowed anyway because again they want a place where somebody can walk up to you and walk in the door and sit down and meet with you.

Paul

Google has made it clear that if you are a home based business and they're okay with that, but you need.

Jeff

To be service area.

Paul

Absolutely.

Jeff

Yeah.

Paul

Do not list now again that your.

Jeff

Home that goes back to the. Are they putting homemade big businesses at a disadvantage? A of lot lot of people have a side of their home and they may even have a separate entrance with a sign on it that this is a business. So in that case if you have permanent signage in a door, you may be able to use that But I think then they want to sign out by the street, which most HOA aren't going to allow. It goes to that video of somebody walking up to the, you know, getting out of their car, walking up to the door. But unless you're in that rare case where you're operating a dog grooming or a hair salon or something else, even maybe consulting out of your home, having your home address probably isn't what you want to do. There's privacy concerns. But also it just in my opinion, doesn't look professional. Right. If I'm looking for a plumber near me and I see a picture of a plumber's office with their logo and a truck parked out front and I see a guy's house, who am I going to think is more serious about being a plumber? So really think if you're using your home address, if they'll even allow you to do it. Think, really think about, about how that works. Ian mentioned all the different attributes you can flag on your site. If you are a place where people can go, take advantage of the is it accessible? You know, all of the, the different flags that you can set, list them, go through all of the places and pro tip, depending on the category that you set for your business, those attributes may change. I once worked with a client that was listed as a restaurant even though they weren't, they were a food distributor and they were being listed as restaurant and you wouldn't believe what it took to unlayer that. But because they were listed as a restaurant, they had dine in takeout options.

Paul

So.

Jeff

Look at for the category, make sure you're in the right category and then look at all the attributes that are available, make sure you claim them, list your hours of operation and when you get those emails from Google that says, hey it's you know, Thanksgiving coming up, are you open on Thanksgiving? Go ahead and set your hours. No, I'm not. You're not open on Black Friday. If you're retail, you're going to be, but if you're other businesses, you may not be. Make sure you set those hours and change the hours as, as holidays arise. That will also show Google that you are keeping things current.

Ken

Right.

Jeff

If the hours were set three years ago and they never change for holidays, Google's gonna go, yeah, this may not be as relevant to the buyers, customers as it should be. So list the hours and keep them updated and then reviews. We've already talked about posts. You can treat your Google business profile as kind of a social media of sorts. If you Will you can put actual posts of content and do that regularly, do that a couple times a week at least. Again, that's a way of showing ongoing activity, just like SEO in general. If you're Google, your question and answer machine, is this website going to be a better answer or is this Google profile going to be a better answer to somebody's query than this other one? Well, let's see, which one was updated last week, which one wasn't updated for the past three years, right? That recency, that currency, that relevance to what people are looking for. Some of the signals that Google uses to evaluate that are how much things change and are updated. So add posts to the Google profile on a regular basis. They don't have to be as long and lengthy as blog articles on your website. They probably can and should be a little bit longer than a typical, you know, social media post. But even if all you want to do is a social media style, post that length, that format, do that, it's better than nothing, maybe put a little bit more into it. And then again, it's all of this taken together, all of this information that Google is going to use to try and match up your profile to somebody's searches and it doesn't cost anything, so why not do it? It's just a little bit of time and like Ian said, you can get a basic profile up and running in a half hour. You can build the rest out over time and tie it into the other things and just, just keep at it is, is the mantra. Just, just, you know, just keep swimming from Finding Nemo. Right? Just, just keep working it. And it takes a little time, but once the reviews start building up, once the posts are getting out there and you're starting to show up and search more, you'll show up and search even more. Spin that flywheel up. But it's another, another error on the quiver.

Paul

And you know, one thing I'd mention is we're talking about this and this would apply to any account as a business owner, be involved and document everything, the logins, everything. We run into this all the time where some employee set that up 15 years ago when they're dead or we can't get in touch with them and we don't know the login or the email address associated with it because a lot of times, look, people are busy and business owners, they'll just have someone set it up just to check off the box and then, you know, three, four years later, they need to do something with that account, whether it's Google business profile or any other account and they can't access it.

Jeff

Yep, yeah, absolutely. And even though it's a rented property, so to speak, you know, we talked about the website's the only thing you totally own and control. The Google business profile is a rented property. But you need the keys to it, right?

Ian

Yeah.

Jeff

You need the keys to be able to get in and make changes and control it. I have had clients come to me. I can't get into my Google profile anymore. What do I do? So like. Well, you're gonna have to contact Google and good luck. It's gonna take a while. Now that, that web was it GBP advisors that, that you mentioned earlier, that's a good way to try and get in and get some help. But then you're gonna have verification, you know. Yeah, sure. Anybody can be trying to claim your profile. Right. You really need to have it in your name. Don't let somebody else set it up for you and tell you they'll manage it. Because then like Paul said, what happens if they're not around? You need to owner. Yep.

Ian

Primary owner.

Jeff

Yep. You can, through the profile manager, you can allow other people to access it and manage it for you. You can give them permissions and that's what, what we advocate, what we recommend. We, we don't like to be, and we don't advocate that, that any of our clients let anyone else be in the ownership role of the their properties. But sure, you're going to give us control through the, the business profile manager, through the Facebook business manager, through, you know, whatever Google Ads manager, you know, through whatever management tools are available. Use those. Don't, don't just let somebody else put it in their name.

Paul

All right, good stuff. So, well, we're already coming up on an hour, so I'm going to round table this last question. I think Ken recorded an answer. So it's going to ask some questions about on page SEO best practices for contractors. And I believe Ken recorded a video with his answer.

Ken

So for on page optimization, I like to think of this in two ways. One is around keywords. So keywords don't necessarily have the same impact that they did, you know, 10 years ago. I mean it used to be that everything was driven around keywords. You still want to use keyword concepts, don't get me wrong. And they need to be long tail for you to rank. It's very difficult to rank for a one or two keyword phrase like running shoes. But if you have, you know, running shoes in St. Louis or custom fit running shoes, you know, and Then location, you're going to have a better opportunity. So to make this relevant to contractors, you know, it could be James Hardy Siding, okay, Where you're going to compete against not only the company, but also every company that may provide James Hardy Siding installation or selling their product. But if you talk about, you know, James Hardy, elite contractor in St. Louis, now you've got a better opportunity to rank. So using that concept of the long tail keyword phrase and realizing that Google understands things semantically now so that it's going to look at similar phrases. So even if you are trying to optimize for that, that phrase, and that's kind of your focus of what your web page is really all about, Google may have other intentions and it may look at semantically similar keyword phrases. Now, having said that, you know, you, you've got several opportunities for on page optimization. Your title, this is, you know, this is the meta title feature. This is what's going to show up when you hover over the tab at the top of your browser. That's going to show up in the title, your description. So this is the meta description. And so you write and you tell the search engines in the description 160 characters or less what that page is about. Now, the search engines may overwrite that, but still it's just good best practice to go ahead and do that. Don't leave it blank. Don't let it happen by accident. Take control. Ultimately, Google wants to see that you're doing the things on your website to try to help make it understandable, you know, and consistent, and have that core strong messaging to reinforce the services you offer, the locations that you serve, serve the expertise that you have, the, you know, and all of that. So keywords, there is a, there is still an SEO field for keywords really as much as anything that's to help you grade your own page in terms of how you're using the keywords in places like the title, the description, maybe page, copy, the alt text, you know, for sure. So the alt text, every picture that goes on your website, Google can see that it's a picture. It doesn't necessarily know what it is. This is also important for ADA compliance, you know, website accessibility, if you will. The alt text tells the searcher either somebody who has, you know, like a visual impairment, for example, or, or the search engine what that picture is. And so it just really is another piece of content and a way that you can describe what your web page is all about to just really reinforce that using the proper header structure. Commonly you Might think of these as like paragraph titles. So you have what we call H1, H2, H3, H4, etc. And so you want to only have one H1 because that's the main header, that's the title on your page. The title at the top here, the title, the meta title. I kind of think of that as the title of your page. The header is the title on your page. It's what the readers are going to read to see the structure of the content. And then you want to use H2S. Those are subheadings, you know, that start to introduce the larger topics. And then you can, you know, incorporate a couple of Those, incorporate some H3s for additional subheadings just to provide the structure of the content and make it easier for humans to consume and also for the search engines to consume. You want to use your keywords or variations of your keywords throughout the web page. Copy that. You have this again, it's all reinforcing. You're telling the search engine, here's what my page, here's what I'm telling you my page is about. And now you've got to provide the proof that it's really about that. And so, you know, you do that by use incorporating keywords in all of these different core elements, anchor text for links. So I know Jeff's going to talk about linking, but you know, you want to use the right words that again, have SEO meaning, that have good keyword phrase meaning to the search engines to reinforce what it is that that page is about. The next thing is I like to talk about a little bit about your site organization because again, this is kind of on page. It's, it's kind of the, the technical backbone and setup of how you've got your website going. And so, you know, having social media sites integrated with your website, again, not a huge deal, but it sends signals from, you know, to the search engines that you've got other content and other places that, that can be powerful. You need to make sure that your website's set up to be crawlable. The anchor text I talk about is important. Your URL structure, how you name each and every web page you know, yourdomain.com James Hardy signing contractor St. Louis for example, that has. You want to be consistent with that. Ideally, having a flatter architecture is better in some regards. You want to try to keep your content organized and maybe you have pages that fall underneath pages, so you have a hierarchy of those pages. But don't go crazy with it. Keep it fairly flat. Use your Architecture to reinforce the pillars or the foundational pieces of content and all the supporting pieces, pieces of content that go along with that. And then, you know, using, you know, using the proper site mapping structure just to make sure it's crawlable, make sure that there are no broken links. Broken links, you know, kind of can cause real problems. And if you have web pages that are no longer appropriate, accurate, you've taken them down. Use a 301 redirect to manage that so that the search engines know what pages to display instead. Instead of just throwing up, you know, a broken link, which would be a 404 error. You don't want to have multiple URLs going to the same content, you know, that's going to be considered duplicate content. That's just a waste, it's not necessarily a penalty. But you spent a lot of time and effort creating pages that are largely seen in the, in the eyes of the search engines as duplicate, and that's not good. And then, you know, just the technology, I mean, this is a little bit old and out of date in some regards, but believe it or not, there's still websites out there that have some of this stuff with AJAX and Flash and you know, so, so think, you know, keep your technology of what's running your website, website up to date for two reasons. One, it's a security vulnerability if you don't. But two, the search engines want to see that you're actively updating and maintaining your website. And so if you're using old archaic tools on your website, that's, that's going to have an impact.

Paul

Foreign. That was some good information, Ian. We're, we're running, running long on time here, so I'm going to roll a couple things into your question. So content optimization using service specific keywords and you know, service area pages. And I think Jeff talked about this about keeping your business information the same everywhere. Why does all that matter? How does all that help?

Ian

Yeah, yeah, and I, I actually, I know Ken and I agree on this because when we drill down the important, Just because of what he was talking about related to keywords. I know when you have your, when all the eggheads of SEO, which we're part of, get together and Google says, well, keywords don't really matter as much anymore. They absolutely do. It's a lie. Like your, your voice search keywords, how you ask for things, the, the words you use on your website, they absolutely mean just as much today as they did yesterday. Except Google's gotten smarter with how semantic keywords work. Together how they view topics that you talk about that are, you know, keywords are part of. Like I, I hate it when we as industry insiders talk about stuff like that because I think it confuses the heck out of people. You should be using words that matter to the people that are searching for you and align with how they search for you. That's the bottom line. And those are keywords. So I just like to rant on that because I feel like we as insiders talk too much about this in a way that's confusing to people. So you guys can disagree with me, but that's okay.

Paul

Keywords don't matter.

Ian

Keywords do matter.

Jeff

They've got to be the keywords people are using. Right. Again, stay away from your internal jargon.

Ian

Absolutely. So service specific keywords absolutely matter. Don't get your head stuck in the clouds with, hey, we're gonna, I've seen this happen with businesses we've been consulting with where they develop their own verbiage about a service. So they want to, they want to be the IBM or the Coca Cola or the Apple. And so they've created their own terminology that absolutely no one in the industry uses. Don't do. You can do that, but don't expect people are going to be, yeah, yeah, like you have to use common terminology that people are using related to your services. So if you're a plumber, use the terms that people are searching for. Broken toilet, backed up toilet. You know, like there's a million things dripping faucet. Like, yes, you should be using that. We're a plumber, that we fix leaks that we like. There's all the standard stuff that you should be using. Absolutely. Don't deviate from that, your, your core service offerings, but also think about how people search for it and the, the problems you're solving. And then lastly, not specifically related to service area or service specific keywords, but I wanted to make sure this was said today. We've been talking a lot about kind of doing your thing on Google business profiles. But don't forget, you do not exist in a bubble, in isolation. You need to out optimize consistently your business profile over your competition. So Jeff was talking about reviews, talking about updates, like, you need to be using this tool more than your competition to keep sending signals to Google that you're the better choice in the competition. Right. If you don't do that, if you get complacent and just, you know, set it and forget it, you're not going to do very well from a signal standpoint with Google. Right. Even if you have more reviews than your competition. But the last review you got was a year ago and they have a hundred or a thousand this year. It's, you're, you're going to start to slip through those rankings. So I just wanted to make sure that was said because I think businesses get very complacent with things they don't always think about. You know, this is just like it's the same argument about your website. It's not a set it and forget it either. Think about it as a physical location that you have to keep looking at its very best in order to send the right signals to customers when they walk through the doors. Same thing you're doing with all of these digital profiles and properties as well.

Paul

Yes, definitely. So, Jeff, internal linking, what is it? Why is it important? And internal link as opposed to outbound links?

Jeff

I think we can, we should, we could probably do a whole podcast on strategies, link building strategies. It might not be a bad one actually. I'll add that to the list, but since Ken mentioned it, I know we're running short on time. I'll hit it really quickly. Internal linking is just links on pages in your websites that link to other pages on your websites and they give Google hints about what content is related to what other content. And there are strategies around how you build pages to have, we call them hub pages or pillar pages, to have like the most meaningful high level content and then you branch out in other places and then those other places branch back. So as Google's crawling the website, it's getting hints about what things relate to what other things and how they tie back to each other. So that's important. But also it's not a stretch to think Google crawls your site in different ways. It may come to the site once every three months and look at the sitemap and digest every page of the site. Other times it may come in from some site linked to you and it's going to look at maybe five or ten pages and that's as far as it's going to go because it's not its main job, it's looking at other things. Right. So having those links from wherever it came in, not necessarily your homepage, but back to other pages, is only going to help Google crawl the site and do a better job on figuring out what your site's about and therefore more likely to present you as, as the answer to somebody's question, Hey, I know we're going to need to jump pretty soon. I do want to Hit one other thing really quick. And Paul, I need you to hold your tongue on this one.

Ken

Bing.

Jeff

Right, Bing. If it's only 5%, 7%, 10% maybe of what people use for searches, anything you do in SEO is probably going to apply to Bing. Except Bing has its own places for business. And the good news is once you do your Google business profile, Bing has a set up so you can import everything from your Google business profile into your Bing places profile. Don't ignore Bing, even if it's only 5% of the people that use it. Would you like a 5% increase in your website traffic or your business? Take the extra step then to go over to Bing, claim your business profile there. And you can probably just import everything over from the Google profile in college yet. But. But keep that in mind too.

Paul

All right, good stuff. So I think this, I. We're, we're long on time. I think this is a good place to wrap up. So Ian, can you take us out?

Ian

Absolutely. So thank you to our guides today and Canon Absentia for contributing. Thank you to our audience. We value you greatly for taking the time to listen to what we're sharing. As you can tell, we're all very passionate about serving clients, about helping you get your marketing working for your business. So if you have any particular needs, reach out to us. We invite you to do that. If you want us to cover a particular topic on this podcast, reach out. We would be happy to explore that option. And please share this with people you think would value it and get some great insights out of. So until next week, keep calm and mark it on folks.