83 - How To Optimise Your Site For Local SEO

Note: This transcript was auto generated then some poor soul sat and listened to it, and followed through correcting any mistakes they spotted. Please however expect human error and shout if you spot an issue. Email: lee [fancy curly symbol] trailblazer.fm.

Verbatim text

Lee:
Welcome to the WP Innovator Podcast, the podcast for web designers and design agencies, exploring the world of WordPress and online business. And now your host, Lee Jackson.
Lee:
Hello and welcome to episode number 83 of the WP Innovator Podcast. This is your host Lee. And on today’s show, we’ve got Rob Watson talking about local SEO. Yep, it exists. It’s complicated, but thankfully Rob makes it super duper easy. If you’re not already a member of the Facebook group, head on over to wpinnovator.com forward slash group, where we are all in there sharing our thoughts, our cat pictures, our holidays. I don’t know. We’re sharing all sorts of amazing stuff in that group. If you are a web designer, a WordPress enthusiast, a design agency, a marketer, a social media god or goddess or a genius in SEO, really this group is for you because it is full of really nice and normal people having a great time sharing stuff, useful stuff, the best. All right, I’m going to shut up, sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. And remember to keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Seriously, you do not want to lose a limb.
Lee:
You are joining a conversation with me, that’s Lee Jackson, and Mr. Rob Watson, who was shockingly surprised when he realized that this whole podcast does not start with that really cool kind of jingle music. So I kind of feel like we need to do that for you right now, don’t we?
Rob:
Yeah, you’re going to sing along for me?
Lee:
Hi, and welcome to the WP Innovator Podcast. I can’t remember the rest.
Rob:
That’s even better.
Lee:
Let’s get…
Rob:
There you go. That was it. Oh, and then there’s that kind of funky music, isn’t there, for the intro?
Lee:
It’s like…
Rob:
Yeah.
Lee:
We should be playing that. Larissa, get your guitar out. It would be amazing, wouldn’t it?
Rob:
Yeah, I’m not going to sing, though.
Lee:
No, no. Well, you could. Well, that would be… I mean, go for it. Do a little solo for us.
Rob:
Got any songs?
Lee:
No, no, no.
Rob:
No?
Lee:
Let’s talk about SEO instead.
Rob:
We can talk SEO.
Lee:
I’ll stick to my strings.
Rob:
I thought SEO stood for singing ever so originally. Oh, that was quick.
Lee:
Oh, that was good.
Lee:
Guys, if you don’t know Rob Watson, he’s a mate of mine. He’s in the WP Innovator Facebook group as well.
Rob:
You better have me if you’re not, because I’ve just lied otherwise.
Lee:
I am.
Lee:
You can find that over on wpinnovator.com/group.
Lee:
And this podcast is because me and Rob and a few others were actually having a chat on SEO. And Rob linked to this amazingly long article, 29 actionable tips that you can apply today for your SEO strategy. And it’s something that pretty much all of us, I think, struggle with who do not focus primarily on SEO. So I thought it’d be great to get Rob on to unpack his journey first before we get to the meat and potatoes. I’d really love to know more about your journey, mate. And then to kind of dive into deep dive, as they like to say, into that blog post as well, mate. So before I, like, fill 20 minutes of chatting and not giving you a word in edgeways, I’ll shut up. And do you mind just giving people a little bit of an introduction about who you are, how old you are, your favorite color, the color of your boxes, all that sort of stuff?
Rob:
Yeah. Color of boxes today, gray.
Lee:
Gray.
Rob:
Well, good choice. I like it.
Lee:
On this hot day.
Rob:
Not the most original, but yeah.
Lee:
No.
Rob:
So my name’s Rob Watson. As I mentioned to you before, there is another Rob Watson who speaks at digital stuff, digital events and that sort of thing, which isn’t me. But I guess I can kind of take credit for some of his work. But at the moment, I’m a freelance digital marketing consultant. I’ve got my own website, clicktosale.co.uk, which is where this blog post is from. But just to rewind, like you said, my career, I go all the way back to sort of offline marketing and the days of using dead trees to print stuff on and send copies and stuff through the posts. So my offline background, which I see has really stood me in good stead because I was more focused on direct mail and more measurable stuff. We measured how many calls we got off things, how many sales we got off. So I segued quite neatly in later years into the digital world where it’s basically sort of, it’s been described as direct marketing on steroids where all the results come through quicker. You can see much more granular level. So, yeah, I’ve been involved more hands on with digital from, I would say, about, oh, where are we now? About early 2000s.
Lee:
Wow.
Rob:
Did bits of freelance on the side and gradually built that into a full time thing. And most of my income should be of real interest to your target audience and to yourself. It does come from just working closely with marketing agencies that don’t have an in-house digital person. I actually get a sustainable income just out of that alone, just by working with a select few. And that’s me. May turn it into some sort of a micro agency with some staff in years to come, but don’t really aspire to turn it into Saatchi and Saatchi, which I’m sure is something you and your listeners can identify with.
Lee:
Saatchi and Saatchi, eh? That just sounds like so much pressure and stress.
Rob:
Yeah.
Lee:
I quite like the idea of the micro agency. I guess you term us as a micro agency. There’s only four of us, and we don’t really have any plans to get a massive, expensive office and do all that sort of stuff. I think we’re just cruising and enjoying life.
Rob:
Exactly. That’s what it’s all about.
Lee:
Because, I mean, like yourself, I’m a family man, I’ve got young kids. So it’s a lifestyle thing as well.
Rob:
Totally. Yeah. Long mate. Continue.
Lee:
Now, I was looking through your website the other day because I actually prepare for these things. And I remember seeing somewhere that you have done a variety of marketing roles since 1996.
Rob:
Yeah.
Lee:
Was that when the digital stuff started or was that like the killer?
Rob:
No. That was the dead trees bit. I mean, actually, during that time, I’ve done a full-time marketing degree.
Lee:
Yeah.
Rob:
Bits of marketing work on the side during the degree and then on to a graduate scheme in marketing. So really a real broad mix of stuff. Lots of very sort of, I worked for a broadband provider, which went on to become part of Virgin Media. And so some really interesting stuff there when broadband was first taking off. And back then, you would pay about 35 quid a month for one meg broadband. Much faster on your phone now for a fraction of that price. And they used to have like a monthly download limit of one gig. And they used to say that all the real gamer geeks would just about get near that. And you think, you know, they were classed as heavy download. It’s incredible when you look at how technology has moved on. Now we now have phones that are faster and more powerful than that. And that’s 20 years. Just in the space of less than that. About 15 years ago I left there.
Lee:
That’s insane.
Rob:
Was that NT Hell you were with?
Lee:
It was indeed, yeah.
Rob:
Well, I mean, they called it NT Hell. I actually never had a problem with them. And when they moved over to Virgin, I continued to stay loyal. I’ve been a customer for donkey’s years. But now I’m getting 160 meg down instead of the 2 meg I think I started with back in the day.
Lee:
That is insane.
Rob:
It’s a good feeling.
Lee:
So, I mean, I’m interested. So, I’ve got quite a lot of friends who’ve done marketing degrees, etc. And they did it around 20 years ago. I imagine, did the internet even factor in that original marketing degree?
Rob:
No. Well, it was talked about. They didn’t really know what they were going to do with it. I do find it’s, I think that the, I’ve done a marketing degree. I did the Chartered Institute of Marketing post-grad diploma. I actually teach on a part-time basis digital marketing for a CIM college as well. So, on the CIM diploma. And I do think there is value in getting some education in it. It teaches you the strategic side of things. But in terms of hands-on stuff, there’s no course that will cover that. Well, no one course that will cover everything you need to know. So, I get real value out of going to conferences. Best one being Brighton SEO, I think is incredibly valuable. And then the training that they do as part of that as well, the paid training that they do, has served me really well as well. So, one of those courses was local SEO, which without that course, I wouldn’t be in a position to sit and do a podcast with you specifically on local SEO. So, there’s some great knowledge there. So, yeah, I think you have to be, you have to just commit to being a lifelong learner. And some of that learning is very informal, like blogs and listening to fantastic podcasts like yours.
Lee:
So, I like what you’re saying there. Obviously, they’re fantastic podcasts. But I like the idea as well of people often feel that, oh, I’ve not got a degree in X, Y, and Z, so I can’t really do this. But what you pointed out is, obviously, with the degree, you’re going to get some great background, you know, a lot of theory and all of that sort of stuff as well about marketing, the biggest sort of picture that is very, very valuable. But even with that in your toolkit, you are also still doing what all of us are doing, which is on a daily basis learning because the landscape and the tools of marketing seem to be changing on a daily basis.
Lee:
I didn’t even know what bots were a year ago. And now everyone’s talking about bots. I still don’t really get that either, to be honest.
Rob:
No.
Lee:
Any insight into bots? It sounds really impersonal to me.
Rob:
That’s a great deal.
Lee:
I mean, I’ve come at SEO from the kind of, when you mentioned bots, you’re talking in terms of search bots and that sort of thing.
Lee:
No, I’m actually talking about the bots that do the stuff with regards to Facebook. I mean, just general marketing. So, these are the Facebook bots that people are going on about now, all of that automation.
Rob:
No, nowhere near it, to be honest.
Lee:
Yep.
Rob:
And it just goes to show that you’ve got to not get too obsessed with trying to know everything because there is just too much going on. So, that’s why I try. And I have reined myself in over the years. I used to do WordPress sites for people, but now I try and shy away from that. I see myself as a kind of traffic and content person. So, I love the whole idea of looking at things like keyword research, looking at the way people behave on Facebook. The whole persona building bit and saying, well, okay, how can we get masses of the target market for this client to their website and get them converting? What are the steps they’re going to take? Just obsess over sort of customer journeys and the little micro conversions. Try and just keep it realistic. And then when it comes to something that might involve a bot, you just partner up with somebody else on that.
Lee:
Yeah.
Rob:
And I just try and things like WordPress sites, yeah, I can do them. And I did them very averagely and I did them mostly from off-the-shelf templates. And it’s just knowing your limits and say, so what I’m trying to do now is influence people towards WordPress.
Lee:
Yeah.
Rob:
So, they’ve got a site that I know I can work with through all their campaigns. But no, I’m nowhere near it with bots. That’s one for another day.
Lee:
Definitely. Well, I guess the only reason why I highlighted that again is just because of the marketing in general. You’ve got SEO. You’ve got social media marketing. There’s pay-per-click, which is not SEO. I get that. But there is building a website. There’s still offline campaigns as well because print media is still very powerful. There are so many things that you could be doing. And what I like from what you’ve just said there is as well that you’re focusing on one or two things and doing them really, really well, which is awesome.
Lee:
Now, how long have you been going it alone?
Rob:
It’s only the last six months.
Lee:
And how did that journey happen?
Rob: Just fairly more organically than it sounds. We just built up bits of freelance work. I’ve had bits of freelance work in the past, and that’s when I did build WordPress websites for people. And probably about the 90th guest that said this, but I was doing stuff way too cheaply. But then, of course, you were learning. In fact…
Lee:
Yeah, but I’ve said that as well, remember?
Rob:
Yeah.
Lee:
Oh, yeah.
Rob:
So we’ve all been there. It’s like group therapy. In fact, I actually go back as far as 2004. I was maybe done with Ron Gardening. I actually started learning Dreamweaver. I bought a copy of Studio MX. It was before Dreamweaver and that suite of products had even been bought by Adobe. So I started learning and I was able to turn out average, really, really average sites for people really slowly. And then this thing called WordPress came out. Do you remember they marketed so-called famous five-minute WordPress install where they talked you through how to do it and you could install it on your domain? And I was like, right, three hours later, I thought this five-minute install isn’t going to work. It’s false advertising.
Lee:
Yeah.
Rob:
So I kind of gave up on WordPress. I come at marketing from the content and creative side of things. I’m not a code person. So that’s why I’m pushing the work myself away from websites now and actually building them. Then hosts came along that did WordPress one-click install scripts. So when I said one-click, I thought, hmm, five minutes before, I gave it a go. And I actually got into WordPress around version 2.7. It was about 2009.
Lee:
Yeah, that’s in fact 2.7. I feel like that was just when custom post types came out. Or was it 3.0? I can’t remember.
Rob:
I think it was just before.
Lee:
Yeah, that was it.
Rob:
I think it was about 3.0. So, yeah. And I had a job where I was traveling around a lot. And I’d go to conferences and things where I would be waiting to speak to the delegates at the conference about insurance. And I’d have, like, 20-minute coffee break where I get to chat to them and then, like, two-hour roll. And I used to take my laptop and just try and learn new stuff. And then came WordPress, which I heard on a podcast that if you’ve not tried WordPress before, this is the time you should really try it. So I did. And it was just you buy a cheap theme. You had one sidebar across the whole site. And it was really, really basic.
Lee:
Yeah.
Rob:
And I just never really looked back. So, yeah. So I’ve gone through a journey of doing sites for people far too cheaply. Then having a day job that was too consuming for me to do any freelance work, realistically. So I backed away from that. I have been qualified as a Google AdWords person on and off for a while. I did a few years of that and kept that going on the sideline. And then let the qualifications go and everything because they replaced all the qualifications. And I’ve now just done all my Google exams again.
Lee:
Oh, wow.
Rob:
It’s a changing beast, though, isn’t it?
Lee:
Yeah.
Rob:
So when I first did it, it was almost entirely keyword-based. I never did any sort of image-based ads on the display network. And I still don’t really know the display network that well. But the keyword-based side of AdWords, I know really well. And it dovetails really well with SEO. So I look at clients and say, well, okay, if you need some quick traffic, we’ll do some PPC. But I’ll be working on an SEO strategy in the meantime to get you some more traffic. And this will kind of plug that gap and get you some paid traffic in the meantime.
Lee:
I like that.
Rob:
Yeah, PPC certainly isn’t the solution, is it? It certainly can help. But I think a good long-term SEO strategy is something that even I need to invest in. I’m just making it up as I go along. But I’ll be following all 29 steps.
Lee:
Now, we are going to do a deep dive in a second, guys, into the blog post. But if you want to go check it out, if you go to clicktosale.co.uk forward slash WP Innovator, Rob is making a redirect, and that will send you straight to the blog post. And it sounds long with 29 steps, but trust me, it’s a nice, simple podcast. Sorry, nice, simple blog. And this podcast, I am sure, will be of great help to you. Also, I just want to encourage people as well. If you are currently in the day job and you are dreaming of becoming a freelancer, you know, or starting your own agency as well, or maybe you don’t quite yet feel skilled enough, just take those lessons from Rob’s journey there, you know, where there was a lull. He’s been teaching himself how to do stuff and since then has now, you know, been able to break free of the 9 to 5, as they say, and now probably works 7 a.m. till midnight.
Rob:
Yeah, on a quiet day, yeah.
Lee:
On a quiet.
Rob:
I love that. Screw the 9 to 5, everyone says. And then you realize when you’re in business for yourself, there’s never any time.
Lee:
So, anyway, clicktosale.co.uk /WP Innovator. And Rob, spotlight is on you. I have heard the term local SEO. I think I know what it means, but could you tell me what it means?
Rob:
So, first things first, it’s not like brand spanking you. It has been around really for probably about 8 or 9 years now, I guess. But it’s just the purpose of this podcast is to highlight the differences to people because anything you’re doing on sort of, some people use the word traditional SEO, which makes me laugh, makes me think of traditionally brewed beers in a keg. SEO.
Rob:
SEO from the 1900s.
Rob:
But no, it’s conventional SEO, traditional SEO, call it what I want, but non-local SEO. So, all the good things you’ve been in before, like in keyword, if you’ve done good keyword research before and you’ve then made pages that match those keywords very well and you’ve built links to your website, don’t worry. All that stuff is not wasted. There’s a layer of extra stuff that you can do to make sure you show in that local searches.
Rob:
So, to answer your first question, what’s local SEO? Well, your target audience is mainly web designers and agencies and such like, so it’s highly relevant to all of them. But basically, if you put in the keyword that you expect to appear under into Google and the little three map pack thing appears near the top of the search results underneath the paid ads, that you are a local SEO type business that needs to focus on local SEO.
Rob:
So, the anatomy of a search page on a local search now, as I said, you’ve got the AdWords ads at the top, you’ve got the three little listings on the map pack below that, and then you’ve still got the organic listings underneath. And slightly different things feed into the algorithms for all of those. So, you just need a sort of, if you’re doing PPC, it’ll be a three-way play. If not, you need a sort of a two-way play to try and get on that page one, because there’s only so many businesses can get on there.
Lee:
Are you saying a map pack, by the way?
Rob:
Map pack.
Lee:
Map pack.
Rob:
So, right now, I’ve just Googled WordPress agency from, and I’m in Wellingborough physically, and I appear at the top of the list there where the map is, and you can also see where we are on the map. Actually, I also appear as number one organic result, but I don’t know if that’s just because I’m doing it from my internet connection.
Lee:
It’s probably because you are just, you know, your site will be so well-optimized for that, just because your site screams out you’re a WordPress agency.
Rob:
True.
Lee:
Probably a lot of people would put web design, so if it’s a web design agency, Wellingborough or web design. So, basically, a local search will be triggered. Even if someone doesn’t put a place name, there’s different ways you can be triggered. So, they might put web designer, and Google will say, okay, this is one that we recognize as being something where people search because they want someone local. So, they will show you, because you’re on the phone most of the time nowadays, and it’s got GPS, they will show you some local results.
Rob:
Yeah.
Lee:
If you’re on a desktop, it will use the IP address and so on, but it will determine where you are and show you some local results. If you put near me, it will also do that. And here’s a little stat for you. Between 2011 and 2015, I haven’t got any more up-to-date figures than this, but search terms with the words near me and went up 34 times. So, not 34%, 34 times in between 2011 and 2015.
Rob:
So, people are aware that Google is much smarter and sharper at delivering these localized results now. So, they do look for stuff like that with the words near me in it. So, they don’t even need to put a place name. They don’t even need to put near me because it will determine your location. So, another little stat for you. Google stated recently, and this is probably a worldwide stat, so I don’t know how it breaks down for the UK, but 46% of searches that are done through Google are reckoned to have local intent. And of those, 91% will trigger a local SEO results page with a map pack on it, like we’ve just described. So, it’s pretty mainstream. It’s not absolutely every business.
Rob:
And, of course, there are more informational-based searches where someone’s not looking for a provider. They might just be looking for, I don’t know, recipes or something where you won’t get the map pack. It will be a traditional Google 10 straight organic listings. But, yeah, there’s a lot of these, so your target audience will need to think about this sort of thing.
Rob:
So, yeah, so what it’s trying to do with the blog post is just put together a sort of methodical plan. It doesn’t matter how quickly you work through them, but it’s just to say these are the main bases of things that you need to think about. So, there are all sorts of things that feed into that map pack result. Incidentally, the map pack, you might have seen it before, it started off with, depending on where you are in the world, it came in at 2008 or 2009, and I think it started off with, I can never remember exactly, it went from 10 to 8, down to 7, and then 2015, I think it was, it went down to 3.
Lee:
Yeah.
Rob:
And the reason it did that, it was the same time that Google got rid of AdWords ads that went down the right-hand side of the page. They did that to make the desktop and mobile experience more consistent. So, you can imagine if there were 10 listings, you’d have to do it over-scrolling on your phone, but 3 just fits nicely on the smallest of smartphones.
Lee:
It is quite cluttered, I’ve found, since. I mean, I get why they’ve done it, but I do find it cluttered since they did that.
Lee:
Now, I’ve got a very important question at this point, because I’ve been led to believe in the past that I want to optimize WordPress Agency Northampton, or WordPress Agency Northampton, sure. However, is that necessarily the case, or because of these different algorithms where they’re detecting your IP or the GPS from your phone, does me optimizing and throwing the word Northamptonshire all over my website even count anymore, or does Google just simply know where I am?
Rob:
Google knows where you are, and there’s no harm in putting that extra word Northamptonshire in there. You’d probably show up for, if someone down the road searches for WordPress Agency and doesn’t put a location in, they’ll still find you. The more specific you are, the better. It’s, if you imagine that, it’s no different from one of those old Boolean search systems they used to have in libraries, in terms of the way it works. If you go in and the more specific words you put in that are actually in there, the more specific results will come back. So, it’s Google essentially works in very much that way. And a lot is, a lot of the ranking is based on the sort of reputation of your site, site anyway, the good quality links that come into it. So, yeah.
Lee:
Another question then, and I’m literally pummeling you right now. So be prepared mate. But does this not also mean, if my understanding is correct at this point, that being number one on Google for a search term is no longer kind of a very accurate measurement? Because whoever appears number one for web designer in the Google search result will actually still depend on where you physically are. So I might be paying you to say, get me at the top of, you know, I’m a global web designer. Get me on the top page as web designer. However, the problem there is, is that in Edinburgh, I might be on the top result. But down in Kent, I might actually be on page two. Is that now the problem?
Rob:
Yeah, there’s elements of that. Yeah. If you’re, I mean, it’s always going to favor very local results for a web designer.
Lee:
Yeah.
Rob:
So, yeah. But to be the number one, there’s almost no such thing as being number one on Google anymore because search has become so specific and so personalized. So what shows up for me will depend on where I am. It will depend on the past search history, depend on whether or not I’m logged into me. I tend to use Chrome as my browser. So it’s associated with all the other Google products and knows what I’m up to. And I’m not totally sure exactly what signals it gets from Google now, which I use for me, all the personal and work emails.
Rob:
So, yeah, the concept of being number one on Google or something is not really, is a bit of a falsehood nowadays. But I still do rank tracking with clients and say, load them into rank tracking software just to see how they are because it’s just a good overall health check.
Rob:
But ultimately now you just need to focus more and more and just say, okay, I’m doing this. This is my strategy. My measure of that is analytics, SEO driven visits, SEO driven conversions, and just managing those over time and just seeing how they improve with the strategy that I’m doing. So just looking at visibility at every stage. So looking at how many people view you, you get stats as part of having a Google My Business profile that show you how many people have seen your profile, how many have put it through and so on and so forth. So it’s just been really granular with analytics.
Lee:
It’s really encouraging you say that, mate, with regards to kind of being number one, because I felt probably for the last two years that that is something that’s no longer really achievable because Google seems to change so much. And an example of that would be is that I now run searches for WordPress fixes without even typing in the word WordPress. So I would write something that could mean for any platform in the world. It could actually be Drupal for all Google knows. But because I’m logged in, Google knows that I search WordPress stuff daily and it just gives me WordPress results, which is phenomenal.
Rob:
Yeah, very true.
Lee:
I guess if you use terms like plugin or anything else.
Rob:
Well, I don’t even use WordPress plugin. You know, I might just say how to show the title on the category page. That could be anything, but somehow it knows that I mean WordPress, which is cool.
Lee:
All right. Well, let’s take a look at going through your blog post. It would be great just to unpack a few of these. I don’t know whether we’re going to be able to fit all 29 points in, but it would be great to cover some of the basics. And you do establish some three key basics that people need to consider. So do you mind just giving us those three and just maybe unpacking them a little bit for us as well?
Rob:
That’s the SEO basis. Well, you’ve got your keyword research, your on-page SEO basics and the advanced on-page SEO. They’re the three key areas.
Lee:
Yeah.
Rob:
I mean, the basics are what I’m going to do here just to save time. I’m going to cross-refer you to various things that can tell you in more detail.
Lee:
Cool.
Rob:
Than I can confines of this podcast. But yeah, basically for keyword research, the much maligned Google keyword planner. People say it’s inaccurate and that it’s a bit unimaginative. But I still think it’s a good starting point to look at the likely search terms that people are going to use for you and look at the monthly volumes of how many people search for that. And it lets you make decisions and say, you know, this is I’m going to go mainly after that keyword. Now, Google is smarter than ever at sort of looking at synonyms and that sort of thing. So I was commenting on a, not your Facebook group, but a different one the other day. Someone saying, for example, if someone put web design leads, web designer leads, web designer Yorkshire, it’s don’t need a page for each of those. You don’t need a page to exact match each of those keywords. That’s getting ridiculous. So just do your keyword, come up with some lead keywords, scatter what they call LSI keywords, some synonyms and other words that people looking for that thing might also use. And just write your content that way. So that’s your keyword research. On page SEO, the best thing you can do is Google on page SEO, Brian Dean, not the ex-Sheffield United footballer, but the SEO guy. Brian Dean, Brian with an I and Dean spelled just D-E-A-N on a backlink code. He has a page called the anatomy of a, I forget what he calls it now, something to do with on page SEO. He tells you all the elements you need for good on page SEO. Look at that because he’ll explain it better than I ever could. Make sure that you do, you tick as many of those boxes as you can. And then you start to look at the wider sort of local SEO type things. But it’s just moving on to the real specifics of local SEO. And to appear in that map pack, to stand a chance of doing that, you have to have a Google My Business account.
Rob:
Which basically Google have a habit of renaming things like Google Apps is now G Suite and so on. And search console, replace Google Webmaster Tools. So basically what happened, you used to have, you used to list your business on Google Maps. Then it was Google Places and now it’s Google My Business. And basically if you go onto maps.google.com, search for your business by name and you find a profile. You’ll know if you’ve got a Google My Business listing and you can either claim it or you might need to start a new one from scratch. Google have a bit of a funny verification process which involves Google actually sending you a postcard. Some people still find quite unbelievable. A tech company like I am sending you a postcard. But it’s to make sure you’re at that address.
Rob:
Now, it’s a bit frowned upon to have virtual office addresses and that sort of thing. They don’t work well for local SEO. So, you know, you need to have a proper physical address or you can hide your address and choose to describe yourself as what they call the service area business. So if you’re a personal trainer or a web designer or whatever else you need to work from home and you don’t want to put your home address on, you’ve got an option there. But it just helps them determine where you are. So follow my checklist on the blog post which tells you how to complete your Google My Business profile well because that is what drives that map pack result. Those listings are taken from there. So over time, if you make sure you’re on there, you’ve got the right categories on, you use the ability to add photos and stuff just to make it look a bit more exciting. And you get some reviews over time that will help you appear better on the map pack results. Google will rotate. If I look for a web designer and then results and then walked a couple of miles across town and looked again, it might be very different results. So it’s just it’s not about being always in that. It’s not a matter of, you know, I’m showing the map pack and that’s that. It depends on those time and location. But if you if you have a good profile on there and get good reviews over time and I’ve got some tips on the blog post on how to get good reviews, you can appear well on that and also get keep on getting good quality links to your website. Hopefully some local ones, because if you don’t have to be the greatest, most prestigious sites, just like local organizations and churches and schools. And if you sponsor any events or do anything locally in the community already, you can just say to them, oh, do you mind giving me a link to my website? That would really help as well, even if they’re not an amazing high profile website.
Lee:
Church Magazine, guys, your source of local SEO.
Rob:
Yes.
Lee:
You know, just don’t think of any website as being too small and insignificant. So just think very locally. And again, that’s not to say that if you’ve got a link from Forbes.com or BBC, that will be any other standard SEO link building type activity. As long as they’re good sites and they’re not, you know, Russian Viagra sites or whatever.
Rob:
Yeah.
Lee:
They’re going to it’s going to be good for your SEO overall.
Rob:
That’s hilarious. The Russian Viagra sites. Yeah. We I’m all right in saying, but back in the day, I remember when I first launched a WordPress web, well, not first launched a WordPress site. But when I did one of my first WordPress sites for a client, they seemed to be a huge target for comment spam, which had tons of links to other websites. Was that people trying to get around that thing and trying to create backlinks as it was?
Rob:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was. I suspected it was somewhere Viagra taking you to Viagra websites, but others were like linking you to random local websites from all around the world. And I was trying to work out why. And from you just describing that there, I was thinking, oh, maybe that’s what people were trying to do.
Rob:
The naughty way, the way that we do not recommend you do.
Lee:
No, I think they cottoned on to that because you seem to get a lot less email spam in those days. And they thought, oh, I’ll target something else. So I found a thing called WordPress. But I found Akismit very good at screening those out.
Lee:
Yeah.
Rob:
No, that’s good. And as long as you set it so that they’re moderated, I guess it’s not a problem anymore. So you mentioned earlier reviews. With regards to reviews, are you saying as well that helps? Does that just help you get onto the map pack? Or is that actually going to also help kind of give Google a bit, give you a bit more credibility to Google? And Google may give you some extra weight to your website versus the other web agency in your area who only has two reviews and you’ve got 50.
Rob:
Absolutely. Yes. Yes, on both counts. Yes, it’s good for Google. Of course, it’s good for customers if they see you’ve got a good rating. You can still appear on there with none. Where you’ll appear and whether you’ll appear depends on the competitiveness of your little niche. So if there are 20 other WordPress agencies in Wellingborough with much better reviews than you, you might struggle. But I still don’t doubt that. So yes, it’s just about getting as many as you can. There are actually some really strict rules around if you encourage or offer discounts or in any other way incentivize a customer to leave you a good review. It actually breaks Google’s terms of service. And in America, it’s against FTC rules and companies have been sued. Some of the examples, yeah, some of the examples were a bit ridiculous. Like they were charging a surcharge if you didn’t leave a Google review.
Rob:
But yeah, just be careful and don’t put anything in writing about things. There probably are companies out there offering a discount in return for a Google review. This is actually in the best spirit of someone writing about something and their own website not being the best example. I’ve only recently started on getting some proper reviews myself. I’ve had the first couple come through already. But the big learning is just do everything you can to make it easy for people to leave you a review. It’s not actually that intuitive knowing how to go onto Google and leave someone a review. So it’s just on a desktop, it’s terrible. It’s just a tiny little blue text link saying write a review. So in a previous day, Job of mine, I did actually create a reviews page that said, here’s a screenshot, big red circle around the little blue text link. Here’s where you go. Click that link. Here’s a link through to the page so you can go and do that and spoon-fed people that way. So something that works well is either a reviews page, and I explain that on the blog post, or you just create a little PDF layer just talking through people how to do it with some screenshots. You can sort of email that out to people. And actually, if you encourage people to use their mobile phones, if you’ve got Google Maps on the phone, they just search for it. And the process for leaving a review on mobile is dead easy. So it’s just making sure that you do that. And then if you have email newsletters and that sort of thing, we’ve included that in the past where we have leave us a review on Google item, and it takes them through to that reviews page. Just by doing little bits like that and asking them at the point, preferably you sort of ask people at the point you’ve delivered whatever project it is. Because that’s when their satisfaction is likely to be the highest, and if you leave it too long before asking them. One other thing, though, is if people come to your premises, don’t have hundreds of people leaving a review from your premises. And some companies have set up review booths and that sort of thing.
Lee:
Good advice.
Rob:
For someone to do it. But Google knows when lots of the reviews come from the same IP address.
Rob:
There was, I did hear something, there was a guy who I had some local SEO training off who does SEO for car dealers in the US. And he put on his blog recently, some, quite a few chains of dealers have been slapped by Google and sued for having fake reviews from staff, which is a real stupid own goal, really. So don’t, don’t get caught doing that.
Rob:
And you should be, Google say that it’s, Google have quite titled it, local SEO experts say between five and 10 results is where it sort of kicks in and starts to make a difference to your ranking on the map pack. So if you get to at least five, it shouldn’t be difficult for a lot of businesses. Then you’ve got a chance of ranking well.
Lee:
Two top tips, guys. Don’t ask people that hate you. And also, I only discovered this the other day because I was chatting with an amazing guy that I’ve done loads and loads of work with in the past. And I wanted to leave him a Google review. And he sent me a link to leave a Google review direct. So he actually clicked on write review and then copied and pasted that link over to me. And it actually worked. It popped up with the write review screen for me straight away. So all I needed to do was start writing and press submit. I don’t know if that’s something that’s quite new, but I just tested it whilst you were talking. I went to your profile and hit write review. I then copied that link into an incognito window and it popped up. But just asked me to obviously to sign into Google before I could write it. But it does actually allow people to write a review. So in theory, you could create some sort of vanity link to your review as well. So when you’ve completed a project, obviously test it regularly because we don’t know if Google are going to change how that works at some point. But then you can ask your clients to leave your review. And like you, mate, I only have two reviews. It’s not actually something I’ve ever, ever pushed until Brian laid a few episodes ago, said that it was super important. And obviously you as well have been pointing out that it is actually really, really important.
Rob:
Yeah.
Lee:
And you’re now teaching them new tips.
Rob:
I’m teaching you as well. Well, this is the whole point of the podcast is that we’ll teach other. It’s just one big teach fest. It’s amazing.
Lee:
Because we’re all learning every day. And you said that earlier, didn’t we? You’ve got to be prepared to learn every day. And yeah, this podcast has been awesome for me because selfishly, I’m actually being taught way more, I think. People expect me to be the expert. But actually, I’m actually a listener who just gets to host. And I get to learn from all of the guests, including yourself.
Rob:
Yeah, I’ve got to go and add that blog post. It’s a 30-point action plan now.
Lee:
Yeah, there you go. Well, I’m glad because 29, my OCD, mate. I was really struggling with that.
Lee:
Remember, guys, click to sale.co.uk forward slash WP Innovator. That will redirect you to the blog post. So the idea here was really just to have a conversation. Get some of those top tips from Rob’s brain, which he dropped that are not even in the blog. So that’s good. Especially things like don’t have a review machine. I don’t know if that’s in the blog. I don’t remember reading that. Don’t have a review machine in your office because that would be bad. That would be perceived as you trying to spam the Google reviews. And maybe don’t even get your mom to do it. That probably doesn’t count either. Google probably knows it’s your mom.
Rob:
Yeah, it’s got the same surname. I’ve seen reviews where with a bit of quick Googling, you determine that, oh, that’s one of the directors leaving his own company, a five-star review and writing nothing.
Lee:
Oh, no.
Rob:
Just putting five stars. Yeah, but yeah, try and encourage people to write a bit as well and say what they like about working. Otherwise, I always think personally, I don’t know what Google review is, blank reviews, where they just put the star rating and nothing. But to me, that would look a bit odd.
Lee:
Yeah.
Rob:
As a prospective client, if it’s five stars and thinking, great, they liked them that much, they could think of nothing per se. I asked an SEO guy the other day whether SEO is dead. And he gave a great answer. I’m going to ask you the same question. Because obviously, it’s not dead, but what is your response when people come to you and say, is SEO dead? Because everyone thinks social media is now the way to go. Other than punching them in the face, what do you then say after that?
Rob:
I just think, is social media ever going to have the same level of buyer intent? Someone’s actually looked for something for a reason. Of course, some of them will be competitors and what have you. And some of them will be at varying different places on the customer journey. Some of them are really not wanting to be hounded. But then there’s people in there who really need the solution this week. Or even today. So no, SEO is not dead. It’s SEO.
Rob:
My response to that is SEO as in building loads of crappy links. And back to Russian Viagra example again. Most people think of SEO as probably is dead. But it’s more a full-on content marketing approach now. Saying, putting the customer first and saying, yeah, I want loads of links. But everyone’s now out there asking for links and doing outreach. What can I come up with that’s so amazing that it answers every question someone could have on a subject and it’ll get links?
Rob: So I’ve been quite scientific about, again, my own website is one of my worst examples, just like many freelancers. But the massive gap between blog posts and then I’ve come out with this 29-point masterpiece that really covers everything. And that’s very deliberate. I follow Brian Dean’s approach of what he calls the skyscraper technique. Instead of, the world doesn’t need another 10 top marketing tips for SME businesses post. But if there’s something that tackles something very specific, comes up with an action plan. So you’ll see my blog post becoming, you know, it might only be like one a month or every two months. And Brian Dean is a great example. He practices exactly what he preaches. He’s got about 30-odd blog posts. But can you imagine how competitive it must be to rank for something like on-page SEO?
Lee:
Yeah.
Rob:
He does it without loads and loads of content. SEO is not there. You just need to look at quality and be very, very scientific and work much harder. What I’m really pleased with is the fact that I’ve asked you this question before the other episode has gone live. And that’s with Pete Everett, guys. That’s go back and listen to episode 80. And your answer is so consistent with his. I’m so pleased to hear it. I was trying to trick the SEO guys, but I can’t. His answer was pretty much, you know, the same as you. With Google, it’s buyer intent. When someone’s going onto Google, they are looking for the fan in this baking heat. Or they are, you know, they are looking to purchase something on Facebook or Twitter. People have an interest in products like yours, but they’re not necessarily in the mood to buy it on that particular day, etc. So it’s more of a brand awareness exercise with the odd lucky dip where someone actually does purchase. And his one line phrase, which I really loved, was that SEO is not dead. It is changing. And that’s exactly what you’re alluding to. You know, the old traditional style 1800s with the town crier saying, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, special offer on stakes is now changing. But it’s changing and it’s becoming about quality and doing things the right way.
Lee:
Mate, you are a legend. I really appreciate your time being on the podcast. You can head on over to clicktosale.co.uk/WP Innovator to go check out that article. I’m sure Rob is going to be super happy if you also click on that contact link on the website and ask him any questions. You might want to also go and throw those questions into the group. That’s WP Innovator.com/group. Let’s have a conversation in there as well. And also Brian Dean. He is he’s a very good guy at backlinko.com/blog. Go check out his blog over there as well for some great advice. How else can people connect with you, Rob?
Rob:
I’m on Twitter, which is just click to sale. I have a Facebook page as well. That’s pretty, pretty dormant at the moment, to be fair. But yeah, probably Twitter through the website. But the best way to find you are for people who are intending to buy. So you don’t have to worry about that Facebook page, mate.
Lee:
No, you shall.
Rob:
Nice one.
Lee:
OK.
Lee:
All right. Well, enjoy this bacon heat, mate.
Rob:
And I shall.
Lee:
You too. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you very much.
Rob:
Nice one. Take care of yourself.
Lee:
All right. Bye.
Rob:
Bye.
Lee:
And that’s a wrap. Now, in next week’s episode, we have a young man, a good friend of mine, actually, called Mike Doyle. Advanced warning. This is going to be slightly explicit, partly because of the language, but also because of something he said at one point. And oh, my gosh, I did not know where to look. I didn’t know what to do with myself. It just got really awkward. It was a it was a weird moment. I kind of feel a little bit like just thinking about it right now. I feel a little bit creeped out. So it’s a really good episode, but it just kind of gets weird in a good way. Eventually, I guess kind of it kind of saves itself at the end. But anyway, next week, me and Mike Doyle are going to be sitting there with coffee. It was coffee that time because of the time of day. Chilling, chatting and talking all about animation and video. That’s in next week’s episode. Episode number 84, because I’m quite good at counting now. All right, guys. See you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye.