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Episode 146: How to Optimize a Google Business Profile for Local SEO
626 Plays3 years ago
Today we are chatting about optimizing your Google business profile formerly known as a Google My Business listing. If you're a local business looking to show up in local searches this is something that you want to pay attention to. We also have an extended conversation about the impact reviews can have on ranking and local SEO. A big thanks to Leah our SEO specialist over at Till Agency for joining me for this discussion. If you're interested in SEO be sure to head on over to Till Agency’s website till.agency and reach out! We can help with everything from audits to technical fixes to coaching and content creation.
For show notes visit...https://daveyandkrista.com/optimize-google-business-profile-local-seo/
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Transcript
When does Google remove old reviews?
00:00:06
Speaker
Does Google take down reviews that are old? Not typically, not just because they are old. If your business has changed significantly since that review was left and that review seems totally unrelated to your business now, like say you started your business and you were a cake maker and then over the years you've transitioned to being a branding photographer or something.
00:00:33
Speaker
Reviews that are related to these wonderful cakes that you made might get taken down because Google's saying, this is not for this business, this is not relevant.
Introduction to Google Business Profiles and SEO
00:00:43
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
00:00:53
Speaker
Today we are chatting about optimizing your Google business profile, formerly known as a Google My Business listing. If you're a local business looking to show up in the local searches, this is something that you'll want to pay attention to. We also have an extended conversation about the impact reviews can have on ranking and local SEO.
00:01:12
Speaker
A big thanks to Leia, our SEO specialist, over at Till Agency for joining me for this discussion. If you're interested in done for USEO, be sure to head on over to Till Agency's website, till.agency, and reach out. We can help with everything from audits to technical fixes to coaching and content creation.
00:01:30
Speaker
Be sure to check out the show notes at dvandchrista.com for the resources we mentioned during the episode, and we want to hear from you. Let us know what kind of content you'd like to see on the Branchette Book Podcast as we move forward. To leave your feedback, just send us a DM on Instagram, at dvandchrista.
Why are Google Business Profiles vital for local businesses?
00:01:45
Speaker
Now, onto the episode. Leah, thank you for joining me today. Of course. Thanks for having me back.
00:01:55
Speaker
Yeah, of course. I feel like we've recorded quite a few episodes now. I feel like they're always popular. SEO, I think in general, pretty popular topic. And you always cover things with such thoroughness that I think people really appreciate that. I know I really appreciate it.
00:02:11
Speaker
Today, we're focusing on local SEO. Specifically, we're going to focus on Google Business Profiles. We recently chatted about this, and you were like, no, Google My Business doesn't exist anymore. It's now Google Business Profile. So if you hear me say it really slowly, it's just because I'm trying to remember to say it the right way.
00:02:30
Speaker
So we're focusing on that today and then we're also going to focus on Google reviews because that is going to be, I think, one of the most important reasons to have a Google business profile and then also one of, I think, the most important ranking factors to at least when it comes to the local pack. And we'll talk a little bit more about what all that means in a minute.
00:02:48
Speaker
So talking about local SEO and then sort of like just a section of that because beyond Google business profiles, there's more to
What is Google Business Profile?
00:02:57
Speaker
local SEO. So if we have time, we'll get into that. We are recording this episode live. If you're interested in live recordings, get on our email list. You know, we'll make things known through that. But basically, you have to be part of the Facebook group to attend live. But if you are here live, let us know. Drop your names in the comments. Drop questions in the comments as well. And we'll try to get to those.
00:03:19
Speaker
as we cover some of this other content. So, Leah, thanks again. For those of you who do not know Leah, Leah is an SEO specialist over at Till Agency. And Leah also works on our ads. So, what I mean by that, of course, you know, as an account manager at Till Agency, she's working on all sorts of people's ads, different businesses, but she actually works on the ads for Devian Christa as well. So, Leah is our account manager.
00:03:45
Speaker
We very much appreciate the work that Leah does for us specifically. And she's also an SEO expert. So, Leah, did I cover everything? Yes. You made me sound much more cool and exciting than I think I actually am. So, thanks for that. But again, and if you've listened before, you might know this about Leah, but Leah also lives on a bus. So, that is also, I think, one of the coolest things as well.
00:04:09
Speaker
But we're not here to talk about that. We're here to talk about Google Business Profiles. Leah, what is a Google Business Profile? Why should we care? Yeah. So a Google Business Profile is, like you said, used to be called Google My Business. Before that, it was Google Local and Google Places. It's been a thousand different things. But at the heart, it's basically the official record of your business on Google.
00:04:34
Speaker
where people go to check your hours or your location or read reviews, look at photos related to your business. It's like the Google record of your business and it's very important. Yes, I'll stop rambling there. No, that's good. As far as businesses that you consider creating a Google business profile, like so who is this relevant to?
00:04:58
Speaker
Yeah, so I would say every business with any online presence should set up a Google business profile. I think it's going to be especially important for businesses that have a physical brick and mortar location, whether that's a store or a studio or an office. But really, if you have an online presence, if you have a site, if you have social media, if you're interacting with customers online, you should have a Google business profile.
00:05:25
Speaker
awesome.
How does Google's 'vicinity' update impact businesses?
00:05:26
Speaker
And so if you're wondering, if you're like, well, I created this thing called the Google My Business recently, well, you then have a Google Business profile. So they just changed the name of all that. So and I would say nothing, there's not, I think, huge changes on the back end. Like if you haven't been in your Google My Business profile for a while, and now they've switched to Google Business profile, once you log in, you're not going to see anything, I think,
00:05:49
Speaker
It looks pretty much the same. Yeah, exactly. And we'll dive into that in a second. But I can just show people here, this is where you would go to create a Google business profile. Alright, so if you're interested, you can just go to google.com forward slash business, and you can create a Google business profile from there. But like Leah was saying, going to be especially relevant for
00:06:10
Speaker
local businesses who want some sort of online presence, especially if you have a brick-and-mortar location, but even if you're a service-based business as well. Maybe, Leah, you could talk about some of the recent updates for service-based businesses who don't have a location for people to come to and some of the updates that Google has made to better serve those types of businesses.
Why set accurate service areas?
00:06:33
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So at the end of 2021, late December or sorry, late November, early December, Google released an update that they're calling vicinity, which made some changes to the way Google business profile works. Prior to that update for service based businesses like photographers or coaches, things like that people who serve their customers primarily online or on site like out of
00:07:01
Speaker
a venue or their home or wherever. Prior to that update, I would have told folks you want to make sure that you have an address on your Google Business Pro or then Google My Business to show up in local map packs. I would have said, find a neighbor, find a friend, find a P.O. box. I get an address on your profile. But with the vicinity update, that has totally changed. And I honestly think that's for the better. If you don't actually have
00:07:31
Speaker
a brick and mortar location that you're serving clients out of like a studio or an office or a store. You want to be using service areas, which basically you just go in and put it in the locations that you serve. And then on your Google business profile, you'll show you'll see kind of a span of the regions that you serve instead of a physical business location.
00:07:53
Speaker
Yeah, and I would say that even as you set the area that you serve, you want to make sure that you set it accurately. So if you're a photographer, for instance, I think I see this more often with photographers, which is why I bring it up, where you want to travel a bit. So maybe you're in the Mid-Atlantic area and all of a sudden your service area is like half the United States. I don't think that's going to be as impactful. I think really you should be trying to target whatever that primary area is
Tips for optimizing Google Business Profiles
00:08:19
Speaker
that you work.
00:08:19
Speaker
And then, you know, there's other ways I think to optimize for people who are looking for destination wedding photographers or locations outside of where you're actually based. So that'd be sort of my one suggestion there when you're setting your service area.
00:08:36
Speaker
But I think now it is pretty important to make sure that you set that you choose the appropriate type of business, right? So I think with you in the past, we had, you know, including an address, even though we didn't serve people at that address, this is kind of back in the day when we were running our photography business to give ourselves a better chance of showing up in that local pack. Now, if you're wondering what the local pack is,
00:08:59
Speaker
This is what it is here, so hopefully you can see my screen. Again, if you have questions, feel free to drop those in the comments box and we'll get to those. But the local pack is this right here. So typically it's going to be three results. I think over the years Google has tested showing a different amount of results here. But one of the things that a Google business profile will do, especially one that's optimized, is it will make it more likely that you show up in this section. And you'll see that this is the section that's above the fold. It takes up the whole space above the fold.
00:09:29
Speaker
So, even if you're not ranking organically here, it gives you a chance to show up, alright? So, there is benefit, I think, to optimizing your Google business profile. And what you'll see here is that, you know, and I just threw in an Apple sweating photographer, these results, you know, for instance, like we're in here and I think we're actually still on the first page, but
00:09:47
Speaker
They're going to be a little bit skewed because I'm not incognito. This is, you know, obviously it knows that we own that site, so on and so forth. But point being is you'll see that the organic search results are not the same as the results in the local pack. So this is another opportunity to get some search visibility here.
00:10:07
Speaker
I guess maybe what we should do is transition to talking about how we can optimize our Google business profiles. And as we talk through some of that, if it would be helpful for people, I can actually jump into a sample Google business profile here as well. But where should we start? So we're setting up, we've selected the right business type, and we're in our Google business profile. What things should we focus on optimizing?
00:10:33
Speaker
Yeah, so that is a big question. I have some
Handling disappearing and fake reviews
00:10:36
Speaker
very specific technical tips that I have figured out from working with clients, very specific things that you want to work on, and then some more general tips. The general advice applies across the board when you're working on your SEO and not just your Google Business Profile listing specifically, but that would be don't try to be sneaky. Don't try to be clever and game the system.
00:11:01
Speaker
Your profile will get disabled and it's a long nightmare of a process to get Google to reinstate your profile sometimes if you've violated their terms of service. So don't try to be sneaky. Don't try to cram keywords in where they're not supposed to go. If you're not serving people at a location, change that to a service area, things like that.
00:11:26
Speaker
starting to pull profiles down. So general advice, don't try to be sneaky. As far as specific tips, let's see, I already talked about service areas. With the Google vicinity update, which was, like I said, at the end of 2021,
00:11:44
Speaker
You want to double check that your URL is accurate. And by that, I mean checking to make sure that you're using your canonical address, your canonical URL in your business profile. And that includes whether you have HTTP or HTTPS.
00:12:02
Speaker
And if you don't have HTTPS, you should, but I think maybe that's a topic for another podcast. And if www isn't part of your canonical address, you don't want it to be included in your business profile.
00:12:16
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I want to pause right there just to show people kind of what we're talking about here. And if you're listening, I know it's maybe a little bit harder to visualize. But if you go to your website here, and if we're just on the website that I use as a demo, if I try to put www.ChristieJones in here,
00:12:34
Speaker
What it's going to do, it's going to redirect me to just christiajones.com without the www. So the www version of your website versus the non-www version of your website, two different versions technically, right? Like one redirects the other. So you want to make sure that you're just actually copying and pasting. So what I would do if I were you is I'd go into your website and actually just grab whatever's here. And what you'll see is if I paste that into the address bar, it comes up exactly like that, right?
00:13:04
Speaker
For us specifically, it doesn't include the www. If you have Showit and you don't have the HTTPS here, it's just HTTP, then you can ask Showit to add an SSL certificate for you and they should take care of that no problem. It takes very little effort. But again, if I put in the HTTP version, it's going to redirect me to the HTTPS version.
00:13:26
Speaker
And it might seem like something silly, but it's important, as Leah said, to make sure there's consistency in name, address, phone number, and website URL. Wherever you list those things on the web, they should look exactly the same no matter what listing it is. Did I miss anything there?
00:13:45
Speaker
No, that's perfect. The other thing
How to respond to reviews effectively?
00:13:48
Speaker
I would say is looking at your business name in your Google business profile listing. You don't want to cram any keywords in there. That's another piece of advice that has changed kind of over the last few years. Some people have said, yeah, you can put keywords in your business name in your Google business profile.
00:14:07
Speaker
and for some people that worked and for some people that got their profiles taken down. So if your business name is Krista A. Jones Photography, your business name on your profile should be Krista A. Jones Photography and not Krista A. Jones Photography, Annapolis Wedding Photographer. So you don't want to cram keywords in there, you want it to be exactly correct. Yeah, awesome. And just going back to this as well,
00:14:35
Speaker
where you can include information and descriptions of what you do here. And you'll see that Google will make suggestions as well, which you don't have to accept. But you want to make sure that you use these spaces here. And Google is going to give you a certain amount of characters that you can use. And we recommend trying to use as many characters as they give you.
00:14:54
Speaker
plus trying to use keywords that are relevant to what you do. And again, just to reemphasize what Leo was saying, you know, we don't want keyword stuff. We want to write this for actual people, but at the same time, we do want to make sure that we include some keywords. So even here,
00:15:10
Speaker
and we do this loosely. We were based in Annapolis, but we included Baltimore DC and the Eastern Shore regions, which are other areas that we work and relatively close to where we were based. We want to make sure that we just fill in as much of this info as possible, including times that you're open and closed. Basically, if there's a field in here, it would only take a few minutes to do this, so you might as well get it done.
00:15:36
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So that description area is where you can kind of optimize, where you can fit in your keywords, et cetera. And yeah, I agree. Use all the characters they give you and fill in everything to the best of your ability, absolutely.
00:15:52
Speaker
Awesome. So what should we move on to next? Maybe we start talking about reviews since reviews are the key when it comes to a Google My Business listing. One thing that I noticed as visiting this is that there's only two reviews on it now. So there used to be far more reviews on our Google My Business listing. So maybe you can speak to perhaps why all of a sudden these reviews are just disappearing.
00:16:15
Speaker
Yeah, so there are a few things that I have seen. I will preface this by saying there hasn't been an official announcement from Google saying this is why reviews are disappearing. So this is just based on things that I have seen through client accounts. But one thing that I have seen is that if reviews that you have on Google are duplicated in other places on the internet, like
00:16:38
Speaker
you know, WeddingWire or Yelp or Facebook. If Google sees that those reviews are duplicated, they are likely to take them down from your Google business profile. So if you're starting to see that your reviews are disappearing, again, it's a thing that recently we would tell people, yeah, get your clients to leave your reviews in all of the places. Just tell them to copy and paste it all in all of these different places. And that advice has changed recently with this vicinity update.
00:17:06
Speaker
So if you're seeing your review numbers drop, it could be that those reviews are duplicated in other places, or there are other indicators that are making Google think that they might be spam or fake reviews.
Impact of review quantity and quality on rankings
00:17:20
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And Jennifer's asking, does Google take down reviews that are old?
00:17:26
Speaker
Not typically, not just because they are old. If your business has changed significantly since that review was left, and that review seems totally unrelated to your business now, like say you started your business and you were a cake maker, and then over the years you've transitioned to being a branding photographer or something, reviews that are related to these wonderful cakes that you made,
00:17:53
Speaker
might get taken down because Google is saying, this is not for this business, this is not relevant. But they wouldn't take things down just because they were old if they were still relevant. Yeah. And I think that's key. I don't think they're going to take stuff down only because of how old the review is. But it is something that I've seen where older reviews do seem to disappear after time, especially if you don't spend any time in your Google business profile, you know, where people aren't
00:18:17
Speaker
you know, actively going there, as would be the case with the example I just showed you. So, I wouldn't count that out as a reason, which I think, again, just provides additional, I think, motivation for us to go out and continually getting to get reviews for our business. And we can see, and this is why I brought up this page here, how important they are.
00:18:36
Speaker
Like I said, sample search and Apple sweating photographer, but I'd be willing to bet whatever we put in here, we're probably going to see something similar where proximity is going to be taken into account for sure, but then also look how these are ordered. 33 reviews, 16 reviews, and 13 reviews. All of them have nearly five stars.
00:18:57
Speaker
I don't think it's any coincidence that the order that they're listed in is based on how many reviews that specific business has. Also, I would say things like, and this is something that people can't control, but how many years in business somebody has been. I think even domain age, for instance, we see makes a difference when it comes to SEO and certainly how fast you can get a piece of content ranking. Reviews
00:19:20
Speaker
super important on that front.
Strategies for acquiring detailed reviews
00:19:23
Speaker
But if you have any other questions about reviews, especially if something weird has happened, drop those in the questions. One thing I should bring up as well, because we know plenty of people who have had this issue, is reviews that are fake or spammy or negative. What sort of advice do we have for those people, Leah? Yeah, so first I would say take a deep breath. You're not the first person that it's happened to and it's going to be okay.
00:19:48
Speaker
I know it can be super, it can really get your hackles up when you get a fake spammy review. But first thing, take a deep breath. If the review is like totally fake, it's somebody that you've never worked with, you can report it to Google and ask them to take it down. But in the meantime, I would reply to that review. General advice, reply to all of your reviews, whether they're good or bad, but reply to this spammy review and say, I've never worked with this person.
00:20:17
Speaker
this review appears to be spam. Just so that people who see it, they have a little context for that review. And again, you'd want to report that to Google to have it taken down. But if it's a bad review from somebody that you actually worked with and had a bad experience, whether they're exaggerating their experience or not, you want to first reach out to that person if you have their contact information and see if there's a way that you can remedy their situation.
00:20:46
Speaker
There have been lots of studies that show that people who have a bad experience that is then turned into a good experience are more likely to leave a good, like glowing review than people who have a good experience from start to finish.
00:21:00
Speaker
So point of the story is create a bad experience at first. No, that's terrible advice. Don't do that. Strike that from the record. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so reach out to that person and see what you can do to make it right. Sometimes it's as simple, like if you're a photographer, like, I'm so sorry, let me give you a 20% discount on prints or something. See what you can do to make their experience better. And then again, respond to that review.
00:21:27
Speaker
If you've reached out to that person to try to remedy the situation, saying like, I reached out to this customer, we're in the process of remedying this, or I offered several solutions to try to make this better and haven't heard back. You don't want to, don't fight with people in the responses to the review. Like you don't want to, don't create drama on your business profile, but again, provide a little context for that bad review for people who are not involved in the situation and are just reading that on your profile.
00:21:55
Speaker
Yeah. But see what you can do to remedy the situation. And if you do remedy it, maybe ask that person if they would consider updating their review. Absolutely. And I think also a key to not create more drama on your Google Business Profile, try to address it, but then also try to take it offline. Try to take it to a phone call, try to take it to email, whatever you have to do to not have that conversation in real time in your Google My Business Profile.
00:22:22
Speaker
So, there is that fine line between, you know, actually addressing, you know, somebody who had a bad experience and showing that you care as a business owner and then also not upsetting that person more so it becomes a fight on your Google business profile, right? So, but reviews, you know, I would say even if you work with people over the past year, maybe it's been a few months, you can go to those people and you can ask them for reviews and you can make it easy for them to leave reviews as well. We'll talk about that.
00:22:52
Speaker
in a minute here and just a quick question or if you are watching live and you have you can't attend the whole thing here we will this recording will be available on Facebook group but then also it will be on iTunes next week so no worries if you have to run
00:23:07
Speaker
But anyways, for the rest of us, getting back to reviews. So I think that's great in handling reviews. If Google does have people you can reach out to, as Lea suggested, they don't move quickly. And just because you tell somebody, oh, this review is fake, I never work with this person, doesn't guarantee they'll take it down.
Why diversify review platforms?
00:23:24
Speaker
Now, how can we get better reviews? And what I mean by better reviews are reviews that are not just like, oh, Lea did a great job. End review, right?
00:23:34
Speaker
So how can we get better reviews on our Google Business Profile?
00:23:39
Speaker
Yeah, that is a great question. It will depend a little bit on what kind of service provider you are, but basically you want to work that into your workflow. I would say work in asking people for a review at the point where they are happiest with you. So for photographers, that's going to be when you deliver their gallery or right after you deliver their gallery, things like that. So find that point where people are the most satisfied
00:24:05
Speaker
and the most pleased to have worked with you and ask them then. And I would recommend not guiding too much. You don't want your reviews to all look like you carefully crafted them, but you can give them some questions to answer. Like, hey, if you're not sure what you would want to say in your review, here are some things that you can think about.
00:24:25
Speaker
would you recommend me to a friend, et cetera, to kind of give people more points on which to address and assess your service so that people who are reading those reviews, they get a little bit more information than just like, yeah, Davey was great, you know? Period. That's it. Five stars. Yeah. So yeah, ask some questions to kind of inspire people to write longer, better, more detailed answers.
00:24:53
Speaker
And ask everybody. I get folks who reach out about reviews disappearing or bad reviews, et cetera. And honestly, my biggest advice is get more good reviews. So everybody who you work with,
00:25:06
Speaker
if they weren't terrible to work with and you're not like, oh no, they had a bad experience, I shouldn't ask them, but everybody who you work with who has a good experience, you should be asking for reviews. Most people, I think there was a recent study, I think it was something like 70 or 80% of people will leave a review if they're asked to. You don't want to like incentivize reviews, don't give away like discounts or free products or anything for reviews that gets into kind of like
00:25:34
Speaker
spammy shady stuff that might get your reviews taken down, but just ask people and continue to get new good reviews.
00:25:42
Speaker
Two additional points that I want to make about reviews. One, interesting getting better reviews. You probably have an idea of what sorts of obstacles people are overcoming in the sales process. Just those questions people seem to care about when you're doing a discovery call or when somebody's inquiring. And so those might be of clients that you've served well. You might ask them specifically about those pain points. And that way, as somebody is reading that review, they can imagine themselves as the client
00:26:12
Speaker
and hopefully more easily overcome that obstacle. So definitely make it easy to leave reviews and make it easy for somebody to leave you a good review that actually helps you book more clients. The second thing is, as Leah said, you don't want to duplicate reviews across channels, but one of the great things about Google Business Profile is that Google will typically aggregate reviews on your
00:26:37
Speaker
website so or on your Google My Business profile. So I'm just going to double check if that's still if I have an example here. Yeah, while you're checking on that, with the vicinity update, Google has said there are three factors that they're ranking people on for local search. And those are relevance, distance and prominence. And prominence has to do with how well known your business is, which can have a lot of factors in that like your business age and
00:27:05
Speaker
you know, press and backlinks and things. But also, if all of your reviews are only on Google, you're not very prominent. And so I would recommend as you're working this into your workflow, asking people for reviews, don't just ask people to leave reviews on Google. I would say kind of cycle asking people to leave them on, you know, Yelp or WeddingWire or Facebook or other
00:27:31
Speaker
review sites that are relevant to your business, to your niche. Don't just ask people to leave them on Google. Maybe most of them, like maybe two on Google, one somewhere else, two on Google, one somewhere else. But spread them out a little bit because that will help your overall rankings, even if all of those reviews don't end up on Google.
Local citations and consistent business info management
00:27:49
Speaker
Yeah and you know to build on that local citations are still important i think they used to be more important so i think the advice now would typically be focused on creating local citations and structural citations in places that are relevant to your business so for instance here.
00:28:07
Speaker
interior designer i imagine like house is you know one of the places that you would want to create a listing but google my business or google business profile will sometimes aggregate reviews from other places actually in your listing so people you know who might be on your
00:28:23
Speaker
your listing will see you have a certain amount of Google reviews, but then you'll also see you have 20 reviews from WeddingWire and five reviews from The Knot or something like that. So I think this is probably a good time to transition to talking a little bit about some of the supporting aspects of optimizing for local just as we tie up the conversation here. But I think the stuff we're going to get into right now
00:28:42
Speaker
is probably stuff that deserves its own episode. So we'll just kind of wrap up with that. If you are attending with us live and you have a question, feel free to drop those in the chat as we wrap up. But one of the things that we should talk about is a local citation. And basically, when you create a Google Business Profile, you're creating a structured citation.
00:28:59
Speaker
maybe to a certain extent, at least in Google's eyes, the most important one, right? But Leia's named a few, like WeddingWire, the Knot, House, Yelp, all those are places where you can create citations. And places where you want to make sure your name, address, and phone number are consistent across those citations. That can help you build prominence, as Leia just suggested. And there are services out there that you can use. Do you know any of those services off the top of your head, Leia?
00:29:26
Speaker
that you can use that would create citations for you or companies that you can go to? There is one that I have used in the past called Bright Local. They also publish a lot of cool SEO studies and stuff. So they're just a good company to follow in general. But they will do those local listings for you on things like, I think it's yellowpages.com. There's tons of them. But yeah, Bright Local and there are lots of other companies that will do that where
00:29:55
Speaker
you basically tell them your name, address, phone number, website, and pay them, I think it's probably a monthly fee, and they will go and put your information in all of the places.
00:30:07
Speaker
Yeah. And there's a few major data aggregators out there that they'll all submit all your stuff to. I've mixed feelings on it all. But if you really do want to focus on local SEO, it is a relatively small investment to use one of those basically local tools. So I've used Moz in the past. And remind me, Leah, which one was the one you have experience with?
00:30:30
Speaker
Bright, local. Bright, local. Okay. I'll make sure that both those are in the show notes as well so you can access those. But I want to say it was like a hundred bucks a year somewhere in there to use one of these tools. And the nice thing is when you make an update there, it updates everywhere. And you can kind of manage, I think even reviews from one spot. So I would say it doesn't hurt how much it helps compared to a few years ago.
00:30:54
Speaker
I'm not so sure, but if you are focusing on local SEO, something to check out.
Local keyword research techniques
00:31:00
Speaker
I would say a few other things, and Leah, feel free to just jump in if you have something to add here, but optimizing, or I'm sorry, doing local keyword research, you know, and really, I think keyword research in general, but realizing like if you're just, if you're a photographer and you're just optimizing for like, I don't know, your city and photography, there's probably other searches that people are doing that could give you some search visibility.
00:31:24
Speaker
So if I go back here and maybe I don't know why if you have something to add to that while I do a sample search here. Yeah. So I was actually just talking with a client about this yesterday about how different areas search for things so differently.
00:31:40
Speaker
So folks in the Northeast will search for wedding planners in a totally different way than folks in Atlanta, et cetera. So you definitely want to do that research. And a little plug for a past Davey and Krista episode where we talked about our... Burns the Book episode where we talked about our favorite tools for doing things like that. My big recommendation for folks who are just doing some kind of casual keyword research would be the Keywords Everywhere browser extension.
00:32:10
Speaker
But do a little research and see what folks in your area are actually searching for. It's great for when you're optimizing your Google business profile and also for creating content on your site, et cetera.
00:32:22
Speaker
Yeah, and these little modals will show up as well. So even for a search like an Apple's wedding photographer, and this could help you do some of that keyword research and try to figure out what sort of content you want to create on your site, people also ask. And there's this dropdown, right? And it has all these questions. And if you select it, it'll show you at least a glimpse of the answer, which you could click into. And so one of the related questions is, how much is a wedding photographer cost in Maryland, right? And so those are things that you might not think about creating content around.
00:32:50
Speaker
Especially if you don't share your prices on your website, you could still create content around that question creatively without actually sharing your prices on your website. Just another reason to do local keyword research. The last thing too is potentially create local landing pages. This is something in a recent show at SEO, Q&A that we did.
00:33:13
Speaker
that came up a bunch, which is basically, you know, if I'm, you know, for instance, the example I always use just because I've experienced there is Annapolis, if I'm located in Annapolis, how do I also rank for Baltimore Wedding Photographer or DC Wedding Photographer? You probably won't be able to do it all on the same page. So one thing that you might consider doing is creating pages dedicated to those specific either services that you offer,
00:33:39
Speaker
or locations that you want to rank it.
Creating location-specific landing pages
00:33:43
Speaker
So that's another way that you can optimize for local.
00:33:46
Speaker
Yeah, that is great advice, especially as folks are moving from using addresses to service areas. You can include, like Davey said, if you work primarily in Annapolis, maybe don't try to include Houston, Texas or whatever in your service area. But yeah, you can still create, you know, Houston, Texas wedding photographer landing page.
00:34:10
Speaker
And if you want from your Google business profile, you can create a post with a photo from one of your favorite Houston weddings that links to your Houston wedding photographer's landing page. And then that's on your Google business profile for people to click through and check out. I think people don't use the posts on Google business profile.
00:34:32
Speaker
to their maximum capacity.
Resources for optimizing Google Business Profiles
00:34:34
Speaker
I think there's a lot of cool stuff you can do to help people navigate around your business and see the things you want them to see just using those posts.
00:34:43
Speaker
Yeah and last thing I'll say and then we'll wrap up here but it doesn't take long to come in here and click over to post here and create a post. So these are things that I would recommend people do especially if they are a local business. You're actually serving people in local areas. You're not purely e-commerce or something like that.
00:35:05
Speaker
highly recommend people take full advantage of their Google business profiles. It doesn't take long to fill out all the fields. You could probably do this the first time. If you're just setting things up for the first time, maybe taking an hour. But I think you put 30 minutes into your listing a month, right? I think that's going to pay dividends over the long run. So definitely, if you have not paid attention to your Google business profile in the past,
00:35:27
Speaker
I highly recommend going and creating one. A few resources that I want to mention as we end here. One, if you are interested in having done for you SEO, head on over to till.agency. Like I said, you'll likely be working with Leah and our SEO team. Leah, like I said, is super thorough and she does just a really wonderful job. Otherwise, I wouldn't trust her with my own accounts. Head on over to till.agency to learn more about that. If you send us an email or fill out our contact form over there,
00:35:57
Speaker
then Leah will get back to you and talk about next steps and we can help you with all sorts of things when it comes to search engine optimization, whether you want more ongoing help or whether there's just a certain project that you want tackled and you don't want to have to do it yourself. And if you're interested in more doing it yourself or just learning a little bit more about SEO, be sure to check out our ShowIt SEO course. It is updated relatively frequently, at least with big updates. It is specific to the ShowIt platform.
00:36:25
Speaker
All right, so we're tackling things that are specific to the Showit platform, although there are a lot of principles in there that just apply largely, but we are using as an example the Showit platform specifically. So be sure to check that out as well, and you can learn more about that over at davianchrista.com.
00:36:42
Speaker
in our shop. There's a link to it. If you just church show at SEO, David and Krista, you can find it that way too. So, the wonders of Google, right? So, Leah, thank you so much for your time and I'm sure we'll have you on again soon. Yeah? Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.
00:37:01
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.