August Monthly Community SEO Q&A

Caleb Ulku 102:36
Transcript
0:00
0:10 Oh, excellent. All right, we are
0:15 live.
0:18 >> Ah, excellent. Okay, I see July monthly
0:22 community SEO. I'm going to change that
0:24 to August.
0:27 >> Perfect.
0:53 All right.
1:03 >> You do recordings?
1:05 >> Yes. Okay.
1:28 All right, welcome, welcome, welcome
1:30 everyone. It is of course Monday, August
1:34 11th at 1:00 central. Welcome to our
1:37 August
1:40 community uh Q&A uh with a focus on of
1:45 course AI and AI SEO. Sorry we're a week
1:49 late. I was in Austin last Monday for a
1:54 very fun masterclass event, but I am
1:58 back here today. So what we're going to
2:00 do is just start uh going through some
2:03 of the questions. Uh, I have the
2:05 wonderful Destiny here and she's going
2:08 to feed me the questions that you guys
2:10 have asked. Uh, feel free put something
2:13 in the chat if you would like. Uh,
2:15 otherwise there are a couple of comments
2:17 on the school community that you can use
2:19 and get your questions in there and
2:21 we'll just uh we'll just start hitting
2:24 them and and go through it if we have
2:25 time. Then uh we'll take some live
2:27 questions. That's the plan. But all
2:29 right. All right. Cool. So, thank you
2:31 guys for being here. Let's go ahead and
2:33 start. The first question we have is
2:34 from Muhammad Abdullah
2:38 and the question is, is there any
2:40 benefit to bringing the business map
2:42 embed onto the above the fold of the
2:44 landing page? Uh, I would say probably
2:48 not. This isn't something that we do. We
2:50 always embed a the Google business
2:54 profile on the GBP landing page, but we
2:57 usually embed it pretty low. And the
2:59 reason for that uh the space above the
3:03 fold that is the space that is visible
3:05 by a user when they first click through
3:08 to your website. That space is very very
3:10 important, right? Especially for a local
3:12 business website. Honestly, a lot of
3:15 users won't even scroll down at all.
3:17 They're just going to look at the hero
3:18 image, whatever's on top. They're going
3:20 to look for a click to call, maybe a
3:22 foot bill, and then they're going to
3:23 move on with their life. So, putting the
3:27 GBP embed above the fold probably not
3:30 something that we would recommend. Uh,
3:33 that being said, we haven't tested that.
3:35 So, um, I I probably wouldn't do it. We
3:39 almost always just put it down below.
3:41 All right. Next question from Mike here.
3:44 When you say article, is it different
3:46 from a whole page content or is it just
3:48 a page content minus headings and title
3:50 tags? So, that's a good question, Mike.
3:53 And this is something that I often
3:54 struggle with because everyone has a
3:57 different name for different things,
4:00 right? Okay. So, I could say an article,
4:03 a web page, a website, a URL, and I
4:06 might mean the same thing by all of
4:08 those terms. Uh, but some people might
4:11 not know what I mean. Like, if I say
4:12 URL, that might confuse some people
4:15 versus if I say web page, do I mean the
4:17 whole domain or do I mean that specific
4:20 page? So when I say article, what I mean
4:23 is the whole URL that has that content
4:26 on there. So I'm including the images,
4:29 I'm including things that break up walls
4:31 of text, I'm including the headings, I'm
4:33 including the title tags, I'm including
4:35 everything when I say article, I'm also
4:38 usually when I say article, I'm also
4:41 including uh external backlinks to that
4:44 page, right? And we have to do that
4:46 external backlinks to a page. The reason
4:49 we do that is to convince Google to show
4:53 Google that we're not just publishing a
4:55 bunch of AI slop, right? It's easy to
4:57 publish AI slop. You can easily connect
5:00 uh WordPress to the open AI API and
5:04 publish 10,000 pages tomorrow. Uh but
5:07 that won't rank, that won't help you. Um
5:10 so we are sourcing these uh links just
5:15 to make sure the content is seen by
5:19 Google as not AI slop. Okay. So that
5:23 external link I'm usually also talking
5:25 about that when I say article and I'm
5:28 also including when I say article I mean
5:32 the uh other internal links right so if
5:36 we post a new article or a new URL or a
5:38 new page whatever terminology you want
5:41 to use also need to um add links from
5:46 the website other pages on the website
5:49 back to that page. All right, cool. Just
5:52 so you guys know, Silio and Jay, if we
5:55 have time at the end, I'll hit your
5:57 in-person questions. Uh, I see you got
6:00 your hands up. You can keep them up. If
6:02 you have time at the end, I'm I'll hit
6:03 them. But most of this, I'm going to try
6:06 to get through the written questions
6:08 that were submitted in advance, and we
6:10 have quite a few of them. But if we get
6:12 through those, absolutely, uh, we can we
6:15 can do that. But no guarantees. If you
6:18 want to put your question in the chat
6:20 here, uh, then Destiny will see that.
6:23 She'll feed it to me on this other
6:25 window. Just wanted to make sure you
6:27 guys get your question answered. That's
6:28 going to be the easiest way. But if you
6:30 want to speak, then keep your hands up
6:32 and we'll see you at the end if we have
6:34 time.
6:37 All right. So, Wes asks, "Do you
6:39 recommend adding citizen cities,
6:41 services, and neighborhood pages for
6:43 service area business with a large
6:45 service areas?" All right. So this is um
6:47 an interesting question Wes. So my very
6:50 first answer to this question would be
6:52 if you have a service service area
6:54 business and for those of you who don't
6:56 know a service area business means that
6:58 it's a Google business profile without a
7:01 visible address. Okay, when you're
7:03 creating your Google business profile uh
7:06 you can create one without a visible
7:08 address. If you do that it's called a
7:10 service area business. Now, service area
7:13 businesses are much harder to rank than
7:16 a business that has a visible address.
7:18 Uh, I've seen case studies that estimate
7:21 30 to 50% higher. I've seen other case
7:24 studies that say 100% harder or even
7:26 more. Uh, but in almost every situation
7:31 where we've worked with a client who had
7:33 a service area business, when they added
7:35 a visible address, they got a pop in
7:38 ranking. it almost immediately uh the
7:41 ranking got better across the board.
7:43 This is so significant and such a
7:46 significant factor that uh for our SEO
7:50 agency, I will no longer take clients
7:53 that have a service area business. I
7:56 will not take you as a local SEO client
7:58 unless you have a visible address
8:00 because service area businesses are
8:02 really, really hard to rank, right?
8:04 Especially if we're talking about
8:06 services that are competitive, and most
8:08 are, right? Plumbers, HVAC, roofers,
8:11 these are all fairly competitive. And if
8:13 you want to rank, then you really need
8:15 to have a visible address. Okay? It can
8:18 be your home. You can get a Google
8:20 business profile verified at a
8:21 residential address, no problem. It can
8:23 be your home. If you don't want your
8:25 home address visible, then you can rent
8:27 an office space and get that address
8:29 verified. But if it's a service area
8:31 business, it's going to be very very
8:34 hard to rank. Okay. So, he had some
8:36 other questions about cities, services,
8:38 neighborhood pages. Sure, we would
8:40 follow the same geographic process that
8:42 we do for our visible address locations,
8:45 but I just wanted to answer the question
8:48 first, Wes, that service area business
8:50 is going to be very, very hard to rank,
8:52 much less rank as you get farther and
8:54 farther away from your address. Change
8:56 it to a visible address. Then make sure
8:59 you've built up enough topical
9:00 relevance, right? So make sure you have
9:02 enough content about the topic and make
9:04 sure you have enough trust. We can do
9:06 that by looking at your local rank map.
9:08 We want to see your local rank map in
9:10 the 25 to 35% range for being in the top
9:14 three. That's a sign that you have
9:16 enough topical relevance, that you have
9:18 enough trust. Then you can start
9:20 producing geographic based content like
9:22 these different cities, services,
9:24 neighborhood pages. The one additional
9:27 warning I would give you is it is
9:29 typically very difficult to rank your
9:32 GBP, if the searcher is in a city
9:35 different from your GBP address. Okay?
9:38 So, uh we have a lot of clients where I
9:41 can pull up the local rank map and
9:43 they're 1 2 3 4 they're 1 2 3 here and
9:46 then right there they're like 56 and and
9:48 and higher. And we can literally draw
9:51 the border of the city municipality just
9:54 by looking at rank maps. As soon as the
9:56 city changes, it gets much much harder
9:58 to rank. So, um, anyway, Wes, hopefully
10:01 that's not all bad news for you. You're
10:03 going to be fine. Just change it to a
10:05 visible address and you'll be good to
10:08 go. Uh, that's the biggest piece of
10:10 advice I can give you. But be warned,
10:12 Wes. If you add a visible if you add an
10:16 address to a service area business, it
10:18 is very very likely to trigger a
10:20 reverification.
10:22 It's less likely if you add the same
10:24 address that you originally verified it
10:26 at, but Google won't give you that
10:28 address. It knows what the address is.
10:31 It stores it somewhere, but it won't
10:33 tell you. You have to just put a new
10:35 address in. Hopefully, it's the same one
10:37 you verified on. If it's a different
10:39 one, you're almost always going to
10:41 trigger a reverification. And if it's
10:43 not a different address, if it is the
10:45 exact same address, you're still
10:47 potentially strong potential going to
10:50 need to do a reverification.
10:54 Next related question from Wyatt. If a
10:56 business has a large service area with
10:58 multiple counties, should they embed
11:00 maps on their homepage for each of those
11:02 counties and service areas? Uh, no. Uh,
11:05 so Wyatt, we almost always will have one
11:08 Google business profile landing page,
11:10 right? So, when you go into your Google
11:12 business profile, there's a box in there
11:14 that says website colon, and then
11:16 there's a web address, a URL. Whatever
11:19 you put in that web address, I like to
11:21 call the Google business profile landing
11:24 page. And the reason we call it that,
11:25 very simply, of course, if somebody
11:27 pulls up your Google business profile,
11:29 clicks website, that page is where they
11:31 end up. Now, for most businesses, that
11:33 is the homepage. But not always, right?
11:36 If you're multilocation or if you have
11:39 an e-commerce or something like that and
11:40 you don't want to use the homepage for
11:42 your GBP, then it might not be your
11:44 homepage. The GBP embed we will do on
11:47 the GBP landing page, not on every
11:50 single page that talks about it. We'll
11:52 only do one GBP embed and we'll do it on
11:54 the landing page. That's it. Okay. So
11:58 yeah, if a business has a large service
11:59 area, now that being said, a large
12:01 service area with multiple counties,
12:02 that's going to be pretty hard to rank
12:04 across a large service area with
12:05 multiple counties unless the competition
12:08 is very minimal in that area.
12:13 All
12:15 can check from Gregory. How can you
12:17 check the Chamber of Commerce links to
12:19 make sure it is a do follow link?
12:23 Excellent suggestion. And in fact, um I
12:26 am between all of our clients. I am a
12:29 member of I don't know
12:32 dozens of chamber of co chambers of
12:35 commerce across the United States. And I
12:37 will say one chamber of commerce that is
12:40 pretty close to where I am. It's the
12:42 Chamber of Commerce in Mobile, Alabama.
12:45 M O B I L E pronounced Mobile if you're
12:48 not familiar with that. But anyway, the
12:50 Chamber of Commerce in Mobile, Alabama
12:52 will only provide no follow links. Uh
12:56 the way that you check this is if you go
12:58 to the chambers's website and then you
13:00 go to the directory from the chambers
13:02 website you can then view source code
13:05 and just do a controlF and search for no
13:07 follow and just see if the directory
13:10 links that or the if the directory if
13:13 the links from the directory to the
13:15 members websites see if they are no
13:17 follow. Okay. And if they're not then
13:20 you're golden uh good to join. If
13:22 they're no follow, then usually what
13:25 we'll do is I will send a message to
13:28 that chamber of commerce and ask if we
13:30 can have a do follow link. Uh most of
13:32 them don't even know what I'm talking
13:34 about and they're happy to do it as long
13:35 as I'll join the chamber. Uh the chamber
13:38 of commerce just really wants people to
13:40 join. So if I'm like yes, I will happily
13:41 join today. If your web developer can
13:44 change this so that I get a do follow
13:46 link, they'll often say, yep, no
13:48 problem. And then I'll join. Um, so far
13:52 out of all of the chambers of commerce,
13:54 the one in Mobile is the only one that
13:56 has said no. So, I've never joined it.
13:58 Uh, but that's how we check. We just
14:00 want to make sure that we're getting a
14:02 the best kind of link is a plain text do
14:05 follow link from the directory website.
14:07 That's what we want to see. And when we
14:09 see that, um, then I'll usually join it
14:13 straight away. All right. I'm finding a
14:16 lot of GBP services. Do you really do a
14:18 page per service or do you combine
14:21 similar services? It was a question from
14:23 Tess. And Tess, my answer is yes. We
14:27 really do a page per service. So if you
14:30 have 30 services, we're going to create
14:32 30 pages. If you have a 100 services,
14:34 we're going to create a 100 pages. The
14:37 exception to that is, of course, while
14:39 we're creating all of this content,
14:41 while we're creating all of these pages,
14:43 we're going to watch the local rank map.
14:45 Okay? And if the local rank map turns
14:48 green and starts to look really good,
14:50 then I'm going to stop producing content
14:52 because I'm done. We're ranked, right?
14:55 Then it's a conversation with the client
14:56 as to whether they want to try to rank
14:58 farther out or whether they want to
15:00 create another GBP or what the potential
15:03 path forward is for a client who's
15:05 ranked everywhere where we initially uh
15:08 did the first scan. But yes, we will um
15:12 create a page for every service. Uh, we
15:14 call it the core 30, but that's mainly
15:16 because core 30 rolls off the tongue
15:18 really well and sounds a lot less
15:20 intimidating than core 500. But if you
15:23 have 500 services, then it might be the
15:26 core 500 for you. Probably won't need
15:28 all 500 unless you're like personal
15:30 injury lawyer or plastic surgery or
15:32 something else that's crazy competitive.
15:35 But, you know, 80 to 90% of the
15:38 businesses uh in the in like regular
15:41 cities like Fort Wayne, Indiana is my
15:44 favorite example because it's just this
15:46 sorry if you're from Fort Wayne, but I
15:47 always use it as this like generic
15:49 Midwest example city, you know, couple
15:52 hundred thousand people. May maybe
15:55 you've heard the name, but it's just
15:56 this random city in Indiana, Fort Wayne.
15:59 So, if you're a plumber in Fort Wayne,
16:01 you'll be able to get ranked with the
16:03 core 30. you won't need 200 pages of
16:06 content. But in case we do, then uh the
16:09 option is there. We can just keep
16:10 producing it. All right, good question.
16:13 Now, let's see. Uh another question
16:16 here. Muhammad asks, "My competitors are
16:18 stuffing keywords into citation URLs.
16:21 Should we do these tricks sometimes? Is
16:22 it best to follow basics?" So, that's an
16:25 interesting question. I don't really do
16:27 tricks. Uh the way we do SEO doesn't
16:30 really use tricks at all. and a
16:34 welltimed question Muhammad. I would say
16:37 I have been doing a lot of work in the
16:40 citations area because there's a lot of
16:43 evidence that chat GPT just loves
16:46 citations. Okay, so let me let me back
16:49 this up and talk about citations just
16:51 briefly really quickly for those of you
16:53 who are here and interested in it. So,
16:56 um, when we see citation, what most
16:59 people think of when I say citation is
17:02 this, you know, um, what like Joe's
17:05 business directory listings.com or some
17:07 spammy site like that where, you know,
17:11 you you go there, you you have you pay
17:13 your VA and they, you know, enter these
17:15 little boxes of information about your
17:17 business and they do this over and over
17:19 again, 200 times, 300 times, until their
17:22 fingers are bleeding. And then of the
17:24 300 citations that they entered with
17:26 blood all over everything, they get like
17:28 six of them indexed by Google because
17:30 they're all just complete spammy crap.
17:32 Okay, so that type of citation I'm going
17:34 to call that let's do SEO like it's
17:38 2019. Okay. Um those don't really do
17:41 much of anything anymore. So if you're
17:43 doing that type of citation, I'm going
17:45 to give you permission to stop and just
17:48 stop. You don't need that type of
17:49 citation. It doesn't do anything, right?
17:52 Google won't index them. ChatGpt doesn't
17:54 care about them. They're not high
17:56 quality, reputable sources. The only
17:59 exception, the only time we will ever do
18:02 those types of citations, like the
18:04 spammy ones that BAS can just type in,
18:07 uh the only time we will do that is if
18:10 we don't have a GBP yet. Okay? Uh if
18:13 there's no GBP, simply getting the
18:15 business name on the internet can be
18:18 helpful to getting the GBP verified.
18:21 If there's a verified GBP, that type of
18:23 citation is a complete waste. Okay?
18:25 Don't do it. Then you're going to panic
18:27 that they're not getting indexed. Just
18:28 don't worry about it. It's spammy and it
18:30 will do nothing. Now, today it's
18:34 obviously not 2019, right? So, we still
18:37 do citations, but when I talk about
18:39 citations now, what I mean are very high
18:42 quality citations. These are citations
18:45 that will almost always require
18:47 verification. Right? If you can have a
18:50 VA go create your citation in 10
18:52 minutes, this is not a citation worth
18:54 getting. Right? So these citations that
18:57 I'm talking about, Apple Maps, right?
18:59 Bing for business. Bing for business is
19:01 critical. Remember that chat GPT uses
19:04 Bing for Business, not Google Maps. So
19:07 if you want Chat GPT to recommend your
19:09 business, you need to have a Bing for
19:10 business listing. To get a Bing for
19:12 business listing, you need verification.
19:14 To get Apple Maps, you need
19:15 verification. Uh there's also like Yelp,
19:18 the Better Business Bureau. Uh a bunch
19:20 of the car navigation systems, right?
19:22 The BMW, the Audi, the Mercedes, these
19:24 navigation systems, they have business
19:27 directories and getting listed in them
19:29 generally will require a verification.
19:32 So these types of high quality citations
19:35 I think are absolutely critical. Uh and
19:38 they can act really help to move your
19:40 local ranking. uh but they're incredibly
19:44 important for chat GPT. ChatGpt loves
19:46 these citations. It eats them up and
19:48 provides recommendations based on these
19:50 highquality citations. Okay, so
19:54 hopefully that answered your question,
19:55 Muhammad. If you can stuff keywords into
19:58 the citation URLs, that citation is
20:00 probably just a waste of time and you
20:02 shouldn't worry about it. I actually
20:05 have a uh YouTube video coming up. Um,
20:09 I'm I'm in the middle of scripting it
20:11 and the title of it is why most
20:14 citations are completely worthless. Do
20:17 this instead. So, uh, welltimed
20:20 question. I was just working on that
20:22 scripting this morning for that one. Uh,
20:24 excellent. And by the way, um, hopefully
20:27 Destiny can drop this link if you want
20:30 an easy way to give a citation. Now,
20:32 this is going to sound like a plug, uh,
20:34 but there's this tool. It's called Lead
20:36 Snap. I've talked about it quite a bit
20:38 on my most recent YouTube videos, we do
20:40 use this in-house. Uh I mentioned at one
20:43 point in the 10 years that I've had my
20:45 SEO agency, we have changed tools
20:47 exactly three times. Right? Those three
20:50 times were once for uh high level, once
20:52 for chat GPT, and then the third time to
20:55 start using lead snap. The thing I like
20:58 about lead snap so much, it does the
21:00 local heat maps, the local ranking maps.
21:02 A lot of other tools do that. But uh
21:04 what I like about Lead Snap so much is
21:06 it has API connections to Apple Maps,
21:10 Bing for Business, these navigation
21:11 systems, BBB, etc. So you can connect
21:14 your GBP account to lead snap uh double
21:17 check all the information on the GBP
21:19 that it's accurate. You toggle one
21:21 switch and it will uh with these uh API
21:25 connections create all of these super
21:28 citations that will not require
21:30 verification. It will copy your GBP onto
21:33 Bing for Business without having you to
21:36 get the postcard and all the other crap
21:38 that you would normally need to verify a
21:40 Bing for Business. Highly recommended.
21:42 Uh Destiny just dropped the affiliate
21:45 link in the comments. Yes, it's an
21:47 affiliate link, but if you use that
21:48 link, you'll get half off your first
21:50 three months. Okay. And the other thing,
21:53 uh, the founder of Lead Snap would
21:55 probably be annoyed if I told you, but
21:56 the really cool thing about Lead Snap is
21:58 once you get the citations, if you turn
22:00 it off, uh, Lead Snap will not delete
22:03 your citations. So, it's $20 a month,
22:06 but take that for what you will. Uh, it
22:08 is excellent, excellent at getting those
22:10 citations. Okay.
22:12 Uh, next question from George. Georgees.
22:16 George, is it okay to add the same
22:19 service on multiple categories? Uh we
22:22 usually don't do that, George. Um we do
22:25 not duplicate category or we do not
22:27 duplicate services. Uh we want 20 to 30
22:31 services and we want them to be unique.
22:33 Uh they should be in the category that
22:35 they're most relevant to. Uh now with a
22:38 service, you can of course type anything
22:40 you want in the box, right? There's no
22:42 drop-own box or anything like that. Um
22:45 so you can type anything you want. So
22:46 you can type services that feel very
22:48 related as long as they're still related
22:50 to the overall category, just don't make
22:53 the services exactly the same thing. So
22:56 one of my favorite examples of this,
22:57 right? So we have a client who's a
23:00 plastic surgeon and his primary category
23:03 on the GBP is plastic surgeon, but
23:05 another GBP category is cosmetic
23:08 surgeon, right? So he has cosmetic
23:10 surgeon as a secondary category. Well,
23:12 cosmetic surgeon and plastic surgeon are
23:14 the same thing pretty much. Um, so how
23:16 do we divide the services between
23:18 cosmetic and plastic surgeon? Well, they
23:20 don't need to be completely perfect
23:22 accurate, right? Just do your best. Uh,
23:24 get it divided out. You can always ask
23:26 Chat GPT to help you. Chat GPT5 does a
23:29 pretty good job of this. Just give it
23:31 your list of categories. Give it your
23:32 list of services and ask it to divide
23:35 the services into the category that they
23:38 are most semantically relevant to. Okay.
23:42 Now, when I say semantically relevant,
23:44 that's an important word. Uh, Google's
23:46 algorithm uses semantics to determine
23:48 ranking. So, you want the closest
23:50 semantic relevance. Also, make sure when
23:54 you're asking chat GPT or cloud or
23:56 whatever to do that, tell it what you're
23:58 trying to do. Tell it that you're trying
23:59 to rank this business higher on Google
24:01 Maps so that could it please do this
24:04 with that goal in mind. It's always good
24:06 to give the AI's your final goal. it
24:08 might uh identify a path forward that is
24:11 a little bit different than what you had
24:13 thought to achieve that same goal. All
24:16 right, next question from Al.
24:20 Can you provide a list of the tools both
24:22 free and paid that are required for your
24:24 premium local SEO course? Uh, sure. So,
24:27 it's not a long list. Uh let me pull up
24:31 real quick because I think in the first
24:34 section of the premium course I say the
24:38 tools that you need
24:43 recommended tools. There it is. Okay.
24:46 Here are the recommended tools in uh
24:49 that we use at my agency. Okay. Number
24:52 one is the Google search. Okay. That's a
24:54 free tool. Everyone gets about 20 free
24:57 searches a day. If you go over that 20,
24:59 then you get 20 more. Um, that was a bad
25:02 joke. You have unlimited free Google
25:04 search, obviously. Okay, number two is
25:06 Google Search Console, which also is
25:08 completely free. We don't use Search
25:10 Console nearly as often as we used to
25:13 when we focused on non-local because
25:15 interactions with your GBP with a map
25:18 listing do not show up in Search
25:20 Console. But the search console, it's
25:22 free and it can still be helpful for a
25:24 lot of other things. The indexing
25:26 reports, performance reports, things
25:27 like that. Uh Claude, uh Claude.AI,
25:31 I haven't yet done a full comparison
25:34 between Claude Sonnet and ChatGpt 5, but
25:37 Claude Sonnet was better than ChatgPT4.5
25:41 at writing content. So, we have Claude
25:43 Sonnet that we rely on for most of our
25:45 content. That's $20 a month. Uh then of
25:48 course we have chat GPT. That's another
25:50 $20 a month. Uh potentially you could
25:53 use just one of them instead of both,
25:55 but we're at $40 a month here total. Uh
25:57 lead snap is the next tool. That is $60
26:00 a month for up to 10 GBPs. If you have
26:05 more than 10 GBPs, you should be able to
26:07 afford more than $60 a month. Uh and in
26:10 fact, you don't need lead lead snap
26:11 until you have your first client anyway
26:13 because what you're going to do with
26:14 lead snap is connect a GBP to it. So,
26:17 uh, we're at $100 a month now. Uh, then
26:20 we have high level. Honestly, the only
26:23 thing that we use highle for, uh, right
26:25 now at the agency, we used to use it for
26:27 more, but we've migrated a lot of it
26:28 over to lead snap. So, the main thing
26:31 that we're using highle for right now is
26:34 when we run ads to grow the agency,
26:37 right? So when we run agency ads, we use
26:40 high level to manage those ads, to
26:42 manage the CRM, to manage communications
26:45 and the email uh the email sequences and
26:48 all of that. So if you're running ads, I
26:50 would recommend high level. If you're
26:52 not running ads, you probably don't need
26:54 it. Uh so high level is $300 a month. Uh
26:57 but I'm going to call that optional and
26:59 not include it. Uh page optimizer pro.
27:02 Page Optimizer Pro is a tool uh Kyle
27:06 Roof came up with it. Uh fascinating
27:09 story behind it, but I won't uh belabor
27:11 that point. Basically, Page Optimizer
27:14 Pro analyzes the content that's
27:16 currently ranking on Google and gives
27:18 you ideas for semantic keywords, LSI
27:20 keywords to include in your own content.
27:23 It used to be much more valuable pre-hat
27:26 GPT, but we still use it today. So, I'm
27:28 going to include that there. It's not
27:30 very expensive. I think it's $30 or $40
27:32 a month. Uh, and then Screaming Frog,
27:34 that's the last tool. Screaming Frog is
27:36 like $100 or $200 a year, but it's
27:40 completely free if you have fewer than
27:42 500 URLs. I can't remember if it's 500
27:45 or or 100. But if you're needing
27:48 Screaming Frog for a client that has
27:50 more than 100 Uh, perfect 500. If you're
27:52 using Screaming Frog and you have a
27:54 client that has more than 500 URLs, a
27:56 100red or 200 bucks a year should also
27:57 be no problem. So, my that's it. That's
28:00 that's our total um that's our total
28:02 list of uh tools that we use. And uh
28:06 with Claude and Chat GPT, we're at like
28:09 yeah, I guess
28:12 $30 a month, something in that range. Uh
28:14 which would be 4 to 500 if you're also
28:18 needing to use uh high level as a CRM.
28:21 Great question. Uh Al Sher asked a
28:24 follow-up question. AHRS, we don't use
28:27 AHFs anymore. uh AHFS is not very useful
28:31 for local SEO. Um the information it
28:34 gives uh is not good, right? A we know
28:38 that all of these third party tools that
28:39 are looking at keywords, AHREFs, MA, um
28:43 any of them, Majestic, Semrush, we know
28:45 that the lower the volume, the search
28:48 volume of the keyword, the less and less
28:50 accurate it gets. So if you're solely
28:52 focused on local SEO, they get so
28:55 inaccurate as to be pointing in the
28:57 wrong direction. So yeah, we don't use
28:59 ah refs. I don't check domain ratings. I
29:02 don't check domain authority because
29:04 frankly for local SEO, you don't need
29:07 to. We're not just building mindless
29:09 links to try to grow the domain rating
29:11 as high as possible. That's not the best
29:13 way, the most efficient way to do local
29:16 SEO. Remember with local SEO, what we're
29:18 trying to do is build up trust with both
29:22 Google, Google's AI for the AI overview
29:25 and of course with chat GPT so that
29:29 there's enough trustworthy information
29:31 about your business online so that these
29:34 tools will recommend you to their users.
29:38 And all of these tools, even Google
29:41 search itself is getting better enough
29:44 to the point that domain rating just
29:46 isn't valuable for local SEO. And all
29:50 the keyword research is wrong anyway.
29:51 So, we never use keyword research for
29:53 local SEO. So, uh anyway, yes, no a no
29:57 ahfs, uh nothing like that.
30:01 Um, another follow-up question. What do
30:03 you use to find broken links and slow
30:05 pages as you build out? Screaming frog.
30:06 That's what Screaming Frog is for.
30:08 Screaming Frog does an excellent job at
30:10 finding things like that. You can
30:11 actually hook for free, no additional
30:13 charge. You can hook Screaming Frog into
30:16 Page Speed Insights and as Screaming
30:19 Frog is crawling your domain, is
30:21 crawling that domain, it can run Page
30:23 Speed Insights on every single URL it's
30:25 crawling. Um, yeah, it's cool. And it'll
30:28 also find the broken links. It'll find
30:30 the slow pages. We don't need those
30:32 chintzy uh automated audits that those
30:36 like AHFS does. Don't need that.
30:38 Screaming frog will do great. Okay, next
30:41 question from Virgil. Are meta
30:44 descriptions important for local SEO?
30:47 Well, this is an interesting question. I
30:48 don't really know. Let me think about
30:50 how to answer this. The um my knee-jerk
30:54 reaction to this question is to say no.
30:58 Meta descriptions are not very important
31:00 for local SEO. Uh let's walk through
31:03 this together and see if I change my
31:05 mind by the time I get to the end of
31:07 this little spiel I'm going to give. So,
31:09 for those of you who don't know, just to
31:10 make sure we're all on the same page,
31:11 the meta description is sometimes what
31:15 Google will show right below the title
31:17 tag uh on the search engine results
31:20 page. I say sometimes because often
31:22 you'll give Google a meta description
31:24 and it will decide that it can come up
31:26 with a better meta description and it
31:28 will write its own meta description no
31:29 matter what you put in that box. Uh so
31:32 sometimes so when we talk about local
31:35 SEO we are not trying to rank anything
31:38 organically right I get a lot of
31:40 questions about what about keyword
31:42 cannibalization or uh what what about
31:45 duplicate content what about all of
31:47 these different things and you shouldn't
31:50 care or worry about any of those things
31:52 with local SEO because when we talk
31:54 about local SEO everything we're doing
31:57 every page we create every URL or
31:59 article that we create on that website.
32:02 We're trying to rank the Google business
32:04 profile higher. That's the only goal. I
32:07 don't care about organic rankings. I
32:08 don't track organic rankings when we're
32:11 doing an a local SEO engagement. I only
32:14 care about ranking the Google business
32:16 profile. That's because 5 to 10% of the
32:19 traffic will go to the ad. 60 to 70% of
32:22 the traffic will go to one of the map
32:23 results. So even if you're number one
32:26 organically, you're playing for 20% of
32:29 the search traffic, right? So, why do I
32:31 care about being number one organically
32:33 if I'm only playing for 20% of the total
32:36 traffic? I'd rather be in the maps. So,
32:38 everything we're doing is to try to rank
32:41 in the maps to get the GBP in the maps
32:44 listing. The maps algorithm has three
32:47 core factors, right? Trust, relevance,
32:49 and proximity. So, any halfway decent
32:53 website, uh, that's just not terrible.
32:56 If you're standing in the lobby of the
32:58 business and search for plumber near me,
33:01 they should show up in the top three,
33:03 right? Uh like that number one spot
33:05 right on their address should be in the
33:08 top three unless something is seriously
33:09 wrong or the website is terrible. Uh so
33:12 what we're really trying to do when we
33:13 talk about local SEO is grow the trust
33:16 and relevance to overcome the proximity
33:20 detriment as we get farther and farther
33:23 away from the GBP. Okay, so that's what
33:25 we're trying to do. We're trying to grow
33:27 that trust and relevance to overcome the
33:29 proximity issue as we get farther away.
33:31 That's local SEO. So, are meta
33:34 descriptions important? The reason I
33:36 said no is because I don't care about
33:37 organic. And it's not like Google will
33:39 leave a blank. It'll write its own meta
33:41 description for you. Okay. Okay. But so
33:44 I just said no, they're not important.
33:46 But man, we still fill them out because
33:48 could you imagine creating a new website
33:49 and not filling out meta description,
33:51 especially with AI writing it for you?
33:54 Just have AI write the meta description
33:55 for you, put it in the box, and and move
33:57 on with your life. Now, if you're taking
33:59 on a local SEO client with like 500 URLs
34:02 and there's zero meta descriptions, I
34:05 probably would not use the amount of
34:07 resources necessary to write 500 meta
34:09 descriptions. Even with AI, that's going
34:12 to take hours of time. So, I probably
34:13 wouldn't do that. Uh, but if I'm
34:15 creating a new page, it takes an extra
34:17 30 seconds to do a meta description. So,
34:20 we'll just do it. Okay. Hopefully that
34:22 wasn't too controversial for you guys.
34:24 Let me know uh in the comments if anyone
34:26 like completely disagrees with my take
34:29 on meta descriptions for local SEO. Uh,
34:32 not what I expected. I did not expect to
34:34 get on this live stream and then shout
34:36 out to everyone that made descriptions
34:38 are a waste of time for local SEO. But
34:40 hey, that's where we are on this Monday
34:42 afternoon. Cool. All right. How next
34:46 question is from Jay. All right. How
34:48 hard is it to rank for an additional
34:50 location if you've been in business for
34:51 a very long time? All right. So, this is
34:55 I'm assuming you have one location,
34:56 you've ranked it well, and you want to
34:59 cool. You have multiple locations.
35:01 You're ranked well. Uh, for whatever
35:03 reason, you're adding another location.
35:05 Maybe they actually expanded. Maybe you
35:07 want to rank in other cities, but for
35:09 whatever reason, we're we're going to
35:11 add more GBPs uh and try to rank it. So,
35:14 the good news when we have a website
35:16 with multilocations, this is my favorite
35:18 kind of client, right? If someone comes
35:20 to me and says, "Hey, I want local SEO,
35:23 man, I love it if they're multilocation
35:25 business." Because the great news about
35:26 a multilocation business is you already
35:29 have a ton of topical relevance, right?
35:33 Uh, we normally would not add more
35:35 locations unless the locations they have
35:37 are already ranking well. You know, I'm
35:39 not going to create a new website with
35:41 10 locations right off the bat. I'm
35:42 going to start with one. I'm going to
35:44 rank it. Add one. I'm going to rank it.
35:46 Add one. I'm going to rank it. Maybe at
35:47 some point I'll add multiple ones, but
35:49 I'm not going to go from like 0 to 10.
35:52 So, I have multiple locations uh that
35:54 are already ranking in uh same target
35:57 keywords, maybe just a different city,
35:58 but same topical keywords. I mean,
36:00 that's great news. um because it's going
36:03 to be much easier to rank the next one.
36:05 Now, how much easier? H that's going to
36:07 be based on so many factors, right?
36:09 Competitiveness, what are your uh what
36:11 are the other websites doing? How many
36:13 GBPs are in the area? What are the
36:15 cities in that area doing? So, usually,
36:19 especially for multilocation, well, I
36:21 mean, honestly, for any new client, the
36:23 first thing we're going to almost always
36:24 do is run a local rank map, right? The
36:27 local rank map will guide everything.
36:29 Everything we do in a month for a client
36:31 for local SEO is based on what that
36:34 local rank map says. And Destiny can
36:36 confirm this if you don't believe me,
36:37 but local rank map is such a critical
36:40 factor. Uh that's the beginning of
36:43 everything. So, uh get a new location,
36:46 get it verified, run a local rank map
36:48 like straight away and see what it looks
36:50 like and that'll give you an idea how
36:53 much topical relevance did you get just
36:54 from sharing that domain. And what are
36:56 the first few steps that you need to do?
36:59 Often, especially if you start to talk
37:00 about third, fourth, fifth location, we
37:02 can skip a lot of the topical relevance
37:04 building straight away just because the
37:06 domain is already has so much relevance
37:09 and so much trust. We can just
37:11 immediately start uh producing
37:13 geographic based content to improve some
37:15 of the outlying dots.
37:20 Little bit little bit of a water break
37:22 there. All right. uh from George. For
37:25 SEO and user experience, is it better to
37:28 have one general FAQ page on my website
37:30 or should I create a specific FAQ
37:32 section under each individual service
37:35 page? This is an interesting question.
37:38 So, what I would do, so the way that we
37:41 handle this, George, um when
37:46 there Okay, I'm getting I'm trying to
37:49 put my thoughts together to answer this
37:50 question. So, there are three phases to
37:53 a local SEO engagement. Okay, let me
37:58 pull it up real quick uh because I don't
38:00 want to get the phases incorrect. So,
38:03 the first phase of a of a local SEO
38:05 engagement, what we're going to do is
38:07 create the core 30. Okay, so we've
38:10 talked about this before. That's
38:11 creating your GVP category pages,
38:13 secondary category pages, and service
38:15 pages. We call that the core 30. Phase
38:17 one, create the core 30. Phase two,
38:20 create additional topical relevance.
38:22 Now, you might be able to skip phase two
38:24 if the rank map looks good after you've
38:26 done the core 30. Okay? So, again, make
38:28 sure you watch your rank map. So, phase
38:31 two is additional topical relevance. So,
38:33 you've done the core 30, but you don't
38:35 yet have enough topical relevance. And
38:36 then phase three is to create
38:38 geographical relevance. You have the
38:40 topical relevance. Now, we need to
38:41 create geographical relevance. The
38:43 reason I mentioned that is the way that
38:45 we handle FAQs is we will almost always
38:48 put a generalized FAQ on the GBP landing
38:51 page. Okay? And that FAQ, we're going to
38:55 try to answer questions that real people
38:58 are asking about that type of business
39:00 in that area. And the reason we're doing
39:02 that is for ChatGpt recommendations.
39:05 Right? If Chat GPT said, like if it's
39:08 February in Minneapolis and somebody
39:10 asked ChatGpt, "Hey, my hose bib broke.
39:14 Who would you recommend to fix it?"
39:16 Well, if we have an FAQ on the
39:18 plumbers's GBP landing page that talks
39:21 about how good they are to at fixing
39:23 hose bibs in the Minneapolis winters,
39:26 that significantly increases the chances
39:28 that ChatGpt is going to recommend that
39:30 business for that user. So, we want to
39:32 pull the questions that people are
39:34 actually asking about that service and
39:36 about the region that the service is
39:38 located in and answer those questions in
39:41 regular normal language because regular
39:43 normal language is how people chat with
39:44 chat GPT. And let me see if it's
39:47 actually live because I did we we
39:50 started using a new prompt for this
39:54 uh the customer language analyzer
39:57 prompt. It's in this school community.
40:00 Uh, I had it on draft because the
40:02 YouTube video hasn't gone live yet. But
40:04 for those of you who are here, I'll go
40:06 ahead and flip it to published. And then
40:08 there's the link to it. Uh, I just
40:10 dropped the link in the, uh, Zoom chat
40:12 here. So, that prompt uh, it's going to
40:15 get chat GPT or claude basically to
40:17 crawl Reddit, Trust Pilot, other
40:19 business sites and figure out what types
40:22 of questions are people asking about
40:25 this type of business and this type of
40:27 location. Okay? and those will answer
40:30 with a small FAQ section at the bottom
40:32 of the GBP landing page just to get more
40:34 recommendations from ChatGpt.
40:37 After that primary FAQ is done, the only
40:40 time we'll put additional FAQ sections
40:43 on the website is if we need additional
40:46 topical relevance. Okay, so that's phase
40:49 two, right? Phase one is the core 30.
40:51 Phase two is additional topical
40:53 relevance. So if we need additional
40:55 topical relevance because we're not
40:56 ranking well we did the core 30 now we
40:59 need to add uh additional supporting
41:02 content for that service. Okay. And the
41:06 best way to get ideas for supporting
41:08 content and a lot of you know this is
41:10 the people also ask section on Google.
41:12 Right. So instead of plumber
41:15 Minneapolis, we'll just write plumber
41:17 and see if we get a people also ask
41:19 section. Uh another good way we can put
41:21 local plumber or you can put a question
41:23 word after the word plumber. Right? Who,
41:25 what, when, where, what, how, why, how.
41:27 If we put one of those question words
41:28 after plumber, we're almost certainly
41:30 going to get a people also ask section.
41:32 Then we can create an FAQ on one of the
41:34 service or category pages to answer some
41:37 of the people also ask questions. And
41:39 then we'll write additional long- form
41:41 content to answer the people also asked
41:43 question more deeply and then provide
41:45 the link back and forth from the FAQ to
41:48 the deeper uh intense answer and back up
41:51 to the FAQ. Otherwise, we're not
41:54 typically just adding FAQs to every
41:56 article we write. Okay, that was a much
41:59 longer answer than I was expecting.
42:01 Hopefully that was helpful. Uh Sander
42:03 asks, "What software do you recommend
42:05 for rank maps?" Lead snap. Um I like
42:09 Lead Snap. I like Lead Snap a lot. Um I
42:12 already talked about it citation use. We
42:14 also use it to generate rank maps. Uh we
42:17 used to use local dominator, but I don't
42:19 use local dominator anymore. And the
42:22 reason that we don't use local dominator
42:25 for uh these rank maps anymore is
42:28 because when you run a uh rank map with
42:31 lead snap, when you get the results for
42:34 what your whatever business you ran,
42:36 it'll give you the results for that
42:38 business. Excellent. Uh Viking does
42:40 that. Uh White Spark does that. Local
42:43 Dominator does that. But on top of that,
42:45 Lead Snap will also give you the 20 or
42:47 so other businesses that it found while
42:50 it was running your rank map. It will
42:53 let you view any one of those businesses
42:56 rank maps. Very, very cool. But even be,
42:58 let me pull it up real quick, cuz even
43:00 better than that, it actually gives you
43:03 information on um the how they're how
43:08 how you're ranking in the like your
43:10 average rank position. uh what percent
43:13 of that rank map is in the top three and
43:16 it also gives what percent of your
43:18 market you're dominating. Let me pull
43:20 one up uh cuz when we saw this I mean
43:23 this is very exciting. It uh makes it
43:25 much easier to check how competitive
43:27 different spaces are uh with one heat
43:30 map run. So let me see um I ran one for
43:34 Doc Dancer. Yes, this is not a client of
43:37 mine. I am not silly enough to share a
43:39 client of mine on YouTube. So, anyone
43:42 who wants to go mess with this
43:43 particular business, please don't. But
43:45 they're not a client of mine. This is
43:47 just some random uh plumber, I think, in
43:50 Fort Wayne, Indiana. As I said, I use
43:52 Fort Wayne, Indiana all the time. All
43:54 right, so this is what it looks like
43:56 when you run the uh rank map in Lead
43:58 Snap. So, this is the Doc Dancer. Not
44:01 bad. They're ranking pretty well close
44:02 by. And then, you know, we drop out of
44:04 the top three. But what's really cool is
44:07 uh any one of these other businesses if
44:09 I click on it I can I can look at their
44:11 rank map very easily any of their
44:13 competitors I can also look at what
44:15 average rank is and I can see what the
44:18 top 3% is. So this means that this home
44:21 comfort experts they're in the top three
44:23 with 62% of this area. So the reason
44:26 that's critical of course right is if
44:28 you're in the fourth position you're
44:29 invisible. uh top three is what's
44:32 important and I can actually sort by top
44:34 3% and see how many people are how many
44:38 businesses are ahead of Doc Dancer in
44:40 terms of that top 3%. On top of that, we
44:44 also have market share. And this one is
44:46 also really cool what market share
44:48 means. Remember we said that uh it's
44:51 very hard to rank a GBP if the searchers
44:54 in a different city, right? So if I just
44:57 for fun, if I ran this rank map, but I
44:59 had to cover the entire United States,
45:02 we all know that it would be impossible
45:04 to rank across the entire United States
45:06 with a single GBP. So what this market
45:09 share attempts to do is estimate how
45:12 large of a region is theoretically
45:15 possible for this GBP and then report
45:18 back of that region that's theoretically
45:21 possible to rank. How much of that
45:23 region are they ranking in? Okay, so
45:26 this is a little theoretical
45:27 calculation, but it's it's pretty cool.
45:30 Uh I like that. I like the top 3%. I
45:32 like the average rank. I like being able
45:33 to see all the competitors with one run.
45:36 Um very cool. We use lead snap. Those
45:39 are the reasons why we use lead snap.
45:42 Okay. Uh Adil asks, "I heard virtual
45:46 offices rank lower or do not rank at
45:48 all. Is that accurate?" I've never heard
45:49 anything like that for virtual offices.
45:51 We've had a lot of luck with virtual
45:53 offices. Haven't had any issues ranking
45:55 them. Uh the only uh thing I might say
45:58 why you might have heard that a deal is
46:01 if you are talking about virtual offices
46:04 and it's a service area business, right?
46:06 meaning a uh hidden address. So hidden
46:11 address, I already talked about hidden
46:13 address being
46:15 um very difficult to rank, very very
46:18 difficult to rank a service area
46:20 business. So that might be what you're
46:23 seeing if you created a GBP in a virtual
46:26 office and then kept the address hidden.
46:29 But if the address is not hidden and
46:31 you're able to get the GBP verified, so
46:33 that's going to be the real trick,
46:34 right? It's going to be hard to get a
46:36 GBP verified uh at a virtual office, but
46:39 if you can get a GBP verified and you
46:41 can have a visible address, I have not
46:44 seen any difference between ranking a
46:46 virtual office versus an actual office
46:48 building. But again, uh getting that GBP
46:51 verified is going to be the challenge.
46:54 All right, Sylvio asks, "Does Medium
46:56 post as a way to generate links to a
46:58 website? Do I need a link from the
46:59 website to Medium as well?" So, you
47:01 don't need a link from the website to
47:03 Medium. Uh but yes, a medium post is a
47:06 way that you can generate backlinks. Uh
47:09 but I mean I I wouldn't go crazy with
47:11 this cuz remember um even if there's a
47:16 world where Google cares a lot about
47:18 your overall backlink authority to local
47:20 SEO and I think it cares, but I don't
47:22 think it cares a lot. And I'll talk more
47:24 about that in a second. Um we also know
47:27 that Google really only cares about the
47:29 number of referring domains uh to your
47:32 domain. Um, so I wouldn't go and get a
47:35 medium link to every single page. I
47:37 might get one medium link to the
47:39 homepage and and call it good. Okay. So
47:43 I say that uh more broadly speaking when
47:46 we're talking about building back links
47:48 for local SEO, there are really two
47:50 types of links that we focus on. The
47:52 only two types of links that we build
47:54 for local SEO. Okay. The first one, I
47:57 think I might have already mentioned
47:58 this. It's the hey Google, this is an AI
48:01 slop link. Okay, this is a low to medium
48:03 quality link. Typically, we're going to
48:05 use something like a PBN uh because it
48:08 it's just a signal to Google that the
48:12 page isn't AI generated slop, right? You
48:15 can't generate
48:17 thousands of pages of AI generated slop
48:19 and also provide a medium quality link
48:22 to each one with any sort of reasonable
48:24 budget. So just that medium decent um
48:28 link it's a signal that it's not AI
48:30 generated slop. Uh it helps it gets
48:32 indexed helps Google's algorithm trust
48:34 it a little bit more. Obviously that
48:36 does absolutely nothing for chat GPT and
48:39 it does absolutely nothing for Google's
48:41 AI systems. Okay, that is purely to get
48:44 it indexed in Google's algorithm uh
48:46 Google's base algorithm non AI. Okay.
48:50 The second type of link uh is what we
48:53 refer to as a trust building link. So
48:57 this is a link that's actually designed
48:59 to get Google to trust this business
49:01 more and it will also get chat GPT to
49:04 trust the business more and it will get
49:05 Google's AI to trust this business more.
49:08 So, that type of link is a hyper local
49:12 uh link often a chamber of commerce, a
49:16 local event sponsorship, a youth sports
49:18 league, something like that. I uh a lot
49:21 of my clients are have so much support
49:24 for little girls softball teams. Uh
49:26 their business name gets written on the
49:28 little girls jerseys. They get a plaque
49:30 usually with all the girls standing
49:32 there for a photo and they put it up in
49:34 the waiting room and that's all fabulous
49:36 and great and makes them feel happy. But
49:38 obviously from my perspective, you know,
49:40 SEO blinders on. All I care about is
49:43 that youth sports league unique to that
49:46 city, hyper local to that location, is
49:49 going to send a link to my client
49:51 thanking them for their sponsorship. And
49:54 that's that's worth a few hundred bucks.
49:56 A handful of links like that is usually
49:58 enough to rank locally. So, let me give
50:01 you a a prompt that can have chatgpt or
50:04 claude actually crawl um crawl the local
50:09 region and find those types of links for
50:13 your local business. So, you tell it,
50:16 you know, you're a plumber in Fort
50:18 Wayne, and what it's going to spit back
50:20 is a list of all of the organizations in
50:23 Fort Wayne, all of the sponsorships, all
50:25 of the events. We had a personal injury
50:27 attorney uh in New Orleans, and we
50:30 sponsored the Bayou Bash. I'd never even
50:32 heard of this event, but whatever. We
50:34 sponsored the Bayou Bash. It was a few
50:35 hundred bucks. Personal injury attorney
50:37 gets a thank you link. Suddenly, they're
50:39 ranking a lot better in New Orleans. Um,
50:41 so anyway,
50:43 uh, that was a very long answer and not
50:45 related to the medium post question very
50:47 much at all, but hopefully uh, that was
50:50 good for you, Silio, talking a little
50:52 bit more broadly about our backlinking
50:54 strategy. All right. Now, Ronnie asked,
50:57 "If we change the name of a GBP from a
51:00 restaurant, can we add at the end of the
51:02 name this restaurant and city or will it
51:04 ask us for reverification?" Okay, so
51:06 interesting question. Okay. So, first of
51:10 all, if you're ranking really well,
51:12 don't change a whole bunch of things on
51:13 your GP. Okay? Uh we don't want to
51:16 change a whole bunch of things if we're
51:17 ranking well because if we're ranking
51:18 well, we're ranking well. And we don't
51:19 want to change a bunch of things because
51:21 there's only downsides, only bad things
51:23 that can happen.
51:25 But anytime we change things on the GBP,
51:28 there's a chance that it will trigger
51:30 reverification or even a suspension. If
51:33 you add services, it might trigger
51:35 reverification. If you add special
51:37 holiday hours, it might trigger a
51:41 Uh changing the name is uh more likely
51:45 than a lot of the other changes. In my
51:47 experience, the only thing more likely
51:49 to trigger a reverification
51:51 uh other than the name is changing the
51:53 address. Right? If you change the
51:55 address, 70% chance it's going to ask
51:57 for reverification. If you change the
51:59 name, maybe maybe 50/50, right? We'll
52:02 just call it even odds. That will ask
52:05 for reverification.
52:06 Now, even if it doesn't, if it doesn't
52:09 ask for reverification and your GBP now
52:12 has keywords in it, right? What like you
52:14 said, restaurant and city. So, great.
52:16 Let's so you know, so your new GBP name
52:19 is right uh fajita restaurant Houston,
52:23 Texas or something like that. Okay. So,
52:26 then what can happen is once you
52:28 actually start ranking, well, you
52:29 remember that SEO is a zero sum game.
52:32 there are only three businesses featured
52:33 in the top three. That's why it's the
52:35 top three, of course. So, when you get
52:37 into the top three, you're pushing
52:39 someone else out. Uh they're likely to
52:43 notice that, right? Because getting
52:44 pushed out of the top three is going to
52:46 mean fewer calls, fewer visitors, etc.,
52:49 etc. So, as you get ranked higher and
52:52 higher, you're going to attract more
52:54 attention from your competitors. And uh
52:56 what what some competitors will do, not
52:59 all of course, but what some competitors
53:01 will do is they can helpfully suggest
53:05 things to Google about your GBP.
53:09 They used to be able to move the pin.
53:10 Thankfully, they can't do that anymore,
53:12 but they can still suggest to Google
53:14 that your business is permanently
53:16 closed. And if you don't respond to
53:19 that, Google can accept it and then mark
53:21 your business as permanently closed. Uh,
53:24 so another just I keep talking about
53:26 lead snap. Lead snap does actually allow
53:28 locking your GBP. So changes like that
53:30 can't happen anymore, but you don't need
53:32 to do that. All you need to do is just
53:34 keep an eye on the GBP. A lot of
53:36 different suggestions are going to come
53:37 up. So if that happens, right, if
53:40 somebody suggests that your business is
53:41 permanently closed and you don't respond
53:44 to it, then it could close your GBP. But
53:46 you can respond to it and say, "No, it's
53:47 still open." But the bigger issue is
53:50 that if your business name has a bunch
53:52 of keywords in it, uh, somebody can
53:55 report that as being a spammy business
53:58 name and then Google could suspend your
54:01 GBP and require you to come up with
54:04 documentation that proves that is your
54:07 actual and accurate business name. Now,
54:09 if it isn't, you can always file some
54:12 paperwork with your state uh DBA
54:15 paperwork uh doing business as and just
54:18 file that paperwork so that your
54:20 keywords are actually in the business
54:21 name. Um and that way when you do get
54:24 suspended, you at least have the
54:25 paperwork to get out of the suspension.
54:27 Uh or just, you know, make sure your GBP
54:30 name matches your business name on your
54:34 business paperwork. Character for
54:36 character. If your GBP name doesn't have
54:39 INC, but your business formation
54:41 paperwork has INC, Google will not
54:44 accept that. It needs to be the exact
54:45 same name to be accepted. So, make sure
54:48 your GB make sure you have documentation
54:50 to support whatever name is on your
54:52 Google business profile. Okay,
54:58 hopefully that was helpful, Ronnie. Now,
55:00 let's see. Clicking around, clicking
55:03 around. All right, next question. Sander
55:05 asks, "When a business moves a few miles
55:07 away in the same city, how do we recover
55:09 the top three rankings?" So,
55:12 um, when a business moves a few miles
55:14 away, how do we recover the top three
55:16 rankings? So, we would do basically the
55:18 same thing we would do with the new SEO
55:19 engagement, right? We'd look at the rank
55:21 map. Uh, does how does it look? Does it
55:23 need more topical relevance? Does it
55:25 need geographical relevance? Uh, what's
55:27 going on? What can we do to actually
55:29 improve it? uh it sounds like the
55:31 business has already moved, but when we
55:33 have a client who is moving to a new
55:36 location, what we'll often do to avoid
55:39 this exact issue, right? Because if
55:41 you're ranking really well and then you
55:43 change something significant on your
55:44 GBP, you will often lose rank position
55:47 and I don't want to do that. So, if a
55:50 business, if a client of mine is moving
55:51 a few miles away, we'll often have them
55:54 create a new GBP at the new location
55:57 rather than move their existing one. Uh,
56:00 that gives us a little bit more ability
56:02 to rank farther away uh from the new
56:04 location. Uh, but more importantly, it
56:08 doesn't mess with their first location.
56:10 Um, the challenge of course could be
56:13 that at some point you might have to
56:15 support that that first location is an
56:17 actual location. If someone else reports
56:20 it as spammy or fraudulent or not really
56:23 there, it might get suspended. Then you
56:25 need to come up with paperwork to
56:26 support that location. Uh, so hopefully
56:28 you have that paperwork uh that you can
56:30 provide. If not, at that point then
56:33 focus on the new uh GBP. Uh but that's
56:36 typically how we would prefer to do
56:38 things is to create a second GBP and
56:40 rank the second one up. That way you
56:42 have both of them. Uh you have some nice
56:44 redundancy there. Uh but beyond that, if
56:46 you've already done the move, then I
56:48 would just say um if you've already done
56:51 the move, then recover the top three
56:52 rankings the same way that you would uh
56:54 do a new engagement with a new client.
56:56 Watch the rank map, decide topical
56:58 relevance, uh decide uh geographic
57:01 relevance, and and move from there. All
57:04 right. Malik asks does chat GPT content
57:07 rank because I tried to just copy paste
57:09 content on the site got boom but after
57:11 some days all ranking drop and never
57:13 come back. 100% chat GPT content ranks.
57:17 Uh Google doesn't care who wrote the
57:20 content. Google doesn't care if the
57:23 content was written by AI or if the
57:26 content was written by uh a human.
57:29 Right? What Google cares about is that
57:31 the content is actually high quality.
57:34 So,
57:36 um, we have stuff ranked all the time.
57:38 Most of our clients now, actually, I
57:41 mean, I say most, I might even change
57:43 that to say all of our clients are
57:46 pretty much ranked exclusively with AI
57:48 written humanited content. Okay. Uh, we
57:52 do run a tool zero GPT. Uh, you can use
57:56 the free version. Uh, we we just run
57:58 that after we have content before we
58:00 post it. We're looking for something
58:02 below 60%, we don't try to get to zero.
58:05 I know those AI detectors are complete
58:07 garbage. Uh, they don't really work. Uh,
58:10 but what they do typically work well at
58:13 is identifying lowquality content. Um,
58:16 so something that scores like a 90 or
58:19 100% on zero GPT, it's usually just not
58:22 great content. So, we don't want to post
58:24 that. We want to post content that has
58:26 something new or interesting to say
58:27 about. Um, uh, also clawed content will
58:32 typically do better than chat GPT
58:34 content right out of the bat, which
58:36 makes sense, right? All of the
58:38 plagiarism tools are designed to detect
58:40 chat GPT written content because chat
58:42 GPT has, I don't know, 120 million daily
58:45 active users, uh, probably 10 times, if
58:49 not more than what Claude has or any of
58:51 its other competition. Now I'm curious.
58:54 How many daily active users does Claude
58:58 have? Um
59:01 20 million. Okay. So Claude has 20
59:03 million. Chat GPT has 130 million. So,
59:08 you know, if you were designing a
59:09 plagiarism checking app, you would
59:11 design that app or not plagiarism, an AI
59:14 checking app, you would design that app
59:16 to try to figure out if chat GPT wrote
59:19 it cuz most of the people are out there
59:21 using chat GPT. Uh, so simply by using
59:24 claude, it's a different model, of
59:26 course. So, it's going to write content
59:27 in a different way and will often pass a
59:30 lot of those um AI detector tests just
59:33 by not being chat GPT content. But yes,
59:36 the short version of your answer me is
59:39 man chat GPT 3.5 came out in November of
59:42 2022. I think the last time we wrote
59:46 anything by hand was probably 6 months
59:48 after that, maybe mid 2023. So it's been
59:52 a couple years now uh since we've
59:54 written anything by hand without AI. All
59:57 right. Uh Shafi asks, "Do you do your
1:00:00 SEO on high level?" Yes, we absolutely
1:00:03 do. Uh we have a uh we have a lot of
1:00:08 um so there's a a Facebook ads campaign.
1:00:13 Uh there's a version of it that I have
1:00:15 on YouTube and it's the same one. I just
1:00:17 don't go into as much detail obviously
1:00:19 on YouTube. Um and then in the AI SEO
1:00:24 mastery classroom um there's a second
1:00:28 one which let me grab the link. The this
1:00:31 is free to unlock if you join. It's not
1:00:34 going to be unlocked by default. Uh you
1:00:36 will have to run a quick AIdriven audit
1:00:40 to get this unlocked. If you don't have
1:00:42 this unlocked, just run that audit. Uh
1:00:45 you can find that audit in modern SEO uh
1:00:49 module 2, lesson two. Okay? Then I will
1:00:52 unlock this module for you. No extra
1:00:55 money uh completely free uh once you're
1:00:58 already a member. That lesson will break
1:01:00 down everything we did for this Facebook
1:01:02 ads campaign. uh our targeting uh the
1:01:05 the follow-up uh uh emails we had, the
1:01:09 contract uh the sales script, everything
1:01:11 we had. Uh with that campaign, we landed
1:01:14 like 97 plumbers in 6 months. Uh so it
1:01:18 was a really good campaign. It worked
1:01:20 really well for us. Highly recommend you
1:01:22 check that out. And one of the ways we
1:01:24 were able to scale this, I think Destiny
1:01:26 and I, we probably both have some PTSD,
1:01:29 uh landing that many clients that
1:01:30 quickly. And every single one of them
1:01:32 was basically a new website build. And
1:01:35 what we basically did uh we created a
1:01:37 website template in high level and the
1:01:40 GHL snapshots will copy the websites
1:01:42 over. So we created a website template,
1:01:45 landed a new, uh client, no problem. We
1:01:47 reimpport that same snapshot. We have
1:01:50 everything there. And then we just copy
1:01:51 paste new AI generated content over the
1:01:54 existing content using that same AI
1:01:56 template. Uh and we get them to rank
1:01:59 very well. A lot of the examples I use
1:02:02 on YouTube are plumber websites that we
1:02:05 landed from that campaign whose websites
1:02:07 are on GHL's website builder. I've heard
1:02:10 a lot of people say that you can't rank
1:02:12 GHL websites. I uh they are completely
1:02:15 wrong. We ranked many many GHL websites
1:02:19 uh just because it's just faster and
1:02:20 easier to copy it over uh than to build
1:02:23 everything in WordPress. But if you like
1:02:24 WordPress, that's fine too, right? You
1:02:26 don't have to use GHL. Uh you know, do
1:02:28 what works for you. All right, another
1:02:30 question from Silio. Can I create an ad
1:02:32 in Craigslist and use my website link as
1:02:35 a way of creating a better? I mean, I
1:02:36 guess you could, but uh I don't know how
1:02:39 effective that would be. Haven't done
1:02:41 anything like that. I mean, again,
1:02:42 right, those local sponsorships, that's
1:02:44 good to build trust and, uh, fairly
1:02:47 inexpensive PBN links, that's good
1:02:48 enough to show Google it's not slop. Um,
1:02:51 those two types of links work. Uh,
1:02:54 they're easy. Uh, they don't require a
1:02:56 lot of effort or timing. So, we I don't
1:03:00 really test a lot of other links, right?
1:03:02 Uh generally the way that we work at uh
1:03:05 our agency is we'll find something that
1:03:08 works and then we'll just keep doing
1:03:10 that until it doesn't work anymore. Um
1:03:13 yeah.
1:03:16 Uh so yeah, that those two types of
1:03:18 links we have work. So we haven't tried
1:03:20 a bunch of other types of links. If you
1:03:21 want to try to create an ad in
1:03:23 Craigslist and use a website link, then
1:03:25 cool, go for it. I don't know if it'll
1:03:26 work or not. I haven't done it. Um,
1:03:29 maybe it will, but yeah, let us know.
1:03:32 All right, Virgil and Mik both ask,
1:03:35 "What do you use to get customers for
1:03:37 local SEO? Do you suggest running ads?"
1:03:39 All right, so this is a good question
1:03:41 and it is August 11th. So, my plan
1:03:45 before the end of August, I'm going to
1:03:47 start a new series on YouTube. It'll be
1:03:50 on my same channel, the same Calebulku
1:03:52 channel. But what I'm going to do in
1:03:54 this series, and I'll start in the next
1:03:56 couple of weeks, is I'm going to build
1:03:58 an SEO agency uh from scratch, not
1:04:01 leveraging any leads from my YouTube
1:04:03 channel. Obviously, I get people who
1:04:05 need my help, have asked for my help
1:04:07 with local SEO from the YouTube channel,
1:04:08 not using any of those leads. So, new
1:04:10 agency from scratch, uh new name of the
1:04:13 agency, not leveraging anything that
1:04:15 I've done before, any reputation aspects
1:04:17 before. and I'm going to build it to 10K
1:04:20 a month in three months without a sales
1:04:22 call. That's my plan anyway. We'll see
1:04:24 if I'm actually successful or not. Um,
1:04:27 and my plan to do that uh for both
1:04:30 Virgil and Mik is going to be running
1:04:32 ads, right? 10K in 3 months without
1:04:35 running ads would just boy that would be
1:04:37 difficult. Doable but difficult. Uh, if
1:04:40 I wanted to hit 10K or if I wanted to
1:04:42 just get clients without running ads,
1:04:45 then well, you could start a YouTube
1:04:46 channel. We get quite a few clients from
1:04:48 the YouTube channel now, but my only
1:04:51 warning is that for the first year, the
1:04:53 only one who ever watched my YouTube
1:04:54 videos were my video editor and my
1:04:56 mother. Uh, neither of whom want SEO
1:04:59 services. So, it does take a lot of time
1:05:02 for a YouTube channel to actually gain
1:05:04 traction. Uh, one thing I like to think
1:05:06 about for YouTube, we've talked about
1:05:08 domain rating, domain authority, things
1:05:10 like that. The equivalent metric for
1:05:12 your YouTube channel is total watch
1:05:15 time. So, the longer your watch time,
1:05:17 the more likely YouTube is going to be
1:05:19 to recommend your videos to other
1:05:20 people. So, it just takes time to build
1:05:22 up that watch time, unless you get super
1:05:24 lucky and uh you know, get a uh viral
1:05:27 video out of the bat, which I've never
1:05:29 done. That didn't happen to me, but if
1:05:31 it happens to you, that's awesome, and
1:05:32 I'd be thrilled for you. Uh so,
1:05:35 long-term play, but it can work. Beyond
1:05:37 that, I'm going to say pick one niche uh
1:05:41 and learn a lot about it. Right? I said
1:05:43 we got 97 plumber clients. I didn't get
1:05:46 97 random local service businesses. And
1:05:48 the reason for that is especially as you
1:05:51 start talking to more and more of the
1:05:53 that service professional. Like I
1:05:55 remember the first sales call with the
1:05:57 first plumber who booked a call with my
1:05:59 sales guy, not me. Uh my sales guy is
1:06:02 this uh he was a
1:06:04 was a guy in his like mid20s, right?
1:06:07 Lived in an apartment. Uh he didn't know
1:06:09 what a water heater was. He didn't know
1:06:11 tanked water heater, sizes of water
1:06:13 heaters. He didn't know what an ondemand
1:06:14 water heater was. He didn't know any of
1:06:16 that. Why would he? He's in his mid20s.
1:06:17 He lives in an apartment. But I tell
1:06:19 you, he talked to 600 plumbers in the
1:06:22 next few months. And after the first few
1:06:25 dozen, he was better able to walk a
1:06:28 plumber through their business, how much
1:06:30 they should price, how long it should
1:06:32 take them to execute the job, uh all of
1:06:34 these different aspects, what they
1:06:36 should charge for an estimate, if they
1:06:38 should charge for an estimate at all. He
1:06:39 knew the average plumber's business
1:06:41 better than the average plumber after
1:06:43 spending that long talking to that many
1:06:45 plumbers. That's the value in choosing a
1:06:48 specific niche. Uh is you get so
1:06:50 familiar with that niche. And that also
1:06:52 allows you to do things like go to
1:06:54 Facebook groups and answer questions.
1:06:56 Somebody asks, "Hey, what kind of water
1:06:58 heater works for me?" Yeah, you're not a
1:07:00 plumber, but you might know how to
1:07:01 answer that question because you're so
1:07:03 familiar with that space. or you know
1:07:05 plumber Facebook groups where they might
1:07:07 ask marketing questions how to get in
1:07:09 front of more people. You can help them
1:07:10 by answering those questions but
1:07:12 actually talk in such a way that you
1:07:14 know the plumbing business also. Uh
1:07:16 Facebook groups, Reddit, those work
1:07:17 really well for that. If you join those
1:07:20 groups and start like messaging people
1:07:22 or being spammy, you're going to get
1:07:23 kicked out immediately. You need to join
1:07:25 and just be helpful and add value and
1:07:29 over time start to get recognized and
1:07:32 people come to you. The shortcut to all
1:07:34 of that is uh run ads. Uh so basically
1:07:38 that's your choice. I also another uh
1:07:41 really good source for uh clients for me
1:07:43 when I was first getting started also
1:07:45 was Upwork. Uh I built my SEO agency to
1:07:49 seven figures off of Upwork leads. Uh so
1:07:52 that's another good way. I still know a
1:07:54 lot of people on Upwork who are having a
1:07:56 lot of success on that platform. Uh it
1:07:58 can be also frustrating. uh cold email
1:08:01 can work but it can also be frustrating.
1:08:04 Um but yeah, so I would say ads to
1:08:06 shortcut uh or build up your reputation
1:08:09 in a single space or you can go a route
1:08:12 like Upwork. Um for me, I'm I'm going to
1:08:15 use ads for my challenge because that's
1:08:17 the fastest. Okay. Ronnie asks, "How do
1:08:21 you rank for a business that has no
1:08:22 services options in the GBP?" So, every
1:08:26 GBP should have services options. Um, if
1:08:29 yours doesn't, then I might look around
1:08:31 more because you should have services. I
1:08:33 don't think I've ever seen a GBP where
1:08:36 you couldn't enter services. Uh, okay.
1:08:38 How do you do a quick audit on a
1:08:40 prospect website and give GBP and GBP
1:08:43 giving some value upfront? This is an
1:08:45 excellent question, Brian. So, I'm still
1:08:47 debating what exactly I'm going to run
1:08:51 for this challenge. Okay, what exactly
1:08:54 my ad campaign is going to be. There's a
1:08:56 few different ideas that I have. One of
1:08:58 the ideas that I have, okay, so if we're
1:09:01 talking about wanting to do local SEO,
1:09:04 most of our target audience, most of the
1:09:07 people who would hire us to do local
1:09:09 SEO, most of them have paid for
1:09:12 marketing in the past and they've been
1:09:13 burned. Okay, we're it's going to be
1:09:15 hard to get someone who's never paid for
1:09:17 marketing to suddenly jump on board
1:09:19 a,000 $2,000 a month local SEO. So, I'm
1:09:22 really looking for somebody who's done
1:09:24 hired somebody to do marketing or even
1:09:26 SEO before and it hasn't gone well.
1:09:29 That's who I would be trying to reach,
1:09:30 right? So, one idea of mine was to run
1:09:34 an ad campaign on, you know, Facebook,
1:09:36 YouTube, something like that, and
1:09:38 basically have the ad campaign say
1:09:40 something like, "Most SEO agencies are
1:09:43 terrible. We're not. uh, let me do a
1:09:47 7-day trial and if we can't show you
1:09:51 good results, then no harm. Something
1:09:53 like that. I haven't figured it out
1:09:55 fully. Keep in touch for it later. But
1:09:58 if somebody said yes to that, how can I
1:10:00 do a 7-day SEO trial? Right? That sounds
1:10:02 insane. Well, there are only a handful
1:10:04 of things that can actually make a big
1:10:06 difference uh, if you're looking at a
1:10:09 website or GBP. And so many local
1:10:12 businesses get this wrong. So, we have
1:10:14 looked at at my agency, Destiny and I,
1:10:17 we have looked at hundreds of GBPs,
1:10:20 okay? And by far, by far the most common
1:10:24 homepage title tag for a local business
1:10:28 is the word home. Okay? That's obviously
1:10:32 wrong. Okay, that's just wrong. Um, the
1:10:36 homepage title tag needs to include the
1:10:39 primary category and the city name, and
1:10:41 they just have the word home. Okay. So
1:10:43 then what you would do, run a local rank
1:10:46 map without changing anything. Then tell
1:10:49 them or try to get permission from them.
1:10:52 Change the homepage title tag. Give them
1:10:53 the new title tag. Wait a couple of
1:10:56 days. Rerun the rank map and it's going
1:10:57 to be better. Okay? They're not going to
1:11:00 get from like 20 plus into the top
1:11:02 three, but they might get from an
1:11:03 average of 17 or 18 to an average of 14
1:11:06 just from changing the title tag. So
1:11:09 there's there's a handful of things like
1:11:10 that, right? the title tag, the H1 tag,
1:11:13 primary category, uh secondary
1:11:15 categories, service pages, the uh the
1:11:18 maps embed, the local business schema.
1:11:21 Uh these just very quick things that are
1:11:24 very fast, very easy to fix and can
1:11:27 meaningfully improve the rank map just
1:11:29 in a couple of days. Um so that's what
1:11:32 we will often do with that quick audit
1:11:34 for a prospect. Uh another aspect that
1:11:37 we'll do is I'll run a local rank map.
1:11:40 Um, and I like lead snap for this. So,
1:11:44 let's here. Let me let me show you. Let
1:11:45 me just let me pull up uh Doc Dancer
1:11:48 real quick. I'll show you.
1:11:52 So, if uh this business I'm pulling it
1:11:55 up now. I'm not sharing yet, so you're
1:11:57 not missing anything. Um, but we'll
1:12:00 pretend this business reached out and
1:12:02 said, "Hey, can you do local SEO for
1:12:06 me?" Um, 212. We have a little bit of
1:12:08 time. Um, so I'll grab this. Okay, here
1:12:13 it is. Okay. Share. Share. Boom. All
1:12:17 right. So, this company reaches out and
1:12:19 says, "Hey, we want local SEO. We want
1:12:21 to rank higher. Um, what can you do for
1:12:25 me?" Okay. So, what I can do, I'm going
1:12:27 to open up the websites for the top
1:12:29 competitors, which again, oh, this guy
1:12:31 doesn't even have a website. Uh, neither
1:12:34 does this guy. fairly quick to do on um
1:12:38 lead snap here, right?
1:12:42 Perfect. Okay, page not found. No
1:12:44 problem. They had UTM tracking on but it
1:12:47 didn't work. Okay, so then what I'm
1:12:50 going to just check is how big are these
1:12:52 websites? How many indexed pages do they
1:12:55 have? That just gives me a rough idea of
1:12:58 how competitive uh this particular space
1:13:01 is. So Doc Dancer has 380.
1:13:06 Uh Home Comfort has 412 and Brockmaster
1:13:09 has 250. Okay. So 380 is quite a few.
1:13:14 Obviously these other two are also quite
1:13:15 a lot. So uh this is way more than uh
1:13:20 should be necessary to rank well in Fort
1:13:22 Wayne, Indiana. So what that tells me is
1:13:26 they probably have been writing blog
1:13:28 posts for quite a while.
1:13:30 um they you know that weekly blog post
1:13:33 which everyone thought they needed to do
1:13:34 and a bunch of businesses still do and
1:13:36 it's a waste of money and a waste of
1:13:37 time and dear god please stop writing
1:13:39 weekly blog posts but with this many
1:13:41 index pages they probably been doing
1:13:43 that for a while so I know that what I'm
1:13:47 going to propose to them is I am going
1:13:50 to propose to them a technical audit uh
1:13:53 because if they have 380 indexed pages
1:13:55 and their rank map looks that bad a lot
1:13:58 of that content needs to go there's
1:14:00 something else wrong with the website.
1:14:02 So, yeah, I'm going to propose a
1:14:03 technical audit. I'm going to uh do a
1:14:06 GVP audit. I'm going to give them some
1:14:08 new content for their homepage. Uh
1:14:10 that's a standard package that we offer
1:14:12 when we see a client like that. And uh
1:14:15 for that, we charge $1,900. Um so,
1:14:19 that's something that we'll give people
1:14:20 quite a bit. Like, hey, you're you have
1:14:23 way more indexed URLs than I would
1:14:25 expect given how your rank position
1:14:27 looks. we will do a bcde e. Uh this is
1:14:30 the price for it. Let us know if you
1:14:32 want to move forward. Uh if if I had
1:14:35 done those site colon searches and saw
1:14:37 something more typical like doc dancer
1:14:39 had maybe 30 URLs and the other couple
1:14:42 of businesses that were actually in top
1:14:44 three had 50 60 70 then that would tell
1:14:46 me that hey I need to produce 20 or 30
1:14:48 more URLs and that's going to get me
1:14:50 looking pretty good in this top three.
1:14:52 So looking at something like that, we
1:14:54 would skip the technical audit package
1:14:56 and just go straight into the GBP audit
1:14:59 and then uh monthly content. Okay, I
1:15:02 know that was a quick answer. Hopefully
1:15:03 that was helpful. That's how we do the
1:15:05 quick audit. All right, Mike asks, "What
1:15:08 terms do you use on the rank map?" So
1:15:10 for every local rank map, we'll always
1:15:12 do at least the primary category city
1:15:15 name, right? Houston um air conditioning
1:15:20 repair Fort Wayne air conditioning
1:15:22 repair Fort Wayne, right? We'll always
1:15:24 at least do GBP primary category and
1:15:27 city name. Beyond that, it's going to be
1:15:30 based on what are the high ticket
1:15:33 services that this client really cares
1:15:35 about. I don't need to track 50 terms,
1:15:38 right? Um I think the most we're
1:15:40 tracking on any of our local clients is
1:15:42 probably five. Uh, so for a plumber, I'm
1:15:45 going to track plumber city name. I'm
1:15:47 going to track water heater replacement
1:15:49 city name and I'm going to track main
1:15:51 drain line replacement city name. That's
1:15:53 because water heater replacement, main
1:15:55 drain line replacement are the bread and
1:15:57 butter. Every plumber wants more of
1:15:59 those jobs. It's a ton of money and not
1:16:01 that much work for those. So, that's
1:16:03 those are the that's what we track for a
1:16:05 plumber. I'm not going to track leaky
1:16:07 faucet or clogged toilet because yeah,
1:16:10 frankly, most plumbers don't want to
1:16:12 rank for that. Um, and I don't need to,
1:16:14 right? If I'm ranking in the top three
1:16:16 for plumber, I'm probably ranking in the
1:16:19 top three for all of these related
1:16:21 categories and services, right? Longtail
1:16:24 keywords aren't really a thing for local
1:16:26 because of the GBP, right? Everything is
1:16:28 based on the GBP. So, Google will figure
1:16:31 out what category you're searching for
1:16:32 and then match you up with the GBP who's
1:16:34 doing best in that category. This is
1:16:36 very, very different for AI searches,
1:16:39 right? Chat GPT is 100% longtail
1:16:42 keywords. If you ask it for help
1:16:45 replacing a lead main drain line in
1:16:49 Chicago, uh, Chat GPT will read reviews,
1:16:54 uh, will read your website, try to see
1:16:57 if you've done that type of work before,
1:16:58 that exact work, replacing lead main
1:17:01 drain lines in those cities, and it will
1:17:04 do those before it recommends you. Okay,
1:17:08 so ChatGpt cares a lot about uh longtail
1:17:10 keywords. For local, Google doesn't, so
1:17:13 we really only track a handful of of of
1:17:15 terms. We don't go crazy with it. All
1:17:17 right, for local citations, what is your
1:17:19 take on GHL tools, Yex, and Uberall? Are
1:17:22 they any good? Uh, they're a waste of
1:17:24 money. They're very, very expensive. Um,
1:17:27 I talked about Lead Snap. It's $20 a
1:17:30 month for API connections to very, very
1:17:33 high quality citations. That's the tool
1:17:35 we use. Yex is way more than that and it
1:17:38 won't give you a Bing for business
1:17:39 listing. Uh, perfect. Uh, let's see.
1:17:44 Shelfie asks, Caleb, what's up, pal?
1:17:46 Cool. Does the 197 a month program
1:17:48 actually really work? Well, it depends
1:17:50 on what you mean by actually really
1:17:52 work. Uh, so the training that we have
1:17:54 in the 197 a month program, it is
1:17:57 over-the-shoulder training of how we do
1:17:59 SEO at my agency. Uh, it's everything we
1:18:02 do. Nothing is left out. uh step-by-step
1:18:05 instructions uh how to do everything
1:18:07 that we do. There's also an entire
1:18:10 module about what to do to get
1:18:11 recommended by chat GPT. So, yes, if you
1:18:15 follow everything in there, the way that
1:18:17 it's laid out and the way that it's
1:18:19 shown to do, you will see higher rank.
1:18:22 Uh we've seen that over and over again.
1:18:24 people who are constantly posting in the
1:18:26 group about how much better the rank
1:18:28 maps look after they built out the core
1:18:30 30 after they sourced some chamber of
1:18:32 commerce links uh people highlighting
1:18:34 that chat GPT recommended them after
1:18:36 they implemented some schema stuff but I
1:18:39 mean of course it won't work if you
1:18:40 don't do anything with it right so if
1:18:43 you join and then treat it like a
1:18:45 Netflix special it probably won't do
1:18:47 anything if you just watch it and then
1:18:49 don't implement then yeah so a lot of
1:18:52 the answer to that question is based on
1:18:54 you right? I know the material in there
1:18:56 will get you ranked higher for Google's
1:18:58 algorithm and will get you recommended
1:19:00 more on chat GPT. It's just whether you
1:19:02 take that material and actually
1:19:04 implement it. Um, yeah. So, I don't
1:19:08 know. Hopefully that was helpful. Let's
1:19:10 see. Sylvio, do you suggest the pings
1:19:12 from Fiverr to boost GMBB? Man, I have
1:19:15 no idea. Pings from Fiverr. I I'm
1:19:18 tempted to say flat out no. I can't
1:19:20 imagine ordering pings from Fiverr. Um,
1:19:23 I I I I've said before, right? We don't
1:19:26 and I somebody commented, I thought it
1:19:27 was pretty cute. Tricks are for kids. We
1:19:29 don't really do tricks, right? Cuz
1:19:32 remember when we talk about trying to do
1:19:34 tricks to rank on Google, maybe the
1:19:36 tricks work, uh, but they usually don't
1:19:38 work for long, right? Google will update
1:19:40 their algorithm and then, uh, the the
1:19:42 businesses, the websites that use tricks
1:19:44 will suddenly lose rank position. And
1:19:47 tricks like that certainly don't work
1:19:48 for Chat GPT. chat GPT and in fact
1:19:51 Google's own AI overview don't care at
1:19:54 all about backlinks. Um so you know
1:19:58 trying to do all these tricks uh never
1:20:00 really did that much. We don't do much
1:20:02 about the blackest hat thing we do are
1:20:04 the PBN links that we use uh to show
1:20:07 Google that the content we're generating
1:20:09 isn't slop. Uh beyond that like we
1:20:12 basically follow the rules and I know it
1:20:14 sounds boring uh but we structure the
1:20:16 websites the way Google wants to see
1:20:17 them. We write content like Google wants
1:20:20 to see and chat GPT wants to see. Um,
1:20:24 and yeah, like a a good test, Sylvio,
1:20:28 is if we did here, I keep I keep say I
1:20:33 keep saying things and then uh uh we'll
1:20:35 we'll pretend we we're all in Missouri,
1:20:37 right? Missouri is the show me state.
1:20:39 So, we'll pretend we're all in Missouri.
1:20:40 So, here we go. We're in Missouri. So,
1:20:42 I'm going to type in plumber Chicago.
1:20:44 Uh, so I get my maps listing. Rescue
1:20:47 Plumbing for Chicago Plumbing, Good
1:20:49 Plumbing. Remember those three
1:20:50 companies. Now, still in Google, I'm
1:20:53 going to say, "Can you recommend a good
1:20:55 plumber in Chicago?" Right? A
1:20:59 conversational search. Now, if I do
1:21:00 this, I get an AI overview. I'm happy it
1:21:03 actually happened live and on camera,
1:21:05 but it actually did. There's no map,
1:21:07 right? There's no map. This is a local
1:21:09 search. There's no map. I get an AI
1:21:12 overview and I get four seasons. Uh,
1:21:17 and another recommendation is power
1:21:19 plumbing. Neither one of these two
1:21:23 are in Google's map listing. Okay, so
1:21:26 Google's AI overview for a
1:21:28 conversational search recommended
1:21:31 different businesses than the ones that
1:21:33 are ranking on Google Maps. Okay. I
1:21:35 mean, that's just wild to me that
1:21:37 Google's AI isn't recommending the same
1:21:40 businesses that Google Maps is. So,
1:21:43 Google Google AI has figured out that it
1:21:46 basically gets to start over. It doesn't
1:21:48 need to use the same rank algorithm. Uh,
1:21:50 it can do different things and look for
1:21:52 different factors. Okay? And what's
1:21:55 fascinating about this, if you look at
1:21:57 these businesses, and I spent quite a
1:21:59 bit of time looking at these businesses,
1:22:00 this Chicago plumber search is not new
1:22:02 to me. Uh but if you look at power
1:22:04 plumbing and you look at Four Seasons,
1:22:06 one of the big things that jumps out uh
1:22:09 those two versus the three uh plumbers
1:22:12 in the maps listings is uh the three
1:22:16 plumbers on the map listings have a
1:22:18 bunch of inconsistent citations. And the
1:22:22 citations for the two that are in the AI
1:22:24 overview are spot-on, 100% accurate,
1:22:27 character for character. Right? So, I
1:22:30 know I talked about citations before,
1:22:31 how important they are, how important
1:22:32 they are to be accurate. That's one of
1:22:34 the reasons that I say that because it
1:22:37 is that important. Uh, so anyway,
1:22:41 um, the the point of all of that, the
1:22:43 way it's the reason it's related to
1:22:45 Sylvio's question about whether I use
1:22:47 this these other tricks for ranking. Um,
1:22:50 so AI overview is showing up for local
1:22:53 search for conversational query. We know
1:22:56 that Google is rolling out AI overview
1:22:58 to replace its normal search results.
1:23:01 How long do we think the maps has left
1:23:04 to live before Google uses an AI
1:23:06 overview almost entirely or uses the AI
1:23:10 overview to feed the map. Okay? And you
1:23:13 cannot trick the AI with things like
1:23:17 pings from Fiverr or something like
1:23:19 that, right? The AI is looking for
1:23:21 citation consistency and mentions in
1:23:24 reputable websites. It does not care
1:23:26 about links. Not even a little bit.
1:23:28 Okay. All right. Hopefully I didn't harp
1:23:30 on that for too long. I just The first
1:23:32 time I saw that, I was just like, "What
1:23:34 is going on? How does Google AI not
1:23:37 recommend the same businesses as that
1:23:39 are ranked in Google Maps? It's crazy.
1:23:41 It's ridiculous. That's where we live."
1:23:43 Okay. Travel to. That's a fun name.
1:23:46 Should I create local landing pages for
1:23:49 nearby neighborhood cities if I have a
1:23:50 physical address that serves customers,
1:23:52 i.e. a veterinarian? All right. So if
1:23:55 you have a physical physical address or
1:23:57 not, it does not matter, right? What
1:23:59 we're trying to do is turn the rank map
1:24:01 green. So I don't care if you have a
1:24:04 phys if you have a physical address that
1:24:05 people visit or you have a physical
1:24:07 address that people don't visit, but you
1:24:09 still have it. Okay, the answer is going
1:24:10 to be the same. And the answer to that
1:24:12 question is yes. Um, you should create
1:24:15 local landing pages. I call that
1:24:17 building geographical relevance. So what
1:24:20 we would what what we do how we do that.
1:24:23 Do I still have that rank map? Let me
1:24:25 see if I have Here we go. So, let me
1:24:27 pull it up here with Doc Dancer. Good
1:24:29 old Doc Dancer.
1:24:32 I really have no connection with this
1:24:33 business. Um, but anyway, here we go.
1:24:36 We'll pull it up. So, geographical based
1:24:40 continent. So, they're not quite there
1:24:41 yet. They have uh 15% in the top three.
1:24:44 I want to see 25 to 35% in the top three
1:24:47 before we dive into geographical based
1:24:49 content. Uh, so let me grab someone
1:24:51 else. Let me grab this guy.
1:24:53 35% of the top three. I'm going to
1:24:55 pretend this guy came and said, "Hey, I
1:24:56 want to rank higher. What can you do for
1:24:58 me?" So, we're going to look at the rank
1:24:59 map. Now, we know we have enough topical
1:25:01 relevance because we have all this
1:25:02 green. So, Google clearly believes that
1:25:04 this business can provide this service.
1:25:06 We just need to build the proximity as
1:25:08 to get farther and farther away. So,
1:25:10 what we're going to do is I'm going to
1:25:12 look for like fours, fives, and sixes.
1:25:15 And uh so, let's pick this four right
1:25:17 here. So, we got this four. And that
1:25:20 four is right next to ah get out of
1:25:24 here. That four is right next to South
1:25:26 Chowoon Place, right? That neighborhood,
1:25:29 South Chowoon Place, right next to the
1:25:30 four. So I'm going to write an article
1:25:33 and I'm targeting air conditioning
1:25:34 repair Fort Wayne. So I'm going to write
1:25:36 an article and my target keyword is
1:25:39 going to be air conditioning repair
1:25:41 South Calhoun Place, Fort Wayne. Okay,
1:25:44 that's what I when when I say building
1:25:46 up geographical relevance, that's what I
1:25:48 say. I'm going to call out the location
1:25:50 that Google has on their map. Call out
1:25:52 my main keyword. Call out the city. And
1:25:55 then in this article, I'm going to
1:25:56 provide driving directions from this
1:25:58 number four over to your veterinar's
1:26:01 office. Okay. Um I'm not going to target
1:26:05 different cities. I'm going to look at
1:26:06 the local rank map and target my
1:26:09 geographical content based on getting
1:26:11 fours and fives to turn into twos and
1:26:15 threes. Hopefully that was helpful.
1:26:20 All right, next question. What do we
1:26:22 have here?
1:26:23 Valute. Val, Valotech. Valotech. I'm
1:26:26 going with Val. Cool. At this turning
1:26:29 point from freelance to small agency,
1:26:31 any tips on tools, client care, and
1:26:32 add-ons to offer. All right. So, the
1:26:34 tools I walk through uh this is going to
1:26:36 be posted on YouTube, so feel free to uh
1:26:38 go back and and and view that. I won't
1:26:40 hit the tools again. Um client care.
1:26:44 Okay. Okay. So, the biggest thing that I
1:26:45 would say about client care is when you
1:26:47 land a new client, uh, they need to not
1:26:50 go more than a couple of days without
1:26:51 hearing from you. Okay? And, you know,
1:26:55 Destiny and I, we chat about this often.
1:26:57 Yeah. We we land a new client. If if you
1:27:00 go like 4 days or 5 days and don't say
1:27:03 anything to a new client, you're going
1:27:05 to get an email from them reaching out
1:27:09 and um they're going to be like, "What's
1:27:12 going on?" That's terrible, right?
1:27:15 That's absolutely terrible. You never
1:27:17 want that to happen. So, when a client
1:27:19 first signs on and first pays you,
1:27:21 they're nervous. They're not sure if
1:27:23 it's the right move. Uh they're going to
1:27:25 have buyer remorse. These are all very
1:27:27 normal feelings. So, what we do straight
1:27:30 away, uh I have a short Loom video and
1:27:33 it shows how to give us access to
1:27:35 analytics, search console, and
1:27:37 WordPress. Uh, so we'll kick that over
1:27:39 to them and then within 48 hours we're
1:27:42 going to give them the GBP audit. Okay,
1:27:44 the GBP audit uh takes an hour, hour and
1:27:48 a half to do. That's going to be in
1:27:49 their inbox within 48 hours. Uh, just to
1:27:53 make sure they're comfortable that they
1:27:54 did the right thing by starting the
1:27:57 engagement, right? Um, on top of that,
1:28:00 uh, within 72 hours after that, we're
1:28:03 going to give them new content for the
1:28:04 GVP landing page. it'll incorporate
1:28:06 their existing content, maybe add a
1:28:08 little bit more, maybe change things
1:28:09 around depending on what's going on. Uh,
1:28:11 but yeah, we'll give them that within 3
1:28:13 days after that. Um, and another thing
1:28:16 that we'll very often try to do,
1:28:18 especially depending on the
1:28:19 competitiveness and where they're
1:28:20 currently ranked, is we might do a
1:28:23 reactivation campaign. So, if they have
1:28:25 a list of prior customers that they're
1:28:26 not doing anything with, uh, we'll maybe
1:28:29 set those customers up. we'll get them
1:28:31 in high level or something like that and
1:28:34 then run a campaign. So, if it's a, you
1:28:37 know, a plumber or something like that,
1:28:38 maybe we'll run a campaign for seasonal
1:28:40 water heater maintenance, seasonal water
1:28:42 heater checkups, anything like that
1:28:44 because we want their phone to start
1:28:46 ringing as soon as possible in order to
1:28:49 again convince them that they did the
1:28:50 right thing. In my experience, if we
1:28:53 have a client that stays with us for 6
1:28:55 months, and 6 months is the turning
1:28:57 point. If a client stays for six months,
1:29:00 they're probably going to be our client
1:29:01 for many years, right? I have very few
1:29:04 clients who have been with us for longer
1:29:06 than six months, but less than like four
1:29:08 years. So, the goal is to get it to 6
1:29:13 months. And the way you do that is uh by
1:29:17 like constantly communicating to them,
1:29:20 constantly sending them information. Uh,
1:29:22 so if we land a client and we're going
1:29:24 to do say eight articles a month, I'm
1:29:26 going to send them two articles every
1:29:28 week. Okay. I'm not going to wait until
1:29:29 the end of the month and send them all
1:29:31 eight. I'm going to send them two a
1:29:33 week. Okay.
1:29:36 All right. Uh, Sean. Yeah. So, the lead
1:29:39 snap, the $20 for lead snap is for the
1:29:41 citations. Uh, it's $59 to have 10 GBPs
1:29:46 hooked up into Lead Snap. Uh, but if you
1:29:48 use my affiliate link, that $59 will be
1:29:51 30. Uh, but I think you can do a lead
1:29:54 snap just citations only. Okay.
1:30:02 Do you manually go through the GBP on a
1:30:03 new client? Yes, I do. And how do you
1:30:06 Well, I don't. My team does. Uh, and how
1:30:08 do you fill it out fully if they are not
1:30:10 done right? So, we get access to their
1:30:12 GBP. Uh, they uh grant us manager
1:30:15 access. And with manager access, we can
1:30:17 go into their GBP uh fill everything the
1:30:19 way it should be done. Um we also
1:30:23 uh can link their GBP up into lead snap
1:30:26 and then with lead snap we can make the
1:30:29 GBP edit through lead snap instead of
1:30:31 logging in through the GBP itself.
1:30:33 Either way is fine. Um, but the actual
1:30:37 exact document that we go through, I
1:30:43 have like 80 windows open right now, so
1:30:44 I'm trying to find it. Um, the document
1:30:48 that we go through uh to analyze their
1:30:51 GBP to collect everything to make sure
1:30:53 it's done correctly, that document is ah
1:30:57 right here.
1:30:59 I will drop a link to it in the chat. It
1:31:01 is in the school group. Um, so that
1:31:04 document, it's a Google doc. Uh, feel
1:31:06 free to copy it. Uh, we basically just
1:31:08 walk through their GBP with that
1:31:10 document open and, uh, make sure
1:31:13 everything is filled out and done
1:31:14 correctly. There's also a questionnaire
1:31:17 that that document links to that they
1:31:20 need to fill out, uh, to do things like
1:31:22 business hours or the special features,
1:31:24 stuff like that. Okay.
1:31:27 What tools do you use for tracking
1:31:28 analytics and success? Good question. We
1:31:31 use the uh local rank map. That's it. Uh
1:31:34 when when we send a proposal to a
1:31:36 client, the proposal is going to be
1:31:38 based on uh what we want to see the rank
1:31:42 map looking like after 3 6 9 12 months.
1:31:45 Uh what our goals are uh for that rank
1:31:48 map. And then we use the rank map as our
1:31:50 measure of success. Um
1:31:53 I I mentioned we'll do some like
1:31:55 activation things in order to get some
1:31:58 additional calls, stuff like that.
1:31:59 that's just to make them like even
1:32:01 happier, stuff like that. But we track a
1:32:04 lot of stuff like that. Most clients
1:32:06 actually won't give us access to their
1:32:08 tracking phone numbers. Um, so that's no
1:32:11 problem. Uh, my measure of success, and
1:32:13 I make it clear with clients upfront, is
1:32:16 we want to see the local rank map get
1:32:17 better. Now, that in no small part is
1:32:21 because the people that become our
1:32:24 clients at the agency are already
1:32:26 reasonably familiar with SEO. Um, so
1:32:30 when we were running that Facebook ad
1:32:33 and just landing general plumbers who
1:32:35 weren't super familiar with SEO, they
1:32:37 just wanted calls. Uh, for that we we
1:32:41 controlled their tracking phone numbers.
1:32:42 It was all through HighLE. High Level
1:32:44 automatically records every tracking
1:32:46 phone number and we priced all of that
1:32:49 uh per qualified lead. And then we had
1:32:52 someone whose job was to listen to all
1:32:54 those phone calls and decide if it was a
1:32:56 lead or not. Um, so yeah, hopefully that
1:32:59 makes sense. So it depends on the type
1:33:00 of client that we have. Uh, but either
1:33:03 yeah, the local rank map or the number
1:33:05 of calls, leads, things like that. All
1:33:07 right. Uh, Sylvio, do you change
1:33:09 anything in the H2 access? Nope, we
1:33:11 don't change anything in the H2 access.
1:33:13 Um, for our PBN, we obviously uh block
1:33:16 the uh crawlers from seeing it so that
1:33:19 the Af's bot, Majestic bot, Semrushbot,
1:33:22 etc. can't crawl the PBN. Uh but yeah,
1:33:25 other than that, we very rarely change
1:33:27 anything in the HD access unless it was
1:33:29 messed up. All right. Do you use a
1:33:32 plug-in to generate your schema or you
1:33:34 creating schema manually? Uh both, Dan.
1:33:37 Uh honestly, I would say both. So often
1:33:40 what we'll do, uh so for critical schema
1:33:43 like local business schema, we're going
1:33:45 to start with a tool that will just
1:33:47 generate local business schema for us
1:33:49 with the positioning, uh name, address,
1:33:52 phone number, etc., etc., etc.
1:33:54 Uh but then we want to turn that into a
1:33:57 nested schema where we have some of the
1:33:59 services nested. Uh maybe we have other
1:34:02 types of schema nested inside the local
1:34:04 business schema. Uh there's this great
1:34:07 example. We have a client who is a
1:34:09 personal injury law firm. Uh and they
1:34:11 had a crazy settlement. I won't get into
1:34:14 the details, but they had a crazy
1:34:15 settlement and they wanted that
1:34:17 highlighted. So I took a reference to
1:34:20 that settlement. It was published in the
1:34:22 Washington Post. Uh, and I had chat GPT
1:34:25 edit the local business schema to nest
1:34:27 in information about that settlement and
1:34:30 it nested it in under like the reward
1:34:33 category or something like that and
1:34:34 implemented that new local business
1:34:36 schema on their homepage. uh within a
1:34:39 week if you started asking chat GPT for
1:34:41 an attorney recommendation in that city
1:34:44 not only was it recommending this
1:34:45 attorney it was recommending this
1:34:47 attorney because of that settlement that
1:34:50 was in implemented into the schema. So
1:34:53 for local business schema, we'll
1:34:54 definitely do it like almost always
1:34:56 custom do it with chat GPT so we can
1:34:59 nest all of this information. Basically
1:35:01 think about that is what do you want
1:35:02 chat GPT to know about your business
1:35:04 because chat GPT is going to be so much
1:35:06 better about pulling that information
1:35:07 from the schema um than otherwise very
1:35:11 fascinating. Google's AI seems to uh
1:35:15 have zero just does not care about
1:35:18 schema whatsoever. Uh the example I just
1:35:21 showed of Chicago, you can do this
1:35:23 yourself of with uh I've done it with a
1:35:25 bunch of different cities and it's
1:35:26 pretty consistent all the time. The
1:35:28 businesses that Google's AI overview is
1:35:31 recommending almost always have no or
1:35:33 terrible schema implemented. So chat GPT
1:35:36 cares a lot about schema. Google
1:35:39 Google's AI cares not at all about it.
1:35:41 Uh Google's algorithm cares a lot about
1:35:44 schema. So do schema. Okay.
1:35:48 2:35 running to the point where I have a
1:35:51 back end to go get my kiddos from
1:35:54 school, but we'll keep going here for a
1:35:56 little bit. Do you have any
1:35:58 recommendations for an effective chatbot
1:35:59 to use on a restaurant uh website?
1:36:02 Honestly, uh high levels default
1:36:05 integrated chatbot works great. uh it
1:36:08 used to be okay and then we would
1:36:10 implement something like closebot uh was
1:36:13 another that we used where we'd
1:36:14 implement closebot uh instead of using
1:36:16 the highle built-in one but the highle
1:36:19 built-in one added the objectives added
1:36:22 the goal settings that close bot had I
1:36:24 still think closebot is maybe a little
1:36:26 bit better but I don't know like for a
1:36:30 little bit better it's not in my mind
1:36:31 it's not worth implementing another tool
1:36:33 and trying to get it integrated so
1:36:36 normally now we just use the high level
1:36:37 integration one and call it good.
1:36:40 Uh what do you think about Google quakes
1:36:43 happening since last Monday? We don't
1:36:45 pay a whole lot of attention to that. We
1:36:47 haven't seen much of that affect uh our
1:36:49 local clients. Again, right, I said
1:36:51 we're not really using a lot of tricks.
1:36:53 Uh right, we're doing SEO by building
1:36:57 out the type of content, the type of
1:36:59 structure, the type of links that Google
1:37:00 wants to see to build that trust, to
1:37:03 build that authority. Um, I don't really
1:37:05 pay a lot of attention to Google quakes.
1:37:07 That seems to be that something you
1:37:09 would really care about if you were
1:37:10 trying to rank with a bunch of tricks.
1:37:12 All right. Does Google hate AI generated
1:37:15 sites? Not at all. Uh, I think I
1:37:18 mentioned before that we have dozens and
1:37:21 dozens of websites ranking very well,
1:37:23 all fully AI generated, uh, human
1:37:26 edited.
1:37:28 Um, all right. Would index cloud stacks
1:37:31 be as good as PBN links? Johnny, man, I
1:37:34 don't know what indexed cloud stacks
1:37:36 are, so I have no idea. Um, yep, that's
1:37:40 all I got.
1:37:42 I haven't heard that term. Uh, again,
1:37:44 I'm very boring with SEO. We're not
1:37:46 using tricks, right? We're just doing
1:37:49 what Google wants to see to build that
1:37:51 trust, to build that authority. Uh, what
1:37:53 is the one thing you would do
1:37:54 differently if you're just starting out?
1:37:56 Oh, that's a good question. Okay. The
1:37:58 one thing I would do differently if I
1:37:59 were just starting out, like I would
1:38:01 start a YouTube channel. It takes a long
1:38:03 time uh to build it into something
1:38:06 that's good, but I mean it's been quite
1:38:09 good since it got there. So, I would
1:38:11 start a YouTube channel. Uh beyond that,
1:38:14 I would start running ads. Um I would
1:38:16 start a YouTube channel. I would start
1:38:18 running ads. That's how I would build an
1:38:19 SEO agency from scratch today if I were
1:38:22 just starting out. Um yeah. Okay, cool.
1:38:25 That's that's that's what I would say
1:38:27 about that. When a prospect agrees to
1:38:29 sign up for services, is it okay to chat
1:38:30 chat GPT to create a doc to have them
1:38:32 sign or how do you suggest to go about
1:38:33 that part? So, uh I have a contract that
1:38:36 we use with Docuign. Uh I will admit
1:38:38 chat GPT wrote the first draft of that
1:38:41 contract, but then I had my attorney uh
1:38:43 read it through to make sure it was
1:38:45 okay. Obviously, ChatGpt is not an
1:38:47 attorney. Uh, so I had an actual
1:38:50 attorney read it through, make sure it
1:38:52 was okay, and then we use that in the
1:38:54 doc sign for a new services. We used to
1:38:58 not do that. We used to just say, "Hey,
1:39:00 30 days out, just give us a heads up,
1:39:02 etc., etc." Um, but uh, we had a bunch
1:39:07 of clients who'd like canceled last
1:39:08 minute, wanted refunds, blah, blah,
1:39:10 blah. So now we require a signature on a
1:39:13 contract. Um, and yeah, it scares some
1:39:17 away, but I figure if the client's
1:39:18 scared away uh from signing a contract,
1:39:21 then they probably wouldn't have been a
1:39:22 great client anyway. That being said, if
1:39:24 I were starting out brand new, I would
1:39:26 not use contracts. Uh, contracts are
1:39:28 very scary to business owners. Um, so we
1:39:33 didn't use contracts for many years.
1:39:35 Okay.
1:39:36 Uh, does so silio
1:39:39 does title, meta tag, breadcrumbs,
1:39:41 content, FAQ, schema, keyword relevance
1:39:43 together, does it maximize CTR? And so
1:39:46 CTR isn't a thing, right? When we talk
1:39:49 about local SEO, we're not the websites
1:39:51 don't matter. So the meta description,
1:39:53 breadcr all of that stuff, none of that
1:39:55 matters uh because we're ranking the
1:39:58 GBP. So when we talk about GCTR in local
1:40:02 SEO, what we're talking about is the
1:40:04 quality and the uh quantity of reviews
1:40:08 of your GVP versus the other two that
1:40:11 are in the top three. Reviews are not a
1:40:13 major rank factor. You can rank in the
1:40:16 top three with 50 reviews if the other
1:40:18 two guys have 10,000 and then there's uh
1:40:22 fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth
1:40:24 all have 5,000 reviews. You can rank
1:40:26 really well with very few reviews
1:40:28 compared to your competitors, but if you
1:40:30 have 50 reviews and they have 10,000,
1:40:32 you're not getting any calls. Uh, and
1:40:34 there's nothing you can do for CTR in
1:40:35 that case except get more reviews uh to
1:40:38 be better about that. All this other
1:40:40 stuff you're talking about organic SEO
1:40:43 below the map results, don't pay a lot
1:40:45 of attention to that. will still do all
1:40:47 of these different types of schema, but
1:40:49 it's more that chat GPT loves it and
1:40:52 finds it easier to read than actually
1:40:54 reading the website. I have this
1:40:56 suspicion that chat GPT's website
1:40:58 crawling is not very good uh compared to
1:41:02 uh Google's.
1:41:04 Uh
1:41:06 so yeah, the chat GPT relies on schema
1:41:10 more than Google does. Uh so all of
1:41:12 these different types of schema will
1:41:14 definitely implement. Uh I I know
1:41:16 RankMath does a lot of these uh
1:41:19 automatically which is great. And then
1:41:21 you know you can have chat GPT create
1:41:23 custom ones for pages that see that it's
1:41:25 important. And the last very last
1:41:27 question from Mr. Dan. Last question.
1:41:31 Last but not least, do you use Jasper
1:41:34 schema writing? No, we do not. We do not
1:41:36 use Jasper schema writing. Um cool. All
1:41:40 right. Well, thank you very much for
1:41:42 attending. I really appreciate this.
1:41:43 Thank you for asking your questions.
1:41:45 Hopefully, this was valuable. Uh we do
1:41:48 this every week inside the pro
1:41:50 community. So, if you don't want to
1:41:52 wait, uh think about joining that
1:41:54 community and then we'll do this uh
1:41:55 tomorrow actually. Uh we do this every
1:41:58 Tuesday in the pro community. Uh
1:42:00 otherwise, the next one we'll do for
1:42:02 this community is going to be on
1:42:04 September 1st. It's the first Monday of
1:42:06 the month. September 1st, 1 p.m. Central
1:42:09 is the next scheduled one of these.
1:42:11 Hopefully, you can be there. And uh
1:42:14 yeah, thank you very much. In the
1:42:15 interim, feel free post in the school
1:42:18 group. Send me a message. If you do send
1:42:20 me a message with a question, I'll
1:42:21 probably just reply to you and say,
1:42:23 "Post that in the community." So, go
1:42:25 ahead, post in the community. I do read
1:42:27 every post. I try to reply to most of
1:42:30 them. Thank you very much for coming and
1:42:32 have a good rest of the afternoon,
1:42:34 everyone. Take care.

This is a 102-minute live Q&A session hosted by Caleb Ulku, founder of an AI SEO agency, answering pre-submitted and live questions from his community about local SEO strategy. Key topics covered include Google Business Profile (GBP) optimization (service area businesses vs. visible addresses, GBP embeds, service pages), citation quality (why most directory citations are worthless and which high-quality ones like Bing for Business and Apple Maps actually matter for both Google and ChatGPT recommendations), content strategy (one page per service, internal/external linking), and the tools his agency uses (Claude, ChatGPT, Lead Snap, GoHighLevel). Caleb emphasizes that service area businesses without a visible address are significantly harder to rank and that modern citations must require verification to be worthwhile. He also discusses how ChatGPT pulls recommendations from Bing for Business listings, making those citations critical for AI-driven local visibility.

Google Business Profile (GBP) Optimization Local SEO Strategy and Ranking Factors Citations and Link Building for Local SEO AI Tools in SEO Workflows SEO Toolstack and Recommended Resources Unknown Host Destiny
  • Service area businesses (GBP without a visible address) are 30–100%+ harder to rank than businesses with a visible address — add a physical or registered office address to your GBP to see near-immediate ranking improvements.
  • Most traditional directory citations (spammy, no-verification-required listings) are worthless for modern SEO and ChatGPT visibility — focus only on high-quality, verification-required citations like Bing for Business, Apple Maps, Yelp, and BBB, since ChatGPT uses Bing for Business (not Google Maps) for local recommendations.
  • Create one dedicated landing page per service (not combined pages) and monitor your local rank map — stop producing content once the map turns green, indicating sufficient topical authority and ranking coverage.
  • Always give AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude) your end goal (e.g., 'rank higher on Google Maps') when asking for help with tasks like dividing services into categories, as the AI may suggest a better path to achieve that goal.
  • The agency's core paid tool stack is lean: Claude ($20/mo) for content writing, ChatGPT ($20/mo), Lead Snap ($60/mo) for citation management and local rank maps, and GoHighLevel for CRM/reporting — totaling roughly $100–$160/month.
Concepts 14
High-Quality Citations
1 videos Core

Business directory listings on authoritative, verified platforms (Apple Maps, Bing for Business, BBB, car navigation systems) that require verification and are valued by both Google and ChatGPT for local recommendations.

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Core 30
5 videos Core

A local SEO website architecture strategy consisting of approximately 30 pages built from 3-4 GBP categories and 20-25 services, structured so the website exactly mirrors the Google Business Profile to signal trust and relevance to Google's algorithm.

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ChatGPT and Bing for Business Integration
1 videos Core

The relationship whereby ChatGPT uses Bing for Business (not Google Maps) as its local business data source, making Bing for Business listings critical for AI-driven local recommendations.

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Service Area Business
1 videos Core

A Google Business Profile created without a visible address, which is significantly harder to rank (30–100%+ harder) than a GBP with a visible address.

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GBP Landing Page
3 videos Core

The most important URL for a local business website — the page linked in the 'website' field of the Google Business Profile, typically the homepage for single-location businesses, which targets the primary category + city name as its keyword.

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Topical Relevance
4 videos Core

The practice of building additional content that connects a business entity with its service entity by answering real questions people ask about that service, proving to Google the business genuinely performs those services.

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Local Rank Map
5 videos Core

A geographic visualization tool (also called a 'local SEO heat map') that shows exactly where a business ranks for a given keyword across different locations, helping identify gaps and guide optimization efforts.

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Page Optimizer Pro
3 videos Core

An SEO tool that analyzes competitor content to provide specific recommendations on word count, LSI keyword usage, and content comprehensiveness to help content rank on Google.

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Semantic Relevance
1 videos Core

The concept that Google's algorithm ranks content based on semantic (meaning-based) relationships between words and topics, not just exact keyword matches.

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Lead Snap
3 videos Supporting

A local SEO tool with API connections to Apple Maps, Bing for Business, BBB, and car navigation systems that automates high-quality citation creation and provides local heat map ranking reports.

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Do Follow Links
1 videos Supporting

Hyperlinks that pass SEO authority ('link juice') to the linked page, as opposed to no-follow links which do not, making them the preferred type of link for citation and SEO purposes.

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AI Slop
1 videos Supporting

Mass-produced, low-quality AI-generated content published without proper links or signals of authority, which Google does not rank and treats as spam.

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Caleb Ulku
34 videos Supporting

The primary guest and SEO expert featured in the video, founder of an AI SEO agency that developed the Core 30 local SEO methodology and scaled to 97 plumber clients using AI-driven content and local link-building strategies.

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Screaming Frog
2 videos Supporting

A website crawling tool used to find broken links, slow pages, and technical SEO issues, with integration into Page Speed Insights for performance auditing.

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Q&A 18
Is there any benefit to placing a Google Business Profile (GBP) map embed above the fold on a landing page?

Probably not. The space above the fold is very important real estate, especially for local business websites. Many users won't scroll down at all — they'll look at the hero image, look for a click-to-call button or contact info, and move on. Placing the GBP embed above the fold is not recommended. It's best to embed it lower on the page. That said, this hasn't been formally tested, so it's more of a best-practice recommendation than a proven rule.

When someone refers to an 'article' in the context of SEO, what does that term typically include?

When referring to an 'article' in SEO, it typically means the entire URL and all its components, including: the written content, images, headings, title tags, and anything that breaks up walls of text. It also includes external backlinks pointing to that page (which help signal to Google that the content isn't AI-generated spam) and internal links from other pages on the same website pointing back to that page. Essentially, 'article,' 'web page,' 'URL,' and 'page' can all be used interchangeably in this context.

Should a service area business (SAB) add city, neighborhood, and service pages to rank in a large service area?

Before worrying about city or neighborhood pages, the most important step for a service area business is to switch to a visible address. Service area businesses (Google Business Profiles without a visible address) are 30–100%+ harder to rank than businesses with a visible address. Adding a visible address almost always produces an immediate ranking improvement. Once you have a visible address and have built sufficient topical relevance (visible on the local rank map in the 25–35% range for top-3 positions), you can begin producing geographic-based content like city, service, and neighborhood pages. Be aware that adding an address to a service area business will very likely trigger a reverification.

Should a business with a large service area embed maps for each county or service area on their homepage?

No. You should only have one GBP embed, and it belongs on the GBP landing page — the URL listed in the 'Website' field of your Google Business Profile. For most businesses this is the homepage, but it doesn't have to be. You do not need to embed a map for every county or service area. One embed on the GBP landing page is the correct approach.

How do you check whether a Chamber of Commerce provides a do-follow or no-follow backlink?

Go to the Chamber of Commerce website, navigate to their member directory, and then view the page's source code. Use Ctrl+F to search for 'nofollow' and check whether the links from the directory to member websites are marked as no-follow. If the links are not no-follow, they are do-follow and worth pursuing. If they are no-follow, you can contact the chamber and ask if their web developer can change your listing to a do-follow link — most chambers don't know the difference and are happy to accommodate if you agree to join. The goal is to get a plain-text do-follow link from the directory.

Should you create a separate page for every service, or combine similar services on one page?

Yes, create a separate page for every individual service. If you have 30 services, create 30 pages; if you have 100 services, create 100 pages. The exception is if the local rank map turns green and shows strong rankings before you finish — at that point you can stop producing content since the goal has been achieved. This approach is called the 'Core 30' (though the number varies by business and competitiveness). For most businesses in average-competition markets, 30 pages is sufficient to rank well. Highly competitive niches like personal injury law or plastic surgery may require many more.

Should you stuff keywords into citation URLs to compete with competitors who do this?

No. If a citation platform allows you to stuff keywords into the URL, it's likely a low-quality, spammy citation that isn't worth your time. Modern SEO citation strategy focuses on high-quality citations that require verification — such as Apple Maps, Bing for Business, Yelp, the Better Business Bureau, and automotive navigation systems (BMW, Audi, Mercedes). These high-quality citations are especially important because ChatGPT uses Bing for Business (not Google Maps) to make local business recommendations. Low-quality directory citations that can be created in minutes without verification provide little to no SEO value.

Why are high-quality citations important for ChatGPT recommendations, and which ones matter most?

ChatGPT uses Bing for Business — not Google Maps — to make local business recommendations. So if you want ChatGPT to recommend your business, you must have a Bing for Business listing. Other high-quality citations that matter include Apple Maps, Yelp, the Better Business Bureau (BBB), and automotive navigation systems (BMW, Audi, Mercedes). These citations typically require verification, which is what makes them valuable. Low-quality directory citations that can be created without verification are largely ignored by both Google and ChatGPT.

Is it okay to add the same service to multiple GBP categories?

No, avoid duplicating services across categories. Aim for 20–30 unique services, each placed in the most relevant category. When dividing services between categories (e.g., 'plastic surgeon' vs. 'cosmetic surgeon'), use ChatGPT or Claude to help assign each service to the most semantically relevant category. Always give the AI your end goal — for example, tell it you're trying to rank higher on Google Maps — so it can make the best recommendations. Services don't need to be perfectly divided, just reasonably accurate.

What tools are recommended for local SEO, and how much do they cost?

The recommended local SEO tool stack includes: (1) Google Search — free; (2) Google Search Console — free; (3) Claude AI (Claude Sonnet) — $20/month, preferred for content writing; (4) ChatGPT — $20/month; (5) Lead Snap — $60/month for up to 10 GBPs, used for local rank heat maps and high-quality citation building via API connections to Apple Maps, Bing for Business, BBB, etc.; (6) Page Optimizer Pro — ~$30–40/month, for semantic/LSI keyword ideas; (7) Screaming Frog — free up to 500 URLs, ~$100–200/year beyond that, used for finding broken links and slow pages; (8) High Level — $300/month, optional and mainly useful if running paid ads for agency growth. Total core cost is roughly $130–140/month without High Level.

Is Ahrefs useful for local SEO?

No. Ahrefs (and similar tools like Moz, Semrush, and Majestic) are not useful for local SEO. These tools become increasingly inaccurate as keyword search volume decreases, and local SEO keywords typically have low volume. The data can actually point you in the wrong direction. For local SEO, you don't need to track domain ratings or domain authority, and keyword research from these tools is unreliable. The focus for local SEO should be building trust with Google and ChatGPT through quality content and citations, not chasing domain rating metrics.

How do you find broken links and slow pages when doing local SEO?

Use Screaming Frog. It's free for websites with fewer than 500 URLs and costs about $100–200/year beyond that. Screaming Frog can identify broken links and slow pages. You can also connect it to Google Page Speed Insights for free — as Screaming Frog crawls your domain, it will run Page Speed Insights on every URL it finds, giving you performance data across the entire site.

Are meta descriptions important for local SEO?

Meta descriptions are generally not very important for local SEO. Google often ignores the meta description you provide and writes its own based on what it determines is more relevant to the search query. Since local SEO rankings are primarily driven by factors like GBP optimization, topical relevance, trust signals, and citations, meta descriptions are a lower priority. They may still have some marginal value for click-through rates, but they are not a significant ranking factor for local SEO.

What is a service area business (SAB) and why is it harder to rank than a business with a visible address?

A service area business (SAB) is a Google Business Profile created without a visible address. When setting up a GBP, you can choose to hide your address, which creates an SAB. SABs are significantly harder to rank than businesses with visible addresses — estimates range from 30–50% harder to over 100% harder. In nearly every case where a client switched from an SAB to a visible address, rankings improved almost immediately. This is such a significant factor that some SEO agencies refuse to take on SAB clients for local SEO work.

What is Lead Snap and why is it recommended for local SEO?

Lead Snap is a local SEO tool that costs $60/month for up to 10 GBPs. It provides local ranking heat maps (similar to other tools), but its standout feature is API connections to high-quality citation sources including Apple Maps, Bing for Business, the BBB, and automotive navigation systems. By connecting your GBP to Lead Snap and toggling a switch, it can automatically create verified citations on these platforms without requiring you to go through individual verification processes (like waiting for a postcard to verify Bing for Business). Importantly, if you cancel Lead Snap, your citations are not deleted. It's considered one of the most efficient ways to build high-quality citations for local SEO and ChatGPT visibility.

When is it appropriate to start creating geographic-based content like city and neighborhood pages?

You should wait until you have sufficient topical relevance and trust before creating geographic-based content. A good indicator is your local rank map showing you in the top 3 for 25–35% of the map grid. Once you've reached that threshold, it makes sense to expand with city, service, and neighborhood pages. Also note that ranking in cities different from your GBP address is inherently difficult — rankings often drop sharply at city/municipality borders, which is visible on local rank maps.

What are low-quality citations and should you still build them for local SEO?

Low-quality citations are directory listings on generic or spammy websites where a VA can manually enter your business information in bulk (e.g., 200–300 listings). These are largely worthless for modern local SEO — Google rarely indexes them, and ChatGPT ignores them entirely. The only scenario where these bulk citations have any value is if you don't yet have a verified Google Business Profile, as getting your business name on the internet can help with GBP verification. Once you have a verified GBP, stop building low-quality citations — they waste time and resources.

What is the GBP landing page and how should it be used?

The GBP landing page is the URL listed in the 'Website' field of your Google Business Profile. When someone views your GBP and clicks 'Website,' this is the page they land on. For most businesses, this is the homepage, but it can be a different page (e.g., for multi-location businesses or e-commerce sites). The GBP embed should be placed on this landing page — and only on this page. You should have just one GBP embed per GBP, placed on the GBP landing page, typically lower on the page rather than above the fold.