Local SEO Expert

Welcome back to another episode of this is my South Bay podcast. And today I have with me Michael Nease. How’s it going? It’s going great having a great day. Sunny outside and enjoying the Southern California weather. Yeah. And I’m not in an office so I loved it. That’s right. And this is my my first time on this side of the podcast.  I’ve done quite a bit of recording with you. But you know, this is exciting to actually be able to be doing this with you for me also. Thanks for joining. Yeah. Thanks for having me. So today I wanted to talk briefly about local search engine optimization or local SEO, which seems to be you know, the Crux of it for a lot of local businesses.

So basically if you have a business and it’s you know your tire shop and you know, you’re competing with local businesses, you’re looking for people to drive into your location and you know use your services you’re really not looking for traffic for if you’re in Los Angeles. You’re not looking for traffic and taxes or Connecticut or whatever.  Yeah, so I mean I kind of see this as being from my point of view as being like the storefront for local business online, you know, I use it a lot I use local SEO as a consumer a lot where if I’m looking for a restaurant or a dentist or something like that.

I just go straight to Google which I think most people do and I type in dentist and then it shows me like that list of dentists in my area with rankings and different things like that.  So. I think you know kind of like my I’ve done this a bit for my own businesses and for a few others, but I know this you’ve done a lot more than I have. So just thinking, you know, if I’m if I’m a I don’t know a I’ll just say this because my friends some friends of ours just started doing a hyperbaric chamber.

It’s a new kind of kind of edgy medical treatment okay to help some incurable conditions that they have and so if I’m looking for a hyperbaric chamber as well and I have a hyperbaric company, how do I make sure that I’m the one that people find? As opposed to you know, ABC Hyperbaric?

Target Local Market

So again with businesses that are looking to target local what happens first of all is Google wants to be able to deliver the correct results to its users. So it has a couple ways to do it. First of all is trying to figure out from you know, if you’re logged into your Facebook account. If you’re logged into your Gmail account, it kind of knows where you are.  Yeah, so that’s first and foremost. They had, you know your Yelp account Etc. They kind of know Google knows. Okay this persons in Los Angeles and especially when you type in near me or something like that without even typing in the city, it will figure out where you’re at. And so if you’re looking for let’s say a pizza shop.

It’s completely irrelevant if you’re in downtown Los Angeles and then a pizza shop comes up in Seattle. Right, so Google will not have done its job and then eventually users will move onto another search engine that you know, they don’t they don’t have to search so hard to find what they’re looking for. So that’s the first thing is that you know, Google has things set up to figure out where you are which is kind of spooky but Google knows.

Yeah, I recently was invited to become a Google guide.  What is that?  It’s basically you Google can see that you’ve been to a place and they after you’ve reviewed a few places on Google they say would you be interested in being a Google guide? So I’m like a local person who every now and then I’ll open Google and it’ll say I see that you were at such-and-such Mediterranean.  Would you be willing to answer some questions about it? It asks questions like do they have a handicap accessible entrance? Is this place good for?

Do they accept reservations and you just yes or no questions? Okay, and so I would imagine that that kind of feeds into something like this.  It’s an interesting experience, you know, because I’m. I’m giving them the opportunity to kind of follow me on my phone. And so but you know, I to for the experimental side of it. I’ve been doing it to kind of see how it what it is and like how it might be beneficial to other people. Of course. So Google is out there always collecting data.  So because again if it doesn’t deliver the right search results.

Then they’re going to be out of business. Ya know people are looking for, you know, some of these looking at some of these search engines like Yelp and Google and so on and they’re wanting to have those results right away and they can look at the reviews or look at the you know, the menu of the store or the pricing on the what they’re offering and make a decision right there on their cell phone.

Keyword Research

Yeah possibly. So what are some like top things that a company needs to do to I don’t know to get listed and maybe make sure that they’re even showing up. Yes, so whatever you’re going to do for search engine optimization. You want to kind of Bring It Down scale it down to a local strategy. Let’s say for example, you’re selling I don’t know engagement rings and a lot of people might want to try on the engagement ring before they purchase it.  They might want to customize it at etc.  If you’re doing an engagement ring, you can say manufactured engagement rings in Los Angeles. Okay engagement ring wholesaler, Los Angeles targets the area go after a certain proximity as opposed to. Doing it in a generic way where you just use the keyword.

So when you add in the title tag, or the anchor text or whatever you add Los Angeles or LA area Downtown LA Etc. Whatever you’re going to do. You can kind of see a better result locally. Yeah, so that’s the first strategy. So kind of like quality Thai food in Torrance. Exactly. You want to you want to go after and you can you can do if you’re in Torrance you can do that keyword Torrance.  You can do that. Keyword South Bay. You can do that keyword Los Angeles that keyword Greater Los Angeles area Etc and see which ones are indexing which ones are bringing in the traffic do a bunch of keywords that way and kind of have a little most. Like your own case study the see which ones are indexing which ones are bringing in the traffic Etc.

Link Building

And that way you don’t have to waste your time with doing that process over and over again for every keyword. Yeah. The next thing I would say is when you’re doing link building to really lock in on the neighborhood and go after the directories the local influencers and so on that are going to give you links for.  That area so for the for the business owner who might be listening who may not know that maybe they’ve heard the term link building but they don’t know exactly what it is.

Explain it in the simplest way possible while textbook there’s a couple different ways of Link building but the textbook way is there’s a somebody has something they mention your website on their website and then they give you a clickable link from their website to your website, so they’re pointing from their website to yours. Like if you’re looking for this service if you’re looking for a dry-cleaning store in Redondo Beach you can click here and that link when they click it takes you directly to your website that is in this case a dry-cleaning store.

The more links you have that are pointing to you from other websites. The more people that are saying hey, this is a good website go check them out. Here’s a link that I’ve given and go check them out and they’re awesome. The better your ranking is going to be kind of like Google saying, this website looks like it’s going to be interesting to other people because all these other people are linking to you exactly so that’s where kind of Google organic really kicks in is Google is kind of vouching for you when its ranks you because you can buy the traffic from Google but you can’t buy the organic.

It’s kind of like Google is saying hey, you know if you’re looking for the service. Here’s a list of companies that we think their business model their business Etc matches. Well with what you’re offering and they’re taking a number of indicators to come up with ranking you know, like I said, the link building is one of them reviews time on site average pages that are viewed by an average person Etc.

Like it’s just kind of going in there. If you go into your Google analytics, and there’s all that data. Google’s looking at it also, so if you. A hundred people that came to your website today and all of them came to your website and they left without spending any time on it without going into without going into any of the other Pages.  It’s a negative thing. You’re not going to get ranked when you have people that are just bouncing. It’s called a bounce rate. So if somebody comes to your site and they just bounce the higher your by bounce rate is. The less of a chance you have to get ranked with Google and then your listing is there but it might be on page 2.  Or I could be not even ranked like not even showing up in searches, correct? Wow. Okay.

So again Google’s in their mind. They’re protecting us like the user from websites that. You know, they don’t recommend and again, they’re looking at different indicators to for that. Sometimes the time the reason that someone doesn’t stay on a website.  It could be the load time. It takes it just takes too long too long for the website to load.  You know it these are things that can be corrected absolute.  It’s not like Google calls you and tells you hey move to a faster server, right?

Let’s say that a company does go through and do some of these things, you know, maybe they’ve had their brick and mortar store for a couple years.  They’ve had a really not a very strong web presence and they’re trying to actually start to get ranked. What kind of a time frame were they looking at? Between like starting to do this work to actually like seeing improvements. Well SEO is a you know, it’s kind of a long game. It’s not like you’re going to do a blog post and suddenly everyone’s going to be coming to your website and you’re going to be a brand that’s kind of like the dream that a lot of marketers SEO quote-unquote specialist cell is that hey, I’ll get your number one and all, you know, you’ll have more business than you’ll know what to do with.

Generally, the way it works is you have to come up with a strategy come up with the keywords that are important to you find the keywords that there’s potential because if you’re going after let’s say I’ll use the example with jewelry again, if you go after the keyword jewelry, you’re probably not going to get ranked ever in the number one or number two, but if you go after let’s say men’s tungsten wedding band.  You have a much better chance of getting ranked and if that’s what you’re going after because Under the Umbrella of jewelry, you might have pearls you might have watches you might have silver jewelry. You might have all kinds of things that you don’t even carry so you don’t really need to go after that that keyword.

The long tail keywords are where the higher conversions are and so in the beginning. I feel like most people skip over the keyword analysis and research and they skip over the competitor competitive analysis and they just kind of jump into okay. I want you know this keyword, but does that really work when they like when you go through all that trouble of optimizing for it.  Are you really gonna be able to convert? So that’s the first like the the Crux of it is to kind of go in there and figure out what’s you know, what are we going to go through the trouble of doing to get this traffic to come to your website? I mean, it sounds it sounds like there’s a whole lot of moving parts that factor into the hole.

Yelp Reviews

That’s what it seems, so short of hiring someone like yourself which you know, what are some what are like, maybe it’s a couple things that businesses can do. Just on their own I would say in the beginning. They should probably ask for reviews from their clients if they can open up a Yelp account and then when there’s a client that they feel like they hit it off with to ask for a Yelp review.  Obviously, I can say all the nice things about myself. But if somebody else says something nice about me that goes much further in life true, and there’s no difference with. Yep looks and you know I can write blog articles about myself all day talking about how wonderful I am.

But if somebody else goes to Google reviews or Yelp reviews and said something nice about me that goes a thousand times further.

That’s very true. Speaking of Yelp. I get calls from them all the time wanting me to pay for their services. Is that something like I know that a business owners are also getting the same thing as. Should I talk to them? Yeah, it depends on your budget. Yeah, so and it depends, you know, there’s a lot of competition on Yelp and it’s it seems to be you know on the expensive side.  So it’s not cheap, so you have to be careful. I think they have like a monthly minimum the and that’s just to get ranked X number Impressions and I’m not a really big fan of buying Impressions. Yeah, so. I don’t suggest it if you have limited budgets and there’s other ways to kind of get the word out.

You know, that’s not going to make sense. He’s like kind of looking for anomalies that might be people. Into cheat the system exactly.  So it seems like I mean as with anything in life the more honest and straightforward you are about this the better results ultimately over time. Absolutely you’ll get absolutely if you’re looking for something where there’s like a spike in traffic.

There are a lot of things that companies will do its called black hats where they do things that it’s going to upset Google in the long term as soon as Google finds out. Google’s going to take away most if not all of your ranking, but you could get kind of like this sugar rush. I call it where suddenly the traffic goes through the roof and you know sales are coming in and phone calls are coming in.  And as soon as Google finds out watch out because you’ll be in the sandbox and it will be difficult to get out of that. It’s not a right long-term strategy for building a business and I’ve had companies approach me to do things like that. I’m not I don’t touch that because I feel like.

That’s unethical, you know, you can build all these fake links to pages and do these things but the minute you’re not going to fool Google.  So the minute ago Google finds out then good luck after that. Yeah. This kind of makes me think of like financial investments, you know, people artificially inflated stock. It sees an increase a bunch of people make thousands of dollars and then immediately it crashes. You know, where as the people who are like Warren Buffett who have these long-term plays that are increasing consistently over time are the ones who ultimately benefit.

That’s a good example. I’m going to. Use that in the future. You’re welcome. Okay. Absolutely. Yeah. So is there anything else that you think we need to cover while there’s a lot to talk about with SEO but I think that that kind of gives people an idea and if anybody wants to get more information, you’re welcome to go to my website, Thisismysouthbay.com. If your book now, I have like 15 minute sessions where I can kind of answer your questions and see if there’s anything that I would say or like low-lying fruit for you to kind of get the ball rolling with your digital marketing campaign with your website.

And so I would say, you know start there do some research whatever you’re going to do you need to do it consistently, you know you the example that I always give with SEO is if you’re going to eat 365 dinners in one year January 1st, if you eat all 365 and you don’t eat the rest of the Year, how’s that going to be?

Like, how’s that going to work out miserable? It has exactly so it has to be consistently one a day if you’re going to do 365 if you’re going to do 50 to do it once a week. You have post to your social media your blog post and do your link building. Everything has to be with some kind of consistency so that Google understands.  Google is looking for Trends so that I would say have that in mind when you’re preparing to go on this long journey with search engine optimization. Absolutely. I think that’s great advice. Thank you. All right. Well, thanks Mike. Thanks for coming in and until next time everybody.