October 15, 2025 • 28 mins
The spotlight's on local SEO in this episode, where they dive deep into how reviews can totally make or break a business’s online presence. Speaker A kicks things off by dropping some serious knowledge, emphasizing that it's not just about appeasing Google—it's about what customers think and feel. He’s all about putting the user first, which he believes is the secret sauce for climbing those search rankings. They chat about the emotional rollercoaster that comes with reviews, pointing out that while bad reviews can come in hot and heavy, getting those golden good ones is a task that often feels like pulling teeth. With wit and charm, they explore the nuances of local SEO, highlighting the importance of keeping your Google Business Profile in tip-top shape and the power of content in building trust with potential customers. Buckle up, because this convo is packed with gold nuggets for anyone looking to up their local game!
What You'll Learn:
- The biggest misconceptions about local SEO and how they impact your bottom line
- What separates businesses that dominate local search from those that remain invisible
- Strategies for consistent local rankings across different service areas
- The crucial role of reviews in local SEO and how to get more positive ones
- The future of local SEO and emerging trends to watch
Takeaways:
- Local SEO thrives on reviews, it's not just a Google thing but a user trust thing.
- Understanding marketing channels is key; ignorance can cost local businesses big time.
- User signals, like engagement and reviews, are increasingly vital for local SEO success.
- Content helps Google know what you do; it’s a powerful tool for visibility online.
- Putting the user first, then Google, is the mantra for effective SEO strategies.
- Multiple locations in SEO require careful planning to avoid self-cannibalization of search presence.
Links referenced in this episode:
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Bright Beam SEO
- Waze
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
One of the most importantfactors in local SEO is the number
of reviews you have.
And if you're getting reviews,your name right, your domain address,
those are huge.
I just think you can all.
You always have to put theuser first and then Google second.
That's the way I see it.
Like reviews are important notbecause Google wants them to be important,
(00:22):
but because people thinkthey're important.
Yeah, people will go out oftheir way to put forth effort to
give you a bad review.
Right.
Because they're emotionally charged.
(00:45):
Mmm, that's good.
And welcome to a new episodeof Digital Coffee Marketing Brew.
And I'm your host Brett Dystrever.
Please subscribe to thispodcast on hold your favorite podcast
apps leave.
A five star review really doeshelp with the rankings.
And let me know how I am doing.
But this week we're me talkingabout SEO and local SEO.
(01:08):
Well, you know, the thingsthat local business need to know
but sometimes need a lot ofhelp with because it's difficult
sometimes.
Google's always changingthings and gives me headaches sometimes.
Anyways, I have Josh Thompsonwith me.
He's a founder of Bright BeamSEO where he helps home service companies
scale their lead flow throughGoogle business profile optimization
(01:28):
and local SEO strategy.
With nearly 20 years ofentrepreneurial experience, including
building a financial servicelead gen company and starting and
selling an addiction treatmentcenter, Josh knew what it takes to
grow businesses from theground up.
So welcome to the show, Josh.
Thank you, appreciate it.
(01:48):
You're welcome.
And the first question asksall my guest is, are you a coffee
or tea drinker?
I've got my coffee right nowand I don't know how anybody who's
an SEO survives withoutcoffee, but I guess tea baby, if
you drink enough.
Do people say tea a lot?
It depends.
I get various different answers.
(02:10):
I get from tea to black coffeeto nothing at all, to monster or
energy drinks.
Sure, it varies between onwhich specifically people like, but
it's always interesting tofigure out what people actually drink.
I've done the black, I've doneit all.
My wife got me an espresso andI hate to say that I am straight
(02:31):
addicted to it.
I love it.
I never would have thought Iwould liked it as much as I do, so.
Oh, so you like, you like theespresso shots basically?
Well, yeah, Lattes, right?
Like it's basically a quick latte.
I tried doing the machines, okay.
If it takes me more than likefive minutes, it's too much work
for the morning.
I gotta get to my computer.
Right.
(02:52):
So that's what I've been doingfor the last four months straight.
That's fair.
That's fair.
So I gave a brief summary ofyour expertise.
Can you give the listeners alittle bit more about what you do?
I like to say yes to newthings and to helping people.
And 20 years ago, my friendhad some problems with substances.
(03:15):
After he kind of went throughthe rehab thing, he found this really
interesting treatment.
I'd already been doing somewebsites and the financial stuff.
Right.
And so I was like, yeah, let'sdo it.
So, you know, I helped build,you know, a company that then went
under.
And so then I end up startingmy own with another individual, and
(03:41):
I hired SEO companies.
And then I would be like, Ican do this.
I'd start doing it.
And I went through that a fewtimes before.
I was just like, I. I'm justgoing to do this.
And so SEO became a bigpassion of mine, and that's what
really drove me into SEO.
I sold that.
And just by happenstance, Ikind of found my way into the local
(04:04):
SEO with some people that I knew.
And I've been like, man, howlucky am I?
Especially with all the AI andeverything going on, because local
SEO is just by its nature,bottom of funnel where people need
a person.
Yeah, it's been.
It's been an amazing journey,and I've been able to learn a lot
of things and do a lot ofthings, but now helping businesses
(04:26):
do their SEO has been reallyfun, and I've been doing this for
a number of years now as well.
All right, so what's some ofthe biggest misconceptions that people
have or local business ownershave or marketers have for local
SEOs, and how does thatmisconception actually hurt their
bottom line?
That's a good question.
And I'm going to kind of flipthis a little bit.
(04:49):
I would say the biggest misconception.
It's not really a misconception.
I think there's a lack ofeither desire or just general knowledge
about SEO.
And the reason I point thatout is just because I see a lot of
home service businesses,they're busy, I get it.
But they don't understandreally anything about the different
(05:14):
marketing channels and howthey work.
And it puts them in a positionwhere they end up spending a lot
of money on just basically aprayer, hoping that the guy they're
hiring is going to get themwhere they want to go.
They know they want to get somewhere.
I applaud anybody who's outthere, like, trying to test things
(05:34):
and get it going, but I Thinkthe biggest problem most of these
businesses face is they don'ttake the a few hours, maybe a couple,
maybe an hour a week to reallybe involved with marketing, understand
their marketing and make surethey're managing the marketing.
You know, you have tounderstand it to manage it.
(05:55):
Right.
So I see that as, you know, a thing.
I think most business owners,especially in the local area, that
if they got involved in, wouldsave them a lot of headache and give
them a lot of benefit.
And so can you walk us throughwhat separates the companies that
do it really well or dominatelocal search and for those that still
remain, well, invisible andnobody knows about them?
(06:17):
Yeah, and just to clarify alittle bit, I do mean all of marketing.
I think people in the localarea, they don't really know if they're
buying ads, what ads, wherethe ads coming from, or SEO.
Right.
There's all these marketing channels.
Now you come to SEO and howSEO works.
The first thing is that localSEO and general SEO are a lot different.
(06:43):
You know, it's like plumbingin H vac.
I think a lot of people assumethey're the same thing, but local
SEO is more focused on theGoogle Map being the priority, whereas
the kind of the searchesgenerally are not as important, although
they do play a big part.
(07:04):
But the target is getting upon Google Maps.
If you're on Twitter a lot,you start to think that everyone
in the world is an expertbecause you're following experts.
I just think most businessowners either, and I'm talking about
the SEO companies, I justdon't know if they care or love SEO.
(07:25):
I think that's really the mostimportant thing that you can do as
a business is if you're goingto hire somebody to do a job, you
want to make sure that they'restill involved.
And if you can figure out away to figure out if they like it,
are they educating themselves?
This just changes too fast tohave somebody who's doing things
(07:46):
that they did yesterday,they're still doing them today.
I would say that in myestimation, the people who do well
for their clients are peoplewho still are educating themselves
about SEO, especially today.
I mean, things have probablychanged more over the last year than
maybe the last decade with allthe AI.
(08:06):
And it's going to keep changing.
Would you put like Googlebusiness or my business or whatever
they're calling it?
I don't remember now anymore.
Would you put that part oflocal SEO as well?
Because that kind of likebridges that gap and is Waze a part
of that?
Because I know Waze is part of Google.
Technically, they bought thecompany, but they feel like there's
still two different, like beasts.
Would that be part of thelocal SEO mix as well?
(08:29):
Yeah, I guess when I sayGoogle Maps, I mean the Google Business
Profile.
That's what's linked to Google Maps.
I know there's so many termsfor this same thing.
Google Maps, Google Business Profile.
That is the initial and thecore of local SEO.
Exactly.
And so your website is veryimportant, but you're going to do
(08:53):
different things with the website.
When your focus is the GoogleBusiness Profile and the Google Map
rankings, you know you'regoing to do different things with
link building than you'regoing to do if your focus is general
traditional SEO over the otherside of it.
And then as far as the ways,and I haven't seen that really, I
(09:15):
don't see a lot of that beingsomething that people talk about
or is really changing anything specifically.
No, it's fair.
I mean, I feel like Googlereally hasn't really done much with
Waze.
I think they bought them like,what, decade ago or something like
that, and they just reallyhaven't done much with it.
Great app for, like, users,but they haven't really done much
to it beyond buying it.
(09:37):
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
What about the content creation?
Does that also play a part nowwith local SEO of like making sure
you have videos, blogs orwhatever you can actually produce
or hiring someone to producethat stuff?
Does that now start to play alittle bit more of a more prominent
role in local SEO besides thelink building and besides trying
(09:59):
to be on Google Maps?
Let's just break it down alittle bit.
I mean, one of the mostimportant factors in local SEO is
the number of reviews you have.
And if you're getting reviews,your name right, your domain address,
those are huge.
But where content really comesinto play is in two things.
Number one, content,especially on your website, is really
(10:23):
important for giving Googlethe information about what to show
you for and what not to showyou for.
Right.
So especially when you'retrying to rank for secondary keywords
and, and things that you don'tprimarily do, you still want to try
to drive some business there.
That's really important.
(10:44):
So your website becomes thistemplate area to showcase your authority
through content.
On top of that, though, usersignals will always.
And if, if anything, they'regetting more important.
User signals are always goingto be important part of the mix.
I think Google is looking atthings like TikTok, Instagram and
(11:07):
saying, hey, look, these guysare figuring out ways to give People
what they want without reallykeywords and all this stuff.
Right.
It's just engagement.
So anything that you can do tomake things more engaging, for instance,
Google business profiles, youcan put videos up and Google will
(11:28):
autoplay those videos incertain when you're on certain apps
or on certain browsers.
So that can be really engaging.
Right.
Video is always engaging.
And then I just think you can all.
You always have to put theuser first and then Google second.
That's the way I see it.
(11:48):
Like review are important, notbecause Google wants them to be important,
but because people thinkthey're important.
And so I think anything youcan do to showcase, you know, what
you do quickly or show peoplefrom your business, build trust.
Right.
Make people more comfortablewith the fact that you're coming
to their house, those are allgoing to be really good ways of converting,
(12:13):
getting sales and drivingthese positive signals to Google.
And talking about reviews, Iknow it's probably the hardest thing
to do is actually get good reviews.
The bad reviews are prettyeasy to come by because everybody,
everybody expects you to havegood service.
But when you don't have goodservices, when people go, all right,
(12:34):
I'm going to, I mean, we alldo it.
I mean even I do it and you do it.
Like, how do companiesactually get the good reviews?
Because bad reviews are easyto come by.
Yeah.
People will go out of theirway to put forth effort to give you
a bad review.
Right.
Because they're emotionally charged.
Well, that's going to depend alot on what kind of business you're
(12:55):
in.
A lot of local business,businesses have the luxury of having
a good amount of volume ifyou're doing 100 jobs a month.
The way I see it is if youautomate that kind of stuff, there's
a lot of great tools forautomating it.
You're going to get probably25 to 30% of those people who will
(13:19):
leave you a review.
That's really the best approach.
If you have the volume, thenit's kind of a set it and forget
it.
And then, you know, you workon your customer service angle to
help customers elevate fromjust a customer to a fan or just
even, you know, doing a goodenough job to where people, you know,
(13:41):
they, they're excited to saysomething when they're prodded.
If you don't, then you gottapound the pavement.
Right.
You gotta hit people up.
You gotta do extra, extra work.
You know, if you're a newerbusiness, you have to really, really
get involved in, in asking customers.
(14:03):
I would say it's it's, it'sreally hard for business owners.
They don't like to do it andafter a few weeks of trying really
hard, they realize it's reallyhard and it's annoying to do right.
But it is so important.
You have to keep making ityour number one priority.
(14:25):
I like to hit up my clientsvery often and just remind them,
let's get reviews.
If you can get customers towrite long reviews, that's great.
If you can get customers toput pictures of the job that you
did in their reviews, I likethings where you as the business
can't manipulate it as easily.
Right.
If a customer is taking actionon Google's platform by doing more,
(14:50):
that's going to be a bigsignal because you can't just do
it yourself.
If I can go do it myself on mybusiness profile, well, everybody
can.
So getting customers to takethose bigger actions, I think that's
a really big signal to Googleand will continue to be because it's
not as easy to get done fromthe business owner's perspective.
(15:11):
And talking about likemultiple locations, specifically
maybe for home services, itdoes face a unique SEO challenge.
So what strategy do yourecommend for consistent local rankings
across different service areaswithout cannibalizing your own search
presence?
Oh, that's such a good question.
I do a lot of research.
(15:32):
I like to look at cities andjust look at people.
It's a difficult question.
There's going to be a give andtake on each side.
Do you want to potentiallypick up a few more customers in another
area, but you're going to loseout on the clout?
It really comes down to reviews.
I guess that's what I'm sayingis do you want one place in your
(15:56):
local area that has 5,000reviews or do you want five places
with 500?
What I'm seeing is a lot ofcompanies that are doing really well,
not only in like a major city,but also in the secondary categories.
In a major city, they justhave an explosive number of reviews
(16:20):
when compared to their competitors.
So if you can have onelocation that has 10 times the amount
of reviews as everybody,that's gonna do really well.
But it's, you know, but thenpeople do really well with multiple
locations.
So it's, it really has to be agame that you have to think out.
(16:42):
It's gonna depend a lot onyour, on your niche, the, the services
that you offer.
And I would just say I try totake these things, I try to test
things out and then I just,you have to take it with a grain
of salt a little bit that youmight have to change later.
(17:02):
It's just going to be a caseby case basis based on the city,
based on the customer, whatthey offer, the services.
I don't think there's any one,one set answer, but this is also
just evolving so much.
I've been, I've been readingand looking at so much in this space
that I don't feel like I havea solid.
This is what you do.
(17:22):
It's too specific on the casesby case basis.
I, I would say, would like the.
AI or LLMs help with that alittle bit more with that type of
a thing because I meancanalization is going to, I feel
like it's going to happen notbecause you want it to, just because
like you said, it's a costbenefit analysis.
(17:42):
How much business do I wantand how much do I want to cannibalize
my own search?
Right.
Well, the interesting thingabout cannibalization in Google Maps
is if you do a lot of lookingaround, you'll see that like a roto
rooter in New York and in NewJersey are both ranking really well.
So they don't cannibalize inthe same way.
At least right now.
(18:02):
Right.
Everything can change.
It doesn't seem like theycannibalize each other in the same
way as search does.
Google does, in my view, tryto keep each individual location
separated out.
Right.
So it treats them almost likethey're totally different.
Right.
(18:23):
So I think that helps.
As far as AI though, do wewant to get into the whole AI?
I mean, that's a, that's kindof a whole nother conversation.
But I would be more worriedabout reviews and review numbers
over anything else.
And if I had the choice, if itwas going to really limit my ability
to get reviews on twoprofiles, I probably would stick
(18:47):
to the one.
Unless they're in like otherstates or something.
Right.
Where that it's more obvious.
Right.
So speaking of voice search,because it was the hay day thing
before AI and I feel likethey're kind of merging together
now.
Do you see it actually helpingwith local SEO?
It's saying like using Alexaor still Google home to actually
(19:08):
find them a plumber or findthem something.
Do you see that still workingout or is this kind of like it's
nice to have but it's notreally going to move the needle at
all.
No.
That's really interesting.
I mean, yeah, voice search wassupposed to be this big thing, right.
And it, everyone talked aboutit for a long time and it, it Kind
of fell off.
I actually think where thisgoes, or at least what I see as a
(19:31):
potential, is that AI agents,once that becomes this thing, then
you're going to be doing that, right?
You're going to say, hey chat,give me an estimate with the top
three roofing companies in my area.
And then chat will go do thesearch and the top three that it
comes up with are going to bethe ones that it schedules onto your
(19:54):
calendar for you.
I see that being a possibility.
So I think that that way oftalking and that way of, of searching,
I've actually been doing a lotof testing with those type of searches,
but more within like chat orthe Google AI interface because that's
how I see people naturally interacting.
(20:14):
If we start to get to thatpoint where voice is going to be
the primary driver of some ofthese searches, the top, the best,
those kind of terms.
Where I see it right nowthough is look, all these AI interfaces,
they're going to pull from two things.
Search, which is going to bebased on how much authority do you
(20:36):
have, backlinks, all that isgoing to be the way to get up in
a search.
And then two is going to bebased on the Google or the Bing map
pack, where the number ofreviews you have is going to get
you up in the search.
So I think as this changes theunderlying game of having website
(20:56):
authority and having reviewson your Google business profile,
that's going to be the primaryfuel behind everybody going in and
just adding best plumber intheir city to their title in their
H1 and everything so that theyshow up for that search.
So that when somebody saysthat, so it's, it's, to me it's doesn't
(21:21):
really change the game toomuch at this point because the guy
with the highest authoritythat can rank for these keywords
at the turn of a dime is theone who's going to be able to do
that and show up andeventually get that, that business.
And so since local SEO or justGoogle's algorithm is always changing,
(21:43):
what do you see?
Local SEO or in the next fiveto 10 years, where do you see like
the future trends going?
Well, as far as people whoalready are in local SEO, just by
nature, it's hard for me tosee a lot of, I mean, if AI comes
in, what's AI going to do?
Just display the map for youthat's already displayed?
(22:05):
I think the one concern inthat, in that scenario is that we
actually get more segmented.
Right now you're saying thatBing becomes, Bing becomes a bigger
Piece of this.
Even though people don't know,no one wants to use Bing, but they
want to use chat, they justdon't know it's Bing.
Right.
So Bing becomes a bigger part.
(22:25):
It fragments things which is Ithink usually good for a market.
It, it makes it so thatmultiple people are getting business
where in a Google only environment.
Right.
It, it, it kind of solidifiesthe top few.
So it's not necessarily a badthing to have more variety in that
(22:48):
sense.
But I think where I see themost interesting change is in all
of these people who are inter,who are, who are national financial
advisors, insurance agents.
Sure there's some local ones,but a lot of those are nationalized
right now.
I think over time, especiallyas my biggest worry of how do I know
(23:11):
you're real?
Like how do you know I'm real?
In, in five years you could beAI and I wouldn't even know it.
So I think as that becomes thecase, AI video, AI phone calls, AI,
people are going to start toget more nervous and they're going
to say I want somebody localthat I can talk to.
And so all of these businessesthat do their national business that
(23:32):
you don't really need somebodylocally are going to move more towards
the Google Map and GoogleLocal because more people are going
to be concerned that they wantto make sure they're talking to somebody
who's real.
And that's only going tohappen if they're face to face.
Well, to be fair, I canalready do an avatar through Descript.
(23:52):
That would do everything for me.
Right now it's alreadyhappening, right?
I mean YouTube's you're goingto be able to duplicate everything
in the YouTube library in aday with completely different faces
and different words.
I don't know what that does tothe world, but I do think when it
comes to stuff that likefinancial and, and consultants and
(24:15):
all that, it makes me thinkthere's this potential here where
people are going to just belike, the only way I know you're
real is if I meet you.
So in person could be the newthing again.
Yeah.
As weird as that is, right.
It's the video scares me morethan anything.
I'm not so much scared aboutsearch because people have to find
a service.
(24:36):
I'm scared about the fact thatvideo can be so easily created and
replicated and these peopleyou follow online could be completely
fabricated and you wouldn'teven know it.
That's very weird to me.
So for our listeners who wantto take action immediately after
this episode, what is the Onelocal search audit item they should
(24:56):
check today that could revealmaybe something they could change
or a quick win they couldactually do.
Well, look, I would actuallysay that even though what I'm going
to say is the answer, youprobably don't want to do it yourself.
People do not understand howfinicky and fragile a Google business
(25:17):
profile is.
Anytime you change your name,you can be suspended.
Anytime you change yourcategories, you can be suspended.
Your name, your address, yourphone number, your website, those
are such big drivers of business.
But if you, I, you see thesestories all the time or I do, I went
and added LLC to my business.
(25:38):
I didn't want, I took it off,I got suspended.
You cannot change these things.
There are back door methods tochanging this stuff that are much
safer.
So I don't want to say get anexpert, do what you want.
But that's my forewarning with that.
The most important things onyour business profile, especially
(25:59):
for somebody new or somebodywho is not getting business, is making
sure you have keywords in yourbusiness name.
There's ways to do that sothat it's legit.
But if you call yourselfJohn's and you're a roofing company,
John's Roofing company is morelikely to get the search volume than
John's or John's Company.
(26:20):
Right.
So those keywords in yourname, if they're not there, that's
going to be affecting you.
And then number two is justyour primary category.
Google is adding categoriesall the time.
Maybe not all the time, but alot of people don't know that they're
in the wrong category.
So making sure your businessis listed under the right category
(26:43):
is a huge driver and such asimple fix that has a major impact.
That's a really good thing tocheck and just make sure is correct.
Gotcha.
And people listening to thisepisode, they're wondering where
can they find you online tolearn more.
Yeah, so I'm @brightbeam SEOon Twitter or I guess X.
(27:05):
My website is brightbeamSEO.com I try to provide a lot of
downloads.
We have a download right nowon our homepage that's basically
how do you do this yourselffor local businesses?
So you can download that andgo through that if you're interested
in kind of doing it yourself.
And Josh, brightbeam SEO.comis my email.
(27:25):
I love talking about business.
You don't have to feel likeyou're going to have to do business
with me if you have things youwant to bounce or talk about or just
questions.
I love talking about thisstuff, so feel free to reach out.
All right.
Any final thoughts for the listeners?
I think we gave a lot of thoughts.
(27:46):
Hopefully they're solidified enough.
So.
No, I appreciate it.
You're welcome.
And thank you for joiningDigital Coffee Marketing Brewing,
Sharing knowledge on local SEO.
Yeah, yeah.
And thank you for listening.
As always, please subscribe tothis podcast and all your favorite
podcasts.
Me?
Absolutely.
A five star review.
Would this help with the rankings?
Let me know how I am doing.
(28:06):
Join me next week because I'mtalking to another great thought
leader in the PR marketing industry.
All right guys, stay safe.
Get to understand your localSEO, your Google business page, and
everything else in between andsee you next week.
Later.
One of the most importantfactors in local SEO is the number
of reviews you have.
And if you're getting reviews,your name right, your domain address,
those are huge.
I just think you can all.
You always have to put theuser first and then Google second.
That's the way I see it.
Like reviews are important notbecause Google wants them to be important,
(00:22):
but because people thinkthey're important.
Yeah, people will go out oftheir way to put forth effort to
give you a bad review.
Right.
Because they're emotionally charged.
(00:45):
Mmm, that's good.
And welcome to a new episodeof Digital Coffee Marketing Brew.
And I'm your host Brett Dystrever.
Please subscribe to thispodcast on hold your favorite podcast
apps leave.
A five star review really doeshelp with the rankings.
And let me know how I am doing.
But this week we're me talkingabout SEO and local SEO.
(01:08):
Well, you know, the thingsthat local business need to know
but sometimes need a lot ofhelp with because it's difficult
sometimes.
Google's always changingthings and gives me headaches sometimes.
Anyways, I have Josh Thompsonwith me.
He's a founder of Bright BeamSEO where he helps home service companies
scale their lead flow throughGoogle business profile optimization
(01:28):
and local SEO strategy.
With nearly 20 years ofentrepreneurial experience, including
building a financial servicelead gen company and starting and
selling an addiction treatmentcenter, Josh knew what it takes to
grow businesses from theground up.
So welcome to the show, Josh.
Thank you, appreciate it.
(01:48):
You're welcome.
And the first question asksall my guest is, are you a coffee
or tea drinker?
I've got my coffee right nowand I don't know how anybody who's
an SEO survives withoutcoffee, but I guess tea baby, if
you drink enough.
Do people say tea a lot?
It depends.
I get various different answers.
(02:10):
I get from tea to black coffeeto nothing at all, to monster or
energy drinks.
Sure, it varies between onwhich specifically people like, but
it's always interesting tofigure out what people actually drink.
I've done the black, I've doneit all.
My wife got me an espresso andI hate to say that I am straight
(02:31):
addicted to it.
I love it.
I never would have thought Iwould liked it as much as I do, so.
Oh, so you like, you like theespresso shots basically?
Well, yeah, Lattes, right?
Like it's basically a quick latte.
I tried doing the machines, okay.
If it takes me more than likefive minutes, it's too much work
for the morning.
I gotta get to my computer.
Right.
(02:52):
So that's what I've been doingfor the last four months straight.
That's fair.
That's fair.
So I gave a brief summary ofyour expertise.
Can you give the listeners alittle bit more about what you do?
I like to say yes to newthings and to helping people.
And 20 years ago, my friendhad some problems with substances.
(03:15):
After he kind of went throughthe rehab thing, he found this really
interesting treatment.
I'd already been doing somewebsites and the financial stuff.
Right.
And so I was like, yeah, let'sdo it.
So, you know, I helped build,you know, a company that then went
under.
And so then I end up startingmy own with another individual, and
(03:41):
I hired SEO companies.
And then I would be like, Ican do this.
I'd start doing it.
And I went through that a fewtimes before.
I was just like, I. I'm justgoing to do this.
And so SEO became a bigpassion of mine, and that's what
really drove me into SEO.
I sold that.
And just by happenstance, Ikind of found my way into the local
(04:04):
SEO with some people that I knew.
And I've been like, man, howlucky am I?
Especially with all the AI andeverything going on, because local
SEO is just by its nature,bottom of funnel where people need
a person.
Yeah, it's been.
It's been an amazing journey,and I've been able to learn a lot
of things and do a lot ofthings, but now helping businesses
(04:26):
do their SEO has been reallyfun, and I've been doing this for
a number of years now as well.
All right, so what's some ofthe biggest misconceptions that people
have or local business ownershave or marketers have for local
SEOs, and how does thatmisconception actually hurt their
bottom line?
That's a good question.
And I'm going to kind of flipthis a little bit.
(04:49):
I would say the biggest misconception.
It's not really a misconception.
I think there's a lack ofeither desire or just general knowledge
about SEO.
And the reason I point thatout is just because I see a lot of
home service businesses,they're busy, I get it.
But they don't understandreally anything about the different
(05:14):
marketing channels and howthey work.
And it puts them in a positionwhere they end up spending a lot
of money on just basically aprayer, hoping that the guy they're
hiring is going to get themwhere they want to go.
They know they want to get somewhere.
I applaud anybody who's outthere, like, trying to test things
(05:34):
and get it going, but I Thinkthe biggest problem most of these
businesses face is they don'ttake the a few hours, maybe a couple,
maybe an hour a week to reallybe involved with marketing, understand
their marketing and make surethey're managing the marketing.
You know, you have tounderstand it to manage it.
(05:55):
Right.
So I see that as, you know, a thing.
I think most business owners,especially in the local area, that
if they got involved in, wouldsave them a lot of headache and give
them a lot of benefit.
And so can you walk us throughwhat separates the companies that
do it really well or dominatelocal search and for those that still
remain, well, invisible andnobody knows about them?
(06:17):
Yeah, and just to clarify alittle bit, I do mean all of marketing.
I think people in the localarea, they don't really know if they're
buying ads, what ads, wherethe ads coming from, or SEO.
Right.
There's all these marketing channels.
Now you come to SEO and howSEO works.
The first thing is that localSEO and general SEO are a lot different.
(06:43):
You know, it's like plumbingin H vac.
I think a lot of people assumethey're the same thing, but local
SEO is more focused on theGoogle Map being the priority, whereas
the kind of the searchesgenerally are not as important, although
they do play a big part.
(07:04):
But the target is getting upon Google Maps.
If you're on Twitter a lot,you start to think that everyone
in the world is an expertbecause you're following experts.
I just think most businessowners either, and I'm talking about
the SEO companies, I justdon't know if they care or love SEO.
(07:25):
I think that's really the mostimportant thing that you can do as
a business is if you're goingto hire somebody to do a job, you
want to make sure that they'restill involved.
And if you can figure out away to figure out if they like it,
are they educating themselves?
This just changes too fast tohave somebody who's doing things
(07:46):
that they did yesterday,they're still doing them today.
I would say that in myestimation, the people who do well
for their clients are peoplewho still are educating themselves
about SEO, especially today.
I mean, things have probablychanged more over the last year than
maybe the last decade with allthe AI.
(08:06):
And it's going to keep changing.
Would you put like Googlebusiness or my business or whatever
they're calling it?
I don't remember now anymore.
Would you put that part oflocal SEO as well?
Because that kind of likebridges that gap and is Waze a part
of that?
Because I know Waze is part of Google.
Technically, they bought thecompany, but they feel like there's
still two different, like beasts.
Would that be part of thelocal SEO mix as well?
(08:29):
Yeah, I guess when I sayGoogle Maps, I mean the Google Business
Profile.
That's what's linked to Google Maps.
I know there's so many termsfor this same thing.
Google Maps, Google Business Profile.
That is the initial and thecore of local SEO.
Exactly.
And so your website is veryimportant, but you're going to do
(08:53):
different things with the website.
When your focus is the GoogleBusiness Profile and the Google Map
rankings, you know you'regoing to do different things with
link building than you'regoing to do if your focus is general
traditional SEO over the otherside of it.
And then as far as the ways,and I haven't seen that really, I
(09:15):
don't see a lot of that beingsomething that people talk about
or is really changing anything specifically.
No, it's fair.
I mean, I feel like Googlereally hasn't really done much with
Waze.
I think they bought them like,what, decade ago or something like
that, and they just reallyhaven't done much with it.
Great app for, like, users,but they haven't really done much
to it beyond buying it.
(09:37):
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
What about the content creation?
Does that also play a part nowwith local SEO of like making sure
you have videos, blogs orwhatever you can actually produce
or hiring someone to producethat stuff?
Does that now start to play alittle bit more of a more prominent
role in local SEO besides thelink building and besides trying
(09:59):
to be on Google Maps?
Let's just break it down alittle bit.
I mean, one of the mostimportant factors in local SEO is
the number of reviews you have.
And if you're getting reviews,your name right, your domain address,
those are huge.
But where content really comesinto play is in two things.
Number one, content,especially on your website, is really
(10:23):
important for giving Googlethe information about what to show
you for and what not to showyou for.
Right.
So especially when you'retrying to rank for secondary keywords
and, and things that you don'tprimarily do, you still want to try
to drive some business there.
That's really important.
(10:44):
So your website becomes thistemplate area to showcase your authority
through content.
On top of that, though, usersignals will always.
And if, if anything, they'regetting more important.
User signals are always goingto be important part of the mix.
I think Google is looking atthings like TikTok, Instagram and
(11:07):
saying, hey, look, these guysare figuring out ways to give People
what they want without reallykeywords and all this stuff.
Right.
It's just engagement.
So anything that you can do tomake things more engaging, for instance,
Google business profiles, youcan put videos up and Google will
(11:28):
autoplay those videos incertain when you're on certain apps
or on certain browsers.
So that can be really engaging.
Right.
Video is always engaging.
And then I just think you can all.
You always have to put theuser first and then Google second.
That's the way I see it.
(11:48):
Like review are important, notbecause Google wants them to be important,
but because people thinkthey're important.
And so I think anything youcan do to showcase, you know, what
you do quickly or show peoplefrom your business, build trust.
Right.
Make people more comfortablewith the fact that you're coming
to their house, those are allgoing to be really good ways of converting,
(12:13):
getting sales and drivingthese positive signals to Google.
And talking about reviews, Iknow it's probably the hardest thing
to do is actually get good reviews.
The bad reviews are prettyeasy to come by because everybody,
everybody expects you to havegood service.
But when you don't have goodservices, when people go, all right,
(12:34):
I'm going to, I mean, we alldo it.
I mean even I do it and you do it.
Like, how do companiesactually get the good reviews?
Because bad reviews are easyto come by.
Yeah.
People will go out of theirway to put forth effort to give you
a bad review.
Right.
Because they're emotionally charged.
Well, that's going to depend alot on what kind of business you're
(12:55):
in.
A lot of local business,businesses have the luxury of having
a good amount of volume ifyou're doing 100 jobs a month.
The way I see it is if youautomate that kind of stuff, there's
a lot of great tools forautomating it.
You're going to get probably25 to 30% of those people who will
(13:19):
leave you a review.
That's really the best approach.
If you have the volume, thenit's kind of a set it and forget
it.
And then, you know, you workon your customer service angle to
help customers elevate fromjust a customer to a fan or just
even, you know, doing a goodenough job to where people, you know,
(13:41):
they, they're excited to saysomething when they're prodded.
If you don't, then you gottapound the pavement.
Right.
You gotta hit people up.
You gotta do extra, extra work.
You know, if you're a newerbusiness, you have to really, really
get involved in, in asking customers.
(14:03):
I would say it's it's, it'sreally hard for business owners.
They don't like to do it andafter a few weeks of trying really
hard, they realize it's reallyhard and it's annoying to do right.
But it is so important.
You have to keep making ityour number one priority.
(14:25):
I like to hit up my clientsvery often and just remind them,
let's get reviews.
If you can get customers towrite long reviews, that's great.
If you can get customers toput pictures of the job that you
did in their reviews, I likethings where you as the business
can't manipulate it as easily.
Right.
If a customer is taking actionon Google's platform by doing more,
(14:50):
that's going to be a bigsignal because you can't just do
it yourself.
If I can go do it myself on mybusiness profile, well, everybody
can.
So getting customers to takethose bigger actions, I think that's
a really big signal to Googleand will continue to be because it's
not as easy to get done fromthe business owner's perspective.
(15:11):
And talking about likemultiple locations, specifically
maybe for home services, itdoes face a unique SEO challenge.
So what strategy do yourecommend for consistent local rankings
across different service areaswithout cannibalizing your own search
presence?
Oh, that's such a good question.
I do a lot of research.
(15:32):
I like to look at cities andjust look at people.
It's a difficult question.
There's going to be a give andtake on each side.
Do you want to potentiallypick up a few more customers in another
area, but you're going to loseout on the clout?
It really comes down to reviews.
I guess that's what I'm sayingis do you want one place in your
(15:56):
local area that has 5,000reviews or do you want five places
with 500?
What I'm seeing is a lot ofcompanies that are doing really well,
not only in like a major city,but also in the secondary categories.
In a major city, they justhave an explosive number of reviews
(16:20):
when compared to their competitors.
So if you can have onelocation that has 10 times the amount
of reviews as everybody,that's gonna do really well.
But it's, you know, but thenpeople do really well with multiple
locations.
So it's, it really has to be agame that you have to think out.
(16:42):
It's gonna depend a lot onyour, on your niche, the, the services
that you offer.
And I would just say I try totake these things, I try to test
things out and then I just,you have to take it with a grain
of salt a little bit that youmight have to change later.
(17:02):
It's just going to be a caseby case basis based on the city,
based on the customer, whatthey offer, the services.
I don't think there's any one,one set answer, but this is also
just evolving so much.
I've been, I've been readingand looking at so much in this space
that I don't feel like I havea solid.
This is what you do.
(17:22):
It's too specific on the casesby case basis.
I, I would say, would like the.
AI or LLMs help with that alittle bit more with that type of
a thing because I meancanalization is going to, I feel
like it's going to happen notbecause you want it to, just because
like you said, it's a costbenefit analysis.
(17:42):
How much business do I wantand how much do I want to cannibalize
my own search?
Right.
Well, the interesting thingabout cannibalization in Google Maps
is if you do a lot of lookingaround, you'll see that like a roto
rooter in New York and in NewJersey are both ranking really well.
So they don't cannibalize inthe same way.
At least right now.
(18:02):
Right.
Everything can change.
It doesn't seem like theycannibalize each other in the same
way as search does.
Google does, in my view, tryto keep each individual location
separated out.
Right.
So it treats them almost likethey're totally different.
Right.
(18:23):
So I think that helps.
As far as AI though, do wewant to get into the whole AI?
I mean, that's a, that's kindof a whole nother conversation.
But I would be more worriedabout reviews and review numbers
over anything else.
And if I had the choice, if itwas going to really limit my ability
to get reviews on twoprofiles, I probably would stick
(18:47):
to the one.
Unless they're in like otherstates or something.
Right.
Where that it's more obvious.
Right.
So speaking of voice search,because it was the hay day thing
before AI and I feel likethey're kind of merging together
now.
Do you see it actually helpingwith local SEO?
It's saying like using Alexaor still Google home to actually
(19:08):
find them a plumber or findthem something.
Do you see that still workingout or is this kind of like it's
nice to have but it's notreally going to move the needle at
all.
No.
That's really interesting.
I mean, yeah, voice search wassupposed to be this big thing, right.
And it, everyone talked aboutit for a long time and it, it Kind
of fell off.
I actually think where thisgoes, or at least what I see as a
(19:31):
potential, is that AI agents,once that becomes this thing, then
you're going to be doing that, right?
You're going to say, hey chat,give me an estimate with the top
three roofing companies in my area.
And then chat will go do thesearch and the top three that it
comes up with are going to bethe ones that it schedules onto your
(19:54):
calendar for you.
I see that being a possibility.
So I think that that way oftalking and that way of, of searching,
I've actually been doing a lotof testing with those type of searches,
but more within like chat orthe Google AI interface because that's
how I see people naturally interacting.
(20:14):
If we start to get to thatpoint where voice is going to be
the primary driver of some ofthese searches, the top, the best,
those kind of terms.
Where I see it right nowthough is look, all these AI interfaces,
they're going to pull from two things.
Search, which is going to bebased on how much authority do you
(20:36):
have, backlinks, all that isgoing to be the way to get up in
a search.
And then two is going to bebased on the Google or the Bing map
pack, where the number ofreviews you have is going to get
you up in the search.
So I think as this changes theunderlying game of having website
(20:56):
authority and having reviewson your Google business profile,
that's going to be the primaryfuel behind everybody going in and
just adding best plumber intheir city to their title in their
H1 and everything so that theyshow up for that search.
So that when somebody saysthat, so it's, it's, to me it's doesn't
(21:21):
really change the game toomuch at this point because the guy
with the highest authoritythat can rank for these keywords
at the turn of a dime is theone who's going to be able to do
that and show up andeventually get that, that business.
And so since local SEO or justGoogle's algorithm is always changing,
(21:43):
what do you see?
Local SEO or in the next fiveto 10 years, where do you see like
the future trends going?
Well, as far as people whoalready are in local SEO, just by
nature, it's hard for me tosee a lot of, I mean, if AI comes
in, what's AI going to do?
Just display the map for youthat's already displayed?
(22:05):
I think the one concern inthat, in that scenario is that we
actually get more segmented.
Right now you're saying thatBing becomes, Bing becomes a bigger
Piece of this.
Even though people don't know,no one wants to use Bing, but they
want to use chat, they justdon't know it's Bing.
Right.
So Bing becomes a bigger part.
(22:25):
It fragments things which is Ithink usually good for a market.
It, it makes it so thatmultiple people are getting business
where in a Google only environment.
Right.
It, it, it kind of solidifiesthe top few.
So it's not necessarily a badthing to have more variety in that
(22:48):
sense.
But I think where I see themost interesting change is in all
of these people who are inter,who are, who are national financial
advisors, insurance agents.
Sure there's some local ones,but a lot of those are nationalized
right now.
I think over time, especiallyas my biggest worry of how do I know
(23:11):
you're real?
Like how do you know I'm real?
In, in five years you could beAI and I wouldn't even know it.
So I think as that becomes thecase, AI video, AI phone calls, AI,
people are going to start toget more nervous and they're going
to say I want somebody localthat I can talk to.
And so all of these businessesthat do their national business that
(23:32):
you don't really need somebodylocally are going to move more towards
the Google Map and GoogleLocal because more people are going
to be concerned that they wantto make sure they're talking to somebody
who's real.
And that's only going tohappen if they're face to face.
Well, to be fair, I canalready do an avatar through Descript.
(23:52):
That would do everything for me.
Right now it's alreadyhappening, right?
I mean YouTube's you're goingto be able to duplicate everything
in the YouTube library in aday with completely different faces
and different words.
I don't know what that does tothe world, but I do think when it
comes to stuff that likefinancial and, and consultants and
(24:15):
all that, it makes me thinkthere's this potential here where
people are going to just belike, the only way I know you're
real is if I meet you.
So in person could be the newthing again.
Yeah.
As weird as that is, right.
It's the video scares me morethan anything.
I'm not so much scared aboutsearch because people have to find
a service.
(24:36):
I'm scared about the fact thatvideo can be so easily created and
replicated and these peopleyou follow online could be completely
fabricated and you wouldn'teven know it.
That's very weird to me.
So for our listeners who wantto take action immediately after
this episode, what is the Onelocal search audit item they should
(24:56):
check today that could revealmaybe something they could change
or a quick win they couldactually do.
Well, look, I would actuallysay that even though what I'm going
to say is the answer, youprobably don't want to do it yourself.
People do not understand howfinicky and fragile a Google business
(25:17):
profile is.
Anytime you change your name,you can be suspended.
Anytime you change yourcategories, you can be suspended.
Your name, your address, yourphone number, your website, those
are such big drivers of business.
But if you, I, you see thesestories all the time or I do, I went
and added LLC to my business.
(25:38):
I didn't want, I took it off,I got suspended.
You cannot change these things.
There are back door methods tochanging this stuff that are much
safer.
So I don't want to say get anexpert, do what you want.
But that's my forewarning with that.
The most important things onyour business profile, especially
(25:59):
for somebody new or somebodywho is not getting business, is making
sure you have keywords in yourbusiness name.
There's ways to do that sothat it's legit.
But if you call yourselfJohn's and you're a roofing company,
John's Roofing company is morelikely to get the search volume than
John's or John's Company.
(26:20):
Right.
So those keywords in yourname, if they're not there, that's
going to be affecting you.
And then number two is justyour primary category.
Google is adding categoriesall the time.
Maybe not all the time, but alot of people don't know that they're
in the wrong category.
So making sure your businessis listed under the right category
(26:43):
is a huge driver and such asimple fix that has a major impact.
That's a really good thing tocheck and just make sure is correct.
Gotcha.
And people listening to thisepisode, they're wondering where
can they find you online tolearn more.
Yeah, so I'm @brightbeam SEOon Twitter or I guess X.
(27:05):
My website is brightbeamSEO.com I try to provide a lot of
downloads.
We have a download right nowon our homepage that's basically
how do you do this yourselffor local businesses?
So you can download that andgo through that if you're interested
in kind of doing it yourself.
And Josh, brightbeam SEO.comis my email.
(27:25):
I love talking about business.
You don't have to feel likeyou're going to have to do business
with me if you have things youwant to bounce or talk about or just
questions.
I love talking about thisstuff, so feel free to reach out.
All right.
Any final thoughts for the listeners?
I think we gave a lot of thoughts.
(27:46):
Hopefully they're solidified enough.
So.
No, I appreciate it.
You're welcome.
And thank you for joiningDigital Coffee Marketing Brewing,
Sharing knowledge on local SEO.
Yeah, yeah.
And thank you for listening.
As always, please subscribe tothis podcast and all your favorite
podcasts.
Me?
Absolutely.
A five star review.
Would this help with the rankings?
Let me know how I am doing.
(28:06):
Join me next week because I'mtalking to another great thought
leader in the PR marketing industry.
All right guys, stay safe.
Get to understand your localSEO, your Google business page, and
everything else in between andsee you next week.
Later.
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