August 25, 2025 • 51 mins
In this episode of Local Marketing Secrets, Danny Leibrandt sits down with Tim Kahlert — founder of Hyptrix, author of The Local SEO Bible, and leader of the largest Local SEO Facebook group with over 100,000 members. Tim shares his incredible journey from being broke and living in a van in Australia to becoming one of the most recognized and influential voices in the Local SEO space.
Throughout the conversation, Tim breaks down what really moves the needle in Google Business Profiles, why conversions matter more than rankings, and how to structure a website for maximum impact. He also dives into the lessons he’s learned from building a thriving community, creating his massive Local SEO checklist, and helping businesses cut through the noise of conflicting advice to focus on what actually works.
The two also explore the future of Local SEO in the era of AI, discussing press releases, reviews, and the role of conversions in driving sustainable growth. Tim’s no-nonsense, testing-driven approach offers practical takeaways for local marketers, agency owners, and business leaders alike.
If you want to know what’s working right now in Local Search and hear honest, actionable insights from someone who has tested it all, this is an episode you won’t want to miss.
Tim Kahlert, Founder of Hypetrix:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timkahlert
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RealTimKahlert/
Community: localseohustlers.com
Hypetrix: https://hypetrix.com/
Danny Leibrandt, Founder of Pest Control SEO:
Facebook: https://facebook.com/DannyLeibrandt
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/dannyleibrandt/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DannyLeibrandt
Website: https://dannyleibrandt.com
Pest Control SEO: https://pestcontrolseo.com/
Local Marketing Secrets Platforms:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LocalMarketingSecrets
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1TCL0LhZbsJS6mzanqnnT1?si=224075c9fbda42f5
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/local-marketing-secrets/id1741176782
Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/e0bb5254-5d6c-4940-8211-085157cc1239/local-marketing-secrets
Podcast Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Tim Kahlert
06:07 Building a Successful Facebook Group
14:39 Common Questions in Local SEO
22:06 Optimizing Google Business Profile
25:46 Service Section Strategies for Google Business Profile
31:12 The Importance of Reviews in Local SEO
36:59 Navigating AI in Local SEO
46:09 Focusing on Conversions Over Rankings
#localseo #localseoexpert #localseoservices #localseotips #localmarketing #localbusiness #homeservicebusiness #homeservicemarketing #homeserviceadvertising #localadvertising #seo #marketing #podcast #business #timkahlert #hypetrix #localseobible
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey there and welcome back to Local Marketing Secrets.
I'm your host Danny Lebrandt andtoday I'm with Tim Callert.
Tim is the founder of Hype Tricks, the author of the Local
SEO Bible and one of the most active voices in the local SEO
space. He's a contributor to White
Sparks, local Search ranking factors, a frequent writer for
Bright Local, and he runs the largest local SEO community with
(00:22):
over 100,000 members in his Facebook group.
Tim is known for his no nonsenseapproach to Google business
profiles, his massive local SEO checklist, and his focus on what
actually moves rankings in the real world.
So if you want to understand what's working right now in
local search, this is an episodeyou won't want to miss.
Now, without further ado, Tim, welcome to the show.
(00:43):
Thanks for having me. Absolutely.
So Tim, tell me a little bit about your background.
How did you originally get into local SEO in this whole space?
Yeah, well, after I studied in 20, 15 or three years, I didn't
really know what to do. I never wanted to work, wanted
to work for a company. I never wanted to, you know, I
(01:03):
always knew it better anyway, sonobody wanted to work with me, I
guess. And so I was, I was lost.
I just didn't know what to do. So I basically took a flight
ticket to Australia and did somesome traveling.
I didn't have much money, but I knew that when I want to, when I
come back to Germany, basically that I will have my own business
(01:26):
at some point. So it took me quite a while.
It took me like 6 months to get into, you know, to get into this
whole marketing thing because I started marketing, but it was,
it wasn't really practical what they taught us.
So I didn't really know how everything works on the
Internet. And so basically I was looking
for or phrases like how to make money online.
(01:47):
At some point I was like I was, so I was so desperate.
And so that eventually got me to, you know, to the idea of how
do people actually pay me any money online?
Like, what do I have to do to, to get paid?
And then I realized, OK, if I provide value to them, if I just
provide, you know, informationalvalue.
And so I, there was an, there was an interesting article I
(02:11):
read about Google ads and supposedly the most difficult
thing you can do, the most difficult skill you can learn
online. So I learned everything about
Google ads, but it was all theoretically.
I mean, I, I ran some, some Google ads on some affiliate pro
projects, but it didn't really work.
And, but I found it interesting the whole Google ads stuff
(02:32):
basically. So I, then I just joined
Facebook groups. I joined 5 Google ads Facebook
groups and I just wanted to testwhat I, what I thought about the
Internet basically in terms of providing value to people.
So I what I did was I spent 1415hours a day answering people's
questions about Google ads on Facebook groups.
(02:52):
And if I didn't know the answer,I would just go to Google and
Google it up and then put it into my own words and try to
explain it without copy and pasting, you know?
So because I didn't want to mislead anyway, I just want to
understand the topic myself 1st.And so it took like 10 days and
until the like, I, I got hundreds of messages in the
meantime from different kinds ofpeople.
(03:14):
But after 10 days, a guy reachedout to me and said like, Hey,
can you help me with Google ads?And there's like, I never gave a
coaching my whole life before I,I have no clue how that works,
right? I wasn't really prepared for
that situation that someone would actually reach out to me
because I didn't, didn't probably didn't believe in it
fully. So and he, he was quite rude.
He was like, I don't need someone for my for fucking
(03:36):
coaching, I need someone to run it for my company.
I was like, OK, OK, I'll do this.
So and then he transferred. I had five bucks left in my, in
my bank account. Like it was $5 was left because
I was spending everything in Australia.
I didn't have anything left except for my van where I was
living in back then. And then I just had to decide
(03:57):
whether to spend the 5 bucks on food or petrol.
So I guess and there was there was really the last two weeks
and before that client reached over were pretty terrible.
I couldn't really sleep or sweating at night.
I was like, I didn't really knowwhat to do because I owed my mom
like 5 grand, her boyfriend 5 grand and the government 10
(04:21):
grand. So like lots of lots of debt and
to pay and I say oh shit if thisdoesn't work I don't know what
to do. But anyway last minute this guy
transferred $600 to to my bank account.
It was like wow this shit works.And then Long story short, this
guy wanted Google ads and obviously he wanted to have
(04:43):
something more sustainable SEO. So he I up sold him an SEO
package and I think on the firstmonth he paid me 2500 on the
retailer, which was so much money for me like, Oh my God,
this is insane. Yeah.
And everything worked Well, I just, I just learned on the go
basically. So I started, I started joining
(05:06):
local SEOSEO Facebook groups, helping people.
And then at some point, the the owners of those groups, they
didn't really live up to their own expectations because most of
the descriptions of those Facebook groups say that you
can, you know, you can provide case studies, you can help
people, you can just talk about different strategies.
(05:26):
And some of them didn't like that.
So they banned me from those groups.
And I was like, oh, shit, that'smy only funnel basically that I
have. So I decided to start my own
Facebook group so that this wouldn't happen again,
basically. And then, yeah, I just had a
monologue in my Facebook group for six months.
And then after six months, I think it just took off.
I think this consistent work andanswering people's questions
(05:48):
every day and answering every single comment every day.
And actually thinking about the problems, people have had a huge
impact on the growth of the group because in the first year
it's grew from zero to 900 and in the second year to 30,000.
So that was that was a huge, howdo you say, but exponential
(06:08):
growth. Yeah, Yeah, that.
Wow. That's incredible.
Yeah. No, I I never knew that.
Well, so you're $20,000 in debt,you had $5 to your name, and you
ended up somehow closing this big client.
It's funny because I, I see a good amount of overlap with my
journey. I was totally dead broke.
I was in college. My first big client was actually
(06:29):
$2500 a month too, which is pretty funny.
So yeah, I know. It's it, it feels so hard to
make money online until you actually do it.
It's, it feels like it's fake and everyone is, it's not an
actual thing until you make money online.
So yeah, it's pretty cool. So yeah, tell me about the
Facebook group more. So do you have 107,000 members?
I just checked, you know, 20 minutes ago.
(06:51):
OK, so you you grew the first year to 900 then to 30,000, just
the backdrop and maybe even someone that wants to grow their
own group, like how did you growso fast?
As I mentioned before, I think it's a lot about consistency and
posting every day. Even though it's a monologue at
the beginning, because it was literally a monologue for six
(07:12):
months. I was talking to myself,
Facebook like the most people that join, they don't search for
Facebook groups. They get it promoted by
Facebook. So they see an ad that says
you're joining this Facebook group or what whatsoever.
And at the beginning of your group, when you start a group,
Facebook doesn't promote the group at all.
So you really have to put so much effort into it so that if
(07:34):
you get all these tiny little reach boosts basically through
consistently posting and commenting under everyone who's
who's commenting, there was no one literally basically.
So yeah, the first six months I would say were the hardest.
It grew from zero to 500 people in six months.
(07:55):
And I was really hard. It was so like, talk, like just
start talking to yourself. And you know what I mean?
You know, it's like there's no response coming from anyone.
And it's like, Oh my God, is this really worth it?
I think most people struggle with that, not even not only
about the Facebook groups, but but Instagram, SEO, you know,
all of that. All of those things take a lot
of time. And it pays off if you put
(08:17):
consistent effort and you don't get distracted by whatever it is
that appears to be more shiny than what you want it to do.
And so, yeah, definitely, I mean, obviously you need to have
a good profile picture you have to have on your Facebook page or
private Facebook account, great cover image.
(08:38):
You know, just fill it with some, some things and then you
interact with people in other groups and come down to their
stuff. And then they will eventually go
to your profile and then join your group.
If that's one CTA you have on your on your Facebook page.
I think, yeah, it really comes down to consistency, not being
distracted and yeah, joining other Facebook groups and
(09:01):
interacting with the people and like in a meaningful way, not
just with AI, you know, like don't, don't use AI to copy and
paste stuff. I don't think it really works.
You can use it for grammar checks and stuff like that.
But if you want to interact and draw following on, I don't know,
Reddit or Facebook, I think it'svery important people understand
that the thoughts you're puttinginto writing are actually your
(09:23):
own thoughts and not some machines.
Yeah, definitely. Well, that's incredible.
Congratulations on getting over 100,000 people in that group.
That is that is so much. So tell me about what are the
most common questions you get there?
You say that you're you're answering questions all the
time. What are like some of the
biggest problems you're seeing that people have?
(09:44):
Yeah. I think it's very like this 3
audience basically. I mean, you would probably know.
So it's a local business owners,it's agencies and is a
freelancers, Le Classio freelancers.
So all of them are three different segments of the
audience that have different kind of problems.
So the the the business owners obviously they don't want to
(10:07):
know how to how to run an agencyor get more clients.
But many people that, that's oneof the biggest questions
actually, we actually get is like how to get more clients
for, for SEO. And I mean, I'm always referring
people to my method because I've, I know it works.
I know it doesn't cost anything but your time, but it, it does
(10:32):
really work to just engage online and provide value to the
people and actually help them move forward with their
business. And not just to, you know, many
people who do that, they have some kind of their incentive is
to get business back, right? And if you do it more
altruistically, you would get even more business back.
(10:54):
It's interesting that the way itworks, but that's that
definitely one of the most askedquestions in the group that how
to get clients or very generic ones, how to how to rank on
Google Maps. What are ranking factors?
I have AI have an exhaust sheet of 750 questions because we
every three months we basically collect all the questions and
(11:15):
then see if they fit any of the categories we have because you
know this the group got hacked two years ago where I just want
to drop this here because it's an amazing opportunity to drop
it. Yeah.
So the group got hacked. No one knows who it was, but the
only person joining or the only two people joining was William
(11:37):
Jones and his wife, Rowena Jones, you know, from Rank
Fortress or whatever, William Jones marketing, whatever he's
calling himself. So these are the only two people
that joined and apart from thesetwo that joined, many were
kicked and most of them didn't, didn't like Wayne Jones.
So I don't want to, I can't say who it was basically because I
(12:00):
don't know it, but that's just the fact it had attached it.
But anyway, the, the connection is that we, we collect all the
questions and even though the group was stolen, I got all the
questions corrected because we do this every every three
months. So then nothing gets lost.
Because the guy, I could see it in the activity log, he, it took
(12:22):
him one hour. No, it took him like 7 hours to
delete all my posts manually. You know, it's, it's insane how
much, how much effort someone puts into this.
And that, that was, that was William Jones himself,
basically, who deleted all my posts.
Dang, that was the, there was a evidence in the, in the lock
file. Yeah, it was very interesting.
(12:43):
So he wanted to steal the group then and make it his own.
He did basically, yeah. So a hacker, whoever it was,
handed over the the admin rightsto some, some fake account
basically. And then they didn't really want
to do anything with it. So he sold it to some other guy
and this guy sold it back to me.And then some fake profile
(13:07):
reached out to me and said, hey,I want to talk to you about the
group. And it's like, yeah, of course
you want to talk to me about thegroup.
But that was obviously William Jones for sure.
It was, I mean, I have no proof of that, but it's that's what I
would suggest, yeah. Yeah, you know that.
That's horrible. I mean, that's, that's your
whole thing for me. That'd be like my podcast
getting stolen somehow. It's like what?
(13:29):
You know, I, I've been spending a lot of time building this
thing. It's the same thing with you.
You're spending all this time onthat Facebook group and it it
got hacked, but thank God you got it back somehow.
So now you've been running it and continue with where you were
going, the 750 questions. So everything fit like one of
those categories. Yeah.
So we got so many questions and yeah, I think I just wanted to
(13:52):
summarize that there's so many questions and I can't really,
you know, I think the client thing is a big problem.
The ranking factor thing is a big problem.
And what I think the people should focus on more than
ranking factors is they should more focus on conversions
because, you know, it did just all these different platforms.
You can, you can get reach, but it all comes down to you sending
(14:16):
the people to your website and then they have to convert that
in one way or the other, right? So I think conversions is a very
big thing and it also helps yourranking.
I mean, if Google sees the the path that the customers going on
your website, you know, they land on your webs and then they
basically don't come back to thesearch after they submitted the
(14:36):
form. I mean, that's a clear sign to
to everyone that, OK, that was agood, that was a good decision
to Google that and provide that search results to the end user.
So, yeah, yeah. Yeah, No, I've been making that
point with clients a lot lately that you can't have SEO without
CRO conversion rate optimization.
(14:57):
It like you said that, like I like to give kind of an, an
extreme example that let's say we do SEO and you know, you're
ranking number one and I don't know, ranking number one on all
your top keywords. But then every single person
that clicks on the page for whatever reason, maybe it's
super slow, maybe it looks weird, maybe it's not mobile
optimize. Every single person that clicks
(15:18):
on the page ends up clicking offand going to a new site.
Obviously that's a red flag and Google's going to move you
either lower on the first page or maybe even to page 10 because
that's a clear signal it's Google and that that got
released in the the recent leak like a year or two ago.
That's Google's looking at all these different factors.
So you you can't just optimize for SEO.
(15:40):
So do you have any conversion rate optimization hacks and
anything that's like a must do? I think the most important thing
is the above default spot where people land on like that's the
the spot most people see and thefood or is certainly the spot
that the least people see. So I think I just posted
something in the group today about the above default spot
(16:00):
that you always see a lift in conversions when you optimize
that spot. If you have a shady spot and you
optimize that you make it reallygood, then you will always see a
lift in conversions. It's inevitable basically
because people learn. I mean, depends on the niche.
Obviously for towing business, probably not so important as it
is for a restaurant or yeah, forwhatever.
(16:24):
And so I think the above defaultspot is so important and that
you just structure your keywordsand you use PS and your social
proof in a certain way and the and the CTA in a certain way so
that people are actually more inclined to click than to leave.
And if you can do that, that's yeah, I mean, that's so much
money for for some companies that they leave on the table if
(16:45):
they don't do it. Yeah, definitely.
Could you get a little bit more tactical there if you're OK with
sharing? Like should you have like a hero
image or you know like a big heading, like an offer, just
keyword optimized. What do you have specifically in
that first section? I think it depends a lot on the
vertical, depends a lot on the industry and the specific
(17:07):
business. Like it depends like everything
in SEO. So yeah, yeah, I think there's
no one-size-fits-all approach, but you can certainly have some
general structure that you can follow, like a keyword relevant
heading that contains Ausb usually works really well.
(17:27):
You know, people see immediatelywhat they get and that they are
at the right place and then you support it with some kind of
bullet points your, your value propositions basically.
So just put all the value proposition in these bullet
points that people see immediately what they get from
you if they do business with you.
And a clear CTA is very important.
(17:50):
If you see your main CTA should have one colour that
differentiates from the rest of the page.
I think that's a big mistake. Most people do because they have
a, a red and blue website and then all of their main Ctas are
either red or blue. And then it doesn't really stand
out. And then it just you, you never
know what kind of action you actually take when you click on
(18:12):
it based on the colour. So, and then social proof is
very important as well. So we'd go from headline USPS
CTA social proof and it doesn't only have to be a review badge,
but that's, that's a great way of showcasing social proof, but
also how many years you're in business, if you're taxed or
(18:33):
licensed or if you have other certificates or whatever is
relevant to that in that particular case.
You know, it's, I think that's very easy actually.
You know, it's very easy to structure, but I still think
like 90% of local businesses just don't do it and they just
don't do it. And what works in some of the
(18:53):
industries is people smiling in the camera, like a personal, the
personal touch, a personal picture of someone or a team
that's smiling into the camera is worth more than, I don't
know, some, some random fancy AImade image.
You know, I think that works pretty well.
(19:13):
Yeah. Oh yeah.
No, I totally agree on all thosepoints, especially that last one
that people will connect with people.
So you don't want to use stock arts.
We don't recommend using AI images, but real images from
your company. And also like I'm, I'm working
with this, this one client who'sin arborist and we're building
his website. And I was like, OK, dude, I, I
need some pictures. You have like no pictures
(19:34):
available. So send me like 30 pictures or
so. And I kind of gave my criteria
and all the pictures that he sent me, it was either just of
trees or just of lawns or if he was in the picture, he was like
a mile away. He's super far.
I'm like, all right, man, I'd like, I'm going to need some
pictures close up, like if you're comfortable, you know,
have your face in the picture orone of your technicians in the
(19:56):
picture because it again, it's hard to connect with someone if
they're, if they're like a mile away on your lawn, you want to
be close up. If they're smiling they can
still be working, but I definitely recommend that as
well. Tell me about it.
Yeah, yeah. No, it's it's just work in
progress. It's just, it's such a hard work
to get good pictures from clients.
(20:19):
Like the idea. I remember it like one of our
clients, he, he wasn't really incharge of the photo, photo
taking action. So he just sent me the pictures,
but someone else took it. And then I told them, look, it's
great you put you put pictures of the humans smiling to the
camera. But can you can you maybe ask
the people not to show their middle fingers to the camera?
(20:42):
You know, it was this amazing picture he sent.
And then I, I I basically waiteda year for that.
And then I saw the faces, like, oh, that's awesome there.
I looked at his hand and he's like, it was like, no, that's
hilarious. Oh, my God.
Yeah. It's, it's so hard.
But you have to keep pushing andyou have to keep pushing and
(21:04):
kind of consult them on how to create better pictures, even
though I'm not a photographer. Yeah, yeah, no, I'd considered
even flying out to clients, maybe charging them a little bit
more, so actually film videos inperson, take photos in person
because like we just, it needs to be done and it needs to be
done properly. So cool.
And then do you recommend videostoo?
Should those be on the website or Google Business profile?
(21:29):
Definitely. Yeah, absolutely.
Especially like the more complexyour business is, the better a
video will work in terms of explaining a business concept,
explaining your use piece, showing your face to the camera,
talking. I mean, I think that's very
important. And together with some video
(21:49):
reviews, for example, those can can work really well.
Yeah. Awesome.
Cool. Yeah.
Let's jump into some more GoogleBusiness profile stuff.
So you have, I believe you have a 300 point checklist on Google
Business profiles. Is that true?
Yeah, it's a local SEO checklist, not only Google
Business Profile. Yeah, there's like 5050 points
(22:10):
about Google Business Profile. Yeah, I've got the rest.
OK, Yeah. So let's talk about those 50 to
60 points on Google Business profile.
What are like some of the top ones there?
What are someones everyone needsto know about?
Definitely keywords on the business name.
And I, every time I post that, everyone is like, Oh, it's,
you're not compliant with Google's, but I didn't say that,
(22:31):
you know, the, I didn't say anything about Google's
guidelines and not to, not to violate them or to violate them.
And, but changing the business and making more keyword heavy
makes a lot of sense. And I advise that to all my
clients. We are usually getting ADBA or
we're changing the business nameentirely because it makes so
much more of a difference in local search because if you're
(22:55):
not having the business like thethe keyword in your name for a
local business is not really relevant.
You know, people were not were not takes true.
I mean, it doesn't make so much sense to to have a very generic
business name, but just put put the keyword at the end or
something like that, you know, and just get Google compliant.
And I think that's that's one ofthe big things.
(23:15):
The second thing is obviously the primary category of that
primary category doesn't match your business name or the
keywords you want to target. Then you're not ranking for
anything. The Third Point is reviews for
sure getting consistent reviews.I think White Spark or during
Sky did some tests on that wherethey where they found that
(23:37):
consistent reviews actually impact rankings so that you
should probably get weekly reviews.
I mean, I haven't really tested this myself, but I think weekly
should be fine like at least 123weekly reviews or have like a
10% conversion rate on, on reviews.
So if you have 100 customers that you should at least get 10
(23:58):
reviews. And the the 4th part, I think
there's like 4 very OK, you've got the service section on GBP
that certainly has impact on rankings.
We did some tests on that where we we were trying to rank for
for turns that the business wasn't even, but there wasn't
(24:18):
even a local 3 pack for and thenwe added those to the service
section. Suddenly there was a three pack
that we triggered. So we triggered other businesses
visibility basically. It was very interesting to see
and you we started to rank for near me terms, but not for the
actual service term, which was interesting as well because we
added this as a customer serviceto to the service section and
(24:43):
the and not all the activities, not not so many people, not so,
so many business profiles have an activity feature where we
have a yoga retreat client that has an activity feature and that
definitely impacts rankings verylike a lot actually.
Yeah, we can see that the the the increase in conversions was
(25:07):
massive after we just added a couple of activities.
It's kind of like the service section just with the duration
of the activity. And I think you also could add a
pricing, pricing point to each of the activities.
Yeah, the 5th or 6th point is the website.
I think that's very, very important for Google Business
(25:28):
profiles, that the organic rankings or your, your organic
performance actually impacts local rankings as well.
I mean, Google doesn't really hide that fact that they even
show this in their in their Google Business profile
guidelines. Yeah, but I think these 5-6
points are the most important ones.
Yeah, awesome. I want to jump into the services
section. So I'm curious because there's
(25:50):
like a lot of different nuances there.
So first, do you think you should have every single unique
keyword like another client I just took on of all the
different service plus city combinations, we found a total
of like 160 keywords. So should all of those be in
that service section or maybe just the top 20?
And do they need to be differentor what are your thoughts there?
(26:12):
Well, I think you need to test this for your own business.
I don't think this will work thesame way for every, every Google
business profile. I don't I don't believe that.
And it's also very different, difficult to assess because
you're always in a different local area where different
districts play a different role in terms of how customers think
(26:34):
about those districts and how they how they use them.
So I think it's very difficult to, to actually assess what
keywords are the right keywords there.
I would keep it very relevant, just I would keep the, the
industry keywords relevant as long as it's relevant.
Just add more keywords and then see how the how the rankings
(26:54):
improve or how your, how your leads improve, like whatever.
Like maybe they want something, maybe you suddenly have an
increase in, in a very small niche topic.
You know that just because you added a service to the service
section. So I think you just need to test
(27:15):
this a lot. And but 160 services, I don't
know. I wouldn't do it.
I probably would. I don't know, like at some point
Google needs to needs to think about it as well.
Like is this actually user friendly?
You know, is it user friendly tohave 160 options there?
You know, like nobody will ever read that.
So I think focusing on the primary ones, the secondary
(27:37):
ones, and then everything that'srelevant where you think you
could make some money from, that's what I would put in
there, yeah. Yeah, awesome.
Now thinking back on that, so that that 160 keywords was
across 8 cities. So I'm guessing, I'm not sure if
you'd agree with this. I don't know if I've heard
anyone talk on this, but then should you just optimize the
Google Business profile for the only the city it's based in?
(27:58):
Because you can't really rank far out anyways.
I don't think Google Google believes that the Geo terms you
add in there are part of the services.
I don't think they actually consider this as a service.
This is would be the same as near me.
We tried that with the near me. Oh OK, it didn't work.
(28:20):
So they Google didn't really actually look at near me.
But when we edit this one keyword, I I mentioned that
before. When we edit this one keyword,
it triggered the local pack, butonly for the near me phrase, not
for the actual phrase. So that tells me that it already
considers this local anyway, because it's part of the local
environment in that Google Business profile.
(28:41):
Yeah, interesting. OK.
So you don't have to optimize for the cities or for near me
for the services section. I don't believe.
I don't believe so. I mean, we haven't, we haven't,
I haven't seen test results and we we did that as well, but we
didn't see anything from it. So this looked very spammy if
you start adding all these districts and cities and yeah,
(29:04):
whatever you want to target to it, because there's a proximity
algorithm anyways, right? That restricts your Google
profile from going off off that radius basically.
And being visible outside that radius is sheer impossible most
of the time. Yeah, got it.
What about for optimizing for near me on the website then?
(29:28):
Yeah, I used to, I used, we usedto do that, but I don't think
it's that valuable anymore. I don't think Google, Google
would give you, it doesn't. It wasn't really impactful.
I was a big fan of integrating it into the FAQ section, you
know, because it's the, it's kind of like the only way where
(29:48):
you can do it naturally when youhave a question that says like
where is the next, where's your next mattress store near me,
basically. And then you could answer the
question. The next mattress store near you
is blue. So, and then that would
integrate it in a very natural way, would certainly not harm
(30:09):
the business, you know, but you can do it.
Why not? You know, it's like, yeah.
Okay, yeah, no, it's it's hard to kind of integrate that
naturally. It sounds you could say near
you, but near me it's like what you know, that doesn't really
make. Sense, yeah, let you phrase it
in a like in the first person, when, when from the customers
perspective, you know, when you read, when the customer reads
(30:29):
the FAQs in their from that perspective, it would be where
can I find the next metastore near me?
And then they would read that itwas like here, can I find that
basically, you know, when they see the answer to that question.
So that's, from my perspective, the only way to integrate it in
the very natural way. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I also wanted to dive a little
bit more into reviews. So obviously reviews are
(30:52):
important. You should aim to have, you
know, five stars. You should aim to get as many as
possible. But what about these specific
nuances within reviews? Like do you think we should be
trying to collect a photo? Should we get keywords in the
reviews? The keywords in the review
replies? Like talk to me about some of
the nuances around reviews. Right.
(31:13):
There's some local search patterns that suggest that Most
likely the, the sentiment in thereviews plays a role and the
keywords as well. But it's not as most people
might think about keywords, keyword rankings, like it's not,
I don't think they're, they're tied to specific keyword
(31:33):
rankings. It's just like as soon as
someone mentioned that the business was great and they use
certain keywords, then that's relevant to the business.
And that's basically a relevant point that the business gets.
I don't think it has anything todo with the the actual keyword
rankings because most people confuse that they search for
(31:54):
something and then the reviews would be suggested on the map.
I don't know if you know that like there's some, there's some
tiny little snippets above the location pins that repeat the
parts of the review that you wasthat you searched for.
And most people think there is adirect correlation, but what
we've tested this so many times,there's no correlation and
(32:14):
nobody has ever found a correlation between that.
So. So the keywords itself might
impact rankings, but not on the keyword rank level of that makes
sense. Interesting.
And then? Yeah.
Does I mean this is super nuanced, I'm kind of just
curious myself. Does the reviewer being like a
(32:34):
local guide make any difference?They're like a local guide.
Level 3 versus 8. Is that much better than someone
who just has a random Google account?
Yeah, that's very hard to say because I haven't seen any
evidence of that. Like most people claim that the
local Google Guide account has more power than a normal
account, but I'm not so sure. I think it's more it's it's when
(32:57):
you look at the suspensions and the reinstatements of Google
business profiles, it often times has a lot to do with the
e-mail address that's used on the on the accounts.
So if you spanned a lot or if you left fake reviews or if you
violated Google's guidelines, then this account doesn't have
(33:17):
the same credibility as an account that's fresh or that has
a long history and you know, good standing and all of that.
So I think that can make a difference if you're, if the
account that the review comes from can possibly have a higher
impact than an account that was violating Google's guidelines in
(33:40):
the past. Yeah, that's, that's what I
don't think the, the local guidestuff.
I mean, maybe, maybe not, but itmight be so nuanced as you, as
you said yourself, it's yeah. And and it's, it's not really
under our control anyway. You know, the customers who come
in don't have any control about their or what kind of account
(34:02):
they take or how active they areon on Google.
You know, because you're not targeting that way.
You're not you're not saying, but come to my Barber shop, but
only if you look a guide. Yeah, no, it's you, you can't,
you can't determine that like you said, what what about
getting reviews? Do you have any strategies for
getting reviews? Like should you be using AQR
(34:24):
code? Should you offer them a little
bit of something? I don't know, a lot of people
have different strategies. I'm curious what would?
What are someones you recommend?Yeah, right.
It also depends on the niche definitely like as a as a
restaurant, you, you could put it on the on the tables, which
is the the most easy way of doing it.
But then if you're a service based business, you could leave
(34:48):
those QR codes on any of the equipment that the cost that's
with the customer, for example, or you, you just put it on the,
on the car steering wheel after you got a job done or, you know,
put a little phrase underneath, did you like the job or did you
like the work and then leave a review.
But there's many different ways of getting it.
(35:09):
Our problem is not that we're, we're lacking ideas.
The problem is more that the client can actually do the stuff
we want from him. So they, they have to figure at
the end, they have to figure that out your, them themselves.
What's the best way for them to get to get that stuck?
(35:29):
Because we, we suggested SMS, wesuggested what WhatsApp and
e-mail. And then I don't know, after a
year, nothing happened. So I was like, OK, how can we
get them more reviews so they'renot overwhelmed with what I want
from them? So it's, it's very, it depends a
lot on the client and a lot on the industry, but there's
thousands of ways to get it. I mean, obviously the best way
(35:51):
is to insist personally, after the job is done here, can leave
it a review. I'm, I'm going to wait, you
know, just hand over your phone or hand over whatever and then
scan the code and leave us a review now.
And you would probably have the highest conversion rate with
that, you know, if you insist onit.
But it depends a lot on what type of person you are and if
(36:13):
you can stand this little attention that, yeah, you're
insisting on something that the customer doesn't have anything
from, basically. And you're not, you're currently
not giving anything in return for that review and you're not
allowed to anyone. Yeah.
Yeah. That that's typically what we
recommend to do, which, you know, might be seen as a little
bit more aggressive, but I believe that follows after a
(36:35):
great service. So you know, you have a great
rapport with them. You're you're being super nice.
The service was awesome. Then you know, then you can ask
for the great review and it's, there's not really any tension
there. But obviously if you ask before
the service or if it if it doesn't make sense and then you
shouldn't, cool. No.
I just meant like if you insist on it, you know not, not if you
chance, but if you insist on, doit now, no.
(36:58):
Yeah, that's that's a little toomuch.
And then they might actually change it to a one star or
something like that. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You don't want to do that. Cool.
I want to move on to stuff relating to AEO or AIO, whatever
people say. Are you doing anything different
for your clients or people you consult with for AI overviews,
(37:20):
AI mode and LLMS like chat, PT? Are you changing anything in
your processes or is it mostly the same?
We did a little bit more PR, I would say ever since.
But to be honest, Jenny, the theresearch on Chatti mean the AI
(37:42):
OS are quite easy if you ask me.That's just very good SEO and
you will be featured. So that's basically it.
But Chatti PT is very different.Most people believe that you
have to be very prominent. You know, you have to boost your
fame, you have to get a lot of backlinks, You have to go to get
a lot of brand mentions, brandedsearches, maybe if they can
(38:03):
track that. Yeah, backlinks and PR and
features and unstructured citations where you, you know,
where someone just lists your business details on a non
directory site that's believed to be the the way it works.
But I haven't seen real evidencethat this is actually what works
(38:27):
because every time I'm searchingfor our clients businesses with
their primary keywords, I'm getting a ton of shit results.
You know, in all three differentways.
You can search locked out of ChatGPT, you can search locked
in without a plan, and you can search with a plan and with a
pro plus plan. So and you would get 4 different
(38:49):
search results which is incredible, but all of them
don't really show me great results.
You get 3.8 star businesses recommended.
So that tells me we're not thereyet and nobody knows what's
what. What are the actual factors From
a logical point of view, it makes a lot of sense.
You know, backlinks, branded searches, brand Brent mentions
(39:11):
structured citations, etcetera. It makes everything makes a lot
of sense. And if you ask the AI, it will
tell you the same. But what it actually does is
very different, is very different from what everyone
believes. It might work in some
industries, maybe, but it definitely doesn't work in our
industries because I've been, yeah, almost on a daily basis on
(39:33):
it basically. And then it always gives me
very, very weird results. Yeah, from three months ago.
I did one search and it listed me, I think 7 businesses and
there were 32 mistakes in these in, in these rankings.
And I'm not, I'm not saying likegood or bad, it was wrong or
(39:54):
right. It was like wrong, wrong
direction link, wrong website links.
It even made-up business, a business like it made it
completely up. And yeah, it was incredible.
I, I, I posted it about it and it was like 32 big mistakes.
It's like, wow, how is this evenpossible?
Like how can people trust this? And so, yeah, maybe we we need
(40:19):
to do another podcast in a year,I guess, and then I can probably
tell you more, but currently I don't trust all these these tips
on how to rank an AII, can only guess.
You know, I created about a postabout it as well because it's
like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense in the future, but how it
is now, I don't know it it doesn't really align with what
(40:43):
I'm thinking about all of that and and what it actually gives
me, you know, so. Yeah, definitely.
I I respect that you have a verytesting oriented approach of
like if someone hasn't clearly tested it, you're you're not
going to speculate it there. There has to be some proof that
it works. And yeah, I've noticed that
myself too. I use Stretch BT all the time
and it's great for traveling, searching up things, what
(41:05):
whatever else. But when it comes to actual
local searches, it really it doesn't compete with Google at
all. So I've I've seen that too.
And you mentioned press releaseswas really one of the only
things you were changing. Have you seen any studies on
that? Do those do those make a
difference? No, we wanted to test it, but I
think it's too early, too early to say anything reliably because
(41:27):
we're running a couple of PR campaigns.
But I think everything takes a lot more time than we think.
Like you're not, you're not throwing out some press releases
and then a month later you will see the results.
I don't believe so. And yeah.
And as you said, I it's, it's just, I can only trust reliable
(41:49):
results at the end. You know, I don't want to.
Like there's so much hearsay in that, in that industry.
It's it's amazing. It amazes me every day.
You know, people tell you all the kinds of all those all, all
stories about how they ranked a certain business, but there was
no sophisticated or empirical approach to it.
(42:12):
So that's why I'm I'm always very like, OK, good.
Thank you for the information. I'll check.
You know, so, but yeah, it's very hard to test any,
everything anyways. You know, it's very hard to to
isolate certain factors and to be 100% sure that certain
tactics actually have an impact.But I think the whole, you know,
(42:33):
if you just have to see the whole picture and do everything
that you believe works and then if it works, great, you know?
Yeah, definitely. Well, that being said, I want to
ask you a subjective question that I just came up with.
Do you think with everything that's changing with the LLMS,
with AI mode potentially taking over, do you think things will
get easier or harder for small businesses that might be at like
(42:56):
100K maybe 500 K here? That's a very great question.
I think both, I think it will get harder and easier.
It will obviously get easier because they have their own
advisors at home. So but the problem is everyone
(43:16):
has their own own advisor at home.
So, and the better you can use your own advisor, the better you
are in business. So I think basically everything
stays the same, just on a, on a more sophisticated level.
That's what I what I think. Yeah, because everyone can use
it. Where's the leverage?
(43:37):
You know, if everyone can use that stuff, you just, I think
the only thing you have is your brain.
And if your brain works better than the the brains of your
competitors, then that's what what's going to give you a
leverage on it over to them. Yeah, no, I agree.
That's a good point. It's it's like everything's kind
of become democratized, that there's so much potential,
(43:57):
there's so much opportunity. It's really up to you to
capitalize. It's like, are you going to ask
her for reviews? Are you going to watch podcasts
like this? Like it's everything's on the
table now. It's it's all for the taking.
But it's just whether you're, I guess, ambitious enough or I
guess part of that is just beingsmart enough to, to know what to
do and to, to ask the right people.
(44:17):
I agree. Yeah, I think so.
I mean, I can see it, I can see it my own that sometimes I
should use AII really should to improve certain processes.
But I'm doing it manually because I'm so stuck.
I'm so in my routines that it's very hard for a human being to
change and to actually accept technical developments.
(44:40):
And so if it's very hard for me,who's who's an attacker for us
basically, I guess who are in, in this industry, there must be
even harder for people who run atruck repair or a plumbing
business, you know, they're, they're just not in that
industry. So changing for them means much
(45:00):
more than it means for us. Yeah, no, my dad's 66.
He runs a a flooring company. And I've been telling him for
the past year or so, like use stretch BT I mean, it's, it's so
useful enough, whatever. And I was using it over a recent
family trip of ours and he finally cracked.
He's like, all right, like show me how to do it.
I want to do it. And now I showed him how to like
talk back and forth with it. And now he's like addicted.
(45:22):
My mom was like, oh, you createda monster.
He will not stop using it. So so yeah, that's pretty funny.
I feel like some people just kind of have to break the
barrier. Maybe have some someone younger
just show them like, hey, you know, look, just talk to it like
it's a person. Like ask it any question that
it's like you just have an expert in your pocket or
wherever you go. But it's kind of a, it's kind of
(45:43):
a crazy concept to wrap your mind around.
It's true. It's true, and people have to
get used to it, Yeah. Definitely, Yeah.
So especially for those, those older home, home service
business owners. Well, cool.
We'll start to wrap up here. Tim, the last question I have
for you is what is your message or advice to these local
marketers or local business owners?
(46:03):
What do they need to know? What do you want to tell them?
What do I want to tell them? I think one thing is that the
majority of people focuses too much on rankings and not
conversions or profits. So I mean, it's, it's so
(46:28):
interesting because when I, whenI start my Co journey in that
Google ad space, it was always about get impressions, get
clicks, get conversions and profits.
So you optimize in that, in thatrow, in that order.
And it's kind of like the same and with SEO as well, you just
(46:49):
have to get noticed somewhere, rank high, like improve your
rankings, get more visibility, then convert and convert that
traffic into a lot of money. And I think most business owners
only focus on rankings and not so much on the conversions and
the profits at the end. Because when I talk to them,
(47:10):
then usually what happens when they start working with us is
they obviously get better rankings.
That's great. I mean, I'm happy for them and
that's what we do. We get them more visibility.
But at some point they're like, I wish we could make much more
money with all those rankings. I'm not sure if it's worth it,
but when you look at their, at their business and at their
(47:32):
offers and what else they do in their business, then there's
usually something entirely wrong.
You know, they're, they're happyto pay for SEO services, but
what they also need is some business advisor who tells them,
look, your offer sucks and your other channels are not really
nice and you don't have an e-mail marketing campaign and
you know that you don't have allthe other things.
(47:52):
And I think it's, it's so important to to look at, yeah,
to look at all these things equally to like rankings is
nice, nice visibility. But if you, as you said before,
if you're ranking first and you're converting, you can get
the best rankings in the world. They don't, you don't need them.
So, yeah, rankings, conversions,profits, I think that's that's
(48:14):
something people should consider, yeah.
Awesome. No, that's a great message.
I know. Especially it's son of SCO
people, I feel like the home service people are mostly dialed
in on that. They're like, hey, I just want
to, I just want to make money. But whatever it is, if you have
to like stand outside and spin assigned, you know, just do
that. But it's like a lot of SEO
people, it's all about rankings.It's not about, like you said,
(48:34):
conversions or revenue and profit.
So I think that was great points.
And we'll wrap up the show here.Tim, where can people find you
online? Connect with you and your
company? Join the local SEO hustlers
Hustlers community, Local SEO Hustlers dot com.
And it's a community. There's I'm trying to build that
(48:58):
community because because of theFacebook hack that happened two
years ago, so that I have something that you can't just
take away that easily. Yeah.
And yeah, that's, that's basically just join the
community, that's it and interact.
And you can obviously join the Facebook group as well.
It's what is it Local SEO strategies and Google Business
(49:20):
profile help with Tim Carlos. I like that so many keywords I
had to use a keyword. It's your group.
Without the keywords wouldn't work.
Yeah, no, you practice what you preach.
Yeah, that's fine. Oh, that's good.
Yeah, well. What about your your agency hype
(49:42):
tricks and also local SEO guide if you want to get that?
Right. So, so about the agency, I've
never actually intended to grow that agency.
I wanted to have, I wanted to have a stable income in the 1st
place and then I wanted to sell more my knowledge then, then get
(50:05):
more clients because I never, never really enjoyed that
hustle. And it's a lot of work with
clients as well, especially if you're at the beginning.
I mean, if you have 100 lions and 100 people working through,
that's a different story. But I like being in the fields
and actually doing the work myself as well.
So that's why I never actually intended to, to grow that
agency. And we're focusing on auto
(50:26):
repair and truck repair clients as well because I think that's,
that's where my, my strengths are.
Yeah, no, that just join the community and that's it.
That's really it. Awesome.
And well, last thing, because I'd like to give you a chance to
promote. Where can people find you on
social media and follow you? Just Google for my name Tim
(50:48):
Collett on Facebook LinkedIn, Facebook LinkedIn, Facebook
LinkedIn and Facebook LinkedIn. Not everyone.
Yeah, I have an Instagram account as well, but I'm not
doing anything on it. It's just some personal stuff.
You follow me on Instagram. Yeah, yeah, I know.
Me too. Facebook and LinkedIn are my
main platforms. Yeah, cool.
(51:09):
So go make sure to follow Tim onFacebook and LinkedIn.
All the links will be in the description if you want to click
on those. Tim, thank you so much for
coming on the show. That's been a blast.
I learned a lot from you and youseem like a really cool guy.
I feel like we had a great conversation here.
Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Danny.
Thank you for sure.
Hey there and welcome back to Local Marketing Secrets.
I'm your host Danny Lebrandt andtoday I'm with Tim Callert.
Tim is the founder of Hype Tricks, the author of the Local
SEO Bible and one of the most active voices in the local SEO
space. He's a contributor to White
Sparks, local Search ranking factors, a frequent writer for
Bright Local, and he runs the largest local SEO community with
(00:22):
over 100,000 members in his Facebook group.
Tim is known for his no nonsenseapproach to Google business
profiles, his massive local SEO checklist, and his focus on what
actually moves rankings in the real world.
So if you want to understand what's working right now in
local search, this is an episodeyou won't want to miss.
Now, without further ado, Tim, welcome to the show.
(00:43):
Thanks for having me. Absolutely.
So Tim, tell me a little bit about your background.
How did you originally get into local SEO in this whole space?
Yeah, well, after I studied in 20, 15 or three years, I didn't
really know what to do. I never wanted to work, wanted
to work for a company. I never wanted to, you know, I
(01:03):
always knew it better anyway, sonobody wanted to work with me, I
guess. And so I was, I was lost.
I just didn't know what to do. So I basically took a flight
ticket to Australia and did somesome traveling.
I didn't have much money, but I knew that when I want to, when I
come back to Germany, basically that I will have my own business
(01:26):
at some point. So it took me quite a while.
It took me like 6 months to get into, you know, to get into this
whole marketing thing because I started marketing, but it was,
it wasn't really practical what they taught us.
So I didn't really know how everything works on the
Internet. And so basically I was looking
for or phrases like how to make money online.
(01:47):
At some point I was like I was, so I was so desperate.
And so that eventually got me to, you know, to the idea of how
do people actually pay me any money online?
Like, what do I have to do to, to get paid?
And then I realized, OK, if I provide value to them, if I just
provide, you know, informationalvalue.
And so I, there was an, there was an interesting article I
(02:11):
read about Google ads and supposedly the most difficult
thing you can do, the most difficult skill you can learn
online. So I learned everything about
Google ads, but it was all theoretically.
I mean, I, I ran some, some Google ads on some affiliate pro
projects, but it didn't really work.
And, but I found it interesting the whole Google ads stuff
(02:32):
basically. So I, then I just joined
Facebook groups. I joined 5 Google ads Facebook
groups and I just wanted to testwhat I, what I thought about the
Internet basically in terms of providing value to people.
So I what I did was I spent 1415hours a day answering people's
questions about Google ads on Facebook groups.
(02:52):
And if I didn't know the answer,I would just go to Google and
Google it up and then put it into my own words and try to
explain it without copy and pasting, you know?
So because I didn't want to mislead anyway, I just want to
understand the topic myself 1st.And so it took like 10 days and
until the like, I, I got hundreds of messages in the
meantime from different kinds ofpeople.
(03:14):
But after 10 days, a guy reachedout to me and said like, Hey,
can you help me with Google ads?And there's like, I never gave a
coaching my whole life before I,I have no clue how that works,
right? I wasn't really prepared for
that situation that someone would actually reach out to me
because I didn't, didn't probably didn't believe in it
fully. So and he, he was quite rude.
He was like, I don't need someone for my for fucking
(03:36):
coaching, I need someone to run it for my company.
I was like, OK, OK, I'll do this.
So and then he transferred. I had five bucks left in my, in
my bank account. Like it was $5 was left because
I was spending everything in Australia.
I didn't have anything left except for my van where I was
living in back then. And then I just had to decide
(03:57):
whether to spend the 5 bucks on food or petrol.
So I guess and there was there was really the last two weeks
and before that client reached over were pretty terrible.
I couldn't really sleep or sweating at night.
I was like, I didn't really knowwhat to do because I owed my mom
like 5 grand, her boyfriend 5 grand and the government 10
(04:21):
grand. So like lots of lots of debt and
to pay and I say oh shit if thisdoesn't work I don't know what
to do. But anyway last minute this guy
transferred $600 to to my bank account.
It was like wow this shit works.And then Long story short, this
guy wanted Google ads and obviously he wanted to have
(04:43):
something more sustainable SEO. So he I up sold him an SEO
package and I think on the firstmonth he paid me 2500 on the
retailer, which was so much money for me like, Oh my God,
this is insane. Yeah.
And everything worked Well, I just, I just learned on the go
basically. So I started, I started joining
(05:06):
local SEOSEO Facebook groups, helping people.
And then at some point, the the owners of those groups, they
didn't really live up to their own expectations because most of
the descriptions of those Facebook groups say that you
can, you know, you can provide case studies, you can help
people, you can just talk about different strategies.
(05:26):
And some of them didn't like that.
So they banned me from those groups.
And I was like, oh, shit, that'smy only funnel basically that I
have. So I decided to start my own
Facebook group so that this wouldn't happen again,
basically. And then, yeah, I just had a
monologue in my Facebook group for six months.
And then after six months, I think it just took off.
I think this consistent work andanswering people's questions
(05:48):
every day and answering every single comment every day.
And actually thinking about the problems, people have had a huge
impact on the growth of the group because in the first year
it's grew from zero to 900 and in the second year to 30,000.
So that was that was a huge, howdo you say, but exponential
(06:08):
growth. Yeah, Yeah, that.
Wow. That's incredible.
Yeah. No, I I never knew that.
Well, so you're $20,000 in debt,you had $5 to your name, and you
ended up somehow closing this big client.
It's funny because I, I see a good amount of overlap with my
journey. I was totally dead broke.
I was in college. My first big client was actually
(06:29):
$2500 a month too, which is pretty funny.
So yeah, I know. It's it, it feels so hard to
make money online until you actually do it.
It's, it feels like it's fake and everyone is, it's not an
actual thing until you make money online.
So yeah, it's pretty cool. So yeah, tell me about the
Facebook group more. So do you have 107,000 members?
I just checked, you know, 20 minutes ago.
(06:51):
OK, so you you grew the first year to 900 then to 30,000, just
the backdrop and maybe even someone that wants to grow their
own group, like how did you growso fast?
As I mentioned before, I think it's a lot about consistency and
posting every day. Even though it's a monologue at
the beginning, because it was literally a monologue for six
(07:12):
months. I was talking to myself,
Facebook like the most people that join, they don't search for
Facebook groups. They get it promoted by
Facebook. So they see an ad that says
you're joining this Facebook group or what whatsoever.
And at the beginning of your group, when you start a group,
Facebook doesn't promote the group at all.
So you really have to put so much effort into it so that if
(07:34):
you get all these tiny little reach boosts basically through
consistently posting and commenting under everyone who's
who's commenting, there was no one literally basically.
So yeah, the first six months I would say were the hardest.
It grew from zero to 500 people in six months.
(07:55):
And I was really hard. It was so like, talk, like just
start talking to yourself. And you know what I mean?
You know, it's like there's no response coming from anyone.
And it's like, Oh my God, is this really worth it?
I think most people struggle with that, not even not only
about the Facebook groups, but but Instagram, SEO, you know,
all of that. All of those things take a lot
of time. And it pays off if you put
(08:17):
consistent effort and you don't get distracted by whatever it is
that appears to be more shiny than what you want it to do.
And so, yeah, definitely, I mean, obviously you need to have
a good profile picture you have to have on your Facebook page or
private Facebook account, great cover image.
(08:38):
You know, just fill it with some, some things and then you
interact with people in other groups and come down to their
stuff. And then they will eventually go
to your profile and then join your group.
If that's one CTA you have on your on your Facebook page.
I think, yeah, it really comes down to consistency, not being
distracted and yeah, joining other Facebook groups and
(09:01):
interacting with the people and like in a meaningful way, not
just with AI, you know, like don't, don't use AI to copy and
paste stuff. I don't think it really works.
You can use it for grammar checks and stuff like that.
But if you want to interact and draw following on, I don't know,
Reddit or Facebook, I think it'svery important people understand
that the thoughts you're puttinginto writing are actually your
(09:23):
own thoughts and not some machines.
Yeah, definitely. Well, that's incredible.
Congratulations on getting over 100,000 people in that group.
That is that is so much. So tell me about what are the
most common questions you get there?
You say that you're you're answering questions all the
time. What are like some of the
biggest problems you're seeing that people have?
(09:44):
Yeah. I think it's very like this 3
audience basically. I mean, you would probably know.
So it's a local business owners,it's agencies and is a
freelancers, Le Classio freelancers.
So all of them are three different segments of the
audience that have different kind of problems.
So the the the business owners obviously they don't want to
(10:07):
know how to how to run an agencyor get more clients.
But many people that, that's oneof the biggest questions
actually, we actually get is like how to get more clients
for, for SEO. And I mean, I'm always referring
people to my method because I've, I know it works.
I know it doesn't cost anything but your time, but it, it does
(10:32):
really work to just engage online and provide value to the
people and actually help them move forward with their
business. And not just to, you know, many
people who do that, they have some kind of their incentive is
to get business back, right? And if you do it more
altruistically, you would get even more business back.
(10:54):
It's interesting that the way itworks, but that's that
definitely one of the most askedquestions in the group that how
to get clients or very generic ones, how to how to rank on
Google Maps. What are ranking factors?
I have AI have an exhaust sheet of 750 questions because we
every three months we basically collect all the questions and
(11:15):
then see if they fit any of the categories we have because you
know this the group got hacked two years ago where I just want
to drop this here because it's an amazing opportunity to drop
it. Yeah.
So the group got hacked. No one knows who it was, but the
only person joining or the only two people joining was William
(11:37):
Jones and his wife, Rowena Jones, you know, from Rank
Fortress or whatever, William Jones marketing, whatever he's
calling himself. So these are the only two people
that joined and apart from thesetwo that joined, many were
kicked and most of them didn't, didn't like Wayne Jones.
So I don't want to, I can't say who it was basically because I
(12:00):
don't know it, but that's just the fact it had attached it.
But anyway, the, the connection is that we, we collect all the
questions and even though the group was stolen, I got all the
questions corrected because we do this every every three
months. So then nothing gets lost.
Because the guy, I could see it in the activity log, he, it took
(12:22):
him one hour. No, it took him like 7 hours to
delete all my posts manually. You know, it's, it's insane how
much, how much effort someone puts into this.
And that, that was, that was William Jones himself,
basically, who deleted all my posts.
Dang, that was the, there was a evidence in the, in the lock
file. Yeah, it was very interesting.
(12:43):
So he wanted to steal the group then and make it his own.
He did basically, yeah. So a hacker, whoever it was,
handed over the the admin rightsto some, some fake account
basically. And then they didn't really want
to do anything with it. So he sold it to some other guy
and this guy sold it back to me.And then some fake profile
(13:07):
reached out to me and said, hey,I want to talk to you about the
group. And it's like, yeah, of course
you want to talk to me about thegroup.
But that was obviously William Jones for sure.
It was, I mean, I have no proof of that, but it's that's what I
would suggest, yeah. Yeah, you know that.
That's horrible. I mean, that's, that's your
whole thing for me. That'd be like my podcast
getting stolen somehow. It's like what?
(13:29):
You know, I, I've been spending a lot of time building this
thing. It's the same thing with you.
You're spending all this time onthat Facebook group and it it
got hacked, but thank God you got it back somehow.
So now you've been running it and continue with where you were
going, the 750 questions. So everything fit like one of
those categories. Yeah.
So we got so many questions and yeah, I think I just wanted to
(13:52):
summarize that there's so many questions and I can't really,
you know, I think the client thing is a big problem.
The ranking factor thing is a big problem.
And what I think the people should focus on more than
ranking factors is they should more focus on conversions
because, you know, it did just all these different platforms.
You can, you can get reach, but it all comes down to you sending
(14:16):
the people to your website and then they have to convert that
in one way or the other, right? So I think conversions is a very
big thing and it also helps yourranking.
I mean, if Google sees the the path that the customers going on
your website, you know, they land on your webs and then they
basically don't come back to thesearch after they submitted the
(14:36):
form. I mean, that's a clear sign to
to everyone that, OK, that was agood, that was a good decision
to Google that and provide that search results to the end user.
So, yeah, yeah. Yeah, No, I've been making that
point with clients a lot lately that you can't have SEO without
CRO conversion rate optimization.
(14:57):
It like you said that, like I like to give kind of an, an
extreme example that let's say we do SEO and you know, you're
ranking number one and I don't know, ranking number one on all
your top keywords. But then every single person
that clicks on the page for whatever reason, maybe it's
super slow, maybe it looks weird, maybe it's not mobile
optimize. Every single person that clicks
(15:18):
on the page ends up clicking offand going to a new site.
Obviously that's a red flag and Google's going to move you
either lower on the first page or maybe even to page 10 because
that's a clear signal it's Google and that that got
released in the the recent leak like a year or two ago.
That's Google's looking at all these different factors.
So you you can't just optimize for SEO.
(15:40):
So do you have any conversion rate optimization hacks and
anything that's like a must do? I think the most important thing
is the above default spot where people land on like that's the
the spot most people see and thefood or is certainly the spot
that the least people see. So I think I just posted
something in the group today about the above default spot
(16:00):
that you always see a lift in conversions when you optimize
that spot. If you have a shady spot and you
optimize that you make it reallygood, then you will always see a
lift in conversions. It's inevitable basically
because people learn. I mean, depends on the niche.
Obviously for towing business, probably not so important as it
is for a restaurant or yeah, forwhatever.
(16:24):
And so I think the above defaultspot is so important and that
you just structure your keywordsand you use PS and your social
proof in a certain way and the and the CTA in a certain way so
that people are actually more inclined to click than to leave.
And if you can do that, that's yeah, I mean, that's so much
money for for some companies that they leave on the table if
(16:45):
they don't do it. Yeah, definitely.
Could you get a little bit more tactical there if you're OK with
sharing? Like should you have like a hero
image or you know like a big heading, like an offer, just
keyword optimized. What do you have specifically in
that first section? I think it depends a lot on the
vertical, depends a lot on the industry and the specific
(17:07):
business. Like it depends like everything
in SEO. So yeah, yeah, I think there's
no one-size-fits-all approach, but you can certainly have some
general structure that you can follow, like a keyword relevant
heading that contains Ausb usually works really well.
(17:27):
You know, people see immediatelywhat they get and that they are
at the right place and then you support it with some kind of
bullet points your, your value propositions basically.
So just put all the value proposition in these bullet
points that people see immediately what they get from
you if they do business with you.
And a clear CTA is very important.
(17:50):
If you see your main CTA should have one colour that
differentiates from the rest of the page.
I think that's a big mistake. Most people do because they have
a, a red and blue website and then all of their main Ctas are
either red or blue. And then it doesn't really stand
out. And then it just you, you never
know what kind of action you actually take when you click on
(18:12):
it based on the colour. So, and then social proof is
very important as well. So we'd go from headline USPS
CTA social proof and it doesn't only have to be a review badge,
but that's, that's a great way of showcasing social proof, but
also how many years you're in business, if you're taxed or
(18:33):
licensed or if you have other certificates or whatever is
relevant to that in that particular case.
You know, it's, I think that's very easy actually.
You know, it's very easy to structure, but I still think
like 90% of local businesses just don't do it and they just
don't do it. And what works in some of the
(18:53):
industries is people smiling in the camera, like a personal, the
personal touch, a personal picture of someone or a team
that's smiling into the camera is worth more than, I don't
know, some, some random fancy AImade image.
You know, I think that works pretty well.
(19:13):
Yeah. Oh yeah.
No, I totally agree on all thosepoints, especially that last one
that people will connect with people.
So you don't want to use stock arts.
We don't recommend using AI images, but real images from
your company. And also like I'm, I'm working
with this, this one client who'sin arborist and we're building
his website. And I was like, OK, dude, I, I
need some pictures. You have like no pictures
(19:34):
available. So send me like 30 pictures or
so. And I kind of gave my criteria
and all the pictures that he sent me, it was either just of
trees or just of lawns or if he was in the picture, he was like
a mile away. He's super far.
I'm like, all right, man, I'd like, I'm going to need some
pictures close up, like if you're comfortable, you know,
have your face in the picture orone of your technicians in the
(19:56):
picture because it again, it's hard to connect with someone if
they're, if they're like a mile away on your lawn, you want to
be close up. If they're smiling they can
still be working, but I definitely recommend that as
well. Tell me about it.
Yeah, yeah. No, it's it's just work in
progress. It's just, it's such a hard work
to get good pictures from clients.
(20:19):
Like the idea. I remember it like one of our
clients, he, he wasn't really incharge of the photo, photo
taking action. So he just sent me the pictures,
but someone else took it. And then I told them, look, it's
great you put you put pictures of the humans smiling to the
camera. But can you can you maybe ask
the people not to show their middle fingers to the camera?
(20:42):
You know, it was this amazing picture he sent.
And then I, I I basically waiteda year for that.
And then I saw the faces, like, oh, that's awesome there.
I looked at his hand and he's like, it was like, no, that's
hilarious. Oh, my God.
Yeah. It's, it's so hard.
But you have to keep pushing andyou have to keep pushing and
(21:04):
kind of consult them on how to create better pictures, even
though I'm not a photographer. Yeah, yeah, no, I'd considered
even flying out to clients, maybe charging them a little bit
more, so actually film videos inperson, take photos in person
because like we just, it needs to be done and it needs to be
done properly. So cool.
And then do you recommend videostoo?
Should those be on the website or Google Business profile?
(21:29):
Definitely. Yeah, absolutely.
Especially like the more complexyour business is, the better a
video will work in terms of explaining a business concept,
explaining your use piece, showing your face to the camera,
talking. I mean, I think that's very
important. And together with some video
(21:49):
reviews, for example, those can can work really well.
Yeah. Awesome.
Cool. Yeah.
Let's jump into some more GoogleBusiness profile stuff.
So you have, I believe you have a 300 point checklist on Google
Business profiles. Is that true?
Yeah, it's a local SEO checklist, not only Google
Business Profile. Yeah, there's like 5050 points
(22:10):
about Google Business Profile. Yeah, I've got the rest.
OK, Yeah. So let's talk about those 50 to
60 points on Google Business profile.
What are like some of the top ones there?
What are someones everyone needsto know about?
Definitely keywords on the business name.
And I, every time I post that, everyone is like, Oh, it's,
you're not compliant with Google's, but I didn't say that,
(22:31):
you know, the, I didn't say anything about Google's
guidelines and not to, not to violate them or to violate them.
And, but changing the business and making more keyword heavy
makes a lot of sense. And I advise that to all my
clients. We are usually getting ADBA or
we're changing the business nameentirely because it makes so
much more of a difference in local search because if you're
(22:55):
not having the business like thethe keyword in your name for a
local business is not really relevant.
You know, people were not were not takes true.
I mean, it doesn't make so much sense to to have a very generic
business name, but just put put the keyword at the end or
something like that, you know, and just get Google compliant.
And I think that's that's one ofthe big things.
(23:15):
The second thing is obviously the primary category of that
primary category doesn't match your business name or the
keywords you want to target. Then you're not ranking for
anything. The Third Point is reviews for
sure getting consistent reviews.I think White Spark or during
Sky did some tests on that wherethey where they found that
(23:37):
consistent reviews actually impact rankings so that you
should probably get weekly reviews.
I mean, I haven't really tested this myself, but I think weekly
should be fine like at least 123weekly reviews or have like a
10% conversion rate on, on reviews.
So if you have 100 customers that you should at least get 10
(23:58):
reviews. And the the 4th part, I think
there's like 4 very OK, you've got the service section on GBP
that certainly has impact on rankings.
We did some tests on that where we we were trying to rank for
for turns that the business wasn't even, but there wasn't
(24:18):
even a local 3 pack for and thenwe added those to the service
section. Suddenly there was a three pack
that we triggered. So we triggered other businesses
visibility basically. It was very interesting to see
and you we started to rank for near me terms, but not for the
actual service term, which was interesting as well because we
added this as a customer serviceto to the service section and
(24:43):
the and not all the activities, not not so many people, not so,
so many business profiles have an activity feature where we
have a yoga retreat client that has an activity feature and that
definitely impacts rankings verylike a lot actually.
Yeah, we can see that the the the increase in conversions was
(25:07):
massive after we just added a couple of activities.
It's kind of like the service section just with the duration
of the activity. And I think you also could add a
pricing, pricing point to each of the activities.
Yeah, the 5th or 6th point is the website.
I think that's very, very important for Google Business
(25:28):
profiles, that the organic rankings or your, your organic
performance actually impacts local rankings as well.
I mean, Google doesn't really hide that fact that they even
show this in their in their Google Business profile
guidelines. Yeah, but I think these 5-6
points are the most important ones.
Yeah, awesome. I want to jump into the services
section. So I'm curious because there's
(25:50):
like a lot of different nuances there.
So first, do you think you should have every single unique
keyword like another client I just took on of all the
different service plus city combinations, we found a total
of like 160 keywords. So should all of those be in
that service section or maybe just the top 20?
And do they need to be differentor what are your thoughts there?
(26:12):
Well, I think you need to test this for your own business.
I don't think this will work thesame way for every, every Google
business profile. I don't I don't believe that.
And it's also very different, difficult to assess because
you're always in a different local area where different
districts play a different role in terms of how customers think
(26:34):
about those districts and how they how they use them.
So I think it's very difficult to, to actually assess what
keywords are the right keywords there.
I would keep it very relevant, just I would keep the, the
industry keywords relevant as long as it's relevant.
Just add more keywords and then see how the how the rankings
(26:54):
improve or how your, how your leads improve, like whatever.
Like maybe they want something, maybe you suddenly have an
increase in, in a very small niche topic.
You know that just because you added a service to the service
section. So I think you just need to test
(27:15):
this a lot. And but 160 services, I don't
know. I wouldn't do it.
I probably would. I don't know, like at some point
Google needs to needs to think about it as well.
Like is this actually user friendly?
You know, is it user friendly tohave 160 options there?
You know, like nobody will ever read that.
So I think focusing on the primary ones, the secondary
(27:37):
ones, and then everything that'srelevant where you think you
could make some money from, that's what I would put in
there, yeah. Yeah, awesome.
Now thinking back on that, so that that 160 keywords was
across 8 cities. So I'm guessing, I'm not sure if
you'd agree with this. I don't know if I've heard
anyone talk on this, but then should you just optimize the
Google Business profile for the only the city it's based in?
(27:58):
Because you can't really rank far out anyways.
I don't think Google Google believes that the Geo terms you
add in there are part of the services.
I don't think they actually consider this as a service.
This is would be the same as near me.
We tried that with the near me. Oh OK, it didn't work.
(28:20):
So they Google didn't really actually look at near me.
But when we edit this one keyword, I I mentioned that
before. When we edit this one keyword,
it triggered the local pack, butonly for the near me phrase, not
for the actual phrase. So that tells me that it already
considers this local anyway, because it's part of the local
environment in that Google Business profile.
(28:41):
Yeah, interesting. OK.
So you don't have to optimize for the cities or for near me
for the services section. I don't believe.
I don't believe so. I mean, we haven't, we haven't,
I haven't seen test results and we we did that as well, but we
didn't see anything from it. So this looked very spammy if
you start adding all these districts and cities and yeah,
(29:04):
whatever you want to target to it, because there's a proximity
algorithm anyways, right? That restricts your Google
profile from going off off that radius basically.
And being visible outside that radius is sheer impossible most
of the time. Yeah, got it.
What about for optimizing for near me on the website then?
(29:28):
Yeah, I used to, I used, we usedto do that, but I don't think
it's that valuable anymore. I don't think Google, Google
would give you, it doesn't. It wasn't really impactful.
I was a big fan of integrating it into the FAQ section, you
know, because it's the, it's kind of like the only way where
(29:48):
you can do it naturally when youhave a question that says like
where is the next, where's your next mattress store near me,
basically. And then you could answer the
question. The next mattress store near you
is blue. So, and then that would
integrate it in a very natural way, would certainly not harm
(30:09):
the business, you know, but you can do it.
Why not? You know, it's like, yeah.
Okay, yeah, no, it's it's hard to kind of integrate that
naturally. It sounds you could say near
you, but near me it's like what you know, that doesn't really
make. Sense, yeah, let you phrase it
in a like in the first person, when, when from the customers
perspective, you know, when you read, when the customer reads
(30:29):
the FAQs in their from that perspective, it would be where
can I find the next metastore near me?
And then they would read that itwas like here, can I find that
basically, you know, when they see the answer to that question.
So that's, from my perspective, the only way to integrate it in
the very natural way. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I also wanted to dive a little
bit more into reviews. So obviously reviews are
(30:52):
important. You should aim to have, you
know, five stars. You should aim to get as many as
possible. But what about these specific
nuances within reviews? Like do you think we should be
trying to collect a photo? Should we get keywords in the
reviews? The keywords in the review
replies? Like talk to me about some of
the nuances around reviews. Right.
(31:13):
There's some local search patterns that suggest that Most
likely the, the sentiment in thereviews plays a role and the
keywords as well. But it's not as most people
might think about keywords, keyword rankings, like it's not,
I don't think they're, they're tied to specific keyword
(31:33):
rankings. It's just like as soon as
someone mentioned that the business was great and they use
certain keywords, then that's relevant to the business.
And that's basically a relevant point that the business gets.
I don't think it has anything todo with the the actual keyword
rankings because most people confuse that they search for
(31:54):
something and then the reviews would be suggested on the map.
I don't know if you know that like there's some, there's some
tiny little snippets above the location pins that repeat the
parts of the review that you wasthat you searched for.
And most people think there is adirect correlation, but what
we've tested this so many times,there's no correlation and
(32:14):
nobody has ever found a correlation between that.
So. So the keywords itself might
impact rankings, but not on the keyword rank level of that makes
sense. Interesting.
And then? Yeah.
Does I mean this is super nuanced, I'm kind of just
curious myself. Does the reviewer being like a
(32:34):
local guide make any difference?They're like a local guide.
Level 3 versus 8. Is that much better than someone
who just has a random Google account?
Yeah, that's very hard to say because I haven't seen any
evidence of that. Like most people claim that the
local Google Guide account has more power than a normal
account, but I'm not so sure. I think it's more it's it's when
(32:57):
you look at the suspensions and the reinstatements of Google
business profiles, it often times has a lot to do with the
e-mail address that's used on the on the accounts.
So if you spanned a lot or if you left fake reviews or if you
violated Google's guidelines, then this account doesn't have
(33:17):
the same credibility as an account that's fresh or that has
a long history and you know, good standing and all of that.
So I think that can make a difference if you're, if the
account that the review comes from can possibly have a higher
impact than an account that was violating Google's guidelines in
(33:40):
the past. Yeah, that's, that's what I
don't think the, the local guidestuff.
I mean, maybe, maybe not, but itmight be so nuanced as you, as
you said yourself, it's yeah. And and it's, it's not really
under our control anyway. You know, the customers who come
in don't have any control about their or what kind of account
(34:02):
they take or how active they areon on Google.
You know, because you're not targeting that way.
You're not you're not saying, but come to my Barber shop, but
only if you look a guide. Yeah, no, it's you, you can't,
you can't determine that like you said, what what about
getting reviews? Do you have any strategies for
getting reviews? Like should you be using AQR
(34:24):
code? Should you offer them a little
bit of something? I don't know, a lot of people
have different strategies. I'm curious what would?
What are someones you recommend?Yeah, right.
It also depends on the niche definitely like as a as a
restaurant, you, you could put it on the on the tables, which
is the the most easy way of doing it.
But then if you're a service based business, you could leave
(34:48):
those QR codes on any of the equipment that the cost that's
with the customer, for example, or you, you just put it on the,
on the car steering wheel after you got a job done or, you know,
put a little phrase underneath, did you like the job or did you
like the work and then leave a review.
But there's many different ways of getting it.
(35:09):
Our problem is not that we're, we're lacking ideas.
The problem is more that the client can actually do the stuff
we want from him. So they, they have to figure at
the end, they have to figure that out your, them themselves.
What's the best way for them to get to get that stuck?
(35:29):
Because we, we suggested SMS, wesuggested what WhatsApp and
e-mail. And then I don't know, after a
year, nothing happened. So I was like, OK, how can we
get them more reviews so they'renot overwhelmed with what I want
from them? So it's, it's very, it depends a
lot on the client and a lot on the industry, but there's
thousands of ways to get it. I mean, obviously the best way
(35:51):
is to insist personally, after the job is done here, can leave
it a review. I'm, I'm going to wait, you
know, just hand over your phone or hand over whatever and then
scan the code and leave us a review now.
And you would probably have the highest conversion rate with
that, you know, if you insist onit.
But it depends a lot on what type of person you are and if
(36:13):
you can stand this little attention that, yeah, you're
insisting on something that the customer doesn't have anything
from, basically. And you're not, you're currently
not giving anything in return for that review and you're not
allowed to anyone. Yeah.
Yeah. That that's typically what we
recommend to do, which, you know, might be seen as a little
bit more aggressive, but I believe that follows after a
(36:35):
great service. So you know, you have a great
rapport with them. You're you're being super nice.
The service was awesome. Then you know, then you can ask
for the great review and it's, there's not really any tension
there. But obviously if you ask before
the service or if it if it doesn't make sense and then you
shouldn't, cool. No.
I just meant like if you insist on it, you know not, not if you
chance, but if you insist on, doit now, no.
(36:58):
Yeah, that's that's a little toomuch.
And then they might actually change it to a one star or
something like that. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You don't want to do that. Cool.
I want to move on to stuff relating to AEO or AIO, whatever
people say. Are you doing anything different
for your clients or people you consult with for AI overviews,
(37:20):
AI mode and LLMS like chat, PT? Are you changing anything in
your processes or is it mostly the same?
We did a little bit more PR, I would say ever since.
But to be honest, Jenny, the theresearch on Chatti mean the AI
(37:42):
OS are quite easy if you ask me.That's just very good SEO and
you will be featured. So that's basically it.
But Chatti PT is very different.Most people believe that you
have to be very prominent. You know, you have to boost your
fame, you have to get a lot of backlinks, You have to go to get
a lot of brand mentions, brandedsearches, maybe if they can
(38:03):
track that. Yeah, backlinks and PR and
features and unstructured citations where you, you know,
where someone just lists your business details on a non
directory site that's believed to be the the way it works.
But I haven't seen real evidencethat this is actually what works
(38:27):
because every time I'm searchingfor our clients businesses with
their primary keywords, I'm getting a ton of shit results.
You know, in all three differentways.
You can search locked out of ChatGPT, you can search locked
in without a plan, and you can search with a plan and with a
pro plus plan. So and you would get 4 different
(38:49):
search results which is incredible, but all of them
don't really show me great results.
You get 3.8 star businesses recommended.
So that tells me we're not thereyet and nobody knows what's
what. What are the actual factors From
a logical point of view, it makes a lot of sense.
You know, backlinks, branded searches, brand Brent mentions
(39:11):
structured citations, etcetera. It makes everything makes a lot
of sense. And if you ask the AI, it will
tell you the same. But what it actually does is
very different, is very different from what everyone
believes. It might work in some
industries, maybe, but it definitely doesn't work in our
industries because I've been, yeah, almost on a daily basis on
(39:33):
it basically. And then it always gives me
very, very weird results. Yeah, from three months ago.
I did one search and it listed me, I think 7 businesses and
there were 32 mistakes in these in, in these rankings.
And I'm not, I'm not saying likegood or bad, it was wrong or
(39:54):
right. It was like wrong, wrong
direction link, wrong website links.
It even made-up business, a business like it made it
completely up. And yeah, it was incredible.
I, I, I posted it about it and it was like 32 big mistakes.
It's like, wow, how is this evenpossible?
Like how can people trust this? And so, yeah, maybe we we need
(40:19):
to do another podcast in a year,I guess, and then I can probably
tell you more, but currently I don't trust all these these tips
on how to rank an AII, can only guess.
You know, I created about a postabout it as well because it's
like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense in the future, but how it
is now, I don't know it it doesn't really align with what
(40:43):
I'm thinking about all of that and and what it actually gives
me, you know, so. Yeah, definitely.
I I respect that you have a verytesting oriented approach of
like if someone hasn't clearly tested it, you're you're not
going to speculate it there. There has to be some proof that
it works. And yeah, I've noticed that
myself too. I use Stretch BT all the time
and it's great for traveling, searching up things, what
(41:05):
whatever else. But when it comes to actual
local searches, it really it doesn't compete with Google at
all. So I've I've seen that too.
And you mentioned press releaseswas really one of the only
things you were changing. Have you seen any studies on
that? Do those do those make a
difference? No, we wanted to test it, but I
think it's too early, too early to say anything reliably because
(41:27):
we're running a couple of PR campaigns.
But I think everything takes a lot more time than we think.
Like you're not, you're not throwing out some press releases
and then a month later you will see the results.
I don't believe so. And yeah.
And as you said, I it's, it's just, I can only trust reliable
(41:49):
results at the end. You know, I don't want to.
Like there's so much hearsay in that, in that industry.
It's it's amazing. It amazes me every day.
You know, people tell you all the kinds of all those all, all
stories about how they ranked a certain business, but there was
no sophisticated or empirical approach to it.
(42:12):
So that's why I'm I'm always very like, OK, good.
Thank you for the information. I'll check.
You know, so, but yeah, it's very hard to test any,
everything anyways. You know, it's very hard to to
isolate certain factors and to be 100% sure that certain
tactics actually have an impact.But I think the whole, you know,
(42:33):
if you just have to see the whole picture and do everything
that you believe works and then if it works, great, you know?
Yeah, definitely. Well, that being said, I want to
ask you a subjective question that I just came up with.
Do you think with everything that's changing with the LLMS,
with AI mode potentially taking over, do you think things will
get easier or harder for small businesses that might be at like
(42:56):
100K maybe 500 K here? That's a very great question.
I think both, I think it will get harder and easier.
It will obviously get easier because they have their own
advisors at home. So but the problem is everyone
(43:16):
has their own own advisor at home.
So, and the better you can use your own advisor, the better you
are in business. So I think basically everything
stays the same, just on a, on a more sophisticated level.
That's what I what I think. Yeah, because everyone can use
it. Where's the leverage?
(43:37):
You know, if everyone can use that stuff, you just, I think
the only thing you have is your brain.
And if your brain works better than the the brains of your
competitors, then that's what what's going to give you a
leverage on it over to them. Yeah, no, I agree.
That's a good point. It's it's like everything's kind
of become democratized, that there's so much potential,
(43:57):
there's so much opportunity. It's really up to you to
capitalize. It's like, are you going to ask
her for reviews? Are you going to watch podcasts
like this? Like it's everything's on the
table now. It's it's all for the taking.
But it's just whether you're, I guess, ambitious enough or I
guess part of that is just beingsmart enough to, to know what to
do and to, to ask the right people.
(44:17):
I agree. Yeah, I think so.
I mean, I can see it, I can see it my own that sometimes I
should use AII really should to improve certain processes.
But I'm doing it manually because I'm so stuck.
I'm so in my routines that it's very hard for a human being to
change and to actually accept technical developments.
(44:40):
And so if it's very hard for me,who's who's an attacker for us
basically, I guess who are in, in this industry, there must be
even harder for people who run atruck repair or a plumbing
business, you know, they're, they're just not in that
industry. So changing for them means much
(45:00):
more than it means for us. Yeah, no, my dad's 66.
He runs a a flooring company. And I've been telling him for
the past year or so, like use stretch BT I mean, it's, it's so
useful enough, whatever. And I was using it over a recent
family trip of ours and he finally cracked.
He's like, all right, like show me how to do it.
I want to do it. And now I showed him how to like
talk back and forth with it. And now he's like addicted.
(45:22):
My mom was like, oh, you createda monster.
He will not stop using it. So so yeah, that's pretty funny.
I feel like some people just kind of have to break the
barrier. Maybe have some someone younger
just show them like, hey, you know, look, just talk to it like
it's a person. Like ask it any question that
it's like you just have an expert in your pocket or
wherever you go. But it's kind of a, it's kind of
(45:43):
a crazy concept to wrap your mind around.
It's true. It's true, and people have to
get used to it, Yeah. Definitely, Yeah.
So especially for those, those older home, home service
business owners. Well, cool.
We'll start to wrap up here. Tim, the last question I have
for you is what is your message or advice to these local
marketers or local business owners?
(46:03):
What do they need to know? What do you want to tell them?
What do I want to tell them? I think one thing is that the
majority of people focuses too much on rankings and not
conversions or profits. So I mean, it's, it's so
(46:28):
interesting because when I, whenI start my Co journey in that
Google ad space, it was always about get impressions, get
clicks, get conversions and profits.
So you optimize in that, in thatrow, in that order.
And it's kind of like the same and with SEO as well, you just
(46:49):
have to get noticed somewhere, rank high, like improve your
rankings, get more visibility, then convert and convert that
traffic into a lot of money. And I think most business owners
only focus on rankings and not so much on the conversions and
the profits at the end. Because when I talk to them,
(47:10):
then usually what happens when they start working with us is
they obviously get better rankings.
That's great. I mean, I'm happy for them and
that's what we do. We get them more visibility.
But at some point they're like, I wish we could make much more
money with all those rankings. I'm not sure if it's worth it,
but when you look at their, at their business and at their
(47:32):
offers and what else they do in their business, then there's
usually something entirely wrong.
You know, they're, they're happyto pay for SEO services, but
what they also need is some business advisor who tells them,
look, your offer sucks and your other channels are not really
nice and you don't have an e-mail marketing campaign and
you know that you don't have allthe other things.
(47:52):
And I think it's, it's so important to to look at, yeah,
to look at all these things equally to like rankings is
nice, nice visibility. But if you, as you said before,
if you're ranking first and you're converting, you can get
the best rankings in the world. They don't, you don't need them.
So, yeah, rankings, conversions,profits, I think that's that's
(48:14):
something people should consider, yeah.
Awesome. No, that's a great message.
I know. Especially it's son of SCO
people, I feel like the home service people are mostly dialed
in on that. They're like, hey, I just want
to, I just want to make money. But whatever it is, if you have
to like stand outside and spin assigned, you know, just do
that. But it's like a lot of SEO
people, it's all about rankings.It's not about, like you said,
(48:34):
conversions or revenue and profit.
So I think that was great points.
And we'll wrap up the show here.Tim, where can people find you
online? Connect with you and your
company? Join the local SEO hustlers
Hustlers community, Local SEO Hustlers dot com.
And it's a community. There's I'm trying to build that
(48:58):
community because because of theFacebook hack that happened two
years ago, so that I have something that you can't just
take away that easily. Yeah.
And yeah, that's, that's basically just join the
community, that's it and interact.
And you can obviously join the Facebook group as well.
It's what is it Local SEO strategies and Google Business
(49:20):
profile help with Tim Carlos. I like that so many keywords I
had to use a keyword. It's your group.
Without the keywords wouldn't work.
Yeah, no, you practice what you preach.
Yeah, that's fine. Oh, that's good.
Yeah, well. What about your your agency hype
(49:42):
tricks and also local SEO guide if you want to get that?
Right. So, so about the agency, I've
never actually intended to grow that agency.
I wanted to have, I wanted to have a stable income in the 1st
place and then I wanted to sell more my knowledge then, then get
(50:05):
more clients because I never, never really enjoyed that
hustle. And it's a lot of work with
clients as well, especially if you're at the beginning.
I mean, if you have 100 lions and 100 people working through,
that's a different story. But I like being in the fields
and actually doing the work myself as well.
So that's why I never actually intended to, to grow that
agency. And we're focusing on auto
(50:26):
repair and truck repair clients as well because I think that's,
that's where my, my strengths are.
Yeah, no, that just join the community and that's it.
That's really it. Awesome.
And well, last thing, because I'd like to give you a chance to
promote. Where can people find you on
social media and follow you? Just Google for my name Tim
(50:48):
Collett on Facebook LinkedIn, Facebook LinkedIn, Facebook
LinkedIn and Facebook LinkedIn. Not everyone.
Yeah, I have an Instagram account as well, but I'm not
doing anything on it. It's just some personal stuff.
You follow me on Instagram. Yeah, yeah, I know.
Me too. Facebook and LinkedIn are my
main platforms. Yeah, cool.
(51:09):
So go make sure to follow Tim onFacebook and LinkedIn.
All the links will be in the description if you want to click
on those. Tim, thank you so much for
coming on the show. That's been a blast.
I learned a lot from you and youseem like a really cool guy.
I feel like we had a great conversation here.
Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Danny.
Thank you for sure.
Host
Danny Leibrandt
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