Local SEO is rough and the latest Pigeon update has everyone scratching their heads.
Today we bring on Scott Davis and discuss how the Pigeon update effected local SEO and how to dominate the search results post-pigeon.
Learn to maximize your local SEO efforts after Pigeon and get your rankings back on top.
We’ve Provided the Transcription Directly Below
[showhide type=”pressrelease” more_text=”Show Transcription (%s More Words)” less_text=”Hide Transcription(%s Less Words)” hidden=”yes”]
Sweeney: Hey guys! Welcome to another episode of the TriggerCast. Sweeney here and today we bring on Scott Davis. With the whole mixed up in SEO, Post Pigeon and all the craziness that’s been happening, I saw a few pieces of content by Scott. I was very intrigued. I saw that he was arriving host Pigeon. I wanted to bring him on and get his opinion what’s changed, what’s working for him and what you can do as well. Focus, once going to be very SEO strong. He doesn’t not have a webcam so you don’t get to see his beautiful face but you will get to see my beautiful face and more importantly you get to hear him talk on the matter. So, Scott introduce yourself a little bit. I appreciate you coming on.
Scott: I’m happy to be here. I’m Scott Davis. I’m the Senior SEO Specialist for Valley Interactive Marketing in Plano, Texas. We do hotel sites there. I’m also the CMO of a very small business in Dallas, in North Dallas Supplies and Repair.
Sweeney: What first pulled me towards Scott is tell us a little bit about the results that you’ve gotten, Post Pigeon or just with the appliance?
Scott: We talked about this a little in prep. Your comment is actually the better phrasing of what’s been going on. The phone lines have been melting. The phones are ringing off the hook. My appliance owner literally complains that he’s been on the phone all day but he’s not complaining that it’s a bad thing. He’s complaining because it’s a good thing. It’s really been cool. We got Map Pack Placement where we didn’t have any before. We also manage to push down a few of the directories that were hanging out on our niche on the first page which also helps.
Sweeney: Very awesome! If I recall correctly, your ranking I believe number 1 for the terms. I did a little bit of searching. I think you show up before the Map Pack and you’re number 1 on the Map Pack. Can you clarify that?
Scott: That is correct! If you search appliance repair in Dallas and any variation, we’ve got the number 1 search result. We’re also number 1 on the maps. With personalized results if you happen to be connected, you’ll see some of our G+ a little bit further down on the first page.
Sweeney: Wow! That’s very impressive. I imagine this is a more recent thing. You know who’s number 1 before and who’s  #1 and #2.
Scott: In the Map Pack or in general?
Sweeney: Search in general.
Scott: I’ve had the number 1 spot for about 12 months. It changes a little bit. I re did my primary keyword for the home page just raising wise about 6 months ago. I wanted something that flowed a little better and the content. It was easier to use. As the far as the Map Pack goes, I know exactly who was beating me. It was Lonestar Appliance.
Sweeney: If I read correctly, I think there was 1 Google Review.
Scott: And it’s a negative one.
Sweeney: That’s pretty interesting.
Scott: Unfortunately, it took us about 2 weeks to respond on that one. That’s always a little bit of emotional process when the owners are involved and deals with all the customers. Once we come down and responded to the review, during that 2 week time frame, we’ve gone #1 from the maps, to #2 and down to #3. I was like, we need to respond to this. We responded to it, the next day right back to number 1 in the maps even though it was a negative review. It’s like it almost didn’t matter.
Sweeney: Interesting. I like that aspect because negative reviews are a reality of getting reviews. As long as it’s a 2 way conversation, I think that’s a lot better in both sides get a chance to state their opinion. Other times, you can tell the customers that they’re wrong. Sometimes, you can tell the owners probably that’s a mean person. I think it’s better off that way. I guess refreshing to see that it worked out that way.
Scott: We were quite pleased.
Sweeney: Real quick on pigeon, we do worried a little bit in the results. If you have met falling Pigeons I’ve talked about on the Friday Reload a few times, the quick synopsis is the Google Map Pack results have changed drastically. I believe they have shrunk.
Scott: We’re seeing that.
Sweeney: Compared to what before?
Scott: It was usually around 5 or 6. It just depended who in the area actually had the map listing with URL tied to it.
Sweeney: Gotcha! Last Map Pack listings obviously increase competition there. A bigger boost has been given to directories such as Angie’s List, Yelp, Yellowpages and these other kind of directories. A little bit less related but still on the same vein. A video thumbnails have completely switched over. We used to do video thumbnails then shrinked it to only about 13 sites. Now, it’s basically like 96% YouTube. I think Daily Motion and National Geographic is a video thumbnail but it’s basically only YouTube at this point. Also, author snippets have been taken away. They switched things up in the search results and it’s decent done I would say.
Scott: Yes, I actually missed the author snippets. That was fun.
Sweeney: You weren’t a part of that or you didn’t realize it was taken away?
Scott: No, I missed the fact that they’re not there anymore. It was cool those searched to one of my articles and see me right there next to it.
Sweeney: I agree. It made sense. They changed with the time. Now, kind of shifting gears. You have this post. I can re tell it. It’s “How to Beat Local Directories Post Pigeon” or we can just focus in general on strategies that we worked with Post Pigeon.
Scott: Let’s talk to that post. I’ve got a copy of it in front of me. How to Beat Local Directories Post Pigeon is really not as hard as you would think. There are some overall things that Google does regardless what your side is. We’ve all got to deal with the little Pengiun. We all got to deal the big Panda. Duplicate content is one way to deal with your directories that you need to beat them. A good way to do this is by submitting the same original content to all of the directories. They’re description for your company is the same on every site. Their content is unique in describing you. Your content on your website is unique. All the directories have basically the same so-so description. Yext is a good way to syndicate descriptions like that. Yext is a service similar to most local where you can go in and manage all of your site listings. It has got spots for company hours, locations, URL and it also has a field for description, syndicates it to all of the directories. Now Panda gets to visit them. If you’ve got a better website with the better content, you will out rank. It also helps having a Google Map listing. Google+, Google Maps, they have followed links. These are links from Google, that’s 99 domain authority. It really can get any better. Google loves their own product thus YouTube in the video snippets. But directories don’t qualify from map listing. They don’t have a physical location that’s in the area that they’re searching for in local. They can’t show up in the Map Pack. That means they’re not eligible for those really cool links you can get from Google. Another way to actually deal with places like Yelp is actually any place you’ve got bad reviews is putting a reviews page on your website. Don’t copy the reviews from somebody else. If you look at my appliance site, I’ve got a reviews page but that’s an image. I took pictures of it. I put the pictures on the page. I don’t have the duplicate content issue. They link out to the sites that I’ve got up there. You can actually read the reviews on their sites. When you search North Dallas Appliance Repair reviews on the first result beating all the directories. That was actually really, really easy.
Sweeney: Why do think that happened?
Scott: That’s a loaded question. It’s because with the Google Map, whatever you put in the name field for that is going to be #1 for that search term. If it’s your company name, that’s going to make whatever sites link #1 for that. Adding reviews to it when domain is already associated with my brand, it makes just even easier to pop up for that reviews. It also helps a few reviews in the URL. Make sure you do all the on page correct.
Sweeney: I imagine that maybe not have the huge benefit but certainly it helped. You always want to be #1. People look for those review, they still going to get that quality content. And now they’re on your site.
Scott: Right! Yelp still shows up. They’re on their #2 or #3 depending on where their site ranks and served that day. At least I get the first shot and come with the reviews on my site.
Sweeney: I’m curious when you’re saying that you’re talking about the duplicate content to beat the directories. Is there any way that this might shoot yourself in the foot so to speak. Now, you’re Yelp directory listing isn’t going to show up as high. If you’re not showing up higher, does it make sense that you might be hurting that pages chance of ranking well?
Scott: It’s very possible but as long as Yelp is still showing up in general and they search in Yelp, it’s not Google search. They’re not going to have the same duplicate content Panda algorithm.
Sweeney: I guess what I’m trying to say is if for some reason I mean you are competing with yourself to a certain degree like Yelp listing is coming up. In a way you do have to buzz yourself to try to put your #1 star forward I guess.
Scott: I gave bad description via Yext to all of the directories. I just one that I had one my website was better. The fact they all have quality descriptions but it’s identical just makes it a little bit easier to beat. It’s not going to totally crush them, I mean their directory site. They all have the same information.
Sweeney: Very true! So, moving forward. I see you talk here a bit about keyword research. I can read this back but basically you talk about how people are doing their keyword research on post Hummingbird.
Scott: Yes, it’s the old SEO joke. SEO walks in bar, pubs, social house on and on the different ways to phrase. A lot of what’s going on after Hummingbird, Google is learning that if I search Hotels in Dallas, that search means then exact same thing as Dallas Hotels and Hotel in Dallas TX, Hotel in Dallas Texas. They’re giving you almost identical SERP pages. There’s about 5-10% variance, usually the top 10 spots as far as where the domains are ranked. But if you actually go through and pull them and compare the top hundred results, it’s all the same domains. When you’re doing your keyword research, they’re giving you exact match volume if you’re using the keyword planner. When you pull it, everything that is essentially the same keyword you’re looking for the absolute value. You’re targeting broad match modified in Adwords. If it has got Dallas and Hotel in it, add up those volumes together. That’s your real search volume for the term. It’s not as small as what you think.
Sweeney: That’s the better way to go about the process or just a better way to get a good gauge on how much volume is really there?
Scott: It’s a better way to see what’s going on. I would also say when you’re doing your optimization, don’t use a semantic variant homepage primary keyword as a target on any of your sub pages because your homepage is going to beat it. Google is not going to show that page up in search. They’re going to show up your homepage and they like it better. It has got more links.
Sweeney: Speaking of links, I read somewhere that you don’t… Obviously, your site is ranking decently well and beating out some other people. So you know what you’re doing. What is your strategy then?
Scott: I pay Yext and I leave them alone. I spend 15 minutes a year making sure all of my citations and the dashboard are correct. Then I don’t think about it for another year. It’s that easy for us as far as local goes.
Sweeney: So, what else do you spend your time one? Is it the one page content? Is it setting up creating unique content? Is it onsite SEO?
Scott: I spend a lot of time looking at the data and dealing with the PPC as far as adjusting bids, trying to be at the spot that I want to be in, not paying too much. Dealing with the competition and that’s actually backed off a little bit since Pigeon. We were spending about thousand dollars a week on PPC up until about Pigeon. This week, we’ve spent $200. I have to say this was a change Google made to try to increase Adwords revenue.
Sweeney: It could be particular for you that might be some other guys making up for that difference. So you do PPC as well.
Scott: Yes!
Sweeney: How does that hard of your SEO strategy? Are they hand in hand? If so, how does PPC compliment the SEO? What are your goals that you’re trying to get out of the PPC?
Scott: The idea for the PPC Campaign is we want to be in spot 3 or 4 because we’ve usually got the #1 organic results. If they got a Map Pack, we’ve usually got the number maps. It seems to be really effective whether they click or not. Being right there next each other, 3 spots in a row; the name reinforcement, the URL reinforcement. I even have the phone number up there 3 times in the Ad extension on the map listing and in my meta description for my homepage. I don’t necessarily care if they click. This is a small business. I need the phone to ring. Our spend on PPC has dropped. I’m already running Ad scheduling. I’ve got them set to turn on and turn off. We don’t run on Sundays. We run certain things on others. I’m actually running 5 campaigns at the moment. They’re all designated for individual text that we’ve got going. I don’t usually run on mobile for our hotels on the PPC. I definitely run mobile for local. I highly recommend it.
Sweeney: That is something I’ve seen and noticed that mobile PPC. I remember reading about the hotels and that makes sense. Everything is industry’s specific at the end of the day.
Scott: They really is!
Sweeney: You’ve been saying that with the hotels it obviously didn’t work for everyone. But as you said, locally it does.
Scott: Yes sir! It’s exactly it.
Sweeney: Do you have any tips you’ve learned from doing PPC as far as branded search terms or as far the Ads or Ad Extensions? Any secrets there?
Scott: It’s really complicated involved process. I can say with the new Ad Extension, they pull out with the Call Ad Extensions. They’re actually pretty cool. The 25 character count limit is awful. There’s nothing like trying to say something and then rephrasing it and trying to shove it in to 25 characters so it fit. It allows us to add for the hotels; free WiFi, free breakfast, free parking especially in Brooklyn, different things that you couldn’t necessarily fit in the Ad. They may not be something that you think was relevant to the search. You can’t really guess what people are going to search. When they search and if you got an Ad extension that’s not in your Ad, that Google thinks it’s relevant, they probably going to show it. I haven’t look at the appliance this week on the call extension performance but one of the hotels I was looking at yesterday, I was seeing about 14% CTR when the call out extension was actually running.
Sweeney: That’s definitely a pretty big change.
Scott: Yes, I like it! The benefit of more extensions is going to raise your Ad rank because you are participating which means it’s easier to get that #1 spot if that’s what you are bidding for and your calls per clicks is going to be a little bit lower than somebody else bidding on that spot.
Sweeney: When you do have #1 spot or #1 Map Pack spot, you talk about going for that 3rd or 4th. Is that because it’s shifts are not worth it for you to spend to be the #1 in Adwords? Is it wasted? Is it worth it for you to be at the mix?
Scott: For the hotels, we’ve got 1 up in Brooklyn. It’s Hotel Le Jolie. We only run on brand for them. I’m running at exact match for the brand name itself. I’ve actually got put in there with broad match modified just to catch every occurrence of somebody’s searching that. On that one, being brand CPC is pretty cheap for your own name. On those, I usually go for #1 because we are competing with online travel agencies, booking.com, Travelocity, holiday inn and all the other big brands. The competition are pretty large but they pay less CPC then you would in local. In local, I’m not buying my brand name just because once again using broad match modified for my targeting within a said geographic area. So, the name of the company happens to be North Dallas Appliance Repair, Dallas Appliance Repair to my keywords. My Ads show up there. But like I said, I’m really shooting for spot 3 because in January our CPC for 1 click on Appliance Repair Dallas was about $18. It has come down a little bit. I think I’m paying $7 this week. With small business owners, doing their own Adwords and budgeting and anything else, when the phone rings they freak out. You have to pay for that. So, spot 3 for that is a little bit of a control. I don’t have to setup automated tools to adjust my bids but I can still make sure I’m not going to pay $12-$14 per click.
Sweeney: It’s kind of the answer to the problem so to speak. Other business owners for example when you go over #1 on the Map Pack, I’m sure that other was buy, buy, buy. They’re causing the bids to run out instead of getting cut. You still stay relevant and not get your ass hooked with the Ads.
Scott: Pretty much!
Sweeney: Now, where are you reviews and Reputation Management end up in this mix?
Scott: I’m glad I don’t have to do Reputation Management at Valley Interactive. I’m not that techful most of the time. It’s probably better for all of us. Fortunately, I haven’t had to do a lot of it with the appliance company. We’ve had reviews here and there that weren’t spectacular. One of the random with this particular vertical is happy customers don’t leave your reviews. They give out your number. They give out your card. They call you back maybe 2 or 3 years later. They don’t necessarily go to leave to reviews. Tends to be the ones that are unhappy that take the effort to create the account, log in and verify their email and then go leave you a bad review. How do I recommend it? I do a little PR when I was in high school. Reputation Management specifically to your brand is extremely important. If you go bad reviews on TripAdvisor, go out there and at least respond to them. If you’ve got bad reviews on Yelp, go out there and at least respond to them. You’ve to act like you’re being responsible business owner in doing your job and that’s really your job. Taking care of the customers and making sure everybody knows sometimes situations don’t work out. But even when it doesn’t work, we’re going to part ways way on good terms.
Sweeney: You’re going to do your best to make the best to the situation.
Scott: Yes, pretty much!
Sweeney: So, you don’t have to do the Reputation Management but do you have anything in particular to boost reviews or write them to a certain location over another?
Scott: I do. I’ve tried and my only successful was that negative review on G+. I picked up a lovely tip from Greg Gifford. They’ve got a tag that you can put at the end of a link to your Google+ page. It’s a little query parameter. When they click on that link, it actually takes you to Google+ and assuming you already signed in which most people aren’t. After you sign in, the review box pops up. But if you’re actually signed in when you click that link, it pulls up your Google+ page and pops up the box right there in front of you so can leave a review. You don’t have to find it. You don’t have to look for it. I actually put that link on the very top line of my reviews page on my site. I want people to hit the site to go leave reviews. They haven’t seen to figure that out from the Google+ badge.
Sweeney: I think I run an article by Greg Gifford where he talks about an auto dealership and how to have a postcard. I think the post card is tweaky to a site. I know there are rules about it. You can hold people’s hands.
Scott: But you can’t give them anything for it.
Sweeney: Yes! I know he had a way doing it. I’m curious if you were pointing reviews to many specific directions. I imagine with hotels, it’s probably going to be a lot more difficult. There are many different review sites as far as Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor. I don’t even know how many other sites. Booking.com, Trivago, Travelocity, Expedia, Priceline but there’s a lot.
Sweeney: That’s a lot of reviews to spread out across. I’m curious, have you ever done anything with video SEO and video rankings?
Scott: Most of the time I worked for a light bulb company in Dallas and read some of their product pages. We did a lot of embedding YouTube videos and making sure we put a good description in YouTube on the video with a link back to the page that was talking about that products so people can find it and buy it. If they run the website they could hit the tab over the video and watch the video right there on the website. We actually got some pretty good attraction but I wasn’t able to see the numbers on that then. After that, I haven’t really done much with the video.
Sweeney: Gotcha! You talked about re marketing, I’m curious and we’ll get into that in a second. Do you do anything on social strategy like on Facebook or Twitter?
Scott: I know we’ve got a social strategy on that one but that’s not my department in Valley. As far as the appliance, we only advertise to people on Google but we’re not advertising on Bing. We’re still on list with Webmaster. We don’t do phone books. We don’t do print Ads. We don’t do TV. We’re only advertising to people that actually search. I do some Google+ posts and try to get a little attraction on the page, build up some of those links respectfully. As soon as people start abusing, you know what’s gone. Like I said, we handle that at Valley but I don’t actually do that so I couldn’t tell you what strategy was there.
Sweeney: Gotcha! What about your re marketing strategy?
Scott: Well, we’re not re marketing on the appliance but I’m actually going to start up for dryer vent cleaning. With all the traffic that we’ve got coming to the website and all the people that see it, I will set up a campaign to re market to people that have been on the site and hit some of my site goals for dryer vent cleaning. Chase them around the internet with the display Ad going. You love their service, we can clean up their dryer vents too and see how that works. I’ve tried running PPC on that and I’m not getting a lot of action but we just get into that. There’s a ton of competition in the market. It’s on industry itself. Deep in my toe in the water. We’ve done for hotels. It wasn’t spectacular as far as the success rate. We were offering deals on the websites and our client wanted to offer the same deal on the re marketing. If you’re going to chase around the internet, you’ve got to chase around with the better deals. We weren’t able to do that. So that one wasn’t that spectacular. Actually it started to get one of those clicking Sta. Monica Hotel right before they left us. That was the only one that was actually offering a better deal on the re marketing and people loved it.
Sweeney: Very good! It could have worked so well. Now, can you give me a minute run down on Schema. I’ve heard of it 3 or 4 times.
Scott: Certainly! If you’re listening to this go to schema.org. This is background market you put in your code that essentially tells Google where you at, what things are. It’s structure data market. It’s a way to tell Google you got an address in the footer. You can actually label it. This is the street number. This is the street. This is the city. This is the state. This is our phone number. This is our brand. This is our logo. Google takes that data. If they choose, they may integrate it in a knowledge graph. It may affect your placement as far as Map Pack. When somebody is searching for something and they happen to be near you, well I’ve seen this Schema mark up. Google can go, this is probably the best. I will give this guy a little boost in the Map Pack or maybe give a little jump in a certain because you’ve done a better job with helping Google understand what you’re actually putting on your website. I know they’ve got Hotel Schema. They’ve got Business Schema, Address Schema. You can do all sorts of stuff. There’s a whole catalog. It’s just another way to mark up and do the technical SEO back in and telling this is what this page is about.
Sweeney: How important do you feel it is?
Scott: Do you want to show up? That’s all I got to say. It’s not going to take you from #99 to #1. But if you’re already doing everything right, you’ve already got things clicking, it’s just one extra step. It’s the extra mile to make sure that maybe this other guy got a little close to you and you competing in position 1 or 2 or 3. This might be the thing to make sure you hold on to position #1. When I go into webmaster for all of my appliance terms that I actually care about, my average position is 1.0. It’s not 1.2. It’s not 1.5. It’s 1.0. I cannot necessarily drop it off on Schema but definitely use it.
Sweeney: Now, shifting gears a little bit more. I saw you have phone tracking. I can read this here and you tell us if there’s lessons and other things you’ve learned. Let’s talk about manual phone tracking. Good portion on the time and local, if the customer is calling you and found you online they will tell you why they’re on your site. My client’s servers happen to have unique position of the owner answering the phone every time. When they’re calling Scott I was just on your website. On the website it says mention a website on 10% off which tends to bring the referral info because they’re mainly advertising. That’s something that I saw you mentioned. I’m curious, does it worked out well?
Scott: Once again on that one, we’re only advertising online. We’re not doing any print or anything else on the site. That helps but we’re in the directories. We need that link. We need that spot. We need the citation. People call. Scott answers the phone and typically the first words out of their mouth when he answers the phone is, is this Scott? We’ll, I know they have seen that. They’ve been to our website. They hit the about us page. They may have even seen the Ad Extension. I added that as a Call Ad Extension to our PPC, speak to Scott, the owner. That really helps as far as people’s confidence. You’re not going to get the run around. You’re not going to get a secretary. You’re not going to get somebody on the call. You doesn’t know anything about what’s going on. You’re talking with the guy. That makes a little easier. There are things you can put out there on your website if you’re not running a Google tracking number or Google voice number. If you got a Google account, you can get one. They will forward it to any number you want. They also will keep track of it and you can record it in your analytics. We don’t actually do that with  the appliance company. That’s why we have to manually track the phones as far as where they came from. It is an option. We chose not to go that way because we’ve got brand history with the phone numbers and we wanted to keep that.
Sweeney: Which is, I’d say typically rare to have.
Scott: I guess for most people. I see that it is normal but maybe I’m just weird. I had the same phone numbers since I was 16.
Sweeney: I’ve had the same phone number a long time too but I think most businesses unless it’s like a lawyer attaching some word phrasing, there’s not that attached phone number. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. It’s good thing that people remember the phone number. That’s great.
Scott: When was the last time you saw a 613-2500 number? All even. You know they’ve been around a while. They just get this pop up, spring up out of nowhere and not a fly by night. That’s what we are going for on that. Like I said, the 2500 helps.
Sweeney: Gotcha! Also, I have a comment here. You talked about the hotels and how they hurt themselves to duplicate content sometimes.
Scott: OK! I will be vague because I compete with this people when I come across this. When Google announced the https boost that could a slight benefit. I happen to be doing some of our brand competition site, looking it and see what is up there. It happen to notice that the link to this page is https. I thought that’s a little weird. Is there an http version? So I pulled that one up and I was like, Oh no! You also see the www. and the none www. Those are technically 2 different domains. If you’ve got both versions, you’ve got duplicate content.
Sweeney: Sometimes little things can trip us up. I’m curious outside of what we covered do you have any other tips as far as post paid gen or with the updates in general? Things that you’ve seen this 2014 that have worked well or any bold predictions.
Scott: Actually, I finally manage to get a post up last night about Google+ adoption and personalized search. People are going, is Google+ going away? They seem to be backing away? What’s going on? My bold prediction for your is Google+ doesn’t going anywhere. Google has integrated and do everything they got. They’re relying on it to get social data they used to pay Twitter and Facebook for. Why would they ever get rid of it. Google wants to be a better search engine. This is the way to do that. They know who you email. They know you add. They know who you share. If I like something, my body likes something and gives a good review. On my cellphone, I’m always logged in when I search. Google knows I know my body. I will get that site suggestion a little higher up in the SERP because it’s personalized. Google knows that John likes. I probably like it too. Well, spread your connections. Network to these many people as you can and they personalized results.
Sweeney: Interesting! Just when everyone’s tailing for the death of Google. Scott says they will stick around. As far as you mentioned Yext and Moz local, I’m curious if you have any other tool or software that you use recurringly for SEO or lesser known tools that we might not have heard about it?
Scott: I believe Screaming Frog and Xenu. Screaming Frog is a crawler. It’s free. The unlicensed version is awesome! I’ve been using it up until we actually just got a license for it today. The license version does all sorts of cool stuff. I even had a chance to figure out some of the stuff that it can do. I highly recommend Screaming Frog and Xenu. I hope you find your URLS. I hope you find your redirects. I hope you find your broken links so you can go in and fix those on the technical side. Moz Local is a trusted data contributor to actual local lists. They’re essentially similar to Yext. It’s a directory listing service. It’s a citation management service that go in there and hope you clean up all your citations. You’ve got consistent name, address and phone number across the internet now. They help you find duplicate Google map listings and Bing map listings. You can’t fix it in the tool but you can take care of it with Google and Bing. Yext and their dashboard has got a little deal where you can poke and update. I think they submit to 40 directories and 3 or 4 of the major aggregators. Moz Local submits to 7 major aggregators including best of web. Moz Local is also raising their price. I think it was $49.99 for a year and I believe it’s going up to $81 a year which is still a killer deal. Yext is a little more expensive. You’re going to come in at about $400 a year. You do have to renew them every year to keep the benefit. We let Yext lapse for about 2 months. It cost me 200 links as far as the Google Webmaster count. For not link building and just doing Yext 15 minutes for 1 year, 1,200 different domains that were all quality linking to the appliance site in a year without doing any link building and all.
Sweeney: With the link building portion, we’re going to go sand box real quick here. A hypothetical site has it’s onsite SEO. It’s perfect. It has got Schema market. You’ve done your Yext or Moz Local. You’re all set to go on that. You have few different pages and unique content. Typically the next day I know of is with the duplicate link built, where do you go from there if everything is “perfect”? Does that worth to create more content or get links? What more can you give?
Scott: Well, I would say why most people don’t think of this is link building that’s why I use Yext. It’s close to link building. It’s putting you in directories. Most of these directories take URLs. That’s a link to your website. The major aggregators, sites like LA Times that help Ads section or services in Dallas. People in Dallas read the LA Times. They’ve got a section for local companies, appliances. I’ve got some links from there. New York Times, Miami Heralds, all of these different sites pull from the major aggregators. You’re in the place that everyone goes for the information. As long as you’re there they come to you. They’re going to pull your information. They’re going to link to you. You’re in the source that says legit. They just come natural. At that point, I would go in and make sure that my Google+ description, the company information field is fully optimized. Make sure you’ve got a good description in there. You can’t link that field. These are followed links from Google. I put a description of whatever it is. I usually use the very first mission of the company’s brand name. I’ll go through and give them a little bit site map toward the bottom to help them find things on my site. They happen to found me on Google+. They can go directly to the information they want then typically some contact information at the bottom. I would also start posting about whatever it is that you’re putting up site wise on the Google+. I actually experimenting for one of our hotels in San Antonio. The markets are just really tight, competition is brutal. There are so many hotels in San Antonio that beating my heads against the wall, trying to make this one site to perform. So, I started taking some of the sub pages where we are tailing and making some traction on the competition. It made some relevant post. We go in and post about Memorial Day, thanking the troops and we link to that page on the G+ post. We’ve got great military friends and family. 50th anniversary of Sea World, that’s another good one that we can post about and say celebrate the 50th Anniversary at Sea World with us. We’re not Sea World. We’re next to it. So, stay with us. We’ll give you a deal. Those are also links from Google. That links are necessarily followed but +1 on that links are.
Sweeney: So, you Google+ 1 post basically?
Scott: I would.
Sweeney: Deep link in the site that’s relevant to that?
Scott: Pretty much! It definitely helps some of those pages. We’re actually on the process of going through a new site launch for that one. I’ve had to take and see what I can do promoting those pages with G+ until we get the new one up. We got a lot more followers on that particular G+ account just by being active in the community and sharing. Tons of followers, well it’s a hotel. That’s pretty good for us. It builds a little good will in the community for you. It puts a reputation out there that you care as a business. You want people to stay with you.
Sweeney: Gotcha! Well Scott, do you have anything else that you would like to add. I think we can about wrap this up. I think that’s basically it. Most of the SEO questions that I know. Do you have any extra secret tips or secret sauce that you didn’t mention or next posting you might write about it or been bubbling in your head? Anything of that sort?
Scott: You know, I’m drawing a blank at this point. My post usually come to me at 7 or 8 at night. When I’ve read somebody’s comment and go, I can help you with that. Usually I’ve read the same thing 3 or 4 times like stop saying this.
Sweeney: How about the Jacuzzi?
Scott: Oh, the Jacuzzi one. I’m still right on that. If you search hotel terms with Jacuzzi, Google knows that Whirlpool mix with hotel terms means Jacuzzi so you can rank for the brand term. That’s a little Hummingbird for you in Google learning. This word mean that same thing so I can give you the same SERP set.
Sweeney: If you can’t use the branch term, you can probably use something similar.
Scott: If you don’t know what’s similar, go the SERP and look. See what you can find. It pulls up almost the same search results. That’s the same term.
Sweeney: That’s an excellent tip. I like that one. Thanks a lot for coming on Scott. I appreciate the knowledge drop.
Scott: Happy to be here!
Sweeney: Have a good one man. Take care over there in Texas.
Scott: I will. It’s been a nice balmy 80 degrees here. Summer is actually pretty mild. We’re making  it.
Sweeney: Good luck with the Fantasy Team! I’ve been struggling personally.
Scott: I still off Waiver Wire this last week which brought me to weekly win. Now 1 & 2. Since with my 2 quarterback league, I’ve got 5 quarterbacks. I’m about to do a little trading because Teddy Bridgewater is starting and Derek Hart is starting. I totally drafted those guys, leverage.
Sweeney: 2 quarterback leagues. Take care! Have a good one!
Scott: I appreciate it!
[/showhide]
Tips From The Interview
1. Submit the same company description to every directory identically & let Panda visit the directories in your Vertical. You’ll outrank them on keyword queries relevant to your site because your content is unique and theirs is not.  Yext is a good way to syndicate that.  Similar to Moz Local.
2. Beat Yelp reviews & other review sites by adding a reviews page to your website. When people search for your business name & reviews, you’ll show up 1st.
3. Take advantage of G+ and Google maps. Some of these links are followed and will help your organic placement. (99 domain authority). Directories being directories don’t qualify for a Google map listing and thus won’t have that coveted Google link.
Post Hummingbird Keyword Research
As for thorough keyword research – I guarantee 99.99% of the people doing SEO are doing their keyword research wrong post-hummingbird. You have to aggregate the search volume for all of the terms that mean the same thing (but google has to recognize it’s the same query). Hotel in Dallas, Dallas hotels, hotel dallas tx — add all the search volume together and you’ll get the true demand for the concept. They all pull the same SERP results. (go look – 5% variance in position for the top 100 results — usually only varying in the 1st 10 results — is still the same SERP set.)
Local PPC Tips
Spot 3 or 4.
Mobile for hotels don’t work as well.
The call out extensions are great, allowed them to add Free WIFI, Free Parking, Kids Eat Free.
