Top 7 Local SEO Mistakes You’re Probably Making

Summary

Highlights

• Losing Google reviews by review gating scared a business for more than a year. 😱
• Third-party tools accidentally deleting businesses' Google listings is more common than you think. 🙈
• Google loves localized content, and companies like The Zebra are acing it! 🦓
• Experimenting with 'affordable' instead of 'cheap' resulted in a traffic surge. 💥
• AI-generated image traffic is notably declining according to SEO trends. 📉
• Longer title tags significantly boost local search rankings—seriously! 🚀
• Mobile and desktop rankings need separate attention as they vary widely. 📊

Key Takeaways

• Avoid review gating to protect your Google reviews and rankings. 🚫
• Grant third-party tools limited access to your Google profiles. 🔒
• Focus on creating local content to improve local search rankings. 📍
• Optimize for 'affordable' instead of 'cheap' to boost traffic. 📈
• Consider pulling back on AI-generated images as Google lowers their rankings. 🤖
• Use longer title tags to improve SEO performance. 🏷️
• Track both mobile and desktop rankings since they can differ. 📱💻

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Common Local SEO Mistake The chapter discusses a common local SEO mistake where a business lost all its Google reviews overnight, significantly affecting their rankings. Despite a year passing, they haven't recovered. The chapter aims to cover such common mistakes that businesses might unknowingly be making.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Review Gating and Google's Response The chapter discusses the concept of 'review gating,' a practice where businesses solicit feedback from only satisfied customers for public reviews, while directing dissatisfied customers to private feedback forms. The chapter explains that Google disapproves of this practice. When Google identified that a business was engaging in review gating, they penalized the business by removing all its profile reviews and significantly reducing its ranking. This penalty had long-lasting effects, as the business's rankings never fully recovered even after more than a year of monitoring.
• 01:00 - 01:30: Importance of Following Google's Review Guidelines The chapter highlights the critical importance of adhering to Google's review guidelines when requesting reviews. It emphasizes that reviews significantly impact local pack rankings and warns against violating Google's rules to prevent the risk of losing them. An example is given of a business owner who lost access to their Google business profile, illustrating the potential consequences of non-compliance.
• 01:30 - 02:00: Risks of Third-party Tools on Google Business Profile In this chapter, the risks associated with granting third-party tools access to Google Business Profiles are discussed. An incident is highlighted where a business's listing was accidentally deleted after giving a tool access. There's also a rise in account suspensions due to similar issues. The recommendation is to not give full access to third-party tools unless they are fully trusted. Furthermore, the chapter points out a shift in SEO trends, with Google putting more emphasis on local content.
• 02:00 - 02:30: The Shift Towards Local Content in SEO The chapter discusses the shift in SEO towards prioritizing local content over national-level websites. Angie, a national site, previously dominated search rankings with a single page for services like 'emergency garage door repair,' but its rankings have declined as Google now favors local business pages. Another example is given with searching for car insurance in Utah, where local results are more prominently featured in Google searches.
• 02:30 - 03:00: The Impact of Localized Content on Rankings The chapter explores the shift in search engine rankings due to the increasing importance of localized content. Previously, national companies like Farmers Insurance dominated search results with their generic pages. However, there's now a significant trend towards prioritizing localized pages, which has caused a decline in the visibility of generic pages from larger companies over the past year. Localized content is highlighted as a crucial factor for improving search rankings. The chapter includes a case study of 'The Zebra,' a company that has successfully adapted to this shift by incorporating effective localized content strategies, thereby excelling in the insurance industry rankings.
• 03:00 - 03:30: The Zebra's Success with Local Content The chapter titled 'The Zebra's Success with Local Content' highlights a successful example of local content strategy. It showcases how a page focused on auto insurance in Salt Lake City effectively utilizes local data to rank well in search results. The chapter emphasizes the importance of providing useful and data-rich content to appeal to search engines like Google. It mentions the Zebra as a source of inspiration for creating effective local content.
• 03:30 - 04:00: Keyword Strategy: Affordable vs. Cheap The chapter discusses the strategic use of the word 'affordable' instead of 'cheap' in business marketing. It highlights that while businesses avoid using 'cheap' due to its association with low quality, people frequently search for it online. The recommendation is to use 'affordable' because search engines like Google treat it similarly to 'cheap'. A case study is mentioned where traffic increased significantly by optimizing for 'affordable' without using 'cheap', suggesting that avoiding these keywords may lead businesses to miss out on potential traffic.
• 04:00 - 04:30: The Decline of AI Images in SEO The chapter titled "The Decline of AI Images in SEO" discusses recent changes in how Google ranks images, particularly AI-generated ones. Initially, AI images were considered a beneficial alternative to stock photos and were capable of driving significant traffic. A case where AI images were utilized in a home services business demonstrated notable traffic increases. However, the situation has shifted, with Google seemingly adjusting its quality metrics in a way that now devalues AI-generated images. As a result, there are noticeable declines in traffic linked to AI images, as highlighted by an SEO expert named Zach Notes on LinkedIn.
• 04:30 - 05:00: Title Tag Lengths and SEO Rankings The chapter discusses the impact of AI-generated photos on website image traffic and SEO rankings. It advises website owners to monitor their image traffic using search console, specifically if they have implemented AI photos. A drop in traffic might necessitate a reassessment of using AI photos. Contrary to common SEO advice that recommends keeping title tags short, this chapter suggests that longer title tags could be more effective. It references a video about how businesses can enhance local SEO strategies.
• 05:00 - 05:30: Difference Between Mobile and Desktop Rankings In this chapter, the focus is on exploring the difference between mobile and desktop rankings by experimenting with the length of title tags. It begins with the assertion that longer title tags have led to increased rankings and traffic for many businesses. The typical approach diverges from the norm by using title tags over 200 characters long, justifying this deviation with successful outcomes. To examine the effect of shorter titles, a test was conducted where a 275-character title tag was shortened to 41 characters, with the outcomes of this test being pivotal to understanding the relationship between title length and ranking differences across platforms.
• 05:30 - 06:00: Additional Insights on Local SEO and Proximity The chapter discusses an incident where a business lost rankings for a top keyword after altering their title tag, but regained them after reverting the change. This suggests that longer title tags than the recommended length can be effective. Additionally, it's highlighted that Google rankings can differ between mobile and desktop, impacting businesses in significant ways.

Top 7 Local SEO Mistakes You’re Probably Making Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Imagine waking up one morning and all of your Google reviews gone. Thousands of them just disappeared overnight. This actually happened to a business that made one big mistake. Not only did they lose their reviews, but their rankings kinkedked. And the worst part, a year later and they still haven't recovered. And that's just one of the local SEO mistakes that we're covering today. Stick around because some of these mistakes are so common that you might just be making them right now.
• 00:30 - 01:00 Okay, so let's talk about how this happened. This business thought they were being smart by only asking happy customers for reviews on their Google listing. The unhappy customers were sent to a private feedback form. That's called review gating and Google hates it. Once Google caught on, they wiped out all the reviews on all their profile and their rankings, they cut in half almost overnight. The worst part, we track the rankings for over a year and they never fully recovered. So before
• 01:00 - 01:30 you ask for reviews, make sure you're following Google's review guidelines. We've linked them below. Reviews matter a lot for local pack rankings. In fact, they matter too much to risk losing them at all. Make sure you aren't violating Google's guidelines when it comes to asking for reviews. Picture this. You log in to go manage your Google business profile and poof, it's gone. This exact thing happened to a business owner who posted
• 01:30 - 02:00 on the Google Business Profile forum. Their listings just vanished. Turns out they gave a third party tool access to their Google Business profile and it accidentally deleted their listing. We're also seeing a rise in account suspensions from this. So, if you're using any tools, do not give them full access until you fully trust them. SEO is changing and Google is prioritizing local content more than ever. For example, a few years ago, big
• 02:00 - 02:30 national sites like Angie could rank with one single page everywhere. If you look at their emergency garage door repair page, this used to dominate searches for 24-hour garage door repair services, but rankings on this page have really declined over the last year, and now Google is showing more local business pages instead. Here's another good example. In the past, if you were located in Utah and you did a search for car insurance on Google, you would get a
• 02:30 - 03:00 search result that looked like this. It showed a lot of car insurance pages from national companies. Now when you search, you are a lot more likely to see localized pages. Companies like Farmers Insurance used to get a lot of exposure on Google for their generic big insurance pages, but they are dropping a lot in the last year. If you're struggling to rank, adding localized content can be a gamecher. Let's look at one of the sites that is really winning in the last couple of years in the insurance industry, The Zebra. They have
• 03:00 - 03:30 really nailed this concept of local content. This Salt Lake City page that ranks for auto insurance in the Salt Lake City area has tons of local content that would be useful to users in that area, especially the data. Google loves numbers and this site is giving them tons of data about how much car insurance costs in the Salt Lake City area. So, if you want a site for inspiration on how to do local content right, check out the Zebra. Link in the description.
• 03:30 - 04:00 Businesses often avoid words like cheap because it sounds low quality, but guess what? People search for them a lot. The trick, use affordable. Google treats them the same. We tested this and saw a massive traffic boost by just optimizing for the word affordable. We didn't use the word cheap anywhere. So, if you're avoiding these keywords, you might be missing out on easy traffic, and that's not something you can afford to [Music]
• 04:00 - 04:30 do. If you had asked me months ago, I would have told you that AI images were a great alternative to stock photography, and they could result in a lot of traffic from Google. We actually added AI images to a home services business and saw a pretty substantial increase in traffic. All that has changed recently. Google appears to have added some sort of quality metric that does not rank AI generated images as well as other images. An SEO named Zach Notes first talked about this on LinkedIn and showed some sharp declines
• 04:30 - 05:00 from businesses that were using AI photos. We are seeing this pattern clearly on this page. It becomes even clearer when you look at image traffic. So, if you've added AI photos to your website, you should check your image traffic in search console. If you see a drop, you may want to consider pulling back on that strategy. Lots of SEOs will say to keep your title tag short, but we have found that the opposite works much better. We published a video recently about how businesses can win in local SEO by using
• 05:00 - 05:30 longer title tags. We have increased ranking and traffic for tons of businesses by adopting the strategy in this video by simply making your title tag longer than the recommended practice. In some cases, our titles were over 200 characters long. While we've seen plenty of cases where we've seen gains from lengthening a title tag, we wanted to test to see what would happen if we shortened a title tag. So, we tested this by shortening a title tag from 275 characters to 41. The result,
• 05:30 - 06:00 they lost rankings for one of their top keywords. So, we put the title tag back and they gained everything back. Moral of the story, do not be afraid of making your title tags way longer than the recommended length. Here's something a lot of business owners don't know. Your mobile and desktop rankings on Google can be totally different. One of our clients that got impacted by the diversity
• 06:00 - 06:30 update was only impacted on mobile. Since most people search on their phones, tracking rankings on desktop is simply not enough. In fact, we did an entire video on this very topic. We switched all our clients to mobile tracking over a year ago, and the difference was huge. We made this change because the majority of our clients get way more traffic from mobile. But here's the real kicker. We had a client that rebranded and followed our Google business name optimization strategy. And
• 06:30 - 07:00 what we found was surprising. The changes boosted desktop rankings way more than mobile rankings. I think I know why. On mobile, Google dials up proximity as a ranking factor. Meaning basically how close you are to the business matters a bit more on mobile than it does on desktop. That means that proximity matters a little more than other factors like relevance or prominence. It makes sense, right? If you're searching on your phone, Google assumes that you might be traveling and
• 07:00 - 07:30 you need nearby results fast. All right, we have covered seven huge local SEO mistakes, but what about you? Have you made any of these mistakes or do you know one that we didn't mention? Tell us about it in the comments below and we'll chat. And if you found this video helpful, make sure you hit that like button and make sure to subscribe because we're dropping more local SEO strategies every single