Local SEO Secrets Exposed!

James Dooley: Hi, so today I'm joined with Kasra Dash and today’s video is on local SEO. I get quite a lot of clients coming to us wanting enquiries and leads for specific businesses and niches in a local area. Generally speaking, at Fat Rank we prefer to work on a lead generation model with companies that cover quite a large area of the UK. For anyone who's watching this and specifically wants to generate more leads in a local area, first and foremost: why is it important for these companies to try to generate their own leads? We always say it's the holy grail of a successful business to generate your own leads. Why is that? Kasra Dash: Because you're not relying on anyone. A lot of people nowadays have businesses that rely solely on Yell, Bark, Checkatrade and sites like that. If, for example, one of those companies gets bought out or goes bust, essentially your business goes bust as well. You shouldn’t necessarily switch them off, but you should absolutely be diversifying your traffic sources and where your enquiries come from. Don’t just rely only on word of mouth. Don’t just rely on Checkatrade, Bark, etc. You should also be trying to generate your own enquiries via your own website. James Dooley: So, if these companies have come to us and said: “Look, you’ve got a no-risk supply of enquiries, you’ve got pay-on-conversion of jobs…” —but for some reason at Fat Rank we say, “You know what, the time, effort, money and resources we put in just isn’t worth it if you’re only, say, a carpet cleaner within 20 miles of Kent, or a blinds and shutters company within 20 miles of Yorkshire.” For us, at that small geographic level, it’s just not worth doing it on our performance model. So for them to try and rank their own website, first and foremost they need a website. Let’s go through what the next steps are for them and what they can do. First, let’s talk about a Google Business Profile. Let’s presume they’ve got a GBP set up so they can start ranking in the Google Maps. If they’ve not, go and get yourself one. If you’ve got a physical address, go onto Google Business Profile, create your listing, put your address and telephone number in. What are the next steps after that they can do to try to rank for local SEO in the Google Business Profile? Kasra Dash: With Google Business Profile, it's kind of like the old-school Yellow Pages listing, but on Google. You're basically saying: “Hey, this is where I'm located. These are the services I provide.” Once you’ve claimed your Google Business Profile, you need to fill out the services. Otherwise Google won’t know what category to put you in. It doesn’t know if you’re a carpet cleaner. It doesn’t know which carpet cleaning services you provide. Let’s say you only do commercial carpet cleaning, or you only do office carpet cleaning, etc. So the next step is: Claim your Google Business Profile. Spend a good couple of hours filling out all the services you actually provide as a business. Then Google will realise: “Ah, okay, these guys do office cleaning,” so whenever somebody searches “office cleaning company near me”, you’ve got a much higher chance of showing up for that keyword. James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. One of the biggest factors for ranking the Google Business Profile is reviews. The amount of times we speak to businesses that say: “We’ve been trading 20 years, we’re the biggest carpet cleaning company in Bristol.” Brilliant… but you’ve got two Google reviews. If you’ve got a happy customer, go and get them to leave you a Google review. That is your business card online. If someone searches “carpet cleaning Bristol” and you show up with 2 reviews in position 2, but the guy in position 3 has 35 reviews, they’ll probably click result 3 ahead of you. The more people who click result 3, the more likely they are to leapfrog you and become result 2. So: Go out and get those Google reviews as much as you can. Strengthen your Google Business Profile. From there, you might start generating more enquiries via local SEO. Now, talk a little bit about citations. At localseosharks.com they provide a citation service. For anyone who doesn’t know, citations are business listings. We normally recommend doing, not just 100 or 200—which some SEOs say—but for a proper push we say: go and get 500. That’s putting your Name, Address and Phone number (NAP) into as many business listings as you can within your country—Yellow Pages, Thompson Local, Cylex, all the different directories. What’s the importance of having all those listings in different places, specifically for a Google Business Profile? Kasra Dash: When you're getting business citations, listings or directories, you need to realise that those websites are categorised. Take Yellow Pages in the UK, for example—probably the biggest one. If you get listed there: First, it categorises you by location (e.g. all Bolton businesses). Then it categorises you by service (e.g. lawyers, or specifically commercial law). So if you’re a lawyer in Bolton doing commercial law, Yellow Pages will place you on a page with other commercial law firms in Bolton. When Google looks at your website—especially if it’s new—it can quickly see: “Ah, jamesdslawfirm.com does commercial law and is based in Bolton.” Google then ties that to: Your website Your Google Business Profile You’re essentially just connecting all the dots for Google by getting business directory listings. James Dooley: So if you’re a business owner looking to generate more local leads, head over to localseosharks.com, go to the local citations page and get yourself 500 citations. That’s going to power up your Google Business Profile. Moving on from the maps listing (GBP) to the website itself… You mentioned filling in the services you provide inside your GBP. That also needs to be reflected on the website. If you do carpet cleaning for offices, or carpet cleaning for hotels, those are different intents and deserve different pages. You need separate pages for: Office carpet cleaning Hotel carpet cleaning Gym carpet cleaning, etc. Same for lawyers—immigration law, family law, personal injury, and so on. They’re all different services, so they need different pages. The amount of people that come to us with one page saying “I’m a lawyer in Bolton” is crazy. You’ve got 15 services and one page. What’s your take on that, and what do people need to do for local SEO? Kasra Dash: The main struggle for business owners is they just think of it as one service. Using the cleaning example: “We’re a cleaning company. It’s all just cleaning.” But your customers aren’t searching that way. They’ll search for: Office cleaning Gym cleaning Hotel cleaning Stadium cleaning Carpet cleaning Oven cleaning, etc. You need to step back and ask: “If I wanted my own service, what are all the different ways I might search for it?” A dedicated page for “gym cleaners” will almost always outperform a generic “cleaners” page when someone types “professional gym cleaners”. If you have that focused page and your competitor doesn’t, you stand a much better chance of ranking and converting. Also, the content itself should speak directly to that use-case: Cleaning treadmills Cleaning benches Cleaning dumbbells and mats People want to see that you’re an expert in that specific environment, not just a generic cleaner who “can probably do gyms as well”. James Dooley: Exactly. Because of that, make sure you have dedicated service pages and also location pages for the areas you cover. If you operate in Leigh, Wigan, Bolton, Manchester—have specific pages for each. That’s going to work better both for SEO and for users who want to see that you actually serve their town. We’ve spoken about citations from Local SEO Sharks and how they help your GBP and website. We call those foundational links. Is there any other type of links you’d look to build for local SEO apart from citations? Anything else you’d set up? Kasra Dash: For sure. It depends on the difficulty of the keyword. Not everything I’m about to list applies to every niche. For tougher markets, like “lawyers in New York” or “lawyers in London”, you’ll need more. But as a base layer, I’d look at: Niche edits (link inserts) Guest posts Press release services Digital PR For something like “cleaning company in Bolton”, that’s much easier than “lawyers in London”. So for Bolton cleaning I wouldn’t go crazy. You could: Get your 500 citations from Local SEO Sharks Create 10 social profiles (Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) and link them to your site Run one press release through somewhere like CTRU.com or again via Local SEO Sharks Then buy maybe 5 guest posts and 5 niche edits That’s usually more than enough to rank for “cleaning company in Bolton” once your on-page is decent. James Dooley: Yeah, exactly. If you were targeting something like “lawyers in London” though, that’s a lot tougher. I’d still do all the foundational stuff: Citations Press release 10 social profiles Guest posts Niche edits But I’d increase the volume: Maybe 20 niche edits 20 guest posts Add tier 2 backlinks to power up those guest posts Possibly layer in digital PR for big authority hits And when you get to a keyword that valuable, you’re making serious money if you rank. At that point I’d want a fractional CMO / SEO strategist involved. I’d book a call with someone like yourself to plan a proper strategy: More case studies More reviews Awards and PR Maybe Facebook ads and PPC on top of SEO So let’s say a high-ticket builder or franchised lawyer only works within a 40-mile radius and they’re watching this thinking, “I get it, I want to grow in my area.” They book a strategy call with you—what do you go through on that call? Kasra Dash: First, I’d look at how they currently appear in Google Business Profile within that 40-mile radius. We’d focus on: Getting more Google reviews Making sure all services are set correctly Uploading photos and videos (e.g. guided tours, team shots, before & afters) Fully optimising GBP to rank in the top three for “near me” searches Then we’d: Build citations Run a press release Create / refine dedicated service pages on the website Optimise the on-page content Build guest posts and niche edits to those pages I’d then usually say, “Let’s let that settle for 2–3 months,” check where we land, and then decide whether we need: More links More topical authority (blog articles, supporting content) More PR or reviews It’s about getting a foundation in place, then iterating based on data. James Dooley: When you’re providing that strategy and blueprint, if someone’s watching this with the budget and is willing to invest, how can they book a call with you? Kasra Dash: Check out the link down below, or just go to fatrank.com. Fill in the form and say you want a call with myself or with James, and we’ll figure out who’s the better fit. If it’s more e-commerce focused, maybe it’s better with one of us; if it’s more pure lead generation, maybe with the other. Either way, head over to fatrank.com, fill in the form, and we’ll get back to you. James Dooley: If you’re a local business and you don’t have a big budget, there are still a few quick wins: If I had to pick three things out of everything we’ve spoken about today as a base starting point, it would be: Get all of your service pages uploaded to your website. Order your citations. Do a press release. If you can get those three done by the end of the week, you’ll already be ahead of most local competitors. So I hope you liked the video on local SEO and how you can start generating some of your own leads in-house. In my opinion, that’s the holy grail—but still use: Lead generation companies Paid advertising Leaflet drops Do whatever is working and generating a return on investment. But as first steps: Build out the service pages Go to localseosharks.com and order those citations Get that press release done to bring a bit more power through to your website.