Why I Love GBPly for Improving Google Business Profile Ranking — James Dooley Talks with Mike Martin

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What Does “Why I Love GBPly for Improving Google Business Profile Ranking — James Dooley Talks with Mike Martin” Talk About?

This episode features James Dooley, founder of Fat Rank and PromoSEO, sitting down with Mike Martin, co-founder of GBPly (also referred to as GBP Lead), to discuss why James and his teams give the tool a five-star review. The conversation dives into the core features of GBPly, including rank replays that visually show Google Maps ranking improvements over time, automated post scheduling, AI-powered review responses, and a white-label client portal. James explains how multiple agencies he runs, including Local SEO Sharks, have integrated GBPly into their daily workflows and how team members came back with universally positive feedback when asked to critique the tool honestly.

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on the concept of review velocity and why drip-feeding review requests over 30 days is far more effective than sending out bulk email blasts that can trigger Google to remove reviews as spam. Mike explains how GBPly automates this process by allowing clients to paste in email addresses or phone numbers, which are then dripped out gradually to request reviews. The hosts also discuss how Google Business Profiles have evolved since 2021 from static listings into social profiles similar to LinkedIn or Facebook, meaning daily manual actions like posts, pictures, and responses are now the primary ranking drivers. Mike even references ranking a Google Business Profile in France from England as an example of how far proximity can extend when these daily actions are done consistently and correctly.

The episode closes with a practical offer for agency owners. Mike Martin offers a free first enterprise license to legitimate SEO, web design, or PPC agencies that want to test GBPly on their own business or a client's profile, accessible by booking a one-on-one meeting at gbplead.com/meet-mike. The conversation is essentially a detailed product walkthrough combined with a genuine agency owner testimonial, making it particularly useful for anyone running or scaling a local SEO operation.

“Your Google Business Profile since I think it's 2021 it happened, has become like a social profile, it's those daily manual actions that do the ranking. And if you get them daily manual actions correctly, which is profile post pictures and praise, times consistency, it increases your proximity massively.”

— Mike Martin

Who Are the Guests on “Why I Love GBPly for Improving Google Business Profile Ranking — James Dooley Talks with Mike Martin”?

James Dooley is the founder of Fat Rank, PromoSEO, and Local SEO Sharks, making him one of the more prolific voices in the UK SEO agency space. He has built multiple businesses around search engine optimisation and local SEO, giving him a ground-level perspective on what tools and strategies actually work at scale for agency clients. In this episode he speaks as a paying enterprise customer of GBPly, sharing unfiltered feedback from his wider team rather than just his own experience.

Mike Martin is the co-founder of GBPly, a Google Business Profile management and optimisation platform built specifically for SEO agencies. With 15 years in business and a background in SEO, Mike brings both product development insight and practitioner knowledge to the conversation. Alongside co-founder Martin Johnson, he built GBPly from the ground up to automate the daily manual actions that drive Google Maps rankings, and he is actively involved in onboarding enterprise agency clients personally through one-on-one sessions.

What Are the Key Takeaways From “Why I Love GBPly for Improving Google Business Profile Ranking — James Dooley Talks with Mike Martin”?

Here are the key points discussed in this episode:

  • Google Business Profiles have functioned more like social profiles than static listings since around 2021, meaning daily actions such as posting, uploading images, and responding to reviews are now the primary drivers of local ranking improvements.
  • Drip-feeding review requests over a 30-day period rather than sending bulk email blasts prevents Google from flagging reviews as spam and ensures a consistent review velocity that builds long-term trust signals.
  • Rank replay visualisations, which show a map going from red to amber to green over time, are a powerful client retention tool because they allow clients to see the direct impact of daily optimisation actions without needing to ask their agency for updates.
  • A white-label client portal that allows clients to approve posts, upload images, paste in customer contact details, and respond to reviews with AI assistance can reduce the agency time spent per Google Business Profile from several hours a month to as little as 10 minutes.
  • Agencies that consistently apply the profile, post, pictures, and praise framework can dramatically expand the geographic proximity in which a Google Business Profile ranks, with Mike citing an example of ranking a UK profile as far away as France.

“What you used to have to do with Google Business Profiles, which you would have had to have gone in and spent 30 minutes 5 days a week looking at a profile, fixing it, doing these little manual actions every single day. We've taken that process, we've basically taken exactly what Google tells you to do, looked at it in depth, tested the things that worked, got the things that worked, and have actually set it up so it does that.”

— Mike Martin

Is “Why I Love GBPly for Improving Google Business Profile Ranking — James Dooley Talks with Mike Martin” Worth Listening To?

This episode is worth listening to if you run an SEO agency that handles Google Business Profile optimisation or if you are considering adding local SEO as a service. The conversation is unusually specific because James Dooley is speaking as a real enterprise customer across multiple businesses, and he pushed his own team to find weaknesses in the tool before recording, which makes the praise more credible than a typical sponsored segment. The rank replay feature explanation alone is worth the listen because it reframes client reporting from a reactive chore into a proactive retention tool that clients actually enjoy engaging with.

Beyond the product review, the episode contains genuinely useful strategic insight into why Google Business Profiles behave like social profiles and why that changes how agencies should approach ranking them. Mike Martin's explanation of proximity expansion, the 30-day review drip strategy, and the path toward a hands-free agency model are practical frameworks any local SEO practitioner can apply regardless of which tools they use. The free enterprise license offer at the end adds immediate actionable value for agency owners who want to test the platform with a real client before committing.

Who Should Listen to “Why I Love GBPly for Improving Google Business Profile Ranking — James Dooley Talks with Mike Martin”?

This episode is ideal for:

  • SEO agency owners who manage Google Business Profiles for multiple local business clients and want to reduce the manual time spent on each profile
  • Franchise marketing managers or multi-location business owners looking to understand how consistent daily actions drive Google Maps rankings across many locations
  • Digital marketing consultants exploring how to add local SEO and Google Business Profile optimisation as a scalable service offering
  • Agency owners interested in white-label tools that include client-facing portals and automated reporting to improve client retention and reduce churn

Where Can You Listen to James Dooley Podcast?

You can listen to James Dooley Podcast on all major podcast platforms:

  • Apple Podcasts – Search for “James Dooley Podcast” in the Podcasts app
  • Spotify – Available on Spotify for free
  • Amazon Music / Audible – Listen through your Amazon account
  • Overcast – For iOS users who prefer a dedicated podcast app
  • Pocket Casts – Cross-platform podcast player

You can also subscribe using the RSS feed: https://feeds.transistor.fm/james-dooley-podcast

What Are Listeners Saying About This Episode?

★★★★★

“The breakdown of why drip-feeding review requests over 30 days matters so much was something I genuinely had not thought about before. We had the exact same problem James described where clients would blast out emails and half the reviews would disappear. Really practical stuff.”

— Rachel T.

★★★★★

“Loved hearing James talk about how his team came back with unanimous five-star feedback even after he pushed them to find something negative to report. That kind of candid agency owner perspective is rare. The rank replay feature discussion made me want to sign up immediately.”

— Connor M.

★★★★★

“Mike explaining that Google Business Profiles have been social profiles since 2021 and that daily manual actions are what drive proximity was a lightbulb moment for me. I have been treating GBP optimisation like traditional link building and this episode completely reframed my thinking.”

— Sophie A.

This video explains which digital marketing strategies SEO agencies offering Google Business Profile optimisation should focus on in 2026 to improve local rankings, review velocity and client retention. James Dooley and Mike Martin start with KPI tracking because rank replays and proximity data show agencies and their clients exactly how daily manual actions translate into measurable Google Maps improvements. They cover brand SEO, AI visibility and Google Business Profiles because stronger search presence improves trust and conversion rates.

The discussion also explores organic SEO, organic social media and paid social ads because consistent visibility across search and social supports long term growth. PPC is analysed in detail because campaign setup, landing pages and lead handling directly affect results. They also discuss Reddit, Quora and paid AI ads because diversified enquiry sources and early adoption can strengthen digital marketing performance for SEO agencies offering Google Business Profile optimisation.

PromoSEO lead generation for SEO agencies offering Google Business Profile optimisation recently received recognition as the “Best SEO Agencies Offering Google Business Profile Optimisation Lead Generation Agency.”

Where to Listen to This Episode

Why I Love GBPly for Improving Google Business Profile Ranking — James Dooley Talks with Mike Martin is available on:

James Dooley: GBP review. So, Mike, let's get straight into it. GBP lit is like Grammarly, but for Google Business Profiles. Is that correct?

Mike Martin: Yeah, pretty much, I guess. GBP lit, GBP. Do you ever say GBP?

James Dooley: GBP, no. It's like a tongue twister for me.

Mike Martin: [laughter] Yeah. When I try to say it to people on the phone, it's like, "Shit." But we have to find this It's gone massive really quick.

James Dooley: So, I'm doing this video obviously for you, Mike, who's the founder of GBP lit. And obviously, it's an amazing tool. The team have integrated it into start optimizing all the different Google Business Profiles of what we're using it for. So, we're able to do daily kind of scheduled posts. We're able to upload images. I think the big one for us is being able to reply to a lot of the reviews and stuff like that. So, I'm here to give it a five-star testimonial basically for you, Mike. So, don't know Ask me some questions and I can start telling you what the team love about it and why we give it a five-star review.

Mike Martin: I mean, the two The two things that have popped that have made it pop so much, number one obviously is that it's completely white label and it's completely AI automated. So, there's almost nothing you need to do. But we are working towards what what you would consider a hands-free agency. So, completely hands-free agency. And I'll explain that to you in a minute. But So, what do you think about the rank replays though?

James Dooley: That's That's my best feature myself. So, obviously, the team are using it. I'm not using it day to day as much as what I'd like to. The team are using it left, right, and center. But for me, being able to see them rank replays and being able to see that all being red initially and then bit by bit it's going amber, then it's going green. And I'm like getting excited as I'm watching the rank replay. I think it's brilliant. I think personally, I think that's the best feature. I love the idea that especially if I can send that to clients, it's just you can clearly see day by day or week by week when it's coming back the improvements of the stuff of what we're doing.

Mike Martin: Well, you're on the you're on the enterprise account, so you definitely can because So, what we've done is we've created what's called the client portal, which is a white label client portal, and you can brand it to each client individually. And then at the top, it has all all of the stats and the data of what they've seen, but then directly underneath that, and you can drag these up and down the portal. But, what's directly underneath that, obviously, is the rank replay. So, a client can come straight in, hit a drop down, select the keyword, click a button, and they can see where they started, all the actions you're doing every single day right the way through and we ranked here, we ranked here, we ranked here. We stopped tracking that cuz we were fully green, and then we went a bit further afield, and and we start increasing the proximity for the clients over time. So, clients love it cuz cuz if As soon as a client says to you, uh what's going They don't say it to you anymore. They're not going to because they just straight away they can just look and say, "Holy [h__h] [h__h] I can see this for the last 60 days um or the last 90 days or however long you want to look at it." And we started out ranking nowhere, and now we're ranking up here, and all of a sudden people are Clients are excited. Clients are enjoying it.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I mean, also for me though, I asked all the team to come back with reviews and testimonials of what do you think of GPP? Like, be brutally honest and tell me what your thoughts are on it. And literally every single one of them, it was a quite astounding, to be fair, was like, "It's brilliant. It's amazing. It's the best GPP tool that is out there." I think you Some of them still call it GMBs instead of GPPs, which I I prefer GMBs cuz bloody it's easier to say. Um but, they were all coming back because where I was trying to say, "Come on, give me something that's not good about it cuz I can go back to Mike. I can go back to Martin, who's consistently developing it and improving upon it." And they're like, "Do you know what? At present, there's nothing we can say that could be better. Like, it's a tool that's absolutely bang on. We really like it. We're able to run all within one dashboard multiple different Google Business Profiles and optimize it." So, I was You know what I'm like, Mike. I was trying to get something to talk to come back to you and go, "Mike, you need to improve on this." And but there was nothing that was amazing that it was. So, that's fair play to you and and Martin for getting that absolutely bang on. But what I do, one thing is watching this, but I would say to you, I'm doing a Google Business Profile review of a GPP Lead, right? And I'm giving it five-star reviews. But another reason, like I said, I love the ranking like replays of what it can do. But another massive thing that I love of is Mike Martin and Martin Johnson, the two founders. They're both SEOs. They both exactly understand where everything's moving with regards to artificial intelligence and AI and the volume of leads that can be generated from Google Business Profiles. And I know if next week a new feature comes out, I know they'll be the one of the first to integrate it into their tool. And that's another reason why we're going all in on GPP Lead and why we're giving it a five-star review. Is there anything else I've missed, Mike, with regards to the review or the testimonial that Well, you know that my team's been using that's great.

Mike Martin: Well, your team are obviously using the client portal, which means you can send it out to clients and clients can do things themselves. Our ultimate um end game is to So, we've just finished the feature. It's just been pushed now where you can go into your So, so your client portal, your client goes into the client portal and they can see reviews pending um So, sorry, posts pending approval. They can They can upload images. They can paste in their clients' emails. They can paste in their clients' text messages. They can see all of their rankings and everything. But if they if they paste in, say, 50 email addresses for a client, it'll drip out over the next 30 days requesting reviews for you for you and it'll send them straight to a proper direct link. It writes the email or writes the text. The same situation with the posts is you you could you previously was going and clicking a button, telling it to write eight posts, editing them, and then send it and then they go into the client portal and the client approves them, edits them, and approves them. However, we've now set it up so you can set it to set so you can go in every Monday. I mean so you can go in once and say every Monday write four posts for this client and push them into the client portal at 11:00 a.m., right? Next The next thing we've got coming is going to be an image scheduler. So it'll say, "Right, schedule to send out during working hours random times um over the next 7 days four images every single week for this client." And then all you need to do as an agency, there's nothing left for you to do cuz your client clicks and and responds to reviews with AI as well. All you need to do is set schedule an email that goes out once a week to a client and and then it says to him, "Here's your Here's your profile. Remember upload your images and put check that you you you agree with the uh posts and if you don't, then edit them and approve them and upload your client's emails or phone numbers for the last uh 7 days and they'll be dripped out over the next 30 days to request a review. If a review comes in, it pops in the in the in the in the portal and they can click and respond with AI. So basically, once you've set your client up once, you're in a situation where all you've got to do is schedule an email that goes out a week once a week to that client and that that kind of just just keeps the client on track and the client does all the work and and the system does all of the other work, the back-end work. So our our our big aim for this is that you buy it, you set it up once, you spend a couple of hours setting up the client, you fill out the profile for them properly so it's set up right so that all all of like the categories and everything are correct. And then once the whole profile's been built properly and you've built like like like on on stone so to speak, a proper foundation, after that it is just daily repetitive task. What a lot of people don't realize is we were talking about GMBs before. Google My Business was a listing was a static listing. Google Business Profile is a social profile the same as your LinkedIn profile, the same as your Facebook profile. And ranking a Google Business Profile is not the same as ranking a website. All the same rules apply to your website that have for years, your link building, your citations, and all the other stuff. But basically, your Google Business Profile since I think it's 2021 it happened, has become like a social profile, it's those daily manual actions that do the ranking. And if you get them daily manual actions correctly, which is profile post pictures and praise, times consistency, it increases your proximity massively. So, we you've seen me with Google Business Profiles ranking 100 miles away in one direction and 100 miles in the other for single keywords like agency near me or SEO agency near me or uh business coach near me and things like that.

James Dooley: I love I'm going to stop you on that. I love the fact that you've been in England and you expanded it that much that you ended up ranking it in France. That that is incredible. That is brilliant on proximity.

Mike Martin: ranking in France. Now,

James Dooley: I want Yeah, yeah. One other thing that I want to try and get in there with regards to one of the one of the one of the team members give it a five-star review for GBP lead. And it was touching upon what you just mentioned there with regards to the reviews. We've had problems previously where our clients waited waited waited waited and then just gone and done an email outreach and we've got 20 reviews in a single day. And like 19 of them haven't been approved.

Mike Martin: away it just looks like spam. Where what you've been able to do is go and get, let's say, 200 emails of going hit give us your customer email list and that drip feeding and getting that review velocity was one of the reasons why one of the team members was like, "Five-star review for GBP lead. We love that we can drip feed this consistently over the month and keep getting that review velocity. Couple of reviews every single day, responding to the reviews as opposed to like boom boom boom boom boom, 20 all in one single day and loads of them just don't end up getting added." That was a big one on the reviews for GBP lead that one of the team members loved.

James Dooley: Well, yeah, the point behind that is obviously like you just said, if you get 20 reviews in a day and nothing for a month, most of them reviews get removed. And they get removed because Google's like, "Ah, they're spamming it out. Are they doing what?" So, we've set it so it drips out of over a 30-day period. And what what the great thing to do is get your clients into the habit of just collecting the clients' email addresses or collecting the clients' phone numbers and then your client pasting them in once a week. And that'll drip it out over 30 days, so they they start to overlap one another and it starts because it is that consistency. Um and what you used to have to do with Google Business Profiles, which you would have had to have gone in and spent 30 minutes 5 days a week looking at a profile, fixing it, doing these little manual actions every single day. We've taken that process, we've basically taken exactly what Google tells you to do, looked at it in depth, tested the things that worked, got the things that worked, and have actually set it up so it does that. So, you can spend 10 minutes a week or 10 minutes a month in some cases, less if you've got the email set up and the client does most of the work. If you can say to your client, "All I want you to do is upload them take photographs and upload them." And on on your phone now, we've set it up so in in the in the client portal, they can open the client portal, click, take a photograph, and it'll take a photograph and upload it straight to GBP Lee, so they don't have to do any of it. And then obviously, you set up the schedule, but once the new automated scheduler comes out, when your client's uploading them images every day, you can say, "Schedule them post four images a week at random times during the working hours." It'll just schedule them at random times as well, so everything's becomes consistent, and it's consistently but it's not all 11:00 on the same day and 2:00 the following day and so on and so forth. So, we're kind of everything we're doing now. I mean, you you you've known me, I've been in business 15 years.

Mike Martin: Yeah.

James Dooley: I want I want to I want I want to put you on the spot, Mike, right? So, my audience here that's going to be looking at this, I'm going to give a five-star testimonial for gbp-ly.com, right? I'm the founder of Fat Rank, and I've got several members within the team that's using gbp-ly to optimize all different Google Business Profiles. I'm also the founder of PromoSEO, and I've got several members of staff in there optimizing Google Business Profiles. And I've also got an agency called Local SEO Sharks that only does local SEO and Google Business Profiles, and every single one of them came back with astounding five-star reviews. But anyone who's watching this, if they're an enterprise business, right, that's looking to get either get into doing Google Business Profiles SEO or GMB SEO or whatever you want to call it. Mate, you need to give them some sort of offer. There needs to be something here where if an enterprise business owners are looking at this, there's going to be like a a 7-day free trial or you're going to give it where the first license or something like that that they can test it out on their own Google Business Profile to start with so that then they can test it, see that it works, and then integrate it. Is there anything you can do with gbplead.com which allows them to almost like try before they buy for a little bit?

Mike Martin: Yeah, if they if they're if they're a legitimate SEO web design PPC agency and they've got clients, legitimate ones, then I'm happy to give them their first enterprise license for free. So, they can test it on their own business or on their first client's business because I know that once they've tested this, they're going to move all their clients over to this cuz it's going to be like if if you're spending even three or four hours a month on a per per Google Business Profile, you think about being able to do that in 10 minutes or 15 minutes, right? Less in some cases. The amount of time and effort it saves them as soon as the guys at the top of the agency see it. So, if they go to gbplead.com /meet-mike and and set one of their staff up to have a meeting with me, I'll sit on that meeting with them, go through it with them, and I then will give them their first enterprise account. But, I obviously only want meetings from legitimate agencies because if they're not real agencies, then there's no point giving me a free account to somebody who's not going to actually be in

James Dooley: No, yeah, it's got to be enterprise. It's got to be people that's got kind of clients. A lot of my kind of audience are people that have got multiple Google's Business Profiles. If they can get that you can't say fairer than that. That's a legendary offer that.

Mike Martin: to put 20 or 30 clients on, then I'm I'm all in. I'll do a one-on-one meeting with them. I'll go through, I'll show the I'll set it up with them there and then on the spot. I'll give them the free license. I'll set it up for them, and we'll run through everything. And once they've seen it on on the enterprise model and how the client portal works, obviously they start pitching it out to their clients. I mean, they you even need to pitch it? It's literally most people do this already for clients. They just spend time doing it.

James Dooley: So, if you're a franchise SEO agency owner or you're just an SEO agency owner that you're doing local SEO for on Google Maps or even if you're not doing it yet, but you're looking to get into it and you've got lots of clients, make sure you check out gbplat.com/meetmike. Meet {hyphen} mike is it?

Mike Martin: That's if you want to book a meeting with me if you're an agency enterprise, yeah. Meet {hyphen} mike.

James Dooley: And And don't forget, guys, James Dooley, the founder of Fat Ranker Pro, Mike gives it a five-star rating. It is a great tool if you're looking to scale out optimizing Google Business Profiles. Mike, it's been an absolute pleasure.

Mike Martin: Cheers, mate. Thank you.

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