EP100: SEO Strategies With Ronnie Rodrigues

I actually, just to kind of, I could take you through a long, long story, but I'd rather keep this to the point and at least get to your question. But essentially, I worked in the corporate. field and area for corporate finance and operations for well over 15 years. And roughly about five years ago, I basically stumbled upon SEO. And then the thing that really drew me in is that, you know, I'm analytical, I'm an analytical person. And so it kind of goes hand in hand, the work that I do, and it fits, you know, our personality quite well. And so essentially around five years ago, a little bit over that time, I started dabbling, getting into SEO. And then took a step deeper and really started understanding how it could benefit local businesses. Yeah.

Correct. We'll say I keep it... contractors, home services, basically any type of home service-based businesses that travel to a customer, consumer to perform work is essentially the work, you know, the clients that we work with. But yeah.

Okay, so I'll break it down in a nutshell. Want to get right to the point here. Essentially, you're a local business. You want to optimize your business online, your digital asset or entity online. So that way you can show up at the top of, you know, the work that we do is on Google. Obviously, it's 95% of market share is owned by Google. The work that we do is optimize websites, Google business profiles, as well as various assets and entities online so that they rank for specific keywords. But beyond those keywords, it's really about search intent and then what the consumer is looking for, then fulfilling that search intent, if that makes sense. And so essentially, that's what we do to help local contractors at a 30,000 square foot view is get you on page one of Google, get you ranking in the map pack so that way you can. Build your brand, build your online visibility, as well as obviously get more leads for your business.

Search. Yeah. Organic search.

The very important part. Yeah.

Yeah. So search organic search. So essentially what organic is, is anything that's when you go onto Google, you're going to see if you're just doing a regular Google search, let's say for a particular service in your area, like chimney cleaning or something in your area. Right. So you'll search chimney cleaning, you know, plus the city that you're located. Generally, this is what consumers do. Right. So that retrieval that, you know, that you get back, that's if you do it from your desktop, that's going to be basically paid ads is going to be located at the top. And anything organic, meaning free traffic, is located at the lower half of the page. So that's where a website would come into play. But that search organic from the online desktop version, but also Google Maps is something that a lot of local contractors don't realize the impact. Like it's absolutely for majority of contractors, it's an absolute must that you want to get your name out there and have great. build up brand by having great reviews about your business. Essentially, it's an absolute must and it's from mobile. And so essentially when you search that same search service, like chimney service plus the city, but instead you're doing it from your mobile phone, what pops up at the top is generally all of the, we call it Google Maps. And so that's where Google Business Profile is located. Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

There's a couple of things there. I just want to unpack a little bit. It's basically a lot of misconceptions or myths in the field. And so in the area of marketing and SEO, people have, you know, they've unfortunately been burned by either bad SEO agencies. And so that's left a bad distaste in their mouth about what it truly is, or they haven't really been explained, like what it entails and why it could potentially take building your brand and building rankings over time. It doesn't happen overnight. It happens over time. And so essentially, What people get wrong is they think that, hey, you know, as long as I can, can I rank in a month? That's like the first thing we get, right? So you get people like, hey, I want to rank within a short period of time. That's, you know, that's not good because that generally can't happen unless you're ranking for long, long tail keywords that have very little impact potentially in the search. But generally it takes time because now you're trying to build and establish your brand against others in the marketplace. And so when we look at. contractors, a lot of them will say like, this is my competitor on page one. I want to beat them in like two months. Like that, that can't happen in most cases.

Yeah. In a short period of time, if you, um, it's, we have to look natural in the eyes of Google and what we do, what we optimize. And so anything that you kind of like try to force feed Google in some way or really forced can maybe hurt your website. And so. It's a journey and not a sprint is what I tell a lot of clients in that basically it's, it can be very fruitful to your business because it can generate revenue for months and months and months. And then beyond that, it's the referrals that you can get from those new customers, new clients, you know, like, and mainly new customers online, right? So now if you have a referral program in your own business, that's where that can thrive even further, you know, but essentially, yeah, it's, it's one of those things where people think they can get the pace. in a month or two, but it's not usually the case. Yeah.

So the thing that, that comes into play is that Google has had a lot of updates over the years to combat spam and to combat any of these practices that are like shady practices. So an example of a shady practice or a practice that potentially hurt your website is purchasing GSA links, right? These links are like robot created, they're like software created links and you can create a thousand and send them to a website. Like that is like basically. putting fire on your home. That's what that equates to. You never, ever, ever in any circumstance want to ever do anything like that or basically hire someone if you don't, if not knowingly, they may be doing something like that to your site. I mean, it's very known within the SEO industry of communities that, you know, you don't do stuff like that. That's really, that can really hurt your site. So essentially the key, the key now to ranking is Google likes to see quality. And so quality meaning So you have your website, the way that Google looks at rankings in their algorithm and the way they factor things in, it's the backlinks to a website that are extremely important. And so if those backlinks are to your website are both relevant and are high quality, then that has a great impact on your site. But if they're not, that can have the exact opposite impact to your site.

It's like a popularity contest. Yeah,

Yes, exactly. So you basically are thrown into a bunch of, you know, bad apples. It's like guilt by association.

I didn't do it.

Okay, so the first step, like you said, is actually claim your Google business profile. So claim that listing. And the way you go about doing that is basically requesting a postcard to be sent to your house in most cases. In some cases, it's handled differently depending on your niche. So if you're a roofing contractor, Google has... There's been a lot of marketers that spam Google and so they're stringent in the way that they go about approval. They typically may require a video call to prove the identity of your business. And so it's either going to be postcard to claim your business or a video call or potentially even an email request. So you want to do that with a specific Gmail account that you have created specifically for your business, right? So with that Gmail account, once you create or claim your listing, postcard comes in, let's just say. Five days typically it'll take, five, six days. Now your listing is live, right? So the things that are going to be critical is looking at your competitors. The competitors have a lot of photos on their Google business profile. Do they have a lot of reviews on their Google business profile? Are they putting GMB posts, we call it? And that's basically updates to your profile, like, you know, what's going on with your business, any new services being offered. So those specific things are probably the biggest, will have the greatest impact for doing basically, if you would do it on your own, right? So you wouldn't necessarily need an SEO agency to do all those pieces, right? But that's how you can kind of hit the ground running if you don't already have a Google business profile.

Google plus or something, but I was a social, I know.

Okay. So I'm going to drop a couple of golden nuggets here. So like this, right? Yeah, I definitely get a pen ready. So if you are a contractor and let's just say you're, you have your GMB up or your Google business profile up, right? You're on site on location and you've done, you're about to complete a job, let's just say, right? So you do before and after photos from your phone on site, customer location, right? So if you do that and have it on your phone and from there, Now, from being on site, either outside or, you know, whatever parked on the street, uploading to your Google business profile, those photos, that in itself, you're already providing a geotagged photo right there because of where you are, your coordinates. Google will read the metadata on that photo and know like where you are, your coordinates and all of that. So it actually will strip out the data before it uploads into the picture, into your Google business profile. with the stripping out, I don't know that it necessarily, it's not going anywhere. They have access to it. So there's got to be a reason why they strip it out for this. Definitely Google stores data, right? So that will be beneficial. The other thing, right? So this is a huge golden nugget, especially now. So engagement is key and critical with your Google business profile. So with engagement, there's like specific things that will count towards engagement. So Google updates. So you as a business owner, updating, let's say once or twice a week about services, you know, things of that nature in your area, right? The second thing is reviews. Customer leaving your review from their cell phone in their location, speaking about the brand of your business and the services provided will be of great benefit to ranking. So basically, if there is a way that you can approach a client or customer upon, you know, finishing a job and you can say, hey, Would you mind leaving us a positive review online? Just let us know, just name our brand, our name of our business in your review, and then what kind of services we perform. So if they can do that, it can be very impactful.

Correct, yeah, yeah. And so the reason why that holds a lot of weight is because in the eyes of Google, that's very hard to manipulate, right? So you can't, as a business owner or a black hat SEO, manipulate a review of a customer in their location, right? So that's why it can be very impactful. But that's a huge golden nugget, yeah.

might. I'm not sure if they do, but they might. But you're hitting on something that could be extremely impactful as well.

As long as the pictures we're taking, yeah, you can actually take them from your office, I believe. As long as the coordinates where they were taken, that's where it's up. But as far as point of upload, I don't believe they look at that data. I don't think so. Okay.

But I think you might be, a lot of companies utilize that. So as long as the customer is leaving a review, even if they're getting notified via email or something on their mobile, you know, that's where it will be very impactful. Yeah.

There's another thing I just want to touch on. When you look at also the utilization of a platform like Google versus social media, understand that the intent is completely different. So when someone goes on Google, their intent is to, you know, if they're searching for something, they're actively looking for a particular service in their area. So they're already in a different like buyer stage, you know, like versus flicking through the feeds on a Facebook, in the Facebook app and go through the feed and then have an interrupt of marketing, which we call it is basically an ad. for a service. They're not there and necessarily look for that ad. They're on their feed, you know, and that's an ad that pops up. But when they're going on to Google, the intent is there and they're in a different mode. It's like buying stage, I would say. Yeah.

Correct. Yeah.

So like an example would be like Plumber Chicago, right? So that's a short tail keyword. So if you were looking at a long tail keyword, it could be something along the lines as toilet drain cleaning Chicago. So that's very specific. And there's more words in that keyword search term. Generally, those search terms that are longer have lesser volume. In my experience, as I've seen at the long tails, they have lesser volume, but they have greater conversion. Basically, someone's looking for or researching something, let's say, in home remodeling, right? And so they're looking. very targeted on a specific thing like remodeling my master bedroom and bathroom, right? So if they were doing something like that, you know, not doing, but basically typing that into a keyword to the search term in Google, that's very targeted. So that person looking for that service, if your business was to show up up top, you have a very higher, you know, there's a higher probability of conversion because now that person has come to you basically on a specific type of search. So a lot of times they're reading upon that. So they're like obtaining information about your business. And then when it comes time to taking the action, they're just closer to the end of that sales funnel, basically to either, you know, not even sales funnel, but booking a call, booking an estimate or quote. They're just very close to that, you know, in the buyer stage.

Yeah, so basically it's funny because when you search Google on a desktop from location, it's not necessarily supposed to be location-based, but there is differences. I've noticed that if I'm searching desktop here versus three states over, whenever five states over and searching desktop there for just a specific keyword without a, we call it geo-modifier, without a city name or anything, like just chimney service, right? There would be a difference. And like you said, this generally will see more preference. But the bigger thing that we see is that when there's good quality written content on a website, in a blog post, it fulfills basically a few of like Google's needs, right? So it fulfills with providing good quality, relevant information to any type of search term. So if you have a very well-written blog post that's really speaking about specific, like you said, the framing of the showers, right? So if you had basically the how-to or what describes it to a certain extent. that will be of greater benefit. Yeah. And then being location-based. But generally, if you have a bigger website you're competing against that has a high domain authority, they might overcome that on search. So they may show up at the top.

Oh, yeah. So basically for a few clients, we do this, right? So we have like a blog post. Let's say it's 500 to 750 word blog post. We'll take a snippet of that blog post, repurpose the content by publishing that on a Google business profile post. So we'll do that and repurpose the content. So you can do that. It's just the number of characters. You're limited on your GMB.

Correct. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So you can have a quick summary, a link right in that update. And then if they click it, they can go right back to your website. It also helps your website. Again, you're pushing engagement and traffic to your site. So it's like a two for one kind of deal.

Yeah. So basically, when you look at the benefit here, I mean, in most cases, I mean, if you're a smaller contractor in a smaller city, in a smaller location, and there's not a lot of competition in your area, generally, you may be able to purchase a website on your own, get it set up, and it will rate well over time. It all depends on what your goals are as a business. And so if you're more of a competitive market, looking to SEO, having somebody, an SEO agency, I should say, to focus on your website is huge because not just... There's a few pieces to it, but the main pillars of SEO are on-page SEO, technical SEO, and then the backlinks, Google Business Profile, and content and syndication. And so, you know, for our agency, what we do is we kind of like, we're all encompassing as far as the services that we provide from an SEO perspective. And so we know things that help rank sites where business owners may not know. Like, so for instance, press releases, specific types of press releases can have a tremendous impact. on Google Business Profile, as well as website. Those press releases are generally very favorable or looked at very favorable by Google. But, you know, business owners don't always know that part of it or they're not sure of what steps to follow in order to carry out a successful SEO campaign. So our agency, that's what we bring is we bring the experience, the knowledge, the expertise in that area and saying, OK, month one, we do technical and on-page SEO. which is everything related to your website. One, two, or within that same month, we might add content as well, add more location pages, more service pages, work through your site and look to see what the type of site architecture is appropriate based on what your competitors are doing. So there's a lot that goes into when we look at those pieces is basically to do a very in-depth analysis to understand what it will take to bring a client to page one from their current spot, right? So. Essentially, that's what we bring is that expertise and understanding of what we need to do, what buttons we need to push to make things move. Yeah.

So the changes that are happening are, Google is very fluid, right? With changes that happen in updates. This is the thing also that is very helpful is have a good keen sense on is, you know, Google generally each, you have to look at each entity or like Google Maps and Google Search are two different databases. And so when there's updates, There's not one update that impacts generally both. It's usually separate updates that are happening. And so Google Business Profile and Maps are like updated basically weekly, if not multiple times each week, where Google Search is updated probably every other day or every day, but they're very minimal updates. There are basically the biggest ones, they'll double mass core updates. And that happens usually two to three times per year. Those are the ones that we really pay attention to to see. Basically, we have good, a good sense of seeing how websites react from across all of our clients to see what, give us better insight what Google is doing potentially. You know, as far as, you know, what changes are they making and how do we either combat those changes, not necessarily, but basically still stay on top and not let those changes impact our client sites. One big thing is Google Maps has been definitely, there's been a lot of focus to reviews. There has been a lot, a lot of focus because a lot of spammers, bad marketers, they'll be in those profiles and there's a lot of fake reviews. So what we're seeing is that even as of earlier this month and last month as well, actually, but earlier this month, they do these sweeps where they sweep, like you may be a legitimate business that has 30 reviews, they'll do a sweep and you'll lose 10 reviews for no reason. I mean, so what I see with that is that, you know, good reviews are being lost. The legitimate reviews are being lost in the shuffle, but Google is paying a lot of attention to that. With that, that tells me they're focusing on quality and authority reputation there. Like that's really the main focus because they want to make sure that the reviews that you're seeing that is trustworthy, right? So whatever you're Googling online and you're the consumer and you're reading, you don't want to go across the first five businesses that have all fake reviews on their business, right? So when you trust in Google by using Google, right? So essentially that's what they're combating right now. So they're doing a lot of updates that are impacting. the reviews and there's been a lot of jumps in the Google Maps as far as businesses, you know, jumping up and down. So I can tell there's constant updates happening there.

Yeah, exactly. So when you have a review, that's why what I mentioned previously is that when you have a review by a consumer that says the brand of your name, the brand of your business. in that review, as well as a keyword potentially of the service that was provided, right? You have that in the review, that holds a lot of weight. So Google reads all of that. Yeah, they do have, that has a lot of weight because again, that's not a business owner writing their view. That's a different, you know, a second party or, you know, writing that review. So that tends to have a greater weight. That's why press releases are impactful as well, because that's a separate, you know, publication that's posting something about your business. So that holds a higher weight in the eyes of Google. Yeah.

Correct. Yeah. It'll see, it knows, it'll, it'll know to associate that and that'll have, you know, greater impact when, like you said, at the end of the day, what all Google is trying to do is surf up to the person who's doing the search, what they think they want, right? So beyond that, they're going to provide the, you know, what they think they want, chimney service, cleaning or home remodeling, right? Remodeling my home. They're going to. bring, you know, show you the top people, right? So they're not going to show you the guys that have like one star generally. There's like 10 guys that have over 50 stars,55 stars, right? So like when you have guys like that on Google Maps, that's what it looks at. It looks at the trust piece, the quality piece, usually more reviews, better reviews, shows good quality. That's a better trusted company. So that's what they're going to show at the top of rankings. So yeah. And then we have keywords sprinkled in there that basically it allows them to really. pull that association between your business. It looks to your Google business profile as well as your website from those keywords in the reviews. So it'll even crawl and look at your website. So it knows that association.

Correct. And responding to reviews actually is beneficial as well because it helps toward user engagement. So you're engaging with your profile. Customers are engaging. So that helps is doing that as well, too. But like you said, that's a pretty nifty way of kind of sneaking in your keyword there. Yeah.

You may have been really good. Correct.

Oh, so AI, I know there's a lot of, I just think that's like a loaded question because I think AI is going to be disruptive for like everything. But, you know, to what extent, I guess we won't know until we get there. But with SEO, there's already a lot of... chatter about certain things. But at the end of the day, it's, I don't know. I don't see it really having a tremendous impact.

Content writing. Yeah. So where in the SEO space, people are doing that already. They're like, I'm hearing a lot about various tools being used so that way they can put blog posts out there, like all auto-generated. So what I see with that is, as of right now, I don't know that Google is paying much attention to any of that, but it doesn't mean that within, let's say you had 20 posts on your website that were all AI generated posts. It doesn't mean that a year from now, Google doesn't change the way they look at sites and now begin to penalize sites that have AI written, if they're able to detect it. I mean, so what I generally will say, if someone's looking to do any kind of AI, just always, you know, it's not at a point where it's as. well-developed that you can just like basically throw something in there, generate a post and then throw it on your site. A lot of times it can look kind of spammy. So you always have to have somebody look at that and at least fine tune that article, rewrite certain things. So you can utilize AI as a tool to be more efficient, I feel like as an SEO agency. But as far as like, it's like anything else, utilizing a tool to be more efficient. But I don't see it being like a dominating factor in any way at this point in time.

Oh, man. So you want to see a book right now? Oh, I don't have it over here. It's just a brand new book. So I do, on a side note, it's a day trading book about candlestick, reading candlesticks. That's what I'm reading right now, if you would have asked me. But generally, I don't know, some of the books I like, a lot of the ones that, you know, one is one of them that the author of that habit. right over there actually. But there's a few. Napoleon Hill has obviously the one that they can grow rich, which everybody is well aware of. That's one of my favorites.

Oh, I have to run up. Oh, that's all right. Yeah, it's a small book. It's more about technical, basically the trading, you know, on how to read candlesticks and patterns. Oh my gosh. It's more of a... Yeah, it's not a very in-depth book. It's more about get a better understanding of how to read patterns. Yeah.

I was drawn to that. You know, I saw and I said, let me just grab this. You know, just pick up something new.

A couple of ways. You can email me. Ronnie at SMT, digital solutions. com. So Ronnie at Sarah, Mary, Tom, digital solutions. com. Or you can give our agency a call at 508-690-5843. And yeah, happy to answer any questions that anybody may have about SEO and set them in the right direction.

Yeah. Ronnie at SEO marketing, I believe.

Yes. Ronnie SEO marketing.