Showing results for "SEO"

What are Analytics in Local SEO? Analytics in Local SEO provide valuable insights into how a business is performing on search platforms Google and Bing. By tracking key metrics, businesses can better understand customer interactions, refine their digital marketing strategies, and optimize local search presence. Google Business Profile Insights Google Business Profile Insights provide a detailed overview of how customers find and interact with a business on Google. These metrics help businesses assess their online visibility and customer engagement. Key Google Metrics Available in Local SEO Search Terms – Displays the queries people use to find a business. (Available in Local SEO and Executive Report.) Search Total – Shows the total number of searches where the business appeared. (Available in Local SEO, Executive Report, Multi-Location, and Multi-Location Executive Report.) Customer Interaction [Bookings] – Tracks completed customer bookings. (Available in Local SEO, Executive Report, Multi-Location, and Multi-Location Executive Report.) Customer Interaction [Conversations] – Counts unique conversations initiated via messages. (Available in Local SEO, Executive Report, Multi-Location, and Multi-Location Executive Report.) Customer Interaction [Food Orders] – Measures food orders placed directly through Google. (Available in Local SEO, Executive Report, Multi-Location, and Multi-Location Executive Report.) Note: Google updates the Searches metric at the beginning of each month, and it may take up to five days to reflect new data. Bing Insights in Local SEO Bing Insights allow Local SEO Pro users to see how their business listings perform on Bing. This feature enhances visibility into search traffic and customer interactions beyond Google. Key Bing Metrics Available in Local SEO Traffic insights to measure Bing as a source of customer visits. Customer interactions based on listing visibility and engagement. Performance trends for evaluating marketing effectiveness. Accessing Analytics in Local SEO Google Insights Navigate to the Analytics tab in Local SEO. View Google-specific data related to search queries, interactions, and overall visibility. Bing Insights (Available for Local SEO Pro Users) Select a Local SEO Pro account. Ensure that the Bing profile is created and synced under Listing Sync. Go to the Analytics section and click on Bing Insights to view performance data. Note: If Bing sync is disabled, users will need to enable it to access Bing insights. New syncs require time to backfill data from the last 90 days. Why These Insights Matter Better Decision Making – Helps businesses understand which search platforms are driving traffic. Improved Engagement Strategies – Aligns customer interactions with business goals. More Control Over Listings – Ensures that businesses can monitor and adjust their presence on both Google and Bing.

Check out this white-label walkthrough video of Local SEO!

The Admin View in our Local SEO product has been a powerful tool for Partners, offering the ability to adjust product settings, view sync statuses across locations, and identify discrepancies between Primary Categories set by partners and Google. Now, we've introduced a convenient enhancement for Partner Admin users—a direct access point to the Local SEO Admin Dashboard from within the product interface. Partner Admins can now easily navigate to the Admin Dashboard using the new Admin button located in the product's sidebar. How to Access the Local SEO Admin Dashboard Navigate to Partner Center > Accounts > Manage Accounts > Select Account > Local SEO. In the sidebar of the Local SEO product, locate and click on the new Admin button in the left-hand panel.

Local SEO empowers your agency to start the conversation about digital solutions with local businesses. You can introduce hundreds of business owners to a powerful solution that can help improve their local findability.  Inform your SEO strategy with data that shows exactly which keywords are helping your clients rank in Google organic search and Google Maps.  To get started with Keyword Tracking, navigate to Local SEO > Keyword Tracking. From here, select 'Add Keywords.' For those with the Standard edition of Local SEO, you’ll be able to add 3 keywords. Those with Local SEO Pro will be able to add 15 keywords in total. Click 'Add Keywords' to save, and start tracking. It may take 10-15 minutes for results to populate after keywords are updated Note: If you wish to purchase more keywords you can do so by activating the “Additional Keywords” add-on.  The Local Grid allows you to zero in on individual hotspots that tell you how your client's business is ranking in that particular geographic location. The map radius will default to 1.25 miles but if you wish to change the radius of the map, you can do so by clicking the Settings Gear and selecting from 1.25, 2.5, 5, or 10 miles for larger cities. While the Trend tab showcases the progress of that particular keyword over time. Keyword Tracking Refresh Rate The refresh rate for Keyword tracking depends on the version of the Local SEO active on the account. Local SEO Standard Monthly Local SEO Pro Weekly   FAQ Q: Can I add or change the competitors in Local SEO Pro? A: You cannot change or add competitors linked to specific keywords in Local SEO Pro. The competitors are system-generated based on the geographical area and the keywords being tracked. If you have concerns about the competitors displayed, you may consider deleting the associated keywords instead.

SEO Keywords can be reported on in the Executive Report! You and your clients can select keywords to be synced (to sources that accept this data), and specify which ones should be pushed to the Executive Report. This allows you to monitor keywords without pushing them all to the Executive Report. When should I sync Keywords to the Executive Report?  When you want to monitor more keywords than you are actively working on. You may only want to report on the ones you are doing the work on. When you want to report only on the keywords that have made progress as SEO efforts can take time to show results. When you only want to display keywords when clients purchase specific SEO products or services. You can set the default you would like for new keywords - either to be favorited or not when new keywords are added.

A strong Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy is vital for any business looking to compete online. The main objective of SEO is to increase a website's traffic and ultimately its conversion rate. This is accomplished by ranking high in the search results for keywords related to the business. The SEO strategy's mission is to optimize the website's content so that search engines find the business more relevant and authoritative than their competitors.  This is why it's vital that your clients understand how they appear in local search results and how a majority of their online information affects their search ranking. Snapshot Report can be a great tool in helping them visualize this as it shows exactly how the business ranks within Google Search.  SEO Section Breakdown The SEO section requires a minimum 60% match to the Google listing for Name, Address, Phone Number, and/or Website to populate this section correctly. If this threshold is not met through matched data, the system sees no match found. Weighting: Name: 20% Address: 20% Phone Number: 40% Website: 20% Local Search Results This section displays exactly how your prospect's business appears within Google's search results. This helps them to visualize how they appear for any new customers with no prior search history. This section is broken up into two separate parts.  Google Map: This displays their rank within an 800-meter radius around the business's location. Each hotspot is clickable and shows how they rank within that hotspot compared to local competitors for the selected keyword.  Search Results: This showcases the top three search results for the selected hotspot, and where the prospect appears. If they don't appear within the top three results, they'll appear just below their search ranking. They'll also be able to see whether their Google Business profile is claimed or not, which can affect how they rank within these results.  NOTE: The keyword that is chosen is pulled from their Google Business Profile account if it's claimed, and if it's not claimed then it uses the prospects business category. This keyword can also be changed in the Snapshot Reports customization settings found when editing the report. Learn more about your customization options.  Organic Keyword Performance Organic Keyword Performance measures your prospects against their competition when it comes to the number of keywords they rank for, organically. The higher the value per click, the more optimized your prospects' keywords are.  Keywords: This number shows how many organic keywords your prospect shows up for within the top 50 results of Google. So while they may show up for more than this number of keywords, if they appear within the 50+ results, those keywords won't be counted.  Clicks: This measures how many times those keywords have led to a user clicking on and visiting your prospect's website from Google Search.  Value: This shows how much your prospect would have to spend monthly on paid ads for those same keywords to receive the same amount of clicks they're getting organically. Please note: this value will be displayed in USD ($).  NOTE: This is calculated by assigning each organic keyword a value determined by where the prospect's business domain ranks on it. So the higher a business ranks for a keyword, the more valuable that keyword is to them. We then calculate the average across all their organic keywords. Value per click: Value per click = Value / Clicks. This is the value of each organic click your prospect receives.  Organic Keyword Ranking Organic Keyword Ranking displays up to 5 of the top keywords your prospect currently ranks for. This gives the prospect a good idea of how Google views its website based on its content.  Keywords: These are the keywords and phrases that customers would be searching for to find your prospects' business on Google. These are determined by reviewing the content on their website.  NOTE: It's important to note that this data is based on the content of your prospect's website. If these keywords don't match up with their business or industry, then that means that work is required to optimize their website content so that they rank for keywords more related to their area of expertise.  Competitiveness: This measures how difficult it is to appear in the top Google search results for that specific keyword. The more competing businesses that are targeting that specific keyword in their SEO strategies, the longer the dark blue bar will be.  Rank: This displays the position your prospect ranks within Google's search results. The closer to 1 they are, the better they're doing in optimizing for that specific keyword.  Local Searches (US Only): For the given search term, this is the amount of estimated organic traffic the keyword receives on average per month within the prospect's local area.  Clicks (Outside of the US): For the given search term, this is the estimated number of clicks the keyword receives on average per month.  Global Searches: This is the estimated number of searches per month across Google for that keyword. 

Discover the benefits of offering Local SEO or Local SEO Pro to local businesses. Local SEO establishes accurate business listings, which helps clients attract leads, stay top-of-mind, and generate revenue. Drive Your Digital Revenue Growth  With Local SEO, your clients can establish accurate business listings across the web, increasing their chances of getting found in local searches. Packed with four powerful presence management tools—Google Insights, Listing Sync, Citation Builder, and My Listing—Local SEO is the most comprehensive business listing solution on the market. Local SEO empowers your agency to start the conversation about digital solutions with local businesses. You can introduce hundreds of business owners to online presence management and your digital marketing platform. Once your clients are ready to buy, Listing Sync Pro and Citation Builder are natural upsells that maximize revenue. Google Insights Empower your clients to see how their business is performing on Google Search and Maps. Google Insights in Local SEO provides your clients with a valuable glimpse of their customer activity, including: How customers find their listing Where customers find them on Google What customers do once they find their listing Listing Sync With Local SEO, your prospects and/or clients can sync their business info to Google Business Profile, and Facebook for no extra charge. With Local SEO Pro, you can also sync to Apple, Bing, X, and Instagram. From there, you can upsell them to Listing Sync Pro, where they can quickly establish accurate business listings on more than 35 reputable sites. Improve your client's chances of getting found online. Drive customers to your client’s businesses by generating accurate locations on popular navigation systems. Empower your clients to quickly change their hours and contact info whenever there’s a change to their business details. Protect your clients’ listings against manipulation by third parties Citation Builder With Citation Builder, your prospects and/or clients can monitor the accuracy of their listings on the three data aggregators—Tranunion, Foursquare, and Neustar/Localeze—that are referenced by over 300 sites. You can then upsell them to the paid version of Citation Builder where they can build accurate business listings on the four major data aggregators. Improve the likelihood that potential customers find your business in local search. Generate hundreds of online citations. Fix inaccurate business info at the root of the problem. My Listing With My Listing, your clients can easily create a mobile-responsive business listing that is optimized for local search. Drive more traffic to your client's website. Display your clients’ store hours and contact info so it’ll be easier for people to find their business. Design and share coupons to generate revenue. A strong presence is the first step toward success. With Local SEO, your clients are getting the most essential set of tools they need to start building their online reputation. And after you give it to them—for no extra cost to you—they’ll need more of your solutions to take their marketing to the next level.

Join George Leith on the latest episode of the Conquer Local Podcast as he chats with Will Palmer about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in the legal niche. While Will has 15 years of professional Sales and Marketing experience, he has dedicated the last nine years to the legal industry. His accomplishments include being a 4-time winner of The Sales President’s Club Qualifier by ADP & Thomson Reuters, and Regional Salesperson of the Year by Thomson Reuters. He founded three companies; KyteStrings Digital, dedicated to Med Spa Marketing, Growth Lab, a Legal Marketing service, and lastly, Performance Content Partners, his most recent SEO content services. To learn more about Growth Lab, visit: https://growthlabseo.com/about/ Conquer Local is presented by Vendasta. We have proudly served 5.5+ million local businesses through 60,000+ channel partners, agencies, and enterprise-level organizations. Learn more about Vendasta, and we can help your organization or learn more about Vendasta’s Affiliate Program and how our listeners (like yourself) make up to $10,000 off referrals. Are you an entrepreneur, salesperson, or marketer? Then, keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy. SEO in the Legal Niche Introduction George: This is the Conquer Local podcast, a show about billion-dollar sales leaders, marketers leading local economic growth, and entrepreneurs that have created their dream organizations. They wanna share their secrets, giving you the distilled version of their extraordinary feats. Our hope is, with the tangible takeaways from each episode, you can rewire, rework, and reimagine your business. I'm George Leith, and on this episode, we welcome Will Palmer. With over 15 years of professional sales and marketing experience and nine of the 15 dedicated to lawyers, we're gonna learn from Will how to capture this lucrative niche. He's a four-times President's Club Qualifier and won Regional Salesperson of the Year, and when you listen to Will, you'll see he is a dialed-in sales professional. He founded and rebranded three different companies and I wanna hear that story for sure. Get ready, conquerors, for Will Palmer. He's coming up next on this week's episode of the Conquer Local podcast.  George: Well, it's been a while since I've been to Kansas City, Missouri, so today we're gonna do it virtually. Will Palmer on the line with us from Kansas City, CEO, and founder of Growth Lab. Welcome, Will, to the Conquer Local podcast. Will: Thanks, George, good to be here. George: We're pretty excited to have you on the show because you've been very successful in your career working in what I consider to be a really lucrative space, which is working with law firms. But love to understand a little bit more about your background and how you became the SEO expert that you are today. Will: Yeah, I'll give you the rundown with my experience. So, I guess the best way I would describe myself would be sort of an internet nerd, and my wife would attest to that. I've just always been on the computer from a young age and sort of turned into this legal marketing entrepreneur over the last almost 10 years, believe it or not. And so, worked with, you know, pretty national well-known agency in the marketing space for legal. Before that, had pretty traditional professional sales experience with some big players, like ADP, and ultimately, in the last couple of years, have realized my dream of being an entrepreneur and quitting sorta the corporate world to give myself just an opportunity to kinda build my own empire, so to speak, to have really better work-life balance, to build a team, to take sorta my creativity and apply it to the business world, take my sales experience, apply that to my ability to acquire our own customers and really just gain a lot more control over the sales process, the marketing solutions that we provide that lead to really good results for our law firms that we serve. So it's been a really fun ride and I just wish I did it sooner. George: Yeah, you know, we were talking about this before we jumped onto the show. You were in the corporate world for quite some time, honed all your skills, and then took the plunge. So congratulations on that. And what you are articulating, I hear from lots of entrepreneurs, "I just that we woulda done it earlier." But for folks that are listening on to the show today, I do wanna talk a little bit about your experience, because you mentioned, you know, you're doing the sales. Like you're right in there doing the sales and leveraging all those skills. Is that a key component to your success, obviously? Will: Yeah, I think, and I've talked about this before, in my humble opinion, one of the most important common traits among the most successful entrepreneurs, no matter how big the business is, is the ability to sell and get out of your comfort zone if you aren't familiar with sales and to sell. So yeah, I would say it's played a significant role in our ability to scale quickly because the sales process, obviously, being one sort of cog in the machine in terms of how you can scale quickly with revenue and make a really valuable service for your clients. But sales has been a huge component of that, no doubt. George: So you founded and rebranded three different companies. Let's talk about those and the niches that they serve. Will: Yeah. Try not to do that if you're listening. Yeah, you know, you learn and you make kinda some mistakes, but yeah, that's really what happened. And just to touch on the why behind that and a little bit about my journey. When I was with a large organization serving legal, and I've served legal for close to 10 years now, coming up on 10 years, you know, I certainly didn't wanna violate any non-competes, things like that. So really, I carved out a niche in a space that was geared towards med spas and sorta healthcare. And it worked really well. We brought in a lotta good money and it was called KyteStrings Digital. It was really an integrated approach where we would essentially touch every channel. Despite my sales background, I guess I'm a little bit unique in that I, like I mentioned, I'm sorta the marketing nerd as well, and that I can practice what I preach. I love digging into analytics and different acquisition channels and all that. So we could say yes to a lotta different things over there. So we could say yes to automation, email marketing, Facebook ads, Google ads, SEO, website, I mean, everything you could think of, we could say yes to, and that was good because it earned us a lotta business quickly. The bad part of that was that it was not scalable. There was a lot of elements to that that were out of our control in terms of building repeatable, predictable, and high-output processes within each of those channels. It's just almost impossible to do effectively unless you have a 30- or 40-employee agency and you've been around for a long time. So, when I left the corporate world and I was out of the non-compete, I was able to pivot back into legal. Between that process, I had created a new entity and made a different brand. And that was purposes for equity distribution among the partnerships I was exploring, so I won't get in the weeds on that. But ultimately, we did finalize sort of hopefully our, knock on wood, our final rebrand, which is called Growth Lab. It really exists to allude to the fact that, you know, my team is, we're very deep and skilled in a few very key areas, and we're not wide. I literally took the opposite approach. Instead of trying to offer a lot of things so that I could say yes to a lot of business, I turned down a ton of business or refer it to agency partners or colleagues in the space that do things outside of what we do. And really, we only do three things for law firms at this point with Growth Lab. We do SEO, which is really our bread and butter. We do SEM, so we run ads on Google, Yahoo, Bing, so search ads. And we do websites. That's the only three things we do. We do not touch anything else. And Growth Lab has been successful at really scaling because of how deep our knowledge is in those areas. George: Well, it's fascinating to me, because what you're referring to, I've talked a lot on this show about over my career, where I sold radio ads, on one station with one format to reach one audience. And then digital comes along and I loved the fact that we could solve more problems, but I wanna understand why tailoring it to just three things, I think it has something to do with scalability, but explain to us what the strategy is there. Will: Yeah, it has to do with scalability, but even more important than that, I think, it has to do with how we can best serve our customer base. And so, if you're an agency owner or even if you're a business and you're trying to understand where to invest a dollar in marketing and sort of, what are the most high-priority things, 'cause as I just alluded to, there's let's say a dozen different channels or strategies you can invest in, depends on your clients' clients. So our law firms' clients, unlike other industries, like healthcare or e-comm or product-based stuff, where you're trying to sort of educate the marketplace, where that's, in my opinion, social media can work really well, if you're trying to create demand, demand creation, we're not in the business of demand creation for legal. We're in the business of demand fulfillment. And so, if you think about a law firm, let's say, you get a DUI. You have a pretty urgent need for an attorney if you're arrested for some kinda criminal charge. Let's say you're trying to get a divorce or you need a divorce attorney. There's a pretty, typically a pretty high urgency around that or personal injury, if you're in a car accident, right? We see the billboards and the TV slots for that. There's a need that needs to be fulfilled with some urgency, and there's some legal questions that need to be urgently answered. So, when we looked at our clients' clients and the legal consumer and their journey to connect to a law firm, and just having been in the space and tried a lotta different things, the most linear path for a legal consumer to connect with a law firm is through search, through SEO, I mean, it's the real estate on Google. And so, if you do a search for top car wreck attorney in whatever city or any of the other practice areas I just mentioned, that real estate includes the local service area ads and pay-per-click at the top, of course, map section and basically organic below that. And that's when our clients can dominate those areas and there's a website on the backend that tells a really unique story, it tells people who they are, what they do, and how to contact them and sort of the five-second rule that I call it, and it converts, that, those three things are the highest return on investment channels, in my opinion, that legal can pursue with their dollars. That, again, is the most linear path. So yeah, it's scalable, but it also serves our client best. And I can talk more about the scalability piece, but it's just been incredibly effective at the results piece. And that's where we're getting referred and getting a lot of growth happening. George: How do you overcome the fact that lawyers are competitive? If you're working with one law firm in a market, are you able to work with others or do you have to go into another market and kinda give 'em a bit of an exclusivity? Will: That's a great question. And our prospects ask us the same question as well. Like, well, "Are you working with other firms in Atlanta," or Houston or LA or whatever it is? And I'm always, of course, honest about it, but what I usually tell people, because when I was with in the corporate world and with Thomson Reuters, I had over 100 clients in Kansas City alone, which is kinda mind-boggling. People don't realize how many solo and small law firms are out there in every metro. And that is problematic. I mean, that's incredibly saturated. But what I usually tell people, and to answer your question is, you want a law firm or any business to participate in the process of search, in the process of client, you know, decision-making processes. And the data behind the legal consumer, and I'm sure this applies to other industries that some of your listeners may be dabbling in or focused on, is that consumers aren't looking at one website before they make a call or fill out a web form. They're looking, you know, between three and four, at least in the legal space. So, as long as our clients are participating in that process and we can effectively differentiate them through unique value proposition language and content and headlines, and just to give you some real-life examples, you know, you may be a woman that needs a divorce and maybe you want a female divorce attorney on your side, or maybe, you know, you got a DUI and there's a younger, hungrier looking attorney with a bunch of accolades or maybe there's an older attorney that has more experience, 'cause you have a really high-stakes, you know, white collar crime involved. And there's always this psychological and cognitive decision-making process at play. And as long as we can get our clients into that position, they usually are going to win because consumers do want choices. So, the other thing too, there's always a right way and a wrong way to do marketing with legal. And if you're an attorney and you believe in the power of digital, and you believe in legal consumers going online to choose an attorney, which is what they do, you can either work with somebody that has seen it all and knows exactly how to build these campaigns, or you can work with somebody that may claim they do and you're still having to compete with everybody else. Do you know what I mean? George: Right. Will: We understand that and we can differentiate our clients so that they're all getting results, in my opinion. George: No, that's really, really well thought out. What I was jumping at is, I got a good feeling that you've had this conversation a few times where you're dealing with a client and they say to you at the end of the presentation, after they sign on the contract, they go, "Just don't sell it to my competitor." 'Cause they see it as a competitive advantage. That's the idea of the perfect sales pitch, in my opinion. Will: Yeah. And that, I'd probably say this, you know, I get it, I'd probably say something similar. But you know, I'm a business owner, they're a business owner, we're all entrepreneurial. George: Yeah. Will: At the end of the day, if they're not happy with the results we're providing, I certainly don't want anybody handcuffed to us with, you know, 12-month term agreements and things like that. I mean, we're a very flexible team. Our team is, we're very entrepreneurial. We're very pragmatic. We're incredibly skilled at what we do and dynamic, and I'm just bragging on my team because we understand the marketing systems that grow our clients' businesses. And if, for some reason, there's a competition issue where it's preventing results from happening, I mean, we'll get it fixed. It's not something we've had to come across thus far. George: That's fascinating. Hey, often, the account manager and the SEO fulfillment coordinator are two different fields. Do you have one person fulfilling both account management and SEO for your clients? Will: We do. The way I structured our team is a bit unique in that our account managers are fulfilling a lot of the SEO services that we provide. Not all of them, but that was intentional after sort of some trial and error where they were, you know, leading teams behind them and just reporting on results and acting as that liaison. But the problem is, when you have an account manager also fulfilling a lot of the SEO, the technical SEO stuff, it reduces the distance between results and communication with clients. 'Cause the SEO space is full of a lot of imposters, unfortunately, that talk a big game, but they don't deliver what they promise, you know? George: No, unfortunately, it is tainted with that for sure. So, given the knowledge and experience that you've garnered over the last number of years in your career, this 15-year career, if you go back and do something differently or a couple things differently, what would that be? Will: Yeah, I mean, based on the knowledge that I have now, I would certainly say niche down, both with clients and with your service offerings. In fact, there's a company that a colleague and I just incorporated and we're gonna bring on some clients that is so niche, it's geared content, it's content only. So it's a content marketing agency geared specifically towards a single niche. So it's not even SEO and website. I mean, it's literally we're just going to produce SEO content. It's called Performance Content Partners where the entire point of that content is just to drive qualified traffic and leads through a website through, you know, high-intent content. So when we're scaling down and niching down, and serving a very specific audience with a very specific service set, that is what I would do much earlier on in sorta my entrepreneurial journey with marketing. It's just much easier to create repeatable processes, teams that are very expert in what they do, and that, again, it leads to higher value for our clients. George: And I think that it's a really good lesson, because where missed expectations happen is where you get that, you know, huge menu of items that you deliver and some of them you don't deliver on a regular basis aren't very good, and then it leads to bad experience. I'm trying to dig into this, but I think that this is what you're trying to solve against by having a smaller set of things that you do really, really well. Will: Yeah, exactly, and I think, for the entrepreneurs and agency owners that are listening and also the business owners that are trying to understand how to best grow their business with marketing, the advice I always tell people, and this is not a sales pitch towards what we do, I even say to prospects, even if you don't work with our team, what I would encourage you to find is a agency or a marketer that is really focused on what you do. Because I think most agencies out there have what I call a heterogeneous customer base problem, in that their customers are not all the same. They serve lots of small businesses or even enterprise kinds of clients. And the problem with that is when you don't have a niche that you serve, like legal as an example, one of many, then the insights that you gather, the strategies you use from working with just legal or just one kind of customer are not able to be recycled, there's no relearning. And when you're marketing to each new customer, you're having to sort of relearn things. And as a result, there's an efficiency problem that happens and your ability to deliver consistent results to your customer base, that is lost. And I think the more customer types you bring on in an agency, the worse service can get for each customer because it's sorta creating this negative feedback loop and customer results ultimately get hurt in that process that we found. George: No, there's some really good lessons in there, and you know, the one thing I wanna leave our audience with is we've gotta congratulate you on the big award that you won here recently, Will. So congratulations, Vendasta's Strategy Excellence Award for 2022. We'll see if you can defend that next year. But thanks for educating us today, some great learnings, and we wish you all the best with your organization as you continue to grow. Growth Lab is a juggernaut. You're doing a great job there. Will: Thanks, George, really appreciate you having me on. Conclusion George: We've been hearing about this niching down thing, phenomenon. I wonder if it shouldn't be niching to win, because niching down, to me, is a little bit negative. But what Will was referring to is by dialing in your offerings and having less offerings that very clearly solve the problems that your customer base has, and then not selling to everybody, being very focused on one vertical or one niche that you do really well, you have a chance to get higher paying customers with larger margin, and you deliver every time. And wouldn't it be great to say that when you sit down with your customer and you get a smile on their face and they're just talking about, "Wow, that was a great month? Look at all of the leads that we were delivered or the new customers that we were able to speak to." It's pretty cool to see it happen, and Will is living it every single day. And you can hear because he's been doing it for a long time, there's quite a bit of discipline needed. Because you have to be ready to say no, to say that that doesn't fit with what we know we can deliver and be successful with. If you liked Will's episode, I sure did, discussing SEO in the legal niche, then let's continue the conversation. Check out these episodes. 217, "The Evolution of Search Engine Marketing," with Sandy Lohr, episode 422, "A Guide to Google Ads," with Mike Rhodes, or episode 514, "The Current State of Vendor and Media Company Relations," with Martin Kristiseter. Please subscribe and leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts, and thanks for joining us this week on the "Conquer Local" podcast. My name is George Leith. I'll see you when I see you.

SEO permeates every facet of the modern business. Local businesses need to be practicing SEO tactics to survive, and consumers depend on search results to make informed purchase decisions. But, as a salesperson, how do you position SEO to deliver a clear value proposition? And how does that change 30, 60, 90, or 120 days down the road? All of your questions will be answered as we are joined by Will Scott, CEO of Search Influence, and a true pioneer in the digital space. Will launched his first website in 1994 and has been driving digital innovation in the space ever since. — Introduction George: It is the latest edition of the "ConquerLocal" podcast. We continue our special editions where we're speaking about everything to do with the digital marketing stack for local businesses and we're talking about every stage. And we actually might cover off a bunch of stages today because joining me on the line, he's in Florida right now because he's getting ready to run an Ironman on Sunday. But he hangs his hat in New Orleans, one of my favorite cities in the world. Will Scott, the CEO of search influence. He's probably one of the sharpest guys when it comes to SEO, started in the space in 1994 when he launched his first website and we are gonna bring him on the show to give us some insights into how to position SEO to your customer and also how to speak to the value proposition 30, 60, 90, 120 days down the road with those clients. And Will always have some great stories to tell. So we're gonna get some of those and we're going to fill you in on that world of search engine optimization. It's all coming up. Will Scott, the CEO of Search Influence is next on the "ConquerLocal" podcast. — It is the latest addition to the "ConquerLocal" podcast. Thanks for joining us today. We have a special guest joining us from New Orleans, one of my favorite cities. And Will Scott, the CEO of Search Influence on the line. Will, thanks for joining us. Will: George, thanks for asking me. George: You know, we're talking about the digital marketing stack that a local business needs to deploy from awareness through to, you know, your listings and your online reputation and your website and the ranking of that website, the conversion and then the advocacy that you need to get from your existing customers. And, you know, we would need to talk about SEO, who should I call? And there was just one name that came to my mind and that was you, Will, because I remember when you and I met about five-and-a-half years ago, I was speaking on a panel and somebody made some outrageous comment that was on the panel and you jumped in. And I think it was, "You don't wanna respond to negative reviews because you'll get negative keywords," or I can't remember what it was, but it's some crazy bloody thing of not responding to a negative review, you didn't wanna do that. The SEO (R)evolution George: Anyways, that's how we met. And, you know, the purpose of this podcast is to help those sales reps that are listening to it as the training material that we try to provide on how to position this digital marketing stack. That's our goal. And we haven't really said it's gonna be 6 episodes, 12, it might be 20 by the time we're done depending upon who we're able to bring in to speak to it. So today, let's talk about SEO. And, you know, can you give us a bit of an overview of the SEO business and how it's kind of evolved in the last five years? Will: Yeah, thanks, George. I think the growth of the SEO business and the sort of changing of the SEO business from the time that I got into it. And for context, I put my first website online in 1994. So I've been doing this for, conservatively speaking, a long-ass time. The thing that's most interesting to me is there's a great scene in the movie "All That Jazz" where they dance to the song "Everything Old is New Again." And I feel like that is just so relevant because whether we call it SEO or even now online PR or content marketing, it's all of the same stuff. George: Okay. So how is that that it's all the same stuff? Will: Will Reynolds gives a great talk in which he sort of shows how Google does things in response to what they believe are human behaviors. And then SEOs do things in response to what Google has done. And Will's point is that instead of chasing Google, SEO should be chasing the human beings. So how do you answer the questions that they have? How do you help them get their job done? How do you help...in your case, how do you help a sales rep better understand the products that they're trying to take to market? So the last probably three or four years, I think there's been a rhetorical shift from SEO to content marketing and sometimes to local search where people are talking more about how you show up well in maps and in other directory listings, something that your products do very well in helping. But this idea of SEO has perhaps become a little bit less popular than it once was. The Value Proposition for SEO George: So I've also heard it sometimes referred to as, you know, the voodoo of SEO, meaning that it's hard sometimes to explain the benefit or what the ROI is. So if you were to sit down with a local businessperson and say, "I'm gonna help you with your SEO," what would be the way that you would position the deliverable so that you can have that comfortable conversation 30, 60, 90 days down the road rather than an uncomfortable conversation where the client thinks they bought something that they didn't get? Will: It's pretty simple. The art of SEO is being where the prospective customer is searching. So in a way back at the dawn of time, the Yellow Pages had a slogan which was. "We put buyers and sellers together." In essence, what SEO does is puts buyers and sellers together online. And interestingly, depending on where you approach SEO, it may be at different points in the funnel. If you're creating content that talks about a need that's further up the funnel than the actual point of purchase, then you can be actually in the awareness phase. If you talk about things like Google listings and directory listings where someone's actively doing a search and you want to show up on the map, that's very much bottom of funnel, that's transactional, they're ready to buy. So I think that the way to position it and the way that we positioned it to our customers is you wanna be in the places where your customer is searching whether they're just getting to know you or whether they're at the point of purchase and there's different tactics that work for each of those places. George: So I have one VP of sales of a newspaper group, transitioned to a digital marketing company, I should say, that shall go nameless, but he very famously says you need to deploy onsite SEO tactics and offsite SEO tactics. Can we talk about both of those and kind of explain them so the sales rep can understand? Will: I actually think that that's a good starting point and I think it's a tad simplistic. Traditionally, when we talk about onsite SEO, we're talking about things like the title of the pages, the content on the pages. Some very low-level bit twiddling like naming images properly, right? All of those things could go into onsite SEO. And then some much more technical things like the use of schema markup to make sure that your addresses are showing up correctly and there's schema for all kinds of things, schema for videos, schema for articles, schema for medical procedures, interestingly. So while I believe that it's a good sort of entry point to talk about onsite and offsite SEO, I think that when you dig down deeper, onsite SEO can be all kinds of things, some of which is very technical and some of which is marketing, right? The language you use, the calls to action, that sort of thing, those all in my mind are part of what a modern SEO wants to think about. Now I can dig deeper in offsite if you like. And that's a place where I think, interestingly, and we use the Vendasta toolset for some of this, distribution to local directories would be an example of offsite SEO. The creation of content that you promote through PR websites and other places where you can get them placed, those are examples of offsite SEO. Finding reasons for other people to link to you, an example might be a sponsorship of a local organization, right? Those are all examples of offsite SEO. But like I said, it's a good basic idea of onsite versus offsite, and then as you dig in, I think that the subtleties and nuances can make it something that you can have a really productive conversation about for years to come George: So that, you know, you're going exactly where I was hoping you would go with this. I think what the VP of sales was trying to do was to position it very simply for the local businessperson that doesn't understand any of that. But what you started to dig into with the schema discussion...and I'll tell you about something that happened today. I have a couple of clients that are actual end businesses because we of course deal through media companies and agencies and I don't get to talk to too many hardware store people or a whitetail deer ranches or mortgage brokers. So I have a couple people that I deal with directly and there are people that I've met over the years in. And so I was talking to the marketing director, it was 33 mortgage brokers. She was going to have a meeting with her boss and her boss's boss to justify the spend that she has against a number of tactics. And you know, she was lamenting over it because she wants to do a great job and they don't really know. They just know that they're looking for some sort of result and they wanna see the till in the cash register. So we were walking through some of those things around schema and page load times and all the things that we had done to optimize their website, which, you know, excuse my French was a piece of shit when we took it over. And so pretty easy to show that we're getting you more traffic and that the people that are coming to the website are spending more time and you're ranking better on search. But you know, she was looking to have pages upon pages of information because she thought that more pages would show that we'd done a better job. How would you describe that call 30, 60, 90 days down the road for a rep to position it? So we've got our baby digital client over here, doesn't really care too much, just wants to see some metrics, and then we've got the maybe a little more savvy customer we need to have a discussion with. Can we walk through both of those as to how you would do it? Will: Well, I think that we have to help the customer understand for the first maybe 60 days an engagement like that you're really kind of covering the bases. You're managing the basic blocking and tackling of SEO. Can the search engines read the content on your site? Do the words and the language on your site speak to the searcher's intent? So those are very much kind of basic stuff. And then next is, is your information accurate across all of the places where searchers might be looking and Google and other search engines might be looking to validate that you are who you say you are, right? So those are, to me, the 30, 60, 90-day kind of discussions as well as do you have a means of telling whether or not you're getting the results that you're looking for? We have a phrase that we use around our office, which is, "Metrics that matter," right? Because I can give you all kinds of metrics. I can flood you with numbers, but 99% of them don't matter. And the one that I think your marketing director is gonna be most interested in demonstrating is does this tactic drive these leads, right? And then what's my relative cost of this tactic relative to these leads? And that to me is, I think, you know, it's a challenge for a lot of folks to do because they're additive. Now paid search is easy, right? You flip a switch, leads come or they don't come, you know if it's working. With non-paid efforts, with organic efforts, there really is a bit of a cumulative effect. Question Period (SEO Style) George: So first off, setting the expectation that this is not a 30-day fix, it's not a 60-day fix, it is 90 at the minimum or maybe even longer than that? Will: Just this week, in fact, Tuesday afternoon we had a summit with one of our customers who has been a customer of ours actively paying us to engage in SEO for 10 years. And they're still seeing value, right? That guy had 400 plastic surgery patients that you can attribute to SEO, and his cost for acquisition of each of those is considerably lower than his cost of acquisition of any other channel that he's in. But, you know, it's an ongoing process. And I used to have customers asked me all the time, "When do we get to stop paying you?" And I would say, only half joking, "When we've driven all your competition out of business and nobody's graduating from school in your industry. At that point in time, you can stop paying us." Is the demand for SEO growing? George: Now that is a great line. And it's very true because, you know, the money that is invested in this tactic is a very low cost of acquisition compared to the other things that, you know, even compared to buying an ad campaign. So it's really interesting. Do you think the demand for SEO today is higher than it was three years ago? Will: So it's a really interesting question. The answer is yes, but the interesting thing is that customers aren't necessarily calling it SEO, right? In some cases, they're calling it content marketing. In some cases, they're even calling it social media marketing, right? Because the activity in social media and the content that one creates there could be considered as part of the bucket, which we would think of as SEO. Should you showcase positive reviews on-site? George: That's a very good point. I have a question. Should I put my positive reviews of my business on my website? Will: You know, people like me usually like to give the "it depends" answer. I think the answer is yes, right? I think that in certain cases the answer is yes. The reason that I think that is because there may be instances where you're collecting reviews that don't necessarily exist out on the review platforms, you know, Google and Yelp and TripAdvisor and Health Grades, and you may have great reviews from customers that don't exist out there. And also, much of the benefit that Google confers to a business is based on the extent to which they look like a real brand. And so if I attract a user to my website and I keep them on my website, there's a higher likelihood that Google is gonna believe that I'm a real brand, and one of the things that people are looking for is reviews from real customers. And so if you think about...back to the Will Reynolds example, if you think about helping the user get done the thing that they're trying to do versus worrying about what Google wants you to do, then you would have some of those on your own website. How important are GMB posts? George: Posting on Google my Business, how big of a deal was that when they brought it out? Will: It was a pretty big deal and we're actually really in favor of having a regular posting schedule to the posts feature in Google My Business. Our rationale is that if you...you know, those cycled through over time, right? We used to talk this way about Twitter as well, is that part of it is because not everybody's logged into Twitter all the time. If you're not present with some regularity, then people aren't gonna see your messaging. These days I tend to tell small businesses that Twitter is a complete waste of their time. However, that same kind of content, if you post with some regularity, a couple, three times a week to Google Posts associated with your Google My Business listing that has the same effect. And if you format your images correctly, you can use them for calls to action like, you know, come in to try one today, buy now, couponing, that sort of thing, which we know does have a big impact on people's interaction with businesses. What is the connection between GMB posts and rank? George: So is Google going to rank you higher in search because you are participating with reviews on the map and you're participating with Google My Business posts? Will: So the real correct answer is no, but what's going to happen is users are going to interact with you more through Google and Google is going to infer from that user behavior that you are a better answer to the question being asked. Google's inference that you're a better answer to the question being asked is a positive ranking factor, no doubt in my mind. George: And the reason that it's so important is because that's the thousand-pound gorilla in the room. It's the users that are using Google that drives that importance. So it's interesting because I've heard people say, "I got to do it because Google ranks you higher," but the reason is they got all the users and it shows that you're interacting with a real business. Will: Well, you know, and it's a really nuanced answer, right? Because you could also just as easily answer yes and leave out all of the detail, the detail being it's because of this and this and this, and Google wants to deliver to the advertiser, Google wants to deliver it to the user the best answer to their question. What happens to inactive GMB accounts? George: Have you saw in the last...if a business claims Google My Business, I mean goes through the steps, postcard, the whole deal, and then doesn't touch the bloody thing for a year that it goes away? Will: We have seen some disappear, and interestingly Google sends out emails every once in a while and says, "Hey, we noticed you haven't logged into your account. Hey, we noticed you haven't updated your listing," and we'll then turn them off. So I do think that there is a real business reason to stay active there. How important are user signals? George: Yeah. And then there's this other piece. I was in Florida...see, you spurred me when you brought up Florida before we went live. I was in Florida about a year-and-a-half ago. We were trying to find this really good seafood restaurant that we found online, had some great reviews, but when we looked at the map, it said that it may be closed. And what had actually happened is there was some sort of construction on the road and people couldn't get to the restaurant on the road that it is going towards. You had to do this big detour and they just basically said, "Don't bother going there, it's closed," you know. So if you're not interacting with those pages, and this just isn't Google My Business, this is others, the user could impact your data. Will: Well, and in fact, you know, we've heard from folks who work at Google that they treat that user data with almost as much credibility as they treat the business owner's data. If they get a preponderance of signals from users there are different than what they get from the business owner, then that's what they're gonna believe. Are local business owners becoming more tech savvy? George: So it's interesting, in your opinion, SEO is a bigger business today, bigger opportunity. Could that be because we have a group of business owners that are becoming a little bit more tech savvy? Will: Well, I think, you know, the great news about having all of the sales efforts out there is that we tend to educate the market. So even if they didn't go to a seminar, you know, even if they didn't go to one of the sessions that you put on with your local newspaper and media clients, even if they didn't come to one of our local university sessions, they're gonna be educated by the people who call them on the phone every day saying, "Hey, this is important." So I think that the demand is actually being driven a lot by the sales efforts. So if you can be the one who was there at the time of need and you can speak smartly about what it is that you're going do to help, I think that the business owner knows they need it, they often don't know where to go, and you know, it's the savvy salesperson who's there and who assures them that their experience in businesses like theirs says that that works. Search Influence & Will Scott George: So I didn't get a chance...I wanted to leave it until the end here to ask about Search Influence. You know, you've been doing this for quite some time. You've got a great business there in New Orleans. Give us the 60-second plug on Search Influence and how things have been going. Will: Well, we're in our 13th year as Search Influence. We, as many companies that have been around that long, have gone through a number of iterations. You know, our vision is that we wanna have a positive impact on one every charged marketer and company whether they work for us or not. And to that end, we spend a lot of energy in making sure that our teams are the best they can be in the areas that they work. We, like you, have worked with media companies and newspapers, in some instances a backend fulfillment of their SEO and social media. And we've also developed products that streamline that process for other marketing companies. So we are ostensibly a digital marketing agency for whom a lot of our work has been in a white label forms for media companies and also a successfully managing fulfillment for companies that might seem to be competitive with us. George: So the New Orleans market has been good to you because I think, we talked about this a couple of years back, you said it's been good for you finding talent in that market. Will: We're not afraid to train and I think that that means that any market that has smart people in it is a good market for us. I jokingly say that we are the number one training organization for digital marketing in the Gulf South because oftentimes people will come to us, learn their craft, and then move onto places like HubSpot and fidelity in Boston, right? It is a good market for us. We're finding more and more a need for greater professional maturity and so we're hiring less at the very entry level, but we do still feel like that's an important part of our role is add that knowledge regardless of whether it sticks with us or not. Will Scott's Favorite Resources George: So I know that you've been running up a storm here lately over the last two years, but I know that that's not the only thing you do outside of work. I wanna ask about what you're listening to as far as podcasts are concerned, what books are you reading, you know, what blogs, where is will Scott going to learn the latest and greatest? Will: A mentor of mine once said that nothing happens until something gets sold. And so for that reason, as a business leader, I do spend a fair amount of my time reading and listening to sales and marketing. You remarked on running, but there's also swimming and biking in there too. The reason I'm in Florida right now is because on Sunday I'm gonna take part in Ironman Florida. George: Nice. Will: So, you know, so I'm a big fan of the "Cut the Crap" podcast because it gives you sort of great bytes of information on books that I think we all should probably be reading. And unless you're an endurance athlete like me, you may not have several hours a week all by yourself with headphones in. And, you know, the other stuff that I'm absorbing right this minute, because this is my first full Ironman and I'm a little bit anxious about it, is I'm doing a lot, a lot of sport listening. I listen to one of your countrymen quite a lot, a guy named Triathlon Taren who's in Winnipeg, I believe, which may or may not be colder than Saskatoon, I don't know. George: Well, on the corner of Portage and Main it is. Yes, they call it "Winterpeg" for a reason. Will: Well, that's a lot of my listening. I've also lately been...I just finished one of Deepak Chopra's early works because I think it's really important to manage the way in which you respond. My two top favorite books right this second are "The Obstacle is the Way" by Ryan Holiday, and Ryan Holiday, this one's a few years old and he looks at stoicism with a bit of a modern lens. And I joke that, you know, stoicism is basically that internet meme where you see something really tragic with the headline, "So this happened," right? And that's really what it is, is that anytime something happens, two things happen, right? There's the thing that happened, and then there's your response to it, right? Typically, you can't control the thing that happened. All you can really control is your response to it, right? And then the other one is a book called "Born to Run," which is this great story of this epic race with a bunch of American ultra runners and the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico. George: So interesting fact, when I first met you, you weren't doing endurance races and things like that. You made a big lifestyle change. Will: I did. I did. I like to tell people, "Don't let your business try to kill you." George: And I can't wait for that book, when you write that book, or maybe you're in the throes of writing it right now, that story, because I think it's quite inspiring and I see you online, see you running, I didn't know about the swimming and the biking part, but a good for you on the Ironman. That is very, very impressive. Well, thank you so much for joining us. I know that you're quite busy and you got a busy schedule. Search Influence is a juggernaut in that New Orleans market and you've got a lot of very happy customers. I happen to know a number of them and they're very pleased with the work that you and your teams have been doing. I appreciate your insight. I think that there definitely are some nuggets in there for our audiences. They're out talking about SEO and helping their customers find new leads and new opportunities. So thanks for joining us on the podcast. Will: My pleasure, George, thanks for taking this on. It's a great service you provide. Conclusion George: Well, always entertaining to speak to Will. I've had the privilege of running into him at conventions and seeing him speak. His content is always bang-on. And interesting, everything old is new again. And I think what he's referring to, and he really dug into that, this content marketing thing and social media marketing thing, that is SEO. If you take that content and you provision it properly, it can help your rank because what you really should be concerned, don't be concerned about Google. Be concerned about the people that are looking for your content and Google will be happy with that because that's what they're tracking is what the users are doing online. I was glad that he was able to dispel that myth that just by getting Google reviews and posting on Google My Business will get you a better search rank. He added to it, you get the better search rank because that's where 83% of all consumers go to do their searches and that's where they're interacting with that content. So again, you have to do the tactics to get the result, not necessarily if you do that Google is going to give you the rank. And interestingly enough, he talked more about getting your listings correct and making sure that you position it that in your first 60 days you're just to cover the bases and there really isn't gonna be a deliverable for about 90 days. And then that one piece that I thought was really inspiring with the customer that he has been working with on their SEO for 10 years is as long as you run all your competitors out of business and nobody else graduates from being a plastic surgeon at the university, you could stop doing SEO, but up until that point you better keep doing it. So very interesting and very thought-provoking from Will Scott. I think that as a salesperson, there are nuggets in there that you can take into your next call to position those tactics for success of the client and your success as the salesperson and the professional expert in the space. We have more episodes. We continue to cover the digital marketing stack for local SMEs and SMBs. It is the "ConquerLocal" podcast and I really appreciate the feedback that we've been getting online through my LinkedIn page. That is the best way to get ahold of me is on LinkedIn, and I read every single comment that we get. I respond to every comment, even the spam of people saying that they'll put me at the top of iTunes in their professional podcast promoters. So anyways, I read them all and I'm looking for that feedback. That's actually where this series came from was from you the listener saying, "Why don't you do something around digital marketing stack? Why don't you bring in some experts?" That's what we're doing and we're gonna continue to do it until we have given you all of the items that you need to be successful in positioning the local digital marketing stack to your customers. My name is George Leith. I will see you when I see you.

Listings aren't just names, addresses, and phone numbers anymore. They now have a SEO effect. Jonathan Best, Uberall's new Chief Revenue Officer, is our guest this week on the Conquer Local Podcast. Our audience can't get enough insight into how to sell the value of consistent listing data for a local business. Jonathan explains that Listings now need to include voice search capability and how that is impacting things like how it integrates into online reputation. The standard "Can I find you?" is now very closely matched with, "Can I trust you?" Jonathan Best is responsible for all revenue generating functions of the location marketing leader. Prior to Uberall, he was Senior Vice President and General Manager for Europe and Africa at Kony Inc. Earlier in his career, Jonathan served in various sales leadership roles at SAP, Oracle and a range of startups.   Introduction George: It's the latest edition of the Conquer Local podcast. My name is George Leith, your host, and I just don't think that we can get enough insight into selling the value of consistent listing data for local business. Because this space isn't just name, address, phone number anymore. It's now basically your content, it's voice search and how that's impacting things, and then it all marries into online reputation. Can I find you is now very closely matched up with, can I trust you? So we're going to get some more insights into this space from the new Chief Revenue Officer at Uberall. Jonathan Best is our guest, and he's coming up next all about local listing data on the Conquer Local podcast.   George: It's another edition of the Conquer Local podcast, and joining us on the line, the Chief Revenue Officer for Uberall, Jonathan Best. Hello Jonathan. How are you doing today?   Jonathan: Hey George, doing great. Thank you. How are you?   George: I'm fantastic. I'm excited to have you on the show. I'm actually going to be in your offices here in a couple of weeks when I travel to Berlin, so I was pumped to get you on the line. But Uberall, head office in Berlin, but you're all over the world.   Jonathan: Oh, we are all over the world. I'm in London today, but I'm often in Berlin, San Francisco, New York, Cape Town, South Africa, Paris, and London as well. So yeah, we're pretty well spread, and we're growing rapidly, and opening new offices all the time. So ...   George: Good. Well, you live the life that I live. Planes and Hilton hotels. Let's dig into Uberall. Give us the elevator pitch on Uberall, who you are, and what your organization does.   Jonathan: Well, the first thing that people typically ask me when we say the name Uberall is that you guys, some part of Uber, which is the first piece that we have to dispel. We're not. Uberall actually means everywhere in German, is the closest translation. And it's a pretty apt title given that what we're trying to do is help local businesses get found everywhere online. So that's the genesis, the title.   Jonathan: We've got a pretty interesting background. We're a seven-year-old company. We were started in Berlin, as you said, by ... actually by two friends who met in grade school, and said, as far back as that, that they were going to start a business together someday. And 20, 30 years later they actually got around to wanting to do that and set up in Berlin together to start a business. And of course, being in an interesting city, trying to figure out how to start a business, the thing that they did a lot was go sit in bars, and drink beer, and try and come up with the inspiration or idea for a business.   Jonathan: And one of the problems in Berlin that you may know because I know you've spent some time here is there's so many cool bars. They're opening all the time. But actually keeping up with them, and finding which are the new cool ones to try and go to is quite difficult.   Jonathan: And back in 2012, when I found ... as David and Florian were trying to come up with their business concept, they decided that that was a pretty neat problem to try and solve. 2012, when Apple Maps was just getting started to challenge Google Maps, Foursquare was starting to get a lot of traction. So there were plenty of platforms that you could go to and look to find new, interesting places. But the content of the places that was listed on those platforms was pretty crappy. So that's the problem that we set up the company to solve. And seven years later, we're one of the major global players in that. And we work with a lot of small SMBs. So those individual bars now get themselves found online using our services. And we also work with some huge enterprises, like McDonald's and KFC, Shell, BP, who've obviously got hundreds and thousands of brick and mortar locations that they need to get found online, and we help them do that.   Jonathan: So we started in Europe where we've still got most of our operations. But we operate and sell globally around the world now.   Accurate Listings = More Opportunities for Success George: So Jonathan, I want to really dig into listings because our audience, the salespeople that listen to the Conquer Local podcast, as part of that local marketing stack, we all know that listings are a very important piece of the puzzle. But it's often difficult to explain the value to a local businessperson on why they need to be doing this, and why they need to constantly pay attention to make sure that that data is correct. Can we talk a little bit about the impact on a local business by getting this information correct? And then, what are some of the common problems with maintaining that correct data?   Jonathan: Yeah. I mean, sure. You're alluding to the kind of SEO effect, and that's definitely one of the big reasons that people are trying to invest in these technologies today. But actually, there's ... when we focus on SEO, and I'll talk about that a bit in a minute, people often overlook some of the even more foundational, kind of fundamental challenges that people have with this plethora of online publishers that they want to get listed in.   Jonathan: And the first one is that one that I just talked about. There's a ton of platforms now that are out there. People are looking for local businesses and services across a range of platforms. Definitely Google, but Yelp, or the local Yellow Page directory. If you're looking for a restaurant or a hotel, you might be checking things like TripAdvisor. A lot of local cities and regions have got pretty decent directories that people search for businesses in. Folk want to have their businesses advertised on Facebook and Instagram because we know that there's a ton of people that are on those platforms.   Jonathan: So the first question for a local business is, if you want to be found online, you've got to be on all of those directories. And the fundamental problem, if you're the guy that's running the bar, or the restaurant, or the dental surgery, or whatever it may be is, your business is about doing something that isn't listing your business all over the place and ensuring that you've got great, consistent data. None of these directories make it super easy for small businesses to do that. They all have their own ways of collecting data and harmonizing it. They all ask you for different things in different formats.   Jonathan: So fundamentally, if you're sales folk, you're listening to the podcast and talking to small local businesses, the easy way to start the conversation is to ask that business what kind of platforms, publishers they actually can be found on. And if they are well represented across a bunch of different people, then typically that's because they're spending a lot of time and effort doing that. And listing solutions like ours really reduce that manual effort.   Jonathan: Or if they're not, then you can get into a conversation really quickly about how much business may you be losing if folk don't find you on the relevant platform or directory that they're looking in.   Simplify Listing Maintenance and Save Time with Listings Solutions George: I want to jump in on that because I think you hit on something that was really important for reps. Because I have people, when I'm out training salespeople, they're saying to me, "Well, if they've got good listings, they don't need some sort of a solution to continue to push that data." But that might just be the business person that needs a solution the most, because if they've got good listings, they probably did it by hand, which is very expensive, time-consuming, and painful. And if you could give them something that just is going to give them peace of mind, there's enormous value there. So the fact that, if you're using some sort of a grading tool on the business that you're calling on, and it throws an A, that might be because they are doing it by hand. And if we could get a robot to do that, that'd be much better.   George: The other piece you're talking about is the fear of loss, where you walk in and you know that they aren't listed properly, they have that discrepancy, and then we prey on the fact that they're missing out on business. So two very important approaches. Because what I have found is the business that has great listing data sometimes is not doing that work in an automated fashion or doesn't even know that that's a possibility. So let's go further down the road now on this whole listing value proposition.   Jonathan: Yeah. I mean, you hit it exactly right. Folk either have really good data online, and it's consistent, or they don't. If they do, then they're either spending a ton of time and effort getting it there and then maintaining it, or they're already using some kind of listings provider. And obviously, if it's the latter, then you're into potentially a replacement situation. But I'll talk a little bit later on about the kind of overall penetration in the market. The vast majority of people that you're going to run into, folk listening to the podcast might run into, they definitely have not solved this problem.   Jonathan: Maintenance is the next thing. If you get all of that data proliferated well, and consistent across a bunch of platforms, that's great. Right up to the point when you change your opening hours, or you want to promote a different offer. At which point, now, you've got to push all of that new data out to the range of platforms. So it's kind of a double-edged sword. Businesses know that they need to have their data on all of these platforms, so they do a bunch of work to get it there. But then once it's there, you have a bunch more work to keep it all consistent and updated. There's nothing worse, obviously, than somebody coming to your store at 6:00 pm because they saw on Facebook that that's what time you're open until, but actually you changed and you now close at 5:00, but you didn't update your Facebook page. So solving the problem of getting listed is only part of the battle. Then you have the subsequent problem of keeping everything consistent.   George: When we step out of name, address, phone number, and hours of operation, there's a bunch of other stuff that we want to have out there. Short, long descriptions. I guess the example that I always like to talk about is the person that's looking for a pet-friendly apartment with a swimming pool. And they do that search ... and there's a chance that they'll do that search, not into a keyboard now, they'll do that search into voice assistance. So there's more data that I need to be concerned about as a businessperson because people are doing more specific searches for the things that they're looking for online.   Jonathan: Yeah, absolutely right. And obviously, if there's any one element of that data that isn't on your online listings, then that person is not going to come to you. They're going to come to somebody who does have that. And as people get more and more familiar with searching online, and expect that there will be a provider out there that has got exactly what they want, those searches are going to get more and more specific. And therefore, the data that you hold is only ever going to need to get more. It will get greater as time passes. And therefore, anybody who's doing this well today and isn't using a listings technology to do it, is just going down a path which is going to pretty rapidly become unsustainable.   Winning vs Losing the Search Game: It’s All About the Keywords George: So we're missing out on business, and new leads coming into our business if we're not putting the correct data out there, because we're just losing at the search game, then. We also aren't able to change our data as our offer changes. We may not have positioned all of the value propositions that we have in the marketplace, and that could come right down to a product that you sell.   George: So I like to use Aveda hair products, and I will go into Google when I'm out ... maybe I'm running out while I'm on the road, and I'll say, "Show me a salon with the Aveda" ... Oh, I don't type it, by the way. I just say, "Siri, show me a hair salon with Aveda hair products nearby." That's the search that a local business needs to be winning, isn't it?   Jonathan: Yeah, absolutely right. And you pick up Aveda hair products. We do a huge amount of work with Schwarzkopf, who are one of the big hair care companies over here in Europe. And they were our founder client for doing exactly that. They wanted to have their products listed in every local store in Europe that stocked them so that folk like you who are on the road and need to get their fix of shampoo and conditioner know exactly where, nearby, they can pick it up from. It's a huge new area that large enterprise are working into. And it's of course imperative that those local businesses that stock those products are able to have their listings reflect that.   George: Jonathan, I want to make sure I understand what you're saying, because I think what I heard you say is, "Schwarzkopf is a brand, and they are paying you to make sure that all the places that sell Schwarzkopf have that information inside some sort of their dataset." Is that what I heard?   Jonathan: Absolutely right. It's one of the biggest developments in our market. More and more of the brands that don't necessarily have physical locations are looking to ensure that the locations that stock their products have their products listed within the local listing of that physical location. So yeah, it's a ...   George: So they offer the listing solution, then, as just a bonus to their vendor?   Jonathan: Yeah, no. Absolutely. They use a couple of different products from us to do that.   George: Salesperson in me thinks: enormous opportunity. It's the first time that I've heard of that.   Jonathan: Well, it's certainly a very large opportunity that we're seeing grow very, very rapidly in our business at the moment.   Voice Search Is a New Medium Using Traditional Algorithms George: Interesting. So the manufacturers and distributors of certain products, making sure that that data shows up in the various businesses that are out there that offer it. Voice search. Lots of people talking about it. I'm sure lots of us are ... we've got a Google Home, we got an Alexa, we got Cortana, we've got Siri, condescending voice on my phone. Tell us how to navigate that space as a local business person. Like, how concerned do I need to be about voice search?   Jonathan: Well, it depends what you've done with your existing listings. If you've done a pretty bang up job already of getting your data listed online, then you're actually in pretty good shape. We just ran a big survey. We surveyed every business location in Boston for a big piece of marketing research that we called the Voice Readiness Study, that we just released. It's available on Uberall.com for anyone that's interested. Which was essentially saying, how ready are businesses in Boston for voice search? And there were some really interesting conclusions, which I won't shove down your throat now.   Jonathan: The thing about search that kind of gets misleading is that people think it's a whole different technology. It really isn't. What Siri, or Cortana, or Alexa are doing when they record your voice question, is going off and picking the words out of your question, and going in and looking for them in a traditional search. So if you're asking for a hotel that's good with pets and has a swimming pool, then the keywords are going to get picked out of that and run through a fairly traditional search algorithm. Of course, what that means is, you've got to have those search terms listed in your locations listing in order for Siri, or Alexa, or Cortana to return that result.   Jonathan: The reason why voice makes it super important is that of course, unlike a typical online or phone-based search where you get a list of answers, and you're hopefully coming high up on that list of answers, your voice assistant is going to give you a single answer. It doesn't give you five different options, it gives you one. So it just makes it even more important that your latest, greatest data, with all of the attributes of the products and services you provide are really accurately listed for your business.   Pictures Are Worth 1,000 Words - Show People Your Business George: I've always wondered about the photos and video portion of that data that lives around ... We're at my buddy, T-bone's, studio here recording the podcast, as we do every week. And he's got a pretty nice place here. He's got this new monitor that he just bought, probably costs a lot of money. He's got new speakers. He's got a new haircut. He wants people to see that and have a virtual tour of the studio, and check ... maybe I'm coming here to film a movie from China to ... T-bone's studio is sitting here, I want to check it out. I want to look at it before I ever talk to him on the phone because we all know that we don't like talking to humans anymore. So tell me about the photos and the video portion of that listing data. Because I think listings ... I think name, address, phone number, maybe hours of operation, maybe business category, but more and more of the photo and video piece is becoming important.   Jonathan: Yeah, no. It completely is. And for all the reasons that you say. I mean ... by the way, your buddy T-bone was only ever going to operate a recording studio or a tattoo parlor with a name like that, wasn't he? So I think the great thing about pictures and videos is the old saying, right, it's worth a thousand words. If somebody can get a sense of what you do with some great pictures or video, then they're going to get much more of a sense for your business. But how do you get people to look at those pictures and videos, right? It goes back to the same thing. You've got to get found first. Then when people have found you, the content that you show them, be that pictures, video, text, or anything else has got to to be great. And obviously, that means that you want to be able to constantly update and promote the latest, greatest pictures of your studio. If T-bone just got some new, fancy piece of kit in, he needs that to be reflected not just in his search terms, but also in the pictures that he's showing.   Jonathan: And obviously then there's the ... so you want to manage that positively. The thing you also need to be able to manage is any user-generated content. User-generated content can be fantastic, but if somebody takes a really terrible photo of T-bone's studio, and it really looks awful, you want to know that that's up online. You want your listings provider to help you identify that. You probably want to get that removed from your listing fairly quickly if it's an image that isn't necessarily reflecting the attributes of your business that you would want to.   The Million Dollar Question for Business Owners Comes Back to the Return on Investment George: I don't mean to put you on the spot, but I do. When you're talking to a local businessperson, because I know that you folks work through partners, but then you get to speak to lots of business people. And they say to you, “Jonathan, how much money am I going to make if I do this listing work that you want me to do? You've convinced me that there may be some value here. What is the ROI for my business if I take you up on this?”   Jonathan: So I just hired a really smart guy in Berlin who's job is Head of Value Engineering. And the reason we hired him, that is the most common question that we get from SMB customers who want to know, generically how good is this going to be? And obviously for the large enterprises that our partners sell to on our behalf, they really want to understand what's this worth? Of course, when you put me on the spot, I can't give you a direct answer, because the value for any individual business is a function of what they're doing, how well they do this already, and what kind of investment they're able to make. Not in our tools, but in using our tools in really smart ways to do a great job of ensuring that the content is consistent, it's well-updated. Because we know those are the things that are strongly affiliated with good ranking results and driving more business.   Jonathan: But I can tell you that the majority of customers that we work with, be they SMBs or enterprises, are seeing a positive return on the investment that they make with us in a small number of months. Three to six months, most people are seeing a positive return on investment. We found some smart ways that we can measure increases of impressions, increases in clicks to call. We can correlate that to in-store visits. We can correlate that, if folk have got a fairly good understanding of average basket size to the revenue they gain. The thing that we can never figure out, and the thing that, frankly, a lot of folk are most interested to understand is, how much business am I losing today because I don't have this kind of technology in place? And of course that's a difficult question to answer. But most folk, when you talk to them a little bit about the types of publishers that their competitors are probably listing on with a listings provider like ours, realize that if they're not already across all of those different platforms, then they're probably missing some eyeballs that they ought to be trying to capture.   George: Yeah, so the ROI discussion in digital marketing always has been a challenge. And I don't understand why people who were used to buying radio ads, you can't measure the ROI on that, or even measuring a directory ad back in the day ... like why it's so important to get this thing that we've never really been able to get. So what you're saying there is, we've got to keep ... as salespeople, because that's our audience of the Conquer Local podcast, working with local businesses. We always need to be throwing that fear of loss out there, that by not doing this, your competitor that's doing it better is going to get the business.   George: Number two, isn't there a way to take the information inside GMB, in the Google My Business Insights, and show a correlation, where before I started working with you, you weren't getting any search results, you weren't getting any clicks on the map button, you weren't getting any clicks to call. And since we started working together and got all this right, those numbers have went up and to the right. Is that the one way that we could tell that story?   From Listings to Reviews, All Data Play a Role Jonathan: Yeah, absolutely. And we've got some great, specific customer data, and we've some great aggregated data across customers that really reflects that. Which is why I'm able to give you some kind of high level, generic ROI returns. The thing that's super interesting that we haven't talked about, which kind of relates to that question is, the ... I guess five years ago when we started this business, we thought that this was going to be kind of a game-changing technology that would really allow people to kind of move the needle by being online and across a whole bunch of different platforms, and getting a really positive ranking effect because of doing that well. Today, five years later, pretty much most people are aware that they need to do this. Doesn't mean everybody's doing it. But at least people are aware that listings is a foundation technology that they should have.   Jonathan: The thing that's really interesting, and it's going to be the next generation, and is the other great talking point for your sales audience when they're out talking to customers is, we already talked about voice search. You can't really be ready for voice if you haven't already solved this problem. But there's a bunch of other interesting things that are coming down the pike as well. And probably the biggest of them is reviews. For folk who follow what Google are doing with the algorithm, increasingly, the most important factor that Google will use to rank your business is the positivity of reviews and recommendations that you have. And a lot of folk are building on top of the listings foundation that they have the capability now to manage reviews across all of those platforms, to aggregate them using a tool like ours, to turn them into a single stream. So you don't have to go to each individual platform in turn, look at the different reviews that you've got, answer them and manage them. But actually to be able to do that in a much more simple flow.   Jonathan: The only thing worse than having bad reviews is having bad reviews that you don't do anything about. And that's why people are now moving from the focus on just the foundational listings product to really managing reviews, recommendations, getting ready for voice search, and all of the other technologies that are really going to require every business to have a really good management of the digital content and the digital information that they push out.   George: So when you're talking to your sales organizations that you deal with, what do you think is one of the biggest challenges in speaking to a local business about the value behind this? What's the piece you really need to drive home?   Jonathan: To be honest, George, the hard part of this is just getting in front of enough local businesses. The thing that's kind of crazy, a lot of folk, especially our investors, ask us about the total addressable market for this kind of technology. Which is pretty difficult to define, because obviously, the total market is every physical business location that exists on the planet. So getting an account of how many organizations there are out there that might need this stuff is difficult to do. But the best guess that anybody's able to provide us with, somewhere between seven and 10% of the physical locations that are out there in the world are already managing their physical location data well online. So there's 90 something percent of businesses that don't do this well.   Jonathan: This is not a difficult conversation to have. And I'd really encourage your listeners to go, when they're talking to local businesses about whatever other solutions they sell to them, ask them about this stuff. Which platforms are you on? I'm pretty sure most businesses will be aware of Google My Business. But are they on Facebook? Are they on Instagram? Are they on Foursquare? Are they managing stuff on TripAdvisor and Yelp. If they are, then they've got this kind of manual challenge that we already talked about. If they're not, then how much business are they losing? That's the start of the conversation. You can get real sophisticated if you want to from there, but this is a foundational, fundamentally simple product that everybody should be confident in talking about to a local business. And confident also that pretty much every local business you talk to is going to need it.   George: No, I think that that's ... you're absolutely right. And that's where we've transitioned in the last six and a half years in this space is, the business people know that they need to do this. It's just, they're looking for a trusted provider. And there has been some snake oil out there when it comes to the listing sites, and getting a fix, and having them maintained. It's good to have folks like you that have nailed it. And when you press that button on the fantastic solution that you folks offer, the data is right, and you have the ability to continue to communicate with those sites.   Conclusion George: So we've been speaking today to Jonathan Best, the Chief Revenue Officer of Uberall. And Jonathan, we really appreciate your time. I know it's early evening there, so we'll let you get back to watching ... I guess it's football. So watching football or whatever you're going to do on a Wednesday evening, and thanks for joining us in the Conquer Local podcast.   Jonathan: Thanks George. Appreciate it. Take care.   George: It's interesting to listen to Jonathan. He arrived at Uberall about eight months ago, and he's been out working with their channel partners, and talking to SMBs, and it's interesting to hear his take on where this space is going. You heard him talk about Schwarzkopf, and utilizing the correct listing data with the Schwarzkopf branding, and with their products and services for businesses that they don't even own. It's businesses that distribute their products and services. I'm interested to learn more about how that might move forward as a revenue line that we, the folks that are listening to this broadcast, might be able to exploit.   George: The other thing that we keep hearing about is the value of having that correct data around voice search. And voice search, as you heard Jonathan mention, you're going to have to be exactly what they're looking for, because when we do a voice search, we ask for way more information about the business. That business has to be populated across the wide array of sources where you need consistent listing data. And now for listing data, not just name, address, phone number, hours of operation, business category. It's what products and services do you sell? What's your unique value proposition? In the case of our examples that we gave you, you heard the pet-friendly apartment building with the swimming pool, or the hotel that's close to the airport, that has a fitness center. Something like that where it's not just, show me a good hotel nearby. It's, show me a good hotel nearby with these attributes that I'm looking for.   George: So we always like to keep educating, and there's some new tidbits from the new Chief Revenue Officer at Uberall. Jonathan Best, our guest this week on the Conquer Local podcast. My name is George Leith, I'll see you when I see you.

Q: Why might a business rank highly on Google Maps within a 1-2 mile radius around its location but be undetectable in other areas? A: Our platform provides the most accurate information available based on mobile search results, specific zoom levels, and location restrictions. It’s important to note that replicating these exact search parameters independently may be challenging. For Google Maps results, we retrieve a maximum of 20 listings per search. If a business does not rank within the top 20 for a specific area, it will appear as a blank red entry on the map. Additionally, we do not include paid or sponsored listings in organic data reports. Please keep the following in mind: Organic search results do not utilize a radius setting. For example: If a search is conducted from a location 8.5 miles away from the business and the keyword falls outside of the business's top 20 results in that area, the location may display as a red dot on the map. To obtain more detailed data, users may wish to adjust the zoom level to focus on a smaller area.  

Potential Cause If the business is a Service Area Business (SAB), the issue might arise from a misalignment between: The keywords being targeted. The address is listed in the business profile. How the Map Works: The business address listed in the profile serves as the center point for the map area displayed in Local Grid searches. If the targeted keywords correspond to a region far from the listed address, no rankings will appear within the grid.   Workarounds to Improve Local Grid Results Align Keywords with Business Address: Update the targeted keywords to focus on the area surrounding the listed business address. This ensures the keywords match the map's central area and improves visibility in search results. Change the Business Address (Use with Caution): Consider updating the business address to a location closer to the region targeted by the keywords. Important: This approach is not recommended as it may impact the accuracy of the business listing and lead to issues. Best Practices Prioritize aligning keywords with the current address for accurate and effective results.

To set up Google Insights in Local SEO, you or your clients can follow these instructions: Go to Local SEO > Analytics > Google. Click Connect Google Business Profile. If your client does not already have a Google Business Profile account, they can click Create a Google Business Profile account to sign up. Once your client has connected their Google Business Profile account, they will be able to view their Google Insight reporting for important online consumer activity data such as: Searches - how customers search for your client’s business Customer views - where customers view your client’s business on Google Customer actions - the most common actions that customers take on your client's business listing Searches This metric gives clients insight into the search terms that show their Google Business Profile in the search results, providing insight into their SEO and the keywords that help them get found. 

Google Search results vary from person to person even when using the same exact keywords as there are multiple factors in the algorithm. While the Snapshot Report makes its best effort to provide objective results, they should be taken as indicative information. Some of the factors Google might use to influence a specific search are:• Previous Searches On a Single Device• Previously Clicked Links• Geographic Location• Google Account History• Device Being Used• Type of Search and Filters Used• Paid Ads Present• Changes to a website or its content• Ongoing experiments with the algorithm 

Though Google doesn’t release details about its algorithm for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), many SEO experts believe that having reviews on your website can help you to move up the search results. Having star ratings also increases "search engine results page click-through-rate" (SERP CTR), which indirectly improves your organic rank. The Review Widget uses “schema.org markup” which is supported by Google “structured data.” This is a standard for how you label data on your website so that browsers and search engines can interpret it and know what it represents. This means that it can identify that a review on your site is actually a review.   The widget is also set up so that the “Aggregate Rating” data is included in the number of reviews and the average rating. This is how Google knows what star rating to include in their search results. Of course, you can’t guarantee that the star rating will appear in the search results since that is up to Google but we have done everything we can to make it possible to show up.

Sitemap - A sitemap is a blueprint of your website that helps search engines find, crawl, and index all of your website’s content. A sitemap tells Google which pages and files you think are important to your site and also provide valuable information about these files. Search engines like Google read this file to crawl your site more efficiently.  Why are Sitemaps Important especially in SEO Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing use your sitemap to find different pages on your site. If the site’s pages are properly linked, Google/ Yahoo/Bing, etc. web crawlers can usually discover most of the site. It also helps in understanding your website structure, making it easier to navigate your website. For example, Google largely finds web pages through links. If the site is brand new and only has a handful of external backlinks, then a sitemap is HUGE for helping Google find pages on the site. How to create a SITEMAP  There are two types of Sitemaps, XML and HTML. XML documents act as a map for your site allowing a search engine robot to know which pages to check first for updates since it last crawled it helps to speed up the process in terms of page discovery and indexing for the search engines it also allows search engines to find really deep pages within your site so if you have deep content at four or five subfolders within your website this sitemap can help search engines find that easier an HTML Sitemap is actually geared more toward our human visitors than search engines it shows each one of the major sections of our website and then all the sub-pages within each of those sections so it gives a nice little breakdown of all the webpages on our site and helps our visitors to easily find the content they want. How To Check if your Website has a SITEMAP Go to your web browser and type your domain name followed by forwarding slash sitemap.xml or Sitemap HTML. For example, www.example.com/sitemap.xml will show what your XML sitemap looks like. If you don't have Sitemaps, you can go to www.xml-sitemaps.com 

Yes, Website Pro restricts SEO bot access to temporary URLs. Why This Matters When a site is first created in Website Pro, it's hosted on a temporary URL (e.g., sitename.vendasta-site.com). To protect your SEO performance, Website Pro prevents search engine bots from crawling and indexing these temporary URLs. This restriction helps: Safeguard your SEO reputation Prevent premature indexing of incomplete or placeholder content Avoid potential blacklistings or negative domain rankings Recommended Best Practice To ensure your site can be properly crawled and indexed by search engines, connect your own custom domain before launching any SEO campaigns or efforts. Mapped (custom) domains: Allow full bot access for indexing Ensure accurate search engine visibility Lay a strong foundation for long-term SEO success Note: If your site remains on a temporary URL, SEO bots will not be able to access your pages, which may delay or hinder visibility on search engines. Need Help? If you're unsure how to connect a domain or have questions about your site's SEO setup, our support team is here to help. Reach out anytime for assistance.

Partner Center admins of Local SEO can deactivate a cancelled Citation Builder or Listing Sync Pro add-on that is under a contract and has not yet expired. The syndication services with the aggregator will terminate, and the Partner will continue to be billed until the end of the commitment. This deactivation ensures clients with overdue payments will not benefit from unpaid services. How to force deactivate a cancelled Local SEO add-on In Partner Center > Accounts > Manage Accounts, select the appropriate account. On the account details page, under "Products" find the cancelled add-on you want to deactivate. Next to the add-on, click the kebab menu > Force Deactivation. In the pop-up, select "Deactivate Now" to proceed with the action. Forcing deactivation will result in the add-on being removed from the Partner Center and syndication services ending. As a Partner, you will be billed until the end of the commitment. This feature will not be visible for active (as in not yet cancelled) Citation Builder and Listing Sync Pro products and is not available for any other Marketplace product or add-on.   This feature is available to all Partners using Listing Sync Pro and Citation Builder.