Best Practices

Suds and Search 45 | Stephan Bajaio, Chief Evangelist and Co-founder of Conductor

January 14, 2021 Greg Gifford Best Practices, Digital Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Suds and Search

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My guest on this episode of Suds & Search is Stephan Bajaio. Stephan is the Chief Evangelist and Co-founder of Conductor, a search and content intelligence platform that helps marketers create and optimize content to improve visibility online.

Stephan has a well-earned reputation for being one of the really good guys in our industry. He is an in-demand speaker, podcaster, and SEO expert. He co-hosts the extremely impressive podcast Search on Tap and the equally impressive webcast Search from Home.

His company, Conductor, puts on the C3 conference and the annual Searchie Awards.

Stephan has a gift for identifying problems. He has an innate sense of when things aren’t working right. I’m going to start our conversation asking him about some of those problems and how SEOs might begin to solve them.

Problems with Google My Business? Use the GMB Forum

January 12, 2021 Greg Gifford Best Practices, Google My Business, Local Search Tuesdays

In this week’s video, I share a simple yet not commonly known tip to help with any problems you might have with your Google My Business listing. Google has Community Help forums for each of its products, so whenever you have a problem with your GMB listing that you can’t solve, you should create a forum post. Watch the video for all the details…

How to add More Hours to your Google My Business listing

January 5, 2021 Greg Gifford Best Practices, Digital Marketing, Google My Business, Local Search Tuesdays, Local SEO

In this week’s episode, I explain how to add additional hours to your Google My Business listing for modified services such as curbside pickup, delivery, or senior hours. If you offer additional services, the “more hours” feature lets you display different hours of operation on your GMB profile to attract more customers. Watch and learn how easy it is to add to your listing!

The top 10 episodes of Local Search Tuesdays of 2020

December 29, 2020 Greg Gifford Best Practices, Digital Marketing, Google My Business, Local Search Tuesdays, Local SEO, Reviews, Search Engine Optimization

For the final episode of 2020, I share our 10 most popular episodes of the year. I aggregated analytics data from Wistia (our video host), YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn to figure out which episodes were the most popular. Here’s the final list, along with links to each video:

How to optimize Google My Business Questions & Answers

November 17, 2020 Greg Gifford Best Practices, Digital Marketing, Google My Business, Local Search Tuesdays

In this week’s episode, I share tips for optimizing the Questions and Answers section of your Google My Business profile. By pre-loading questions, answering them, and keeping your answers upvoted to be displayed as primary answers, you can rock a much better user experience on your GMB profile – and capture more local customers.

Suds & Search 28 | Heather Physioc, Group Connections Director at VMLY&R

August 27, 2020 Mark Bealin Best Practices, Digital Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Suds and Search

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My guest today is Heather Physioc, the remarkably interesting Group Connections Director at VMLY&R. Heather is the leader of an award-winning 40-person Discoverability Group. If you don’t know what a discoverability group is, you’re not alone. I’m going to ask her about it early on in our discussion.

Heather is an in-demand speaker who’s presented at virtually every major conference in our industry. A shortlist of the places you might have heard her present includes MozCon, Brighton, SearchLove, and PubCon.

How to recover filtered Yelp reviews

August 25, 2020 Greg Gifford Best Practices, Digital Marketing, Local Search Tuesdays, Local SEO

In this week’s episode, I share the secret to recovering all those awesome reviews that are hidden in your Yelp profile. Yelp only counts reviews from what it considers to be “regular Yelp users” – so I share a tip that will help you get those reviews to show up and count towards your score!

No one cares about your testimonials

August 18, 2020 Greg Gifford Best Practices, Google My Business, Local Search Tuesdays, Local SEO

On this week’s episode of Local Search Tuesdays, I share what might be a shocking revelation: No one cares about your testimonials page! Customers want to read honest, unbiased reviews on third party sites, and they know that your testimonials page will only list glowing 5-star reviews. Watch the video for more info, and for why you should keep the page on your site anyway.

Suds & Search 26 | Niki Mosier, Head of SEO at Two Octobers

August 13, 2020 Mark Bealin Best Practices, Digital Marketing, Local SEO, Suds and Search

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My guest today is Niki Mosier, Head of SEO at Two Octobers. She’s a well known local SEO, a must-follow on Twitter, and a popular presenter. She has presented at SMX West, WordCamp, Optimisey and she’ll be speaking at Brighton later this year.

A few years ago, Local SEO legend Mike Blumenthal coined the phrase, “Google as your new home page.” The idea is that Google is showing so much information in knowledge panels and other special features that searchers no longer need to go to your website to find out everything. In fact, Google probably has some better information than a small business website.

Suds & Search 24 | Ruth Burr Reedy, VP of Strategy at UpBuild

July 30, 2020 Mark Bealin Best Practices, Digital Marketing, Suds and Search

Also available as a Podcast:

My guest today is Ruth Burr Reedy, Vice President of Strategy at UpBuild. I first heard of Ruth when she was working at Moz as their Lead SEO. Veteran SEOs know that Moz used to be called SEOmoz. Ruth took on the daunting challenge of overseeing the SEO for that rebrand. She’s now living in Oklahoma and I start our conversation asking about her journey to UpBuild.

Ruth is an in-demand speaker who’s presented at all of the major industry conferences including UnGagged, Mozcon, SMX, and State of Search.