Google My Business

The top 10 episodes of Local Search Tuesdays of 2020

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:


Suds and Search 43 | Justin Sanger, Chief Revenue Officer of OMG National

Also available as a Podcast:

My guest on our last episode of Suds & Search for 2020 is Justin Sanger. Justin is the Chief Revenue Officer and Equity Investor at OMG National. For over two decades, Justin has been a pioneer in small business digital marketing.

He founded LocalLaunch back in 2003. LocalLaunch offered Paid Search, SEO, and landing page optimization services way back in the early 2000s just as Google was emerging as the leading advertising channel for SMBs. LocalLaunch was acquired by RH Donnelley in 2006.


How to set holiday hours in Google My Business

In this week’s episode, I walk through the steps for setting holiday hours in Google My Business. When you need to change your hours, or even set your business to be closed temporarily, you don’t have to change your standard hours in your GMB dashboard. If you use the holiday hours feature, you can set different hours for unique days, and on those days, the special hours will be displayed instead of your standard hours. Watch and learn how easy it is to set up!


How to optimize Google My Business Questions & Answers

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.


Signals that influence Local SEO: Google My Business

In this week’s episode, I finish my series on signals that influence Local SEO with a segment on Google My Business. Arguably the most important element in your Local SEO strategy, Google My Business is often overlooked by local businesses. Watch and learn which elements have the most influence over your visibility in searches, and learn how to optimize the most important elements.


Suds and Search 32 | Jason Brown, GMB Spam Fighter and Google Gold Product Expert

Also available as a Podcast:

My guest on this episode of Suds & Search is Jason Brown, an expert Local SEO, and Google My Business Gold Level Product Expert. Jason has a wide breadth of SEO knowledge but what he really loves to do is fight spam.

Spam has been a major issue in SEO from the very beginning. Over the course of my thirteen-year career, Google has cleaned up many of the most common tactics but local businesses still grapple with an astonishing level of spam especially in the map pack.

Spam fighters like Jason Brown act as consumer vigilantes fighting spam on behalf of legitimate local businesses. I start our conversation by asking Jason about the different ways that spammers are attempting to take advantage of vulnerabilities in Google’s local algorithm.

In many cases, this activity isn’t merely a matter of bad customer experience; it’s actually fraudulent. We talk about why Google hasn’t been able to do more to fight spam and how other third-parties like the better business bureau are involved.

Jason presents at numerous industry conferences including LocalU, Local Search Summit, and Pubcon. He is a columnist for SEMrush and regularly appears in BrightLocal webinars. He is a sought after subject matter expert for national and local news pieces on local spam. If you like this interview, I highly recommend that you follow Jason on Twitter.

Grab a beer and join me for a conversation with one of the top Local spam fighters in the world. We’ll talk about why local Spam is so prevalent, how small businesses can fight back, and the time he found a lawyer who had a listing in the middle of the ocean.


No one cares about your testimonials

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.


How to respond to bad reviews from people who weren’t customers

In this week’s video, I talk about responding to reviews from people who weren’t customers – whether it’s a misplaced review that should have gone to another business, a bad review from someone who clearly wasn’t a customer, or even a bad review from a disgruntled ex-employee, I share examples of how to respond to these “bogus” bad reviews that we all hate.