Comments on: What We Learned From A “Google Only” Marketing Approach

By: Will Hawkins

Will Hawkins — Mon, 10 May 2021 19:41:04 +0000

Thank you, Mike. This is a fascinating and useful read. We’ve currently got two clients for whom local SEO is proving to be a useful, if not vital, approach to developing their businesses.

I had’t realised the benefits of each of those GMB features you mention. But, I will definitely use them from now on with our clients.

Regards,

Will

By: Andy

Andy — Sat, 19 Dec 2020 17:28:13 +0000

Thank you for your thorough reply Mike! Much appreciated. I wish a great Xmas with your family – Andy

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Sat, 28 Nov 2020 15:24:38 +0000

In reply to Andy Ferrero. Hi Andy In the rank tracking you should track the phrases that you identified as offering the best opportunities in your keyword research. Unless you are trying to convince unsophisticated business owners of your success, rank tracking too many of these esoteric variations just creates noise in a report that is best used to indicate directionality and/or developing issues. A ranking report is not best used as a client KPI. I think if you do the research you will find that the non-geomodified phrase is the most often used by searchers (and converts better) in local with a simple (no state or zip) city modifier being the second most widely used. So I tracked for example "breakfast" and "breakfast olean" and did so for each of my terms. You can, for the purposes of keyword planning, use Google trends to suss out which specific geo modifiers are are more popular by searching on the phrase and comparing it to the various geo modified versions of the phrase. To increase the value of this select "Shopping" and drill into your specific geography (or the nearest with a large enough volume). Here is an example comparing 'Jewelry', 'Jewelry New York' & 'Jewelry NY' in shopping within the NYC metro. You can see that the implicit, non-geomdified query has orders of magnitudes more searches than the geo-modified terms.

By: Andy Ferrero

Andy Ferrero — Sat, 28 Nov 2020 08:22:00 +0000

Hi Mike, when you say “I decided to track the rank of 24 terms, six breakfast terms, six lunch terms, and then all of them geo-modified with the city of Olean, New York.” – could you please give some details as to how the geo-modified terms looked like? Because I am always struggling to identify the ideal geo-modified query, since there are so many possible combinations and no tool can really help.

For instance :
“tuna fish sandwich Olean, New York”
“Olean, New York tuna fish sandwich”
“tuna fish sandwich in Olean, New York”
etc…

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 02:40:59 +0000

In reply to Jeannine. Jeanine This is so wonderful to hear. I hope you will keep me apprised on how it works out!

By: Jeannine

Jeannine — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 01:58:29 +0000

Hi Mike, This blog and the accompanying video are absolutely brilliant! and so helpful!! I’ve been putting a package together for small local businesses and have been doing a couple of pro bono jobs to better see the effects of the various parts, see how long it takes to do different actions and you’ve just answered my questions. I’ve thought GMB is a really great tool for small businesses that is greatly underestimated, and you’ve just confirmed this. I so appreciate your insight and sharing! It’s really helped me and I’ve even more confident and excited. I believe i can help our local community – especially those who have been hit by the pandemic. Thanks mucho!!

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Sat, 31 Oct 2020 12:03:43 +0000

In reply to Kirk Pomerleau. Kirk Thanks!

By: Mike Blumenthal

Mike Blumenthal — Sat, 31 Oct 2020 12:03:15 +0000

In reply to Joe Y. Joe I used Whitespark for ranking data and Google My Business Insights and FB for raw data that I plotted in Excell for the KPI tracking

By: Kirk Pomerleau

Kirk Pomerleau — Sat, 31 Oct 2020 06:25:52 +0000

In reply to Francisco. Amazing article. It leaves a lot of previous theories in the dust. I have seen a lot of progress using the tools you mentioned in GMB. I will definitely be increasing the title tag haha. Thanks for information.

By: Joe Y

Joe Y — Sat, 31 Oct 2020 00:42:47 +0000

Great study Mike and awesome to see you helped out an SMB. Loved the video presentation too, in it you briefly mentioned what software tracked / charted out the GMB kpi’s / local pack rankings but I can’t make it out. What tool are you using?