SEO For Local: Strategy to Execution Tips with Amanda Jordan

In this episode of the Simple and Smart SEO Show, Crystal Waddell is joined by Amanda Jordan, Director of Digital Strategy at Rickety Roo, to dive deep into the world of local SEO. 

Whether you're a local business owner or part of a franchise, Amanda's insights will help you refine your SEO tactics and strategies for better visibility and results.

Key Takeaways:

1. Local SEO Is All-Encompassing: Local SEO isn't limited to Google Business Profiles or maps. It involves your entire website and how you rank in a specific geography.
2. The Power of Internal Linking: Proper internal linking between service and location pages is one of the most effective ways to improve local rankings and increase traffic.
3. Content Clustering for Local Search: Tailoring content to reflect local search behaviors is crucial for SEO success. Understand how people search in your city and focus on that.
4. Combatting Duplicate Content in Local SEO: Customize location-specific pages by including unique aspects like user-generated content, reviews, and local awards to avoid content duplication.
5. Non-Branded Traffic is Essential: Relying on branded traffic limits your reach. Developing non-branded content will help you attract more diverse visitors.

Listener Action Items:

1. Audit your current internal linking strategy to ensure your key service and location pages are well-connected.
2. Develop location-specific service pages that speak directly to the needs and search habits of your audience.
3. Explore content opportunities that reflect local search terms and behaviors in your market.
4. Utilize tools like Google Trends to understand keyword trends in your region, helping you make data-driven SEO decisions.

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Chapters

• 0:00 I think a lot of SEOs get caught up in tactics versus strategy.
• 0:12 Introduction and Guest Introduction
• 0:52 Understanding Local SEO
• 2:03 SEO Challenges and Strategies
• 2:43 Case Study: ER Services in Texas
• 4:38 Importance of Internal Linking
• 5:03 Fixing Poor Site Structure
• 8:38 Non-Branded Traffic Strategies
• 12:42 Client Communication and Strategy
• 19:58 Understanding Citations and Brand Mentions
• 21:31 Building Visibility Through Social Media and Reddit
• 22:57 Local SEO vs. Regular SEO
• 24:14 Creating Relevant Local Content
• 26:16 Avoiding Duplicate Content in Local SEO
• 31:47 Franchise SEO Challenges and Solutions
• 38:04 Working with Different CMS Platforms
• 41:20 Final Tips and Connecting with Amanda

Transcript

[00:00:00] Amanda Jordan: I think a lot of SEOs get caught up in tactics versus strategy.

[00:00:04] And they'll do a lot of things because they heard those are the things to do, but they don't consider how all of these things work together to form a strategy.

Introduction and Guest Introduction

[00:00:12] Crystal Waddell: Welcome to the third season of the Simple and Smart SEO Show. The podcast dedicated to empathy driven, brand building SEO. I'm your host, Crystal Waddell. I leverage my obsession with user experience to help business owners just like you optimize your website with confidence. 

[00:00:28] Thank you so much for being here.

[00:00:29] Let's jump into another great episode. Welcome back to the simple and smart SEO show podcast. I'm your host, Crystal Waddell. And I'm here with the amazing Amanda Jordan. 

[00:00:40] Amanda works over at Rickety Roo. So I'm going to let her kind of introduce herself and tell us what she does for her company.

[00:00:48] And then we will jump into a conversation all about local SEO. 

Understanding Local SEO

[00:00:52] Amanda Jordan: Hey, everyone. I'm Amanda Jordan. I've been an SEO since 2011. 

[00:00:57] I have worked in other parts of SEO, but a lot of it has been local. 

[00:01:02] And my approach to local SEO is that everything is local SEO. 

[00:01:05] Local SEO just means that there's a specific geography that you want to rank within.

[00:01:11] That is essentially what it means to be a local SEO. So it's not just GBP or Google Maps, it's everything. It's your entire site, it's technical SEO, it's content, it's all of it. 

[00:01:21] But just with a focus on a specific city and understanding that specific audience for that city and how they search. 

[00:01:27] And where you need to be to find them.

[00:01:30] So that's what I do. Rickety Roo is an agency that focuses heavily on local SEO. 

[00:01:34] But we do other types of work too. We were full service. So all those elements of local SEO, I just talked about, we do, including link building. 

[00:01:42] We have a great team and we do great work. And I am the director of digital strategy. 

[00:01:46] Coming up with client strategies and interesting things that we can test and try out on the client sites to determine what are the next things in SEO. What things should we be paying attention to? And hopefully getting them great results. 

[00:02:00] Crystal Waddell: Awesome. I'm so glad that you're here.

[00:02:02] Thank you for coming on the show. 

SEO Challenges and Strategies

[00:02:03] Crystal Waddell: now I was just reading through your bio on LinkedIn and you say that you're not afraid of SEO challenges and you often work with clients experiencing a variety of SEO challenges. 

[00:02:16] And one of those was like an unclear strategy. 

[00:02:19] So I was wondering if you could share an example of an unclear strategy. Because I feel like some of us might actually raise our hands that once you say. 

[00:02:28] Amanda Jordan: Yeah I think a lot of SEOs get caught up in tactics versus strategy.

[00:02:33] And they'll do a lot of things because they heard those are the things to do, but they don't consider how all of these things work together to form a strategy. 

Case Study: ER Services in Texas

[00:02:43] Amanda Jordan: So a good example that I can give, this is actually our US search awards entry where we're like actually shortlisted. But we have this client come to us.

[00:02:52] They do they have ER services. In Texas. So they're like private. You can be a private freestanding ER in Texas. Those are services that they offer. They had a website, but they had only location pages. They didn't mention any of the conditions that they see or the equipment that they have.

[00:03:11] And then they didn't have any internal links actually going to the location pages. 

[00:03:15] So we had a lot of things to do. So what our goal was just not to like, Hey, let's add a bunch of content to the site so they can rank for things. 

[00:03:23] Our goal is to focus on what makes the most sense topically. 

[00:03:27] Where can we help them grow authority?

[00:03:29] What are their competitors doing? And how can we align all of these things together to help at the same time? 

[00:03:35] So not only did we build content, but we built content focused on common conditions that lead someone to visit the ER and then we were creating that content. We built in an internal linking strategy.

[00:03:45] So those pages linked to each other and the key location pages that serve those specific reasons or conditions why people come to an ER. Then we created blog posts focused on each of those conditions based on what people typically search for. When they're not sure if they should come to the E. R. or not.

[00:04:01] And then that's what became our strategy. And we built that around those pages. They had other services on their website, but we were only focused on their E. R. 

[00:04:09] And they saw a significant improvement. I think it was like 267%. I just looked at this earlier today, increased and clicks to their location pages for E. R. 

[00:04:17] For ers from doing this. 

[00:04:18] It's all the stuff that we all know to do, you know? The build internal links, to build content. But the strategy part was figuring out what type of content we need to build? How do we connect it together? And how do we use it to create an overall, like story of what's going on in the site. And what the site is about. So that search engines and users can understand it. 

[00:04:37] Crystal Waddell: Yeah. Wow. That's awesome. 

Importance of Internal Linking

[00:04:38] Crystal Waddell: Internal links have been like one of my favorite things to do. Because I always talk about especially if you're an entrepreneur, you just can't do everything. But where you can start is where you can control things.

[00:04:50] I feel like internal linking is one of those things that we can control. More than anything else on our website. 

[00:04:55] Yeah, we can control content, just making sure that our website makes sense. That's a big plus.

[00:05:00] Another thing you talked about was like poor site structure.

Fixing Poor Site Structure

[00:05:03] Crystal Waddell: Can you give us an example of how you fix poor site structure? Or like what poor site structure might look like? 

[00:05:09] Amanda Jordan: Yeah, so a poor site structure can look like a few different things. It could be everything is off of the root domain. So like it's like domain. com slash name of the blog posts, name of the location page, name of the service. 

[00:05:23] Instead of there being like subfolders or a neat organization to help users and a search engines to understand the relationship between the pages on the site.

[00:05:33] Another thing it could be is that all of your locations, are under three different folders before someone can actually get to the page. 

[00:05:41] That tells search engines that page isn't that important, because if it was, it would be closer to the root. 

[00:05:46] That is how they see it. So your site structure can be make things more difficult for you. Especially with things like breadcrumbs on the site and user experience and navigation. And them getting back to key pages that they want to visit again.

[00:05:59] One of the things that I see happen a lot is that location pages aren't really considered in the structure of the site. So they'll have repeats. So one example that I've seen recently, they had two versions of each location page. So it'd be website. com slash Houston, Texas slash Houston, Texas, and then Houston, Texas slash Dallas, Texas, and then Houston, Texas slash Fort Worth, Texas, which doesn't like When you hear it out loud, it doesn't make sense.

[00:06:29] And it doesn't make sense. But when you're looking at a site, we somehow there's a disconnect sometimes. And we're not thinking about that. 

[00:06:36] So part of it is just making sure that the site makes sense. Things are in an orderly fashion. Another part of it is like, when you go back and look at your data, can you look at it topically?

[00:06:46] Can you look at all of your service pages at one time to see what's going on specifically with them? Can you go back and look at all your location pages together as a cluster? 

[00:06:56] And see what's going on with them. So I like it for that reason, too. But I another part of it, of course, like you said, is internal linking.

[00:07:02] So making sure that these pages have relationships to each other. And that you're focusing on the pages that you want to rank the most. 

[00:07:09] So like your most popular blog posts should be ranking to the pages that are our services or locations or anything like that. 

[00:07:16] That is most relevant for your like money keywords for the keywords that get someone into book a service.

[00:07:21] And not just, I guess the most popular ones, really all of them. If it's a relevant topic, it needs to be linking to the relevant service. 

[00:07:28] No matter what, essentially. 

[00:07:29] And we've come to the point where we're like, not necessarily more content is better. I think it's better to be very strategic in choosing your topics and how you internal link.

[00:07:39] So not spraying and praying like every all of these things are related to SEO.. So we should have a blog post on all of them. But picking a specific part where you feel very comfortable and building out that cluster really strongly first. And internally linking them all to each other correctly before you start on a different topic or at least, have a target topic before you start moving on to others.

[00:08:02] We've seen that be very successful as well. 

[00:08:04] Crystal Waddell: Yeah. That makes me feel a lot better because I'd always wondered if it was better to have, just like my domain collage and wood.com forward slash whatever it was. 

[00:08:13] Versus the pages or blogs or products or whatever. Like Shopify does that automatically. And so I always wondered, should I change that?

[00:08:23] Or is that, best practice? Is that why it's set up like that? 

[00:08:26] But when I submitted my sitemap, I could see that they were, separated into those categories. And I was like, I think that's why they do it like that. So that Google can crawl it in a way that makes sense. Yeah. Okay. 

Non-Branded Traffic Strategies

[00:08:38] Crystal Waddell: So another thing I wanted to ask you about is what is non branded traffic and what do you do if you don't have non branded traffic? 

[00:08:47] Amanda Jordan: So this is actually the most common problem that we see with new clients. 

[00:08:52] And they're not usually not aware of it. They're very dependent on branded traffic. And that is traffic where your business name, phone number, address is part of the keyword used to find you.

[00:09:03] If your business name is, Amanda SEO services. And people can only find you if they type in Amanda SEO services, then you're not going to rank for other things like internal linking or link building or anything like that. 

[00:09:15] So it's important to include the right type of content on your site. And really what helps the most with Diversifying what you rank for is to increase the amount of content you have on your site.

[00:09:27] But what we typically do is like we use data to figure out, okay, what are the key services or products that people are looking for? 

[00:09:34] Based off of that, that's the content that we need to build on our site. The people who are ranking well for that content currently, or those keywords currently, what are they doing differently than we're doing on our pages?

[00:09:44] What elements are they including? Not just, what are they writing about? But like, where is their contact form on the page? Do they have any reviews on the page? 

[00:09:52] What else are they talking about? How do they talk about their guarantees or warranties or how they help their customers? 

[00:09:57] All of those things, too, are part of our research for building out a new page for a service.

[00:10:03] So if you're ranking for a lot of branded keywords, like you only rank for keywords that include your business name. Your focus should be building out new content. 

[00:10:11] If you see a lot of near me or city specific keywords, you likely need location pages. And this location pages should focus on the core topic.

[00:10:19] And then you may need service pages for each location based on how granular gets from there. So an example is if you do Lawn care. 

[00:10:29] You may have Greenville lawn care as one of your pages, but you may need to have a Greenville weed control page, if weed control has a lot of search volume and people who are getting that search volume and receiving that traffic and ranking right now have a specific weed control page for that city, too.

[00:10:47] So that would be the strategy that I would use is to look at what's happening on the macro and micro level for your competitors. For location pages. And how they rank in general. 

[00:10:57] And then see okay, this is probably what's working well for them. This is likely what's not working well for them.

[00:11:02] And going there from there to get your non branded rankings and traffic. And then after you build that content, you still need to build Internal links to the pages, set up your structure data. 

[00:11:12] Do your link building. Make sure you can get to them for the navigation. 

[00:11:15] And all things for you to get the best results possible from it.

[00:11:19] Crystal Waddell: Wow. That's such a great example with the weed control. So you're saying that you should have a location page and a service page. Targeted for the location? 

[00:11:29] Amanda Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. And it really depends on, how competitive those services are. 

[00:11:35] And looking at what your competitors are doing with those pages. If you only serve Greenville, you probably don't need a specific.

[00:11:42] Like, all these pages nested into each other.

[00:11:45] But if you serve Greenville, Charlotte, Raleigh, Columbia, you would need to have. And you know that Charlotte is super competitive for weed control. You would want to have those individual pages so you can make sure you can, dominate in those specific markets for those specific services.

[00:12:00] Crystal Waddell: Awesome. I know that I have some photographers in my small group. I have a SEO small group for entrepreneurs. I call it the SEO Squad. And we meet like every Wednesday for an hour and talk about our websites, but I have several photographers in that group. 

[00:12:13] And so I feel like, wow, this is really great for them as well. So thank you for those examples. 

Client Communication and Strategy

[00:12:19] Crystal Waddell: One of the last things I wanted to talk about was the fact that you say that you provide actual support and strategy and you're not just an SEO or marketing. Yes, person. So I wanted to talk about the difference because as I've tried to help other business owners, sometimes they have a vision for their business.

[00:12:37] And I do feel like they just want someone to come along and say, yes, do this. Even if it's not like the best thing for them to do. And when I've talked to people about strategy versus tactics, that's where I've really run into a brick wall because I'm like, look, I don't really feel comfortable.

[00:12:53] Of you paying me to do something that I really don't believe is going to help you. Could you talk about how you navigate that? 

[00:13:00] Amanda Jordan: Yeah. data is your friend. So, that is what I typically show them is like, Hey, this is what we're actually seeing that people are doing. 

[00:13:11] This is what we see that people are searching for.

[00:13:13] And these are, and this is why we need to take this specific course of action. If having this page look this way is more important to you than having more money, then sure! 

[00:13:24] Do it that way! 

[00:13:25] But. It's not going to help us reach the goal that you set for us. With your SEO strategy.

[00:13:30] So that is typically what I do is I go to the data and I'll show them. 

[00:13:33] Like I'll show them Google Trends. I'll show them Google Search Console, Ahrefs, SEMrush, and I'll help paint the picture for them of what's happening. 

[00:13:42] I'll also give them competitor examples where competitors are beating them by doing the things that I'm recommending doing. 

[00:13:47] So that they can because I see for a lot of local businesses once they can see Oh, I would be the only one doing this and my competitors are beating me and making more money than me.

[00:13:57] How can I catch up with them? 

[00:13:59] That typically clears it up when they realize oh, this is hurting me. This is not just, this is not just something that is like. So something that we can kind of mess with and see how it goes. 

[00:14:09] It's something where we want to get it right the first time. Because it's going to be impactful for our results.

[00:14:14] Yeah. So competitors, I think are is really strong especially for local SEO. Because really, all you need to do is beat the guy who's in the local pack and who's at the top of the page. 

[00:14:24] So if you can beat them, you're good. You don't have to worry about what's going on in any other city or the rest of the country. It's just in that area.

[00:14:31] So thinking about the competitors is a good way to help them change their mind on what they may be considering. And sometimes I do actually let them, like compromise with them. So it's okay, we can have. We can have two versions of this page. This page is going to be not indexed at all! 

[00:14:48] But you can have this page that if you want to use it for other things, send it to people, put it in your newsletter or in your email marketing campaign.

[00:14:56] Sure. But this is the page that we're going to focus on for ranking. And then there's sometimes where you do have to give a little, so it's okay, we have to cut out this thing that we really want to do on this page. But overall, we're getting the majority of things that we need to perform. 

[00:15:09] We told them what the risk, the pros and cons of this change are. 

[00:15:13] And where it could potentially harm us. And they just said they want to move forward with it. Cool. 

[00:15:17] So, I'm very upfront and honest with my clients, like pros and cons of anything that they would want to try or do. 

[00:15:23] And say Hey, our rankings might drop if we do this. Or it may not work out great.

[00:15:28] We don't know yet. Let's test it. That's another, I'm a very big proponent of testing too. So there's a way for you to test it and say, okay, let's see what works best. And test it. That's often a good way to help them understand and illustrate. Why you're making a certain recommendation, and I typically tested on pages where we're already performing great.

[00:15:48] If it's something that's small something for conversion rate optimization or something like that, and it's not going to really impact our rankings. Or somewhere where we want to grow. We're not performing well. If it's something where we're like, Oh what you're recommending is going to hurt us even more.

[00:16:01] then I'm going to take something where we want to grow, but we're not doing well, already as our test pages. 

[00:16:06] Crystal Waddell: Okay, and you mentioned that you use Google Trends to show them like what's working. How do you do that? 

[00:16:12] Amanda Jordan: Yeah, so one of the things that I do with Google Trends is especially when I see like a huge drop in impressions or clicks or anything like that. 

[00:16:23] And a branded is included in those drops.

[00:16:26] So using Google Search Console data to see that one of the things that I end up doing is going to Google Trends and looking in their specific state or city or region. 

[00:16:34] And saying Oh, this is dropping for everyone. Or, Oh, this is just dropping for us. Apparently everyone is the trend is actually going upwards.

[00:16:41] So showing them that data of this is actually the trend in your area. And what you're doing is supporting that trend. Or actually hurting you because we're trending downward with our actual traffic. 

[00:16:53] People are trending upwards for actually looking for those services are looking for those keywords or products.

[00:16:59] That I use that as a way to show them where our focus needs to be as far as services. 

[00:17:04] Crystal Waddell: So when you do that, how far back do you look in the trends? What's the timeframe that you recommend? 

[00:17:10] Amanda Jordan: Yeah. Because there's seasonality that comes into play for some services. So for example, if you're an AC company, like in the winter. 

[00:17:19] You're not getting a lot of business. Your business probably starts either at the beginning of summer or when it's the hottest outside. That's likely when you get the most service. So I like to have at least one year of year over year data in Google Trends. 

[00:17:31] Google Trends will go back much further than that, though.

[00:17:33] So you do have a lot of options for that. I usually start with the five year view. 

[00:17:39] And then look at okay, for the last five years, what's going on? Is there any consistent trend? And then if I can see a very good trend for the year view, I'll shorten it and say hey, this is how people were behaving last year.

[00:17:50] And this is how they're behaving this year. We can see a difference here. And based on that, this is why we're recommending this. 

[00:17:56] Crystal Waddell: Awesome, and just one more thing to follow up on based on something you said a while back. 

[00:18:01] What are breadcrumbs? 

[00:18:03] Amanda Jordan: So if you think about like this, what is it? Is it Hansel and Gretel that left breadcrumbs behind them so that they can?

[00:18:10] Yeah. And that's really what it is. It's actually. Links really to the navigation of your site. 

[00:18:15] So they're actually on the page itself and they usually go below the hero image on most sites. That's where you'll see them, but it gives you a way to trace how you got to that page or where that page is on the site.

[00:18:28] Some sites will have home and that links back to home and then I'll have services and that links back to services and they'll have I don't know. Carpet cleaning and that carpet cleaning page is, the page that you're on. 

[00:18:38] But on that page, you still have the ability to go back to services and home.

[00:18:41] So you can follow the trail essentially of the site. So if you want to see their other services, you can just click on that to go to services, or you can go from the navigation. 

[00:18:50] But it helps. and breadcrumbs also. Can show up as structured data to is part of structured data scheme as well. so it can help search engines and users understand the website better and follow the information architecture of your site as well.

[00:19:04] Crystal Waddell: Awesome. And I have to say, I love the signs behind you, like the ranking road optimization way. 

[00:19:10] And I don't know, is that algorithm alley? Yeah. I was like, I was looking at those because I thought, Oh that's cool that she's got those street signs. And then I realized that they were actually SEO themes.

[00:19:20] So yeah. 

[00:19:21] Amanda Jordan: Chat GPT came up with those road names for me. Hey, what are some road names I can use? This? Yeah. 

[00:19:26] Crystal Waddell: Oh, super smart. I love that. Great job. Great teamwork. Okay. So there's a few things about local SEO that I don't quite understand. 

Understanding Citations and Brand Mentions

[00:19:35] Crystal Waddell: And so I was wondering if you could explain. I don't know how hard this is to explain, but how do you build citations brand mentions, and team visibility. 

[00:19:46] Amanda Jordan: Yeah, citations are essentially anywhere where your name, address, and phone number are listed online. So Yelp is a citation Apple Maps is a citation, all those different, any, Yellow Pages is a citation, all those are citations. There's a lot of services now that will do it for you, like Bright bright local white spark.

[00:20:07] yes, they're all examples of, but they're pretty simple to do yourself to you. It's like essentially setting of a social media account. 

[00:20:14] It's the same steps that you would take there. It's just that you'd be putting information in for your business instead. 

[00:20:20] Citations, I think, have some value, but their value is It's limited because how easy it is to make them now.

[00:20:27] So like any, like you could make essentially 500 citations pretty quickly. 

[00:20:33] Depending on the method you use. So while they have some value, I think link building is probably a stronger way to build visibility. And then brand mentions. 

[00:20:42] That's really, I think, similar to PR and social media, really.

[00:20:47] I see brand mentions and team mentions and things like that. More so a part of your branding and overall marketing strategy. 

[00:20:55] So being visible on social media, having people talk about your company on Reddit. 

[00:21:00] Those types of things are the way I think are the best ways to build brand mentions and to build like a overall like presence online.

Building Visibility Through Social Media and Reddit

[00:21:08] Crystal Waddell: So how can a small local business get people to talk about their business on Reddit? Or a forum? 

[00:21:16] Amanda Jordan: Yeah. One thing is you can definitely do is. Be active on Reddit. not, they call it shilling. Don't shill. 

[00:21:25] Don't like over promote yourself or anything like that, but actually be helpful and answer questions about related to your service or related to your city.

[00:21:34] And you can have like your account name be your business name. That's one way to do it. And then you have lots of brand mentions immediately from those posts. 

[00:21:41] Another way really is just to, To be good at what you do because people on Reddit are often looking for recommendations. 

[00:21:47] And they trust other people on Reddit more than they trust Google reviews or Yelp reviews or anything else. Because it's essentially the new version of a word of mouth. 

[00:21:55] yeah, so have doing good at your job being good at your work is also another way to get those mentions on platforms like Reddit. 

[00:22:04] I work for a small agency. We've been mentioned on Reddit before as a potential agency for people for who are looking for local SEO. We're a very small team, so it's definitely possible.

[00:22:14] And part of that too is just increasing your visibility. Online through other channels other than SEO too. 

[00:22:20] Because if someone sees you posting a lot on LinkedIn and you're like, Oh, this company provides local SEO. Or whatever service you provide, they are more likely to remember you when they're asked about it. Or consider you when they're looking for services later on.

[00:22:33] Crystal Waddell: Okay. 

Local SEO vs. Regular SEO

[00:22:34] Crystal Waddell: What is the difference between local SEO and regular SEO? 

[00:22:39] Amanda Jordan: Really, the biggest difference, I think, is the strategy for topic clustering and content. 

[00:22:47] And how geography plays a part in it. 

[00:22:49] And link building too.

[00:22:50] if you're trying to write nationally, you don't need to worry about a specific city or state. Or how people search there. 

[00:22:57] But on a local level, things are very different. So if someone wants to rank for water heater repair, some places they call it a hot water tank. Some places they call it a water tank. 

[00:23:07] In some places they call it a hot water heater. Some places they just call it a water heater.

[00:23:12] And if you don't know how people search in your city, you're not going to be as visible. 

[00:23:17] And if you don't mention your city, Or state in your content, you're likely to be less visible. Really, I see from a content perspective part of for service pages and location pages, your city or state or county, that is like that's one of your keywords now. 

[00:23:33] That is the biggest difference. And then with clustering and blog posts you want to be locally relevant. 

[00:23:39] Please don't just spam like Any potential topic related to your business.

[00:23:43] Be very specific to your area, be very specific to what you offer. And what people are actually asking about online, to make content. 

Creating Relevant Local Content

[00:23:51] Crystal Waddell: What would be an example of spamming? 

[00:23:54] Amanda Jordan: Yeah. So an example of spamming would be creating a bunch of, if you, okay, let's go back to the, HVAC company example. 

[00:24:03] An example of just spamming content would be to create a blog post about every part of an HVAC system and what it does and how you maintain each part of it. 

[00:24:15] No one is looking for that. Like it's not like serving a purpose other than oh, yeah now we have all these keywords on our page. An example that would be more city specific is like a blog post about The hottest day of the year and how often AC units go out in that area based on the hottest days of the year. Or the hottest days of the year in history for your city.

[00:24:38] And, how many AC units, you typically repair during that time, and why it's important to do maintenance ahead of time. 

[00:24:45] So you're not stuck without AC once it gets to the hottest time of the year. Things like that.

[00:24:49] For a pest control company would be something like most common pests based on zip code. 

[00:24:54] And then having Hey, these are the places where we get the most calls about these specific past.

[00:24:58] These are things you can do to prevent having them as an issue in the 1st place. These are some of the things that we recommend doing. These are the services we offer that are pet friendly. 

[00:25:06] If you have any concern about pets or child friendly, you have a concern about. Children in your home.

[00:25:11] So really thinking about your local audience and catering your content to them. 

[00:25:16] In any way you can, and it can be difficult. Sometimes I'm not going to lie and say it's easy to do because sometimes there's there's only so many ways you can talk about a toilet. 

[00:25:25] Like in plumbing. It's not like there's a bajillion ways you can make this locally relevant.

[00:25:30] but that's part of the reason why I also say like it's better to have a more structured, clear strategy for your content creation. 

[00:25:38] Instead of just like writing posts about everything. It's okay not to have a bunch of posts on your site. You can rank without having a bunch of blog posts. If you're a service business. 

[00:25:48] If you're a blog, that's different.

[00:25:49] You definitely need to have more blog posts to do it regularly. Yep. 

Avoiding Duplicate Content in Local SEO

[00:25:53] Crystal Waddell: I don't know that cannibalization is actually a thing or not, whatever. 

[00:25:57] But like, how do you keep from like having duplicate content, and making it unique versus, because if you have a service page and location page. 

[00:26:08] How do you keep those things from competing with each other?

[00:26:12] Amanda Jordan: Yeah. So duplicate content is like one of the largest issues in local SEO. 

[00:26:18] Because it is hard to scale having a ton of content for a ton of cities about the exact same services. 

[00:26:25] Our strategy is based on what do we need to do based on the competition level in that area?

[00:26:29] So if we see most of our competitors have these key service pages that are in their navigation and they have one location page. But no location specific service pages. 

[00:26:40] That might be enough.

[00:26:40] We may not need to create a service page for every single location, too. 

[00:26:45] But if we see that's what our competitors are doing, and it's how they're winning. 

[00:26:49] Then we're likely going to need more content to support that because everyone else is already doing it.

[00:26:54] So Google's already expecting to see more individualized content. For each of the markets. 

[00:26:59] And then one of the things we're saying too, is that a lot of times small businesses are actually beating out some of these bigger companies because their entire site is focused on one city versus having to try to rank for 20 cities.

[00:27:09] So they have the ability to target a city extremely well. 

[00:27:12] Which means that, okay, we do need more content for this specific city. The way that we deal with duplicate content is to actually find unique things about the city itself that we can write about that's related to the services. 

[00:27:23] A lot of things that you can do, too, are like user generated content.

[00:27:26] So including reviews from people in that actual area. Include like any organizations you're a part of. Any like awards and recognition from that area. 

[00:27:36] Anything you can do to make it unique without having, without requiring your content writers to write like it. 30 different versions of the exact same page is great.

[00:27:46] You can have an about the owner section where the owner talks about their business for that specific location. 

[00:27:51] So those are the ways that you can make your location pages different. And for the individual service pages, what we do for the main location page. We're more focused on the like more general keywords.

[00:28:02] So if it's a window repair company, it would be Atlanta window repair company. Atlanta window services, Atlanta window door company. That will be what the location page is focused on.

[00:28:13] But the individual page pages may be like Shower glass repair. So that'd be Atlanta glass shower glass repair.

[00:28:20] And that's the only topic on that page. We're not talking about the more generic version of the terms that people were looking for. 

[00:28:26] So we like segment our pages so that the location page is like the parent page and then the pages for each service is about a more specific service that is, we know has a lot of search volume, people searching in that specific area.

[00:28:40] Crystal Waddell: Okay. So what about this? What do you think is better? I have a feeling I know the answer, but local SEO or paid search? 

[00:28:48] Amanda Jordan: I'm going to be extremely biased. I think local SEO. 

[00:28:52] Because I think long term, and this is what every SEO says, long term, it's going to be what pays off the best. 

[00:28:59] Because once you've made yourself an authority for a topic in a city. It is very Hard for someone to overtake that. 

[00:29:09] And that you can do that over time, and then you have a really strong base.

[00:29:12] And when you move into new markets and new cities, it's actually easier to rank because you already have that authority for your service overall. Google already trust you search engines already trust you. You already have brand recognition, so it's easier to do it versus with paid. You're constantly having to pay to keep that visibility.

[00:29:30] But with SEO, eventually, you'll get to the point where. Your business is just so associated with the services itself, that it's easy for you to rank in new markets. 

[00:29:39] Crystal Waddell: Okay. What about a business that may not have a website? Do you have to have a website to do local SEO? 

[00:29:46] Amanda Jordan: You can have a Google business profile and focus on Google Maps. 

[00:29:50] And I don't know if you can do LSA without a website.

[00:29:55] I do recommend having a website though, even if it's just one page. I think it's beneficial to specify your services and how people can reach you. 

[00:30:03] Because more than likely your competitors do have a website. There are very few times where I see someone without a website, rank as well as a business

[00:30:12] with a website. 

[00:30:13] Other than if they have an exact match name for the keyword. Or they're extremely well established and have a ton Of reviews that have been there for a very long time. 

[00:30:21] If you're a new business, I would say at least a one page website with just the basic information about how to reach you. What you offer and things like that. 

[00:30:29] If you don't want to build it out, and have to do all those things But you'd be much better off if you did have a full website that talked at length about your services, why people should choose you, how to contact you, and all of that.

[00:30:42] Crystal Waddell: What is LSA? 

[00:30:45] Amanda Jordan: They're local search ads. So they're like a paid ad option specific to google like maps related businesses. 

[00:30:53] They show up at the top of the site. Includes your reviews and like how to contact you. Or I think it's like the phone number and a picture. 

[00:31:00] But they're just a different type of paid ad. They work a little bit differently from regular paid ads.

[00:31:05] Essentially, you're mostly monitoring for reviews and following up with people with leads that come in.

[00:31:10] Is definitely more conversion focus and typical paid ads because it's like they click and call you directly from the ad immediately. There's no other things to do when someone clicks on that, clicks on those, they're just like immediately going to you.

[00:31:24] Crystal Waddell: Okay. 

Franchise SEO Challenges and Solutions

[00:31:24] Crystal Waddell: You mentioned that you did some work with franchises. And one of the things we were talking earlier, the fact that I was in Greenville, South Carolina, where you're from, where you live, last or a couple of weeks ago. And I also go to a gym called orange theory and orange theory is nationwide.

[00:31:42] And so one thing I've learned, because, of course, like every time I go into a business, I'm always like, Hey, what do you do for your SEO? And they mentioned that, the franchise does the SEO. So how does that work? 

[00:31:54] If you're a local business, but you're part of a franchise, how can you improve your SEO?

[00:32:00] Amanda Jordan: Yeah, that can be difficult, honestly, because a lot of times, SEO is like not even a thought when franchises are doing things. 

[00:32:09] For example, when they're choosing like, service areas or like markets for different franchises. They may, like they'll do sometimes do something like, I don't know, North Greenville, South Greenville, East Greenville, West Greenville, but people don't search that way.

[00:32:23] So while their territories are named differently, they're not based off of how people actually interact in human behavior. 

[00:32:32] So that can cause some issues sometimes. But the main thing that we see with franchisees is that it is difficult for them. Like there, there's usually a few different ways they work.

[00:32:41] It's usually, corporate manages all marketing and SEO, things like that. Or, they, have a partner that they use for marketing services. That each franchisee can reach out to and work with. Or each franchisee can just do whatever he feels correct for their locations. And. 

[00:33:00] That last one is very difficult.

[00:33:03] I would not recommend it for any franchise. I think that the best model would be to have an individual partner that you work with that they can work with on a case by case basis to get things done. Or as a corporate can handle it. I think that could be difficult for franchisees because they may have opinions on how things should be done.

[00:33:21] But unless they have permission from corporate they're not able to get those things through. 

[00:33:26] Which is why I think maybe the second option is the best where they actually have a relationship with agency, too. 

[00:33:31] Because we can speak up on their behalf because sometimes their ideas are good. Like they have a good a very good reason for what they want. It makes sense and they should be able to do it.

[00:33:42] But for some reason the corporate level It's not being allowed and we can help bring the data forward To show the value of this recommendation. And help push it through. I think it makes it a lot more collaborative too when you have individual franchisees that can give you Insights as to what's going on with their location and how that may impact another location. Or you see an issue with one location.

[00:34:03] You now you understand and you fix it. Now You understand what could help another location. It's also great for testing, too. So you can have individual franchisees that are open to testing and some aren't. So you can just work at you can test things on one, show them the results. And then others may be interested in doing that test as well.

[00:34:19] I think working with franchises are, it's very interesting, but very, challenging. It is like one of those things where I like a challenge. Franchises are definitely like one of the biggest challenges in local SEO. 

[00:34:31] Because there's so many moving parts. And so many people .

[00:34:34] And so many Different territories and markets where people will behave differently.

[00:34:38] So understanding each market is super important to you. 

[00:34:41] Crystal Waddell: So you mentioned, how somebody might split up Greenville, wouldn't be relevant to somebody who lives in Greenville. Can you give like an example of what would be relevant to someone who lives in Greenville? 

[00:34:52] Amanda Jordan: Yeah. So ways that would be relevant would actually... I think it really requires.

[00:34:58] Either the franchisee that knows the area to be involved. Or for the franchise itself to do the research and understand that area geographically. 

[00:35:07] Because a lot of different cities work different ways like the way someone searches in New York City is different than someone the way someone searches in Greenville. 

[00:35:16] So you may be able to segment territories differently depending on where they are and how people search. There are some areas where east of the city is its own area. 

[00:35:27] So it does make sense to create a territory like that. And people do search like that. 

[00:35:31] But there's other areas where it just that's not how people search. 

[00:35:34] In Greenville, it would be better to have like Different regions, so you could have a main Greenville territory. But then you'll have a Malden territory, which is another area.

[00:35:44] That's, up and coming affluent and nice. And then you can have another 1. that's Anderson /Easley area. And that's another side of this of the city where people would search differently because they're not going to be searching Greenville. 

[00:35:56] They're going to be searching for something more closer to them. But it still technically is the Greenville area.

[00:36:02] So understanding those smaller neighborhoods or smaller cities nearby, I think it's really important. 

[00:36:07] Crystal Waddell: Yeah, I love that. And that's such a great point because I'm not a directions person. And I didn't even know what side of the town I lived on. 

[00:36:16] And I remember the way I learned that I lived on the West side was because there was a West Fayetteville Walmart.

[00:36:25] And I was like, huh. What's the address of this West Fayetteville Walmart is the one that showed up closest to me and it turned out it was just right up the road. 

[00:36:33] And I'm like, Oh, I live in West Fayetteville, but I had no idea, like I didn't grow up here. I wasn't, I'm not good with maps or directions.

[00:36:40] Yeah. A good point is yeah, I know where I live. I know that I live like in this little town that I live in. But if you were to say the direction, plus the city, I personally would have no idea. 

[00:36:51] Amanda Jordan: Yeah, neither would I. 

[00:36:53] And then, I think another reason why it may be better for franchises to get away from that way of thinking.

[00:37:00] It's because Google is using that person's location to determine which business is the closest to them, too. 

[00:37:06] So unless someone is searching from work and they live on the other side of town. Like that is the only way you're going to not be the closest one to them anyway, or the preferred option anyway.

[00:37:17] So I think proximity to the person who's searching should be more of a factor and how people search in that specific area. Over okay, you want this area of this city and this person wants this area of the city. 

[00:37:28] I know there's a lot of other factors that come into play with that other than SEO.

[00:37:31] But I think it'd be a good idea if SEO became more of that conversation or at least a thought when deciding what territories to give different franchises.

[00:37:39] Crystal Waddell: Absolutely. 

Working with Different CMS Platforms

[00:37:41] Crystal Waddell: when I work with people, I typically work with business owners who are using a, content management system like Wix or Shopify. 

[00:37:49] I like to say I'm the non WordPress SEO. So the websites that you guys work with, is there a general theme or specific type of CMS that you work with? 

[00:38:00] Amanda Jordan: We primarily work with WordPress, but we do work with Wix.

[00:38:04] We've worked with Squarespace before, Webflow. And I have a lot of experience with Shopify, too. We really can we can do a lot of different things. Really, the biggest issues that we find with platforms is the ability to, do some more technical back end SEO things. 

[00:38:19] Make changes to improve site speed and make changes to add stuff for structured data, things like that.

[00:38:26] Those are the biggest hurdles we see. 

[00:38:27] But I think really pretty much every CMS that has thought about SEO at least a little bit can be used. It's just more so learning the nuances of each of them. Separately. 

[00:38:40] Crystal Waddell: And I noticed that you made a tool, called the schema advisor tool.

[00:38:45] And so I was wondering, it's can you use that with the Shopify website or Wix website? 

[00:38:50] Amanda Jordan: You could. What it does is it uses the schema. org. And it's trained on the schema types and the recommendations that they provide. And it's trained on Google's guide for schema as well. And what it does is just recommend schema.

[00:39:06] So you should be able to use it with Wix. The Shopify client I work with, they have a lot of things that are custom to them.

[00:39:12] But I think with most Shopify sites, you should be able to just to drop it into the page and I'll just use that schema. So yeah it just gives you a recommendation on the best schema types.

[00:39:22] And if you ask it to, it will give you an example of what that schema would look like. Because it does look like a garbled up. Code jargon to someone who's not very used to looking at it. 

[00:39:33] But if you do go to the Google guide for schema and the schema. org, they will give you examples so that you can understand.

[00:39:41] Okay, this is how these elements of this work together. And this is how I'm supposed to set this up. The schema. org also has a validator. So that you can validate your schema, make sure it works before putting it on the site.

[00:39:52] So you can just copy the code and put it right into the validator. And I'll tell you if it's accurate or has errors.

[00:39:57] Crystal Waddell: Okay, I'll definitely link to that and to your tool. 

[00:40:00] When you say drop it in. Are you just saying drop it in anywhere within the code of the page on Shopify? 

[00:40:08] Amanda Jordan: And Shopify, I think a lot of times people use plugins that will allow you to add the schema. Or apps that will allow you to add the schema.

[00:40:15] It'll add, give you like a little field where you can add the schema now. And you can do it that way. Some of them will try to automate it for you and based on the page type and add schema for you. And you may be able to edit some of those from there. You can also actually add schema using Google tag manager.

[00:40:33] Okay. So you can add the code to Google Tag Manager and it'll automatically load it to that specific page for you. Without you having to make any changes on the actual website itself. 

[00:40:43] Crystal Waddell: I need to talk to somebody about Google Tag Manager because that is something I do not understand, but it keeps coming up as this, miracle code, whatever. 

[00:40:52] So it's yep that's going to be on the list for the remainder of the year. 

Final Tips and Connecting with Amanda

[00:40:57] Crystal Waddell: So Amanda, thank you so much for being here today. Is there a specific place that somebody could go to connect with you, follow you, or just learn more about Rickety Roo or what you've got going on?

[00:41:09] Amanda Jordan: Yeah. you can find me in LinkedIn at Amanda Jordan or Twitter at Amanda T Jordan. 

[00:41:14] And you can find Rickety Roo at RicketyRoo.Com. 

[00:41:18] Crystal Waddell: Awesome. Okay. So as we sign off here, I just have one final question for you. Like of all of the things that you've told us today. 

[00:41:25] What do you feel would have the most impact, most significant impact for an entrepreneur to implement today?

[00:41:34] Amanda Jordan: Yeah, really it's having like location specific service pages and making sure you have internal linking for those pages set up. 

[00:41:42] Doing that alone makes a lot of difference for a lot of businesses that we work with. Because they just don't have the visibility because Google doesn't understand how important that service is to their business yet.

[00:41:53] Crystal Waddell: Awesome. Okay, guys. So you heard it here. Amanda, thank you so much for being with us today and I will catch you next week on the simple and smart SEO show podcast. 

[00:42:02] Amanda Jordan: Thank you.