Bonus Interview with Tony Leary Google local expert #55

Today we have a special guest Tony Leary our local Google expert who knows about Google local and why for contractors it’s so important for it to be correct.

So in Tony’s research he found out that in order to rank in Google local and on the google local listing s you need a website.

In order for your business to have a pin marker on Google maps all your information needs to be organized. Google is the searcher and pulls all the information about your business out of all the different directories so if it's not consistently the same then I could actually hurt your rankings.

A new word for me this week was citations. I heard about citations has the information that has been collected about your business and then Google searches for those in the different directories.

 We talked about the pros and cons of a professional service like yest and others that makes you fill out a massive profile and stuff like that and they're good if you haven't done it but if you have done it or had someone else before fill out directories then it won't fix the things that been done incorrectly it just push more information out and it will take a while to remedy the situation..

So if you've been doing this yourself or have had it done by a service and its not correct the thing that would probably help you out the most is to find someone like Tony that could go through and physically  find the errors and correct the citations, he knows where  to search and find out where the inconsistencies are and redo it so that's the big difference between the companies that make you fill out all the info and push it out , they both have value you just have to decide what is the most important to your other growing of your business right now.

So with a company like let’s say yext takes all your information you fill in for them to process it for you if you make a mistake there's really no one there to go through it to double check see if all that stuff is congruent with what's going out with Tony he manually checks and takes a look he can double and triple check to make sure that what is there is correct.

 

Problem most important thing is to find the source of the incorrect information is and then cleaning it up.

Also the your categories if you are not sure what you need to put your business and you don't have the expertise then you could actually hurt your business ranking as opposed to helping. 

 

One of our other guest on this podcast we interviewed found out through his service that 50% of the contractors using his a mailing service didn't have websites which I thinks crazy but because I think that at minimum a minimum website you need just to confirm that you're a viable business weather you like it or not that is the world we live in.

 

For those do-it-yourselfers Tony has a free newsletter that he has available and you can get the access at the bottom of the post. But if you're like me I’ve  got enough things that I need to do and I do well it is much more prudent to bring Tony on as  team member to help while I do what I do best.

 So let’s talk about Google reviews to go along through Google maps or Google local and how important it is to tie in everything Google especially reviews?

 I found it with the whatever business I do on the Internet invariably every time that I have they say I’m   calling you because I like the reviews that you've gotten so being Google and Google local being number one or being in the top  don't forget to get the Google reviews because one is great but two is better the good reviews and local.

It's really helpful in when someone writes you a review they put the services that you provided and even the neighborhood helps your ranking which I thought was kind of interesting because Google just wants supply relevant information to the people that are searching nice little point of interest.

 Probably one of the biggest shortfalls of Google reviews are that it's hard for people to leave reviews is not the easiest thing to find. So you have to give instructions to your customers to get to the Google reviews. You can go to white spark www.whitespark.ca    They have a tool on their website at the top.   A review generator handout. That you can create a simple PDF form and give your people to write  Google review for them.

So really what we are talking about here is with Google it's called inbound marketing because people are really looking for your service is like the Yellow Pages googles like to new Yellow Pages if you're not in Yellow Pages and how can anyone find you

Once you get past word-of-mouth marketing  a local search marketing actually provides you the second highest return on investment through all studies that have  been done. Go to www.Google.com/business  that's going to Google my business dashboard. That's when you would find your business listing claim it through phone call or postcard if you haven't done that already.

For more tips and go http://cartographymarketing.com/about/  

 Stop by and get his newsletter and feel free to give him a call

Tony Leary

Cartography Marketing

Local Search Specialist

[email protected]

Phone: [phone]