Local SEO Guide

SERP Summary, our free SEO Weather Report for 100k U.S. local Home Services queries is live! Today is a perfect day to launch because over the past week, Google's Home Services SERPs have been the MOST volatile of any week in the past year. Check it out. Link and initial observations of the data in the comments

I had seen Lily Ray's post about Reddit losing SERP visibility over the past week so I ran a query of SERP Summary, our soon-to-launch SERP volatility tracker for 100K Local U.S. Home Services keywords. Since last week, Reddit lost about 1% of its visibility in our data set, making it the 11th biggest loser out of ~95K domains. Who else lost big last week in Home Services? The Top 5 Biggest Losers (in terms of # of lost keywords): 1. YouTube.com: -23K Keywords/-4% 2. Quora.com: -14K/-3% 3. TheSpruce.com: -13K/-15% 4. HomeBeautiful.com.au: -6K/-99% 5. Build.com: -5K/-25%

We are getting very close to launching SERP Summary, our SEO Weather Report of 100K Home Services keywords. That last 10% is of course taking 90% of the time :P So while we wait, here's some interesting data in the Pest Control SERPs over the past month: 1. Inline Videos increased by ~10%. This has been an ongoing trend over the past year across all Home Services categories. 2. Google SERP Ownership (the # of results "owned" by Google in a SERP) is at 75%(!). This has been consistent for this category over the past year, making it one of the hardest to compete in. 3. The big winners over the past few algo updates - see attached screenshot showing the increase in number of appearances in the results over the past month. @castcade-pest-control is the only truly "local" business that is dominating, further supporting the "SEO is all about Brand" theory. If you are interested in getting notified when SERP Summary launches (it will be FREE), you can sign up via the link in the comments.

Let's talk about SEO for start-ups. As Eli Schwartz likes to say, ideally startups shouldn't be investing in SEO until they have found product-market fit. I have a very slight disagreement (or perhaps I have not read his thoughts closely enough) in that I think you can bake basic SEO into your product from the get-go with minimal effort. Regardless, I always love seeing when startups turn on the SEO jets. We are currently working with a fast-growing startup that for two years has willfully ignored SEO. They are much more focused on improving the product via word-of-mouth/virality from customers. It has been working, but something changed recently. Two weeks ago the CEO pinged me and asked how they could incorporate SEO into a strategy to gain more visibility. It was basically the first time SEO aligned with a product decision. As much as SEO can be cool, it was a very cool strategy. Within minutes the team was incorporated into the thread and started to build to the specifications I laid out. Every day they iterated a bit more. Over the past week, Google started to take notice. Not huge traffic by any means, but the quality of this traffic pretty much validates the strategy and it will likely accelerate over the next few months as the team builds upon it. The TLDR: Startups that succeed at SEO treat it like any other product feature. Come up with a plan, build, iterate, profit :)

Fun conversation with Danny Leibrandt of Pest Control SEO.

Into Local Grid rank tracking for Google Business Profiles/Google Maps? Our CEO, Andrew Shotland, reviewed Semrush's new Map Rank Tracker tool. TLDR: It's pretty good. Link in the comments

🌟 Calling all caregivers and friends in Asheville, NC! 🌟 Visiting Angels is hiring compassionate caregivers to join their team. If you or someone you know is looking for a fulfilling role with flexible schedules and competitive pay, please spread the word! Together, let's make a difference in our community. Comment, tag, DM me or share with someone who might be interested! 💙 #Caregivers #AshevilleJobs #VisitingAngels #elderly #disability #flexibleschedule #friendsandfamily #jobopening https://lnkd.in/gwt9z75y

Yesterday I lost a decent-sized deal I was pretty sure we were going to close. For a variety of reasons, it deflated me for the moment. When this kind of thing happens I find myself rereading this post I wrote about an old boss of mine who passed away. For those of you who are having a sales bummer kind of day/week/month, you might find it helpful. At the very least it's a good way to procrastinate for 5 minutes while telling yourself you are being productive :) https://lnkd.in/gX5btWuX

I’m #hiring for Local SEO Guide. Know anyone who might be interested? #SEO #agency #California #local #remote #GBP #WFH #hiring #Share #CFR

Just a reminder to all applicants this is a CA state based role. Although it’s WFH, it’s state specific. I may not be able to respond to all msg so using this as a response to all out of state and international candidates.