How To Rank #1 In Your City — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Tyler, Texas. Population 100,000.
2. 0:03Surrounded by hundreds of thousands of
3. 0:05homes on septic systems. And right now,
4. 0:09someone in Smith County has sewage
5. 0:11backing up into their bathroom, and
6. 0:14they're searching for septic service
7. 0:15Tyler on their phone. This is a real
8. 0:18market with real money. And almost no
9. 0:21one in this market is actually doing
10. 0:23local SEO. While the gurus are telling
11. 0:25you that you can't compete without a
12. 0:27$5,000 a month budget, I'm about to show
13. 0:30you search results where a single
14. 0:32well-built website could honestly
15. 0:34dominate the entire county. If you
16. 0:37aren't in the map pack, in the top three
17. 0:39when that tank overflows, you may as
18. 0:41well not exist, period. So today, I'm
19. 0:44breaking down what happens when you take
20. 0:47that same core 30 framework that wins
21. 0:49for Houston personal injury attorney and
22. 0:52point it at a market where the
23. 0:53competition forgot to show up. I'm going
24. 0:56to show you exactly what's ranking, why
25. 0:58it's ranking, and the gap that's sitting
26. 1:00there waiting for someone to walk into.
27. 1:01And we might even talk about a history
28. 1:03lesson on the local operators who had
29. 1:05this market locked up 15 years ago and
30. 1:08lost it to Google without even realizing
31. 1:10it happened. I run a seven-figure local
32. 1:13SEO agency. We manage hundreds of local
33. 1:16businesses across the country, and
34. 1:18everything I'm about to show you is what
35. 1:19we do for real clients every single day.
36. 1:22Let's get started. Septic service Tyler,
37. 1:26Texas. Let's see what we got. Haven't
38. 1:28done the search before. All right, so
39. 1:30first sign, no ads. This is a sign that
40. 1:32this is likely not a very competitive
41. 1:34space. Usually, we see ads when people
42. 1:37really care about ranking. Now, instead
43. 1:39of looking really hard at just these
44. 1:41three, I'm going to hit more businesses.
45. 1:43I want to see all of the results, not
46. 1:44just the top three. Don't worry, no one
47. 1:47actually does this. My favorite joke in
48. 1:49SEO, it's the only one I know. Where's
49. 1:51the best place to hide a dead body? This
50. 1:53second place of Google search results.
51. 1:55That starts with Robles here. The fourth
52. 1:57result is the first result on the second
53. 2:00page for local. I don't think you could
54. 2:02hide a dead body in the septic tank. I
55. 2:04don't think. Anyway, all right. Checking
56. 2:06reviews, I think it's very interesting.
57. 2:08Okay, A&A, this is a business name that
58. 2:10likely dates back to the yellow pages
59. 2:12which listed them alphabetically. That's
60. 2:15pretty funny. Uh 137, then we get 25,
61. 2:1846, uh 52, 54. So, these two have more
62. 2:22reviews than the ones that are ranked
63. 2:23second and third, but only a 4.3 there.
64. 2:26But, you know, 4.8, he's ranked better
65. 2:28than them. Let's see if there's any
66. 2:30other 61 at a 4.9. They're all the way
67. 2:33down there. We got 55 at a perfect five.
68. 2:36They're all the way down there. 173.
69. 2:39Wow, that's more than any of them. Okay,
70. 2:41so I'm definitely interested in checking
71. 2:44out this one. They are closing soon, but
72. 2:46they're not closed yet. All right, and
73. 2:48then I'll take a look at the number one
74. 2:50ranked. I always like taking a look at
75. 2:52businesses that aren't ranked very well,
76. 2:54but they have a lot of review. Because
77. 2:55if they have a lot of reviews, that
78. 2:57means they do good work, they care about
79. 2:58their business, they probably have
80. 2:59someone helping them go and get those
81. 3:01reviews, but somehow they just haven't
82. 3:04figured out how to do local SEO. And
83. 3:05especially for this service, which is
84. 3:08not super competitive, if they've spent
85. 3:10the effort to get 170 reviews, they
86. 3:13should be ranking. So, we'll take a look
87. 3:15at their site, but first we'll take a
88. 3:16look at A&A, the number one ranked
89. 3:19septic service for septic service Tyler,
90. 3:21Texas. All right, new website. The first
91. 3:23thing I always look at is the title tag.
92. 3:25I want to see the primary category and
93. 3:27city name. We have septic service in
94. 3:30Tyler. Great. The minor mistake that
95. 3:33they have here, again, they're ranked
96. 3:34number one, but this is a very low
97. 3:37competition. If the competition were
98. 3:38higher, this would be more important.
99. 3:40So, their minor mistake, their brand
100. 3:42should be at the back of the title tag
101. 3:44instead of at the front. Earlier in the
102. 3:46title tag the words come, the more
103. 3:49weight Google gives those words. They'll
104. 3:50always rank for their brand name, so the
105. 3:52brand name should be at the end. Minor
106. 3:54fix. H1 is the next thing I always look
107. 3:57at for an H1 tag. This does triple duty.
108. 3:59Number one, it's telling Google
109. 4:01reinforcing your primary category and
110. 4:03city name. Number two, you're telling an
111. 4:05LLM what's important about you, the
112. 4:07single most important attribute about
113. 4:09your business. And number three, you're
114. 4:11trying to convert a user to actually
115. 4:14call. So, let's see how they did with
116. 4:16their H1. Protecting East Texans since
117. 4:182001. So, horrible. Again, a sign of how
118. 4:22low this competition is. They aren't
119. 4:24mentioning the city name. They aren't
120. 4:26mentioning what the service is. They
121. 4:28aren't mentioning why we should care
122. 4:30about them. They do mention the city
123. 4:32name and the services here in the
124. 4:33subheading, but I really think this H1
125. 4:37can be improved. Not for ranking, right?
126. 4:39They're already ranked number one, low
127. 4:40competition. This H1 can be improved for
128. 4:42conversion, for talking to the LLMs. A
129. 4:45lot of room here to make this better.
130. 4:47All right, so we'll scroll down. Last
131. 4:48thing is so this is good. Okay, I this
132. 4:51this isn't amazing. This is much better
133. 4:53than what I was expecting. What I was
134. 4:54expecting to see was a history lesson
135. 4:57about A&A Septic Services. That's what
136. 4:59most businesses put in the first content
137. 5:02on their website. But, right? If
138. 5:04somebody just searched for Septic
139. 5:05Services Tyler, what do you think
140. 5:07they're looking for? Are they looking
141. 5:08for a history lesson on your business?
142. 5:10No. They're obviously looking for Septic
143. 5:12Services, okay? The first content that
144. 5:14we have here, we want to start talking
145. 5:17to the human, to the searcher. What
146. 5:20makes you different? Why should they
147. 5:21call you? So, this is like a six out of
148. 5:2410, but honestly, for this area, I was
149. 5:27expecting it to be a lot worse. So, not
150. 5:29horrible. Pumping services, some images.
151. 5:32Oh, right on the lake. Hopefully, that
152. 5:33doesn't leak ever. All right. Learn
153. 5:35more. What are What What are these learn
154. 5:36mores go to? Okay, so these go to
155. 5:38individual service pages. That's very
156. 5:40good. Aerobic systems, anaerobic
157. 5:42systems, a septic tank pumping. And if I
158. 5:45open that up, I end up on a page for
159. 5:48septic tank or just septic service, but
160. 5:50I guess that's pumping. So, not bad,
161. 5:52okay? So, they they are building up the
162. 5:53core 30. They have pages for their
163. 5:55individual services here. You have good
164. 5:57reason why they're ranking so high. And
165. 5:59we'd like seeing it on the homepage.
166. 6:01It's probably a few more than what I
167. 6:03would normally do, but again, not bad. I
168. 6:06like that they have financing options. I
169. 6:08would probably want to highlight this
170. 6:09more. I'd put the financing options
171. 6:11above all of these different service
172. 6:13pages. That's uh likely something that
173. 6:15sets them apart from a lot of their
174. 6:17competitors, especially smaller
175. 6:18competitors probably don't have the
176. 6:20ability to finance it. So, this is
177. 6:22pretty cool. Now, family-owned and
178. 6:24operated since 2001, sure, but again,
179. 6:26not really what I'm after. I really want
180. 6:29to hear why them. What makes them
181. 6:30different other than the financing? This
182. 6:33is not a GBP embed. Wild, okay. So, we
183. 6:36do like to see GBP embeds. We come down
184. 6:38here and we have another financing and
185. 6:40all of this. So, let's see how big the
186. 6:42website is out of curiosity. Uh
187. 6:45website size, which is how many results
188. 6:47are indexed, is a key sign that we look
189. 6:50for for competitiveness. So, 30 is
190. 6:52pretty small. 30 index pages is pretty
191. 6:54small. So, again, that's a sign that the
192. 6:56competition in this space is actually
193. 6:58quite low. Let's take a look at what
194. 7:00kind of structured data we have.
195. 7:01Structured data is code that tells
196. 7:04Google and tells AI systems who you are,
197. 7:07what you do, that you're a local
198. 7:09business, it's linked with your GBP, all
199. 7:11of these things. So, we have no
200. 7:12structured data. Okay. So, they should
201. 7:14go they should get structured data. It
202. 7:16obviously won't help their ranking
203. 7:17because they rank number one, but
204. 7:18structured data is going to help them
205. 7:20recommended by AI systems. And that's
206. 7:22more and more important. The current
207. 7:25search traffic to AI systems is is
208. 7:27minuscule. It's very low. But, a couple
209. 7:29of months ago, Google rolled out the Ask
210. 7:31Maps feature, which introduced Gemini to
211. 7:34local search results. And we need to
212. 7:36make sure that Gemini can recognize your
213. 7:38business and recommend your business to
214. 7:40users. Structured data is an easy way to
215. 7:43make that happen. Very low hanging fruit
216. 7:45they could easily implement structured
217. 7:47data in 15 minutes. That's definitely
218. 7:50something they should do even though
219. 7:51they're ranked number one. Okay. So, a
220. 7:53couple of things that we saw where they
221. 7:54could potentially improve, but overall
222. 7:56pretty good. It looks like they have a
223. 7:58core 30. They have 30 pages indexed.
224. 8:00They have individual service pages. So,
225. 8:02you know, not bad, but you know, they're
226. 8:04definitely ranking because how low the
227. 8:07competition is, not because their
228. 8:08website is perfect. Now, that makes me
229. 8:10kind of nervous. If we check out our
230. 8:12septic services, Joey Ridgel, which
231. 8:14again, more reviews than anyone else in
232. 8:16the top three, but they're ranked much,
233. 8:18much lower. So, let's see. Do they have
234. 8:20the primary category and city name in
235. 8:22the title tag?
236. 8:24Ah, they have Murchison, Texas. So, that
237. 8:26could be part of the reason that they're
238. 8:27ranked so low because they're not
239. 8:28actually in Tyler and I searched for
240. 8:30Tyler. So, that could be part of it.
241. 8:33But, septic services there, septic and
242. 8:35sand and sanitation contractor,
243. 8:37Murchison, Texas. Okay. Let's just see
244. 8:39how big their website is. 108. So,
245. 8:42that's a pretty big website for this
246. 8:44area. Pennable, why choose? And all of
247. 8:47these are individual service pages. Very
248. 8:50nice. Okay. So, this is better than I
249. 8:52was expecting. We have some
250. 8:54social proof. That should be higher on
251. 8:56the page, not all the way down here.
252. 8:58Member of the Chamber of Commerce. So,
253. 9:00when we and member of the BBB.
254. 9:02All of Okay. So, when we talk about
255. 9:04building external authority, building
256. 9:06trust. Now, that's building trust both
257. 9:09with Google and with the AI system. What
258. 9:11we mean when we say building trust is
259. 9:13basically sourcing quality links. Okay?
260. 9:16Now, the easiest way to get a quality
261. 9:18link for almost any local business in
262. 9:20the United States is to join the Chamber
263. 9:22of Commerce. So, they've done that.
264. 9:23They've also joined the BBB. They've
265. 9:25joined these other areas. Fabulous. This
266. 9:27is exactly Yeah, multiple Chambers of
267. 9:30Commerce. This is exactly what we do for
268. 9:32our clients to get high quality local
269. 9:35links that move the needle on ranking.
270. 9:37Uh we have some clients that we will
271. 9:39literally join dozen different chambers
272. 9:41of commerce for them for more
273. 9:43competitive spaces. So, love to see
274. 9:44this. Definitely a big part of their
275. 9:47rank. A video embed, that's awesome.
276. 9:49Really important to get Gemini to
277. 9:51recognize the business. Gemini's of
278. 9:52course owned by Google and is trained on
279. 9:55YouTube videos. So, when we put YouTube
280. 9:58videos and embed them, that's a signal
281. 10:00to Gemini that you own that YouTube
282. 10:02video and that you're you can teach
283. 10:04Gemini about your business by embedding
284. 10:06YouTube videos on your page. But, we
285. 10:09don't see any uh GBP embed. Let's see
286. 10:12what sort of schema we might have. So,
287. 10:15the video, local business, and website.
288. 10:17So, not bad, not bad. That's pretty
289. 10:18good. Now, what's interesting about this
290. 10:21one is because the area is so large,
291. 10:24that might be a part of how we're
292. 10:26getting kind of conflicting reports,
293. 10:27right? So, Joey Ridgel, I think is a
294. 10:31pretty good example. Like, they have
295. 10:33great reviews, the website's pretty
296. 10:35good, uh their social proof up here. Uh
297. 10:37it's a large website, but it's ranking
298. 10:39pretty poor for the Tyler, Texas search.
299. 10:42So, what I'm going to actually do is run
300. 10:44a quick rank map for Joey Riggle Ridgel,
301. 10:49if I could pronounce it, and A&A Septic
302. 10:51Services, cuz I want to actually see the
303. 10:53rank maps. Let's see if we can find Joey
304. 10:55Ridgel. Joey Ridgel in Murchison, Texas.
305. 10:57That's it. All right, so I'm going to
306. 10:59make this a little bit bigger and we're
307. 11:01going to do septic service and we're
308. 11:04going to run the scan. All right, now
309. 11:06over here, we're going to do A&A Septic
310. 11:09Services. This one might be a little bit
311. 11:11tougher. I might need to enter the
312. 11:12location. A veterinary office, weird.
313. 11:14There it is, A&A Septic Service on
314. 11:17Tyler, Texas. Perfect. And we're going
315. 11:18to run the same size. I hit 5 mi.
316. 11:22And we're going to run it for the same
317. 11:23keyword. So, it's interesting, right,
318. 11:25that for Google Maps, proximity is of
319. 11:27course a significant rank factor. Google
320. 11:29Maps cares about three rank factors,
321. 11:31proximity, uh trust, and relevance.
322. 11:34That's why we run these heat maps. All
323. 11:36right, so here are the two businesses.
324. 11:38We got Joey Ridgel and A&A Septic. And
325. 11:41I'm a little surprised. They're not in
326. 11:43super dissimilar locations. A&A is a
327. 11:46little bit farther east. Uh they're a
328. 11:47little bit farther west. Tyler's right
329. 11:49over here, and Dallas is right up there.
330. 11:51They're ranked reasonably well nearby.
331. 11:54They're ranked uh much, much better than
332. 11:56Joey Ridgel. So, it's kind of a
333. 11:58surprise, right? Joey Ridgel had had a
334. 12:00decent website, a larger website, more
335. 12:03reviews. So, what that tells us is that
336. 12:05the Joey Ridgel website has basically
337. 12:07done something that Google doesn't like.
338. 12:09And we could dive in here a little bit.
339. 12:11110, I wonder what those 110 are made up
340. 12:15of, cuz 110 is pretty large. So, let's
341. 12:18see. We have septic service, reviews,
342. 12:20blog, careers. So, the blog might be a
343. 12:23problem, cuz a blog is a lot of content
344. 12:25that Google doesn't really care about.
345. 12:27And it's kind of funny. I was just about
346. 12:30to use an example that if you're writing
347. 12:32a weekly blog post, and weekly blog
348. 12:34posts, in all honesty, weekly blog posts
349. 12:36are basically like a pox on business
350. 12:38owners. One of the biggest myths, they
351. 12:40waste so much time, energy, effort from
352. 12:42local business owners to sit there and
353. 12:44try to write a weekly blog post. It's
354. 12:46ridiculous. It makes me feel horrible.
355. 12:48And my classic example of wasted blog
356. 12:51posts are like five ways to winterize
357. 12:53your water heaters or something like
358. 12:55that, right? The plumber wants to rank
359. 12:57for water heater replacement. Giving
360. 12:59five tips on getting your water heater
361. 13:01ready for the next season is not
362. 13:03providing topical relevance or
363. 13:05geographical relevance for trying to
364. 13:07rank for water heater replacement. And
365. 13:08right here, five signs your septic tank
366. 13:10needs immediate attention. That is not
367. 13:12giving topical or geographical relevance
368. 13:15for this business. So, they have a large
369. 13:17website relative to this space. And it
370. 13:20looks like a lot of that content is
371. 13:22generic blog content that isn't actually
372. 13:25helping them rank. So, this is a
373. 13:27problem. This is where we would run like
374. 13:31a Screaming Frog scan. We'd get an idea
375. 13:33of their website. That would pull all
376. 13:34the H1 tags, all the title tags. We'd
377. 13:37run something like that through Claude
378. 13:40or an AI and ask Claude to take a first
379. 13:42pass. Hey, look at this content. What of
380. 13:45this makes sense for someone who's
381. 13:47trying to rank for septic tank service
382. 13:49in this area. Now, markets like Tyler
383. 13:52for service like this are pretty much
384. 13:54exactly why I built AI SEO Mastery. You
385. 13:57don't need a massive budget. You don't
386. 13:59need, you know, a perfect framework
387. 14:01pointed at the perfect website that has
388. 14:03amazing technical details and perfect
389. 14:05speed. We break down markets like this
390. 14:07all the time in that group. There's a
391. 14:09link in the description if you're
392. 14:10interested in joining the 3,300 members
393. 14:13who are already there to learn about how
394. 14:15to use AI to do SEO faster. That's the
395. 14:18first step I would take with Joey Ridgel
396. 14:20here. Is just to make sure that the
397. 14:23content on their site makes sense. That
398. 14:26Google agrees with it. I'd also want to
399. 14:28audit their Google Business Profile. I'd
400. 14:31want to make sure that their GBP has the
401. 14:33right categories, has the right services
402. 14:36listed on it. And then I would want to
403. 14:37make sure that their website has a
404. 14:39category page and service page for every
405. 14:41single one of those. And I want to make
406. 14:43sure the website content is linked
407. 14:45together and structured in the exact
408. 14:46same way that the GBP is. Doing all of
409. 14:48those things correctly will improve
410. 14:51their rank position. Their menu is too
411. 14:53large. I feel like this is too many
412. 14:55things on the menu. I don't like lots of
413. 14:58links. Q's here doesn't make sense to
414. 15:00me. If these should be integrated on the
415. 15:02actual page itself, not like as its own
416. 15:06landing page like that. I've already
417. 15:07talked about how, you know, this content
418. 15:10isn't great. They should really be
419. 15:11highlighting what makes them different,
420. 15:13what makes them special. So, overall,
421. 15:15you know, A&A, they're doing a much
422. 15:18better job than Joey Ridgel with a much
423. 15:20smaller website. Okay? And that's the
424. 15:23important distinction. If you structure
425. 15:25your website in a way that Google can
426. 15:27understand it, that the AI systems can
427. 15:29understand it, it's not budget, it's not
428. 15:32large websites that win, it's the
429. 15:34structure to help Google understand your
430. 15:37entity, your service entity, and your
431. 15:40location, the city entity that you're
432. 15:42in. I'm curious what ChatGPT thinks.
433. 15:45Optimizing for ChatGPT is almost the
434. 15:47exact same thing as optimizing for
435. 15:49Google Search. Doing everything correct
436. 15:51in Google Search is often what ChatGPT
437. 15:53also wants to see. There's a couple of
438. 15:55additional things that we might focus on
439. 15:57for ChatGPT, but most of optimizing for
440. 16:00ChatGPT is just good local SEO. And not
441. 16:03surprisingly, A&A Septic Tank Service,
442. 16:06that's the number one result from
443. 16:07Google, is the number one result for
444. 16:09ChatGPT. We see this pretty often. The
445. 16:11overlap between businesses recommended
446. 16:13by ChatGPT and businesses that are
447. 16:15ranking well in Google is close to
448. 16:17around 50%, but in small markets like
449. 16:20this one, where the competitors just
450. 16:23aren't basically doing anything, we see
451. 16:25a much larger overlap. All right, so
452. 16:27that was Tyler, Texas, a market and a
453. 16:30service where the right framework can
454. 16:32basically dominate an entire county. So,
455. 16:34if you like that angle, you're also
456. 16:36going to like what happened when I run
457. 16:37the same teardown in Milan. I was
458. 16:40looking for a tailor in Milan, a city
459. 16:42where tailoring has been an art form for
460. 16:45400 years, and somehow the shops winning
461. 16:48Google today aren't the ones with the
462. 16:50deepest history. They're the ones who
463. 16:52understood one thing about local SEO
464. 16:55that the legends never bothered to
465. 16:57learn. Different country, same story.
466. 17:00Check that one out next.