Chris - Local SEO

Ranking Local Businesses
DM me “LOCAL” to Work Directly With Me
DM me “ROADMAP” for my Local SEO Roadmap

[Chris - Local SEO @ChrisSimpson]

Here’s the check I run before buying any expired domain, and it isn’t WHOIS.

Most people pull the WHOIS, see "registered 2005," and treat that as the win.
Twenty years of age, must be worth something.

It isn’t.
The registration date is a receipt from a registrar.
Google didn’t write it and Google doesn’t care about it.

What you actually want to know is what GOOGLE knows about the domain.

So ask it in that order.
Has Google ever crawled it.
When it crawled, what content was sitting on the page.
Was the domain ever in Google’s link graph or knowledge graph.
Was it ever discovered at all.

Because if nobody ever put content on it, and Google never crawled it, and it never entered the link graph, then to Google that domain is brand new.
No relation, no understanding, nothing carried over.

You’d be paying a premium for a 2005 date on a domain Google is seeing for the first time.

The age you’re buying is Google’s memory of the domain, not the registrar’s.

[Chris - Local SEO @ChrisSimpson]

Indoor golf simulator owners, you want to be a verified address, and one little button decides it.

When you set up your Google Business Profile, there’s gonna be a little button that says "Show address to customers."

What you need to do is make sure that is turned on.

Make sure it says yes.

Simply doing this severely helps placement in the three-pack.

That’s the three map results people see when they search indoor golf simulator near me, or the other indoor golf services and products you offer.

One button, sitting in your profile setup.

Go check that it says yes.

[Chris - Local SEO @ChrisSimpson]

100% Agree with David here.

You're being sold on increasing the page speed because they aren't able to solve actual issues.

[David G Quaid (SEO) @DavidGQuaid]

PageSpeed has never mattered.

PageSpeed doesnt make bad content better

This is a waste of time

[Chris - Local SEO @ChrisSimpson]

Indoor golf simulator owners, an SEO campaign starts in a specific order: services, then keywords, then competitors.

When we’re starting a campaign, the start is: what are your main products or services?

Everything else hangs off of that answer.

Then we do keyword research.

That tells us how people are actually searching for that product or service.

Then we can start doing competitor analysis.

That’s how we get an understanding of what it’s gonna take to rank for that keyword.

Services, then keywords, then competitors.
In that order.

[Chris - Local SEO @ChrisSimpson]

Christmas light installers, the first map pack spot takes the click thirty to forty percent of the time.

Proximity drives it, visibility drops off four to five miles from your profile.

On your Google Business Profile, match the primary category to your primary service.

A verified address is more likely to rank higher than a service area business.

Then file a DBA to get the keyword in your name.

Chris' Light Installation, not Pensacola Christmas Light Installation, thats too exact match.

[Chris - Local SEO @ChrisSimpson]

The two CPA profiles ranking at the top have one thing in common.

The keyword is in their business name.

This is something I always recommend: get the keyword you want to rank for into your Google Business Profile name.

"But my legal name doesnt have the keyword."

Then file a Do Business As with your state.

You amend your company name, legally.

So when Google asks for your corporation documents, the paperwork clearly illustrates it: hey, we have a Do Business As.

The keyword in the name is not a trick.

Its a filing.

[Chris - Local SEO @ChrisSimpson]

I just hit 30 subs on Youtube.

100 Coming soon

https://t.co/YznMOYRVpw

[Chris - Local SEO @ChrisSimpson]

@LoganKingJack Another great example.

[Chris - Local SEO @ChrisSimpson]

Everyone has a rule about Google Business Profiles.

"You can only put 25 services on your profile."

I just audited a CPA firm sitting at number one in Denver.

They have 75 services listed.

Seventy five, ranking first.

There are no hard set rules.

For almost any rule you read online, you can find a live example doing the opposite and winning.

And those 75 services arent random.

They are keyword variations: tax plan, tax planner, tax planners, tax planning and compliance.

Not everybody searches the same keyword you do.

Everyone has a different search intent, a different way of asking for the same service.

Every variation on your profile is another query you can pick up.

Two more moves from the same audit:

Install the Pleper Chrome extension so you can see any profile's primary and secondary categories at a glance.

And go back into your own services and add a description to every single one.

Most people list services and stop.

Thats the whole gap.

[Chris - Local SEO @ChrisSimpson]

@bangkokbuild @wickedguro Thanks Max

[Chris - Local SEO @ChrisSimpson]

I have a good system in place.

I record one hour long video.

I intentionally speak in a manner that is easy to clip.

Then find clips, have A.I cut them for me.

Some long forms I can get 60 + clips.

I record 3-5 times a week.

I currently have 363 shorts scheduled out till the end of September.

Repurpose these each across Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube.

I also have the Twitter carousles automated. The screenshots of the video with captions is also automated.

I've been working on this skill in Claude for 4 months...

It also creates all the copy that goes with everything.

Youtube Titles, Descriptions, unique tags etc..

Different copy for all platforms.

Then Claude auto schedules everything for me with @wickedguro Postiz's

[Jesper Nissen @JespernissenSEO]

@ChrisSimpson 13 times a day? Brutal

[Chris - Local SEO @ChrisSimpson]

@wickedguro Thank you for Postiz. Great platform.

[Chris - Local SEO @ChrisSimpson]

You can audit a top-ranking website in the time it takes to right-click.

I did it live on the CPA firms ranking in Denver.

Here is the exact check.

Go to the page.

Right-click, hit View Page Source.

Control + F, type canonical.

One firm serves the www version and their canonical says www, no trailing slash.

Clean.

The other top-ranking site doesnt have a canonical tag at all.

Same audit, three more findings.

One profile only lists 12 services, so that is open ground they could claim.

Their profile needs real photos: the office, the team, even if its a little messy.

High photo count helps rankings, and it costs you thirty minutes to an hour of taking photos.

And the URLs ranking in search were .com top-level domains.

You want a .com.

The more competitive the environment gets, the bigger that distinction becomes.

On a .io or a .law? Keep it up, build the new site on the .com, keep the two clearly distinct so its not duplicate content, and let the .com take over.

The firms at the top are not doing magic.

They are just missing fewer basics.

[Chris - Local SEO @ChrisSimpson]

The text you click to be taken to your service page is called anchor text

What you use for your anchor text can help that service page rank higher in Google organic results

A blog written about top places to vist in your city, that has anchor text like "Bathroom remodeler in Fort Worth Texas", can help your service page rank.

[Chris - Local SEO @ChrisSimpson]

If you run a local business, Google is checking your footer for two pages you might not have.

A privacy policy and a terms of service.

And it checks whether they're there even if you never link to them. It sends a GET request to /privacy-policy and /terms-of-service to see what comes back. A 200 means the page exists. A 404 means it doesn't.

What is it actually asking? Is this a real company. Do they have a terms of service. Do they have a privacy policy.

These are common trust factors.

I had a client, a process server, do 50 leads in one month off a 5 page website. I wouldn't even call it 5 pages.

Privacy policy, terms, sitemap, those aren't pages. It was really a 2 page site, homepage and about page.

But those files were there, and they loaded.

So go do two things. Make sure both pages actually exist and return a 200 on your site.

Then put them both in your footer, on every page, where a visitor can find them as easily as Google can.

[Chris - Local SEO @ChrisSimpson]

Go look at your Instagram bio right now.

If your URL is sitting in the text of the bio, it is not a link.
It is just words.

Someone would have to right click it, copy it, and paste it into their address bar.
Nobody is doing that.

Instagram gives you a business URL link field.
Go set it.

And when you do, put the FULL URL in.
Not a shortened version, not the bare brand name.

Same check on every other profile you own.
The URL needs to be there, and it needs to be clickable.

A URL that is not clickable is a link you don’t have.

[Chris - Local SEO @ChrisSimpson]

A week ago this scale said 195.

The goal is to lose a pound a week.

[Chris - Local SEO @ChrisSimpson]

For local businesses you set the primary category of the Google Business Profile to match the company's primary service.

The primary service can be their #1 revenue generating service.

You don't want a secondary service to be your primary.

An example of this is a landscaping company located up north, that also does snow plowing in the off season.

A landscaper should not have snow plowing as their primary category.

This is a secondary category or this is a opportunity to have a second Google Business Profile dedicated to snow plowing.

[Chris - Local SEO @ChrisSimpson]

Pest control companies with a brand new site, stop adding pages.

I counted the pages on one and got to eighteen, on a business Google has barely met.

You are a new entity trying to be formed with Google, and spamming it with a pile of pages, context and information just makes it harder to rank any of them.

If you already built them, leave them.

Do not delete them, do not redirect them, do not touch them.

Just stop making page nineteen, and let the entity form.

[Chris - Local SEO @ChrisSimpson]

After you submit, watch your server logs.

What's coming through the second you hit that submit?

Can you track where they came from?

In Google Search console, look at your links. This will take weeks maybe months to appear.

Then you may, depending on their indexing method, see the sites they're using to link to your pages / site.

Visit those sites, see what they're doing.

[Ian Nuttall @iannuttall]

SEO question: how do tools like speedyindex.⁠com force Googlebot Mobile to crawl a URL without using Search Console?

It doesn't seem to be backlinks or the Indexing API & my tests to capture referrers etc didn't find anything.

I'll make a free and OSS tool if I figure it out!