Yahoo Finance & MarketWatch Now Included at No Cost
Happy Friday!
Yahoo Finance and MarketWatch publishing are now included for FREE our Associated Press News Brand Features. + they’re a part of our weekend deal…
The much awaited FREE Q2 webby is coming up this Wednesday, July 20th at 1 pm EST! Chaz will be talking about how to create more robust campaigns with better results by incorporating SaaS into your agency – sharing insights on the multiple SaaS offers that he has used to get the best out of client campaigns. Sign up here to learn how to improve client retention at our webby!
With the 4th of July sale wrapped up, our team is working on getting all the bonuses sent out today. We will also announce the $10,000 winner on the SEO Vault next week.
Next Thursday is also the 150th episode of the SEO Vault, so be sure to tune in – we’ll be celebrating with prizes!
If you need LINKS for your client campaigns, then this weekend deal is for you…
Get 20% Cashback On All Link Purchases This Weekend
Any links you purchase this weekend will earn you 20% cashback that you can use on any other services!
FREE GoHighLevel custom accounts are now available for all monthly managed SEO campaigns (including managed links which you can get 20% cash back on…). You can offer review management, website chat, social scheduler, and other SaaS features to your clients without any extra expenses….
The Local Marketing Mastermind is drawing closer and closer & the discounted rooms are going fast…
Brock Misner will be talking about data manipulation to rank higher during his presentation – Influencing Local Rankings Factors with User Engagement and Brand Presence
Eldar Cohen will be talking about how to grow your agency to six-figures per month (like he did) with his presentation – The Wizard Way of Selling SEO Services
Victor Perez will be talking about how to beat large agencies (& any agency) by conveying your value and results during his presentation – How to Beat Large Agencies: Results & Client Acquistion
Bucky Helms will be talking about maximizing client retention and satisfaction during his presentation – How to Achieve Customer Success in Your Agency
Don’t want to miss out on the valuable insight shared during presentations and networking from the HIGHLY successful SEO’s and agency owners, many of whom run 6-figure agencies.
Quickly improve your revenue, results, and client retention to the next level with tips and strategies acquired over years of proven results. The 2022 Local Marketing Mastermind speaker topics cover everything your agency needs to flourish.
We hope to see you at this year’s mastermind in St. Petersburg, Florida!
To your success,
Chaz and the Entire Team
This Week in the Local SEO Community…
Build Better Location Pages
No matter what type of local business you’re working with location pages are an important aspect of your SEO strategy.
Chaz published his full location page checklist so you can better analyze your client’s current pages and create more optimized location pages.
Favorite SEO Tools
SERP Results Beta
If you’re looking for an affordable rank tracker (local & organic), this is it! We’ve built a better rank tracker with improve accuracy (& not a huge price tag). Sign-up for a beta test account and check it out for FREE!
Local Brand Manager
Local Viking
Local Client Takeover
We love free training – LCT is filled with it! Check out Chaz’s updated Local SEO 2.0 Course, Link Mastery Course, and GMB SEO Specialist Course. We also give away the closed trainings during sales!
Resources for Agencies
Free Quarterly Webbys
Campaign & Link Recs
Free Tools & Trainings
Save time and money with our free tools like SEO pricing calculator, tech audit, proposal generator, and free audit tools. Also find trainings & past webbys in our knowledge base.
SEO Testing Reports
Don’t Miss Out on Our Biggest Updates
Opt-in to our Text Notficiations and you’ll get a 15% OFF coupon sent right to your phone!
But don’t worry about spam texts…
We save our text lists for the BIGGEST deals and even BIGGER announcements!
Access special deals + sale notifications
& never miss out on savings!
Follow us on social!
How to Increase Chances of Listings Verified Instantly
FROM THE VAULT
Episode 149
Hosts: Mike Milas + Benjamin Olson
+ Sophie Allen + Bucky Helms
What we discussed this week…
Google Search Console Insights Finally Supports Google Analytics 4
PSA: Google Course Rich Results Require At Least Three Courses
Google Search Console Link Counts Keep Falling A Lot
Google Merchant Center Adds Auto-Tagging For All Free Listings Across All Of Google
> Watch the Latest SEO Vault episode to catch up on the most recent local update and so much more.
Don’t forget The SEO Vault airs live on the Web 2.0 Ranker Facebook and YouTube every Thursday at 4 pm EST.
Interested in being a guest on the vault!? Sign up now
https://forms.gle/ae5Dh575BqYieDBEA
Resources for Agencies
SEO Testing Reports
Free Tools & Trainings
Save time and money with our free tools like SEO pricing calculator, tech audit, proposal generator, and free audit tools. Also find trainings & past webbys in our knowledge base.
This Week in the Lab with SEO Mad Scientist
GBP Verifications: Triggering Phone
and Instant Verify?
Welcome back to another week of test updates, and this week we are going to jump right into it. We have been hearing a LOT of people having problems with client GBP verifications. Hence, we began testing different verification setups to see if we could figure out how Google is now “trusting” new GBPs when they are submitted…
Full disclosure, we have run about 9 tests across 3 different accounts, so we are working with limited data. With that said, we will highlight three of the tests that we believe told us a lot about what Google was looking at when triggering a verification or even instant verification.
Each test includes a short video where we recorded the process we followed to submit the GBP. These are mostly meant for quick reference as they are sped up to quickly show you what happened.
The first listing was a simple test to see if our previous discovered “instant verification” would be triggered again if we did the same thing.
Here are some bullet points on what was done/used to set up the GBP:
-
Was at the location I was listing the GBP at
-
Using local Wifi with my computer and phone
-
Created listing from my computer
-
Used my cell phone as phone number
Some other details that we don’t feel played a major role were the website used and the gmail address. The website did not have Search Console or Analytics setup when verifying the listing, and the gmail was a newer gmail having been referred in the past year. Nor did the website have a local address or any local targeting at all.
In this scenario, we got an instant verification, and it took about 20 minutes for Google to confirm the edits…
Here is the quick video for reference.
Instant Verify at Current Address (Home)
For this next test, we did the same exact thing but with a location about a mile away from where we were at. We did not use any website in this example to see if it made any major difference.
In this scenario, we were asked to do a video verification to verify the BGP listing. Since we were not “at” the location we were trying to verify the GBP, this made sense to us and somewhat confirmed our assumption that Google was using different data points to check various things and then requiring verification based on each finding, such as video verification to confirm you are at the actual location in this case…
Here is the second recap video for reference:
Video Verify at Remote Address (1 Mile Away)
This is one of the few final tests we ran where we were able to obtain the listing and confirm most of our findings.
Again, here are what we feel contributed most based on all our tests:
- Was at the location I was listing the GBP at
- Using local Wifi with my computer
- Location service turned on on my phone
- Created listing from my computer
- Used my cell phone as phone number
This situation was very similar to our first test; however, our cell phone was not on local Wi-Fi. In this case, Google asked us to text message to verify the phone number or to use e-mail. It seemed there was a slight variation in trust signals from our first test, which triggered the phone verification.
Here is the final clip for reference:
Phone Verify at Current Address (Library)
When all said and done, the biggest factors Google seems to be verifying are the physical address and “business” (specifically contact info)
In short, if Google can verify that the business has the correct contact information and is physically located at an address, you will have no problem verifying.
The question is, how was Google determining the physical address?
As we stated, some of the biggest factors that seemed to influence our testing were where we were physically at (if we were at the address) as well as the accounts and info being used to verify.
Being signed in to a local wifi at the location had the biggest impact on getting verified. Still, some other factors that seemed to make a difference in triggering phone or video verification are:
-
Using a cell phone number (with cell phone at the location)
-
Gmail was used to verify the GBP, the Gmail was attached to the android cell phone number used on the listing.
-
Being on local wifi from phone and computer being used to verify
With limited tests, it’s hard to determine the EXACT factors. Still, so far, when we are at the address on the local wifi without a computer and phone and use the cell phone number as the business number, we have had a 100% verification rate through phone, email, or instant verification.
It’s also important to note that these categories were tested in roofing and internet marketing services. The business category could have had an impact as well.
We won’t know without further testing…
Join us next week for another exciting update, and until then, Happy testing 🙂
Favorite SEO Tools
SERP Results Beta
If you’re looking for an affordable rank tracker (local & organic), this is it! We’ve built a better rank tracker with improve accuracy (& not a huge price tag). Sign-up for a beta test account and check it out for FREE!
Local Brand Manager
Local Viking
Local Client Takeover
We love free training – LCT is filled with it! Check out Chaz’s updated Local SEO 2.0 Course, Link Mastery Course, and GMB SEO Specialist Course. We also give away the closed trainings during sales!
Don’t Miss Out on Our Biggest Updates
Opt-in to our Text Notficiations and you’ll get a 15% OFF coupon sent right to your phone!
But don’t worry about spam texts…
We save our text lists for the BIGGEST deals and even BIGGER announcements!
Access special deals + sale notifications
& never miss out on savings!