Ep. 25 Local Vs. Organic

Brad Post, Create the Movement: Welcome to Create the podcast. My name is Brad Post. I’m sitting here with Josh Rich. Josh Rich, Create the Movement: Hello, everyone. BP: How are you doing Josh? JR: Doing well Brad. How are you? BP: Good. It’s been a little while. JR: It has been. BP: But, Josh, you wrote this amazing blog post. And I’ll put the link in the show notes. But it’s basically talking, kind of, about the difference between local and organic results. Right? You wrote that post? That was your good stuff right there? JR: Yes. Yeah, that was me. That was me. Yeah. So, this is like one of the more confusing topics that we kind of have to deal with a lot of times with our SEO campaigns. So, when we say local results, we’re talking about, I think it’s three, or is it four results? BP: The ‘three pack.’ JR: The three. Yes. It was four, now it’s three. BP: Right. JR: It was four, now it’s three. The three results that pop up in the map when you do Google search. And it won’t always pop up. But if you search, especially if you search, you know, like a service, or an industry in your town, then you’re almost always going to get it. So, if search for like, you know, like an oil change place in your town, or an upholstery cleaner, or something like that, you’re going to some local listings there. BP: As long as you have your Google My Business listing JR: Right, right, yeah. The search something’s going to pop up there. So, then the organic results are just like your regular run-of-the-mill results that pretty much, you know, the local results only on the front page. And then everything else past that it’s going to be organic results. Typically, 10 per page. Again, we’re not including the ads in this either. This is just purely unpaid search results here. And so, something that’s really confusing about this is that a lot of times you’ll have a different order. So, say that we’ve Company A, B, and C. Right? And so, say in a local result they pop up in that order: A, B, C. But in the organic results sometimes they’ll pop up like: B, C, A. So it’s confusing. Why is A showing up first in the local results, but then third in the organic? So then, it’s very confusing to think that they’d correlate. But the reason that they don’t is because they’re pulling different information. So, the Google algorithm sophisticated enough to just scan different information. So, it’s almost like two different search results. There’s definitely a lot of cross-over there. I’d probably say it’s about 60% cross-over, then 40% is independent. Which is where that variation comes in. Right? And so, there’s three things really affect this disparity between the two results. The first one is going to be the difference between the citations and links. So, citations those are anywhere on the web where like your name, address, and phone number are, and your url, are listed. So, a lot of times that’s going to be different directories like Yellow Pages, or Foursquare, or Brownbook, Angie’s List, whole, long slew of these. Right? Where the backlink is just a link to your website on someone else’s website. And so, the backlinks are what you want for organic results. That’s going to get your domain authority. It’s going to make you look like a credible website through Google. Whereas citations are what you want for your local listings. BP: Okay. JR: And you want to make sure that whenever you have your name, your address, your phone number, and your website, that it is all identical. So, if you put, like, if you spell out ‘avenue’, but then you put ‘ave’ in another one. BP: a-v-e JR: That’s going to hurt you. So, make sure that like, find one way to do it, and then just run with it. And makes sure that it’s unanimous across the board. So, that’s one difference there. The citation for local, backlinks for organic. The second thing that’s going to influence that is just the way your Google Maps listing is configured. The best advice here is just to fill out everything. First of all, it will, first you want make sure what you want to claim it. The way that works is you’ll, if it’s not claimed you’ll just type in your company name. And it will say ‘claim on business.’ And then it will send you a postcard in the mail with like a five digit, four or five-digit number. And you’ve just got to get the postcard, go on there, then claim your business, type in your code, and you’ll get it. Once you’ve claimed it you’ll have ownership of it. Then it’s filled out. And then put pictures, put descriptions, choose a category, put phone numbers, hours, I mean everything that you can you can possibly do. I think it might even give you a like a little completion bar. You know? For where your progress is. And try to get that as close to a 100% as possible. Google always likes that. It helps make their services better, and as a reward you’ll bump up in the search rankings. And then, the third factor that will influence this is just other directories. Since directories aren’t listed in local results, but they have a lot of traffic, therefore they’re going to have pretty domain authority. So, they’re going to pop up really well in the organics. And that just kind of jumbles up the whole mess of the organic results there. That’s basically it. As far as the differences, there’s more to it than that. But that’s a really succinct way to it. So, just remember if you want to go up in the local result find citations. And we’ve got a list of like, I think it’s over 200, just general business citations that we fill out for all of our clients. Just to help them get up in that in that local search results. Whereas, if you want to get up in the organic, you need more backlinks. BP: Right. JR: Those are two different things. And then fill out your Google Maps listing to the best of your ability. And then, I guess you really can’t do anything about the directories or articles that pop up. You’re just kind of out luck there. BP: Yeah. JR: So, that’s the basic difference there. BP: Sometimes Yelp is a little hard to compete with. JR: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. A lot of those directories the Yelps, or the Thumbtacks, or the Angie’s Lists are crazy hard site to beat. You’re just not going to do it. BP: Right. JR: So, just try to make sure to try to beat your competitors there, and then you’ll be fine. BP: So, you did a search here: ‘Tulsa coffee shops.’ Local results: Topeca, Foolish Things, and Double Shot. JR: Yeah, in that order. BP: Basically in that order. And then the top organic results were: tulsafood.com, Yelp, JR: Exactly. Yeah. Just directory listings. Yeah. BP: But you looked also at their backlinks as to where they showed up? JR: Yeah. BP: And it looks like Topeca had the most citations. So, that’s why they showed up first. JR: Yeah. BP: Foolish Things had the next close. And they had, it looks like Topeca had more reviews than JR: Yeah, that’s another thing I forgot mention there on the Google listing. If you can get reviews that will help a ton, too. So, reach out to your freaking customers, or your employees, or yourself, and just get a good review off Google. And, obviously, it doesn’t have to be five stars. Even just a three-star review will help. Just make sure people are inter