🔴 Live: How to Rank in Google Maps in 2026 (with Luc Durand)

Ajouté : 2026-05-27

[00:00:05]Okay.

[00:00:32]Good afternoon, good evening, good morning, wherever you are, and thank you very much for joining this free webinar on how to rank in Google Maps in 2026.

[00:00:43]Uh this is sponsored by uh GMB Everywhere. I hope you're going to enjoy it.

[00:00:48]Uh and thanks for joining.

[00:00:51]So, today, what we're going to cover essentially is what actually impacts ranking in Google Maps in 2026.

[00:01:03]I'm going to go through a practical walk-through of what you can apply yourself on your businesses' profile to help you gain more visibility on Google Maps.

[00:01:14]And I will also cover local SEO in the age of AI because I think this is a very important item that needs to be considered moving forward because AI is becoming increasingly important in driving customers to your businesses.

[00:01:31]And at the end of this session, we'll finish off with a live Q&A.

[00:01:35]Um we'll have a a about 10 minutes, 15 minutes, so drop your questions in the comments, and hopefully I'll be able to answer some of them, so don't hesitate to comment as we go along.

[00:01:49]For those of you who don't know me, my name is Luke Durand. Uh I'm the founder of the YouTube channel Ranking Academy.

[00:01:57]You may have seen me in the past. Uh and on this channel I worked with uh I worked within the local business industry for about 15 years. The channel managed to rack up 20 millions uh views all the time. It had It collected 288,000 subscribers and it helped thousands of local businesses uh to gain more visibility on uh Google Maps. And uh the only reason I'm saying that is not to brag, but to tell you that I specialize in Google Business Profile Optimization. And essentially I focus on practical SEO, local SEO that works. So, hopefully you'll be able to get a lot out of this session.

[00:02:40]So, I thought we would start off by uh summing up what what works uh in Google Maps, what actually uh what's shifting the needle, what's pushing the needle, and what's helping you rank. So, there are three different pillars that you need to consider. The very first one is Google is always going to try to show the most relevant business based on the specific query.

[00:03:09]That's one of the pillars.

[00:03:11]And on on top of that, it's also going to try to be as useful as possible by showing the business on Google Maps that is the nearest to the searcher. So, proximity is the other pillar and that plays a massive part.

[00:03:27]And finally, the third one is the trust.

[00:03:31]So, Google is going to also show what they think the most trustworthy business is. And the combination of all these factors will result in higher ranking.

[00:03:44]So, what you want to do is play with with those three pillars and influence those three pillars so your business is being picked by Google essentially.

[00:03:57]But there's like one problem within those pillars, which is the proximity one, which is one that you can't really control because you can't control where the searcher is going to be in relation to your business.

[00:04:11]When I say you can't control it, there's there's a way of controlling it, but first let me show you what I mean by how proximity is a bit of a difficult way to why you you struggle controlling this element. So, let me jump in this and there you go. So, this is an example of a business that is a car mechanic and is trying to rank for Mercedes specialist.

[00:04:39]And this is essentially the list of all the businesses that will rank for that query. Now, if I if I take the top one, you'll see it's got a lot of rankings. It's like very well, one and two, but you can see that as I'm going away from the business, which is located right here, the number of positions drop from one to two to three to 10. If I go down the list, you can see that the second business follows the same pattern. And the third business as well. Although they have smaller radius of reach, they're still limited. So, that's what proximity comes into account. Google will never rank your listing further than one to five miles depending on how how many competitors you're facing and where you are on the map. And therefore, it's very difficult to control proximity.

[00:05:29]And the only way you're going to do it is if you start creating multiple Google Business Profile, which will give you a lot more coverage. However, in order to do that, uh you will need to create legitimate location and so on. And it gets a little bit more complicated. So, uh Uh for the sake of this session, we're only going to focus on one Google Business alone, and if you wanted multiple Google Business profile, it would be the topic of another webinar.

[00:05:54]But, it shows you that essentially it's very difficult to control proximity.

[00:05:59]However, you can control Please forgive me. It's going to reload my presentation. Right. Although you can't control proximity, there's one thing you can control, it's the other two pillars, which are relevance and trust.

[00:06:18]And let's start off with relevance and how you can influence the relevance pillar of your Google Business profile.

[00:06:27]Starting off with the most important um uh ranking factor, which is the primary category of your business.

[00:06:37]Which is right there. So, in this is an example of a law firm that has decided to pick legal services as a primary category.

[00:06:45]Which I think is not necessarily the best idea because when it comes to picking the best primary category, you need to be as specific as possible. So, if you're a criminal defense lawyer, which I believe this example was, you shouldn't pick legal services because it's too broad.

[00:07:05]You should pick criminal defense lawyer because it's far more relevant to the primary activity that you're conducting, and therefore that's the primary category you should be picking.

[00:07:17]The other element that you need to take in into consideration when it comes to your primary category is the link within your Google Business profile that points to your website should point to a page that is in line with your primary category.

[00:07:34]So, let's say for instance, this business was to change the primary category to criminal defense lawyer, then their Google Business Profile listing should link to a page that talks about criminal defense lawyer.

[00:07:50]And here a hot tip here, if your business is seasonal, make sure you change the primary category according to seasons. Uh, let's say for instance, and I've come across examples like that.

[00:08:03]Let's say for instance, you are a window cleaner in the summer and a snow removal in the winter, then comes winter, you'd need to change your primary category to snow removal, point your GBP or your Google Business Profile link to a page that talks about snow removal, and flip it in the summer for window cleaning.

[00:08:26]That [clears throat] way, your listing will be always relevant for the service you provide according to season. And by the way, whenever you do this, uh, Google will take into consideration your new primary category within 24 to 48 hours, so the results should be pretty instant.

[00:08:46]Let's move on to the other item, which is, uh, a key component in the relevance, and that's your business.

[00:08:52]Your business name. So, this is an example for a barber, and their business name is called The Ritual Experience.

[00:08:59]And I think again, this is probably a poor choice, uh, because as far as Google is concerned, it uses your business name as a very important uh, ranking signal. And whenever >> Okay, are we back on?

[00:10:36]Okay, I I think we on.

[00:10:40]Let me double check with the tech team.

[00:10:51]Okay, we're on. Okay, so sorry about that. Let's carry on. So, for in in this example, this barber is called The Ritual Experience and I would recommend that they change their name to The Ritual Barber Experience of San Diego, which is where they're located.

[00:11:10]Uh that will help this business rank for the keyword barber and San Diego at the same time.

[00:11:20]Um however, you can't If you decide to change your name, you can't just do that, go into your business profile, and change the name because there's a risk that your listing will be suspended. Before you do that, if you decide to go down that path, and I thoroughly recommend you do if your name doesn't include those keywords that you're targeting, um when you do, what you'll need to do is first of all, change it on your website, change it on your logo, change it uh on uh on on your brand name, change it in your citations, wherever your your business is mentioned on the web, change it in there. You'll have to update your business license, change it on your social media. If you do have uh signage, then change all of that. And the last thing you need to do is change it on your Google Business Profile. Because when you do this, then Google will have crawled all that information prior to you changing your Google Business listing, and it will it will be able to cross-reference that your new name fits with everything that everything else it's seen online.

[00:12:33]Okay.

[00:12:34]Now, let's move on to the next item, which is your opening hours. So, the opening hours is something that never used to be uh to have such an influence, but it it does now.

[00:12:46]And this is a typical example of what you can see uh as far as opening hours are concerned on a listing.

[00:12:53]Okay. So, essentially what's happening with business hours is businesses that are open when people search, often rank better in Google Maps. So, let's say you're open from 8:00 till 6:00, and someone is searching for your business or business like yours after 6:00, let's say at 7:00, then you're less likely to rank if one of your competitors is opened uh at 7:00.

[00:13:18]And that means that the longer you are open, the more likely you will get customers, which is pretty straightforward.

[00:13:27]So, the tip here is to try and extend your opening hours whenever you can based on your competitors.

[00:13:35]Ideally, you wouldn't want to do that because that means you might need to work a little longer or start earlier.

[00:13:42]So, instead of thinking, "Oh, I'm going to increase my opening hours." What you want to do is check your competitors first. And for that, what I do is I use a GMB Everywhere.

[00:13:56]Okay.

[00:13:57]And yeah. And I go I search for a keyword that I want to rank for and I click on the local scan. And once I've done that, it takes me to the results and I can check all the business hours of my competitors for that particular keyword.

[00:14:16]And you can see it will give you the earliest opening, the latest closing.

[00:14:22]It will split it by day, and you can see the most popular hours pattern here, 9:00 to 6:00. So, if you're already within that bracket, there's really no need for you to essentially extend your hours, but if you fall outside of that, you might want to consider extending your hours of work so you can be found by additional customers.

[00:14:45]Okay.

[00:14:48]Right.

[00:14:51]Next item, and before I do that, the one thing that you also need to consider when it comes to your opening hours, make sure your Google Business Profile hours match your real business hours and the hours shown elsewhere online. So, it needs to match with the opening hours on your website and everywhere else where it's mentioned because if it doesn't, Google will automatically update your Google Business hours without checking with you. It will check that somewhere else it says you're open between 8:00 and 5:00 and you're showing on your Google Business Profile 8:00 and 6:00 and Google will often do that change automatically.

[00:15:32]Okay.

[00:15:33]The next item we're going to cover here is uh business address. Okay. So, as you can see, there's a physical address in this actual listing. And the the reason I'm mentioning this here is because businesses with a physical address tend to get you ranked higher.

[00:15:54]And there's two different listings listing types on Google. You've got your brick-and-mortar, so let's say you're a barber or dentist, then you're going to always have an address. Or you're a service area type of business, you visit people at their home, so let's say you're a plumber, an electrician, or whatever else. In this case, Google uh will not want you to show an address because customers don't go to your uh to your address.

[00:16:20]And therefore, you will be considered as a service area type of business.

[00:16:25]However, service area businesses with no address will tend to rank lower if they are competing against other service areas who have had the chance to display their address. And although it goes against Google's guidelines, some some of these businesses are able to display an address. And the way they do it is by claiming an actual physical location, a small office or warehouse, and prove that this location actually exists. So, if you find out that your competitors are showing an address even though they are service area businesses, then you might want to consider going down that path of claiming a physical location such as a small office or warehouse, and you should see a significant uh significant difference in rankings when you do so.

[00:17:16]Right, let's move on to the next item that is an important one, which is additional business categories. So, along with your primary category, you also have the option to add extra uh categories, uh which are called um secondary categories. And you can add up to nine of them.

[00:17:38]Um these secondary categories are very useful because they tell Google that you don't offer just one service or one product, but many others. So, let's say for example, you're an Italian restaurant, but you also do pizza delivery, then a secondary category would be pizza delivery or caterer. And that will help your listing show up for these types of searches as well.

[00:18:04]The secondary categories are not visible uh in Google. You can you can add them to your listing, but you can't really see them in in with a naked eye. So, but you can spy on your competitors um secondary category. And to do that, again, I use uh GMB everywhere, which is I'm not that.

[00:18:28]And here we go.

[00:18:32]Okay. So, when you go to Google Maps and you start searching for uh keywords, you'll see all the listings here. And the primary category will be highlighted with a star, as you can see here, it says chiropractor. And all the secondary uh category will be listed right after that. So, this particular business has got a ton of uh secondary categories.

[00:18:56]And if you haven't added these to your listing and you think that they're relevant to your business, then by all means, just add them. It's uh it's going to take you very little time and it's going to be highly beneficial.

[00:19:10]So, think about those secondary categories. They are very important.

[00:19:18]Okay, the other item we're going to talk about is services, right? You can add the various services you provide into your Google Business Profile. This is a typical example. And as you can see from the screenshot, this was taken from a mobile phone. Because services are only visible on mobile phone. Yet, they're also very important to Google as it will emphasize all the various services that you provide.

[00:19:48]To do that, you can actually use your own, add your own, or you can use the predefined the predefined one that Google is showing on your Google Business Profile. And let me show you how that works. So, this is an example of a Google Business Profile that provides web design and other services.

[00:20:13]Other Yeah, other services. So, if you go to the edit services category, it will come up with a list. And unfortunately, I don't think it's going to come up here.

[00:20:24]I'm going to click out of that.

[00:20:26]And um Right.

[00:20:30]Okay.

[00:20:34]My screen has gone now. Okay.

[00:20:43]Right.

[00:20:44]And I'm going to have to re- share my screen. Apologize.

[00:20:51]Right. There we go. We're back on.

[00:20:55]We should be back on.

[00:20:58]There you go.

[00:20:59]Okay, so you can use those services directly from your Google Business Profile. Google will show you predefined services that you can use on your profile. You can also create your own services or you can use GMB everywhere and it will tell you what kind of services you can add. There is a typical example here.

[00:21:26]Okay.

[00:21:28]Right. So, if you go to the local scan and use the services, you can see all other services that you might want to consider adding to your listing. And again, this is something that's super simple to do and it takes seconds. So, it would be a shame to miss out and it's it's a an important ranking factor. So, something super simple. Right. The next item we're going to look at is it's not it's not a feature in itself, but it's more about regular updates. So, make sure that you update your Google Business Profile regularly because it's not when you've got a Google Business Profile, when you create one, it's not all about setting it up and forget forgetting it all about it.

[00:22:13]Google will know whenever you update it and how well you maintain it.

[00:22:19]So, make sure you add photos to your listing regularly. Make sure you add videos. Add some posts regularly. You don't have to do that every day and add tons of photos and videos, but what you can do is do it at least once a week.

[00:22:38]That will be that will make a significant difference and it's also very useful for your customers, you know, to see new pictures and and new posts and and to make the content fresh.

[00:22:50]It will improve your conversion rate.

[00:22:56]But relevance is not just about your Google Business Profile, right? Having a Google Business Profile is great. It's going to help you rank in uh in Google Maps, but the other item you must take into consider consideration when it comes to relevance is your website.

[00:23:12]Okay?

[00:23:13]Uh it's typical exa- example of a website, and the reason you need to do that is because there is a strong uh correlation or link between how well your website is optimized and how well your Google Business Profile ranks on Google Maps. And the the way you optimize your website uh will will influence that.

[00:23:36]But not only that, the thing is when you update your website, when you optimize your website, it will also help you rank in a regular Google search result, the traditional results. You know, the 10 blue links that you find below the map pack.

[00:23:52]And finally, the other benefit to that is it will increase your chances of appearing in AI-powered search results.

[00:24:02]So, making sure your website is optimized will have an impact that is threefold.

[00:24:12]It will help your Google Business Profile rank on Google Maps. It will help your business rank on the traditional search results. It will help your business rank in AI search results.

[00:24:23]And if you don't do that, or if you don't have a website, which is the case with still a lot of people, then you're going to miss out on a big chunk of visibility.

[00:24:33]So, optimizing your website is is one thing, but what should you optimize uh first?

[00:24:39]So, what I'd say is you must have dedicated service pages on your website.

[00:24:45]Here is a typical example of a website, uh which is what I was talking about earlier. This is a window cleaning website.

[00:24:52]And as you can see, they've got uh uh about seven or eight different uh services and they have built a page, a dedicated page for each and every one of those services.

[00:25:06]Um having a dedicated page for those services will help Google understand exactly what services you offer. Uh otherwise, how is Google supposed to know?

[00:25:18]These pages will increase your chances of ranking for specific searches like roof repair, emergency plumber, uh toilet leak, whatever it is that you provide, these will be super useful to integrate as part of your website.

[00:25:35]They will create an extreme uh a very strong relevance between your website and your Google Business Profile services. So, whenever you add services to your Google Business Profile, which is something that I mentioned earlier, make sure that those services you're mentioning on your Google Business Profile can also be found on your website. And it's all in line, it's all consistent with the information you're giving on both.

[00:25:59]Uh and finally, it gives visitors all the detailed information that they need in order to reach out to you and uh maybe make a booking or whatever it is that you provide.

[00:26:13]In terms of uh your website optimization optimization, it's also important to add uh all the keywords that you want to rank for. So, for instance, professional window cleaning in Toronto, uh Google will know that this is a window cleaning business in Toronto.

[00:26:32]You want to do to include those words uh in important areas of a page like your titles, your heading, uh in a meta description, although the meta description is not necessarily a ranking factor, but uh people will still read it.

[00:26:50]Uh make sure those titles are very clear. This is an example, emergency plumber in San Diego, and it will be very helpful to Google.

[00:26:58]Uh and mention your target location naturally throughout the page content.

[00:27:02]So, if you're in San Diego, mention San Diego. The one thing that you don't want to do though is start spreading all those keywords all over the place and 25 times and spam your page with it because it's it's not really going to be uh very useful and it's going to be it's going to have the inverse impact and Google might think that you're trying to spam the uh the the algorithm and you'll be penalized for it.

[00:27:30]Um so, yeah, important to align all of this content between your website and your Google Business Profile.

[00:27:38]Now, we've talked about the relevance uh aspect of it, the the relevance pillar.

[00:27:46]Let's now move on to the trust pillar.

[00:27:50]So, one of the most important pillar and signal I would say in the trust pillar and I'm sure it will be uh it will it will not surprise anybody is reviews and more specifically Google reviews.

[00:28:06]So, I think there's something important to consider when it comes to Google reviews and it's talk about quantity and people are always under the impression that the more reviews you have, the higher you're going to rank. Uh and this is a myth. Uh there has actually been some studies conducted uh with regarding quantity and turns out that getting more reviews doesn't automatically mean better ranking. And you see the ranking jump as you hit 10 reviews.

[00:28:40]Uh 10 reviews is the the the actual number that you want to hit at at very least. Uh looks like my presentation has dropped again. So, I'm going to have to stop sharing it and share it again.

[00:28:53]And here we go.

[00:29:00]There you go.

[00:29:02]So, there you go. Okay, so uh, yeah, 10 is the magic number when you want when you want to see the biggest uh, ranking boost. Uh, after that, it would still help, by the way, but you will see diminishing returns. Um, right. And so, more reviews don't always improve your rankings, but the impact it has, it will make people feel more comfortable that the your you're the right business to select. Um, especially if the reviews are positive. And then, of course, if I saw a business with 10 reviews uh, with five stars and a business with 360 reviews with five star, I will feel more comfortable picking that business. So, that's when quantity really plays a part. But, as far as ranking uh, rankings are concerned, 10 reviews it should be enough, but you would want to aim for more.

[00:29:59]Finally, reviews with written comments will help your rankings a lot more than simple star ratings because it provide Google with a lot more context. Uh, and Google loves content and context, and that will be helpful. And the final thing that I would say uh, about the reviews here is you've got to encourage people to post to attach photos on their reviews. These are super useful for two reasons. A, because reviews with pictures will tend to stick right at the top of the list, even if they're older.

[00:30:38]Uh, and so, that's the first review potential customers will see Uh, I and adding context on top of that will be a double whammy. So whenever you ask for review um from your customers, you might want to ask to push them to add content and photos to have a really meaty review. So there are tricks that you can use.

[00:31:03]Do not incentivize your customers to do that but you know, take pictures for them. Say to them that you're going to send them to send the pictures to them and then if they can add that to their reviews whatever. There there are a few tricks.

[00:31:17]Again, I'm not going to linger on that but adding context and pictures will be super useful.

[00:31:24]Now the next thing that that is strong ranking factor when it comes to reviews is Google reviews velocity.

[00:31:32]Now let me explain what I mean by that.

[00:31:35]Velocity is essentially how regularly your business gets new review, not just how many reviews you have overall.

[00:31:44]Okay?

[00:31:45]So a steady stream of reviews looks more natural than sudden burst. So you don't want to have 50 reviews in one day then nothing for 3 months, right? Um the consistency helps maintain trust and visibility over the long term and that's when reviews really play a big part into the ranking signal.

[00:32:08]But that's not all. Google reviews recency is also important. So recent review helps show Google that customers are still actively using your business.

[00:32:20]And newer reviews often carry more weight than very old ones. Okay? So businesses with fresh review reviews usually look more trustworthy to both Google and potential customers.

[00:32:31]And that's what I was saying earlier on.

[00:32:34]I was talking about a study by Sterling Sky which find out found out that 10 reviews was almost the magic number, uh but they could also see that uh there was a noticeable ranking drops if you stop getting reviews up for just 3 weeks. So, that's when consistency matters.

[00:32:54]So, this just to sum this up, when it comes to review, you want uh recency, okay, and um uh velocity, and quantity. But, velocity and recency play a bigger part.

[00:33:13]The thing that you I do in order to find out where a business stand when it comes to Google reviews, I check the recency and the velocity of my competitors. And to do that, I use um uh GMB Everywhere.

[00:33:31]So, I use two of their tools. The first one is this one, uh which is the local scan, and you'll see there's a a review tab right here, and it will tell me for a particular keyword, uh the business that are listed, what the average rating is, the number of reviews, uh the highest rating, the lowest rating, uh and the one that's got the most reviews and the fewest reviews. So, it allows me to see in terms of quantity, where my customer or my client is um based within that bracket. Uh so, that gives me uh an indication as how much work is required in order to maybe uh compete with the the the top business for that.

[00:34:20]And the other item that I use, which if I can find it, is uh I think it's here.

[00:34:28]I Actually, I have a screenshot on it. So, let's go to the screenshot instead.

[00:34:37]Once that's reloaded, right. Okay. So, there is that but there is this I did So, when you when you go on to Google Maps and you and you use the Google Review Audit the GM from GMB Everywhere, it will pull up the screen and it will show you the actual frequency and velocity. You can see how fast these businesses are getting reviews and how recently they got those reviews. So, between those two I'm able to figure out what the landscape is when it comes to reviews for one of my clients and how it fares with the competitors.

[00:35:25]Okay.

[00:35:26]That's for Google reviews but that's not all. There are other reviews that you need to take into consideration. And this is the reviews from the web. Within your Google Business Profile, often Google will display reviews from the web and it will include that as part of the actual features there. And that tells you that Google doesn't just look at Google reviews, it looks at the overall review reputation across the web.

[00:35:53]So, reviews on site like Facebook, Trustpilot, Yelp, or industry-specific directories >> Mhm.

[00:44:09]>> Mhm.

[00:44:25]>> Okay.

[00:44:26]Are we on?

[00:44:29]Okay. Awesome. All right. Okay.

[00:44:33]Technical incidents. All right.

[00:44:36]Please do apologize me. I do apologize for the incident here, but let's carry on nevertheless. So, we're done with the Google reviews and we were the other reviews from the web.

[00:44:52]Um, and I was saying that it's important to take into consideration all the other reviews from the platform such as all the the very good platforms such as Facebook, Trustpilot, Yelp, or industry-specific directories. Uh, and these positive reviews will help you be more visible and more trustworthy as far as Google is concerned.

[00:45:18]Uh, and these reviews are also used by AI, so it's an important thing to take into consideration.

[00:45:26]Let's move on to the last item, which I believe is the future of search and more specifically SEO, and that's AI.

[00:45:35]So, you may uh want to optimize for AI. I think you must optimize for AI because more people are now using AI-powered search tools instead of traditional search results. So, you can't ignore it.

[00:45:52]Um, local SEO is no longer just about ranking in Google Maps. It's also about becoming a trusted business entity online. And the only way to do that is to do that across multiple platform. So, as I've already mentioned, consistent positive reviews across multiple platforms make your business look more established and credible. Uh and business with strong local SEO foundations are generally less affected by AI search changes than traditional website only SEO. I don't know about you guys, but uh I barely use Google anymore to do uh research. And the only time I actually use Google for is when I need to search for a local business. So, although AI is threatening, I believe uh traditional search engine results, I think local search results are still kind of safe for now. And if you've got a solid foundation for your SEO, you should be safe.

[00:46:52]Uh but there are things that you need to do in order to make sure that you capitalize on the AI search results.

[00:47:00]Okay, so how do you optimize for AI search results? You may be familiar with the local ranking factor survey uh that it gets published pretty much every year by a company called Whitespark, and they measure all the ranking factors that really influence search results. One of which uh and and this year they've included AI results uh factors. So, based on their uh found on what they found, uh I'm going to tell you what you should consider when optimizing for AI search results.

[00:47:35]Okay, one uh of the most popular items or the the strongest signal is being featured on trusted best of list and local recommendation website. Like in this example, uh best read profiles and reviews about George's 50 top attorneys.

[00:47:53]And uh being on listed on these um website will help you come up in AI search results.

[00:48:03]So, this is because AI trust these best of list and recommendation website as a signal and it tells your it tells AI your business is reputable if it can be found there.

[00:48:17]These mentions will also help strengthen your overall local authority and brand trust.

[00:48:25]The other thing that I've already talked about is the dedicated service pages.

[00:48:30]That was for your website optimization.

[00:48:32]If you've already done that, that's great and it will definitely help you with AI search results.

[00:48:39]Like in this instance, you can see professional mold and mildew cleaning services in London. That's a very niche kind of service, but if anyone is searching for that, AI will probably pick up on that.

[00:48:51]What you want to do when you create those service pages is make sure you detail them as much as possible. So, I've put a list of what item you should be considering when it comes to content and creating those pages.

[00:49:07]So, a clear page title, a strong heading, detailed information about the service, photos of your work. I'm not going to go through the list, but if you watch the video later on, you can pull out all of these items. Make sure you create your dedicated service pages and include those elements as part of it.

[00:49:25]Okay.

[00:49:26]Getting listed on trusted directories is also going to be super important as far as AI is concerned. Remember some of those AI tools, they're not allowed to crawl Google, so they go and they're going to go and find their information from elsewhere and some of these trusted directories will be some of those places. So, for example, Better Business Bureau, Yelp, Facebook, TripAdvisor, Yellow Pages, all the big one. Make sure you're listed on those.

[00:50:01]And many of these directories already rank quite high in Google. So that means they have a major influence on how your business will rank as well.

[00:50:13]The last thing from AI is business mention across the web. So this is an example of a local plumber who was mentioned in local news. And those mentions will definitely help you rank in AI search results because again, that means that that means you can be trusted if you appear in newspaper articles, in blogs, in go on government website, on charity website. And links and mentions from these sites will definitely help you a great deal. It's almost like stepping back in time and doing all local SEO. These are things that we used to do, you know, submitting to trustworthy directories, big social networks, and blog articles, and news articles. It's almost all school SEO that now works with AI. So if you were doing that once upon a time, then consider doing that again.

[00:51:18]And I think that takes us to the Q&A session.

[00:51:25]So let's we've still got a few minutes left. Sadly, we had some technical incident. So let's have a look at some of these questions.

[00:51:40]Okay.

[00:51:43]I don't please note that the da, da.

[00:51:47]Um Oh, okay. What review requests consistently get the best rates? I've experimented with reception desk, QR codes, and email outreach, but results have been inconsistent. Based on my uh experience, uh I think what it will vary depending on industries.

[00:52:10]Uh I think uh if you use QR code, for instance, if you're in a restaurant or anything to do with catering, you put it on a uh a printed receipt at the end on the bill, and at least it takes you straight to the review um item on Google uh on your Google Business Profile. And uh it should work.

[00:52:31]Texts uh will work better because the open rate on a text is about 90%. When you receive a text, you open the open rate is 90%. So, technically, you got more chances of scoring reviews there.

[00:52:44]Uh sending an email is probably not the least effective uh one. Uh or if you're interacting with um uh with the clients directly is quite uh a big one. Some companies incentivize their staff members to get reviews. That works very well. So, although you're not you don't you can't incentivize clients directly to post a review on your listing, you can incentivize your staff members to motivate them to speak to the clients so uh they can create uh they can they can ask for reviews, and that that works.

[00:53:26]Uh that works well. Um Okay. Ch- ch- ch- ch- ch- ch- ch- ch- ch- I can't Okay.

[00:53:34]Okay. Uh Okay, there's another one for reviews.

[00:53:42]Uh Okay, Google policy change in June.

[00:53:46]Essentially, someone cannot leave a review while they're in the building.

[00:53:50]They have to be away. The workflow would be a simple automation. I didn't know about that.

[00:53:56]I'm not entirely sure what that means why you wouldn't be allowed to do that.

[00:54:00]Um I When when it comes to reviews as well, what this makes me think about something. Be very careful. Google is very strict with reviews and it will try to detect fake reviews and it will use various technical tricks to do that. One being the IP address. So, if all the reviews come from the same IP address IP address, that will flag something technically with Google.

[00:54:30]Uh so, if you offer free Wi-Fi to your customers, this could potentially create a risk if they're all using the same Wi-Fi uh network and they're all posting reviews for your business, that could be a problem. They might be flagged as fake even though they're not. So, be very careful with that.

[00:54:50]Uh yes, so someone is suggesting using SMS.

[00:54:54]Wait two days then send a reminder. I think that's a good idea. Uh do do do do do do Also, reviews cannot mention names. I don't think that's true. You can actually definitely mention names.

[00:55:09]Uh there's a lot of stuff about reviews here.

[00:55:14]do do do do Okay.

[00:55:19]Right.

[00:55:20]I don't Please don't forget to leave your questions.

[00:55:26]Oh, how do you prioritize keywords to rank for with the goal to maximize people through your door?

[00:55:34]Okay, that's an interesting question.

[00:55:35]Prioritizing keyword. Essentially, what you want to do is figure out what services you want to be found for. And it's What I always say is, what is the most important service for you, for your business? What is bringing the most money? Okay?

[00:55:55]Uh and therefore, based on that service, do some keyword research uh and try to figure out what the most popular keywords are based on that service. That's where I would start. Uh so let's say you're a dentist and most of your revenue is generated generated through dental implants and 80% of your revenue is generated through that. So, my advice to you would be, do your keyword research around dental implant and then start creating content in relation to that, whether it's um you know, the service that you provide.

[00:56:33]Make sure you go through the whole list that I've mentioned in this.

[00:56:37]Uh add some videos, add some reviews, etc. But that's where I would focus my efforts. And if that's really the most important service, you might even want to uh align your primary category the primary category of your Google Business Profile with dental implants. So, you're not going to say uh your primary category is not going to be dentist, but your primary category will be dental implant that will link to a page that talks about dental implant, in which you'll say, "These are the customers we've had. They've had that type of dental implant." and so on and so forth. So, do your keyword research based on the most popular service and then do the same with the other services later on. But that's how I would prioritize things.

[00:57:21]Okay. Uh and which AI platform is best to get local leads?

[00:57:30]Well, that that's a that's an interesting one.

[00:57:34]I think more and more people are getting through ChatGPT on based on the analytics that I've seen uh from some of our clients, the uh leads that they were getting were mostly coming from ChatGPT.

[00:57:49]Uh I think now it a ChatGPT has become the most popular uh AI search um provider, so to speak, and therefore because of the the amount of uh users on that platform, it's likely to be uh ChatGPT that's going to bring the most uh lead to your business. I could be wrong, but this is what I've seen.

[00:58:15]Uh so, that's that's what I would say.

[00:58:19]And uh what else do I have there? Uh I think um Okay. Uh I think I've got I don't have I don't see any more questions that I haven't answered. A lot of it is about uh reviews.

[00:58:44]Okay. Oh, I can't find a button to post news on my PC in GBP, regardless of browser. It works fine on my iPhone.

[00:58:52]Do you have any idea what that problem might be? Uh absolutely not. I can't tell you why that is.

[00:58:59]It's a bit strange. Um Huh.

[00:59:05]I would say try on another PC somewhere else.

[00:59:09]Uh although it seems odd because you seem to have access to that on um on your mobile, so I would say the feature definitely exists.

[00:59:21]Uh you might want to raise that with Google, but it's unlikely they're they're ever we're to get back to you.

[00:59:26]Um Okay.

[00:59:35]I think how do you go about linking Oh, okay. How do you go about linking website pages to GMB category services? Okay, so let let's just uh spend a bit of time on this.

[00:59:48]So, within your Google Business Profile, you are you can only link to one page essentially from your Google Business Profile.

[00:59:58]Uh which is the website link feature. And then you're going to want to link to a page that's relevant to your uh to your primary category.

[01:00:13]There's something that you need to take into consideration here. And before I say that, um yeah, so whenever you add categories to your Google Business Profile, you can't link to those those pages if they exist on your website. There's no ability You don't have the ability to link to those to to to the to your website pages based on those secondary categories. But, you can add one website link that will point to a dedicated page on your website. And I as I said, you want that page to be the most relevant page possible uh in line with your category. The one thing that I would also highlight is if your website homepage already ranks really high, I think number one in the the traditional search results, often Google will not rank it or will not rank your listing because you're already ranking in the traditional search results. So, you might need to look at what because Google doesn't want to show your business twice in the local search results and in the traditional search results. So, you might want to link to a different page on your website that is not already ranking on the traditional search results, and make sure that that page is still in line with your primary category. I hope that makes sense because otherwise you you will miss out on an opportunity of being visible.

[01:01:46]And I think that's that's it, guys. We We are at 6:00. I don't want to take more of your time. We're slightly over.

[01:01:55]I can't see any more particular question.

[01:01:59]And we're going to call it a day. Once again, I'd like to apologize for all the technical issues we've had today. This was our first show. And I don't know really what happened. So, I hope you enjoyed the session. And then hopefully we'll see you in in another one soon.

[01:02:19]Have a great day, morning, evening, wherever you are, and whatever you're doing.