In the unpredictable world of SEO, Google Trends is updating its platform with robust and effective AIs. To ensure visibility in the highly competitive SEO space, one needs to be acquainted with all its various facets.
In today’s episode, we will discuss new AI updates on Google Trends and shed light on AI keywords and what aspects help in driving traffic to your websites and ranking better. We’ll also explore GMB local rankings and NAP data that gives you an idea of what users are specifically searching for based on the location.
Here’s What We Will Cover Today:
What’s New In AI?
GMB local rankings
AI Keywords
Links:
Find this podcast here:https://www.youtube.com/live/PUcaExnwFWA?feature=share
Newsletter:
Where to find Josh: joshbachynski@gmail.com
Where to find Greg: Support@handsoffpublishing.org
Referenced:
KeywordSpy: www.trykeywordspy.com
(0.01- 1.02)
Josh: Welcome to the SEO Plus AI show. My name is Josh, and I will be your host for the day.
As always, I have my co-host, Greg Bessoni with me. Say hi there, Greg.
Greg: Hello, Josh. How are you?
Josh: I'm doing excellent. How are you doing this Friday? How do you feel about this Friday's new time slot?
Greg: Well, it kind of interrupted my lunch plan, I am a go-out-to-lunch and sort of skip-out-on-work type of guy. But this looks like me in the office.
Josh: I fully understand. You can always go out to lunch after this. And today we are blessed to have with us our good friend and local guru, Ryan Maizis.
(1.03- 1.30)
Ryan: Hi, everyone. I'm Ryan. Nice to meet you. I am another SEO located on the good old Vancouver Island. So, yeah, nice to meet everyone. I am excited to be here.
Josh: For those of you who have never watched the SEO+ AI show before, we are the best show online for both SEO knowledge and AI knowledge and putting the two together–SEO+ AI knowledge.
I've been running a YouTube show on SEO for 12 years now, or something. And if you don't know who I am, where have you been? What's going on? Surely you've heard of me, either famously or infamously, depending on which white hat or black hat group you were in.
(1.31- 2.29)
Today, we're going to be looking at local SEO and how AI can help local SEO. So let's start with our long-running segment. What’s new in AI? We're going to search for AI and see if anything new has changed in the world of artificial intelligence in the last seven days, is what we're going to check. I like to use Google Trends to do this.
So here's what's new in AI for the last seven days. Secret invasion AI.
Okay, so that was the show that Marvel put out, secret Invasion, in which they used AI to generate some of the images. Have you guys seen that show? Did you watch it yet?
Ryan: I just watched the first episode yesterday. It's okay.
(2.30- 2.53)
Josh: The AI I think they used to generate was there was a very colorful girl with a colorful ball that was walking around and she's very integral to the plot. Kind of like that Steven Spielberg movie.
Not in tone or anything, but kind of different. Steven Spielberg did a black-and-white World War II movie once, and the only thing that was colored was a girl with a red coat or something. It was a lot like that.
It was using AI to change the color. I think that's what that was. I noticed today that stable diffusion, a new version of stable diffusion came out that actually has the ability to do hands.
(2.54- 3.43)
If you're interested in MidJourney or any of the AI generation that people are doing, stable Diffusion is kind of a model you can use to generate your own images if you want to do so. So that could be very interesting if you're interested. That is just Google's stable diffusion.
All right, here's a new QR code AI art generator. I have no idea what that is.
It just obviously was a thing here. I thought there was a way to just search this. You watch the show for SEO and AI knowledge, not for Josh to know what he's doing with a computer.
(3.44- 4.41)
So the QR code AI art generator. It looks like it’s an AR art generator that generates a QR code. If you want to generate your own QR code, this is an AI art generator that allows users to create AI generator art using QR codes.
I don't know why here's the code on hugging face. I don't know why you would want to use this. What do you think people would use this for?
Greg: Something beat up? I would think just to make it look more aesthetically pleasing.
Ryan: If the QR code is just going to hold a prompt, I can see anyone who might be in a production environment utilizing that so that people can quickly scan new prompts instead of typing and copying and pasting little odd workflow.
(4.42- 5.20)
Josh: So it makes artwork out of a QR code.
Ryan: So you can make a QR code to send you to artwork.
Josh: Well, who knows what this QR code will send you? It could send you to anything.
Ryan: I'm doing it. Yeah, keep that on the screen. Here we go. And it's sending me to huggingface.com. Just the home page.
Josh: Well, there you go. The prompt for this particular one, which was one of their examples, was a sky view of colorful lakes and rivers flowing through the desert.
(5.21- 6.00)
Greg: That looks nothing like that. Yeah, it does, actually. Okay. I can see the side. There is the desert. I noticed that.
Ryan: Okay, so that's really cool. So if you had a bigger picture or you have art that you could then scan and have people kind of go over to click through.
Josh: You could probably have your picture, for example, and then if people scan it, it'll go to your web page, your CV.
Ryan: Yeah, 100%. I mean, using that a lot in real estate marketing. If someone can scan a QR code on their phone and go to the agent profile or go to listed homes, or middle leases on their device, and they can screenshot it, and save it. I use it all the time.
(6.01- 6.41)
Josh: This could be useful for SEO as well or for marketing in general. You could have these on your pages. You could get these in Google Images as well.
You can get these ranking in Google Images or SEO services. It can have your picture and then people scan it and you can get more traffic that way, possibly. This is interesting.
There are all different kinds of things you could do with this. This is kind of cool actually.
Greg: It lets you upload an image and then the text prompt as well.
Josh: I don't know, I'm not really sure.
Ryan: Can you change the QR code content instead of how you face? Can you put just put a different website?
(6.42- 7.28)
Josh: Sure. So I can do https://www.youtube.com/@joshbachynski, which is the channel you’re watching right now. You could do that. Let me change it here. Let's go.
SEO mastery. I don't know what kind of image is going to do for that. What is an image of SEO mastery? Who knows what will come up here?
Ryan: I could see you like, for example, putting a five-star image back there and it could be like if you scan it, it sends it to the GMB to do a review.
Josh: Oh yeah, it's a great idea. Yeah, because definitely for local reviews are a major factor. Yeah, that'd be a great idea to do that too.
(7.30- 8.18)
So you heard it here first here, folks. This is the best show to find out all the new stuff in SEO and AI separately and also SEO + AI.
And I don't know how long that's going to take, so I'm going to move on. It says it's at 42 seconds of 197 seconds. So it tells you how long it's going to take there, I think right there,
Ryan: I think it's because of how many people are queued. So you're 7th out of 14.
Josh: Yeah, it looks like it looks like it. Hugging face is great to test AI code out, but of course, you're with everybody else testing it out, so goodness only knows what will come up with that.
But let's go back here to our list of new AI stuff that's going on so we can get to talking about the local AI.
(8.19- 9.23)
So App Leonardo AI. What is App Leonardo AI all about?
Ryan: Game assets with AI.
Josh: Okay, so it looks like it's some kind of AI that creates game access. It has artist tooling. You can rapidly ideate. There's a five-cent word for you for today ideate.
You can ideate the verb of making ideas and iterating upon said ideas. You can use existing models, or train your own models. This is kind of like MidJourney.
You can also do this very easily on MidJourney already, but it looks like a 2D RPG game, kind of top-down views. So I don't know how you would use that for SEO per se, but it's neat to see the different stuff that's going on in AI and how you might be able to use it.
(9.24- 10.40)
Rose AI, let's find out. This just shows you what's going on in AI. It says it's your personal data analyst.
Access the power of AI to analyze, summarize, and transform data, and build better, spreadsheets faster. Get started and watch the demo. Okay, so it is an AI analyst.
Okay, so you can make a title. “Let's get that data in.” I'm so inspired by this music.
So did you see the data it gave them there? Start the quick insights. It starts giving them quick insights about the total spend average CPC. The campaign and the number of carts, right? And then you can dive deeper.
(10.41- 11.23)
Ryan: So I think this is great. In any sort of agency or marketing role when it comes to reporting, reporting takes a lot of time, and a lot of this because you get to dive through data. So a tool like this that can give you the wins, the average points that are highlighted to click can save you time, and it can allow you to offload that to other people in the business for consistency. I'm going to look more into this.
Josh: AI is going to revolutionize every single market in every single area, every single app, every single type of information that we both produce and consume. So this is really important to show how spreadsheets are going to evolve. This is going to be built into Microsoft. This is going to be built into the open-source spreadsheets.
(11.24- 12.00)
It's really interesting. This is going to be built into Google Sheets. And it's really interesting how you could use this.
For example, you could download CSVs of your ranking data from search console, and it'll start giving you insights as to what's ranking up, trending up, what's trending down, who's lost clicks, who's gained clicks. It might even be able to show you data about, like if you just had a huge drop.
For example, you could download the CSV, upload it to this thing, and let it analyze it and ask it, what are the semantics that I'm down on? Not just the EMQs. What are the general meanings or semantics I'm down on?
(12.01- 12.37)
It will be like, “You’re down on anything that was red apples related. Your blue apples and your green apples rankings are strong, but you lost all your red apples ranking across X number of pages”, and you'll know right away, all my links on red apples are gone. All my quality on red apples is gone.
Something happened with my topical clusters. Something I was doing about the red apple semantic is suddenly bad. It might help you.
Using an AI like this could help you diagnose different areas and different ways in which you know that you're either really up or really down. Or it could be like your red apples rankings are deficient compared to your green apples and your blue apples rankings. That's what you need to build up.
(12.40- 13.33)
You need to build up your topical authority on this. You need to build up your on-page on this. You need to build up maybe your traffic on this.
You need to build up your links on this or whatever it is, what I call SHEET. You need to build up your SHEET, which is an acronym for Semantics, helpfulness, Experience, Expertise, Authority, trust, and Timeliness. You need to build all that up.
I was calling it HEAT and now I'm calling it SHEET. You need to build up the sheet or the HEATs. You could be in HEAT or you need to build up the sheet.
(13.34- 14.29)
Ryan: Where are these biggest searches coming from in the world? Let me show you up there a little bit. Scroll down like one.
Josh: There is a lot in China. It seems like AI might be a word somewhere in Asia. So we do get a lot of Vietnam searching this for some reason. So I think it's a word or a person or something.
Luna AI. What is this? Unleash your creativity with a variety of models and tools to help you create unique ascending images. Our AI-powered “imageration” tool allows you to unlock the full potential of generative AI.
(14.30- 15.10)
So looks like again, it's another stable diffusion. This is stable diffusion, probably powering it in the back end. Another MidJourney clone competitor which is giving better features.
What MidJourney decided to do is they were going to make the best art generator possible and be light on the features. They can't really decide what features they want to offer.
These guys are immediately going to offer you features as to how you can use kind of this visual model to do text prompting instead of just writing the prompt. I don’t know if you’ve noticed while watching this, but a lot of the art seems to be very stable diffusion-esque, very video game-esque.
(15.15- 16.06)
Mid Journey will do all the different styles, including stock photos and things like that. I think that this is not as good as Mid Journey personally.
What do you guys think about that?
Ryan: I would say, considering what we'd be using it for, I would completely agree. This photoscope is a very dramatic feel almost all the time.
Josh: AI-powered electric shoes. What? Okay, I've got to see what this is. What are AI-powered electric shoes? The AIpowered moonwalker shoes from thisiswhyimbroke.com.
What in the hell is this supposed to be? $1,000. What is the deal? Oh, my goodness.
(16.07- 17.04)
So would you guys ever buy this?
Ryan: What does the AI do?
Josh: I have no idea. This makes no sense. All right, so let's go to Bing chat here, and let's ask it. I still don't have access to generative search, sadly, because I'm in Canada.
Heaven forbid Canada gets access to generative search like the rest of the world.
Ryan: Are you talking like Bardnet? Yeah. I've been using a VPN or, like, remote computer access to get that. There are some cheap companies you can use to kind of log in and access a different location.
(17.05- 17.47)
Josh: Yeah, I tried a couple of VPNs. They didn't work, so I was like, Never mind. I don't care.
I'll wait to see it. And Bingchat says AI-powered electric shoes are footwear that optimizes users' walking performance with advanced artificial intelligence capabilities. By analyzing body movements with each stride, the AI system adjusts the motorized wheels to align with the user's gate.
So that's what it does.
Ryan: Interesting. I think it's just they wrote it to have AI.
Josh: Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised at all if that's what's going on.
(17.48- 18.31)
Okay, so we did a Gigamax AI.
Ryan: Just on the funny side, I bet you an SEO might have told you it can be. Add AI to your page and you'll rank better.
Josh: It's a hot topic, right? All right. What is this? World-class security and risk management system. Gigamax AI. Make money while you sleep. What a player to be reckoned with when it comes to the huge number of coins? Gigamax provides access to arbitrage on multiple exchanges to find trade gaps.
Okay, there you go. So I said a few weeks ago, this is what people are going to do. They're going to make an AI to look at all the coins and be like, ‘Oh, this one's up, this one's down,’ and know what to buy and what to sell at the right time to make money on crypto coins.
(18.32- 19.32)
So that's, I presume, what this is. Let me just ask bing chat arbitrage. Using the power of AI to entertain you.
Gigamax AI appears to be–what it doesn't even know it appears to be. I think it's a platform that offers a crypto trading solution.
Arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of a different price in two or more markets, striking a combination of matching deals to capitalize on the difference. The profit being the difference between the market prices at which the unit is traded. Yeah, exactly.
So that's what this little thing will do. Do I recommend you use it? Probably not. Do I recommend you get into crypto at all? Probably not.
(19.33- 20.08)
But hey, that's what this segment does. So muse AI we looked at before. Visla AI.
I think we looked at it before, too. Did we look at this one before as well?
Greg: No.
Josh: All-in-one video storytelling.
Greg: There are so many of these, it's unbelievable.
Ryan: Yeah, there's a whole bunch of those. I definitely agree. Even, like, Premiere and Adobe are working on AI stuff.
(20.09- 20.53)
Josh: No experience is needed. Well, that's good.
AI-powered video creation creates engaging videos while saving time. So I guess it makes like this PowerPoint of it that's going on right now. I guess it does exactly what it's showing you right now, I think.
Greg: How do you think these no-name services get the huge trends in Google search?
Ryan: They sign up for sites that have a good following. Like, for example, AppSumo is one, and AppSumo runs ads and stuff pretty well out there. And so when people see these, they'll Google search it.
They'll look for the name. I bet you like this. Like, if someone were to search this, they're probably searching the name of it, but typically it's because they wanted some platform, and got some exposure.
(20.54- 21.35)
So you can quickly make kind of these Youtube-ish style videos. It gives you a teleprompter. It looks like you get the shot you need.
I'm still cool with using Zoom and OBS and not having any idea how to run them and muting myself at the wrong time.
Ryan: I think that tool is really good in terms of, going back to running an SEO agency sometimes. You're always making tutorials and how-to's and having an easy editor that you might be able to hire someone to build those out and it could be an effective video.
(21.36- 22.14)
Just look at all these new AIs. Okay, so we looked at this one before. This is like some companion, romantic companion thing.
We looked at a lot of these before. Muse AI.
Ryan: You haven't seen any sort of medical AI diagnosis, WebMD things, have you?
Josh: Great question.
No power video made simple for you. Here's another video. Look at all these. Look at all these ones. There are so many of them. I don't even have time to look at all these because I want to move on to local SEO.
(22.15- 23.00)
Create AI covers. Using AI in seconds with Voiceify, with AI voice models, voice artists such as Drake, and Kanye West.
Ryan: You got to be careful, though.
Josh: This is something that's not going to exist for very long. Sony and the music industry to come down on this hard. So enjoy these tools while you can because I don't think they're going to be around for very long.
Eleven Labs is voices as well. I use it myself. And this is in the top 20 queries. So there you go. That’s what is new in the world of artificial intelligence.
(23.01- 23.47)
So, Ryan, thanks for joining. Ryan, why don't you give me a quick background on just yourself and what you do, and then let's talk about how AI is factoring into local SEO these days, if it is at all.
Ryan: So, you guys, my name is Ryan. I do a local SEO. I have my own agency that around called Amazing Rankings, where we get some rankings that are pretty amazing and we focus on the local side of things. I first kind of got into it like, six, seven years ago.
I found Josh's group through a YouTube video and the fact that he lived on the island as well, I was like, “All right if it ends up being some issues, I can find him.”
(23.50- 24.12)
No issues. As you can see, a couple of years later still here, he could drive to my house and find me.
And that's kind of how I got into it. And since then, I've been working in local SEO. We're getting great results, doing a lot of offering stuff these days, and even real estate.
it's honestly going super great. I'm excited to kind of hopefully shed some light on maybe some of the mysteries as the past two years, I would say Google has been really starting to hone in on how to better moderate local SEO in terms of GMB spam management obstacles that are coming, including reviews getting filtered.
(24.13- 24.52)
What are good reviews? Gmail accounts are going to start being suspended, things that might actually really shake up the market coming in the future. So I'm happy to kind of see what questions you guys got and how I can help.
Josh: I have some questions. So people are concerned, and rightfully so. Although I did a video on this when Greg was on vacation.
I was all alone by myself. Can you hear that violent plan? All alone myself, no one there to bounce ideas off of. I talked about generative search and how I'm not sure if it's going to have as big an impact as some people think it will for informational search.
(25.00- 25.39)
What are your thoughts on generative search when it comes to local? Do you think they're going to start factoring in generative chatbot-style search into the map packs or whatnot?
Ryan: Yeah, so that's a great question. I wouldn't say there's like a clear line to if it's going to happen. I think no matter what, a year, two years, three years at some point. Is it going to happen this year? Not so much.
I am noticing result changes since generative search has become more upfront. For example, if I were to search from where I am, let's just say plumber service or plumber like four months ago, if I were to search Plumber or plumber service, I would typically get a whole page full of plumber services.
(25.40- 26.04)
But now when I do it without any geo appended, I get a mix between what is plumber, and the answers around the topic.
So I'm seeing, like, evidence of that kind of showing up currently. Now, just while I'm saying that I did that on desktop, I'm curious if that same kind of rule is applying if I search on mobile, being that typically mobile is ranked a little bit different. Let's just see plumber.
Josh: . So in the group that Ryan mentioned, which is my underground SEO university, you can join if you want, I've got a promo on right now. Email me at joshbachynski@gmail.com
(26.05- 26.53)
If you'd like to join the group and be in there with heavyweights like Ryan and myself and Greg as well, who is a longtime member of our Underground SEO University as well.
Greg: I'm not even close to where these guys are.
Josh: I think you're being modest, my friend. But in that group, we noticed the change in local. That is the way they’ve changed. George, who is also in the group, says I'm a lightweight.
We got some other members of the group in here, which you guys can ask local questions too, if you guys like, we noticed in the group that they changed the way that they started changing local.
(27.00- 27.35)
For example, in the past, if you searched Chiropractor and you were in Winnipeg, they would have appended Winnipeg, the city, to the end of the search, and it would be semantically how they handled the local aspect of things.
A few months ago, they've changed that, which is, I think, what Ryan is getting at or talking about. And now the AI is computing based on your personalization and your geolocation and your IP address, maybe your past searches, and some other data points that Google has.
They're determining what location you're in and if there are any entities that also have the property of being in the same location and also have the property of being location worthy.
(27.36- 28.00)
Payday loans, for example. I was doing bad credit loans. SEO and bad credit loans just used to be a general informational search, but then it started to skew towards Canada and now it's skewing towards the province.
It works with this on time as well. So here's another pro tip for everybody out there. If you have a more specific location that is more keyed to the user's specific location, the AI will detect these entity properties in terms of extracting entities or ideas, in terms of a natural language processing AI, it'll serve that up for users in that specific locale and will beat the other locales if it's more appropriate.
(28.01-28.44)
Same thing for freshness over time. If you have a more relevant time stamp for your content in various places– join Underground SEO University to find out how to do this and where you would put it to get the maximum effect. You will also beat out other folks because you're more relevant.
Your entity properties match the entity properties of the person searching. So it's very interesting how AI is changing the search game in this way in particular. So sorry, Ryan.
Go ahead. You were doing a search for a plumber there.
Ryan: Yeah, so I'm seeing kind of similar things even when I go on mobile.
(28.45- 29.27)
So when it comes to keyword research or if you're planning out your campaign, it's just kind of like prompt engineering, though. Don't think about the keyword that you want data on, think about the topic specifically. For example, like if we take the law,, sometimes people are looking for information about a lawsuit while sometimes they're looking for a lawyer.
I used to be able to just put the lawsuit name and lawsuit you'd be service pages, but then when you're doing your own page, you get mixed readings because you're pulling from a sample that's not quite on the topic you want to type write about.
So if you're trying to rank things that are georelated when you're doing your SERP analysis, make sure the search isn't based on the keyword but based on the topic. So you know who's really trying to fight for that?
(29.28- 30.22)
Josh: Yeah, I really like how you said that. A lot of the AI-based SEO that we're finding in Underground SEO University–it's so important to understand entities and how natural language processors extract those entities and the EMQ is still important. How important? You have to join the group to find out.
The EMQ is still important, the exact match query is still important. But all the other related entities and what we call the AI keywords of all the various different Google AIs such as Neural Matching, Rank Brain, BERT, and Knowledge Graph. A lot of people already know this.
I'm just echoing what some people know, but we've tested it a little bit further, and helpful content AI analysis that they're doing probably with Palm Two. Product review content or just review content for services or products, which would include local as well, because you have a lot of services and local.
(30.23- 31.10)
So that AI is going to be going over that, making sure you have quality content there as well. By the way, for sales pitch two of the day, 32nd sales pitch two of the day.
If you'd like to know more about exactly how these AIs work, as I said, you could join Underground SEO University and understand it at a high level, like a scientist level, or if you just want to get your SEO done, try our keyword tool called Keyword Spy, which actually builds you AI models.
In all of these different AI models, all these different AIS, it finds the actual entities and keywords you need to use. Go to try keywordspy.com to try it free for two weeks. No credit card is needed. You could try it free for two weeks@trykeywordspy.com.
(31.11- 31.52)
It’s very interesting how AI in terms of classification is going to be working in SEO. So it's classifying everything.
It's classifying your address, your phone number, what type of business you are, what kind of customers you should have, whether you're local worthy, whether you're not, whether you're borough worthy, city worthy, province worthy, or state worthy, depending on where you are and country worthy, they've always done like US English, Canadian English or UK English.
They've always done language groups. So now they have an AI handling that at a much higher level, doing a much better job in terms of local determinations around there. So that's fascinating, and it's something that we definitely need to watch.
(32.01- 32.39)
In terms of understanding the keywords that need to go on the page, there are different AIs that have different keywords that go on those pages.
Now, Ryan, in terms of the informational to the local Map pack rankings, how much implementation of kind of the AI keywords and information do you see pulled over into the GMB local rankings in terms of where you want to put your keywords there?
Can you talk a bit about that?
(32.40- 33.01)
Ryan: Yeah, 100%. Just in local generally, there's like three algorithms that we're typically talking about for maps. So there's proximity, prominence, and relevance. When we talk about keywords across different accounts, GMB, maybe backlinks, maybe your LinkedIn profile, we're kind of talking about prominence because you're being found everywhere.
And that plays a huge factor in the GMB has a weight to that. When I do local SEO, if a page I'm focusing on is on the keyword or topic, ‘ Victoria Plumber’ I'm going to be including that also in the GMB so that I build the prominence of that indent in the web.
I would just say that when I write those out in the GMB, I do try and fit in those highly correlated kind of keywords where I pull up and I put those in and I've seen times where I've put it in for, let's say just category of areas, whether it's a state or a city. Within a couple of days, we've seen map increases.
(33.02- 33.50)
I think the latest one we had was rankings in Rhode Island for a law firm there where we added some optimizations to a GMB with the brand name switch. And next thing they're pretty much across the whole state and it was just kind of connecting those dots.
Josh: That's interesting. So you use the keyword reports that we'd normally use for web pages, but you took those keywords because we built a bunch of AI models that are going to be used across all Google products and you took those keywords and you put them in the GMB.
Did I hear that right? Are you at liberty to tell us where in the GMB you put those? Honestly, is that the secret sauce?
Ryan: Yeah. So, I mean, there is some secret sauce, won't give up. But in general, there's no wrong spot you could put it. There are definitely more optimal ways to do it.
(34.00- 34.54)
I haven't found an area where I've been hit against for it. But if you're making a page for it, I typically try and make some sort of post or service for it on it. The more your GMD is filled out, the better–a general rule of thumb and making sure that those key terms around the topic are mentioned and considered.
So what you're building is a bit of knowledge on the web page. So Google sees your service–Victoria Plumbers, Langford Plumbers–then they also kind of see that on the GMB. And so that has relevance because your copy is on page Vectorly correct or entity correct.
It's seeing it in two spots, maybe three. If you get other stuff going that starts what kind of builds it up. So that's kind of like the general overview of how you want to fill it. The actual intricacies of which terms I'm selecting is a bit nuanced to get in on a call. But that's like the general rule of thumb, if that makes sense.
(34.55- 35.27)
Josh: Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you. So George who is on Zoom asked a question. He says, would you push a local client to have the brand as the URL or the main keyword as the URL? Example goldenriver.com versus financialservicesnearme.com.
Would you do the brand as the URL or something semantic related, the keyword or something?
Ryan: So I always like the great guidance always kind of depends on the goal of the business. So there are people who just want to run a transactional business. They want to show up, search, someone comes in, they pay, they go on.
There's no really like service. It's transactional.
(35.28- 36.19)
There are companies that really want to build a brand. If their company is interested in building a brand, I will always recommend ranking for the brand name. Just the way things have been going in trends, google is slowly starting to hate EMQ GMBs, and the only way they really stick in is if your branding matches that.
But if they're like, yeah, I want to make some quick money in the next four months, then I'm okay with being a little gray to black hat. But if brands have the time and longevity, I think you'll always be safer building out your brand name.
If anyone ever tries to get your name or use your name, then you at least have abilities to send out letters, don't use my name with this. No records of that, but it's hard to claim ownership on, let's say a brand name if it's something that's generally used in a common language.
(36.20- 37.03)
Yeah, I would agree. And the one thing that George asked there was, “Ryan, I'd love to hear your two cent on this as well. One of those examples, there was something I can't remember what it was. It was something near me. So let's say it's massage services.
It used to be that they handled the near me as a semantic as well. But now with the changeover of the NLP being able to process all the entity properties of your phone address, who you are, where you are, whether this search is city based, local-based if it's province based, or state based or country based, the near me is just translated again to the area that's appropriate.”
Ryan: In other parts of North America, I think I know some SEO students will work with near me as target pages, and they're successful. But in finally, Canada, the US. Not quite the same.
(37.04- 38.04)
Near me seems to actually ask you what service of this is the best service to me. And to get that, you need to build an understanding of where you're servicing. The clients that I have who rank best for near-me searches are the ones who have the most in-depth infrastructure built on their site to show Google this is what we're serving, plus all the other prominence and stuff.
So if someone's wanting to show up near me, there is probably limitations to where you might win that search. If there's a company, like, somewhere in your grid that you're trying to rank and they just got that spot locked up, you might not get it for there, but you might get it for other areas. I don't think you ever optimize for near me.
I mean, I think you can use the term if you're saying, hey, “We're always near you, check out all our locations.” But to just write a page that says near me but doesn't mention locations, it's like, well, how do you know you're new and near? And how does Google know you're near if you're just optimizing for near me? What's the difference between someone in San Diego versus Vancouver Island?
(38.02- 38.47)
Josh: Yeah, I think personally with the way that AI works, if you understand AI and the NLP entity properties they're scanning, the Near Me is always translated to wherever that person is.
If I search for Thai massage near Me, I don't know why I'd be searching for that. If I search Thai Massage near Me, it's going to change that to Victoria BC, because that's where I'm closest to. It used to be that the near me was just another two keywords like any other keywords.
Now they're not semantic keywords anymore. Now they're what we call knowledge graph keywords, which again join Underground SEO University.
If you want to find out the difference between semantic keywords and knowledge graph keywords or try keywords for free for two weeks because we generate for you both semantic keywords and knowledge graph keywords, which are sometimes the same, but they're different and implied in different ways to give you a massive boost.
(38.50- 39.50)
Okay, let's see if we have any questions here in the thing. So Stiggs asks who nicely told me how to pronounce his name.
Thank you, Stiggs. “Is it a penalty to create numerous local GMBs for my website?”
Ryan: So it can be. Here's the thing. So let's just say my screen that you see here is the map. And if you have a GMB here and you have one right here, probably not good. That being said, if they're the same business, like if the Map date is the same, including the address and phone number, also not good. Google will say one of them is duplicate and hide it. I have a client that I work with down in Missouri. He has 21 locations.
All of them are on the map pack, multiple GMBs. And the trick is that each one of them has a page with this specific NAP data . And that NAP data is only on the page of the cities it services and it's a clear signal.
(39.51- 40.07)
Now, if you have a client who has five locations, I wouldn't recommend five sites. I would recommend one site. So we will say that it is one entity, but we'll clearly understand where those things pin in.
When I build these out if the service page is if I have, let's say, a Victoria hearing aid center and I have a GMB for it, the GMB is pointing it straight to that hearing aid center page because that's what the user is looking for, right? I'm not going to send them to the home. And so, in short, no if you have multiple locations when we penalize, but if the architecture is not set up correctly in relevance to the whole company, it may.
(40.08- 40.45)
Josh: Thank you very much Ryan, for that succinct answer. Guys, if you have any more SEO questions of any kind, local or otherwise, put them in the chat here. While you are watching live–while you're quickly reading through that.
Ryan: One thing I'm curious, Josh, is that Langford, finally from post Canada, is no longer known as Victoria. We will be getting mailed to Langford. So I am curious, with the address change on how this will affect GMBs, who have had a citation stuff built over the years for Victoria addresses, now that it's changing, I have no idea.
It's kind of like just, “oh, I wonder how this would work.” So if I see anything kind of unique, I'll let you know but interesting change.
(40.36- 41.26)
Josh: That's interesting. So just give people some background, the general city area that we live in is Victoria, BC. Victoria BC is a tiny little city, which is just kind of like what we call downtown. And there's Sanich, East Sanich, west Sanich, North sanich. There's coquitlam and esquamal.
There's all these different kind of areas, including Langford, which is where I used to live and where Ryan currently lives. I moved slightly more outside of town to lake country, I mean, cottage country, which is sometimes why my Internet sucks.
And so there's plenty of cities like this in North America where now they're kind of boroughs that are kind of outside the city they're absorbing them in, and they're changing the addresses. So how do you handle that? My answer is it's a good question. I think it has to do with when Google finally updates it themselves as well.
(41.27- 42.16)
So I heard that it's fine for now to still have Victoria BC on your address or Langford BC on your address. We'll have to see if Google will be able to pick up the nuances between those two things there as well.
Ryan: And so I know that you can change you can request road name changes and address changes, but the times where I've done that, it's never been, like, a smooth, straightforward process. I'm just curious. So there's a couple of searches that I'm doing that I'm seeing if they'll ship regularly, but it's interesting because it's a ship that you don't normally see.
Josh: Yeah. If the way it works, if it's like, okay, what are the best websites to rank in Victoria versus what are the best websites to rank in Langford? If you suddenly get on another list with weaker competitors, you could get a big jump if you just change that one nap component.
(42.17- 42.51)
Ryan: True, technically, if the address changes, all your NAP data becomes, like, 30% less optimized, and that's less of a connection between your GMB and your site and all it. So whenever companies do make the change, you'll want to change it across the board.
But I would definitely say until Google starts registering the new city name to wait. And I do know that it does crawl certain databases, and I think, UPS might be one of uses to help with address names. So it's whenever the updates get pulled from those APIs.
Josh: Yeah, it'll be interesting to see. Oh, my goodness. We got a bunch of questions in here.
(42.53- 43.27)
Steven says, “Do you fellas use any new tools or strategies for ranking clients in competitive niches outside of tried and true traditional efforts? What's your favorite way to use KeywordSpy for local?”
Wow, what a great question. So, yes, we use a whole bunch of tools and tactics that are completely outside the norm.
Again, in underground SEO University, we are completely outside the box. We look at things almost totally differently than any other group or any other SEO kind of trend because we've scientifically tested them all, and we know what's actually true and what's not. And we know what actually is working and what is actually not.
(43.28- 44.09)
That's the science that KeywordSpy is based on, which, of course, is another outside of the box tool. So outside the box that we have the issue, and Greg will attest that. People using KeywordSpy often don't know what to do with it.
They're like, “this doesn't have the same things Href has”. They're a little confused because our tool is better and actually is accurately measuring things that are actually important, which they're unaccustomed to actually measuring or knowing is important. So we put tours in the system.
Now we're halfway through putting tours in that explains and shows you everything that's doing. Again, try keywordspy.com free for two weeks, no credit card needed, into which we're going to make the sign up even easier because we're doing CRO on the website right now, too.
(44.10- 45.00)
But in terms of local, to get to your question there, Steven, our favorite way to use keywords by for local is exactly there what Ryan said. Ryan could chime in again if I'm wrong, I'll just repeat what you said. But because we're building a model of all the Google as a company, a search company, doesn't remake the wheel.
They don't remake the wheel. If they have an AI that's working well here, they apply it across the board, right? And so, because a GMB is just like another web page, effectively another social media page, you can think of GMB as like a social media site. It's another social media page or web page for your business that Google trusts even more because they have more checks and balances in it.
As Ryan says, when that corroborates for all your other entity data, including your NAP data, which is just another kind of entity data, you have a stronger signal. So semantic keywords, NAP data is just knowledge graph keywords. But they're not the only kind of knowledge graph keywords.
(45.01- 45.40)
So we build all those models for you. Again, we build have you even heard of these models before? Check. This is all public knowledge.
Google has admitted the AIs they're using. It is Neural Matching, Rank Brain, BERT–which is their bi directional encoder representations from Transformer, which is probably still doing the featured snippet probably the only thing that thing does.
Maybe the title tag, the Helpful Content AI, which is probably Palm two, the Review Content AI which is palm two, and the Knowledge Graph AI, which is kind of more like their NLP demo that checks out entities and extracts entity property information that makes the KGMID, the Knowledge Graph machine readable ID.
(45.41- 46.39)
But that was an old technology that's not fully updated anymore. They have way bigger databases that have all this information that are much more updated on the kind of classification capabilities that ChatGPT would have. A robust next generation large language model can do right or even better because it's fine tuned just to classification.
The model isn't for prompting that transformer model or that neural network architecture, that deep learning architecture has been fine tuned for entity classification. You can see an example of it in Google Ads. Have you run Google Ads lately? Check on the right hand side.
They're telling you all the entities that are related. There's also other Google products that allow you to do this, that we have access to here in Underground SEO university that we've been looking at, we're playing with, and we're thinking about implementing into keywords by possibly we'll see. So it's really important to get the Knowledge Graph keywords and the semantic keywords and the Helpful keywords.
(46.40- 47.30)
It's very important to know the different dimensions of keywords they're using and just put in the keywords keywords in the right spots. Again, email me@joshbachynski.com if you have any questions and I have a special promo for joining Underground SEO University and you could try Keywords for free for two weeks with no credit card.
Try Keywordspy.com and you put them in the same places as Ryan already explained before, you probably had a chance to ask the question. David says I'm loving the nuggets.
Heman says, ” Black hat question: will Google penalize me for buying links?”
(47.33- 47.57)
Ryan: That is a great question. And so first of all, can they prove you bought links? Is question one in the group you guys will probably find, if you get in, that there are some rules to buying links, but one of the ones that are kind of like well known knowledge is if it's an obvious site that they're buying links from, find a different source, right?
So there's some things like look at a site and if you think, hey, is it obvious that someone might buy a link from here, then I probably wouldn't buy it.
Things that might be indicators of that, what kind of topics are on there? If it talks about AI, then also talks about farming, that's probably like a link site. So try it to be topically relevant. When it comes to links, I'm not sure Google is going to police them as much because now that they have a better understanding of topics and site traffic, they seem to just discredit links.
(47.60- 48.45)
Like instead of going through the process of asking people to remove. They're like, “that looks like a useless link, not going to count it.” And so I don't think you might see penalties, but I think you just might see wasted money and not a return from that effort.
Josh: Yeah, you might be surprised. So, folks, if you want to know, we've done very extensive testing in everything, including external links, obviously. And we have some tested, tried and proven strategies to not penalize your pages, not get demotions on your pages, but also get the pound for pound, get more out of your links and spend less money and do better there.
So again, if you're interested in that, join Underground SEO University. All right, now we're in the home stretch. Let's see the final questions we have here.
(48.46- 49.51)
Ben asks question one, he says, “Here's my thing. Long story, multipart threat. I am a YouTube wannabe struggling with getting traction. Playing in the YouTube ecosystem is a pain. I'm thinking given some of the names I work with on my channel, might help me in Google search. So my channel is nerdy DIY stuff like Adam Savage's tested channel.
I have worked with Tom Hanks Adam Savage and was a prop master with Ghostbusters Afterlife and got permission from Sony to talk about behind the scenes stuff on my channel. So I'm more a general English based SEO kind of guy.
No real location based, more language based. Not sure if this is a stuff you have done, but I'm looking for a different way to rank in YouTube.”
So YouTube ranking, YouTube is actually the second biggest search engine on the planet. Google is the biggest search engine on the planet, and YouTube is the second biggest search engine on the planet. So, yeah, I don't know about Ryan or Greg, but we don't focus on YouTube SEO specifically, as far as I know.
(49.52- 50.37)
It's not about the views anymore. It's more about the watch time. So you need your users to continue watching the entire time. You need to have the keywords and also hashtags. The tags are super important as well.
So watch time and tags to me, seems to be the bigger YouTube ranking factors, even though I don't profess to be an expert in YouTube ranking. Although I've ranked number one on YouTube a lot, with a lot of my videos I've done over the last ten or 15 years, it's definitely something I could move into more.
We've talked about moving into more. We've even talked about AI tools to help you rank in YouTube. And who knows if generative search crushes SEO, which I don't think it's going to do.
(50.38- 51.28)
But on the off chance that generative search crushes SEO, watch for the YouTube spy AI tool that Greg and I put out, because we've definitely talked about other ways to move out. Local is another thing. We decided we could possibly move out into as well.
So keep watching for that. George asks, “so a lawyer site with 1000 links from a time massage site won't count.”
Ryan: So if you were to do an audit and see that that site had a massive hit recently, then you can maybe go and remove those. It's kind of hard to say. It's hard to say in general. You don't want that on there.
I would go ahead and remove that just to be safe. If you kind of found something like that.
(51.30- 51.58)
Josh: If there was a huge drop at the same time.
Ryan: Yeah, if there was a huge drop. But you can't fix what's not broken. And that's something really big to sometimes remember, is that, yeah.
In analysis, you can typically always find some imperfections in a site. Just the nature of the web. There's imperfections.
But if those imperfections are enough to get a queued result is really what the risk is. Just like when you're looking at everyone has cancer cells in them, but how much, right? Although you might find it, you want to think is it worth the battle and what might be repercussions or things after it. If lawyer site is ranking strong, haven't had any evidence, but they also have maybe 9000 other links that are pretty good, then maybe not a big thing to worry about.
(52.00- 52.40)
Josh: Yeah, I would agree. And I didn't want to give more of the underground SEO University secret sauce away, but I will say this, that there are cases in which links can hurt you. They can.
They're rare, they're borderline, and usually it's more in spammy-ish niches. Like the Thai massage site you mentioned. Usually Google ignores 99% of those links, but in very few cases it can hurt you.
And you might have to actually rely on the disavowal file, which of course all the disavowal file is doing is allowing them to machine learn the types of pages that probably have links they can discount and they discount them. So also remember that Google has anti SEO algorithms. When you're doing SEO moves, sometimes your ranks start to fluctuate and then you have a knee jerk reaction and get scared and pull it back.
(52.42- 53.19)
That's the AI realizing, “Oh, that was an SEO doing that. Okay, now I'm going to start penalizing those moves even more when statistically they see SEOs doing it a lot.”
Ryan: Just like credit score. If you start applying for a lot of credit, then your credit drops because they're like this guy's seeking credit. Start making tons of changes to your site that look like it's for a certain thing. Google's like this probably isn't a good behavior. I would agree with that.
Josh: George said in the chat, I love how serious this call is. I was being silly. I hope no one would ever push for this.” Yeah, George is saying because George is also in the group.
George is saying don't throw a thousand Thai legs at your site. That's probably not a good idea,
(53.20- 54.00)
Ryan: Unless you have a Thai massage site.
Josh: There you go.
Then that's exactly what you should be putting 1000 legs from another Thai massage site. Florian says, “Yes, that's me. I looked at the tool and had no clue how to use it.”
Okay, great. So, Florian, we put tours in. So go back into the please do this.
Go back into KeywordSpy. Everyone try keywordspy.com. Everyone try KeywordSpy for two weeks for free.
No credit card needed. Go in and try the tours and let me know how well they're working. Let Greg know. Email me at joshbachynski@gmail.com and let me know how our tours are working and if they're explaining and guiding you through it's. Just like six or seven tours.
(54.02- 54.45)
You press next, maybe four or five and maybe seven times total. It gives you an overview of what you're doing and you can get off to the races there. So we love our tours.
We think they're doing really well. David says, “do you plan to do these streams every Friday?” Yes, we are. Every Friday at 10:00, a.m. Pacific time. We will be doing the stream. So join live.
Make sure you click on the subscribe and the bell so that you're notified when we're going live, so you can ask questions as well. And get your free five minutes of SEO consultation for free. Where can you get a better deal than that? Nowhere.
David says,” hashtags are great in the description.” I agree. And Heman says tutorials.
Yes. We also have tutorials for KeywordSpy. You can watch those.
The tours are easier because they're in situ. They're in the app.
(54.47- 55.16)
Ryan: I remember what I was going to say for the YouTube stuff.
When you're building out, like, we always talk about how Google needs to understand a topic by the words you put on it. If you're trying to rank a YouTube video that's DIY snow sleds, you could use keywords by to maybe make sure your description has some of those key terms mentioned in with it.
We do also find that Google likes when entities have multiple medias, right? So if you just have a channel, I'm hoping that you maybe also have a Facebook.
I'm hoping that you have a website that they get shared too. That all builds into the understanding showing that you would be a good person to show one of these users too.
(55.17- 55.53)
If you're having a hard time capturing new traffic or new users.
And it might be an idea to maybe find a keyword that people are searching for and make a video specific for that. For example, sometimes I find new bands because I found a cover of a band and I was like, hey, “they did great job on this cover. What else do they got going on?” And then you want to check out their music.
You might get introduced to someone by talking about a topic that is searched. And if that gets regular search volume and you get regular watches that could turn into regular subscribers should they like the other stuff in your content.
Two strategies you might want to throw in with that mix.
Josh: Awesome. That's great. So that's been the hour, folks. Thanks very much for listening and watching. This has been the SEO plus AI show.
(55.54- 56.32)
So before we sign off, Greg and Ryan, what are your final tips or thoughts for today? Final tips or thoughts of the day?
Ryan: I'm trying to think what would be a good tip when getting reviews? Get them from real people. No more buying them.
Josh: Incentivize. Maybe use that QR code thing that we saw today. Incentivize your users to give you a review.
Give them a discount, give them money back, give them, I don't know, whatever you can do. Because reviews are super important for local rankings, obviously, as Ryan knows. Also, when they ask you questions to guides and guides answer questions on there.
Super important that they answer those questions right. That's super important as well.
(56.33- 57.47)
George says, “On YouTube script some of the video and transcribe the CC to make sure the main keywords get mentioned.”
Yes. Also, having keywords in there too can possibly help. Or does it? We know in SEO University because we recently tested this join Underground SEO University to find out if that's actually a ranking factor or not.
And Greg, what are your final comments for today? Let's put Greg on the spot, see if he's still sleeping. Greg has been very quiet this episode, so I'm going to stay that way and just say thank you, Ryan, for coming on and it's been great. You're freaking smart, dude and love having you on.
Ryan: Happy to come back, I think. Greg, I think if you were to give any advice, it might be eat lunch before, but you must be hungry still. It's been like been an hour.
(57.48-
I'm also getting a little bit packaged. I'm in the East Coast, so it's 2 pm here, so I can definitely wait for lunch after this call. But yeah, Fridays have forever changed for me.
Josh: Well, we had more people watching, didn't we? I knew Friday would be a better time.
Greg: I used to have a great life until Josh came in my life. Yes. Let me sprinkle some pepper with that salt.
Josh: George says, “thanks, Greg, for KeywordSpy.” I agree. You could thank me too, George, because I actually engineered the thing and Greg and I are partners on this.
But anyway, thanks, Greg, for keyword spy. I agree. Thank you, Greg, for all the hard work you do.
I appreciate everything, including you coming on this show. I'm sure the viewers do as well. Ben says, “he's already done the transcription thing.”
(58.30- 59.33)
Thanks for the thought, though, Ben. If it takes you a lot of time to do it, if you have an AI, doing it takes you no time, go ahead, keep doing it. Otherwise chico says, “Are local citations yellow pages still relevant? Given how Google's implementation of AI are for rankings.”
I'm going to rapid fire these and if I'm wrong, Ryan, just say yes or no.
I'm going to say yes. Steven says reviews. We'll see. And thank you, everyone for listening and watching.
And again, if you have any questions at all, email me at joshbachynski@gmail.com. I'm happy to give you five minutes of SEO advice. If you have a local question, Ryan, give us your contact info, how they can contact you as well.
(59.34- 1.00.17)
Ryan: Any questions, guys? You can find me at ryan@amazingrankings.ca Any questions about local, feel free to reach out.
Also, if you guys join Josh's group, I'm pretty gracious with my time. I don't mind answering questions, putting people in the right way. I've met with students one on one before, so you can email me if you want to join the group.
That's another great thing. One thing I'll say about the group that I liked as I was getting into Internet marketing is that it connects me with like minded individuals and it's more than just how to do SEO and the science behind it, but like having a bit of a support team there. So if you're feeling like you're just at a desk staring at a screen, it can really kind of help load in the load and help always have that consistent guidance.
(1.0018- 1.00.41)
Josh: I appreciate that, Ryan. Thank you very much. I'll slip you that $20.
All right, guys, so we're going to sign off. Thanks very much for everyone for listening and watching.
This has been the SEO+ AI show. Tune in next week at Friday at 10:00, a.m. Pacific, where Greg will be equally as surly and we'll see if we can put some food in him first so he's not so hungry.
And Ryan will show up from time to time as his schedule allows. So thanks guys for watching and we'll see you next time.
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