Darren Shaw: Founder of Whitespark

BluShark Digital

Welcome to the SEO Insider with your host, Seth Price, founder of BluShark, taking you inside the world of legal marketing and all things digital.

Seth Price

Thrilled to have Darren Shaw, founder of Whitespark here with us. Welcome, Darren.

Darren Shaw

Hey, thanks a lot for having me.

Seth Price

You know, I see you everywhere. And you've been very influential part of building, help both Price Benowitz, now BluShark clients. Talk to me about your background and how you came to sort of be the epicenter of all things local.

Darren Shaw

Oh, wow. I don't know if we're the epicenter of all things local but thank you. All right. So Whitespark started in 2005, as a sort of web development agency with just me freelance web, web developer making websites, and then I started getting an SEO because once you make websites for people, it kind of leads to SEO. And the team built it in 2010, we, we launched this software system called the local citation finder, which, you know, after reading a blog post, and figuring out how to do sort of citation analysis, we wrote software for it. And that it was just like, oh, I guess we're a local search company now. So we started building more local search software, I became absolutely obsessed with learning everything I could about local SEO, just and then I started connecting with people in the space and doing some research and got the opportunity to do some speaking, and it just kind of grew from there. And so yeah, now WhiteSpark, we offer tons of different products and services around helping businesses ranking local.

Seth Price

You know, as, as we've developed, and we're focused a lot in the legal space and other professional services, like, you know, cosmetic surgery and things like that, that as I've seen those areas develop, obviously, local is everything. And, you know, you come out with a sort of a report annually, that gives us some sort of idea of where we're efforts that are best spent talking about how that's evolved over the years from when you started it to what we see today.

Darren Shaw

Yeah, sure. So first off, I did not start that. That's the local search ranking factor survey started by David Mann and David started in 2008. And it was just, I think the idea was spawned from what Moz was doing. Moz have the search ranking factors survey, where they're just asked SEOs what they've seen moving the needle. And so David Mim developed it back in 2008, and ran it for many years. In 2017, he passed the rains to me, and I've done the last three editions of it. And yeah, so it's basically just a survey of the top 40 ish experts that are kind of notable people that are speaking about doing research, writing about local search, and kind of getting their combined brainpower into what they see. moving the needle in local search.

Seth Price

No, it's like the ultimate crowdsourcing, you know, I remember from when David was doing it, you know, bet back in the day, that was one of those formative things when you're like, okay, making sure you're not missing using it as a checklist almost, to make sure you're not missing anything. As you do that, like one of the things that, you know, we'll talk about sort of areas that you see going forward, but what are some of the myths that you see that people probably even publicly talk about that you're like, hey, I just don't see credence to where people are advocating for people to spend time and effort.

Darren Shaw

Yeah, so that's, I asked that question in a survey this year, because I wanted to try and get better exposure of these things not actually being ranking factors that don't, they don't have any impact on ranking. And so one of the big ones and the one that topped the list this year was keywords in your Google My Business description. It's just such a common thing that a lot of people assume well, if I put keywords in that description field, Google will pick up on that it'll help me rank keywords in the GMB description do not help you rank Google doesn't look at them in the local search algorithm at all. So there's no benefit to that. And in fact, keywords almost anywhere on your Google listing. Google's not really looking at that for a ranking perspective.

Seth Price

So you're saying that the name of a company with keywords in it you see no effect...

Darren Shaw

No that is huge. It's the only place. Stuff keywords in your business name, you're gonna rank overnight. In fact, it just tested that on a Whitespark listing.

Seth Price

Right. And so that to me, has been one of the biggest issues that we've dealt with, which was spam. I talked about it, you know, you spoke on this as well. And the idea that, you know, we've had a bunch of luminaries on here, from Joy to others talking about, hey, if Google knows this is out there, and you see what's your bots are Russian, you know, oligarchs with their spam, whoever it is massive spam, particularly in the legal space? And you would think they could if they wanted to, they could do something about it. What's your take? Why has Google not taken this on more meaningfully when it's such a bad user experience?

Darren Shaw

Yeah, so my opinion on In the Name spam, so fake listings and fake reviews are a separate issue. But when we talk about stuffing the business name with keywords, that absolutely has a significant impact on ranking it, you'll definitely increase your rankings by stuffing keywords in there. But it's spam your your business name should only be your actual real world name that you operate under. When you stuff the keywords in there. The problem is from Google's perspective, as far as I understand, is that it's because of branded search. So let's say your business name is Denver best personal injury lawyers. So that's your that's your actual business name, you went down and you decided we...

Seth Price

Which people are now doing. Google forces your hand, and people are whether they're launching businesses or changing business names to legitimately be there, because if you can't beat them, you kind of have to join them.

Darren Shaw

And that's the thing if that actually is your business name, and someone typed into the search result, personal injury lawyers Denver, and that's your business name. Google's like, oh, well, are you looking for this exact business because of branded search. That's why they have to surface those businesses. Because if I type Starbucks Google then Google better return me a Starbucks if I type in, you know, Hellman's plumbing, I want to see Hellman's plumbing come up in the results that I'm looking for.

Seth Price

But there's a difference between Hellman's and Sons, which could be the right long term plumbing company, versus Joe's plumbing that just popped up overnight and is nefarious. The fact that the keyword and they know what keywords are. They sell the ad they have that data, they have not made a differentiation between a branded term and and sort of a money keyword...

Darren Shaw

They have. So and that's why like if your business name is Denver plumbers, then when someone searches Denver plumbers, you're not usually going to trigger a knowledge panel, you're going to trigger a pack. Google's like, I don't know, because you can't. Google doesn't know the intent. Are you looking for Denver plumbers, the business? Or are you looking for Denver plumbers, you want to look at all of them? That's the problem. And that's why keywords in the business name work so well, it's because of branded search.

Seth Price

Right. And I think that so obviously, the spammers play on to that, and that's what we were seeing. I again, I spoke with as PubCon, I'm not sure if it's gonna if it's going to catch on. But I noticed even over the last couple of weeks, while the branded keywords, as you just mentioned, still dominate. And if you have those keywords in there, it's obviously a huge competitive advantage. I'm seeing some of the porn spam finally thinning out, I don't know if it's temporary, or if it was the subset that we used researching before PubCon. But that, you know, the really, the reason I say that is it overlap those spammers were using those branded terms, in addition to their other spam tactics to rank quickly, they didn't just use a generic name and hope that it rank they were using the techniques that would, you know, move the needle, have you seen anything of late moving short of where Google is getting some of the important spam under control?

Darren Shaw

You know, I haven't seen it personally. But I have heard in the Twittersphere, people talking about an increase in suspensions. So Google cracking down a little bit more trying to identify this, but it really becomes hard with that branded search, trying to identify who's suspended. And that's where it becomes a tactic actually becomes an agency SEO tactic to go and remove business key...

Seth Price

That's a whole you know, we've people like Ben and Joy and others who have made an entire industry. It's legitimate, but I just it's frustrating, cuz I know, as an end user, even with some Google authority, it is not a given, you could point out something that is clearly spam. And it's not like somebody at the other end, who's looking at it. Oh, this is clearly spam. It may it may stay there for years or beyond, despite having flagged it. I mean, it just it is bizarre that there is not a more efficient way to flag it, because the flip side is people who use it as a sword for stuff that is legitimate, trying to hurt their competitors.

Darren Shaw

Yeah, it's tough. It's a real tough problem for Google to solve. I don't know how they're gonna solve the business name on it. Now fake listings, those that seems easy to me fake reviews, like, gosh, you can you can see the pattern of fake reviews pretty easy. I don't know why they don't solve those problems. The keyword stuff business name is a tougher one to solve.

Seth Price

But, you know, sort of fascinating, so Well, something we saw a number of months back, when Google looked at for us the virtual office situation, you know, going back like 12 to 18 months, we saw a lot of suspensions in that area that were created, like meaning they went way over broad, where people that had legitimate offices were getting hit. I'm sort of glad if we're seeing this, that we have not seen that they're able, if they are doing suspensions in the locals in the in the abusive space locally that it has not been, it's been narrowly tailored enough that we have not seen that at least in our subset of clients that that has been affecting people with suspensions, because when they did the virtual office piece, which is, you know, now with COVID is very controversial, because what is virtual, what is not becomes a very blurred line. So, the question is, are you the poor schmuck paying a lease on real places? Versus Are you paying $50 a month to a Regis, they have the rule, don't be the Regis at the same time, nobody, at least in the major markets is going to an office right now. So the irony that is going to be one of those things, I'm curious to see, will those rules be reduced? Or will the permissions of what is an office to definitely know, it's better to sort of start thinking that you're a biblical scholar, but what is the intent of an office?

Darren Shaw

Yeah, it's interesting line of thinking, I think Google really needs to figure that out. Because with a crackdown on virtual offices, this whole guideline, where you must have a staffed office where someone can walk in and talk to your staff at anytime, well, that doesn't exist during a pandemic. So are they going to adjust for right now? Or will they just kind of lay low until the pandemic is over? I don't know.

Seth Price

You know, it like right now, I'm not seeing it. But you know, like most things, for people who have a legitimate business, the risk of being penalized the soldier dramatic that you just want to stay on the right side of it. But if you have those spammers come in, but it is really a conversation people are starting to have have based on your earlier comment, which is how do you position where do you pick an office making sure you're not being suppressed with multiple people in the same building doing the same thing? What are you calling an office and all of a sudden, there's an entire, you know, consulting world, related to how you build and grow a business that has nothing to do with the market. But it has to do with how are you? How does Google Local view you?

Darren Shaw

Yeah, so yeah, right. Now my recommendation is generally to get the smallest office, you can in some commercial space that is in an area that is going to attract the customers you want. And just get the cheapest smallest office you can. That's that's what I do. Make it make sure it's not a Regis or any kind of virtual office.

Seth Price

What are some of the areas as you look at the survey from before your time quarterbacking it through the years that you've been doing it, that you've seen de emphasize where people may still be putting a lot of love. And it's not as important as other areas that really do need more?

Darren Shaw

Yeah, so the huge trend, you see this every year, the past three years, you've seen the decline in citations. So particularly audit and cleanup of citations, that is one area that I think it was way overstated in the past where I was like, you have to make sure your listings are accurate, your name and address, has to be exactly the same on every directory, you're gonna confuse Google and you won't rank that that concept is mostly dead at this point. Google is very smart. And if you think about it, Google can identify your business offer four pieces of information, you've got your name, your address, your phone number and your website, right? So let's say they see a business listing on the web that has the name, it's in a slightly different format, but it's a partial match, it's got the same phone number, it's got the same address, and a different URL, no problem. Google can definitely say that's this business and associate that listing with the entity at Google, you're gonna get credit for that citation. So you have that citation will pass value. It's a mention of your business. Google can like, if one of your pieces of information is wrong, Google can match on other pieces of information. So this whole concept of citation consistency, I think, is dead. I actually think is dead. The value like, it's dead from an SEO value perspective. But it's not dead from hey, you want people to find the right phone number. And that's why our new citation packages at Whitespark are really geared around this concept of only doing the audit and cleanup on the sites that humans will see. So if a real human is going to see your listing on Google, on Bing, on Apple, on Facebook on the data aggregators, because they spread. So if a real human is going to see it, we want to make sure that that data is accurate. But if you have an incorrect phone number on your, myhuckleberry.com listing or your to find local.com listing, do not waste a minute trying to fix that because it has no value, no impact to your SEO. Google probably is still already giving you whatever small amount of credit there is for that so I can audit clean up and making sure your your citations are consistent is only valuable where humans see your listing, wasted time on anywhere else.

Seth Price

And the reason I'm smiling is that when advice like that is given by somebody like yourself who actually has an economic incentive for the Old Testament, it is just like, if you don't take this advice, there's not much more because normally we listen to people preach things, and they're like, hey, I got the solution for you. So it's somebody who has the solution, but says, hey, I want you to buy less or differently. It carries a lot of weight. What are some of the areas so that if you're advising somebody, let's assume you have a lot of advanced people watching this, but some very basic people, for those that are that are sort of more new to this space, and they have limited resources, where should they be putting their effort and emphasis right now, as far as ROI for time and money with local?

Darren Shaw

Who? Well, let's see, I basically have a like a seven point checklist. Number one, you've got to get your primary category on GMB. Right. That is that it's out of the gates, number one thing you have to do...

Seth Price

And we've seen that just to show you as a case study, somebody went nefariously and changed our main term, you know, from main category just appeared overnight, or noticed it changed it back, it's that it was that much of a, you know, magic tool.

Darren Shaw

The primary category is huge. And the advice is to always make sure that you've matched your primary category with whatever your money term is. So the best like you, we're talking to lawyers, probably on this podcast. But if your primary category is lawyer, but you happen to be a personal injury law firm, you're really hurting yourself make your primary category...

Seth Price

As specific as possible. Well, that comes that comes to a second follow up question, we'll get through all seven, I promise. But with that, if you were advising somebody they do personal injury, that's where they make the 80% of their money. Would you let's say the second places criminal defense, would you recommend a secondary category? Or would you rather have see somebody if you're saying, hey, my real money is being made on the primary, is there an advantage to not having a secondary? Or do you think you can get maximum visibility for primary, even with a secondary?

Darren Shaw

Yeah, so this is a great topic, there used to be this concept in local search, you know, five years or so go have this category dilution. The idea would be if you set your primary category to be personal injury, but you also do bankruptcy law, tax law, and criminal law, you add those other ones, you're gonna dilute the power and value of the main category, that's been disproven a number of times, most notably by Colin Nielsen and Sterling Sky, he did a really good case study, that was by adding all the additional categories that had no negative impact on the primary category. So what you end up doing by adding the additional categories is casting a wider net, it's like, you're not going to hurt your ability to rank for personal injury. But if you don't put criminals and additional in there, you're not going to rip it off in criminal. So definitely add criminal add tax, whatever....

Seth Price

You're telling people like, hey, you're not going to understand what you said. But just to reinforce it, that the secondary place is not going to take Google away from saying, Hey, this is the A player for that and they do nothing but that. you're okay with people adding those for even a nominal extra traffic book boost.

Darren Shaw

Absolutely. I definitely think so if that is an area that you practice in, generally, Google will use that as a hint about what you do. And it's almost like your entrance, like you got your ticket to now play in the criminal space. But if you look at if Google is looking at your website, like what is this business actually relevant for, and the whole thing is, is PI law, then Google's probably not going to rank you really, because your relevancy signals not through the roof on the on the criminal side, you might rank on page three for criminal, but you wouldn't rank at all, if you didn't put it as a secondary category. So it's very valuable to put all the additional categories in and at least get what you can for most other industries that you started.

Seth Price

And I don't want to step on the other six. But what about I'm taking the law firm example for that the practitioner profile as a way to gain expertise? So let's say there's personal injury and medical malpractice, you can't let's say you do medical malpractice and but it's not your primary, the issue that I see very often is that there's a firm that that is their primary, so to compete against the primary or secondary is not easy, but to have a practitioner profile that has that specific category as its primary. That may be your backdoor in. But do you see ever like just going back to sort of we see this a lot on the SEO side of a term on the homepage, let's say criminal versus DUI. And there's a lot of back and forth between? Do you put criminal and DUI on the homepage? Do you separate DUI to the second page? Or are you going to confuse Google by having DUI on the homepage and the second page and it won't know what to show? So do you see ever an issue where a practitioner profile could actually, you know, hurt the ability of the primary firm profile from being seen even though it can give you that top line category. Love. Google now sees a is there ever a situation where you're better off with a single profile in the b2c space as opposed to a b2b firm or you're just trying to get to a person? Can you not hurt yourself? But is there just like I asked before about having a secondary category? Are there ever strategies of not putting practitioner profiles so that you say, hey, this is the main firm profile, all juice goes there?

Darren Shaw

Yeah, I would not do that. I definitely think there's huge value. This is a great case study. Let's say you are a firm where you're generally a PI firm, 80% percent of your business is personal injury. But you happen to have Joe who does tax law, and you got Sarah who does a criminal law. And so now, Sarah's practitioner listing should be 100% focused on criminal and her primary category on the practitioner listing should be criminal, I wouldn't actually even put anything else under her profile, or just keep it strictly criminal. And then instead of linking her profile, her GMB listing to the homepage, link it to her page and make sure that that page itself is extremely relevant for criminal. Now, you're not you're not confusing Google, the primary firm is linking to the homepage. It's all about PI. And then the practitioner listing is linking to her landing page, which is all about criminal and then build out a round of citations all around criminal law for her. So there's great value in that. And I think that's a fantastic strategy to make sure that you're ranking for both. And your firm is going to get the benefit of both.

Seth Price

So we'll try to control the ADHD. We're on to your second point of seven.

Darren Shaw

Sure. Yeah, actually, I wanted to touch on, I talked about the client of citations. And I talked about you don't need to worry about citation audit cleanup anymore. But I don't want to destroy the value of citations themselves. I just touched on that when I mentioned the practitioner listing and why it's useful to do our strategy is clean up on the ones that matter. Definitely get any industry specific citations that you can find. So any legal specific, there's, you know, we have a list of 30 Pretty, pretty solid, legal directories legal is one space with a lot of industry specific directories you should be on, and then any local specific directories. And then I still recommend at least having a presence on the top 30 to 50 general business directories. That's the citation strategy, don't pay for recurring fees, but definitely do those ones because there is still value in that there's a really great study coming out. I can't really talk about it. But it shows where businesses that were only on the base core, like 10 sites versus the the core 50 sites, there really was a ranking boost. And so there is some ranking benefit to being listed on the top 30. So citations aren't completely dead, but they are once and done, don't pay recurring fees for something like Yext, just have your listings out there. Unless you're updating your hours every week or something, you don't need to be able to push that data out. Citations are a once and done thing in my mind and that's why we have all of our packages are going in that exact directory where we are...

Seth Price

We're raving fans, as clients, we get it. And it's made a big difference. Because you want to be able to allocate resources, but not drain yourself of resources where you don't need to as far as...

Darren Shaw

Get the citations done. Again, brand new firm, whatever, get that stuff done, and then call it down. You don't have to worry about citations anymore. Now you focus on the other thing. So getting back to my list, so additional categories was on that list, but we hit that so we got two. Number three, for sure is reviews on Google, oh my God, you have to be having a really good review strategy and making sure that you're asking every customer for review, I would say most listeners of this podcast are already on that. They know the value they're getting keywords in reviews is a big factor as well. There's definitely Google patents that even speak to this, that when people mentioned specific keywords, that helps your relevancy signal for those terms. So always ask when you ask for review, say, hey, it'd be great if you mentioned the details of your case, or the service that we performed for you just so that you can think of they can mention like divorce...

Seth Price

You see it showing up with those with those keywords. My question that people ask me all the time, what about the response to review? Do the keywords there have any influence?

Darren Shaw

Yeah, thanks for asking that. Because that's another myth to dispel. No, it doesn't.

Seth Price

I haven't seen it yet. But I was wondering if anybody could show that I know people who are like, just like the quantity of reviews historically didn't make a difference. It was a conversion factor. Well, you know, at some point it did. My question is similarly, what's your your thought? If you have putting them in that at some point they could be included? Or do you think that that's just like a nofollow link? They don't want to they don't want people just become spammed if they do that.

Darren Shaw

I think it's in the exact same category as why Google doesn't look at your GMB description, because Google doesn't care what you say about you. Google cares about what other people say about you. So when you have the ability to manipulate some thing in the profile, Google's like, yeah, we're not going to trust that as a ranking signal because anyone can stuff whatever they want in there.

Seth Price

One other myth I've heard out there a lot is the GEO tagging of photos? Where do you stand on that?

Darren Shaw

Yeah, no, definitely it has no impact. I've seen a recent study by this guy, Tim Callert. I don't know how to say his last name. But he did a really cool study where he actually tested this and looked at it. Yeah, no impact. This is a real waste of time, trying to like squeeze keywords into your images. And I'll tell you why it's a waste of time. I don't know if you've seen this. But there's this Google thing. The name is not coming to me right now. But it's Google vision or something where you can upload a photo and Google identifies what's in the photo, it doesn't need your EXIF data, it doesn't need to know what what metadata you've stuffed into the file. It doesn't care about that, because it actually can tell you that this is a picture of a courtroom. And this is a gavel. And this is a judge like Google's AI on image recognition is through the roof, really advanced technology. And so any image you upload, Google is actually using that. And it's a tactic that most people are not thinking about. It's like, oh, I'm not uploading images to my Google, people are not uploading images to their Google profile. But do it because it's almost like keyword stuffing your profile, because Google can tell what's in those images. So if you want to rank for, you know, DUI law, upload a picture of a car crash upload, you know, all these different things. The law is a bit tough, like you're a plumber, it's pretty, pretty tough. Upload a a leaky tap or something like that. These things are more tangible. Law is a little harder. But the idea is, is that the photos, Google's identifying what's in the photos, and those are creating relevancy signals for your business.

Seth Price

Gotcha. What about do you think the velocity of uploading photos has an impact? I see people playing around with that right now.

Darren Shaw

I don't think velocity matters. I do like a bit of a stream so that you know, it's kind of regular just showing activity and engagement with your listing. I think there's some value in that. Google sees oh, yeah, this is an active listing. But I bet you would be the same result if you pumped them once per week for six months, or you just dumped them all at once. I think you'd get the same benefit. One would just take you six months to see the benefits. I think it's worth uploading photos right away. Lots of them. I don't think a lot of looking at velocity.

Seth Price

Let's go follow down our seven.

Darren Shaw

All right, what else do I got there. So I got reviews, reviews on Google huge, keywords and reviews. Huge. Your website, of course, is huge. Your website is Google's primary source of information for what your business is, and what it does whatever you link in your GMB listing. So if you link that to your website, your homepage, whenever you say it on there that is so important. Many businesses get this wrong, where it's just like, we don't want to be too wordy. Well be wordy, because when you're wordy you give Google some meat to hook onto, they really want to know what your business is, what it does, it can look at images and get a feel for it. But paragraphs of text are way better. So have a good few paragraphs of text, really describe what you do. And make sure you're building on service pages for every single area of of practice, every single service that you do, and then internally link from the body content of the homepage to all of those service pages. And then throughout your site trust all that internal linking, that is really important for Google to understand what your business is and what you do. And that has a big impact on search as well. And then it's not just putting the content in the body copy. Google is a bit of a dumb robot, and so they don't read, but they do look for keywords in the right spots. So title tag, your headings. And in the body copy, that's really important to make sure that you're getting the keywords you want to rank for and the titles and the headings. Google is definitely definitely parsing that and looking at that. And you get a ranking boost from making sure that your keywords and topically related keywords are in those headings and titles. Another thing that actually a lot of people don't realize they think that there's this like magic keyword limit on the title tag. It's like oh, don't make your title takes longer than 70 characters. I love a presentation that I've seen. I've seen twice from Joel Headley. He used to work in Google, in the local department or Google. And he's done a lot of testing around title tags. It's like, SEOs put some arbitrary limit on it based on what's displayed at Google. But hey, actually, the nice thing about it is that all that other stuff is not displayed. You get a dot, dot, dot, in the title tag. And so what you can end up doing is you can put a whole bunch of extra keywords in there, and you will get the ranking boost for it, but it won't mess up how it looks in the search result. It'll still look really good because it's all behind the dot, dot dot ellipsis. And so that way, you can actually get more keywords into your title tag without looking spammy and still being able to come verb with your title tags. But having those extra keywords in there will help you to rank better for more terms.

Seth Price

To me that was early SEO was the title tag was everything. You could literally rank a site with the right title tag...

Darren Shaw

And you still can. That's the amazing thing about it. But people are shying away from putting too much. So this whole idea of like, oh no, don't keyword stuff, your title tag, I'm actually telling you go ahead and keyword.

Seth Price

No I get it and I agree. It's like it's the one time Google says go ahead. Tell us what you want to be found for you get one opportunity to spam away.

Darren Shaw

Yeah. And so, don't be shy to put extra stuff in the end of your title tag, because it's not going to be seen in the search results. And it will give you the ranking boost. So yeah, get title tags. And then I think diversifying reviews across other sites. So especially in legal, there's a number of important sites, you want to get reviews on those sites as well. Talking about like Avoo, lawyers.com. Those kinds of sites, definitely get reviews on more than just Google don't put all your eggs in the Google basket. And then of course, what is a pillar of SEO is links, getting quality links to your website. That's really, that's SEO in a nutshell, local SEO in a nutshell, you get all those things dialed in, you want to make sure you're hitting all of them, and you're doing really well. So links is a whole topic. We could do 10 more podcasts just on that on all the different ways to get links, but you need to get all those things out. Relevancy on your website, reviews coming in links to your website and optimize GMB profile, the basics of citations and and you got it.

Seth Price

Great. And let me ask you a question on that. I agree with everything there. And we would that's where we live and breathe at BluShark. What about keyword density, anchor text density coming in? Do you see any of that affecting placement in the three pack?

Darren Shaw

I think that there is some boost, there used to be a lot more it used to be the greatest way to spam Google was to get a whole bunch of anchor text optimized links over to your website. Google, of course has figured that out since with a penguin or whatever they started penalizing off of that. And so now it's a it's a healthy balance, you want to have the majority of your links being branded, or URLs, or click heres, that kind of stuff. But a trickle of anchor text optimized links can be helpful. But most times you can't manipulate that if you're getting a link, you're getting a link. You don't really have the option to say I want you to use this anchor text. And so any links where you can manipulate the anchor text are generally links you were able to purchase in some format. And so you got to be careful with it. There is still a little bit of a ranking boost you'll get from anchor text. But I would say it should not be more than 5% of your links.

Seth Price

Well no, that was that was sort of back in the day, we went down to like 1%. And it almost got to squeaky clean, and it sucks and you sort of have to put a little bit back. Are we close to the end of those seven?

Darren Shaw

I think that's it. Yeah.

Seth Price

So let me ask you this sort of in our remaining moments, talk to me about the future like so we know what's there. And it again, I feel like when I read the report, it's not like you're sitting there debating a lot of it. Those are fundamentals. And I think that those of us that play in the space say, Yeah, this crowdsourcing is really good at honing in on that. But will you be the futurist for a few minutes? Where do you see if you had to project over the next 2,3,4 years? Where do you do what which of these do you think will be emphasized? Which of these things might be de emphasized?

Darren Shaw

Yeah, I think we're going to see, less reliance on links a little bit. I think I know it, that'll be a bit controversial.

Seth Price

They've been saying that for a long time. We're waiting. But...

Darren Shaw

I know, it's a little bit be and I think they're going to be a bit better at identifying business entities more like citations, but not directory citations, more like business mentions without a link.

Seth Price

So today, my law partner was in The Wall Street Journal, but for a fashion story, and they refuse the link. He knows my game. Again, not that we won't try again. But literally today's Wall Street Journal on people getting dressed for court, even though they don't need to. He was one of those great dress guys who continues to do it. Yes, I know, in my heart that they're now reading it. I still want the link, because I still know it's important. But in theory, it should be. But we've been hearing that for a long time, and it still hasn't come to full fruition.

Darren Shaw

Yeah, if they've mentioned the full firm name, and your firm name is uniquely identifiable, then you could still get the benefit from that. It's like if they can associate an entity like, imagine the Google's crawlers trying to identify different entities. There's all kinds of entities, one of them might be this is a business entity and so if Google can identify that you will get credit for that. And it'll help you rankings. In the same way that a link from the Wall Street Journal would help your rankings. But if your business name is Denver lawyers, then Google's not going to be able to say oh, that must be this business. That's actually one of the drawbacks of using a keyword stuffed business name, you're gonna have an identifiable brand. And Google has been preaching the brand for a long time, right. So that's one thing to think about, you can definitely get value there. And then I think, looking to the future, there's two other signals two big things, I think, a deeper dependence on behavioral signals. And that's where there's a huge benefit to making sure your listing looks good. It's built out, you're using Google posts every week, you're getting people clicking through to your listing, looking at stuff, scrolling through your listing, reading your reviews, looking at your Google posts, browsing through your photos, all of that engagement and interaction and dwell time on your listing, I think Google will emphasize that in the future. And also looking at more sources of real world data, we know that they see foot traffic not overly valuable right now during a pandemic, but in the future, like actual traffic into your office, into your business, credit card statements. Google has access to all of that being able to see, wow, this business is doing way more transactions, you can really see this like imagine like retail or restaurants, right? Google being able to have that data is really helpful to know this is the actually the this if you're looking for a donut shop, this one is doing 10 times the revenues of any other donut shop in your city. So we're going to rank this one better. So that's an interesting way to have access to this sort of underground data that SEOs have no control over, right? It's just like, Are you a good business? And that's Google's goal. Can they identify the top businesses based off of things that SEOs can't manipulate? They're really working on that. So I see a continued growth in there. And then, of course, not really SEO, but continued monetization, particularly in local we see the local services ads, and coming soon is this whole Google guaranteed badge, where you can get that badge on your listing, you got to pay the 50 bucks a month to Google, but oh, my God, who's not going to do that? It's like, if you don't do that, all these other businesses are guaranteed, your business not guaranteed. It's it's almost like being strong arm for money from Google. And so we'll see if that raises some kind of antitrust issues.

Seth Price

Do you see that as something we know, we've gone through I spoken on LSAs at PubCon. And that was, you know, do you one of the things I'm sure to ask is hey, will Google use that check mark in the organic three pack in order to differentiate and get spam out?

Darren Shaw

Oh, yeah, that's exactly what the Google guaranteed is. And so that'll be there.

Seth Price

Just what is being used only in the paid place? Will that Google screen be a trust factor that will allow to be shown in the three pack, as you know, if you go through that Pinkerton background check, and you do all that? Why are they not giving me credit for that in the organic three pack, not just in the paid place?

Darren Shaw

I think they're planning on it. I think that's coming. And that's what I think is coming down the pipeline. And I think maybe if I put my conspiracy theory, tinfoil hat on, the reason they're not destroying spam in the way that they should is because they will use that as a justification. So if the results are so spammy, there's nothing they can do they have to they have to fix it. Oh, I gotta wait to fix it. We verify the businesses. That way you know, they can squeeze all that money from the businesses, get everyone to give them the 50 bucks a month, but justify it as a spam prevention measure.

Seth Price

Yeah, I see that thankfully, finally, we're seeing some antitrust pressure in the other direction. So you know, for those of us that love organic and love the GMB three pack, like to me, I feel that as they've been taking real estate away organically over the years, that finally they may be like, hey, can we really want to piss the lawyers off in particular, because these are the guys that could make our lives pretty difficult pushing back. But so far that hasn't happened. But the stuff coming out of Texas and some other states is kind of interesting to watch.

Darren Shaw

Yeah, it is interesting to watch. We'll see how Google handles it. They're pretty smart over there. So...

Seth Price

They're pretty savvy and government ways to make a buck. Well, let me let me conclude with this. For most people watching, they're familiar with Whitespark, many of us are big fans, what are some of the products or features you have that people are most underutilized that people should know about? That could really make a difference for local search.

Darren Shaw

We recently launched an update for our local Rank Tracker. So if you're using any other rank tracking solution, I would...

Seth Price

You're talking like a local Falcon? Or more of a...

Darren Shaw

It's more of a traditional local Rank Tracker, but you track by zip. And so you put in multiple zips. That's the way that we recommend people track. And I think it's the best rank tracker on the market for for that kind of thing. I highly recommend you check it out. If you're using anything else, you know, BrightLocal, for example, take a look at ours because you'd be like, Wow, this thing is awesome.

Seth Price

Well, I can't wait. This is what I've loved about doing these interviews is that I get a lot out of it. And then they immediately go to our team, and they're like, oh, wow, you know, it's like getting Darren to visit your team and kick them in the butt is is pretty cool. So for both my team and all of our audience, thank you so much. for sharing your wisdom here and hopefully get to meet up at a conference real soon I missed the in person.

Darren Shaw

I missed it too. Yeah, so next PubCon. We both spoke at PubCon this time around. So next year in person, I'd like to finally meet.

Seth Price

Thanks so much. Have a great day.

Darren Shaw

Have a good one.

BluShark Digital

Thank you for tuning in to the SEO Insider with Seth Price. Be sure to check back next week for fresh insights into building your brand's online presence. Episodes are available to stream directly on BluShark Digital's website.