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
Welcome, welcome. We're thrilled to have you here, and today we have Nate Fischer, co-founder and CTO of Local Viking. Welcome.
Nate Fischer
Thank you, Seth. Thanks for having me.
Seth Price
You know, for a guy who geeks out on figuring out how to get my own law firm and other law firms into the three pack, Local Viking has become sort of both a useful tool as well as an addictive drug. Tell us, how did you, how did it come to be? And how did you, how did you... how did you get to what you have today?
Nate Fischer
Yeah, that's a good question, so, I've been involved in marketing for a really long time, also been involved in engineering for a really long time, have done some agency work ourselves as well as consulting with larger companies, and it became very apparent, very quickly that managing any volume of Google My Business listings at scale needed something on top of the native GMB or Google My Business dashboard. So, that was kind of the, the genesis of, of what happens is that we were fulfilling on GMB work, we realized, hey, you have 5, 10, 100 and maybe 1000 listings, you're gonna have a lot of problems dealing with the native GMB experience.
Seth Price
And so, okay, that, everybody had that but not everybody created Local Viking. So, what, you know, you're sitting there one day, you know, talk to me, there's usually like that, that Shark Tank moment. There's the problem, but, you know, but, you know, ¨we can fix this¨, what, what was that moment?
Nate Fischer
Correct. So, the original feature that Local Viking launched with, a few years ago, and the original Genesis was actually GMB posting, and a lot of automation behind that. So...
Seth Price
The actual post, the first week.
Nate Fischer
Yeah, the actual post, and primarily, actually, scheduling of posts, because as we're all aware, it is not possible to schedule a post in the future If you're just a single practice and you just have one GMB, maybe that's not a problem, you can log in once a week through your posts. However, if you have any amount over that, in GMB, it's really annoying to have to log in and post live. So, the ability to schedule posts was kind of the original itch that we were scratching, and while we were scratching that itch, even though we originally launched with just GMB posting, we realized that there was a number of other areas that needed some help too.
Seth Price
So, clearly, we're part of that world, we have, you know, hundreds of GMBs that we're responsible for, and the post, my feeling is, if Google tells you, it's there, and it's real estate, you want to take advantage of it, they clearly spam you to all hell, I think takes an act of God to get off that email list to tell you how many views you got to your post. They clearly care about this, so we care about it. You know, what was the, what did you roll out after the posting?
Nate Fischer
So, posting came first, then we did a bit of functionality around editing attributes and making that easier at scale, and then, pretty quickly after posting, we were filling in some of the boring stuff, and by boring stuff I mean, let's say the Q&A's, questions and answers on GMB are not very prominent, some automation around photo uploading, which, which was pretty cool, and then I think what really, we focused on it, has been extremely important in the industry is the GEO grid, which is what...
Seth Price
That's why we're talking today. All those other ones are cool, but the GEO grids seem to be a game changer.
Nate Fischer
Exactly, and that really is the concept of being able to show a visualization to an attorney or a local business owner and say, hey, listen, just because you see your business ranking somewhere, when you check, that is not the same scenario that all of your different potential customers are going to see when they're around your business.
Seth Price
And it was good and bad, right? So, for the guy who's checking from his home, it talks them off the ledge because they realize they're doing better at work, but you also, it can be very humbling when you realize the power of Google and location-based search and the fact that they'll give you your area, but you better be damn strong if you want to get that entire grid filled up.
Nate Fischer
100%. It's very easy for a business owner and attorney to be on their computer or their phone in their office and see, hey, look, I'm ranking number one, but the reality of the situation is much different when you go away from that.
Seth Price
What have been some of the more interesting sort of lessons learned through this? I mean, we're, you know, we're, again, as I mentioned, we have, it has gone from sort of a useful tool to an obsession, but talk to me about some of the sort of the funny takeaways you may have and having built this out.
Nate Fischer
Oh, man, there's been a lot. So, one of the main ones that is very interesting to me is, are you familiar with the possum filter? Like GMB listings that are, that are close to each other, that are in competition, and Google's algorithm reacts in such a way where one of the listings will have 100% visibility...
Seth Price
Usually about when you're trying that stuff within the same building.
Nate Fischer
Correct, correct.
Seth Price
Right. So, we've lived that in the legal space, that this is a huge deal for us. Because, you know, if you have, once, if you are looking to sign a lease, we now act as consultants using your tool as well as others to say, hey, is this a good place for you to move into? Because at that address, if you're not number one, you're not being shown.
Nate Fischer
That, that is perfect that, that has been, it slips my mind, you are dealing with this exact issue. So, one of the interesting things that we see, we consult with different types of organizations, so we have some in the medical space, which also has a similar problem where you have...
Seth Price
Absolutely, no, you're almost worse I would argue, and that I can, you can move your law firm across the strip of medical buildings or medical buildings, you only have so many choices. Like, in most, in most zip codes, again, if you want premier space, there may be three buildings to choose from and that's it.
Nate Fischer
Yeah. And in the medical world, for large hospitals, you might have, we have 800 to 900 physicians, they build their Clinic Listings or the department listings. So, one of the interesting things that we see in the GEO grid is a visualization of kind of Google's algorithm when you're, when you're dealing with listings that are next to each other, and so, you can actually see, if you run a GEO grid for two different listings in close proximity, that like one of the listings will have the top half of the grid where they have a bit of rank, and the other listing will only have the bottom half and they look like a almost like a reverse puzzle piece of each other. So, like the visualization of Google's proximity algorithms and their different algorithms in a nice heat map that we as humans can kind of easily understand. I would say that's one of the most interesting things.
Seth Price
Let me just ask you, you with Joy Hawkins about this the other day, from Sterling sky. And my question to you is, have you seen that hospital? Because I get it, like, you know, you have all these practices within a hospital, but the hospital campuses are sometimes very large. Do you find that you can move the pin around in such a way to give yourself some independence to get yourself true, true visibility? Or, you know, what have you seen doctors successfully do?
Nate Fischer
So, yeah, we have experimented with that. Unfortunately, we don't, it doesn't solve the problem completely. It is like, shakes up the algorithm a little bit so the listings will get a bit more visibility each, but there are still clearly algorithmic issues, so...
Seth Price
Based on the geographic proximity or based on the address stated?
Nate Fischer
I would assume it's the address stated. And the other issue with the hospitals is that they have their departments structured in such a way that all of the cardiologists are over here, and all the pediatricians are over here, so that's on top of the fact that they have a bunch of things going on in their actual business, and for them to sit there and try to think about all these algorithmic filters...
Seth Price
The hospital doesn't, I mean, the hospital is not the issue. The question is it, because if it's, if it's all owned by the hospital, that's the hospital doesn't care, or may or may not, but the question is, if you're a practicing doctor with your own practice within the, within the four walls of the hospital, that could be a really big deal?
Nate Fischer
That is a big deal, indeed. And one of the things we've seen is having to communicate back and forth with those physicians and other lawyers potentially, and trying to explain to them, listen, here's the reality of the situation, here are the, the confines that we're, we're working in. And yeah, it's unfortunately, I wish that there is a, a great answer, but being down here in the trenches for years now, there isn't a really solid answer when you're competing against yourself as an...
Seth Price
Why do you think Google does that? You guys have any, you guys are connected to Google, what...
Nate Fischer
What a great question. I think part of it, number one, is that the amount of data that Google is working with is just so unimaginable, and there are engineering challenges that we just can't comprehend because there are very few companies operating at that scale, especially with something like Google Maps. So, I think part of it is just it's an extremely hard problem and they're, they're doing their best to come up with solutions.
Seth Price
You're being very kind and not, not that like, you know, Google is the controls all, but I guess the frustration this was discussed with Joy is that spam listing still work, so if you are cardiologist Joe Smith, that's going to dominate Fred Williams, who may be practicing for 40 years and the guys, there guys right out of med school that the name stuffing, you know, the algorithm isn't picking up on that and yet it's limiting people so that if there is a hospital or a medical building, or a building across from the law firm or courthouse, which would give the user the best experience they don't need to go across town and drive to their lawyer's office to get to the courthouse, it's right there. That makes, that's more efficient, but you as a lawyer, if you're starting out or if you don't have the dominant spot, you'd be silly to go into a building with all that competition.
Nate Fischer
Yeah, the world of GMB spam, and how effective the spammers are being in very high value industries, legal, a huge one that gets spam, personal injury, you could spend more than made anything, possibly could be more, but that's another very frustrating thing for us, especially as an organization where when we're consulting, I have to explain to people consistently, hey, look, that listing that has zero reviews, is completely new, has nothing on it, and just has a completely stuffed title is ranking above you, because that's how Google, Google's algorithm works. And you can't do that, because it's not long term, eventually, you'll have your listing will get pushed down for that, or suspended.
Seth Price
But, look, there's the fake ones, and then there are people who just start their business with that in it, you know, if you're going to name your cardiology practice, rather than just having it as doctor, you know, and Associates, you're like, cardiology of Denver.
Nate Fischer
And during the DBA, is sometimes, I will suggest that in certain industries, not all of them, but I basically lay out, listen, here's, here's the rulebook that we're playing by, here's the unfortunate world where literally spamming keywords in your title is a huge ranking factor, and that is something that you should think about doing if your competitors are doing it and you have to fight against it.
Seth Price
Gotcha. So, talk to me, as somebody who's playing the game, you know, and we're fighting every day, what are some of the takeaways? Any sort of tips or tricks that you think that people should focus on? Based on today, not history, but like, what do you see working today to move the needle?
Nate Fischer
So, that's, that's a great question. I always, no matter what, I always look at the foundations first. So, if you're looking at a GMP campaign, you need to have the boring stuff done on day one or month.
Seth Price
And I'm assuming for a second check, they've been playing the SEO game, they're complying, they're, they're checking the boxes, but is there anything that peeps some people may, you know, say that's not, you know, is the post weekly? Is there anything that you're seeing that might be disproportionally helpful based on all the data you're seeing?
Nate Fischer
So, one recent thing, and this, I wouldn't say is in all cases, I would say this is if you've been playing the game and you have your reviews going, you have your citations, you have kind of the foundation there. What we have been seeing is if you have a listing that is kind of fluctuating in and out of the three pack... Yeah, that is a very common thing. If you haven't done a 360 photo by a verified Google photographer, which isn't a big secret, It's just something that not everybody thinks about, not every business has the budget. However, we have been seeing that push some kind of final trust if you will into the, the fact that that rank, that ranking is no longer going to fluctuate.
Seth Price
Interesting, because we've seen something of late, which was some stuff that we had seen dominant for years, and all of a sudden, we saw them placing Monday through Wednesday with one set, and then, you know, Wednesday afternoon through Sunday with another set, and it went like this for about two months. Is that something you've seen? Is that, we've seen it anecdotally. Are you seeing that across the board where they're AB testing almost?
Nate Fischer
Yes. That is the, the amount of AB testing and kind of trialing that, that people will do with listings is definitely increasing. There is, I don't know if this is because they're trying to actually truly tailor results to each individual searcher when they have enough data on that, that maybe explains why we see so much flux in the rankings, but it is definitely, and I would say today, right now, maybe we're a little bit less hectic than maybe earlier this year, where like, a couple times a day, you could check rankings and depending on the hour of the day there would be completely different now, and...
Seth Price
Then, we had the one night where they threw everything into a tizzy, but putting that aside for a second.
Nate Fischer
The couple of times a year they just introduce a huge bug and everybody scrambles for a little while.
Seth Price
Until, you know, it's a bug, in which case do you think like, you know, it'd be the equivalent of the Great Depression with stockbrokers? You know, jumping out windows, you're like, guys who have not touched their website in 15 years are like ranking above you.
Nate Fischer
Yes, and it just another fun thing we get to deal with working in the GMB space.
Seth Price
No. So, I love the 360, we do, we didn't back in the day, ironically, just got to in today after not having thought about them for a while. What are the, what are some of the other things that you see? Are there things that you think right now, again, I'm speaking now, that are, they're not worth the time? What, where's the juice not worth the squeeze? And where would you spend a little bit extra time squeezing harder?
Nate Fischer
So, what we see right now, today, definitely review velocity is something that we noticed where if we have a client that's ranking really high, and then there's, all of a sudden, they've lost positioning. We'll go through and oftentimes see that a competitor has kicked up their review blast See, and started to gain reviews at a faster pace, and then matching them on just review velocity without doing anything else in the local SEO ecosystem, kind of pushes it back up. So, that potentially is something that Google has been playing with the kind of, I don't know, the filter on how much they allow, how much they're looking at that.
Seth Price
You know, you gotta be careful, because the other day we sent a newsletter out for somebody, and, you know, saw about 8 to 10 reviews come in that day, and we got a nasty gram from Google, like with a soft suspension, which I don't think ever went anywhere, but it just, it's clear that like, you don't obviously, we, everybody knows not to do anything unnatural, but there are times when unnatural things happen anyway. I don't know if you're following right now, the Japanese restaurant that had that, that sort of awful viral incident where they injected an African American patron for wearing sneakers when there was a Caucasian woman at the bar wearing sneakers as well, and, you know, so Yelp is on to this, they put a thing on saying, hey, we're seeing unnatural and they had already gotten about, it's a very highly rated place, they had already gotten probably about a dozen nasty one star reviews that are clearly written by people outside the market, and then they froze the account after 12. They didn't, didn't go back and take those 12 away, but they left those 12. So, there's a flavor of it, Google, I know, I don't think it affected Google as much but the, you know, there's, you don't want spikes no matter what, and that's one of those things, so he's like, okay, make sure you get velocity but not too much velocity.
Nate Fischer
Yeah, and with everything, GMB, and quite honestly, almost everything SEO, slow and steady is gonna win the, win thE race there.
Seth Price
And I agree, but it's life, you know, if you say to your team, hey, go out and start making sure that you speak to every happy client, and if on one day you hit pay dirt, that's not necessarily, it's like you have to almost give a second set of instructions and say, okay, I know you're capable of moving mountains but let's not move mountains, let's just smooth things out.
Nate Fischer
Slowly build a hill. Yeah, and that is definitely the, it's worse, we're playing in a minefield where, yeah, there's, there's things you need to do, but you can't do too much of that or else you get punished, and if you don't do enough, you're definitely gonna get punished. So, it's just kind of that constant battle.
Seth Price
Where are you as far as keywords within reviews?
Nate Fischer
Keyword within reviews? I would say it's, the standard advice that we still give, is that it is good practice to include your keywords in reviews in a natural way, like always, don't, don't be stuffing keywords really unnaturally. Quite honestly, I would say it's been, probably since late last year, since I've actually been analyzing results and watching correlation between that happening and rankings improving. So, that's another thing that's kind of just been...
Seth Price
Is it, do you think that it's keywords? Or do you think some of it's just the, they're now giving you four options of attributes after leaving your four or five story or one or two stories. Do you see those having a big, big impact?
Nate Fischer
I don't see it yet, and I think that there's always a bit of a lag when Google introduces something so that they can collect more information from the users, and then they make algorithmic changes to kind of deal with that. So, like, for instance, when they're gathering custom services, where you can add your own services into GMB, I believe, eventually, they're using that to either expand GMB categories and try to figure out, are there extra things that people think that they're doing that we're not covering in our GMB category said or just kind of training their data around that, around user input, whether it's on the review side, whether it's on the service editing or the attribute editing. I would say it's probably still best practice to include the keyword into the review or into the review response. Is that going to change? Potentially, and, I believe the world of keyword over optimization or keyword density, I think there's a lot more leeway that you have in terms of your keyword density on your GMB listing versus your keyword density on your website. So, I wouldn't be overly concerned about getting punished by Google for having keywords in your reviews.
Seth Price
You know, something one of my friends and co-host of podcasts I do for Law Firm Growth, Jay Ruane, talked about you ever, have you guys' AB tested whether keywords in review responses can move the needle?
Nate Fischer
Yeah, so, we have, we have monitored that for a long time, and there was a point in time last year where we were seeing a lot of positive correlation in our tests. I don't, I don't want to say that there's a causation but certainly a correlation between expanding the reach of a listing by including keywords that are related to your target key.
Seth Price
In the review response.
Nate Fischer
In your review response, yes. In that same vein, I guess there's two different types of activity on the GMB. One is by us as the merchant, or you are the lawyer, whoever is the owner of the listing. That's one type of activity. The other type of activity is customers from the outside world that are leaving reviews, uploading pictures, and I think at the end of the day, all of that interactivity is a lot more important to Google, where it's a lot harder to, it's easy for business to log in and to post photos and to do their stuff, but to actually have customers continuously posting photos and dropping reviews, that shows a sign of a much healthier business, in my opinion.
Seth Price
You mentioned photos before, and one of the technologies you guys had, or it was featured early on, was uploading photos, is that still, do you think philosophy of photo adding some people talk about that as a major factor?
Nate Fischer
That's good question. I would say much less important today than a year ago, certainly. I know there's, there's, this is one of those things that the agency world is very divided on, some agencies that have very, very good results at scale, swear by it. Other agencies that also have very good results at scale, swear that it really doesn't matter. So, yeah, do it, but my advice lately is don't kill yourself with it, like, if you can get a photo uploaded a week on your listing, cool, that sounds great. If you can get a couple of weeks, awesome. If you can only get a couple of months, then that's better than nothing.
Seth Price
Gotcha. What are some of the things that you sort of laugh at quietly, where you see people spinning their wheels where you're, again, from your perspective, it seems that juice might not be worth the squeeze?
Nate Fischer
Oh, man, it's a good question. A lot of, one thing that is very popular until we started kind of talking people off this ledge GMB post frequency, there have been users of Local Viking that will literally post five or six posts per day on every single GMB that they manage, and that...
Seth Price
Not leaving the old ones. That one comes down; another one goes up.
Nate Fischer
New one comes up, yeah. Multiple times a day...
Seth Price
Just trying to show activity within the GMB.
Nate Fischer
Correct. So, I would say the number one thing is hyperactivity across any of your, any of the things that you're doing, whether it's GMB posts, like take it easy a couple of weeks is good enough. GMB photos, couple of weeks if you can get enough, link building, if you're, if you have link building as part of your SEO strategy, that's definitely something that you should do slow and steady.
Seth Price
Thats a whole nother topic, would be the SEO side.
Nate Fischer
That is a whole other world.
Seth Price
And very often overlooked, because for us, we've spent so many years SEO in sites, and people are just focused on the three pack, but the correlation when we look at your grids, and we can get, it's one thing to get something in the three pack based on a nice keyword stuff or something they don't order exact match domain, whatever exact match name, but when you want to sort of win the neighborhood, the greater, the multiple grids that are out there, you're, you're looking at it, we're seeing, hey, if you need the fundamentals, but without the SEO juice, you're not going to be a regional player.
Nate Fischer
Yeah, and that's definitely something. Obviously with our SEO background, and GMB kind of being a related, and very intense, you know, it's very part of our internal processes. And actually, a lot of agency owners and SMBs are not really in tune with the very intimate relationship between your rankings in GMB, as well as your rankings in organic search below the map pack.
Seth Price
You know, something that we sort of noticed, got snuck in there recently, was that, historically, the number of Google reviews was there as a conversion factor, but it was never publicly discussed as a ranking factor, and I think that after a famous New York Times article a number of years ago with a dubious eyeglass store, they really had minimized it. They recently dropped in a footnote saying, oh, yeah, we are looking at number of reviews as a ranking factor. Have you, is that something that they've been doing for a while and just talked about recently? Or do you think that they're, they're looking for new things where, getting for me, the spammers never have meaningful reviews, so it's not like they're sitting there with 20 or 30 reviews, if they had a minimum, where you have to have three reviews, five reviews, something minimum in order to be in play. In less, nobody is there which is not competitive, and who cares if somebody's spamming, but for a competitive market... I, look, sometimes it hurts us, sometimes it helps us. I saw us showing in a three pack, where our competitor that would have been a viable competitor, was pushed out by a spam listing. I don't understand why they don't have a minimum of like three reviews in order to be shown when the other people have X number of reviews.
Nate Fischer
Yeah, I am not sure what Google's doing in terms of how they're weighing reviews, because it is a very common thing for me to be auditing as clients and see several listings with potentially hundreds of reviews below listings with zero reviews or one review that are clearly spammy. So, I...
Seth Price
Agree. Yes, but what I'm not seeing as much is non-spammy reviews, I don't see that often, that often, the spammy reviews with the exact match seem to push people out, but just the legacy reviews, the number of reviews now, not that it can't, but that the people in play generally have a decent number of reviews.
Nate Fischer
Yeah, and that's, that is exactly how the platform should operate, and you would think that Google would implement something like that, given the horrific and understand that they deal with, and bad PR from that spam. So, I think it's something, hopefully over the next six months to a year, the engineers that are at Google are kind of cooking something up and hoped...
Seth Price
Or not, because it's not a revenue producing area. They're focused on LSA, who knows?
Nate Fischer
That is a potential thing, where we just live in this world where we're constantly answering questions of why is this ranking? Why is this? Yeah, it's very possible, but, again, one of those baseline foundation things that just having a steady stream of positive reviews, is what you need to play the game and then dealing on a case by case situation where there are just some search results where Google seems to be completely ignoring reviews and only focusing on the title of the GMB.
Seth Price
In our limited remaining time. Any, what are the features that you guys have, for those of us that use, you guys and love you guys, are there features that we, that we probably either don't know about, are probably underutilizing that you'd recommend that people take a second look at if they're already subscribers?
Nate Fischer
So, that is a good question as well. A big feature that is actually just being released and being firmly beta tested is a lead gen widget with our GEO grid tool. So, it's the ability for you as an agency to embed the tool on your website, and you can drive traffic to that page, business owners will come in put in their business name, put in their primary keyword, and we will kind of generate the GEO grid on the Local Viking site, and then we'll email a PDF to your customer branded under your company's branding. So, it'll look like we have anything, so that's a big, a big one that's coming.
Seth Price
You're saying that this is one where, essentially, for a potential client or for an existing client?
Nate Fischer
Either, but I think potential is the way that we built it in mind as for like, almost like a lead magnet, if you will, hey, come check out your local rankings, put in your business name and email here.
Seth Price
And making that within our site?
Nate Fischer
Correct. You can put that on your page, so yeah, so it's like a, like almost like a website auditing widget.
Seth Price
Literally, like a widget, but it would be private, private labeled of sorts.
Nate Fischer
Exactly. 100% geogrid widgets. Reporting is something that we're turning our attention to and adding a lot more integration between our GEO grid rank tracking and our scheduled monthly reports. That's another big one.
Seth Price
What about alerts if there's a big upturn in a given search?
Nate Fischer
So, alerts surrounding GEO grid rankings is something that we're working on, so that you can say, hey, if I have a GEO grid that lost X percent of its visibility, send me a text or an email, please. That is definitely something coming out. Let's see... A big update to our photo scheduling functionality where you can say let's say you have 20 attorneys, 20 listings that are kind of all part of the same company, you can take photos and smart schedule those out without having to go into each of the 20 listings. So, a nicer way to deal with bulk images is coming soon. We're adding service editing so that you can edit the services of your location directly in the Local Viking dashboard. Just kind of, we have a pretty large team and we're, we're pretty excited about GMB. So, it's just an almost a never-ending stream of updates and continuous work that we have going on here.
Seth Price
Well, thank you so much for your time, Nate. This has been awesome. We'll have to keep, keep in touch so we can hear what you guys are up to and you get a scoop on, on what's coming out next. We'd love to push it out to our listeners.
Nate Fischer
Definitely, Seth. Thank you for having me and thank you for being a customer.
Seth Price
Great. Have a great day.
Nate Fischer
Yep, you too.
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.
