Darren Shaw: [00:00:00] So Google's gathering information about businesses from all over the internet. But the number one data source for your Google business profile is your website.

Introduction and Guest Welcome

Crystal Waddell: Welcome to the Simple and Smart SEO show podcast, where we talk all things, brand building SEO, helping you connect with your audience, elevate your visibility and grow your business. 

I'm your host, Crystal Waddell, here to bridge the gap between SEO strategy and real world business success. By bringing you insights, stories, and conversations from the SEO community and beyond. 

Whether you're an entrepreneur, marketer, or SEO enthusiast, this is your place to learn, share, and build a brand that stands out. 

So grab a coffee or your favorite tea. And let's dive into Smarter SEO for your business. we're gonna have lots of fun today talking about local SEO. 

And my special guest is Darren Shaw, who is the founder of Whitespark, and his company provides software and services to help businesses rank in local results.

And. When I say this guy's very smart. He's very smart. 

So I'm so grateful to have you here on [00:01:00] the show today. Darren. 

Welcome to the Simple and Smart SEO show podcast. 

Darren Shaw: Ah, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate the compliments. 

I'm feeling a little embarrassed now, but yes, thank you. 

Crystal Waddell: And you're also very tall.

I've met you in person. And I had no idea he was so tall. 

Darren Shaw: People always say that. They're always like, oh, I didn't think you'd be this tall. Because they've only seen this tiny little picture of me on the internet, but yes. 

Crystal Waddell: Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I love about in-person events. 

Because then you get that holistic picture of who someone is, yeah. 

Darren Shaw's Background and Whitespark

Crystal Waddell: So tell us a little bit about your background. 

Like how did you found Whitespark? Why did you found Whitespark? Oh, and what are you guys up to right now? 

Darren Shaw: Yeah, I started Whitespark right outta university as a freelance web development company. So I just started making websites for people.

I started making websites in the late nineties, started the company in 2005. 

Just, I decided to go full-time with my freelance business. 

And then, once you start building websites for local businesses, they asked you how to get them ranking in Google. 

And so I started investigating that. 

And deep dived into SEO. And I thought this is way more fun than building websites.

So I really [00:02:00] focused on that. And we built some SAS software, so we built. The local citation finder. 

Which is a SaaS application that helps you understand your citations around the internet. And we built a local rank tracking software. 

We have a local platform for managing Google business profiles. We've got software for managing your reviews.

Then we have services as well. So now the company's grown to 44 people. 

And yeah. 

So it's been 20 years. We're coming up on our 20 year anniversary. 

Crystal Waddell: That is awesome. It is so inspirational, for sure. 

Importance of Citations in Local SEO

Crystal Waddell: So you mentioned a lot of different things, like citation finders. And all that type of stuff.

Yeah. Why is that important? 

Darren Shaw: Citations are less important than they used to be. 

Local Search Ranking Factors

Darren Shaw: So I also do this thing, it's called the Local Search Ranking Factors. 

This is a survey that comes out. 

It used to go out every year when David Mim was doing it. 

But in 2017, he, he handed the reins to me and now I do it.

And I tend to do it every two years. 

Not for any reason other than I'm just disorganized. 

I should be doing it once a year. And everyone always asks me. But so the 2025 version will come out soon. 

The last one I did was in 2023. 

But this is a [00:03:00] survey of all the top experts in local SEO. And I asked them a series of questions to help us understand how Google's local ranking algorithm works. 

And this is for ranking the local packs or in Google Maps.

And that survey gives us a ton of data about how Google's local algorithm works. 

 So the local search ranking factors, you'll get this pie chart. 

It'll show you what impacts local rankings. And so reviews are a huge one on the local side. 

Proximity, how close you are to the searcher is a big one. Citations have lost value. 

They used to be really valuable in the earlier days of local SEO things that you optimized on your website.

Local sEO is like general SEO. You have to still optimize your website, get links. Get mentions. 

All the things that you would do for traditional SEO. 

Plus, now you got a bunch of other things to worry about. You gotta worry about getting reviews on Google. Reviews, on other sites, getting citations.

So business mentions with your name, address, and phone number and optimizing the Google Business profile itself. 

So it's like [00:04:00] regular SEO plus more work. 

Crystal Waddell: Okay, so because I'm not as familiar with local SEO as I am, the general SEO. Could we take it back just another step further?

Understanding Local Packs

Crystal Waddell: You've mentioned local packs. What is a local pack? 

Darren Shaw: Oh, okay. So do a search right now for, your city dentists. And you're gonna get what's called the local pack. You'll see it's got a little map and then it's got three businesses. 

And then you can click more businesses to look at the rest of the local results.

Or on your mobile phone, you can go to the Google Maps app and just search for dentists. Or you can type dentists and then click the maps tab in Google. 

And those are all the local results. But the local pack is that thing that you'll see embedded in the main search results that has the three businesses and the little map.

And it's evolved much over the years. It used to be a 10 pack, then it was a seven pack. For brief period, it was a five pack. Now it's a three pack. They just keep making the pack smaller. Yeah. 

Crystal Waddell: Never a six pack. That's funny. I love it. 

Darren Shaw: Never a six. You should have been a six pack. Geez. 

Crystal Waddell: That would really stick with people.

And the reason why I ask that is because, when you are [00:05:00] coming into SEO from just like a entrepreneur perspective and a business owner perspective. Yep. 

You learn these things as you're going. And you recognize yeah, everybody's, searched for something on their Google maps. 

Gotten directions somewhere. But you don't know that there's an SEO dictionary.

To describe what that is.

I always like to like. Just get that from the expert. To really understand oh, this thing that I'm familiar with, it's not an overwhelming or, abstract concept. 

It's something I've actually interacted with on a regular basis.

I just didn't know the name of it. 

Darren Shaw: Totally. Yeah. It was a whole local search glossary. 

Crystal Waddell: Yeah, exactly. Okay. 

Changes in Local SEO Over the Years

Crystal Waddell: You mentioned a little bit about the citations not being as big of a factor. 

Yeah. What other changes over the last let's even just say the last four or five years.

Would you say there's outdated advice out there from 2020 that just doesn't apply in 2025? 

Darren Shaw: Yeah. Great. There's a number of new factors that we realize have more importance that we didn't know before. [00:06:00] 

And then there's a number of factors that people used to think had an impact, but have since been proven as myths.

So I'll hit both of those. So the first one would be like, what's new? What are the things that are, we didn't really realize before? 

And that would be services. 

Optimizing Google Business Profiles

Darren Shaw: It actually used to be tag as a local search myth that the services on your Google business profile didn't i mpact rankings. Now we realize that they do impact rankings.

So when you optimize the services section of your Google business profile. 

That's a new discovery over the past few years that it's a pretty valuable thing for helping you rank for whatever those services you're adding. 

So the optimization strategy is to make sure you fill out the services section in Google.

You choose all the ones that they're suggesting for you. And you put them on your profile as long as you actually offer those services, and then you need a unique page on your website for each one of those services. 

That's the strategy. And there's great value in doing that work. So that's a newer development.

Business Hours and Their Impact on Rankings

Darren Shaw: The other one is business hours. So we didn't know this until it's been maybe a year [00:07:00] or or almost two years. 

There's this amazing thing that happens during like the time between 4:00 PM and 7:00 PM. Businesses that are closing, start dropping in the rankings. 

And businesses that are open, shoot up to the top.

Google likes to rank businesses that are currently open. 

And so it doesn't make sense for a lot of like service businesses that answer their phone at all times. But it is really interesting. And it's very valuable to know this. 

And the strategy to optimize for it would be: can you set your business hours to be open a little bit earlier? Or a little bit later? 

To maintain your rankings for a longer period of time throughout the day? Or.

For some businesses, if you don't have a physical location. 

You could potentially set your hours to 24 24 7, which would, you'd have to have a call center that's answering your call, right? 

So if you were like a plumbing outfit. 

Or a roofing company. That you go to, your customers, that's called a service area business. 

There's a great opportunity to go 24 7 with your hours.

That way you don't get that ranking drop [00:08:00] when you close. So that's another really interesting development. 

Crystal Waddell: Okay, so I got a couple follow up there. Sure. Like with the 24 hour situation. Yeah. 

Because a lot of businesses that I work with are similar to mine, where they're home based. 

Yeah. Or, there's no physical location of the business.

I don't wanna ask some more questions about that later. But for these purposes. 

Is it okay to have the 24 hour option going on? Even though someone may not answer the phone? Or is it, are you telling me that if someone reached out in some way, either via like a contact page or a chat, would Google be able to realize that?

And also, if you don't answer the phone, is that still matter? 

Darren Shaw: So it's a guidelines violation if you don't answer your phone. 

If it's 3:00 AM and someone picks up the phone and calls you, and there's no answer. 

Then, google would say, why do you have your hours set as 24 7? The guidelines state your hours should reflect when your business is available.

If you are actual physical location, the hours [00:09:00] must reflect when that door is open. 

So you're open and closed hours. 

But for a service business that's a consulting company or something like that, you need to have your hours match. 

And then it could potentially, I think it'd be pretty rare. People could leave a negative review and be like, Hey, it said they were 24 7, so I called them at 3:00 AM and no one answered.

So you could get some negative reviews. So you generally want your hours to reflect when you're available to service customers. 

Now, I would say Google's not gonna police this. You're very unlikely to get suspended if you do it. 

And also I would question the benefits too. It's if you're a business and you don't answer your phone at that time. 

You're probably not gonna get huge benefit from stating the 24 7.

So I wouldn't bother with it. 

Crystal Waddell: Okay. And being an online e-commerce company like myself. 

I don't get a lot of phone calls anyway. Yeah. 

And then I saw something that I thought Google was phasing out the phone metric. 

Is that anything that you've heard in terms of the answered phone metric? 

Darren Shaw: So yeah.

In your Google [00:10:00] business profile, there's a Google Business Profile Insight section. Which is reporting. 

And so what that's reporting on is people. How many people on mobile tap the call button? And so it's only really tracking on mobile. And so the data's not awesome anyways. 

'cause you're missing anyone that just sees the number and makes the call.

That's why people set up what's called the call tracking number, if they really want the data of how many calls they're getting from their group of business profile. 

And I think what you may have seen is that some of that data is being removed from the bulk. So if you're a multi-location enterprise business that has a bulk set up. 

There's some kind of insights that's being removed there.

But as far as I understand, the call data is still going to exist for the general business. 

Crystal Waddell: Okay. See, and it's interesting because it's oh, there's different levels to this thing. 

Darren Shaw: There really are. Yeah. 

Crystal Waddell: Yeah. That's really funny. Okay. And then you talked about like listing out all of your services.

Darren Shaw: But 

Crystal Waddell: then having. A specific page for each of those services? 

Darren Shaw: Yep. [00:11:00] 

Crystal Waddell: What the, what are you talking about there? Like specific, like landing pages? 

And you have to have a website page for every single service. 

And is there a link to that from that specific option? 

Or it just has to align? 

Darren Shaw: Yeah. So a real common mistake.

Let's imagine it's a handyman company. So we're a handyman company. These are the services we provide. 

And they have one page on their website says services. And then they'd be like, we provide all these services. 

Like a bullet point, one bullet point for each of the services. So they do roof repair, they do, window installation. 

They do window cleaning, they do odd jobs.

Like they list all these, right? And have you given Google enough context? 

Because you mentioned it in one bullet point on your webpage? No, you really haven't. And so this the, that's a real common mistake with local businesses. 

So the solution is to have a services section, and under the section there's a dropdown, with all of your primary services. 

And every one of those services gets a page.

And so the reason that you do that is because a Google business [00:12:00] profile. Is one set of data that Google has. 

And then they also are looking, so for information about that business. 

So as the business owner, you can claim your profile, you can make changes, you can give Google information. 

That is one small source of data that Google uses.

Google's also using what are called citations. So around the internet. Oh, you're listed on Yelp? All right, what's on your Yelp page? How many reviews do you have? What's the description? How many photos are in there? 

So Google's gathering information about businesses from all over the internet. But the number one data source for your Google business profile is your website.

People haven't made that mental connection. 

And so the more information you have on your website, it's just it's like your database for your Google business profile. 

So you have to think of it in those terms. So if you haven't built those pages out and you haven't really optimized them. 

And given this is why we're the best and these are the frequently asked questions. 

And here's a video of me talking about this specific service, like really building out those pages.

Google is connecting your Google business profile to your website, and [00:13:00] so that's why it's super important and valuable to do that. 

Because the services section in your Google business profile only has I dunno, 500 characters or something you type in. It's not enough. 

Like you, you need to give it the more context to about your services and it, that's just a really valuable optimization strategy.

Crystal Waddell: That really is, and it makes a case against, like the one page websites. 

Like I've seen a lot of people pitching like one page websites. And I'm thinking, oh wow, that is a major negative against that particular strategy. 

Darren Shaw: One page website, you only get one title tag. It's can I please have multiple pages where I can optimize the title tag, add schema markup, possibly. Add more context.

You really need a multi-page website. If you don't currently have a multi-page website. 

And you're a local business. 

Then you might want to consider. Getting a new website. 

Crystal Waddell: Okay. So let's get into a couple of like weedy type things, more weedy type things. I'd love to play in the weeds. I don't know what the deal is, but I'm like all about some.

Okay, 

Darren Shaw: great. Let's get the weed. 

Local Keyword Research Strategies

Crystal Waddell: But how do you think that small [00:14:00] businesses should approach like local keyword research? 

Darren Shaw: Yeah. Different 

Crystal Waddell: than like general keyword research. 

Darren Shaw: I, is it really interesting local SEO from like keyword perspective. I don't do it, like I don't invest a lot of time in keyword research.

It's like it's such a huge thing. Let's say you're a massive e-commerce company. Your keyword list is huge, right? 

You've got thousands of keywords that actually matter for your business. 

For a small business, a small local business, your keywords. You can probably just write them down. 

There's actually an amazing quote from Matt Cutz in that if you wanna know the keywords, you should focus on, ask five taxi drivers.

It's what would you search if you were looking for my business? 

It's like a roofing company or whatever. And so that was his strategy to keyword research. 

He said that at some conference, like probably 12 years ago. 

And so I got a strategy for local. 

It's like. Ask your mom, ask your friend.

What would you search if you were looking for my business? I would type in roofing company, Seattle. 

[00:15:00] Or I would type in roofer Seattle. You just got the two biggest ones right there. And the rest of them, the long tail for local search is pretty weak. 

So your long tail will target your services.

So if you're hitting those- that's why you need that page on your website for the specific service. 

Is because someone might type in I might not type in roofers. I might type in roof repair. I might type in shingle replacement. 

Like all these different types of services, right? So your keywords, you can mostly figure them out from your website.

So one, build a website. What is your primary keyword? 

You're gonna target those real big common terms to your homepage. Then you're gonna build that, all the services. 

And then on every service you can figure out the two or three primary keywords per service that people would search. 

And that is usually.

You got 90% of the way there with your keyword research on local. And no tools required. 

Crystal Waddell: Gosh, that's amazing. It's crazy how the, this most simple strategy makes the most sense. 

And it could be the least complicated thing in the [00:16:00] world.

But it's oh, could it really be that easy? And for local, I really think it can.

So I love that illustration of the taxi driver. Okay. 

Building Effective Citations

Crystal Waddell: What about citations? That's something that I've never fully understood. 

Darren Shaw: Sure. 

Crystal Waddell: And again, from that non brick and mortar business perspective. Yeah. How can you build citations? And what are good citations? What are bad citations?

Darren Shaw: Okay, great. I love these questions. Okay, so the a citation is generally I mention of your name, address, and phone number somewhere on the internet. 

Typically a directory like Yelp or Yellow Pages or MapQuest or whatever. These are, these like sort of standard business directories. 

And so those are citations and it's name, address, phone number, because those are the three key data points that Google uses to say yes. 

This is the same business that we have in our database.

Your our Google business profile database. And it's I have found a match. This is a mention of that business in our Google business profile. 

And so the theory is that the more [00:17:00] online mentions you have, the more prevalent you are on all the places that Google expects to find businesses of your type.

That helps your rankings. And it's true. 

It does help your rankings, but I do find that citations, they used to be a really powerful strategy. 

Because in the early days of local SEO. Nobody was doing any optimization. And so you could be like, okay, cool, I'll just hire a company to submit me to a hundred directories. And kaboom, I would rank at the top of the results.

And it was true. It worked. It was amazing. It was because nobody else was doing it. Now everybody has done it. It's like a basic thing. If you work in any kind of competitive industry, people are researching local SEO, they know that they have to be listed on all the directories. And they just, they do it.

And so now it's not this competitive difference maker that it used to be. So that's what a citation is. 

That gives you some general context. What do you do if you don't have an address? You don't want your address all over the internet. And so can you build citations? 

You still can. There's a handful of sites.

I would say there's, we have a list of [00:18:00] about 20. We have a blog post. That we probably wrote in 2016 about all the sites that you can get listed on that you can hide your address on. So that exists. 

So you can still go out and build those. One of the benefits you're gonna get there is that you can link them to your website, and that's another signal.

Google says, yes, this is the same business. 

So you can still get that optimization. So it'll be your name, your phone number, your website link, your description, your categories. 

You still wanna go and if you have a listing on something like Yelp per Yellow Pages. 

If they have a field, fill it out. And that same thing applies to your Google business profile.

It's always fill everything out. Add as much information as possible, and that's helpful. But then you can hide your address. And there's some little tricks actually on our list. 

Some of the sites, the address field is required. 

But they'll let you just put like a space in and then you can still save.

And so we have a handful of those that are identified as well. And so you can go and build them. 

I would say if you are a business that hides your address. Citations aren't, they're not super valuable [00:19:00] anyways, but you might as well do them. And the beautiful thing about citations is that it's usually a once and done activity.

So a lot of people will sign up for this. Listings management. They think citations are so important and it's a huge part of local seo. 

And it is important. But you don't need to pay month after month, year after year. For a service like Yext, if you're a small business. 

Like I think those services are extremely valuable.

If you're a big multi-location business, you got a hundred plus locations. Things are changing all the time. You need to push updates. If you're a single location, small business. 

I would always recommend the once and done approach. And then it's oh, five years later we move or we change our phone number.

That's when you'll do an update. But you don't need to pay monthly for a citation service. 

You can generally just build them all at once. Check that off your to-do list and focus on other things. 

Crystal Waddell: And you mentioned Yelp, but Yelp is one of those places, at least the last time I checked where my, no- storefront business. 

Darren Shaw: Yeah. 

Crystal Waddell: Couldn't have a citation because it didn't have an address. Is that. 

Darren Shaw: Yelp is one of the ones that's on our list that you [00:20:00] can submit without an address. 

So think about roofing companies, plumbing companies. Lots of them don't have addresses. They're all on Yelp. So you can definitely do Yelp.

That's one of the ones that's on the list. It's okay. 

There's some big sites that are very important to Google. Yelp is one of them. A Facebook business page is another one. 

Google's always looking for that page, and you want your information to match on these really important sites. So that everything kind of matches up for Google.

Citation Consistency and Its Importance

Darren Shaw: The, on the concept of citation consistency, making sure your name, address, and phone number is perfect on all the different sites. 

That's a strategy that used to be talked about a lot. It's very important for local SEO. 

These days, it's a lot less important. Google is much better at matching information, so it's not as important as it used to be.

If you do any investigating in local SEO, if you ask Chat, GPT: whoa, how should I do local SEO? 

Chat, GPT will tell you that citation consistency is extremely important because the corpus of knowledge on the internet says citation consistency is very important. 

It's actually not. 

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