Transcription:
Hi, welcome to the Home Service Rocket Podcast. I’m Ryan Schrader. And if you’re listening to this, I sincerely thank you for being here. My mission is to be the go to resource for local marketing advice, especially for home service companies. So if you’re a plumber or an electrician or a damage restoration company.
Looking for more business. You’re in the right place by being here. You’ll learn what works to help you in your business be found and create more opportunities online. I’m here to help you get more business. And now I know you’ve never heard this before, but your support is everything, especially right now as we get started.
So please follow and engage wherever you’re listening or watching. And even if you don’t. I appreciate you being here anyway. So on this episode, we’re going to talk about how your customers actually find you on Google, how your business shows up and what we do to make that happen. So let’s jump right in today.
We’re going to take a look at just some Google search results, the different options that come up. So there’s about four different ways that your Google, your company can actually rank on Google. So we’re going to look at what those are, how we show up for those different areas. And Just take a brief overview of that.
So we’re going to actually use my local area as a, an example. I live in the grand Rapids area of Michigan. So we are going to look up water heater replacement Byron center, Michigan. So this is a common thing. Someone would look up for plumbers. And this is going to give us local search results.
This is going to give us ads. This is going to give us Mac map pack results, all of the above. So the first result we see when we look up something like this is our Google guaranteed results. These are local service ads. We’re going to talk more about what each of these mean in a second, but this is the first thing we see.
The second is another sponsored. So you’ll see this sponsored on anything that’s an advertisement, anything that someone is paying to get that location on this page. So the first four companies we interact with here are all paying to show up here. The interesting part is, As humans, even if we’re not on Google every day, like I am, we can see that sponsored.
We know what that means and we instinctively look for some more of those organic results. So while these are still bring in plenty of leads and it’s great to be showing up there there are a lot of people who still skip past these first four businesses to those organic results. So next we have the other ad I said and from there we also have, Then our map pack.
So the map pack refers to the first three that show up here. And then from there, there are also additional businesses. If we click on this, that will show up. Additionally, sometimes we’ll see a sponsored business above the first three here, one or two, even if we click on more businesses here, we’ll likely see that.
So we have a couple more. Google guaranteed will show up as map back. So sometimes we’ll see some additional sponsored spots there. So this is the next. Way we can show up so we have the local service ads regular search ads the map pack Also with ads that will display the next section we have is related questions.
So this is a new source. These are questions people commonly search on google that are related to this search So what that means is these are getting pulled from people’s websites. So this is from Thornton and grooms. com. Some of these will be different informational websites, but some of them can be businesses.
These will pull from business websites. This is why it’s ever increasingly more important that you have frequently asked questions on your website and having those help build the authority and relate to these questions. And these are what Google finds valuable. If you have information about these kinds of topics as well, It’s going to help you rank so related questions is the next section where your business could show up and then After that, we have the organic search results.
So this is what SEO Helps you rank for and helps you rank higher on this list for those important keywords as we continue to scroll One of the things Google’s gotten away from his pages and they’ve gone to a continuous scroll So as we’ve and some in the middle of some of these organic results, we’ll see again another sponsored result, which is another ad, they’re paying for this.
And then in addition, we go down, we have more organic results, more related questions, other searches, and then we start from the top again. So what are each of those now? Let’s dig into each one just briefly and talk about how does your company show up for these? So the first one, Google guaranteed.
What is it? I actually have a tab here just to open this up and make it a little easier for us to see what this is. Is. At no cost to the, your customer, they can use Google Guarantee to basically see if a provider meets some criteria. What does that mean? If you meet the Google Guarantee, Google Guaranteed Advertisers are home service providers.
That have passed an extensive verification process. So that includes verifying your business category, your location. They will also typically ask for your business registration, your insurance, your licenses, and some different minimum requirements in terms of how many reviews or testimonials you have as well.
If you are in an industry that relates to people’s security. One I know is garage doors. Then they may even ask for an additional level of verification and license to get you Google guaranteed. So there is a process to even being able to advertise on this and what it gives the customer is a little bit more insurance.
If you read through this really it covers up to 2, 000. If a company doesn’t follow through, doesn’t complete the work the. Your customer could be eligible for reimbursement by Google of this amount there’s a whole process They would have to actually submit the reimbursement within 30 days They have to have actually booked the job through the call that they made through so there’s a lot of stipulations Long story short it gives the your potential customer a little more assurance gives your company a little more credibility and it’s the first thing that, that Google shows right now.
So it’s very, it is effective. Just to give you an idea, as far as organic versus ads, what’s the breakdown? How many it’s about 50 50. So half of the people that are looking for results and are going to click on the ads and half the people are going to click on the organic results. So it really, the way I look at it is if you’re not advertising, you’re missing out on about half the opportunities that you could be getting on in front of if you’re.
Not focusing on SEO, then you’re missing out on about half the opportunities. You could potentially be getting in front of they’re both going to help grow your business. It’s just which one makes the most sense for you. At any given time. And for a lot of businesses it is both. Google guaranteed, that is how we do that.
And then there is also you’re paying for this. So after you get approved, then you have to manage that account so that you can be the person showing up. What criteria does Google look for to make sure you’re the person showing up and not your competitor? So there’s a little more to it yet, even, but that is one way that you can show up on Google.
The next one is standard search ads. So these and the map pack ads work very similarly. Anybody can advertise. You just need that Google ads account. You need to build your ad. There are some things that you need to understand to be able to have your ad actually show up as well. So you need to be, you’re bidding against your competitors to have your ad show up.
So those are, Things that need to be considered as well, but this is another paid spot on Google for you to show up in. Those are also ran through different websites and different display opportunities. You can manage YouTube ads through Google as well. But as far as the Google search. This is another advertising spot.
Once we exhaust those different advertisements, then we get into some of the organic rankings. So the map pack, obviously extremely important, very location based, but the other factors that are going to help influence this are your organic search result ranking. Where you’re showing up in this list is also going to impact that your amount of reviews, your.
Credibility, your reliability, all of those things are going to be factors for your organic search ranking. So this is another space that is, is extremely valuable to be showing up in. Cause when somebody looks on their Google maybe their Google maps as well, this is going to. Be the same results that would come up there.
Very location based, but there are strategies to get you to show up and to expand that as people are looking this new feature here, it expands the territory. So it’s even more important to be ranking, even if you’re not in that direct vicinity on that map pack. And when we click more businesses, then it becomes into a scroll and it get widens out the area much, much further.
It’s important to meet these criteria then or improve on these criteria that people see. So your reviews are extremely important, the star level, as well as the amount, the number of years in business, and then also what services you provide. You can see here, I searched for water heater replacement.
These all say water heater installation, repair. replacement. Some of these, if I was looking for a tankless water heater, obviously that might be one of my first clicks. So making sure that those services are correct as well is going to go a long way to helping you show up on the map pack when it matters.
Then from there we have our related questions. So these are pulled from different frequently asked questions that are on websites out there. So like I said, some of them might be actual business websites that are in the area. Some of them are just. plumbing resources, different inf informational sites, maybe some different distributors of products and things like that.
You’ll definitely find a variety on here, but again, these are the kinds of questions that if you focus on the content on your website around them, it’s going to help you rank for these kinds of keywords. Then we have our standard. Run of the mill Google search results, finally, right? So we, those are where we always talk about your first page, your second page.
These are your organic search rankings, water heater installation in Byron Center, Michigan, Valley City Mechanical. This is good as anything on this page, just to be number one in the organic search rankings. They’re gonna get a lot of clicks and a lot of traffic as a result of this. What are we doing to focus on that?
Those there’s a lot of factors. I like to call them internal factors and external factors. So the internal factors on your website that you can be doing would be creating content, creating pages on your website for every service you provide on those pages, including the different territories, the cities, the towns, the counties that you serve creating dedicated pages for each of the areas you serve, each of your if you will, if you have many in addition to that, creating frequently asked questions on your website.
Some of the external factors that you can be doing are managing your Google business profile, posting their daily, linking back to your website as much as possible, making sure the information on there is correct, making sure that it links to your website. If we scroll up here, you’ll see that there’s three different map pack rankings.
Only one of them has their website link to their. Google business profile that’s a gonna definitely cost these other two in terms of the amount of traffic that they could get Because somebody’s going to immediately navigate to this one because they can
so Definitely important to check off some of those boxes in addition, you know linking from your social media to your website Partnerships where maybe you can blog on a partner’s website and link to yours. Maybe that’s a insurance partner or a restoration company partner. If you’re a plumber some of the other things are different directory sites.
A lot of companies are using Angie’s list, Yelp, any of those kinds of sites that you can create a profile and link back to your website as well. Home service hookup, all those kinds of things are going to help boost your website externally and help you show up in these organic search results as well.
So there you have it. There’s only one, two, three, four, five, and six. If we include the sponsored map pack ads. six different ways that your business can show up on page one for Google. What is the right one to focus on? What is the right mix? We like to call it a marketing mix to have. It really depends on the business.
It depends on where you’re at and where you want to get to and how fast if you’re a huge company, obviously you can focus on both of these. If you’re a smaller company, it depends on where your opportunities lie and, Now, if you need leads tomorrow, advertising is going to be your best bet because that’s how you show up tomorrow.
Any organic rankings are going to take time. You can expect at least six months to a year to really see leads, to see phone calls coming in from those at the same time, the cost per lead, the long term investment in your business, that focusing on the organic rankings can bring. is unmatched with ads If you have more questions, I’d love to see, answer them, or ask those questions in the comments or anywhere.
Message us on Facebook, reach out to us on our website, valorouscircle. com I’d love to answer your questions, I’d love to make sure I’m getting you valuable information. I appreciate your time very much, and I hope you’ll be here on the next one, and thank you again. Thank
