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Inbound Success Podcast


What do the most successful inbound marketers do to get great results?

You’ve heard the stories about companies using inbound marketing to dramatically increase sales, grow their business, and transform their customer relationships, but not everyone who practices inbound marketing knocks it out of the park.

If you want to know what goes into building a world class inbound marketing campaign that gets real, measurable results, check out the Inbound Success podcast. Every week, host Kathleen Booth interviews marketing folks who are rolling up their sleeves, doing the work, and getting the kinds of results we all hope to achieve.

The goal is to “peel back the onion” and learn what works, what doesn’t and what you need to do to really move the needle with your inbound marketing efforts. This isn’t just about big picture strategy – it’s about getting actionable tips and insights that you can use immediately in your own marketing.

Sep 14, 2020

The holy grail of local search marketing is ranking at the top of Google's Local 3-Pack. Here's how a local search expert helps his clients do just that.

This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Local SEO Search Owner John Vuong shares the strategies he uses to help clients improve their local search marketing strategies and rank at the top of Google's Local 3-Pack.

Hint: There is no magic bullet.

Ranking locally begins with a well run business that sells a great product and treats customers right. If you've got those three things in place, then John has some straightforward strategies that any company - large or small - can use to get to the top of local search results.

Resources from this episode:

Transcript

Kathleen (00:00): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is John Vuong, who is the owner of Local SEO Search. How's it going?

John (00:21): I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Kathleen.

Kathleen (00:23): I'm excited to have you because you are a local SEO guru amongst other things. And I feel like, especially at the time we're living in right now with what's happening in the world, getting your SEO buttoned up is more important now than ever because everybody's starting online these days. Right?

John (00:46): Exactly.

Kathleen (00:47): Before we get into our topic today, can you tell my listeners a little bit about who you are, your story as well as what Local SEO Search does?

John (00:57): Yeah, definitely. So I started this agency seven years ago. But prior to that, I've always been in sales and advertising sales in particular. So I studied business finance, but I didn't really know where I wanted to go with it. And I got into my first job as a sales person and I kind of refined and learned the art of sales and really got better over the years, asked the right questions. Fact-finding, did a lot of training courses, audio tapes at the time because there were no blogs and video like there is today in podcasts. So consuming as much as you can to learn the art of sales. And then the last thing before I started my agency, I actually worked at Yellow Pages and I was there for over five years and I learned, I didn't really work in an ad agency per se, but I had a chance to understand advertising and how it worked in terms of a recurring business model and how to run a larger operation.

John (02:00): And I did, I was basically face to face with the end consumer clients. And that's where I learned the most because I connected with them. I understood their pain points, their troubles, and I wanted to really help. Right? However, I was restricted to the product line that we were offering at Yellow Pages. As you know, at the time Google was really taking off, they were getting more and more users and more people were spending more time in front of a computer than ever doing searches. And as you know, more people were spending you know, more money at Yellow Pages, but getting less return on their investment. And so that's the reason I started this agency. From listening to my clients, letting them know that, you know, you can continue with Yellow Pages, but they didn't really adopt quick enough. And they don't have a solution where customers, your ideal prospects are now actively looking for businesses like yourself. So that's why I got into the world.

Kathleen (03:00): So I just have to say that you saying the words Yellow Pages just took me down memory lane. And I'm sure there are people listening that either won't remember this or, or, you know, it's, they're too young, but like, just that I hear those words and all I can think about is the, the brick of the giant Yellow Pages book being dropped at my front door, like shrink, wrapped in plastic. And I have this one special drawer in my living room where I used to keep all the phone books. Cause you would get like your city phone book, your County phone bucket. And there was the Yellow Pages and the white pages and just the amount of paper that, that took, like, I don't know my mind, I was like, whoa, deja vu, as soon as you said that. So it's, I don't, I don't know whether I look back on it fondly or not. I haven't quite made up my mind.

John (03:54): Yeah. But, but if you imagine like think about 10 years ago Google didn't take off, like the internet was just slowly taking off where the speed of connecting to the internet was dial up, right? Like getting in front of a computer to check your email. It took you five minutes to open up a browser and then search and load up a website. I mean, things took a very long time. And so before, you know, computers and internet and technology started taking off Yellow Pages was still the most instrumental place for a lot of small business owners small, medium sized business owners to market themselves because they knew it was an active, engaged consumer that was actively looking for a product or service. And all you have to do is advertise your one page content and kind of call to action. And really hopefully they will convert, right. They're engaged, they're ready to buy. And all you have to do is be in front of them at the time of purchase.

Kathleen (04:58): So it's funny when I think about that, because, because yes, it was a very like binary equation of what it took to succeed in the Yellow Pages. It was a combination of purchasing an ad. And for those companies that were really creative, naming your company, triple a whatever, like, because literally ranking first was about alphabetization, you know, which is so simple and straightforward. And then you go into this world that we're in now we're ranking first is like, it's like magic, you know, or it seems like it's sometimes we were just talking about that before we started recording about how things changed so much and Google has this supposed algorithm, and now they have RankBrain, which is artificial intelligence. And, but, you know, they don't really tell anybody what's in that. I mean, they give you a sense of the big drivers of what makes you rank, but nobody really, really knows for sure. You know, what, what those factors are. So it's just such an interesting thing when you juxtapose, you know, it was alphabet, did your company name start with a, and did you have a good ad?

John (06:04): It was very straightforward and easy, right. But then comes, but it wasn't actually easy because you had to run a really good business as well. You have to take care of your fundamentals of understanding who your customer is offering a really good product or service taking care of your clients and staff and, you know, pricing it, right. Competitive analysis, all that other stuff like foundational right before you can then promote with a good offer or call to action or whatnot to get them in the door. Right. So you still need to know how to run a good business when you were advertising the Yellow Pages. Right.

Kathleen (06:40): And that will never change even today. Like all the digital advances in the world will never change the fact that you have to have the fundamentals straight. So if, when, when somebody comes to you and they're a business owner and they say, I want to, you know, dominate my local market for search, where do you begin?

John (06:59): Yeah. So I always first find out a little bit about the company to see if they're actually running a good business in the first place. Right. See the little fact check thing to see if they even have a digital presence in first off, like, do they have a website? They don't have any social assets social or any, any media. And then also find out if they are a profitable business, do they know how to run a business? Right. So understanding who their ideal customer is, persona avatars, understand all that. And then you take on the path of what we potentially can do, because ultimately it's all about positioning themselves as the leader thought leader, authoritative figure and expert right. In their niche. And then from there, it's all about like that journey, what it looks like, how long will it take, because we need to really benchmark them and figure out where and what we need to do in terms of strategy and a campaign over the next course of weeks, months, years, even. Right. so it is a long process in terms of inbound and intake, but it's the right thing to do because it is more of a relationship partnership that we're looking for versus an ad campaign.

Kathleen (08:08): Yeah, absolutely. So I mean the Holy grail of local searches, Google, there are other search engines, but let's be honest, you know, if you want to succeed in, in SEO these days, your, your starting point is Google and Google has the three pack. So can you talk a little bit about that?

John (08:25): Yeah, definitely. So as you know, most people are doing searches by keywords on Google. There's paid at the top, there's the local three pack, which is usually radius centric, relevance, and distance based on that storefront or service area that you actually go in and do service calls on as then below is there is an organic listing. So traditionally before the map existed, it was all about making sure you rank organically or naturally below the ads. Right? And the local three-pack came out because mainly the driver was mobile. The reason the map came out because people were on the goal and they wanted to look for local coffee shops, gas stations, restaurants, whatever at their fingertips. And it was easy to go to that store quickly because of directions. You could read reviews, check out their followers, et cetera. So Google's intention was trying to get people usage up on their assets like Google, but also display as much information on their property as possible without going to their website.

John (09:33): So state getting them to not go on your website, but keep them on Google as long as possible. So they can store and obviously, you know, understand your behaviors, right then there's ads. That will be retargeted to you. So the big thing for you to understand is how do you capitalize on what Google is presenting itself, where you can now be on the map potentially in front of a potential prospect who is searching or seeking out your keywords. So first thing is, make sure you verify and own your Google, my business page. So that's the first thing a lot of people don't even do. However, you should do that on it. Got to my business Google my business and own it. Usually it's a postcard that gets sent to you takes two weeks. It's just to verify that you're a legitimate business at that physical location. If you are a service type of business and you don't have a physical address, you can still claim it because you are a local business, you just service a radius. So you just submit it as if your home is your main central pinpoint. And then you can go into Google My Business and put in the radius service area or cities that you actually service.

Kathleen (10:48): No, I had somebody I know who did that. Actually, this is interesting that you bring that up, who was a service business who put in their home and then Google automatically pulled the picture of his house for the business. So how do you deal with that? Like, I mean, I think there's a lot of people who would say, I don't want anybody to have any information about my home. I don't want them to know that it's a home based business. So how do you manage that?

John (11:10): Because Google has maps, right? So there's a difference between putting your address and hiding your address. So you can actually go in and hide your address because then people will not know the physical address. So as a service base, most people are operating from the home and therefore you have the ability to just hide your address. Typically, if it is a service based like plumbing, HVAC, roofing, because these are category driven. And most of the time Google recognizes the services as if they don't have physical locations, because you can operate at home and just run a business, right? So certain categories, you can actually hide your address. And in that case, your friend, you can definitely hide it. And then that map and that photograph of your home will not appear.

Kathleen (12:01): Okay. Good to know. So when, when you talk about the three pack for people who might not be familiar with, what are the three things that make up the three words?

John (12:08): So there's a lot of factors to rank on the Google three-pack. And as you know, Google is always changing their algorithm and always looking for the best result for that given search query or the user. Right? And to understand that you need to understand users in general, right? Because each criteria each vertical, each industry, each market will have different subsets of criteria and factors to rank on that three-pack and even on the natural listings, right? Ultimately what you want to do is have a great website that answers the question, answers the user intent, but ultimately it's all about users behavior as well. So you need to understand that you're providing good, authentic, raw expert content on the website to position yourself as the expert clean look, user friendly website ease of navigation, quick loading, secure website, all these stuff that you should be doing anyways.

John (13:12): And then of course, it's the other factors as a fundamental. It's like, make sure that you have good reputation out there. Good reviews, make sure that other people know about you backlinks, right. Go out there and position yourself as an expert by being a part of better business, rural, or getting more speaking engagements or other articles. You know, it's like a guest posts and associations and memberships. All these are all other factors that organic SEO also plays, but there's other signals that Google local three pack are really prominent on, which is citations, which is you know, directories are submitted, which is consistent across all the board, all, all channels. So all your assets should be consistent. The messaging, the content piece, the authorship just everything, right. And then of course it's all about relevance as well. So if you service an area that is New York, for instance, Manhattan or whatnot, you have to make sure that your website, every property and as every post that you mentioned should be related to that region, right. That the surface area, because you don't want articles to be mentioning your, your service or product if they're in a different country or a different postal code, or, you know, because Google, their whole purpose is to really provide the best user experience for that customer. Who's seeking out the best product or service or finding best business owners to match them. So by displaying the best results for the user you're trying to position yourself so that, you know, you get a higher conversion rate. No, that seems pretty straightforward.

Kathleen (14:52): If you are, let's just use this as an example, a plumber, who's servicing a very specific area, but what if you are, you know, I'm a big like Mr. Plumber that has locations all over the country, but wants to show up first in each of those locations, because then you do have a situation where your website is going to have to have content on different locations. So how do you, how do you tell Telegraph that to Google that, like, I might have all this information on my site, but I have these very discrete, like territories or areas that I serve.

John (15:23): Yeah, definitely. So it's a very similar process as a local mom and pop shop business, small businesses owner, right. Because if you're a Mister plumber, Mr. Rooter or whatnot you have a franchise model and one person still owns that region, right. So there should be a website or a landing page or a subcategory within a page so that you can actually optimize and let people in on that page. Right. Because that's really representing the brand. So it's the same factors because you're still ranking for that one location one.

Kathleen (16:02): So are you putting that landing page in as your website address for that particular local pack listing?

John (16:09): You have to, because if you're going to the main page, which is where every other city is going after you're not going to be optimizing for the right reasons, right. Google will not, you know, signal their signals out there. Right. And they will know that it's more of a branded search versus like a local search.

Kathleen (16:28): So whenever I think about local search and, and you know, this whole topic, there, there are obviously fundamentals, as you said, that need to be put in place a good website, good content you know, getting, claiming your listing and having it all set up properly. So I feel like there's some table stakes and, and, and that's accessible to a local business. But then there are some things that are trickier, right? Where if you're a local business and you're trying to compete against the 800 pound gorilla of your market in the local listings there, they're probably going to have a much higher domain authority, more backlinks. So when you look at all of the different things, the factors are the levers you can pull that are within your control. Are there certain ones that carry more weight with Google? You know, so CA can David take on Goliath in this situation?

John (17:27): Yeah. With the local three pack, it's actually a lot easier for a small, medium sized business owner to capitalize on a competing with a big brand big monopoly, right? Because end of the day, the big, big brands, their main focus is really not on the local level, but more on the branded level. They're going after national campaigns, national ad campaigns, they're not focused on long tail keywords markets, regions, neighborhoods, cities, street level, right? Like intersections, that's where community level search results and queries can dominate versus large brands because their focus is on the bigger picture versus the like little micro level picture. Right. So I always ask clients like, you know, yes, there's a specialty, there's actually a niche in most subsets, like plumber, for instance, but you are also looking for like long tail, what are some of the triggers like drainage, septic tanks stuff that actually matters for that local small business owner that might not actually matter for the larger brands that were just going after very broad plumber terms, right? Yes. There's a lot more competition. There might be a little bit more keyword volume, but is the conversion rate as high, right. What really matters for a small business owner is leads cause sales, revenue, and profitability.

Kathleen (18:49): Yeah. Now it's interesting. Cause like we talk a lot about inbound marketing on this podcast and a lot about content specifically. And so I think probably most people listening are pretty well versed generally on what constitutes a good content or organic SEO strategy. But what I think is very interesting, at least to me, is when you take that overarching approach to content marketing, like, you know, for example, you want to go after the long tails, you want to answer the questions that people are asking about the problems they have. And when you put that, when you put a local search lens over it, I think it could be very easy to get your content wrong. And what I mean by that, and I've seen this play out is I'll just use an example. Like I live in Annapolis, Maryland, and I, I know someone who owns a commercial real estate company.

Kathleen (19:41): And we talked about this once and you know, you can create all kinds of content around commercial real estate. And you know, you could even do commercial real estate in Annapolis, but, but there's, I think there can tend to be an inclination to get a little, I don't know if spammy is the right word. We're like, let's have a landing page for every neighborhood and let's, let's make sure to put the words, Annapolis, commercial, real estate and every blog we write and it can start to sound really forced. So do you, how do you generally counsel your clients to approach that so that they're creating genuinely helpful quality content, but still nailing it at that very hyperlocal level?

John (20:26): Yeah. So I, when I try to find out from the clients are, which markets really are important for them, right? Like always dominate local first and expand, you know, regional national, et cetera. So the big thing for me is understanding where they want to go with it. In terms of, yeah, there's service pages, blog pages, there's different content assets, like video, audio images and all that, right? Like written content. So you need to really refine and figure out like who your ideal customer is. Figure out, map it all accordingly with the journey, but then figure out like, yes, there's certain landing pages that will result in a higher conversion rate you to make it sound natural. So there's an an art to it. Then then more than anything, right? Like you're not just writing for the purpose of Google, you're writing for the purpose of the user.

John (21:21): Right. And you should always write for the user and yes, there's keyword research, semantic keywords, there's different variations. Yes. You can use some certain keywords and embed a couple drippings of that. Even internal waking and all that other stuff, but it's all about like always focus on your ideal customer and write for them. And if you do that on a really regular basis, consistent basis, then it's no longer spam because you see, you'll see a lot of fruits and rewards from it because your ideal customers will reach out to you so far down that funnel that all they care about is pricing, or they've already vetted you. They already check out your case studies, reviews, and testimonials. All they care about is when can you start.

Kathleen (22:08): Right. That makes sense. So when it comes to the listing, you mentioned in the beginning, you have to claim your listing. Obviously that's, that's step one, but then once you have that listing, there are a lot of things you can do with it. And you just talked about assets. And I'm really curious, you know, how important are those assets, the photographs, the video reviews. Like I would love to understand what weight reviews really carry and how many do you really need and that kind of thing.

John (22:33): Yeah. So it's all about perception of running a real good business, right? So it's your first impression. If people don't go to your website, they're going to check you out on Google, my business. Right. And the first thing they see is images of the store, either external or internal. So make it as professional as possible. Spend that extra photography fee to make it look as genuine as possible. And also it's all about like, you can put videos as well, right? Short little clips because more important than ever people want to check you out before they even come to your store today, especially during this pandemic. Right. So they want to vet you and then the reputation aspect is all about making sure that they're authentic as much as you want more, I'm more concerned about quality reviews, right. And always genuinely ask as a process to every single customer, not just your best customers. Right. Because those see right through that you vetted your reviews even, or you paid someone to get only five stars. Right. So try to be as genuine as possible, there are going to be some negative and that's okay. Right. It's all about being real about it and acknowledging it and really responding to positive and negative reviews. Right?

Kathleen (23:55): Yeah. There's a lot of research that goes into like that, that has shown that, that having only positive reviews actually is not good. And it makes sense to me intuitively as just a buyer. Like if I go and I'm looking at a restaurant and all they have is five star reviews, I'm like that that person got their cousin to write all of those, you know? So I agree with you. It's important to have variety. Any best practices around how you ask for them?

John (24:22): Put it in your process, right? So whatever it is from reception to invoicing to thank you, email or a thank you letter, make it a process or text message or call whenever it is. And drip them, it's the same thing as where you drip to get a new customer, you need to have that final, have a final for getting reviews. A lot of people forget that once you have a client that's active paying, they're inclined to do something for you already. They already, you know, use you for a reason. So why not? If, and it's all it is, is a process it's like, you already have an active client, get their email, their information so that you can drip them for a newsletter or whatever it is, right. Like referrals or whatever it is.

Kathleen (25:10): And how often should a business be looking at their listing, updating it, keeping it fresh?

John (25:19): So updating and keeping them fresh. I personally don't update mine quite as often as you know, because nothing really changes. You only update it when there's dramatic service changes or product changes, right. Unless you move location, you have new images of which we need to talk about. Yes. But it's all about like, you know, if you're in a very hyper competitive industry and they expect a lot of changes, like restaurants, like you need to stay on top of what's going on. Like, are you doing deliveries more so than ever where the specials, because you can do Google my business posts as well, very similar to Facebook posts. You know, you can post it on Google and they last for seven days an image and a content piece with hashtags. So why not utilize that extra piece of asset? Right. so I forgot to mention like images, make sure it's your own images to like never use stock photos, make sure you personalize it as much as possible, as much as a lot of people use image tags and make sure that, you know, you, you save it on a file with keywords, Google actually, you know, so they say they don't take that into consideration.

John (26:29): Right. They already have a geotarget. They already have their own vetting system to make sure that it's authentic and real. So do just things that are real to your business. Don't try to hack or trick anyone because people will see through it, especially Google. Yeah.

Kathleen (26:44): That's a good point. I didn't realize you could post updates like you can on Facebook. That's interesting. And I mean, how many businesses would you say really take advantage of that?

John (26:54): So all my clients, we do it for them. So when, when you, most businesses don't even know about it, maybe 5% actually utilize that feature because only half of the businesses actually claim and verify the Google my business page. So there's a huge amount of people that are even missing that boat, let alone, you know, understanding like the category that you put yourself in is so important. Right. And making sure you check in to see where your competitors are actively marketing themselves as well, in terms of review, count, always check into your competitors, make sure you're in the same playing field, right? Because Google will look at trends. They'll look at industry stuff to see if you suddenly have a hundred reviews and every, or your nearest competitor only has five. What's going on. Are you being in buying reviews? Like just do things that are natural, right? Because if you're a high, big ticket item and you're selling homes, you maybe sell five or 10 a year, how do you have a hundred plus reviews?

Kathleen (27:53): Yeah, no, that's a good point. It's a good point. So I assume that you have some clients that come to you and they don't have their listing set up and you need to help them do that from scratch. But I would think, and correct me if I'm wrong. Do you have some companies that come to you and they've set their listing up and they're like, I want to get higher in the rankings. I would love it. If you could talk maybe about any, any case studies or examples you have of like, what, what have those businesses done when they've come to you with an existing listing and they just want to increase their ranking? What are the things they've done and what improvements have you seen and how long does that take?

John (28:29): Great questions? Because we get asked this daily. So most of my clients, I mean, we've been in business for seven years and we focus on family, run, small, medium sized businesses, dentist, physio, chiro, you know, professional health and beauty as well as traits. Right. And usually they are smaller in size, but they're a local leader, right. They have experienced, they've been doing it for five, 10, 20 years. They expect it and plan on doing it for another five, 10, 20 years. Right. so that's my target client and what their intention is, is obviously to cultivate new, acquiring new customers because they understand like Yellow Pages. If you're not there and present, you're not visible to have the opportunity to generate leads, potential clients. Right. so most of my clients actually week we have a pretty good track record. And majority of them do see an increase of between, you know, 20 to 50% in terms of organic traffic growth annually.

John (29:36): And it actually grows afterwards too because we focus not just on the map, but organic as right. And we really focus on like service level targeted keywords that actually drive real business versus blogs that are general in nature and informative type of content pieces that doesn't really drive real customers acquisition of, you know, sales and revenue, because the main purpose for all my clients is phone calls, leads, revenue, sales, and profitability. Right. And if it's not working exactly. And if they don't, if it doesn't work, they're not going to renew with me. So my focus is yes, we have a longer term contract, but we have a very high renewal rate because our whole premise is longterm relationships because we want to grow with them. And it's more of a partnership than anything.

Kathleen (30:27): Well, what you're saying makes sense. And I think in general, philosophically, I get this question a lot. Like if you're doing content marketing, where do you start? Because you have, you obviously want a full funnel strategy, but like where do you begin? And I always tell people, you start at the bottom of the funnel, which is basically what you're saying, which is hyper-specific queries that have to do with high intent purchase searches. And that's because that's the fastest path to revenue and you start getting revenue in and that buys you a lot more time to figure out the top in the middle of the funnel. So I totally agree with you.

John (31:03): Exactly. And then in terms of timeline, I forgot to answer that. So I've seen clients rank months, and then it's some clients like dentists in Toronto. That's where I am may take years because it all depends on benchmark where they're at versus some of the major players. Right. and how much they've invested, especially your client competitor. So it's very hard and it's very individualized in terms of the quotes that we submit to our clients.

Kathleen (31:33): Well, I really liked your suggestion though, of competitor tracking, like, you know, set a schedule, whether it's once a week, once a month, once a quarter, whatever you decide it is. And I guess it depends on how competitive your spaces and go in and look at all of your different competitors and how many reviews they have and what's going on in their listing on the category they're targeting. Like that seems like something very actionable that any business could do right away. And if you see yourself slipping by comparison, then you sort of have your marching orders. Right. It makes, it makes a lot of sense. All right, well, shifting gears, then I have a couple of questions that I always ask my guests. And I'm curious to know what you have to say. The first one is that we talk all about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is doing a really outstanding job, but with their own inbound marketing these days?

John (32:22): Yeah. So I I'm always reading HubSpot, Infusionsoft in terms of their you know, blogs and marketing tactics. Cause they seem to know a lot and just like a big brand, like Yellow Pages, you respect people that have been there for a very long time with a huge user base. And they usually hire the top leaders and experts in the industry. So I do follow them. In terms of specific people in SEO, there's dozens of people that I follow. Just because it's, so, I mean, there's so much going on from technical to link building to you know, user engagement, UX, design speed, there's so much going on. So for me, there's people. But there's also a lot of like big software that I follow it.

Kathleen (33:13): Yeah. Yeah. And I see if you're listening, you can't see this, but I, I can see cause we're on video that behind you, you have Rand Fishkin's book Lost and Founder, and he's one of my favorite people to follow for SEO information. So all right. Second question. I always hear from marketers that it's very challenging to keep up with all the changes, especially in the space you're in. I mean, as you we've talked about this at the beginning, SEO changes all the time, literally. And in fact, I think right now there's a lot of chatter that we're in the middle of a big core algorithm update and everybody's kind of like freaking out, what does this mean for me? So as a marketer, how do you stay up to date with all the things that are changing all the time?

John (33:55): So that's the biggest challenge like, yes, we read a lot. All everyone on my team needs to be on top of the game. There's changes all the time, but there's major changes. We try to stay away from like small level micro changes because it's not going to move the needle as drastic as the larger macro ones. Right. but we do read a lot. So Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, Moz, Ahrefs, SEMrush, backlink.io, Or there's so many different blogs out there. So many videos and podcasts. I listen to it, but I always look at like core foundation and fundamentals all the time. That's more important to me like business. How do you run a good business that has lasted for generations? Not just five, 10 years, I'm talking about 50 years, 80 years, right? Those are the people that want to pick brains with and see what cultivates and what are the real, tangible things.

John (34:50): And that's why I learned a lot from Yellow Pages, like working with thousands of business owners that lasted through many generations. It was all very simple. If you think about it, it's taking care of your customers, listening, understanding what the value prop is, differentiating yourself from competitors, pricing it well, like all the things that you take for granted, but a lot of business owners oversee and they think, wow, getting on the first page of Google will be the Holy grail of at all. But if you think about it, if I get you there and you don't know how to answer your phone, take care of your clients, price it right. All these other factors, it's kind of a waste of effort. Right?

Kathleen (35:28): I feel like, I feel like it's like weight loss. Like everybody gets so entranced by the latest diet fad, but really it's eat less and more, but none of us want to do it. We all want the quick, the quick fix. Right? well, so interesting, John, I really appreciate you sharing all of that with us. If somebody wants to reach out and ask you a question or learn more or connect with you online, what's the best way for them to do.

John (35:55): Yeah. So you can check out my website, it's www.localseosearch.ca. But you can also connect with me on LinkedIn. That's probably the best medium and you can find me. It's John Vong V U O N G. And I'm the founder of Local SEO Search.

Kathleen (36:11): Awesome. And I will put links to all of that in the show notes. So as always, head there and check that out if you want to connect with John. And if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, please head to Apple podcasts or the platform of your choice and leave the podcast a preferably five star review, because that is how we get found. Just like a, you got to get found in local search with reviews. That's how podcasts get found. And if you know somebody else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. Thanks so much for joining me this week, John.

John (36:47): Thank you so much, Kathleen. I had a lot of fun.