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Drive Growth With SEO: 3 Tips for Small-Business Owners  Inc.
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Beyond the Desktop: Actual SEO Media, Inc. Discusses Multi-Device SEO for Cross-Platform Engagement  EIN News
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Join us in analyzing 3 case studies that show the importance of driving brand search behavior and engagement, and how to do it in months, instead of years.
Maximize your SEO efforts in 2024 with insights on Google’s SGE, algorithm updates, and expert tips to keep your site ahead.
Download this guide and learn how to optimize and manage Google Performance Max campaigns, with expert insights and actionable strategies to ensure your campaigns are effective.
Join us in analyzing 3 case studies that show the importance of driving brand search behavior and engagement, and how to do it in months, instead of years.
Join us in analyzing 3 case studies that show the importance of driving brand search behavior and engagement, and how to do it in months, instead of years.
Join us as we dive into exclusive survey data from industry-leading SEOs, digital marketers, content marketers, and more to highlight the top priorities and challenges that will shape the future of search in 2025.
Greg Gifford talks about boosting local SEO with Google My Business, some of the new features to look into, and the tricks that will help you get ahead. 
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In episode 152 of Search Engine Nerds, I had the opportunity to interview Greg Gifford, a world-renowned Local SEO expert.
Gifford talks about Google My Business, some of the new features to look into, and the tricks and hacks that will help you get ahead.

Greg Gifford (GG): It’s massively important, especially because most people that concentrate on local SEO are really looking at that map pack with the map and the three results underneath.
According to the Local Search Ranking study that just came out at the end of last year, the biggest chunk of signals that matter for showing up in that map pack is stuff related to Google My Business.
It’s not as important for showing up in the localized organic, but it’s still important.
The main thing that I’ve been talking about for the past six months at conferences that I try to get across to people is your website is no longer your first impression with customers, it’s your Google My Business.
We’re saying that your Google My Business profile, that knowledge panel that shows up whenever you Google the name of your business, that’s your new home page.
And you see all these different conference presentations lately talking about zero-click search, where you get all of this traffic and all of these interactions without people going to your website – the best example of that is Google My Business.
All the people that used to go to your website to get your phone number or your address, get directions, check out pictures of your business or read testimonials, they can see all of that in your Google My Business profile.
There’s no need to go to your website anymore.
Brent Csutoras (BC): The important thing to remember is that… you should be really looking at, “how do I perform anywhere?” And I think that Google My Business definitely has that. Do you see it continuing in that way?
GG: 100%.We all know that Google has, years ago, moved to just keywords to keyword matching, and now it’s an entity-based search platform.
Your Google My Business is a direct interface with your entity as it exists in Google’s database…
It’s crazy how many businesses out there still haven’t claimed their listing. And so, you need to:
It’s just a no-brainer that it’s only going to continue to be one of the most important elements of showing up in local searches.
GG: It depends on the vertical. Like, you know, I work pretty much with car dealers, almost exclusively, and car dealers are always going to need a website.
When you’re buying the second biggest purchase of your life, you’re going to want that website with that information so you can go in and do your research and figure out what you want.
But, if you’re buying toilet paper, you don’t really need a website. Especially with voice assistance, you’re just saying, “Hey, Alexa. Hey, Google. Buy me more toilet paper.”
I always look at it too, what do I do when I travel? Because I travel to all these conferences and I can’t tell you the last time I went to a restaurant’s website.
Now, they all have websites, but does anybody really go to restaurant website anymore?
Because, all you have to do is do a search, and you’re either looking them up on Yelp or Google.
Then you’re getting all of that top-line entity information from their Google My Business profile, and you can view their menu and do all of these things – even book a table without ever going to their website.
So, I think for certain verticals, we really are approaching a time where, yeah, you probably need a website if people want to really go and check you out.
But for that really top-level, fast-touch stuff, people aren’t ever going to go to your site. They’re just going to look at you on Google.
GG: It’s more convenience factor and it just depends on the industry. I think everybody’s probably mostly going to still have a website for the foreseeable future.
It’s just that, I think you have to realize that a lot of that interaction is going to happen off of your website, and that’s why Google My Business is so important.
GG: Obviously, you’ve got to fill out all the top-line information about your business. That would be:
Make sure all these are correct.
And then make sure you’ve got the right categories chosen. It’s really important that you pick the right categories that matter for your business.
You’ve got to upload photos. You can upload videos – you don’t have to – but I definitely suggest it.
And then that’s where all of your reviews live on Google. That’s a massively important feature that every business should pay attention to because that’s going to not only have an effect how you show up and where you’re ranked, but it has an effect on whether customers are going to want to come to you.
You know, you could be the third-ranked thing in the map pack, but you’ve got twice as many reviews, and a much better review score, then people are probably more likely to click through to you or call you in that situation.
And then now we’ve got the new questions and answers feature, which is actually pretty scary, because most business owners don’t know about it and it shows up right under your top line information.
It allows anyone in the community to ask a question to your business, and the scary part is, anyone in the community can answer that question.
You see all these questions that are coming in from customers or potential customers, that just assume that the business is paying attention.
And the business isn’t, and some random jackal in the community is coming in and putting a snarky answer.
So, that’s a whole kind of customer service and reputation side of things that’s really scary right now for a lot of businesses.
BC: A lot of people don’t pick the right categories, right?
GG: You’ve got ten slots for categories and a lot of people are going to go in and just try to fill them up with the wrong ones. Also, there are all these categories that typically will apply to different verticals that they’re not necessarily choosing.
Another big thing is your primary category – the first one that you choose – carries more weight. So, you want to be strategic in what you’re putting there if you’re a business that has multiple categories.
I just did a video recently and talked about the fact that if you’re a Ford dealer and you’re in a really crowded market like Dallas, you probably want to put Ford dealer as your primary category, because you’re competing against 15-20 other Ford dealers in the whole metro area.
But, if you’re a Ford dealer in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming and there’s not another Ford dealer for 100 miles in any direction, you’d probably want to put used car dealer as your primary category, because that’s where you’re really fighting against all of your local competition.
There’s a lot of intricate pieces like that, that it’s really important to know. If you don’t have a marketing person working with you, most small business owners just have no clue.
GG: Bad reviews aren’t actually a bad thing.
A lot of research points to the fact that you want your review score to fall between a 4.2 and a 4.5, because if you’ve got a perfect five-star review rating, people almost kind of just assume that it’s fake reviews.
Everybody knows nobody is perfect… It’s not really bad to have a bad review, it shows that you’re human and what matters is how you respond to that review.
But, what’s really important is don’t be scared to ask everybody for a review, because I talk to businesses all the time, you know, in every vertical and they’re like, “We don’t want to ask because that means we’ll get more bad reviews.”
The ask is what’s really important. You’ve got to ask every single customer and then you have to make it really easy for them to leave a review.
You don’t want people to have to figure out how to go to Google and do it. Typically you want to set up a page on your site. It would be yourdomain.com/reviews that every employee knows.
That page has simple messaging that says, “Hey, we appreciate your business. Let us know how we did.”
Then it lists out the different options where they can leave reviews. So, you’ve got Google, Facebook, Yelp and all the other review sites that might matter for that vertical.
That way it’s really easy to ask and tell them where to go. You’re much more likely to get a lot of positive reviews.
GG: I would say both Google Posts and Question and Answers. Both of them are fairly new and really important to help you stand out from competitors.
As far as Google Posts go, it’s something where you can put up a little post and it shows up as a thumbnail image at the bottom of your profile that people can click on and it enlarges the image and you get more text.
I would suggest every business out there do at least one post a week. The post will last for seven days and then disappear.
I already mentioned Questions and Answers earlier.  It shows up just below your top-line info and you can load in your own questions.
Check out Greg’s conference presentation decks on SlideShare.
Visit our Search Engine Nerds archive to listen to other Search Engine Nerds podcasts!
Image Credits
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita
Managing Partner / Owner at Search Engine Journal with over 18 years experience in Digital Marketing, specializing in Reddit, Search …
Conquer your day with daily search marketing news.
Join Our Newsletter.
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In a world ruled by algorithms, SEJ brings timely, relevant information for SEOs, marketers, and entrepreneurs to optimize and grow their businesses — and careers.
Copyright © 2024 Search Engine Journal. All rights reserved. Published by Alpha Brand Media.

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hosted by Kerry O’Shea Gorgone
There are people I follow on Twitter, and then there are people whose articles I regularly retweet because they are unfailingly detailed and helpful. Andy Crestodina is in the second category! Andy is a co-founder and the chief marketing officer of Orbit Media, an award-winning 38-person Web design company in Chicago.
Don’t miss a MarketingProfs podcast, subscribe to our free newsletter!
Andy has decades of experience in Web strategy and marketing, and he regularly speaks at the best marketing conferences, including the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum, where this year he’ll talk about Influencers, Search Rankings, and Collaboration.
He’s written hundreds of articles on content marketing, search engine optimization, social media, and analytics, and he wrote the book Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Handbook for Content Marketing.
I invited Andy to Marketing Smarts to talk about influencers and content marketing. Along the way, we also talk about his borderline-insane productivity and how he achieves it!
Here are a few highlights from our conversation (and sneak peeks from our upcoming B2B Marketing Forum):
Do something important before you do something urgent (03:09): “Here’s one of my top productivity tricks. Go to bed instead of staying up and binge-watching shows, because binge-watching does not meet any of [your] goals. Get up early, 5:30 or 6:00 AM. Do something important before you do something urgent. I write, I produce presentations—I’m doing important things before I look at my email.
“Because a small part of you dies the moment you look at your inbox. You get sucked into the ‘urgent’ stuff. And then, when the little boy wakes up at 7:30, I’ve already gotten a lot done. I’ve made important progress on my major goals.”
Some progress each day keeps burnout away (05:23): “I’ve reduced burnout by creating visible tracking for me against my goals. For example, you go to the gym. I’m bad at that, but I do have one exercise goal, which is for 2019 I’m doing 5,000 chin-ups. Which means every morning I’m doing 25 chin-ups…. I have a little chart taped to the wall in my closet. It’s a graph paper, and every box is five chin-ups. So I shade them in. And it’s like one minute or minute-and-a-half of exercise per day…but it keeps me from getting burned out to see that I’m making progress.
“I have a list of every article I’ve ever written. Analytics shows me the performance of everything that I’m doing. If you create visible ways to track your progress against all of your goals, you’re less likely to burn out because you’re always seeing evidence of progress and effort.”
“Influencer marketing” isn’t actually new: We’ve been collaborating on content for years (11:48): “I’ve been doing analytics since it was spelled with a lowercase ‘A.’ Before it was a Google product, there were different tools we used. And what we do, a lot of it, is collaboration with people, which we’ve been doing since before they called it ‘influencer marketing.’ It was just called collaborative content years ago.”
Don’t create content solo (13:12): “I remember thinking to myself, ‘a journalist would never write an article without a source: why would I ever write an article without a contributor quote.’ So probably back in 2012 or 2014 I started reaching out to people to add their insights to my content to make the articles better.
“Three outcomes [of collaborating with influencers]:
To learn more, visit OrbitMedia.com, and be sure to register for the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum. (Use the code B2BSmarts to save $150!)
You can also follow Andy on Twitter, at @crestodina, and be sure to grab a copy of his book, Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Handbook for Content Marketing.
Andy and I talked about much more, including the story of how he co-founded and grew Orbit Media into a multimillion-dollar business, and why one point of view in a content piece is never enough; so be sure to listen to the entire show, which you can do above, or download the mp3 and listen at your convenience. Of course, you can also subscribe to the Marketing Smarts podcast in iTunes or via RSS and never miss an episode!
This episode brought to you by GoToWebinar:

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Music credit: Noam Weinstein.
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Published on September 12, 2019
Andy Crestodina, co-founder and CMO at Orbit Media Studios Inc., and author of the book Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Handbook for Content Marketing. Register now for the B2B Marketing Forum 2019 to see Andy’s presentation on Influencers, Search Rankings, and Collaboration. Use code B2BSmarts to save $150! And be sure to follow Andy on Twitter at @crestodina.
Kerry O’Shea Gorgone is senior editor and writer at Appfire. She co-hosts The Backpack Show LIVE with Chris Brogan and Punch Out With Katie and Kerry, and serves as Consigliere and Showrunner for Chris Brogan Media. Once upon a time, Kerry was a lawyer (number one in her class at Suffolk University Law School).
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Join us in analyzing 3 case studies that show the importance of driving brand search behavior and engagement, and how to do it in months, instead of years.
Maximize your SEO efforts in 2024 with insights on Google’s SGE, algorithm updates, and expert tips to keep your site ahead.
Download this guide and learn how to optimize and manage Google Performance Max campaigns, with expert insights and actionable strategies to ensure your campaigns are effective.
Join us in analyzing 3 case studies that show the importance of driving brand search behavior and engagement, and how to do it in months, instead of years.
Join us in analyzing 3 case studies that show the importance of driving brand search behavior and engagement, and how to do it in months, instead of years.
Join us as we dive into exclusive survey data from industry-leading SEOs, digital marketers, content marketers, and more to highlight the top priorities and challenges that will shape the future of search in 2025.
Optmyzr’s Frederick Vallaeys discusses how PPC advertisers can take better control of their paid search campaigns with automation layering in Google Ads.
Podcast: Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcast Google Podcasts Spotify
For episode 166 of The Search Engine Journal Show, I had the opportunity to interview Frederick Vallaeys, Founder of Optmyzr and former Google AdWords Evangelist.
Vallaeys discusses how PPC advertisers can take better control of their paid search campaigns with automation layering in Google Ads.

Frederick Vallaeys (FV): [Y]ou’re given some automation options from Google so you can decide to manage bids manually to where you always have or you can decide to go on automated bidding. So it’s a choice and it’s a transition you make.
But then once in a while, something comes along like [changes to] close variants to match types. This is basically automation that you’re being forced to take – there’s no off button on these things.
This is driven by machine learning improvements that Google has and by them being able to better figure out what it is the user actually means when they type in whatever query and which advertisers do that match to.
But it kind of throws a wrench into the process that PPC experts have because we kind of know the world to be one way or Google maybe didn’t figure it out perfectly.
Now, all of a sudden they do figure it out, but not always perfectly. So what are we to do? How do we play in this new world?
Brent Csutoras (BC): [T]rusting the machine in some ways it’s kind of a nice thing for a lot of people, especially people that don’t have the experience. But, is this going to be something that advanced users are going to embrace in your opinion?
FV: I think you hit the nail on the head, so this is really built for the people who are not PPC experts.
So if you’re listening to this show, then you’re probably in the camp where you don’t like all of these automations quite so much, because they don’t always get it right.
But where Google’s coming from is obviously millions of potential advertisers who are not using Google Ads because it’s too complicated or they don’t get results.
And so as Google has this ability to actually use machine learning to figure it out, that’s a huge new market that opens up for them. And that’s why they’re pushing so heavily into this.
For the PPC experts, this is something that we have to keep a close eye on because we have gotten pretty good results by doing things manually and using the processes and tools that we have.
One of the concepts that I’ve recently started talking about is automation layering and it’s a pretty simple concept.
The engines, like Google, are going to have their black box methodology that automates whatever it is that they’re automating today. It could be keywords, bids, ad text, and so on. They’re going to use machine learning and do a pretty decent job for the most part.
But there’s going to be instances when we wish we had a bit more transparency and understood what was happening inside the black box.
We want to find those one-off instances when the machine is actually getting it wrong for whatever reason, and that’s where we can build simple automation, that layer on top of the Google system.
These simple automations don’t even have to be machine learning or artificial intelligence. They could simply be an if-this-then-that type of logic rule.
For instance, if all of a sudden you see Google starting to show your ads for close variant, exact match keyword, and for some reason the results from that are bad or you’re seeing it’s like a semantically too different from the underlying keyword, you can put your own automation on top of that that says, “Hey Google, stop doing that.”
So now you get five impressions before we have the data to say this is happening, but then it shuts it off. And so you’re protecting yourself and you’re still maintaining your role as that PPC expert who’s tightly controlling what’s happening with that account.
FV: There’s a couple of levels.
First of all, think about how Google works.
When Google makes decisions about what it considers to be close variants, it’s basically using machine learning and it’s using percentages of similarity.
And so they may determine that a query seems to be 85% similar to the keyword that you had. Now, it’s up to them to decide whether that 85% meets the threshold for showing the ad. That’s something they control.
In automation layering, you can actually step in and you can do your own sort of metrics analysis.
So you could say, “Well, we don’t care so much about how closely it’s related, but we’re going to look at the stats. So let Google show these close variants. But if we see that they perform at a much lower level of conversion rate, then we opt to step in, take action and make it a negative.
One specific way you can do this is through automated rules in the Google Ads system, or you could build a Google Ads script. I’ve published some ad scripts on Search Engine Journal and my GitHub.
Obviously you could use the much simpler options that we have in our tool Optmyzr, but then you have to pay a little bit of money to use that tool.
But the notion is simply, if a query that is a close variant is showing these performance attributes then automatically make it a negative keyword. Or at the very least, send me an email about it so that I know this is happening.
Then I can still make my own human judgment about whether I should keep that as a close variant or maybe I should just add it as its own keyword, but just put a lower bid on it because maybe it’s not performing at the same level.
BC: I think what’s interesting is being able to determine what performs, but there’s another aspect here and that’s being able to improve upon your account…
FV: Exactly. There are two levels of improvement. You get those micro improvements that you can do and then thanks to automation, you can help to also start spending time on the more strategic tasks because you don’t have to worry about every single keyword that’s out there.
When I think about the future of the PPC role, it’s not about us doing a lot of manual work to stay on top and then roll over these Google automation systems.
It’s about being smart and layering on your own automation, or better through a script, tool or an API solution that you build if you’re a really big company.
But you have to basically be on top of what those automations are doing and then be more strategic.
FV: On the targeting side, that would be the main one. You have a lot more options.
Automated bidding is probably the biggest thing people talk about when it comes to automation. But you do have the option of not using it.
Not using bid automation at any level, I think, is just completely the wrong thing to do… I’m not saying you have to use Smart Bidding from Google, what I’m saying is that you have to layer some level of automation on top of your manual process.
You can’t do these things manually at the scale, at the efficiency that a machine learning system like Google’s could do it. And audiences actually kind of ties into this, because the reason it’s even possible today is because of machine learning.
Visit our podcast archive to listen to other Search Engine Journal Show podcasts!
Image Credits
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita
Managing Partner / Owner at Search Engine Journal with over 18 years experience in Digital Marketing, specializing in Reddit, Search …
Conquer your day with daily search marketing news.
Join Our Newsletter.
Get your daily dose of search know-how.
In a world ruled by algorithms, SEJ brings timely, relevant information for SEOs, marketers, and entrepreneurs to optimize and grow their businesses — and careers.
Copyright © 2024 Search Engine Journal. All rights reserved. Published by Alpha Brand Media.

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Halda’s AI SEO Dashboard (Graphic: Business Wire)
Halda’s AI SEO Dashboard (Graphic: Business Wire)

PROVO, Utah–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Halda is excited to announce its latest innovation, AI SEO, a cutting-edge feature designed to give college and university enrollment teams the tools they need to optimize website content, fill information gaps, and improve the quality of AI-generated answers sourced from their content on search engines. AI SEO enables a new level of precision and speed in identifying and filling content gaps to ensure institutions present accurate, student-centered information. By allowing marketing teams to quickly address these gaps without waiting on IT or web development teams, Halda continues to redefine how higher education institutions can leverage websites to more effectively reach prospective students.

How AI SEO Benefits Enrollment and Admissions Marketing Teams
Website optimization has undergone a fundamental transformation in the last two years. For decades, search engine optimization (SEO) focused on helping search engines index and rank content. Now, with the rise of AI-powered search and summarization tools, institutions must adapt to a new paradigm: AI-optimized content.
Modern AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude do more than just index websites—they actively summarize and deliver institutional information to prospective students. The critical question is: Are these AI systems accurately representing your institution’s unique value, mission, and offerings?
AI SEO from Halda helps higher education institutions overcome this challenge by identifying content gaps and how AI summarizes their existing content. This enables institutions to correct inaccuracies and provide additional content that AI can summarize. Without a tool like this, institutions are blind and losing prospective students before they visit their websites.
“In an AI-driven world, Halda AI SEO is redefining what SEO means for higher education,” said Jon Grover, VP of Product. “With traditional approaches becoming insufficient, institutions must ensure their content is crafted intentionally for AI summarization. Without a proactive strategy that is made easier with AI SEO, schools risk losing prospective students who find answers in search engines without ever visiting the institution’s website.”
How AI SEO Works
AI SEO provides intuitive, data-rich analytics tailored for strategic web optimization and student-first content planning. By analyzing institutional website content, it highlights content gaps and shows how AI interprets and summarizes existing information. This empowers enrollment marketers to identify and address missing or outdated content immediately:
AI SEO from Halda empowers enrollment marketers to take a proactive, strategic approach to identifying and addressing web content gaps, ensuring that the institution’s website meets student expectations. Without a tool like this, institutions remain blind to significant content gaps and risk losing prospective students before they even visit their website.
For more insights on improving student engagement and increasing prospective student conversion through AI SEO, visit https://www.halda.ai/post/aiseo.
About Halda
Halda is the first AI-powered enrollment marketing platform that unifies marketing campaigns, websites, and CRMs for a streamlined and effective approach to student recruitment. With Halda, institutions gain access to high-performing, ready-to-use playbooks that can be instantly tailored to match any institution’s brand and voice, driven by advanced artificial intelligence for optimal impact.
Halda’s Personalization Platform offers a suite of AI-powered tools designed to engage and convert prospective students:
Institutions using Halda see improved student experiences—with over 90% of students finding Halda’s assets helpful—and a notable increase in lead volume, typically doubling or even quintupling leads without requiring a website rebuild. Additionally, Halda’s automated lead attribution delivers transparency, helping institutions allocate budgets effectively by identifying high-performing campaigns.
For more information on Halda and the upcoming release of AI SEO, please contact us at press@halda.ai or visit our website at Halda.ai.
Nichole Keele
nichole@halda.ai
Nichole Keele
nichole@halda.ai

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