Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Whitespark Local Update is the go-to podcast for Local SEOs and Marketers who want to stay ahead of the curve in local search and the local visibility space.
Join industry experts Claire Carlile and Darren Shaw for a lively, insightful roundup of their carefully curated selection of top “must-read” and “must-watch” links, including news, trends, and can't-miss resources.
Darren (00:00.098)
Welcome to another episode of the White Spark Local Update with me, Darren Shaw.
And with me, oh hello, hello.
Although we're
SEO. In real life together here at Brighton. And so that is very good and it's very exciting. We've seen some talks, good talks from good people talking about the local SEO ting. Ting? The local SEO ting ting. Yes. Yeah. And you know what we've done? We've found them.
in the United Kingdom.
Darren (00:24.546)
Good talk.
Darren (00:35.554)
Yes, and we asked them one question and you will now get to see their answers because you know what Claire and I have been busy at a conference so we have not been too up on the latest in local search but fortunately we have some very bright people here to give you some excellent takeaways and tips from their talks.
So watch this now.
Michel, how do you say your name? Van Luitenlaar. What? Van Luitenlaar. Come on, give it a try. Make me laugh. always... Say it again. Van Luitenlaar. Alright. Okay, we're here with Michel. Van Luitenhaar. He's an off. I'll take this. He gave a talk today. What was the name of your talk?
Well, something about AI. Something about AI. Now, local SEO in the age of AI. OK. And give us at least one great takeaway from your talk. I think the main takeaway was, well, a few takeaways. The main takeaway, probably the fact that you need to monitor competitors in order to see what your review count should be.
There was a takeaway around pulling in citations from local AI search. There was a little bit of takeaway on where we see AI going. We're a little bit behind here in Europe compared to the US in terms of the experiments that Dura is running. So there's quite a few of the well-known names from the US were cited on the slides. But we are now also getting...
Darren (02:17.422)
Versa in India we also now have the AI overviews in all countries except France. Is that right? Yeah, France. Why is that? France still being punished by our AI overlords for not complying and for trying to control AI a little bit and they don't like that. So naughty French.
Okay, excellent. Hello, hello, hello. We are very lucky we have Sarah here. Thank Thank you from the Uberall. Yes. And we have just been to your talk where you had a very patron, queuing up they were to get in. Did you see that? Yep. And you did a fantastic- Bundles to get in. It was a fight, basically. We were fighting people, fighting people to get in. And we came in and we saw your talk and it was very lovely. Thank you. And we wondered if you would share-
with our lovely audience, your top tip for things that they need to be thinking about for the local SEOs now and in the next 12 months. So this is actually the slide that I forgot. Okay. So what I wanted to say is a lot of businesses overlook posting on their Google and Apple Maps profiles, but it's actually such a good strategy. Even if you're sharing updates, promotions, anything, not only does it like
engaged with customers more who are looking for those businesses, but it also kind of tells AI that, you know, your business is active, it's speaking to customers, you're really trying to engage and bring in new customers. So that was the one thing that I wanted to say. like, yeah, the more fresh, relevant hyperlocal content that you post, the better you tend to perform on like traditional and AI search. So that's something that we've spoken a lot about at Uberall and
I wanted to share it today. I will be sharing it in my slides, so yeah. And I'm sharing it now. We love that. It was the hidden slide. Yes. It hidden, skimmed, very quickly slide. The time forgot. Yes. And it's here now. It's here now. With us. That's the most important thing. We love it. And we love you. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you. And then she runs away.
Darren (04:19.726)
I'm here with Greg Gifford. Greg Gifford spoke today and it wasn't typically about local SEO. It wasn't about SEO at all, actually. So Greg, please share with our audience one really valuable takeaway from your presentation today. So my presentation today was about future career progression and kind of almost making a vision board, visualizing where you want to be in the future so that you can make it happen because you're not going to get the promotion just because you show up and do your job.
So I think the biggest takeaway is you have to figure out and choose your path before you start down the path or you're going to be going in the wrong direction. You're not going to end up where you want to be. educate yourself, always be learning, join networking groups and communities and leverage that peer network of people at the same level of your career and also people ahead of you that you can ask for help and get some mentoring and coaching. Build your own personal brand so that
at your current job, you're more valuable and you provide value and they see that and you'll get bigger and better things. And then I also had a bit at the end of if you want to start speaking to conferences, here's how to pitch and here's how to approach it. But the main thing is just having the right mindset for the future instead of just waiting for the future to happen to you. Because let's face it, life is expensive when you start having kids, know, kids are expensive. You want to make more money, not because you're like dollar dollar bill y'all, but because.
Inflation whatever you want to have a better job. You want to have luxury you want to have fun later in life and travel Make it happen by thinking about it now instead of waiting 10 years and going wait. What am I dollar-dollar bill y'all Greg One final question. What is the greatest local grid rank tracking software? That has come out in the past few months
Darren (06:08.268)
You're not taking way too long. I mean, it's yours, of course. I was doing that for comedic value, of course. The white spark tool is awesome.
Hello. Hello. Hello. Hi. Hello. Hey there. So nice to see you. Very nice to see you. Wonderful talk yesterday. Thank you very much. Amazing. So Erin, yesterday on the stage, brilliant talk about community. Yes. And now I remember very well the strap line from that, which was, hmm, could you remind me of it? Visibility is a byproduct of trust.
Visibility is a by-product of trust. Now, Erin, would you tell us a little bit more about that? I'm very interested, as is our audience, in the context of community, especially with local businesses. One of the ways to get your people and keep your people close is by building a community, not necessarily just about your brand. Now, can you tell us...
some top level stuff from your talk yesterday. Sure. And about trust. Yeah. So when you find a group of people that you can consistently show up for, that you can help, and that you can be yourself around, those are really the key ingredients to building trust. So when it comes to building trust for your business, you actually kind of want to flip it around a little bit. So you are a person behind your business. You don't need to necessarily build trust.
specifically for your brand, show up as yourself and help the folks that and the audience that, you know, would be interested in your brand. And that's kind of the key to making sure that you can build real person to person trust because trust is passed mostly from person to person. So an example in local, I have a friend that runs a small community gym in Seattle and we were talking about, you know, what can she do to kind of amp up
Claire (08:08.682)
membership, know, make sure like retention stays strong and things like that. And a lot of what we ended up talking about was community. wasn't necessarily about, you know, running paid ads or sending flyers and like doing that direct sale. It was really more about are there any businesses around you? There's a wonderful, it's an LGBTQ owned gym. There's an LGBTQ owned coffee shop right next door.
So there's this beautiful intersection where queer people do feel very welcome and invited in this gym. So how can you partner with that intersection across other small businesses? Maybe, you know, co-host an event together, go hang out at that coffee shop, drop your flyers in that coffee shop, but go out and try to find ways to partner with other local businesses. That's a really great way to grow your community. Or maybe it's about showing up at a volunteer event, right? Or running a volunteer event.
maybe some sort of like clean the streets and something like that, but just showing your neighbors because you are a local gym, hey, we're out here, we care about this neighborhood, we care about you, and we're gonna show up and help and we're gonna find ways to kind of build this community up together. So really it's spreading that awareness and you showing up as yourself in those moments, not necessarily advertising for the gym specifically, that's just kind of in the background there, but you start to become associated.
with the community as yourself and as that happens, your brand is going to follow. So that would be my local tip. And yeah, always very exciting to chat with you, Your talk was my favorite talk from yesterday and helpfully you have written up a recap of your talk on the Women in Tech SEO.
blog. So that's fantastic. Because I feel like this is something that people can go and read, apply this, think about how this can work with their brand, with their organization and be authentic and get people to love you and love them back. Because we love love. Yes, we love love. Thank you. Thank you. Goodbye.
Darren (10:14.09)
So let's close it
Okay, goodbye, we love you.
No, like...
Darren (10:22.74)
Sorry. Sorry.
you
I hope you found all those interviews very interesting and join us next week where we'll be back with our regularly scheduled local updates from our laptops and in our houses. And see you next time. Thank you. Bye.
That's the best podcast ever, wasn't it?