7 Google search hacks to knock the local SEO competition out

we do this dozens of times every day we go to google and type a keyword or a key phrase in the search box hit return and bang we get results but there is so much more you can do in that little white box you probably don't know about in today's video I'm going to show you seven Google search hacks to gain a competitive advantage with your local SEO efforts I'm going to around the founder of rank Academy da koat UK where I help small business owners like you with their marketing efforts for better online visibility step by step and click by click if you are new to my channel why don't you subscribe today and click the bell button so you don't miss any of my future videos and if you like this tutorial please give me a thumbs up as it will be very helpful for me to grow my channel let's start with our first search hack finding out how many of your web pages are indexed in Google to do this type the following search command in the Google search box sites and then go on and straight after it enter your website address or any address let's take the example of a plumber that I've found here and copy is web address and stick that straight after the site come on make sure you don't leave any space there and then press Enter Google will show you how many pages it has in its index for this business in this example there are 79 pages and if I quickly scroll through the results and compare it with the website I can see that each page seems to be indexed properly for example underfloor heating plumber commercial boiler commercial repair boiler service and let's compare boiler installation boiler servicing etc etc so it seems like these guys are doing a pretty good job so why is this useful for many reasons first of all it allows you to see if all the pages you have created are being indexed in Google and can be found by potential customers have a look at this dentist website called Bracken Barrett for example it looks very professionally done and has quite a lot of pages and if you click on a procedures section there seems to be a bunch of pages at the bottom about the services that provides such as bridges veneers crowns whitening etc these pages would be perfect for search engine optimizations so let's have a look at what Google has in its index for this dentist go to the Google search type site again call on and then copy the web address of this website there seems to be 77 results altogether or 77 pages when I start inspecting the results all I can see is pages related to their team their team members charity news and some other irrelevant stuff and I cannot find anything related to the services that they provide as indicated on their website this tells me there is a major issue with the way this website is built but more importantly there is no chance in hell these guys would ever be found by anyone searching for teeth whitening or veneers or anything like that since Google doesn't even know this is a service that provide because it can't find the pages I use this site command in Google regularly because it gives me a good idea about the site I am dealing with in a matter of seconds and compare it with the existing competition so I know what I'm up against try this with your own website and make sure all your pages are indexed properly hack number two find out what your competitors have written about a specific keyword you're now able to look at all of your competitors web pages indexed in Google in a few seconds but what if you want to find out what they have written about a keyword that you are targeting let's imagine I'm a plumber and I specialize in underfloor heating and our plumber Eco heat plumbing is one of our competitors so this is very simple once again time to come on the side followed by : in the search box and then the web address of your competitor in this case Eco heat plumbing da cunha UK then simply add a space and type the keyword you are interested in in this instance underfloor heating and then enter Google will show you all the pages from this site that talk about on the flow heating and they are 26 of them although this is interesting Google will include all pages that contains that keyword as part of its results even if it's only mentioned once and 26 pages is still quite a lot to go through what I really want to see is what page is my competitor has created specifically to target that keyword if you are familiar with the basics of search engine optimization and you should be you know that the title of a page is one of the strongest signals to tell search engines what topic a page is about a truly well optimized page will always include the keyword you want to rank for in its title in this example this page was optimized for boiler installation and boiler repair for the area of London called Battersea this means that if I want to find the page my competitor has optimized for a specific keyword I need to find out all the pages they have created which include the keyword in a title let me demonstrate this so it's clear go to the Google search box and once again type sites call on and then the web address of your competitor then add a space and add the following command in title colon followed by your keyword which in our case will be underfloor heating then press return this now shows me all the pages from this website that include the keyword I have specified in a title I am now down to three results why is this useful because it narrows down my research to the exact pages my competitor has built to target this very keyword and in this case if I want to beat them I simply need to replicate at the very least the same type of content or create something even better hack number three identify content gaps if you want to grow your online visibility and you think you've run out of ideas to create new pages one thing you can do is find out if you have any gaps in your content what I mean by that is have your competitors created content that you haven't created yourself which you should consider let's stick with our plumber once more and once again type the same command site : and their web address since these guys have a lot of content around boiler and we feel we are well covered on that front we don't want Google to show us any page that will include the keyword boiler in its title to do this we just need to add the operator sign - followed by in title then colon and the keyword boiler and press Enter Google will display in its result all the pages that do not include the word boiler in their titles why is this useful because now you can quickly scroll through the results to identify if there are any pages they have built which you should build yourself since you are targeting the same market here is an example commercial gas engineering do you have a page on your site that talks about commercial gas engineering is it worth creating one hack number four find some keywords you haven't thought about one way of doing some fast keyword research is to use Google and rely on the auto suggestion the search box will return those suggestions are based on keyword popularity and therefore you should consider adding them to your content strategy when you feel it is relevant although this is great the auto suggestion functionality only completes the query as you are typing along and can you omit a lot of opportunities one way to overcoming this is to use what is known as a wild-card to uncover new options you may not have thought about let alone your competitors let's say you are running a vegan restaurant in New York and instead of searching for a keyword like best vegan restaurant in New York to see what other keywords Google suggests try typing best vegan underscore then New York look at some of the suggestions you are now getting which you wouldn't have got if you had typed your keywords as normal best vegan burger New York based vegan breakfast New York best vegan brunch best vegan bakery why is this useful with this technique you and cover some awesome alternatives and in this case if you are running a vegan restaurant you might want to either adapt your menu to include those items suggested as part of the keywords lists such as burger and breakfast or if you are already serving some of these foods people are searching for then create some dedicated pages on your website hack number five find a level of competition for a keyword not all keywords are worth pursuing the more businesses are competing for a keyword the more difficult it will be to rank but how do you find out let's use one of the keywords or key phrase we have uncovered in our previous hack best vegan burger New York if you type that keyword as it is in Google search box you get about 36 million 700 thousand results which is a crazy number but those results will include every page that Google has found which include either all of those words or just some of them such as New York or burger to truly understand the level of competition for these key phrase you want to see all the pages that include every single word of that key phrase in their title here is how in the Google search box type the following all in title colon followed by best vegan burger New York and look at that this will show you all the results that include all of those words in their page title and they are only 76 results as opposed to 36 million if you run a vegan restaurant in New York I would strongly recommend you create a page for best vegan burger in New York as there is a great chance you would rank for it and attract new customers but we all know that keywords and content are not enough to rank you need links and although external links pointing to your site are the holy grail of all SEO signals you shouldn't underestimate the power of internal linking let's have a look at that in hack number 6 hack number 6 find internal linking opportunities internal links are important for two reasons one they help your visitors navigate through your site and two they will help your SEO efforts as they are part of the SEO signals Google considers to rank your pages adding more internal link will therefore be useful if you don't overdo it and if it makes logical sense of course let's take the example of this handy man's websites called Bob's handyman services who clearly has a lot of services to promote let's say they want to add internal links to push their page furniture assembly in google search type the following command in text : open the quote and type furniture assembly and close the quote followed by space then the usual command site colon and the website of Bobby's handyman services dr. dot uk' then click search what this does in lemons terms is it tells Google to show all pages on this website where the keyword furniture assembly is mentioned anywhere in a copy the quotes around the keywords are telling Google to only bring back pages that would include this exact search term how we typed it and in the same order which is exactly what we need to create a link all I would need to do now is to go through each page within the Google results and find the opportunities where they can turn the text into a link ignore the first page as it is the page where we want to link to and we don't want to link the page to itself but let's have a look at the second page and if you scroll down sure enough there is an opportunity right here furniture assembly and that can be turned into a link hack number 7 find external link opportunities as you know external links pointing to your site are the strongest SEO signals any web site can get to rank higher in search results but there's a local business what you really want are local links but since they are valuable they are also very difficult to get here are 3 ways to source external links opportunities and here is the first one finding local blogs you can reach out to and to do this you can search for something like this your city name plus your industry Plus blog all these words must be put in quotes let me show you an example for a London barber just by scanning the results on the first page of Google I can see some blogging sites I could contact directly look at this one top 40 barber blogs and websites for barbers wouldn't you like to have your site listed on that one and get a link at the same time to uncover other blog options try changing the city name to the postcode or you can also try to use the counting another way of finding external links is finding sponsorship opportunities in your city sponsoring is probably the easiest way to get links obviously we're not talking huge amount of money here we're looking at sponsoring someone like you local football team or other small organizations the sponsorship will results in your business being mentioned on their site along with a link make sure it does before you commit do you uncover potential organizations in need of sponsors here is the command you will need to search for in Google in url call on sponsorship quote city name quote alternatively you can also use in title call on sponsorship quote city name quotes this will bring up all the local websites which mention the word sponsorship in either the URL or the title of the page and the name of your city please remember this is not an exact science and you will get a lot of results out there and you're gonna need to do a little bit of digging around the last way I'm going to show you how to get links is to find relevant directories where you can submit your business details although directories are nowhere near as powerful as there once was they can still move the needle especially if they are local ones or specific to your industry here is a list of commands I recommend you try for industry specific directories and here is a list of command I recommend you try if you are looking for location specific directories give that a go I'm trying to find out some good directories where you can submit your business details to you we're done for today thanks very much for watching if you found this tutorial useful please give me a thumbs up if you're new to my channel don't forget to subscribe and to hit the bell button for any comments or questions post them right below the video and I will respond to them hope to see you soon happy marketing you

Channel: Ranking Academy

Views: 40,283

Keywords: google local, local seo, local seo training, local seo rank, local seo search, local seo 2019, local seo backlinks, local seo keyword research, local seo tutorial, local search rankings, local search seo, local seo search rankings, local seo ranking, seo tutorials free

Id: cRfrck9BZgU

Length: 15min 59sec (959 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 16 2019