5:30 Blogs
8:10 Meta Descriptions
11:35 Meta Keywords
12:55 ALT Tags
15:00 H1 Tags
Hey everyone, this is Joe Burnich with Big West Marketing, empowering small businesses to take their internet marketing to the next level. And what we’re going to talk about in this video are the top five things that Google does not look at when it comes to search engine ranking for your local business. Let’s get started with that right now.
Okay, so the reason that I’m making this video is because there seems like there’s these five things that keep coming up over and over from our clients or from potential leads that come in or people that are just asking questions about what it really takes to rank your local business on the top of Google, on the search engines, so that you get more calls coming in. That’s what we’re talking about right now, and there’s the map section and then there’s the organic section below that. That’s the kind of stuff we’re talking about in this video.
So before we jump in and start talking about the exact things that we know does not work anymore for search engine rankings, I want to talk about why we know this. Why even listen to me versus another SEO expert or an article that you’re reading online. Okay, so here’s how we operate here at Big West.
Number one, we educate ourselves and collaborate with other SEO professionals at what’s called the Local U. So let me pull up this website here. So Local U is the authority when it comes to actual search engine ranking for local business. This is not for big eCommerce websites, it’s not for national business, it’s for local businesses. Businesses that operate in a specific city or service area, which is the people that we work with. We work with local businesses.
So there’s a lot of stuff out there on the internet that you’re going to find that will contradict what I’m going to say. But pay attention. Is it talking about local business or is it just talking about ranking on Google? That’s a big difference. Okay. The stuff that really works for local businesses does not equal the same thing as working for big national website ranking, news sites, e-commerce, all these other types of businesses that are not locally based. They work from a different set of rules when it comes to SEO, so be very careful who you listen to when it comes to this stuff.
Now, a lot of SEO experts out there, they don’t make this distinction either. Okay. They read stuff online, they watch YouTube videos and they don’t pay attention to whether or not it is a locally based piece of advice. Okay? Or a nationally or internationally ranking piece of advice. It’s different. It’s very different. Okay. These people here at Local U, they only focus on the local stuff. We go to these conferences every year and we network in the community and this is where we get our data. Okay. This is where we get the stuff that we know works. These guys are top notch when it comes to this stuff.
Another thing we do is test on our own sites, so we don’t just take everything they say as gospel. We also test with over 300 SEO clients that we’ve worked with over the last 11 years, so we’ve got 11 years experience. We’ve worked with over 300 service area businesses in local communities, local cities to determine what really works and what really does not. Okay.
And on top of that, if that’s not enough, what I urge you to do, if you still don’t believe what I’m saying is to go out there and test for yourself. So you’re going to find all of these free websites that will allow you to put your domain in there, your website address, and they’ll tell you everything that’s wrong with your website, and why it’s not ranking on Google. Okay? And so, and then you take that information and you’re like, “Oh well I need to have these little things on my website, then I’ll start ranking on Google.”
Well, those things are pretty much BS. I do not like these free little website testing. They’re usually trying to sell you something or get you onto their email list. There is an ulterior motive and they’re using stuff that is outdated or is not specific to local business once again.
So how do you know that these little website testers are not valid? Okay. Here’s what I recommend you do. Go find a handful of websites that are ranking very high in big competitive cities like Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, places like that. Okay. Find high ranking websites. Okay. Put them into these free little testers and tell me what you find. What you’re going to find is they are breaking all kinds of rules. They don’t have all that little stuff in line either. So don’t just only test your website, go and test a bunch of high ranking websites, and that’ll tell you that the information that they spit out is pretty much BS.
Okay? So that being said, let’s jump in to the top five things that do not matter for website ranking any longer for local businesses. Okay.
1. Number one, we get a lot of questions about blogs. Do I need a blog on my website? Okay. And a blog is just a page on a website that has articles, that you place articles, ongoing articles all the time on a regular basis in order to inform viewers of your website, visitors to your website of new and exciting news. Okay?
If you’re a local business, you probably don’t have a lot of new and exciting news. We are working with a lot of service-based businesses, roofers, contractors, carpet cleaners, restoration, pressure washers, window cleaners, people like that. Okay? How often do you think they’re going to have breaking news and how often do you think anybody visiting that website really wants to read that stuff? Not often. Okay.
If it’s something you want to do, because you want to like inform your clients, that’s one thing. But if you’re doing it strictly to rank on Google, then you’re wasting a lot of time and possibly money if you’re hiring that out. Okay. So I had somebody, I had a client come to me and say, “Hey, I was told that I have to have a new blog post with 1000 words on my website each and every week in order to rank on Google.” And he had like 40 of these articles that he had written personally, 1000 words each.
And he’s like, “It doesn’t seem like it’s helping with my rankings. Joe, am I wasting my time?” My answer is absolutely yes. Now a couple of years ago, we did a test. We took 30 SEO clients, we put blogs on their websites and we added weekly unique articles to these blogs each and every week.
And because there was a big push that fresh new content and blogs were the new thing when it comes to SEO. And that is true for a news website or a website, an information website that is ranking nationally or internationally that wants to put out information. Okay? It’s not true for local businesses. We did this and we saw absolutely no increase in rankings. So we went back to our old link building techniques and then all of a sudden the website started moving up the search engines again. Okay? So we determined that blogs alone do not contribute to search engine rankings. They do not help you rank higher on Google. Okay?
So if you are worried about doing a blog, if you’re stressing out about whether or not you need to put constant fresh information on your website, the answer is no. You do not need to do that.
Okay? So that’s number one. You don’t need to do a blog for search engine rankings. You can do it if you want to, but it’s not going to help your rankings.
2. Number two, there’s something called meta descriptions, okay? There’s meta information that Google looks at on your website. One of those is called a meta description. Okay. Now, a couple of years ago, I was at one of these conferences and I talked to somebody who I respect about meta descriptions. Are they necessary for SEO any longer? In the past you could stuff keywords in there and Google would look at it and it would help rank your website, years ago.
But, guys Google is getting so intelligent, they’re so smart with their AI, they can read through your website and understand what your website is about. Okay. Without putting a bunch of cheesy keywords in there that don’t make sense, just to rank your website at the top. Okay? So stuffing keywords into a meta-description is not going to help your rankings. Google even came out and said in this article, and this is direct from Google. Okay. And they said, let’s see where is the description section here.
There it is. Even though we… This is coming from Google. Even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for snippets, we show for displaying stuff on Google, we still don’t use the description meta tag in our ranking. It doesn’t help with ranking. Okay. And so what I decided to do was follow the advice of somebody and test it out with our clients and take out that meta-description because Google will go and find its own meta-description based on the quality of content, the words, the text that you have on each page. Google will go and find that for you. Okay.
And they do a really good job. They want it to be something that the searchers can look at and be like, “Oh, that’s what this page is about. That’s interesting information.” Because Google, what they’ll do a lot of times you’ll notice if you are forcing meta descriptions into your website, is they’ll completely ignore it and then they’ll go find something that they think is better.
So the advice I was given several years ago was to just leave it blank, let Google find its own meta-description and then see what happens to the rankings. And We did that. There was absolutely no change in the rankings. There was not an up or down when we took the meta descriptions out, when we tested it with our clients. Okay.
Furthermore, we have seen the ones that had stuffed, not our clients, but other people that we’ve done some testing with. When you started stuffing keywords into the meta description your chancing getting a Google penalty by adding stuff into that meta-description. So my advice is don’t put anything in the meta description, let Google find it. Because if you start putting stuff in there and putting keywords into the meta description, it’s possible that Google is going to look at that and be like, “Oh, they’re playing games. We’re not going to rank this website.”
So it doesn’t help you to put stuff in there, but it can possibly hurt you to put stuff into the meta-description. That’s why we do not do that for our clients. And that’s why I recommend you don’t do that either for your local website rankings. Okay, that was number two.
3. Number three, meta keywords. This is basically the same thing, and this article that I’m going to put in the link, in the description below the video here, I’m going to put a link so you can read this yourself. It says the same things. Okay, so for Google search results currently September 2009 this is a long time ago. The answer is no. Google doesn’t use keywords meta tag in our web search ranking.
Okay, so and it’s the exact same explanation as with the meta-description, you start putting keywords into the keyword tags and you chance getting a Google penalty, you chance Google’s algorithms, Google software formula, to go out there and be like, “Oh, this person’s playing games. They’re putting too much, they’re trying to trick us.” And then you could get a penalty and then you don’t rank at all.
So once again, meta keywords and meta descriptions, but we’re talking about meta keywords don’t help with rankings if you put anything in there, but they can hurt you if you do it incorrectly or if Google reads it incorrectly. Okay? So don’t take a chance of getting that penalty. Just don’t put any meta keywords in there. All right, that was number three.
4. Number four, alt tags. Okay. Alt tags are short for alternative tags. This is something that you’ve put into the pictures, into the images on your website. And what this alternative tag is created for is people that are visually impaired and they have some kind of software that actually read what that picture is about, so you can put stuff out there.
Now we do put alt tags into the photos that we’ve put onto our client’s websites, but we do not do it for Google ranking reasons. Okay? We do it so that if somebody visually impaired comes to the website, they understand what that picture is. Okay? So it does look good to Google when you do that, but once again, if you start stuffing keywords in there, if you start putting little keywords into there, because you could do that in the past and it would actually help your rankings. Years ago you could do that.
Okay, but no longer does it help rankings. It helps visually impaired people that end up on your website. So be very careful how you do this. Make sure it is a true description of your picture. If you’ve got a picture of yourself doing some carpet cleaning say, “John Smith doing carpet cleaning for a client in whatever city.”
That’s an example of an alt tag that would be good. What you don’t want to do is put carpet cleaning, city, name, upholstery, cleaning, city, name, roofing, city, name, know, roofing, Denver, Colorado. You don’t want to do that, okay? You want, because those are just cheesy keyword stuffing techniques that used to work in the past but now can harm you. You want to put an actual true description of that picture on your website and if it is a true picture that you took yourself or had a photographer take, then it’s going to work much better than grabbing some stock picture or stealing some picture off the Google images that you just find online.
You can also get sued by doing that if you’re not careful, okay? So be careful with putting… Do put alt tags, but be careful, do not put keywords stuffed, alt tags, put true descriptions of each photo in there. All right? That was number four.
5. Number five, H1 tags. So when you put your website into these websites scanners that tell you if your SEO is correct or not. A lot of times they’re going to spit out H1 tags. All on H1 tag, yes here, let’s pull up my website here. Pull up my website here, and you’re going to see stuff like these, these big bold titles right here.
These are H tags and there’s different sizes. There’s H1, H2, H3, okay? So there’s another one. Okay, so Google looks at those and says, “Okay, well this is an important piece of this page.” Okay? And basically an H1 tag and an H2 tag are the exact same in Google’s eyes. So a lot of our websites, we put H2 tags. They’re a little bit smaller than H1 tags, but they do the exact same thing as H1 tags.
They just say, “Hey, this is an important thing.” Like right here, right here. This is an H tag. It may be an H1, it may be an H2, I don’t know and I don’t care because Google doesn’t care. Okay? Google wants to see that you’re putting some big, bold headlines in places to emphasize important things that people need to look at. Okay, but they’re not going to rank your website whether or not it’s an H1 or an H2 tag.
So that’s important to know. So that when you look at these Google scans, or if another SEO company is looking at your website and “Oh, you don’t have H1 tags, Google doesn’t like that.” That’s a bunch of BS. Google’s AI is smart enough to know what’s important on your page by seeing big bold stuff. Okay. They don’t need you to put little code in there that’s going to… That goes back to how do we trick Google? How do we trick Google? We use H1 tags, we use alt tags, we stuff keywords into the description, into the meta keywords and all that stuff. Guys, Google is too smart for that stuff.
Okay? This video is made in 2020. Google is too damn smart to be listening to all that BS that used to work. All the tricky stuff that used to work before Google got really smart, used to work. It doesn’t work anymore. It’s not like that, especially for local business. Okay?
So take your chances and start stuffing keywords in there like they used to do five years ago. Hope it can work, hope it doesn’t hurt you, or just take my advice and ignore the blogs and meta-description, meta keywords, the H1 tags, put real stuff in your alt tags for your pictures. Okay? That’s my advice with these five things.
Now, if you’d like to discuss this with me further or somebody on our team, click below, you can have a free 30 minute consultation. Okay? We’d love to talk to you. We’d love to explain this stuff further, but I want to tell you right now, most of your SEO ranking stuff, because you’re like, “Oh well if this tricky stuff doesn’t work anymore, Joe, what does?” Put real stuff on your website, real good content on your website, real pictures on your website, real stuff into Your Google My Business account, and then the rest of it happens off of your website. On other websites with links and citations and just having a good presence on the internet overall.
That’s what’s going to make your website rank. Not all these little tips and tricks that people are still regurgitating in articles and videos online. Okay?
And if you don’t believe me, like I said, go test it for yourself. Go test this stuff. Go test high ranking websites in big competitive cities to see if this stuff is true or not. Don’t just take my word for it. Go test for yourself. Once again, my name is Joe Burnich and you can give us a call at 4064931881 or visit our website at bigwestmarketing.Com. Set up a free consultation and I will talk to you soon.
