The SEO Strategy That Beats Every Big Name in Your Market

Hey everyone, my name is Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care. We have over 150 locations around the world. And today I'm talking about how you can outrank your competition on Google. The beautiful thing about Google is people literally go there looking for your services. So if you can just show up at the top of those rankings, you'll probably get a lot more customers. Not only probably, over 80% of traffic that comes to our websites comes through Google. People are searching for your services and you need to show up first. Now, there's four different ways that we can rank on Google. The very first one at the very top is something called Google Local Services. Google Local Services is a completely different program than Google Ads. Google Local Services, you actually need to sign up for and submit proof of insurance licensing, a background check, reviews, and it's quite the process to be able to accept it. Especially when it comes to licensing. Most states, depending where you live, are going to require something like a pesticide or a contractor license, some other license beyond just your business license. Here's the thing, the harder it is to get in the program, the better. Because usually you're gonna have a fixed number of leads that come through Google Local Services. And if there's a ton of contractors in your area that use it, you're not gonna get a lot of leads. And that's kind of the dumb thing about Google Local Services. You can't just pour more money on it and get more leads. Cause there's only so many leads coming through. Now once you're in this program, you're gonna have a little badge next to your name, it's gonna be green, and it's gonna look like this. We'll call it Google Guarantee. So if you get in the program, not only do they give you leads, usually between like 15 and $30, depending on your home service. I've seen some of them, a lot more like $50 per lead. That's great. But also you're gonna get what's called a Google Guarantee. That little check mark tells the user that up to $100,000, they're actually backing you up. Google's backing you up. But you've gotta get through their program by having all this information submitted to them. Licensing, insurance, et cetera. Google Services. Awesome problem. I can't just dump more money on it if I wanna grow. The second part, if you keep scrolling down on Google, is going to be what most of us think in terms of advertising, and that is Google Ads. These are Google search ads to be More specific, because there are banner ads, there's video ads, et cetera. But this is Google Ads. This is where you're going to be trying to rank for certain keywords if someone searches. And this is going to come above what I call native search, which we'll get to in a moment down here. Native search. Above that on the page is where you actually pay to play. And what's cool about this is if you want to grow quickly, you can spend more money and, and show up on the top of the rankings. The problem with Google search ads is there's only so many people searching for your keywords in your service area. So again, just dumping tons of money on Google Ads. I've seen people spend $50 per day and they're like, it's working great. And then they change it to $100 per day. They don't get any more leads. In fact, they actually just increase their cost per click. And. And they don't make any more money because they simply are dumping more and more dollars on a finite number of people that are searching for that keyword. You're paying to be at the very top of all the search results, right underneath Google Local Services. The next one is super important, and that is your Google listing. This is still above native search. And really what this is actually is part of Maps. Back in the day, they used to have Google business listings totally separate from Maps. Now your Google listing is on the map. So there's several things that are really important if you want to outrank your competition, because especially if you're new, you're like, I've only been in business for six years. How in the world am I going to compete against all these people that have been around for many years? Well, we can get in Google Local Services, we can pay to play and get Google Ads, or we can really optimize our Google listing and. And our Maps listing, same thing. Now, how can you optimize it? Remember that Google is trying to aggregate data. So I want to give it lots of data, my hours of operation, exactly what services I offer. I'm going to also make sure that I have my service area included on my listing. I'm going to give it all the information in terms of images consistently. Three times a week, we post images to our Google listing to make sure that we're giving it lots of information and data, because that's what Google loves. But the thing that a lot of people miss out on is the fact that your Google listing is attached to Google Maps and having a verified address on your Google listing will immediately catapult you being shown on the map. And as you can see, boom, right here, the Bellingham shop shows up in the dead heart center of the map. And it's the only one because most of our competition doesn't have a verified address. They just have a service area. And. And if you have a verified address, it's going to be a pain in the butt to verify. A lot of times Google's going to ask you to have a video and have some signage, and it's not easy necessarily to verify. It's a bit of a pain in the butt. But if you can verify your Google listing and the address on your maps, you are set up massively to be able to rank better on the Google listings that are shown. They usually only show three or four. And so if you can show up there, that's fantastic. Now I'm going to show number five in just a minute because it's a really kicker. It's awesome. But before we do that, let's talk about number four. Number four is the golden goose, because the thing that's beautiful about native search is this is usually where experienced Google users, they're going to go there first. For example, if I search on Google, I kind of scroll past all the ads and I want to actually see the ones that are natively ranking. That's native rank rank. That's the ones I'm usually trying to go for. And so you do want to be here, because guess what? It costs you absolutely nothing to be here. I had to pay for Google local services. I had to pay for Google search ads. I had to verify my stuff and all this goodness. And you can even kind of put Google Ads in your listing. But the native rank is where you really want to be at. And if you're not in the first one or two or three spots, you're probably not going to get seen. If you're on the second page of Google on native rank, you will never be seen. All good businesses go to die on the second page of Google because no one ever goes there. And so 97% of searches come from the first page, and the vast majority of those come from the first three results on native rankings. So I want to get there, but this could take time. Usually on lawncarewebdesign.com or homeservicewebdesign.com it can take the average company about two to six months to rank well on number four, which is native rank. This has a lot of other factors having to do with building your site. It's not as easy just setting something up on Google local services or making an ad or optimizing your Google listing. This one takes a lot of time because you're going to have to build up the credibility in the mind of Google and in the algorithm that you actually have a great website. And there's a lot more that goes into it. Like how fast does your page load? Do you have a mobile responsive website? So when someone pulls it up on a mobile device, their cell phone, does it look good or is it just super janky and have to zoom way in? Also on native rank, keywords are important. What's in your title? Do you actually make it clear when someone shows up at your website what service areas, cities and zip codes you're actually serving? These are the type of things that you will rank better in. Because when Google shows up, a lot of times it's someone in their area typing in landscaper near me or landscaper in Bellingham and you got to show up. And Google needs to very quickly because it's getting millions of websites, needs to know what service area you're actually serving and what services you offer. So that's going to come down to your web designer. Many times now the cheat code on all of this comes down to this beautiful thing called Google Reviews. And the reason I love this one so much is it doesn't cost you anything. And literally in a matter of a few days, you can get Google Reviews that will help you rank well on Google. I have seen websites that don't have a great design, haven't been around for years, don't if you don't have multiple locations, which really helps promote the algorithm for Google because it gives you domain authority. I've seen sites that don't have those things that are only one or two months old, but because they have 50, 100 Google reviews, they start to rank well on Google listings, they start to rank well natively. And that's all free. You can go get Google reviews today, go to your Google listing, get the little code there, text to all your past customers, friends, family. Don't tell your friends and family to lie and say you do a great job. Tell them to review you as the owner, whether or not you're honest, you're dependable, things like that. But if you get Google Reviews, I guarantee you it's gonna be like fuel on the fire of all of these. You'll rank way better in all these categories. Cause Google will trust you. Think about it from Google's perspective. If they're gonna refer you as the user searching something on Google. They're going to go to the place that everyone is talking about and everyone's already been to and saying positive things. And so getting Google reviews gives you a lot of authority, authority in the mind of Google, and it's going to really outrank a lot of other businesses that are competing with you. Use these five things to get more customers and outrank your competition on Google. And also, if you're spending a bunch of money on Facebook ads and Google Ads and you feel like it's being wasted, watch this video here, because I'll tell you exactly why you're probably marketing to the wrong customers.