Transcripts
Hello, welcome to the Close The Loop podcast.
Kevin Dieny:I'm here with a very special guest today, and we're going to be discussing
Kevin Dieny:NAP consistency, and how it relates to SEO, your organic reach, your
Kevin Dieny:organic ability to acquire new visitors and maybe new future consumers to
Kevin Dieny:your business through your website.
Kevin Dieny:So a reason that we wanted to jump into this topic.
Kevin Dieny:Is that it comes up so much.
Kevin Dieny:And I was told this is something really important that people are running into a
lot, which is:is my name, address, phone.
lot, which is:The acronym of NAP is my business listing is my business
lot, which is:information consistent out there.
lot, which is:And is that impacted by things like dynamic number insertion is
lot, which is:that impacted by inconsistency?
lot, which is:It's hard to keep your business consistent everywhere.
lot, which is:A business is trying to establish itself.
lot, which is:In the marketplace, it's trying to establish itself online.
lot, which is:It wants visitors online, who type in their name or type in things
lot, which is:that are related to them to be able to find their business, their
lot, which is:services, their products, so they can acquire those future customers.
lot, which is:That's a huge part of the business.
lot, which is:A lot of early stage businesses are spending a lot of money in
lot, which is:advertising, but eventually that goal usually is, oh man, I hope that
lot, which is:they start coming in organically.
lot, which is:I hope that the referral side, I hope that our presence in the marketplace
lot, which is:establishes ourselves well enough that the awareness of our business expands and
lot, which is:starts bringing in people organically.
lot, which is:So there's this shift toward more online, I think in every industry.
lot, which is:And that is driving this force of, we have to take care of our SEO,
lot, which is:but SEO is not really a quick short term, just do a few things and
lot, which is:forget about it kind of scenario.
lot, which is:To help us really dive into this topic with a lot of expertise, our
lot, which is:special guest is Ryan Lawrence Hill.
lot, which is:He is the head of lead generation and conversion at Huckabuy.
lot, which is:Ryan handles all online marketing channels, lead generation, and
lot, which is:the converting of those leads.
lot, which is:He has been in digital marketing, primarily SEO for over 15 years.
lot, which is:So he brings a lot of experience here.
lot, which is:Aside from hunting, fishing, and barbecuing, helping small businesses
lot, which is:outrank the big box stores and online search is his passion.
lot, which is:So you definitely want to pay attention to everything he's got to share here today.
lot, which is:He's the father of five, also known as a basketball team.
lot, which is:He enjoys leatherwork, harassing his kids, and building the occasional massive Lego
lot, which is:set, which I was really impressed by.
lot, which is:So welcome, Ryan!
Ryan Hill:Thank you.
Ryan Hill:Thank you for having me.
Kevin Dieny:So we're talking again about nap consistency and how it impacts SEO.
Kevin Dieny:So why is it difficult for business to keep themselves consistent in listings.
Kevin Dieny:Listings, as in Google My Business, yellow pages, things
Kevin Dieny:like that, or offline listings.
Kevin Dieny:Why is it so difficult for businesses to keep themselves consistent in regards to
Kevin Dieny:their name, address, phone everywhere?
Ryan Hill:A lot of that has to do with, specifically those different directories
Ryan Hill:and the way they kind of format their addresses or based off of user input.
Ryan Hill:So if you're talking about, you know, you've managed your Google, your
Ryan Hill:Google My Business listing, that's what they call it now, my business.
Ryan Hill:Local business, but it's changed so many times in the last 10, 15 years.
Ryan Hill:It could be a small variation like road spelled out or the abbreviation of RD.
Ryan Hill:And so it's really tough over these hundreds of different directories that
Ryan Hill:Google pulls all this information from to keep that consistent and the spelling,
Ryan Hill:or, you know, a customer might say, well, this is their phone number instead.
Ryan Hill:There's some nasty business practices that go, that go into it with, uh,
Ryan Hill:we won't get into what those are.
Ryan Hill:But you know, competing businesses and stuff, they can make suggestions
Ryan Hill:to these different directories.
Ryan Hill:So it's really difficult to analyze and keep a really consistent NAP
Ryan Hill:profile across all of these just simply because of those factors.
Kevin Dieny:To touch on the SEO aspect, I think a lot of businesses, or maybe
Kevin Dieny:a lot of business owners, marketers are like, man, SEO is such a black box.
Kevin Dieny:I kind of know why, but I was curious if you could expand on why isn't the world of
Kevin Dieny:SEO and how it works and stuff like that.
Kevin Dieny:Why isn't it just, why doesn't everybody know how the algorithm
Kevin Dieny:or how the search engines work?
Kevin Dieny:Why is that something that everyone has struggles with to figure out?
Kevin Dieny:And everyone's got all these little, crystal ball methods
Kevin Dieny:of figuring all this out.
Ryan Hill:You're not wrong.
Ryan Hill:It's kind of a crystal ball method in that Google keeps that algorithm and
Ryan Hill:other search engines as well, but when we primarily talk about search engines,
Ryan Hill:we're of course talking about Google.
Ryan Hill:It's really difficult to figure out what that algorithm is.
Ryan Hill:A lot of work, actually, a lot of physical labor, a lot of time,
Ryan Hill:goes into proper search engine optimization and anyone that you talk.
Ryan Hill:Whether it's an agency or a freelancer, they're all going to have, like you
Ryan Hill:said, that crystal ball that they look into and they've they say,
Ryan Hill:well, okay, this has worked for me.
Ryan Hill:So I've cracked the Google algorithm.
Ryan Hill:Yeah, I can't tell you how many times, like I'll be on Facebook
Ryan Hill:or Instagram and be like, Hey, ex-Google employees spills the beans.
Ryan Hill:Um, something like that.
Ryan Hill:It's not true.
Ryan Hill:Those are just, those are hooks to get you to buy what they're doing.
Ryan Hill:And, the other thing that makes it difficult too, is here you have
Ryan Hill:small to medium business owners where that time intensive work of
Ryan Hill:SEO and getting, your link structure, or your content on your website or
Ryan Hill:back links, or even nap consistency.
Ryan Hill:Those can get really, really pricey.
Ryan Hill:I think I was looking at it a couple of weeks ago and the
Ryan Hill:average cost for a freelance SEO.
Ryan Hill:Is somewhere between $100 and $150 an hour, I'm like, okay, are we lawyers?
Ryan Hill:So, so yeah, there's a stigma and, and, you know, honestly, there have been
Ryan Hill:SEOs in the past and agencies that have really given analysts and optimizers
Ryan Hill:a bad rap because they'll charge thousands of dollars a month for all
Ryan Hill:this work, not get any results from it.
Ryan Hill:And still expect to be paid because they just simply did the work.
Ryan Hill:And the thing that hooked that, that small to medium business owner into,
Ryan Hill:to really fork out money that could go elsewhere, was that promise of,
Ryan Hill:"Hey, I can generate traffic for you.
Ryan Hill:I can get you out ranking Walmart or Home Depot!"
Ryan Hill:It's been tough to overcome that.
Ryan Hill:There's a lot of people out there that, that kind of give it a bad reputation.
Kevin Dieny:Anytime you're like, okay, I need this.
Kevin Dieny:I need to either hire this.
Kevin Dieny:I need to freelance this.
Kevin Dieny:I need to outsource this.
Kevin Dieny:It's like, okay, who can I trust?
Kevin Dieny:SEO changes and it makes it difficult for even the people
Kevin Dieny:in the industry to keep up on.
Kevin Dieny:I know that there are big updates that come out and Google
Kevin Dieny:tries to prepare everyone.
Kevin Dieny:And so it may change the things that have worked before.
Kevin Dieny:Exactly because maybe some, the weightings or maybe something in it has changed.
Kevin Dieny:So, some of the things you have mentioned, which I was hoping to highlight a little
Kevin Dieny:bit was you mentioned link building, you mentioned SEO has a really big emphasis
Kevin Dieny:on keywords, and there's the name, address, phone consistency, or even how
Kevin Dieny:your brand logo looks your images look, your website looks, how fast it is.
Kevin Dieny:There's a lot of components there.
Kevin Dieny:There's just so much to do.
Kevin Dieny:How important is it that they try to stay on top of, let's say their
Kevin Dieny:nap consistency, their SEO, their keywords, their logos, and their
Kevin Dieny:site speed, their related content.
Kevin Dieny:They have the structured content that the whole package of things.
Kevin Dieny:How important is it that they keep on top of that?
Ryan Hill:It's key because if you think of when you're a small
Ryan Hill:to medium business owner, there's always going to be competition
Ryan Hill:that's going to be pushing their SEO.
Ryan Hill:You could do SEO for six months and you could rank in the top keywords.
Ryan Hill:A perfect example is my company Huckabuy.
Ryan Hill:In December we were ranking for Google algorithm update.
Ryan Hill:We actually had the top direct answer box and it was kind of an experiment
Ryan Hill:because we knew it would happen.
Ryan Hill:But we just wanted to prove it over time, we didn't do anything with it,
Ryan Hill:we didn't update the page or anything and sure enough, it started crawling
Ryan Hill:down and it's not that it was crawling down it's that other businesses
Ryan Hill:were pushing so hard to leapfrog us.
Ryan Hill:And then, obviously when they go up, then they push us the other rankings down.
Ryan Hill:It's super important that you have, if you have the ability to either do it yourself,
Ryan Hill:if you're that business owner that says, Hey, yeah, I can dive into this.
Ryan Hill:There's a lot of training courses out there for, beginner SEO stuff like that.
Ryan Hill:There's a lot of plugins for different types of WordPress.
Ryan Hill:That'll help out with that.
Ryan Hill:My company Huckabuy, we actually do really specific software in regards,
Ryan Hill:like you mentioned, the structured data, website speed, but really where they're
Ryan Hill:going to benefit and where you're going to benefit is if you have someone that's
Ryan Hill:experienced in SEO for a long time.
Ryan Hill:Usually that person is familiar with, foreseeing the future
Ryan Hill:and how that comes out.
Ryan Hill:So with the Google update that recently happened in June the core
Ryan Hill:web vitals update, they announced that a year before, And there were
Ryan Hill:SEO's out there in the industry.
Ryan Hill:It's like, okay, something big is going to happen.
Ryan Hill:Google's going to, so we kind of foresee that coming simply
Ryan Hill:because we're used to it.
Ryan Hill:We know the times that Google is going to roll out these new algorithms.
Ryan Hill:They have their own schedule, but yeah, I mean to go back to your
Ryan Hill:original question, how important is it?
Ryan Hill:I'm not going to put an importance on one specific thing until we
Ryan Hill:get later on into the podcast.
Ryan Hill:But if you have an overall strategy for SEO, it's hugely
Ryan Hill:important to your online presence.
Kevin Dieny:Right.
Kevin Dieny:That's a really good answer.
Kevin Dieny:I wouldn't know.
Kevin Dieny:It's one of those things where I'm like, okay, well, if I have all these
Kevin Dieny:things to do, which one do I prioritize?
Kevin Dieny:And I know that they are all sort of important, and I know that some of them
Kevin Dieny:are easier and harder for someone to do.
Kevin Dieny:Let's say who doesn't really like maybe their website's been handed to them
Kevin Dieny:from an agency or from a developer.
Kevin Dieny:Maybe they can ask their developer to do some things.
Kevin Dieny:There's a lot there.
Kevin Dieny:So the next thing I want to go into is the customer experience side.
Kevin Dieny:So, to me, this is my opinion.
Kevin Dieny:I don't know how it sits is a lot of what's driving SEO changes is the
Kevin Dieny:customer experience at the end of the day.
Kevin Dieny:Google or the algorithms are trying to find a way to improve the experience
Kevin Dieny:from someone searching and then landing on the place that they intended
Kevin Dieny:or the best place for them to go.
Kevin Dieny:They're not psychic, they're not perfect, and the algorithms are amazing.
Kevin Dieny:But, uh, from the business side perspective, to me, a lot of what was
Kevin Dieny:behind all this technical components of SEO is trying to improve that
Kevin Dieny:experience when someone hits your page.
Kevin Dieny:And by experience, I mean, You're reducing that friction.
Kevin Dieny:You're trying to get out of the way.
Kevin Dieny:You're trying to make sure they get the page or the place that they
Kevin Dieny:really wanted and intended to go.
Kevin Dieny:If they came to for this one thing and you give them something
Kevin Dieny:else, like a bait and switch.
Kevin Dieny:Bad idea.
Kevin Dieny:If Google sees things like the bounce rate is high or, you know, no scrolls
Kevin Dieny:happening or they could, if they could see like everything about what's happening,
Kevin Dieny:if they could see the expression on the person's face, or they could hear it
Kevin Dieny:through the microphone on your phone first and going, oh, this isn't what I wanted.
Kevin Dieny:They would kill for that.
Kevin Dieny:And so I've looked at a lot of SEO at the end of the day, I'm usually
Kevin Dieny:like, there's a lot going on here, but let me try to simplify this.
Kevin Dieny:Is this better for the end user in the end?
Kevin Dieny:And that's a lot of what I, I get to.
Kevin Dieny:Cause if I put all these, if I jam pack my article with keywords, but you know,
Kevin Dieny:it's small font or I can't read it, or if the it's all squished together or
Kevin Dieny:something's off about it on the page, all these things pop up and get in my way.
Kevin Dieny:The experience there is just not going to be ideal.
Kevin Dieny:So if you could talk a little bit about how SEO and customer
Kevin Dieny:experience, fold together?
Ryan Hill:Yeah, absolutely.
Ryan Hill:And I'm glad you brought that up too, because one of the things that I've been
Ryan Hill:saying for years, and this is going to be, this is going to be a tough pill
Ryan Hill:to swallow for the business owners is that Google actually does not, they
Ryan Hill:don't give a crap about your business.
Ryan Hill:They don't give a crap about your website.
Ryan Hill:They just don't care.
Ryan Hill:Google takes the approach of, we care about our user.
Ryan Hill:We care about giving the user what they want.
Ryan Hill:So Kevin, like you said, it's how fast is your website load?
Ryan Hill:If Google goes in and sees that, Hey, you're ranking for a page about, I
Ryan Hill:don't know, cigar boxes and you click on that link and it goes to wine sellers.
Ryan Hill:Well, Google sees that too.
Ryan Hill:So they've programmed their bots to act, to emulate, how a human would
Ryan Hill:interact with your website and score your website based off of that.
Ryan Hill:So thinking about the fact that Google doesn't care about your website, if you
Ryan Hill:care, how your users interact with your website, you're on the right track.
Ryan Hill:That's the first, that's really the first step.
Ryan Hill:Having loads and loads of content that is keyword stuffed.
Ryan Hill:Okay.
Ryan Hill:Well, yeah.
Ryan Hill:Google does need to come in and understand what your websites about,
Ryan Hill:but that's just one small thing.
Ryan Hill:If it's too confusing, if it's overdone, if the font is too
Ryan Hill:small, I mean, we're going back to, we're going back 10, 15 years ago.
Ryan Hill:Um, there was a tactic, and it was called ghosting where we would keyword
Ryan Hill:stuff the background of a website and then put it as the same color.
Ryan Hill:So it would be white keywords against a white background.
Ryan Hill:So Google's bots would go in and be like, holy cow, look at all this content.
Ryan Hill:Now they've gotten smart and they realized that, that's a black hat tactic
Ryan Hill:of manipulating the Google bots is where, okay, there's all this content
Ryan Hill:there, but the user can't see it.
Ryan Hill:You really, really gotta be careful with that.
Ryan Hill:But I think the biggest point to take away is that yeah.
Ryan Hill:Care about how your user interacts with your website.
Ryan Hill:Like you brought up bounce rate.
Ryan Hill:Why are they bouncing?
Ryan Hill:Why are they going to your website?
Ryan Hill:And then leaving soon without scrolling, without clicking.
Ryan Hill:And that's where you need that SEO guy to go in and analyze.
Ryan Hill:How long are they there before they leave?
Ryan Hill:Are they reading, what information do you have above the fold?
Ryan Hill:There's so many different aspects of it.
Ryan Hill:And then we get into like video and the interaction of
Ryan Hill:video and how well that works.
Ryan Hill:Whether it's on YouTube or whether it's on your website.
Ryan Hill:If you have a product that, you're selling and you have a video of there, chances are
Ryan Hill:you're going to get more video views than people actually reading the description
Ryan Hill:of the product, because I don't know, people are lazy, they don't want to read.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah.
Kevin Dieny:So why is it important then?
Kevin Dieny:You hit on it really well.
Kevin Dieny:Why it's important for, search engines to understand the business
Kevin Dieny:well, to see what's happening on the website to see consumers hitting the
Kevin Dieny:website or having a good experience.
Kevin Dieny:But maybe from like the, specifically from the consumer side or the visitor side to
Kevin Dieny:a business's page, why does it matter that that business do some of the SEO elements?
Kevin Dieny:And how does it help the end user if a business does have NAP consistency,
Kevin Dieny:meaning their name, the address, the phone is consistent and it's
Kevin Dieny:spelled right and it's prominent or is featured as part of that?
Ryan Hill:Any time you're looking at capturing traffic from another
Ryan Hill:website and bringing them to yours, that's where it gets really, really
Ryan Hill:important for that consistency.
Ryan Hill:Just so there's less confusion on the customer end and it improves the user
Ryan Hill:experience when they get to your website.
Ryan Hill:Okay.
Ryan Hill:Yeah, this is exactly the company that I was looking for and NAP consistency
Ryan Hill:actually, Kevin, you brought this up before, even a logo, if your logo
Ryan Hill:is different on another website and they're like, this is not the company
Ryan Hill:that I wanted to interact with.
Ryan Hill:And so they'll just bounce right out.
Kevin Dieny:One thing that you have mentioned, there's a lot of listings.
Kevin Dieny:You mentioned hundreds and I know that there's probably maybe even more, but
Kevin Dieny:for a business in a specific industry or a little more niche, are there listings
Kevin Dieny:that are important from a backlink perspective, or even just from authority
Kevin Dieny:or from the idea that these listings are better for certain business types?
Kevin Dieny:Like maybe the medical industry or plumbers or roofers.
Kevin Dieny:Are there some industry listing services or are generic ones like Google My
Kevin Dieny:Business that are really important that some businesses may be like,
Kevin Dieny:I don't know if I could do 300, but maybe if I can pick the top, I don't
Kevin Dieny:know, 20 or something, I'll just try to stay consistent in the top ones.
Kevin Dieny:Is that an okay strategy?
Ryan Hill:Yeah, yeah, it is.
Ryan Hill:You're not going to get as much benefit out of that strategy, but definitely your
Ryan Hill:Google listing, simply because someone could do a voice search for your company.
Ryan Hill:And if your Google listing isn't properly filled out, it's going
Ryan Hill:to give them wrong information.
Ryan Hill:Or navigating to that specific location.
Ryan Hill:Obviously Google maps is the most widely used...
Ryan Hill:platform.
Ryan Hill:That's, that's the word I was looking for.
Ryan Hill:When you're talking about bringing customers to your physical business,
Ryan Hill:even your website as well, but for local businesses, like you said,
Ryan Hill:plumbers, or doctor's offices, definitely your Google profile.
Ryan Hill:There are some other top ones that different other directories
Ryan Hill:will pull information from.
Ryan Hill:So like yellow pages, Yelp is a big one.
Ryan Hill:Angie's list, which is now Angie.
Ryan Hill:And there's a lot of them too, that you have to pay to be on.
Ryan Hill:So that's one of the things that you'll want to look for as well.
Ryan Hill:Maybe it's a less work to get into these free ones, like Google,
Ryan Hill:like yellow pages or super pages.
Ryan Hill:Whereas, as a business you have to pay to be on platforms like
Ryan Hill:Angie's list, the user it's free, but the business you have to pay on.
Ryan Hill:It might be different anyway, there's, there's charges to some of them.
Ryan Hill:So you'll want to take that into consideration and another thing
Ryan Hill:too, there are companies out there that do NAP syndication.
Ryan Hill:And when I say NAP syndication, you can hire a company that will go out and
Ryan Hill:submit your business information to all these directories for just a monthly fee.
Ryan Hill:So that's, that's another option that you have as well.
Kevin Dieny:Would you place PR, I don't know, companies that rolled
Kevin Dieny:their citations or roll the blasts out around and social media possibly
Kevin Dieny:in the same category as listings, or is that a totally different beast?
Ryan Hill:it depends on kind of the platform, but when you have a business,
Ryan Hill:that's on say like Facebook, you can have a business page on Facebook that
Ryan Hill:has the address and phone number.
Ryan Hill:So yeah, that falls into, like you said, the citation and to those
Ryan Hill:listening, a citation is that signal of the name, address, and phone
Ryan Hill:number, that business information that's coming from another directory.
Ryan Hill:A lot like a back link, but we in the industry called them citations.
Ryan Hill:You'll get a citation from Facebook.
Ryan Hill:It's not going to be social.
Ryan Hill:It'll be a business because Google will pick up on that.
Ryan Hill:Same with other platforms like LinkedIn.
Ryan Hill:Now you're posting on those and you get an interaction from a
Ryan Hill:post and it goes to your website.
Ryan Hill:Okay.
Ryan Hill:Yeah, that's kind of a social, you can even get an easy citation from YouTube
Ryan Hill:and that's like the biggest domain authority citation that you can get.
Ryan Hill:If you just put your business name, address, and phone number in your
Ryan Hill:company description on YouTube.
Ryan Hill:So super easy to get that one.
Ryan Hill:And those are free.
Ryan Hill:So I'm not sure if that answered your question or not actually....
Kevin Dieny:No, it does because I think the idea that, okay, I have to
Kevin Dieny:manage my listings could feel a little bit like this is a daunting task.
Kevin Dieny:And like you said, there are services that can help you.
Kevin Dieny:I know we use a service that, that we put in our information in one
Kevin Dieny:place and it goes and make sure it's updated in all these other sources.
Kevin Dieny:And it tells us like, okay, you're updated in hundreds of these places with this.
Kevin Dieny:So you update it once and then it goes out to everywhere and those things are paid.
Kevin Dieny:And it could take maybe a couple of days to update it at the beginning.
Kevin Dieny:But is it something that has to be watched every week, every
Kevin Dieny:day, every month, every year?
Kevin Dieny:How often do you think something like this would have to be updated
Kevin Dieny:for a business or is it just every time they're like, you know what?
Kevin Dieny:We changed our logo.
Kevin Dieny:We got to go through and update all our things.
Kevin Dieny:How, how much of a burden?
Ryan Hill:That's the, that's the daunting task.
Ryan Hill:Yeah.
Ryan Hill:Honestly I would suggest anywhere from a month to a quarter, just go in and review
Ryan Hill:what your business shows up on, where it shows up, the accuracy of the information.
Ryan Hill:And once again, like you said, Kevin, a lot of companies will
Ryan Hill:hire other companies to do that.
Ryan Hill:Like Localeze is the name of a company and I'm not trying
Ryan Hill:to name drop here or anything.
Ryan Hill:These are just companies that I know.
Ryan Hill:There's another company out there, site citation builder pro.
Ryan Hill:I've known personally those guys for years.
Ryan Hill:And the thing that you really want to be careful of too, is that when you
Ryan Hill:sign up for those services, yes, they'll get your name into those directories.
Ryan Hill:However, when you stop paying for it, then your name's going to be removed
Ryan Hill:or your information is going to be removed or it's going to be changed.
Ryan Hill:I've seen some dirty tactics with some companies it's pretty nasty.
Kevin Dieny:Wow.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, I didn't think about that aspect of it.
Kevin Dieny:They can help get it started, it keeps them around, but
Kevin Dieny:not for the right reasons.
Kevin Dieny:Like, oh man, I'm afraid to cancel it now.
Kevin Dieny:And that's never a really good thing.
Kevin Dieny:So let's pivot again a little bit toward the dynamic elements.
Kevin Dieny:Something that I remember from years ago, anytime someone ends up on your
Kevin Dieny:webpage and you change the page in any way, it was looked at as a bad idea,
Kevin Dieny:a bad thing, Google doesn't want you to, okay, I'll come here, and then all
Kevin Dieny:of a sudden, the whole page changes.
Kevin Dieny:Cause they're trying to get you to click on an ad or something or trying
Kevin Dieny:to get you to go somewhere deeper in the site or they cover the page and links.
Kevin Dieny:I know in the past dynamically altering a page in any way was seen as a bad idea.
Kevin Dieny:So is there anything you'd want to tell us or share about that?
Ryan Hill:Yeah.
Ryan Hill:Yeah.
Ryan Hill:Actually Google's come out in the last couple of years and
Ryan Hill:depending on how you dynamically change that page is good or bad.
Ryan Hill:So in the aspect of what you were saying, if I'm coming to once again,
Ryan Hill:eluding to the, the cigar box, but going to a wine cellar example, that's bad.
Ryan Hill:If you're going to a page and all of a sudden you want to see these and
Ryan Hill:then you see something different, Google's going to penalize you for that.
Ryan Hill:They'll penalize you for it.
Ryan Hill:Now, it might not be a manual action, but their bots will go in and be
Ryan Hill:like, eh, this is kind of shady.
Ryan Hill:Actually, this is a good segue into dynamic number insertion or what
Ryan Hill:we're going to refer to as DNI.
Ryan Hill:There's also something called dynamic rendering.
Ryan Hill:This is something my company specializes in where it takes your website.
Ryan Hill:It serves that form of your website into, in flat HTML.
Ryan Hill:The Google bots come in, they see all your content.
Ryan Hill:They get a deeper crawl because a lot of websites right now are JavaScript heavy.
Ryan Hill:And that JavaScript actually interferes with the Google HTML bot.
Ryan Hill:It takes a lot more resources.
Ryan Hill:And so Google says, okay, we have to use a rendering bot, we are
Ryan Hill:only able to crawl this much.
Ryan Hill:That's what we call Google's crawl budget.
Ryan Hill:So when you're able to give them all this content, now we consider that
Ryan Hill:dynamic rendering because you're serving a version of your website to
Ryan Hill:Google that the customer doesn't see.
Ryan Hill:However, that version is exactly the same version that a customer would.
Ryan Hill:So there's no changes on the website or anything like that.
Ryan Hill:Now, when you get into dynamically changing content, say like phone
Ryan Hill:numbers, that's a little bit different.
Ryan Hill:Because you're talking about a customer seeing, they might be coming from a
Ryan Hill:Google ad and then go to your website.
Ryan Hill:And the phone number of up in the header changes from your actual phone
Ryan Hill:number to one that you want to be able to track calls from Google ads.
Ryan Hill:So that's different than dynamic rendering.
Ryan Hill:That's just dynamically changing a little tiny piece and Google has a baseline
Ryan Hill:of what percentage of your content changes, where it's acceptable or not?
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, that's interesting.
Kevin Dieny:When we ran into this, we have a tool for dynamic number insertion,
Kevin Dieny:and the whole purpose of it is when people come to the website, we
Kevin Dieny:serve them a unique phone number.
Kevin Dieny:And that way we know, this is where they've come from, maybe
Kevin Dieny:an ad, a campaign, any sort of channel, anything like that.
Kevin Dieny:And by giving them a unique phone number, when they make the phone call, we're
Kevin Dieny:able to connect like the two spheres.
Kevin Dieny:The first sphere, this is all the information we have when
Kevin Dieny:they came on the website.
Kevin Dieny:And then the second sphere is everything that took place in that phone call.
Kevin Dieny:It was mentioned in a previous episode, we drove a ton of traffic to our website,
Kevin Dieny:which ended up as a ton of phone calls.
Kevin Dieny:And they're all asking for trampolines and our SDRs on our front line.
Kevin Dieny:We're like, well, we don't even sell trampolines.
Kevin Dieny:And it was because there was a keyword that was triggering off
Kevin Dieny:our ads that was a broad keyword.
Kevin Dieny:So when it got 'synonymed' with Google, which drove a bunch of traffic or
Kevin Dieny:people looking to buy trampolines, and we were bidding at a point where
Kevin Dieny:we were crushing it and getting tons of trampoline calls, but it just
Kevin Dieny:wasn't driving the right kind of call.
Kevin Dieny:So we use that information to change our keywords, change our ads, and
Kevin Dieny:ultimately drive people who were interested in what we did to our website.
Kevin Dieny:The purpose of DNI, at least the way we push it is yes, it's attribution
Kevin Dieny:for your phone calls, but it's also going to improve the kinds of people
Kevin Dieny:you want to bring to your website.
Kevin Dieny:People who are interested in calling, people who are interested in having
Kevin Dieny:that more intimate experience with the business, by picking up the phone.
Kevin Dieny:Or, for tracking web forms or chats or people who are in that lower
Kevin Dieny:funnel, ready to convert stage and understanding them better.
Kevin Dieny:And that helps us understand the middle and the top of the funnel and helps us
Kevin Dieny:drive better things all down the road, but there is a dynamic component to it.
Kevin Dieny:And the phone number is swapping out.
Kevin Dieny:And when we ran into people asking us, well, if you're swapping the
Kevin Dieny:phone, the P and the NAP consistency, like, are we losing a third?
Kevin Dieny:Or what impact is that having?
Kevin Dieny:We're working so hard on our SEO and our organic presence is
Kevin Dieny:this completely sidelining us?
Kevin Dieny:And we were like, well, we don't know the crystal ball.
Kevin Dieny:We don't know how Google is looking at this.
Kevin Dieny:And so we made a change of, any time a crawler, a bot, just like you mentioned
Kevin Dieny:with your dynamic website replacement and flattening tool, anytime the crawler
Kevin Dieny:hits the site, we don't touch the number.
Kevin Dieny:But anytime it's a consumer from maybe even specific sources or channels
Kevin Dieny:or parameter based visits, we will swap that number and we have measured
Kevin Dieny:this and tracked this and found we're not having any negative....
Kevin Dieny:in fact, it could be having a positive change.
Kevin Dieny:But it's one of those things where it's like, oh man, this is
Kevin Dieny:really hard to measure and track because we're not the end user.
Kevin Dieny:So is there anything you wanted to add about the DNI element there?
Ryan Hill:Yeah, actually, I do.
Ryan Hill:Cause you bring up a good point when Google comes into to scan your website.
Ryan Hill:DNI is actually a process of adding a JavaScript on there and depending
Ryan Hill:on where the source is coming from with that user, it switches out
Ryan Hill:to that specific source number.
Ryan Hill:That's tied to it in say like your system, but when Google comes
Ryan Hill:in, they do see that Javascript.
Ryan Hill:But they also see the number that's that your actual phone number that's still
Ryan Hill:coded into your website, just because that JavaScript masks, that phone number
Ryan Hill:with another one for the user doesn't mean that Google isn't reading it doesn't
Ryan Hill:mean that that nap consistency is gone because that phone number is still
Ryan Hill:embedded in the code of your website.
Ryan Hill:So you're not losing anything there.
Ryan Hill:And I really like how you touched on the fact that you were able to
Ryan Hill:isolate a problem with your paid channel based off of the phone
Ryan Hill:number that was attached to that.
Ryan Hill:And it didn't necessarily affect your other channels too.
Ryan Hill:And you didn't, from what I understand, you didn't lose any
Ryan Hill:rankings or anything in SEO.
Kevin Dieny:At least not.
Kevin Dieny:We did with the trampoline crowd.
Ryan Hill:Oh, well, yeah.
Kevin Dieny:A lot of people it's like, do I want to sit down and research for
Kevin Dieny:two hours to see if a company is telling me the truth about what their tool isn't
Kevin Dieny:going to impact SEO, or it's not going to impact my load times on my site.
Kevin Dieny:Yes, it may be adding another request.
Kevin Dieny:Yes, it may be adding JavaScript to my site.
Kevin Dieny:There's a lot there.
Kevin Dieny:And earlier you mentioned, there's a lot of things that business should be doing.
Kevin Dieny:Do you have any quick wins or suggestions or priorities for small, medium businesses
Kevin Dieny:on things they should pay attention to.
Kevin Dieny:Things they could do to get some wins or to at least get them going
Kevin Dieny:in the right direction with SEO?
Ryan Hill:Yeah.
Ryan Hill:Obviously if you're a local business, the first thing would
Ryan Hill:be to manage your Google profile.
Ryan Hill:It's like a social platform.
Ryan Hill:You'll definitely want to add pictures, images, posts, keep it active,
Ryan Hill:request that people leave reviews.
Ryan Hill:If you think of the Google listing as a separate entity of your website,
Ryan Hill:but, it drives traffic to your website or it drives phone calls.
Ryan Hill:There's a lot behind that dashboard that Google can do.
Ryan Hill:They can show you how many driving directions you've gotten,
Ryan Hill:which to me is a conversion.
Ryan Hill:That's a person walking in your door.
Ryan Hill:They can tell you how many phone calls you've got, how many phone calls you've
Ryan Hill:missed, from someone calling off of that.
Ryan Hill:So it's really important to keep that up to date, keep it active.
Ryan Hill:Have people leave reviews on there.
Ryan Hill:Google listings, act differently in website rankings than just normal search,
Ryan Hill:because it's about user interaction.
Ryan Hill:Don't, don't worry about bad reviews.
Ryan Hill:I mean, worry about bad reviews from their user aspect of it.
Ryan Hill:But even a bad review is valuable in Google's eyes because it means that
Ryan Hill:someone is interacting with your business and if there's anything to take away
Ryan Hill:from this, is if you can get anyone to interact with your business, whether
Ryan Hill:it be on Google, whether it be from Google search or whether it be from
Ryan Hill:like your map listing or your business listing, that's going to bump your
Ryan Hill:position more so than your customers.
Kevin Dieny:Let's say a more advanced user who may want to use a tool like
Kevin Dieny:Google optimize, or they have a tool, that helps them run like an AB test
Kevin Dieny:or something like that on their site.
Kevin Dieny:On-page stuff that, that that business may want to be testing.
Kevin Dieny:What is something that you'd say this would be, if there's
Kevin Dieny:everything on a page that I would test, I would test this one first.
Kevin Dieny:Or is there anything that stands out that you'd be like, if a
Kevin Dieny:business is wondering if it should change something on its website.
Kevin Dieny:Is there anything you may want to suggest a business pay a little bit
Kevin Dieny:more attention to than something else?
Ryan Hill:Absolutely.
Ryan Hill:The color.
Ryan Hill:I know that.
Ryan Hill:I know that sounds weird as it really does, but there've been multiple
Ryan Hill:studies, and it being proven.
Ryan Hill:I love Google Optimize because what that does is it allows you, you don't have to
Ryan Hill:make physical changes on your website.
Ryan Hill:You can go into Google optimize and say, okay, 50% of this
Ryan Hill:traffic that's coming from paid.
Ryan Hill:I want this call to action button to be bright orange instead of pink
Ryan Hill:or green or something like that.
Ryan Hill:And so it really, really allows for that, that AB test to see what is successful
Ryan Hill:then when you can prove the concept or...
Ryan Hill:Disprove, whatever concept.
Ryan Hill:So the marketers out there and the website developers and SEO guys.
Ryan Hill:Yeah.
Ryan Hill:Use Google, optimize, change a button color, move the video
Ryan Hill:up or move the headline down, simple little things like that.
Ryan Hill:Google also alluded to, if you're using Google optimize that they're going to
Ryan Hill:consider that a ranking factor as well, because then your testing users out and
Ryan Hill:how they interact with your website to make it a better experience for them.
Ryan Hill:So, absolutely, dealing with any AB testing platform like HubSpot or Google
Ryan Hill:Optimize, just try a color first.
Ryan Hill:You'd be surprised.
Kevin Dieny:That's, that's exciting for me because that's actually not too tough.
Kevin Dieny:I don't have to get into a think tank discussion and ideation process to rethink
Kevin Dieny:my headline or are my sentences combining the right keywords in the right order.
Kevin Dieny:Are they high enough?
Kevin Dieny:Are you using the right header elements?
Kevin Dieny:There is a lot...
Kevin Dieny:I have gone through in the past where I'm like, I don't know if all
Kevin Dieny:this work is necessarily necessary, but I know that, I'm just going to
Kevin Dieny:keep up with what I know are best practices and try to keep it going.
Kevin Dieny:What is funny is Google Optimize, google's own dynamic tracking, the things we're
Kevin Dieny:talking about with some experimentation with flattening the site, a lot of
Kevin Dieny:these are using dynamic elements.
Kevin Dieny:But they're doing them, like you said, there's a right way and a wrong way.
Kevin Dieny:And so knowing that businesses are following the right way or
Kevin Dieny:knowing what is the right way?
Kevin Dieny:If it's a product by Google, they're probably doing it the
Kevin Dieny:right way because it's associating with their other products.
Kevin Dieny:There's just so much in this black box of SEO that people struggle with
Kevin Dieny:unraveling and nap consistency, and everyone's trying to get their SEO up
Kevin Dieny:cause they consider it, free, earned traffic, but it does take a lot of work.
Kevin Dieny:So, just to tie it up at the end, is there anything else you wanted to add?
Kevin Dieny:Something that you thought along the way, you're like, oh, I got to mention
Kevin Dieny:this, but if you still remember, is there anything else you wanted to add to this?
Ryan Hill:The only other thing I think that I would add is, if you could
Ryan Hill:pay attention to the Google algorithm updates and what they focus on.
Ryan Hill:You'll notice a shift in the last few years that everything's
Ryan Hill:going towards mobile.
Ryan Hill:So depending on what kind of a business you are.
Ryan Hill:Yeah.
Ryan Hill:If you're a plumber, I pretty much guarantee you that everybody's going
Ryan Hill:to be looking on their phones, for that plumber that's local to them and even
Ryan Hill:coming through their Google listing.
Ryan Hill:So really focused on the mobile side of it.
Ryan Hill:And I'm not saying the desktop site isn't important because it definitely is.
Ryan Hill:But if you can determine where the majority of your traffic is
Ryan Hill:coming from and optimize towards that, that's, that's a quick win.
Ryan Hill:It's definitely a quick win.
Ryan Hill:If you can rank higher on mobile results than you can desktop.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, the devices is a whole other element to this.
Kevin Dieny:And I think good mentioning it, something that definitely didn't get brought up.
Kevin Dieny:So I want to tie up a little bit of this episode.
Kevin Dieny:The things that I think stood out to me, where yes, SEO is kind of a
Kevin Dieny:black box, but there are definitely some things businesses can do to
Kevin Dieny:make sure that they do rank higher.
Kevin Dieny:You are competing a lot of the time, like Ryan mentioned against your
Kevin Dieny:competitors against other people vying for the same thing in the same space.
Kevin Dieny:So some industries may be less competitive than others, but at the
Kevin Dieny:end of the day, making sure that your business communicates trust for that
Kevin Dieny:end user, for that consumer, that you provide a better experience, making
Kevin Dieny:sure your name, your business logo, your address, that they are, up-to-date
Kevin Dieny:consistent your phone number, right?
Kevin Dieny:There's a lot of places to put a phone number.
Kevin Dieny:Google my business has at least three phone number of
Kevin Dieny:slots for you to put it in.
Kevin Dieny:So if you want to drop in a tracking number there and then your main number,
Kevin Dieny:you can do all those things, right.
Kevin Dieny:All of that works together to provide a better experience for your consumer.
Kevin Dieny:They want to get there.
Kevin Dieny:The mobile aspect, paying attention to how my visitors are getting to my site.
Kevin Dieny:What are they interested in?
Kevin Dieny:Not baiting, switching.
Kevin Dieny:There's a lot of services that can help you do a lot of this.
Kevin Dieny:Maybe take a little time to, to evaluate that.
Kevin Dieny:There's so much out there, which is why this can be so confusing and so
Kevin Dieny:difficult for a lot of businesses.
Kevin Dieny:At the end of the day, I think if you do just pay a little bit attention toward
Kevin Dieny:making sure your business is consistent.
Kevin Dieny:That you are putting yourself out there in the listings, especially
Kevin Dieny:the ones that maybe you've, you've heard your consumers say, I keep going
Kevin Dieny:to the site and finding you there.
Kevin Dieny:If you haven't gone there and made sure that your listing is
Kevin Dieny:accurate, maybe you should do that.
Kevin Dieny:And then you're by ranking higher in SEO, you're driving more business,
Kevin Dieny:more revenue for your business.
Kevin Dieny:SEO is a long term strategy.
Kevin Dieny:I, the way I look at it.
Ryan Hill:Yeah, it is.
Ryan Hill:It's not an instant win either.
Ryan Hill:It's it's definitely long term.
Kevin Dieny:There's a lot.
Kevin Dieny:There's a lot going on, but I know you can do it.
Kevin Dieny:I would encourage you all to, like Ryan said, pay attention to
Kevin Dieny:some of the listings, making sure things are going in the reviews.
Kevin Dieny:I've heard it time and time again, and even responding to
Kevin Dieny:those reviews is so important.
Kevin Dieny:So thank you, Ryan, for helping us talk about this really, a really
Kevin Dieny:interesting topic of NAP consistency.
Ryan Hill:Taboo subject?
Kevin Dieny:Yeah.
Kevin Dieny:It's a tough subject.
Kevin Dieny:It's tough when you don't know the actual algorithm and science that's
Kevin Dieny:going on in the background, but through experimentation and by what
Kevin Dieny:we're being told, we just, we kind of have to follow the trend that's
Kevin Dieny:being set and it's changing, the updates come out and it's changing.
Kevin Dieny:SEO experts are like you said top dollar nowadays, and that could
Kevin Dieny:be hard to find and hard to find someone who actually knows what
Kevin Dieny:they're doing and is performance minded, like you had alluded to.
Kevin Dieny:So, thank you and appreciate
Kevin Dieny:- Ryan Hill: Yeah, it's, it's definitely
Kevin Dieny:It's rare that I get to talk this, this nerdy stuff with people.
Kevin Dieny:So thank you.
Kevin Dieny:I love the nerdy topic, so I appreciate your time, and
Kevin Dieny:everybody thank you for listening to our episode and we'll see you again.
