Local Marketing Institute Podcast

What are the biggest local SEO myths? Lee Auerbach, Chatmeter's SVP of Business Development, joins us to help sort out fact from fiction. Local SEO is continuously evolving requiring marketers to adapt quickly and protect their local rankings. But with so many changes so fast, it's hard to know what advice to trust, what no longer applies, and what is flat-out wrong. In this episode, you...

What is schema markup and why is it important for your local business? Bottom line ... it can improve your local SEO and help more customers find you. For this Office Hours session, we’ve invited Martha van Berkel, one of the most respected schema markup experts in the world, to join us. Martha explains schema markup and how it can be used to help local business websites stand out in organic searc...

When it comes to marketing, what is the “new normal” for local retailers and in-home service providers? Local marketing experts, Neal Polachek and Greg Sterling, join Eric Shanfelt to share perspectives and concrete examples of how local businesses need to modify operating practices and customer communications in the coming weeks and months. Neal and Greg have deep experience as analysts and advis...

In this session, Eric Shanfelt, Founder of Local Marketing Institute shows local businesses how to get started with ecommerce and how to market their products for sale on a variety of platforms. You’ll learn how to: Get your ecommerce system to interact with your POS system. Integrate with Google Merchant Center. Showcase products in your Google My Business listing. Get your products into Google S...

Local business reviews have evolved drastically over the years. But has your review strategy changed to adapt? In this session, local SEO expert, Mike Blumenthal, shows you how reviews have changed and what those changes mean for your business. You’ll learn: • Which review platforms matter now • How reviews actually influence customer decisions • The impact of review gating • How Google uses revie...

Have questions about your local Google My Business listing? How to deal with spam, improve your business listing’s visibility, or problems you may be experiencing? This your opportunity to ask Ben Fisher and get the advice you need. Ben is one of only three platinum-level GMB Product Experts in the world recognized by Google itself. He has been in digital marketing since 1994 and works with everyt...

Facebook remarketing can help local businesses reach customers more cost effectively than other advertising options. With remarketing, you target ads to existing customers or people who already know your business. These people are more likely to do business with you than a “cold” audience who doesn’t know you yet. In this Office Hours session, Craig Mount gives you key strategies for Facebook rema...

Technical site issues can have a big impact on SEO for your local business. Local SEO expert, Dani Owens, joins us in this session She covers the most common technical SEO problems that sites have and tells you how to improve or fix them. Examples include: Making sure Google has no issues crawling and indexing your pages and the content on them Steps to take after installing an SSL certificate Imp...

Voice search optimization really is a big issue for local businesses. Whether it's Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Google Assistant or even Microsoft Cortana, voice search is widely used on mobile phones, smart speakers and other devices. But local voice search isn't just about people searching for new businesses to work with. It's also about helping existing customers looking for directi...

Google Local Services Ads expert, Tom Waddington, joins us for this session to share best practices for LSAs. Local Services Ads aren’t just for home service businesses anymore. The program has expanded to include photographers, financial planners, real estate agents, auto repair, pet groomers, and more. In this session, you’ll learn: Where local services ads are available How to set up the ads on...

Do you know how customers really use online reviews to make decisions about your local business … and how you can better manage your online reputation? Since 2010, BrightLocal has conducted their annual Local Consumer Review Survey to answer this question and gain insight into customer behavior. The latest survey is out and we’ve asked BrightLocal’s Myles Anderson to join us for this session. He’l...

What are the specific factors that impact Google My Business rank? Which of these can you influence and how much can you really expect to impact your search rank? Every business wants to rank as high as possible, but Google’s algorithm is based on three primary factors to determine where businesses ranks in a local search: relevance, proximity and prominence. In this episode, we’ve asked three of...