Synup Office Hour #1 - 5th March 2024

(00:00) on steroid you can go beyond new new ideas and tools um that you can utilize in your strategies and bacon into your services and general Q&A session and a poll for the next okay first the first piece of update that has been going on in the industry for the past couple of months you might have heard about it or read about it there's this huge update from Google that they implemented during the holidays they started in uh last quarter of 2023 and I don't think the update has completely stopped yet it's what's the

(00:54) helpful content update to read out uh unhelpful content from search basically content that was primarily created with keeping uh search in mind to rank for keywords rather than keeping the users in mind uh there is a uh there is a rumor that more updates are on the way uh because we've all seen how some of these forums like Reddit and K are basically ranking for everything okay there was this there was this recent update where Google had a data partnership announced a data partnership with Reddit and uh some some of the

(01:35) experts are stating that that could be the reason why uh Reddit is so popular nowadays in in search results for random queries okay so the easiest way to figure out if uh this hcu or helpful content update has impacted your website negatively is just by going through Google search con tool and figuring out if there has been a sudden and drastic drop if you see a 10 to 20% drop or 30% drop I don't think it would be because of helpful content update helpful content updates are usually uh uh much more drastic uh I've seen websites with

(02:23) million plus monthly traffic dropping to nearly zero within a matter of days okay and and if you have been impacted we have a nice little article that we can share what are the steps you can take to recover from it uh but you have to be patient it's not going to be an overnight Affair if you have been impacted so we will send it out take a look at it if you have questions just reach out to us uh there's a lot of work that needs to be done primarily around content uh weeding out pruning bad content uh improving your UI uh getting

(03:05) rid of AD banners and paid articles that you might have on the websites okay uh it is it is impacting a lot of websites that I've seen in in the industry till date and I'm sure Google are implementing changes that could potentially allow some of the uh better content creators to to show up again on search results uh second update that we recently came across was by Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky uh there was the recent study that she shared for local businesses uh she did a case study couple of case studies in fact for

(03:51) couple of her local clients uh where it was noted that displaying pricing pages on the client's website has has positively impacted their traffic as well as click-through rate uh which is kind of uh tells us that because pricing pages are fairly impactful especially in local segment when people are fairly price conscious and want to know what they are paying for or how much they are paying for before they even reach out and fill out your form so it it would be a nice idea for all local businesses to have

(04:29) their pricing displayed or at least a ballpark figure displayed on the website so potential customers get to know what they're getting into okay uh be be truthful up front rather than hiding behind and quoting a lum some figure at the end of the conversation is it's not a good practice okay so if you're if you have customers if you're talking to customers who are who are trying to figure out if this should be uh displaying the pricing on the website I asked experiment with it try it out make sure you display it

(05:10) prominently create a separate page uh also Mark it up with schema so that Google can read the information properly and see if there's an impact on your clickthrough rate as well as conversion from your website third update that I saw recently uh about Google was uh let me share my screen oh actually there's a screenshot of it on the right right here uh Google used to display a review impression count or view count on on on the review pane of their Google business profile listings that seems to have stopped

(05:57) updating uh historical information or numbers are still showing up uh but new views are not being counted there are rumors that Google is coming up with a new update to counter fake reviews and visibility of fake reviews uh and some are stating that this could potentially because of that okay we'll keep a watch and see how it impacts users uh uh customers alike some Moree updates uh there was a recent rollout plan announced by Google where they are stating that there will be stricter verification process for

(06:45) local Services ads currently uh almost any business if if they are approved by Google for certain categories can opt and apply for local Services ads and pay Google to show their ads on uh on the local Services Paine but uh Google is going to roll out uh new verification option and uh this will be done in phases they have not yet announced uh when this is going to happen there there's no strict guideline but this is definitely going to have it in phases across different states we'll let you know if you find

(07:26) out more uh they was another update uh that we came across that had a NE negative impact on a lot of small businesses over the past few weeks uh Google removed the option of free business sites uh that could be generated using your Google business profile information uh directly from the Google business profile dashboard uh I know there are providers who have launched uh specific uh services around it and if you if you ask me personally what service should I use to create a free site uh if you're good at WordPress just explore the WordPress

(08:09) option but if you do not have a developer handy or do not have the background I would say take a look at something like Wix I believe Wix still does have a free plan that you can use to easily create a single pager website for your customers or for yourself okay Wix has come a long way in terms of SEO over the past few years and they've done a lot of improvements due to which uh there's no reason why you cannot be successful using a website from their platform okay uh last but not the least uh about a

(08:49) week ago we noticed uh the more places and uh link when you on on the local search panel went missing so when you when you go into Google search uh Google search and search for a typical dentist Nei or or a service within a city and you see the three pack search results as shown in the screenshot over here the mo places option which is very prominently displayed when missing and that was a cause for concern because there was a recent study uh hold on a sec there's somebody you there was a recent study made by near Media where

(09:27) it was noted that for certain categories uh up to 48% of users when they search something on Google and looking for local businesses or looking for a product or service locally up to 48% depending on the category click on more places of places option and go to the local finder or map locator to find the businesses and see other options okay you can read more about it on a newsletter or or if you can go to the new NE media website uh we will provide the link to you uh as part of the presentation after uh later

(10:12) today okay helpful tool okay tips of the week uh for this I have to take you to the sign up dashboard or can do do it here right right away uh I've seen a ton of businesses ton of agencies ton of uh larger Brands using a platform effectively for the first few months not using a lot of features that are available to them okay one of the most prominent feature that you can make use of and that report back to your stakeholders or to your clients or to your customers is R TR packing option let me stop sharing this let's go to a

(11:06) dashboard and see how you can utilize it okay say for example you you're in the restaurant business and you have a client this is a this is the customer on the live dashboard all you need to do to add ranking a keyword rank enable keyword ranking on your website is basically go go go to analytics go to ranking analytics and just start adding keywords I would recommend okay they're in New York so Analytics off just hit the tab key after it so

(12:16) that you can add more and if you want you can even add zip codes and see if people are searching by ZIP codes whatever relevant keywords you find just add them over here submit them data keyword data updates on a weekly basis we help you track your ranking on both Google organic search and in local finder wait for a week because the data updates on a weekly basis that that forms the Baseline uh when you onboard a business on signup create that report do improvements and then show your show your work to the client the proof is at

(13:21) the pudding so if you're not tracking your keywords now you wouldn't know if they have seen any significant Improvement they could be changes in profile information there could be changes uptake in the traffic but it it won't be easy for you to correlate that with the uh content that you creating or the post that you're doing with the client or the image optimization work that you're doing for the client so please please please utilize this feature it's very helpful I personally use it for every client I work directly

(13:51) with uh create a baseline report and then do any other any other activities okay now once you have added your keywords what can I do to improve them uh there are few other things that Google allows you to do and some of the things that you can use uh do by using sign up for example same restaurant right this is your smok house uh 67219 Avenue New York uh go to your premium listings edit the business and if your service company start adding Services Services can help rank help help you rank better on Google it can

(14:41) give your business more visibility and it will get you in front of potential customers who are trying to find the service that they're looking for you get a lot of qualified leads okay there there's one way of doing it there's another way of doing it by going to Google go to your Google B business account for example uh this is uh good friend of hours that we work with all the time go to the edit Services section on Google my business based on your category you will see options where you can select from existing services

(15:30) or you can edit this information select the appropriate services or you can simply just add custom Services manually customer custom Services is something that you can even use uh that you can add even with the while using signup platform you can add them for a single location business or if you have a chain of like 50 stores or 100 or thousand stores you can easily uh add them uh without having to go into Google M business uh account one by one so if you have problems adding them and you want us to do the work just send

(16:23) over the services uh to our support team or to your CSM and they will get get the matter for you there's an additional item that you can try doing that I've been testing out a lot uh that is the product section this is something that you can do on your own uh get a nice little product uh depending on your category don't spam this with every every product that you have take your top selling product or the most uh profitable product that you have uh get an image add a product name select it as a new category you do not necessarily need

(17:09) to add the price of product description just a product name and category will be enough along with the decent photo I usually try and avoid using stock photos because Google is very good at Adept at being able to uh see if there a stock photo or not if you if you're using them too much there are chances that they might reject your uh submission uh product and services that are newly added do not go live immediately they all go through a uh editorial process through Google but I have seen customers uh and

(17:50) businesses that are benefiting immensely after adding produ and services uh to the GBP profiles I'm not going to save this I'm just going to cancel and log out of it okay there was another feature that we rolled out recently uh we completed a lot of Integrations right now we like integrate with that I think about a 100 plus CRM and uh Point of Sales software where you can actually put your review solicitation campaign on steroids using signup okay so where does it where can you find this on your website right on your

(18:35) signup dashboard just log into your signup dashboard go to reviews go to review acquisition okay this is your typical review acquisition uh traditionally what you would do is you go to acquire new reviews you select the method that you want to use to collect reviews with uh either you select an uh SMS or email campaign where we create an SMS an email campaign upload a spreadsheet uh manually or manually add the information one by one and start sending out a your requests or you you create a review page via static Ur

(19:15) basically something that you can plug in into your website or your email signature or maybe create a even create a QR code and plug it in on a stand in front of the store or or in your newsletter or on your vouchers or brochers Etc now instead of working on this manually what you can simply do is uh click on the connect CRM or app button over here okay for example say you're connecting with the your spot here location is this yes select the email tool or sales CRM on the accounting software that you're using at present where where you keep

(20:09) most of your customer information on WE primarily uh need the email address phone number and the name of the customer you connected with the CRM it's just going to take a few seconds then log into your hopspot account sync it and Define uh going forward how you want it to run you can primarily automate that entire process by uh filtering in the content that you want the new customers that you uh generate or add to your CRM and literally automate your entire review acquisition proc process within a few minutes uh in fact you can even set

(21:03) it up in a way so that uh anytime you add new customers to your CRM or a PS tool or your accounting software Etc signup can automatically extract the information your new customer information and send out an email or or an SMS uh at the end of the transaction to your customers that way you don't need to log in manually every time I think the team is also working with uh Google at this point to uh create an option through which you can feed in the information via Google sheet every time you want to run a review solicitation

(21:43) campaign you you share the sheet you connect it and sign up will automatically pull the information and send out a solicitation requests okay again if you have questions just just feel free to reach out to any of us and we'll be happy to get you started so helpful tools of the week uh there were there were a few tools that we have been playing around this week uh with uh one of my I I hate creating presentations uh most of the presentation that you see today has been created by my colleague AK uh kudos to

(22:33) her but but I still don't like creating presentation it's time consuming I can't get the design right and if you're as lazy as me there's something in the offing for you uh use something like gamma app I believe they have a free option as well you can simply select a template uh based on your bright guidelines feeded the content and and and create a template proper presentation within a within a matter of minutes okay some of the templates are fairly nice but simple uh you can even I believe with the paid program you can

(23:12) even add Uh custom images and style guides as for your requirement uh the second tool that we play around with a lot uh for several months now uh it came up when we were trying to scrap uh so if you go to Google and search for anything for example R management process so you have this typical section uh where people also ask section where people ask a lot of relevant question and the link to relevant website that has the most appropriate answer so there are time there was a time when we were trying to scrape this information of Google and we

(24:09) we weren't able to do that successfully it was very time consuming training the scrapers modifying them for for the proms so I went we went about looking for a tool that uh that was useful and that does it that can do this at scale so that's when we found something called all as.com uh it's a great Tool uh primarily for Content creation if for example I'm optimizing content for a website right or I'm looking for topics to write about for a customer I'm running out of ideas okay say customer is a medical

(24:50) equipment supplier let's see just put in your keywords uh I think they they provide you three free searches every day and uh once you do this it'll come up with a list of questions associated with your target keyword and phrase letting you know what are the questions people are asking on Google about around that topic okay now you can go deep this is a standard search dep you can basically click on secondary question uh it uses of credit every time you click and go Depot uh so you might need a paid account but it's it's quite

(25:44) simple so you can find out the questions they are asking make a list of them you can even download the results uh in a CSV format with a paid account uh or if you're just uh taking a cursy glance you can just note down there some of the important questions people are asking and devise your content planed around it okay this way you'll never run out of things to write about okay so that's my second favorite tool this week and the third favorite tool that has been a favorite for past few years I would say is GMD

(26:21) everywhere I use it a lot for looking for a sale someone someone give me a live uh business name that we should look at a local business in the US [Music] anyone no okay let me find one thanks Brian DJ Brian us got [Music] it go to your website music for All [Music] Occasions DJ Brian let's see

(27:40) this DJ Brian I believe found the right listing this is the one okay let's take a look at Brian's Google profile you have done great job with the reviews Brian five star rating with 43 but what can we do so primarily I have I have this chrome plugin uh from GMB everywhere as you can see on my browser window so it will let you know the primary category that is start DJ service what job there I'm not too sure uh why would you list your business under wedding services un unless you're specifically

(28:27) targeting people who are looking for wedding services suppose if I look atst M Magic dig your production okay great so here are some ideas Brian uh okay so these are some of your competitors in the region who are trying to rank for wedding services look at there's another magical DJ Productions and and you also show but using this tool what I can figure out there are other categories that you can potentially Target right these are sub categories that you can add to your Google my business pro profile like children's party service or

(29:31) Entertainer service establishment wedding planner wedding service and others so use that tool it's use I think the free version should be good enough for you just go and find some of our competitors see what they are optimizing their uh Google M business for okay once you add those services in your Google Map business uh subcategories what you can do is use those uh use those same categories and create additional pages on your website and maybe write some helpful content and maybe put up some pricing information as

(30:09) well how how you can entertain them and wearing weing digit gigs are high paying and common that's great so maybe there are additional additional categories that you can include and show up on for since you have really good reputation in the in that segment I think you should give it a short and use those additional categories as I mentioned uh to create additional content for your website and rank for them okay there are other things that you can do with the paid versions of the gbw tool so give it a shot uh reach out

(30:49) to us if you have questions or if you need help okay you here the thought uh if you find there are additional categories that you or some of your competitors are using are useful for you you can use those categories on your website as I mentioned but if you want to figure out what to write about plug those categories or those keywords into the also asked tool and see what questions people are asking about and then answer those via content on your website I'm sure it is going to help you rank better and show up show up in

(31:24) search results uh in the location in the Loc and help you improve your business okay that's all from me as far the presentation goes uh I'm open to questions if you guys have any questions no one okay then this was simple enough uh every participant uh will get a followup email with the deck and the information where you can see about see the recording uh AK will also be sending out a short poll to find out uh uh what you want us to talk about during the next event and uh

(32:31) that way that way we can make it a little more interactive than it was today and uh see you all next week thanks so much have a lovely day and the rest of the week thank you so much thank you bye-bye bye thank you have a good day thank you