How to Rank on Google Maps With $100 (Full Local SEO SOP) transcript

Today we're going to walk you guys through how to do local SEO for $100. You know, the economy is ripping right now, but you might not be doing so well. So, we wanted to do an episode where you can do the 8020 with just $100. Let us know if you guys want to see something like more of these type of episodes. Let us know down in the comments section. Subscribe if you haven't already. Let's just get into it. Tristan, what do you have for us today?

Yeah, kind of play off last week's episode. Um, right. There's a lot of things you can do if you're a business owner, you're scrappy, and let's say you don't want to spend a lot of money on leads or you don't have a lot of cash to spend on Google ads, things like that. There's a lot of things that you can do today in my opinion for around $100 that can move the needle, right? Um, so kind of just want to go over that because, you know, in my opinion, if you're scrappy, if you're willing to make things work, um, you know, you can you can still see results with $100 if you apply it correctly. >> Awesome.

Yeah. Um, and we'll we'll do a quick business update. So, we have two case studies running right now. Uh, one on each of our friends. So, Tristan has his buddy's running a vet clinic. It's popping the off. Um, and my buddy Samson's uh, physio clinic also popping off in terms of like business all-time highs. Um, getting clients from Chad GBT from our efforts, opening their second location. Um, but yeah, that'll be at the end.

So, make sure you stay till the very end and, uh, Tristan will just go through the SOP on ranking using local SEO on Google Maps with less than $100. And we we we've got a whole thing for you today. So Tristan, you can go ahead and share your screen and we can just run it. >> Yeah, let's get into it. Cool. So I just whipped up this mirror board really quick. Um >> Oh, yeah. Zoom in real quick. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Zoom.

Always forget to zoom in. Hopefully this is good. Um, so the thing with SEO is I feel like a lot of people in the industry try to make it sound super complicated all the time. Um, just so that they can justify getting like a fat retainer and maximizing that retainer. In reality, like every good SEO I know just keeps it very simple, right? They just pull the same levers. And um, it's just kind of a breakdown of what I would do here if I only had a hundred bucks, right?

And let's say I run like a bookkeeping firm out of Dallas, Texas, right? Do people's books. So, number one thing I would do is, you know, set the foundation, get those citations ripping. Um, you want consistent name, address, phone number across um all of the different business directories um out there. you know, you can you can usually find some pretty good business directories um using people on Fiverr, Upwork, or just, you know, ripping local rank, which they give you all of those directories um within their own platform.

But then there's also directories that, you know, if you if you run a legit like business, this isn't like a rank and rent. This isn't uh a directory, you should 100% try to be getting on like Apple Maps, Yelp, you know, this does this isn't within the $100, but if you're willing to pay, definitely get a better Business Bureau link because those are getting cited like crazy in uh AI search right now. But the idea here is just the citations essentially help your site um get indexed and also give Google really good understanding of where that business location is.

Right? Then what I like to do is I like to point tier 2 links at these citations. Um you can get tier 2 links from a variety of vendors. I know Kevin's PBN is pretty popular, but they, you know, they have mixed reviews. I personally use my own like internal guy who I've been using for a long time, but this is what we always do from the very beginning with any local SEO campaign. And >> wait, where'd you find your internal guy real quick?

Um, >> are you going to share the goods with a local rank academy at least or is it going to be forever a secret? >> Man, I I love the guy. Um, I've told him I'm like, "Dude, I I don't want to share your service because it's so good." But I pro I I'll share it. I I plug him when people ask for tier twos, but I met him in in advise. He's a he's a really good guy. I don't know if he wants me to disclose his name here, but um >> Okay.

No, share share it in our local rank academy. First link in the comment section, by the way. Join the community. We'll we'll share you we'll give you the goods. We'll give you the goods. >> Yeah, he's I think he's in local rank, too, actually, which is funny. So, um yeah, he he has really good tier two links. Um, but I always do that at the beginning of any campaign, right? And it doesn't matter. You don't need a local SEO agent a agency to do this.

Most of them what they're doing is they're just going to Fiverr, Upwork, or, you know, local rank uh, local rank and, um, buying these citations and then pointing tier 2 uh, links at them using their vendors. Um, then what I typically like to do is I like to set up like these pillow links because you don't want to just start building uh niche uh niche edits and guest posts right off the bat. You kind of want to make the backlink profile look as uh natural as possible.

So, we're adding like social media profiles um and then finding other like industry related business directories. So, one thing I've been doing a lot is like I'll literally just go to Codeex or Claude and I'll just say like here's my industry, here's my city, find me a list of a hundred other uh directories related to my like let's let's say related to my bookkeeping business and I'll try to list myself in those industry uh in those profiles as well.

The idea of doing this is building those pillow links but also just you know making sure your entity is consistent across the internet, right? the stronger your entity, a lot easier for Google to recommend you guys. Now, the thing that has changed since Chad GPT, Claude, Perplexity, all these things came out is how easy it is to build a website now, right? Before before all these AI tools, you it it wasn't unrealistic to spend thousands of dollars on a website.

Now, now you you don't need to do that, right? like GitHub versel cloud fair cloudflare that stack can whip you up a website within an hour right and so what I would recommend is store your code in GitHub deploy it on Versell have your domain on Cloudflare and build out the local SEO website structure that we recommended from our prior videos right you have your homepage which targets like uh it doesn't really necessarily target a keyword but it's telling Google like we serve we do this service in this area, right?

Bookkeeping services in the greater Dallas area. Then you split it out by your taxonomy, your different services, your different industries you you serve, and then all of the different areas uh that uh you provide the service in. Great example is like if I'm saying like bookkeeping for construction companies in Fort Worth, Texas, right? That's something like um like how I'm mapping out the taxonomy of my website. I know who I want to target and I know where they are located and I'm creating a page to target that.

And the speed to building that nowadays is so quick um that that's why you know ranking on Google Maps only $100 it is I'm not going to you know say you can do it every single time but it is um it is a realistic possibility. Now, now one one thing to keep in mind here is like building your website out like this and then um you know deploying it to rank in the organic side of the search results. It's not going to guarantee number one map rankings, but it does help you capture anyone who doesn't go um into um doesn't click a Google business profile and clicks into the search results.

Um, I'm, you know, I don't know how true this is, but I have noticed before that like we have an HR client based in Texas and when her organic ranking started to pick up, uh, she only had like four reviews, but as as her organic ranking started to pick up, her uh, Google business profile also started to rank higher and higher in her scans. So, it's not going to be something that is like you build out the website, you build out all these service area pages, you're going to rank number one.

It's more so raising the floor, right? It helps you capture those leads that don't get hit in the Google Maps Google Map pack and it seems like it does kind of give a slight lift to Google Maps, but it's not going to be the number one thing, right? Um, in terms of budget, right, citation and foundational links, you're going to have to haggle a little bit, right? Um, at when I'm doing this at scale, I don't really haggle because I can just get wholesale pricing, but if we're like trying to keep it under a hundred bucks, you can typically get citations and foundational links from a vendor for like 20 bucks.

Indexing it. I just put $1 as a placeholder. It's typically way less. You use something like index checks. It's it's very the the the per unit economics are very friendly, right? You should always index your citations and foundational links. um because if they're not indexed, you know, it's not going to be considered. So, um and then tier 2 links, again, it really depends on the vendor you're using, but between the tier 2 links that we've looked at, it's anywhere between $10 to $50 per order depending on the provider.

Uh and then GitHub for sale and Cloud Cloud Flare. Um this is actually I mean $0. If you're buying a domain, then it'll be $10, but you can typically get away with just using the free plans. I'm kind of assuming here that you, you know, you guys already have, um, a website set up and you guys already have a Google business profile. Um, but, you know, both are unoptimized. So, um, with everything kind of all in hand, you're spending anywhere between $31 to $71 to get everything set up.

Right now, the thing is like here's kind of the priority order of what you should do. Right. Um, if you already have your site, I would switch it over to the the stack we just recommended, which is GitHub, Versell, Cloudflare. Build those found the those foundational links and citation links. Index everything, add the tier 2 uh links to kind of help everything stay indexed, and then wait about one to two weeks, right? if you're um that's when you know you should you you need to give these links a little bit of time to marinate.

Um if you don't have a Google business profile, you know, things do get a little trickier. You're realistically you're not going to be able to rank in maps under $100. But if you already have a Google business profile, that's kind of where where these um you you'll be able to rank under $100. Now, let's say you don't have a Google business profile. There's places where you can rent a commercial office for a month. You know, especially if you're you're in your city, just call around.

A lot of these places, they'll be charging like 500 to 800 bucks, but if it's been dormant for a long time, you can also haggle with them a little bit. If you're just straight up and you're like, "Hey, I just need this office for a month. Uh, I know you guys haven't been using this for a while, but like if I could get it for one month, um, and I pay this much, would you guys be willing to do that? We've seen success with that before, right?

You're not going to be able to quote unquote rank on map in maps for under $100, but you'll definitely be able to do it for way cheaper than, you know, um, than what you would do in like, let's say, 2020 or 2022. Right now, the thing that's really going to help you in this in this scenario, you know, this is why I said this is really good if you're scrappy and you're willing to get your hands dirty, is reviews are still the number one thing that are going to get you into that top spot.

And most of the time, um, what people don't aren't willing to do is they're they're not willing to go in the field themselves and talk to customers, talk to clients, and get these reviews themselves. So, let's say you have a Google business profile. You have your business. You're looking to generate more um more leads through SEO. You you've been paying way too much for paid ads. Here's what I would do from step one.

I would go to my immediate network, friends and family, and ask them to leave an honest review, right? Just just, you know, something to get the ball rolling. And then depending on how competitive your niche is, if it's like a if it's kind of one of those like unsaturated industries, it's not like plumbing, windows, turf, anything like that, um there's usually not that big of a review gap, right? So, if you get, you know, three to five new reviews per month, that should be enough to get you uh in the door.

And then as you begin to continue asking like existing customers um or existing clients for reviews, you should be able to get into the top three. Now, if you're in a home service business, right, let's talk like roofs or like plumbing or even like home remodelers, that's a completely different story. You're dealing with people who have like anywhere between like 300 to a,000 plus reviews probably in the map pack. So, one of the easiest ways you can get those reviews consistently I've seen is knocking door to door and just saying like, "Hey, you know, we're doing free roof estimates right now.

Like, do you want us to take a look at your roof? We'll tell you exactly like what needs to be worked on. You don't have to pay us. We're just in the neighborhood and we want to give like a second opinion." um you know, you're not going to convert every single homeowner, but for the ones who do, you know, you you provide the free service and then when you're face to face, you just say, "Hey, you know, we're we're uh we're trying to get our name out there.

We would really appreciate it, you know, if you we're happy with our service to leave a review." Key thing is you don't text them this, you don't email them this, you just ask them that face to face. You give them you make the stakes as high as possible for them to say no. Most of the time they'll say yes and then you hand them the phone right there and you have them fill out the review, right? Um, again, you you have to be willing to get your hands dirty.

You have to be willing to get scrappy and get these reviews because that's really kind of the main difference if you don't really have a lot of budget to bring someone on whose whole job is to generate these reviews for you. So, um I would say $100 it's not impossible, but you have to be willing to put in the work, right? Um time is money, but money is time. And in this in this sense, you're using your time um to rank number one for under $100.

So, yeah, if I was a scrappy, lean, you know, local business owner trying to get my name out there and get leads through SEO, this is probably the workflow I would use. And then after that, anything that I have left over, I'd probably throw towards links to the homepage. >> Yeah. Yeah. Just additional citations. I think um if I were to change anything here, actually, I probably wouldn't change anything. Maybe for personal reasons, I'd plug plug local rank more, but it is what it is.

Um I will say uh I don't like using Versell because it's too expensive, but for people with like local businesses, it won't matter. So, like if you have less than I want to say 5,000 hits a month on your site, this is like a non-issue. So, most of you guys, if I'm keeping in a buck, not going to be an issue. But once you get past like the 10k sessions a month, Versel starts costing money. Whereas like Cloudflare has like a very generous allowance, but it's much harder to use.

So, you know, there's some like um some uh give and take. Um, but yeah, anyways, I think that that was a insane episode on how to rank on Google Maps using local SEO for $100. Let's go through the updates. Man, >> how's how's the businesses looking? >> Businesses are good. I mean, they pretty much followed like this uh this framework. So, you guys will see that it literally does work. Like this is uh >> first case study, Vet Ped Alliance.

You can see um they're still growing, right? Their floor and ceiling are both extremely high right now. They're averaging around third 20 to 30 clicks a day still. Um the business owner Ali was doing exactly what I asked in this mura board which is he I think he runs this this stack GitHub Versell and Cloudflare which I agree it's it's not great at scale versell but in this case where we're we're talking local business owners who want to get leads today.

You know, it's a it's a good it's a good way to get started. But he's running what I said. I told him, "Get become the receptionist. Just ask for reviews." That's what he did. And I just checked with him in with him this morning. They just hired six new people to handle all the demand they're getting, right? Um not sure what the lead side looks like on Movement Room, but you can see clicks are also at all-time highs.

Impressions are at all-time highs. all of these near me searches, they're starting to show up 42 as well. So, I think you said your buddy, he said you guys are at all-time highs as well, right? Yeah. So, like September as to give you an example number of business interactions and it's only 23 days in is at all-time highs. So, se almost 700 business interactions. Uh I I probably won't share screen, but um I don't know if he wants to share this, but just know it's almost double what it is in April right now.

So freaking sick, dude. Insane. >> And that's from Google Maps. What you're showing is like a search console, which is >> Yeah, this is Yeah. Mhm. Um Yeah. And then if we look at the scans, right? Like um just go compare right now. You'll see this is what happens when you are uh that's not the right one. Grab is this bet pedal lines? Oh, recurring scans. That's why. Um here we go. So, if we look at you can see they've moved up.3 spots um within a week, right?

This is just one week difference. So, um, in my opinion, a lot of this is across just like him asking for more reviews, which he didn't pay anything for that. He was literally just sitting there and texting and asking people in person, "How was your experience?" If they were like, "It's good." He would ask them to leave a review. Right? So you can see right the uh veterinarian near me vet near me a little bit more noise just because it's a large radius but we look at like veterinarian New York uh vet New York veterinarian New York New Jersey this is a one one dot but um all keywords across the board average positions up.3 spots and then you look at their u their tracked keywords that we're looking at.

Almost everything is like number one, number two, number three, number three. >> Uh, and then looker for movement room. You can see kind of the same deal. Active rehab near me. They jumped up 18 spots since the last scan. And so I think that's a large part due to the site buildout, but also um again consistently asking for reviews, g making them say no to your face and um you you will grow like it's it's just a guarantee.

So um yeah, I think we did a scan too for um for movement room as well. So, we can check that here. But I'm not sure if it was the if I made the radius too big by accident. Let's see. >> Looks good. >> Yeah, everything's looking pretty nice. Yeah. >> So, yeah, both businesses, TLDDR, are um they're hiring like crazy right now. >> Yeah, hiring like crazy. Yep. Awesome guys. Um, quite quite the update. I think guys, if you if you want more business ideas or sorry, more like ideas on how to do local SEO at a budget, let us know down in the comment section.

If you guys want to see more of these like granular breakdowns, I think local rank academy first link in the pin comment section, first link in the description. Best way to get it. Um, get to speak directly with Tristan every week. you could probably bomb him with just a ton of questions on a weekly basis. So yeah, subscribe if you haven't already, like the video, and we'll see you guys next week. >> Yeah. One thing really quick, too, is we are um we just took on some local business owners in Local Rank Academy.

So, we're going to be running the same playbook for them as well and tracking in public. You know, we're not going to do it in public on this channel, but the people in Local Rank Academy can follow along, especially, you know, if they have their own local business. So, hopefully we have more traffic graphs to show like this in the next 60 to 90 days. >> Oh, yeah. Cool. Take it easy, man. >> Yep.