In this episode of Local Marketing Secrets, Dan Leibrandt interviews Andrew Shotland, CEO of Local SEO Guide, which does local SEO consulting for multi-location businesses and started over 18 years ago. They've worked with some of the biggest companies in the space such as Angie's List, HomeAdvisor, Local.com, Bing Maps, Thumbtack and many more. Andrew is also a board member and vice president for Bay Area Search, an SEO community in San Francisco, and is quoted in major publications such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal for his expertise in search marketing.

Dan and Andrew explore SERP Summary, Andrew's new tool that tracks 100,000 keywords across five major cities (New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, and Seattle) to show volatility, winners and losers, and SERP features over time. Unlike Moz Cast which just shows if search results are "hot or cold," SERP Summary reveals who actually went up and down and what SERP features are present. This allows marketers to quickly understand who's winning across entire topics rather than individual keywords after Google updates.

The conversation covers shocking data about Reddit and Quora dominating home services search results. Reddit and Quora are now the two most popular domains showing up across all home services keywords. Andrew explains this happened because Google believes personal experience is key, they did a deal with Reddit to train their AI, and every domain with the word "forum" in it grew at astronomical rates. Google wants to elevate these sites both because they claim it's helpful and because they want people interacting so they can crawl conversations to train their AI.

Andrew dives deep into analyzing winners and losers after Google updates. When the January 27th volatile update hit, SERP Summary revealed that inline videos jumped from 26% to 40% presence across all results, local service ads tanked in December (Google moved them into map packs), and This Old House cranked up while Forbes got crushed. The tool allows users to filter by specific date ranges and categories to see exactly which domains and URLs are gaining or losing ground in real time.

Andrew Shotland, Founder of Local SEO Guide:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/localseoguide/

Twitter: https://x.com/localseoguide

Local SEO Guide: https://www.localseoguide.com/

SERP Summary: https://serpsummary.localseoguide.com/

Dan Leibrandt, Host of Local Marketing Secrets:

Facebook: https://facebook.com/DanLeibrandtOfficial  

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/danleibrandt/   

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DanLeibrandt   

Website: https://danleibrandt.com 

Local Marketing Secrets Platforms:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LocalMarketingSecrets 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1TCL0LhZbsJS6mzanqnnT1?si=224075c9fbda42f5  

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/local-marketing-secrets/id1741176782 

Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/e0bb5254-5d6c-4940-8211-085157cc1239/local-marketing-secrets 

Audible: https://www.audible.com/podcast/The-Local-Marketeer/B0D1FCN28S?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp 

Podcast Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to Andrew Schottland

05:02 Utilizing SERP Summary for Home Services

10:39 The Rise of Reddit and Quora in Search Results

17:20 Analyzing Winners and Losers in Home Services SEO

25:12 Analyzing Traffic Trends and Google Updates

29:06 Leveraging Reddit and Quora for Local Marketing

36:05 Rapid Fire FAQ on Local SEO Misconceptions

40:17 Insights on Google Algorithm and SEO Tools

45:40 Local Marketing Secrets and Effective Strategies

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