Is the quality of traffic different today for local businesses?

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0:21Joy Hawkins: I'm Jordan Cooney, and joining me today is Joy Hawkins, owner and president of Sterling Sky. Joy has spent nearly two decades studying local results and has led more than a thousand local SEO tests to determine what ranking factors really matter. Today, we're going to talk about local SEO, how it's evolving in this age of AI, and the rise of paid visibility in what businesses need to do to stay ahead. Is the quality of traffic different today than it was in the past for local businesses? There used to be this rank and rent model that was really popular in the local space where you'd set up a website, rank it, and then sell the leads, right?

0:56I think that I've seen as a trend at conferences, that is less and less popular over the years because it's harder. The opportunity for business owners is like they often all want to target the same things because they want to go after the things with volume. Time for a one-minute break to hear from our sponsor, Previsible. So you're looking for SEO help and you got a couple of options. You could start replying to spam from agencies that claim they can get you to rank number one on Google. You can pay an hourly rate for a consultant who will inevitably nickel and dime you with hourly charges. Or you can work with a cookie cutter agency to quickly launch a strategy-less project with low success rate.

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2:37Sometimes you can really dominate with like, the more niche you get, the more specific you get, but it's not as attractive because you don't get the immediate massive increase in leads and volume, right? But I would say long-term, it could be a good plan.

2:49Joy Hawkins: Thank you to Joy Hawkins, owner and president at Sterling Sky, for joining us. If you'd like to contact Joy, you can find a link to her LinkedIn profile in our show notes or on thevoicesofsearch.com. You can also visit her company website, sterlingsky.ca. If you haven't subscribed yet and want a daily stream of SEO and content marketing knowledge in your podcast feed, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app or on YouTube, and we'll be back in your feed every week. Okay, that's all for today. But until next time, remember, the answers are always in the data.