What data should businesses really be showing on their website?

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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. What should business owners be asking when it comes to ensuring that they are sharing the right data throughout their experiences on their websites or other platforms? I can tell you we get businesses all the time, especially service area businesses that don't have like an address on their website because they work from home.

0:58And then Google can't properly tell where you are. So it should be clear to Google like where you are located. Service areas are trickier because this is where, you know, every business wants to show up in 50 cities. 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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2:36And then they only have one office. That doesn't work. Honestly, if you're trying to expand your local presence in other cities, you need to think about getting more offices and more locations because that's the only way to do it. that really works. Having a physical office is unfortunately tied to, you know, ranking in the local pack. So that is something, especially for home services, we see quite a bit. They don't think that way, but we like tell them, no, you need to get more locations. Otherwise you're not gonna rank in all these cities. Like it's just not doable.

3:02Joy 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 on 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.

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