From Telemarketer to Self-Teaching SEO

I asked Joy how she originally got into local SEO about 18 years ago.

It's kind of funny. She got a job as a telemarketer working for a company that sold Google ads. This was back in 2006. She was in sales, and her job was to literally cold call insurance agents and pitch them why they should hire this company she worked for to manage their Google ads.

She remembers at the time, most people knew what Google was and knew the benefit of having their business showing up there. But she used to literally have people on the phone that would be like, what's Google? She's not kidding. This is where she feels old. That would actually happen. She remembers somebody once calling it Goggle, and she was cracking up.

She didn't know anything about SEO when she got a job there. Didn't know anything about how Google worked or anything like that. It was just she was studying advertising as a student. That was what she was going to college for. She was like, I'll get a job in my field.

Then Google launched Google Places at some point while she was working there. She worked there for three years. She remembers her clients just being really super interested in like, what's that? How do I get there?

She was like, I don't know, but I'm going to find out. So she kind of self-taught herself SEO. She found it really interesting, and she was just wanting to figure out how to rank businesses in that section because her clients wanted to be there. She figured she needed to figure that out if they were going to keep paying her.

I asked if she was also helping out with the service, not just kind of the marketing and selling it.

Yeah, it wasn't by design. Her boss basically wanted her to stay in sales because he's like, oh, you sell, you're good at sales, and we don't really want you doing SEO.

She was like, but this is interesting and I want to learn how to do it.

She remembers her boss at the time saying, yeah, Joy, you can't really wrap your head around SEO. You should stick to sales.

She was like, screw you. But she decided to self-teach herself. She had a client that agreed to pay for a website, so they actually built him a website. Then she used that site to test all kinds of things. She would basically work on it on her own. He wasn't even paying for SEO, but she would do it for him for free and just figure out how to get the site ranked.

It was an insurance site. She still remembers it to this day. Some of the stuff she did was stupid, spammy. That's usually how most SEOs get started, right? With all the really spammy stuff. Crazy bad links, keyword stuffing everywhere, all kinds of stuff. But that's how she learned SEO, and then obviously from there, things got better.

Why Link Building Still Works (It's Just Harder)

I asked Joy if she saw any early success there. What was that like?

It was amazing. Link building, it's funny. People like to talk about how link building doesn't work as well anymore, and she disagrees strongly. But she thinks it's gotten harder.

Back in the day when she was ranking this business, she was getting links on these crappy directories and anywhere you could get it with really rich anchor text and all that kind of stuff, and it worked. It worked awesome. She'd see his site moving up in the rankings. She would go into Google Analytics and look at his traffic.

I told her to tell me more about that, about link building doesn't work anymore. So she thinks that's complete hoax?

"It is that being said I think that it's harder so I think there's a lot of sites um especially with guest posting that seems to be one of the the biggest types of Link building that people do right like you have a piece of content you go post it on another site and then somewhere in that content you're linking back to your site and there's a there's a good way to do it it's just hard it's really hard to find sites to publish on that are good," Joy explained.

She finds that a lot of the sites that people are publishing on are getting nailed in the last year with algorithm updates, and so they're tanking. Then any value of that link that you got is also tanking. She's seen a lot of that in the last year.

So she does think it's getting more challenging, but if you can get a link from a site that is not tanking, it's still really powerful to move rankings for sure.

I asked how much does relevance play into the links that you build? Does it have to be a site about pest control or home services or their local area, or can it kind of just be anything?

From what they found, honestly, it can be anything. She hasn't been able to isolate it where she's been able to split test non-related sites with related sites. But she can tell you that a lot of the sites she's seen links on, they're not related to pest control in your example. They're just generic business sites or sites that are encompassing a lot of topics.

She thinks that as long as the trend for the site is good, as long as that page that you're linked from is in Google's index, is getting traffic, all that kind of stuff, then you should be fine.

She doesn't obsess about making sure it's like, oh, it has to be this local website. If she's in Chicago, it has to be Chicago. As long as it makes sense and it's a decent site, it shouldn't matter.

DBAs and Keyword-Rich Business Names Still Work After 18 Years

Joy told me about what has changed since she started and what's stayed the same.

She remembers back in the day when they had custom categories. You could create a business category on a Google listing. They got rid of that two or three years after, and that was amazing. It worked so well. If they had a client that worked with insurance agents a lot, if they had a client that had auto insurance as a category, they would add a custom category for car insurance, and they would start ranking better for car insurance. It was so easy. But they got rid of custom categories, so that's no longer a thing.

One of the things that hasn't changed in the 18 years she's been doing this is keyword-rich business names.

She remembers when she started in SEO, there was no Google guidelines back then. There was no indication of what rules you weren't supposed to break. So they just did everything. She remembers they used to shove like 10 different keywords in the business name on listings they would set up, and they would start ranking overnight.

That tactic still works. She's not saying do it, for the record, but it still works. You literally will see businesses doing this, and it does still work. So that's something that she kind of expected not to work as long as it has, but yeah, it's unfortunately still working.

I asked her if she implements that for her clients because I don't think it's necessarily sketchy or spammy, especially if you do the DBA.

Yeah, it's different. So what she's talking about, let's say you're a pest control business. She would not put every type of bug in your business name, although it would help you rank for those things.

But they definitely do tell clients to get DBAs. They do rebrand them if they're a very generic business name. For example, if it's like Hawkins and Hawkins Law Firm, that's not going to help you rank on Google for terms that you want to rank for. If you're like a personal injury lawyer, you want to have personal injury in your business name.

"So we absolutely do tell clients to Rebrand get a DBA um that's not against Google's guidelines just to be clear they're fine with that so as a business you could have three or four different names that you go by and that's completely legal and it's completely fine by Google standards so as long as you're not breaking any like industry standards I know some Industries have rules around that stuff um it's a it's a perfectly legitimate way to rank better and still still be within Google's Graces," Joy said.

The Google Posts ROI Reality Check

I asked Joy how important Google Business Profile posts are and how often you should do them.

"Not important at all so I I know I'm sorry I'm going to say lots of things that seos disagree with I feel like seos love Google posts because they're sellable it's like this deliverable that you can put on your report that you're like I did a bunch of posts," Joy explained.

They actually only do them for, she can count on one hand the number of clients they do monthly posts for at the moment. She actually asked her team recently. They're doing them because the client requested it. She was like, can you go back and actually tell me how many clicks those posts got in the last year and how many leads it got?

Those numbers were so low. Almost no clicks. She thinks there was like one lead. It was ridiculous. She has the numbers on a sheet she was just looking at recently. She was like, the ROI on this is terrible.

Her prediction, and she's not usually one to make predictions, she thinks Google's going to ditch them. Because historically, Google ditches features that are not used.

She can tell you the usage rate amongst businesses for Google Posts is very low. The average business does not use Google Posts. None of the businesses near her, the restaurants, all the kind of popular places, none of them do Google Posts. They're not doing them.

So unless they're using an SEO company, and that's not good. That's not something that Google wants. They want features that all businesses are using. And whenever that doesn't happen, they tend to get rid of them.

So her crystal ball prediction is that she thinks Google's going to ditch them in the next few years.

I told her that is a hot take.

She could be wrong. She thinks they either need to ditch them or change them because the way they are right now, nobody's using them. The ROI on using them is just so low. She doesn't do it at all. They're just like, this is a waste of time.

Hours Are Now a Ranking Factor (Confirmed by Google)

Joy announced an algorithm update back in the fall of 2023. It's kind of funny because she got laughed at by a few people when she first came out with it. She was like, Google has a new ranking factor.

They're like, okay, Joy, whatever.

Then she showed examples. She was like, this wasn't like this in October, and this changed in November. Basically, Google added hours are now a ranking factor.

She's heard from people that work with restaurants that for restaurants, they were always a ranking factor in some way before, but they got increased. The dial on it went up a lot.

Google actually came out and confirmed after she tweeted. She likes Danny Sullivan. She tweeted to him, and she was like, Danny, can you tell me, did you change something? Because she's seeing some crazy differences.

And then he said, yeah, we did. She was like, thank you. All the people that laughed at her, she was like, okay, guys, I'm not making up stuff.

Basically, they made it so that when your business is open, you rank better than when your business is closed.

What this means practically for businesses is if you can be open longer than your competitors, you will have an advantage. It's something where you should look at your opening hours, look at when your leads are coming in, and realize that if you're closed weekends, no big deal, but you're not going to rank on weekends.

So if you want people to actually find you, if they're searching for pest control on a Saturday and your business is closed on Saturday, that's a problem. They're not going to find you. You're going to be ranked a lot less, especially if you have competitors that are open.

It's a bit of a mix. They've seen in certain industries this was crazy different, and other industries it really didn't matter. It wasn't a huge significant change. So it does vary a lot based on what you're doing and what your competitors are doing as well.

The Google Data Leak: Nav Boost and Click-Through Rate

I asked Joy if she could give the audience a rundown on the Google data leak.

There's two SEOs named Rand Fishkin and Mike King who released this early June. Basically, there were these documents that were published on this site that had all these different API calls that was a Google document. She thinks they even got confirmation. Google didn't deny that it was a Google document.

So she guesses that we call that confirmation because if it wasn't a Google document, it would have come out and said, yeah, this isn't ours, or this has nothing to do with it. It wasn't supposed to get published, but there are API calls, and there's just lots of interesting stuff in there.

She forgets, maybe 4,000 and something different labels and things in that document. There's a really good website that has a list of them all.

Basically, what it told us was just things that Google is looking at. We don't know if they're ranking signals. We don't know what weight they have. There's a lot of speculation there, but essentially it's some insight into the things that Google's looking at.

One of the biggest controversial things that was talked about that was in this document is this thing called NavBoost, which is essentially Google's word for them measuring traffic to a page or what Joy likes to call click-through rate.

So Google Googlers have repetitively said over and over that like, oh, we don't measure click-through rate, it's not a ranking factor, and how much traffic your site gets and all that jazz doesn't matter.

SEOs have proven that's not true. Nobody should think that's true.

"So I always say people when you hear Google say things they'll just take it as like like truth you got to like Tex test things right and make sure what they're saying is lining up with what you're seeing um because again these aren't Engineers that are saying these things they're like they're they're bound to make incorrect statements but I don't think they're doing it intentionally I don't think Google is trying to mislead the public I think it's just like the way they word things is different than how we word things," Joy explained.

She doesn't think if you ask Googlers to give you the ranking factors, they're going to be allowed to do that. She loves the Googlers. Danny Sullivan got a lot of heat for stuff that he said. She thinks he's one of the nicest, most helpful people that she's run across in the SEO community. So she thinks people should be nice to Googlers. She doesn't think that we should trash on Google and make Google our enemy. She doesn't think that does any good for the SEO community.

Near Me Optimization Still Works (And the BBB Does It)

I asked Joy what's an easy win that people can get right off the bat for either a client or for their own company.

Probably title tags and H1s. It's SEO basics right there. It was funny because she's been on a few webinars about the Google algorithm leak documents. Those documents that came out recently that Google leaked. People are talking about all the factors that are in them.

She's heard quite a few people be like, I'm surprised title tags are still a thing.

She's like, they're definitely still a thing. They do a lot. They move the needle. Adding words to your title tags or things like that can make a huge difference.

The only controversial thing that she feels like they do that some SEOs disagree with is the length of your title tag. Some people are like, oh, you got to keep it to like 60 characters or whatever.

She so strongly disagrees with that. She's like, if you have a long title tag, who cares? Google's going to cut it off anyway. So she would not stress about your title tags being too long. Just put whatever you want in there that's needed.

It needs to include whatever keywords you're targeting, and those obviously need to be words that are searched. That's step one. It should also do variations.

Another thing they know that works really well is optimizing for near me searches. And again, something that somebody told her, oh, that's spammy, Joy. You don't want to put near you or whatever.

She's like, look at the BBB. The BBB does this on their website. So you can actually Google blank near me.

I told her I actually didn't realize that.

"Yeah yeah and so the BBB they're smart obviously like I have to give credit to their SEO team so if they're listening you know good job guys but like they're doing what works and I think yelp's done this for years too like it it works and so we've we've looked at case after case after case where we optimize for near me by putting it on their website and like the amount of clicks that goes up as a result is insane," Joy said.

It's not a lot. You put it in the title, put it in your headers, a couple times in your content. That's it. It's not rocket science.

But she can't tell you how many business owners she's had push back on that. They're like, oh, it's spammy.

She's like, guys, it's not spammy. There's no bad thing that's going to come out of this. Google's not penalizing businesses. They're doing the exact opposite. They're actually increasing your ranking as a result. So it just logically makes sense to not do it.

The YouTube Turning Point

I asked Joy why she's going so hard on YouTube. She's got over 40,000 subscribers (now over 120,000), tons of videos. Is she seeing a lot of ROI? Tell me about it.

It was an aha moment. She was at a conference back at the end of 2022. She heard a keynote speaker named Jeremy Vest who got up on stage and talked about how video is the future.

She was like, oh my God, I hate video. At this point in time, they had maybe two videos on their YouTube channel and she thinks 100 subscribers. It was so lame. They had no YouTube presence at all.

She heard him talk, and she was like, you know, he's right, whether I like it or not. She can't stand being on video. She can't stand the lights, the production, the overemphasis you have to get with your voice. You have to be all excited. Anybody that knows her personally knows that is not her personality. She's not this bubbly person that's going to be all chipper and excited.

So it was tough for her to wrap her head around having to kind of do more of that to be engaging on YouTube. But she decided just to dive in and see if they could get their YouTube channel better.

She did everything this YouTube coach told her to do. So he would be like, Joy, I need you more animated. I need your titles to include things like hack.

She's like, no. But she did it anyway.

She was like, I don't want to. But she was like, at the end of the day, I want to be a client to him the way that I want my clients to be with me. They come to me and hire me because I know how to get them ranked on Google. When they argue with me about tactics, it doesn't help them. It's like, you're paying me to argue with me? That's not a good use of your money.

So she was like, I'm not going to argue with this guy. If he tells me to do something, I'm going to do it.

So she paid a lot of money to this YouTube coach, Jeremy Vest, that she heard on stage. She's been working with him for almost two years. She can't tell you, they have a full-time video editor, a second half-time video editor now. They spend hundreds of hours every month on video. It's ridiculous. Lots of money in ad. It's just been a lot.

But she does think that that is the future. What she's trying to wrap her head around next is how that impacts small businesses. She's like, the average small business doesn't have a YouTube channel, or if they do, it's like her, one video with no views and no subscribers.

She doesn't know what this means for local businesses, but she's getting there. She's like, well, if we figure it out for us, we'll figure out how to do it for our clients. But it's challenging.

My Main Takeaway

The biggest thing I learned from Joy is that Google Posts are a waste of time and get almost no clicks or leads. She can count on one hand the number of clients they do monthly posts for at the moment. She actually asked her team to go back and tell her how many clicks those posts got in the last year and how many leads it got. Those numbers were so low. Almost no clicks. She thinks there was like one lead. It was ridiculous. The ROI on this is terrible. Her prediction is that Google's going to ditch them in the next few years because historically, Google ditches features that are not used. The usage rate amongst businesses for Google Posts is very low. The average business does not use Google Posts. None of the businesses near her, the restaurants, all the popular places, none of them do Google Posts. Unless you're using an SEO company, and that's not good. Google wants features that all businesses are using. Stop wasting your time on Google Posts. Focus on things that actually move the needle.

The second takeaway is that business hours are now a ranking factor since fall 2023, and Google confirmed it. Joy announced this and got laughed at by a few people. Then she showed examples. This wasn't like this in October, and this changed in November. She tweeted to Danny Sullivan and was like, Danny, can you tell me, did you change something? He said yeah, we did. Basically, when your business is open, you rank better than when your business is closed. What this means practically for businesses is if you can be open longer than your competitors, you will have an advantage. If you're closed weekends, no big deal, but you're not going to rank on weekends. If they're searching for pest control on a Saturday and your business is closed on Saturday, that's a problem. They're not going to find you. You're going to be ranked a lot less, especially if you have competitors that are open. Don't just list yourself as 24 hours if you just send people to voicemail. That's a really bad user experience. You can get negative reviews. Unless you actually have a call answering service or something that can actually talk to people 24 hours a day.

The third insight is that near me optimization still works, the BBB does it, and it's not spammy. Another thing they know that works really well is optimizing for near me searches. Somebody told Joy that's spammy, you don't want to put near you or whatever. She's like, look at the BBB. The BBB does this on their website. The BBB is smart. Their SEO team is doing what works. Yelp's done this for years too. They've looked at case after case after case where they optimize for near me by putting it on their website, and the amount of clicks that goes up as a result is insane. It's not a lot. You put it in the title, put it in your headers, a couple times in your content. That's it. It's not rocket science. But she can't tell you how many business owners have pushed back on that. It's not spammy. There's no bad thing that's going to come out of this. Google's not penalizing businesses. They're doing the exact opposite. They're actually increasing your ranking as a result.

The fourth thing that struck me is that keyword-rich business names and DBAs still work after 18 years. One of the things that hasn't changed in the 18 years Joy's been doing this is keyword-rich business names. Back in the day, they used to shove 10 different keywords in the business name on listings they would set up, and they would start ranking overnight. That tactic still works. She's not saying do it, but it does still work. The legitimate version is to get a DBA. They definitely do tell clients to get DBAs. They do rebrand them if they're a very generic business name. For example, if it's Hawkins and Hawkins Law Firm, that's not going to help you rank on Google. If you're a personal injury lawyer, you want to have personal injury in your business name. As a business, you could have three or four different names that you go by, and that's completely legal and completely fine by Google standards. It's a perfectly legitimate way to rank better and still be within Google's graces.

The fifth lesson is that YouTube is the future, and Joy went all in despite hating video. She heard a keynote speaker named Jeremy Vest talk about how video is the future. She hated video at the time. They had maybe two videos on their YouTube channel and 100 subscribers. It was so lame. But she was like, he's right, whether I like it or not. She can't stand being on video, but she decided to dive in and do everything this YouTube coach told her to do. She paid a lot of money to this coach and has been working with him for almost two years. They have a full-time video editor, a second half-time video editor now. They spend hundreds of hours every month on video. It's ridiculous. Lots of money and ad spend. It's been a lot. But that is the future. In two years, they went from 100 subscribers to over 40,000. They definitely get leads from their YouTube channel. Her goal is to be the best SEO YouTube channel in the world. She'll do whatever it takes to get there.

If you want to learn more from Joy, she's pretty active on Twitter/X and YouTube. Her channel is Sterling Sky, and she does a lot of videos. She has a lot of stuff coming up that's really interesting. She's actually increasing their video production yet again this year. They're going to double down even more than they're doing now. She's got a lot of tests that she hasn't released yet that she plans on releasing in the fall. You can also check out LocalU.org for monthly free webinars where she interviews people about SEO topics. They usually have 400 to 700 people show up live. Joy's journey from being told by her boss that she can't wrap her head around SEO to building a 34-person agency and becoming one of the top voices in local SEO is proof that when people doubt you, self-teaching and testing everything yourself is the path to mastery.