From $5 in the Bank to First Client

I asked Tim about his background and how he originally got into local SEO.

After he studied for three years in 2015, he didn't really know what to do. He never wanted to work for a company. "I always knew it better anyway, so nobody wanted to work with me, I guess."

He was lost. He took a flight ticket to Australia and did some traveling. He didn't have much money, but he knew that when he came back to Germany he would have his own business at some point.

It took him about six months to get into this whole marketing thing because he studied marketing but it wasn't really practical what they taught. He didn't really know how everything works on the internet.

He was looking for phrases like how to make money online at some point. He was so desperate. That eventually got him to the idea of how do people actually pay me any money online? What do I have to do to get paid?

Then he realized, okay, if I provide value to them, if I just provide informational value. There was an interesting article he read about Google Ads and supposedly the most difficult thing you can do, the most difficult skill you can learn online.

Tim learned everything about Google Ads, but it was all theoretical. He ran some Google Ads and some affiliate projects, but it didn't really work. But he found the whole Google Ads stuff interesting.

Then he joined Facebook groups. He joined five Google Ads Facebook groups. He just wanted to test what he thought about the internet basically in terms of providing value to people.

"What I did was I spent 14, 15 hours a day answering people's questions about Google Ads on Facebook groups. And if I didn't know the answer, I would just go to Google and Google it up and then put it into my own words."

He tried to explain it without copy and pasting because he didn't want to mislead anyone. He just wanted to understand the topic himself first.

It took about 10 days until he got hundreds of messages in the meantime from different kinds of people. But after 10 days, a guy reached out to him and said, hey, can you help me with Google Ads?

Tim had never given a coaching his whole life before. He had no clue how that works. He wasn't really prepared for that situation that someone would actually reach out because he didn't believe in it fully.

The guy was quite rude. "He was like, I don't need someone for fucking coaching. I need someone to run it for my company. I was like, OK, OK, I'll do it."

Then the guy transferred money. Tim had $5 left in his bank account. He had to decide whether to spend the five bucks on food or petrol.

"There was, the last two weeks before that client reached out were pretty terrible. I couldn't really sleep, I was sweating at night, I was like, I didn't really know what to do."

He owed his mom like five grand, her boyfriend five grand, and the government ten grand. Lots of debt to pay.

"I was like, oh shit, if this doesn't work, I don't know what to do. Anyway, last minute, this guy transferred $600 to my bank account. I was like, wow, this shit works."

Long story short, this guy wanted Google Ads and obviously he wanted to have something more sustainable, SEO. So Tim upsold him an SEO package. "I think on the first month he paid me $2,500 on a retainer which was so much money for me. I was like, my God, this is insane."

Everything worked well. He just learned on the go. He started joining local SEO or SEO Facebook groups, helping people.

Then at some point, the owners of those groups didn't really live up to their own expectations. Most of the descriptions of those Facebook groups say that you can provide case studies, you can help people, you can talk about different strategies. Some of them didn't like it so they banned him from those groups.

"I was like, shit, that's my only funnel basically that I have. So I decided to start my own Facebook group so this wouldn't happen again."

The Six Month Monologue That Built 100K Members

Tim had a monologue in his Facebook group for six months. Then after six months, it just took off.

The consistent work and answering people's questions every day and answering every single comment every day and actually thinking about the problems people have had a huge impact on the growth of the group.

In the first year, it grew from zero to 900. In the second year to 30,000. That was huge exponential growth.

I asked Tim how he grew so fast.

"I think it's a lot about consistency and posting every day, even though it's a monologue at the beginning, because it was literally a monologue for six months. I was talking to myself."

Most people that join don't search for Facebook groups. They get it promoted by Facebook. They see an ad that says, here, join this Facebook group. At the beginning of your group when you start a group, Facebook doesn't promote the group at all.

"You really have to put so much effort into it so that you get all these tiny little reach boosts through consistently posting and commenting on everyone who's commenting."

The first six months were the hardest. It grew from zero to 500 people in six months. "That was really hard. I was so like, just start talking to yourself. There's no response coming from anyone and it's like, oh my God, is this really worth it?"

Most people struggle with that. Not only with Facebook groups, but Instagram, SEO. All of those things take a lot of time and it pays off if you put consistent effort and you don't get distracted by whatever appears to be more shiny.

"You need to have a good profile picture. You have to have on your Facebook page or private Facebook account a great cover image. Fill it with some things and then you interact with people in other groups and comment under their stuff."

Then they will eventually go to your profile and then join your group if that's one CTA you have on your Facebook page.

It really comes down to consistency, not being distracted, joining other Facebook groups and interacting with the people in a meaningful way, not just with AI. "Don't use AI to copy and paste stuff. I don't think it really works."

You can use it for grammar checks and stuff like that, but if you want to interact and grow a following on Reddit or Facebook, it's very important people understand that the thoughts you're putting into writing are actually your own thoughts and not some machine's.

The Facebook Group That Got Hacked

Tim mentioned the group got hacked two years ago. No one knows who it was.

The only person joining, or the only two people joining was William Jones and his wife Rowena Jones from Rank Fortress or whatever, William Jones Marketing.

"These are the only two people that joined and apart from these two that joined, many were kicked and most of them didn't like William Jones."

Tim can't say who it was because he doesn't know, but that's just the facts attached to it.

They collect all the questions every three months so nothing gets lost. Even though the group was stolen, he got all the questions collected.

"The guy, I could see it in the activity log, it took him like seven hours to delete all my posts manually. It's insane how much effort someone puts into this."

A hacker handed over the admin rights to some fake account. They didn't really want to do anything with it so he sold it to some other guy and this guy sold it back to Tim.

Some fake profile reached out and said hey I want to talk to you about the group. "That was obviously William Jones for sure. I mean I have no proof of that but that's what I would suggest, what I think happened."

The Top Conversion Mistakes Costing You Money

I asked Tim about the most common questions he gets in the group.

He has an Excel sheet of 750 questions because every three months they collect all the questions.

One of the biggest questions is how to get clients or how to rank on Google Maps, what are ranking factors.

But Tim thinks people should focus more on conversions. "There's all these different platforms you can get reach. But it all comes down to you sending the people to your website and then they have to convert."

If Google sees the customer land on your website and they don't come back to the search after they submitted the form, "That's a clear sign that was a good decision to provide that search result."

I asked Tim if he has any conversion rate optimization hacks.

"I think the most important thing is the above the fold spot where people land on. That's the spot most people see."

You always see a lift in conversions when you optimize that spot. If you have a shady spot and optimize it and make it really good, you will always see a lift.

"The above the fold spot is so important. You structure your keywords and your USPs and your social proof and the CTA so that people are more inclined to click than to leave."

I asked Tim to get more tactical.

"It depends a lot on the vertical and the industry."

But there is a general structure. A keyword relevant heading that contains a USP usually works really well. People see immediately what they get and that they are at the right place.

Then support it with bullet points, your value propositions. Put all the value proposition in these bullet points.

A clear CTA is very important. If it's your main CTA, it should have one color that differentiates from the rest of the page. "I think that's a big mistake most people do because they have a red and blue website and then all of their main CTAs are either red or blue and then it doesn't stand out."

Then social proof. It would go from headline, USPs, CTA, social proof.

"I still think like 90% of local businesses just don't do it."

What works in some industries is people smiling in the camera. "A personal picture of someone or a team that's smiling to the camera is worth more than some random fancy AI-made image."

The Top Google Business Profile Ranking Factors

Tim has a 300 point local SEO checklist. About 50 to 60 points are specifically about Google Business Profile.

I asked him what are some of the top ones.

"Definitely keywords in the business name."

Every time he posts that, everyone is like, you're not compliant with Google. "But I didn't say that. I didn't say anything about Google's guidelines and not to violate them."

Changing the business name and making it more keyword-heavy makes a lot of sense. He advises that to all his clients. They're usually getting a DBA or changing the business name entirely.

"It makes so much more of a difference in local search. Because if you're not having the keyword in your name for a local business, it's not really relevant. People will not click through."

It doesn't make so much sense to have a very generic business name. Just put the keyword at the end or something like that and get Google compliant.

The second thing is obviously the primary category. "If that primary category doesn't match your business name or the keywords you want to target, then you're not ranking for anything."

Third point is reviews for sure. Getting consistent reviews. Sterling Sky did some tests where they found that consistent reviews actually impact rankings. You should probably get weekly reviews. At least one to three weekly reviews.

"If you have a 10% conversion rate on reviews. If you have 100 customers, then you should at least get 10 reviews."

The fourth part is the service section on GBP that certainly has impact on rankings. They did some tests where they were trying to rank for terms that there wasn't even a local three pack for.

"Then we added those to the service section. Suddenly there was a three pack that we triggered. So we triggered other businesses visibility."

It was very interesting to see. They started to rank for near me terms, but not for the actual service term, which was interesting as well.

Not so many people have an activity feature. They have a yoga retreat client that has an activity feature and that definitely impacts rankings. "The increase in conversions was massive after we just added a couple of activities."

The fifth or sixth point is the website. "I think that's very important for Google Business Profiles that the organic rankings or your organic performance actually impacts local rankings as well."

Google doesn't really hide that fact. They even show this in their business profile guidelines.

Services Section Strategy

I asked Tim about the services section. Should you have every single unique keyword?

"Well, I think you need to test this for your own business. I don't think this will work the same way for every Google Business Profile."

It's very difficult to assess because you're always in a different local area.

"I would keep it very relevant. As long as it's relevant, just add more keywords and then see how the rankings improve or how your leads improve."

About 160 services, he doesn't know. "At some point, Google needs to think about it as well. Is this actually user-friendly? Nobody would ever read that."

Focus on the primary ones, the secondary ones, and then everything that's relevant where you think you could make some money from.

I asked if you should optimize the Google Business Profile for only the city it's based in.

"I don't think Google believes that the geo terms you add in there are part of the services."

They tried that with near me. It didn't work. When they added one keyword, it triggered the local pack, but only for the near me phrase, not the actual phrase.

"That tells me that it already considers this local anyway."

You don't have to optimize for the cities or for near me for the services section. If you start adding all these districts and cities, it just looks very spammy. "There's a proximity algorithm anyways that restricts your Google profile from going off of that radius."

Review Strategies and What Actually Matters

I asked Tim about review nuances. Do you think we should be trying to collect a photo? Should we get keywords in the reviews?

"There's some local search patterns that suggest that most likely the sentiment in the reviews plays a role and the keywords as well."

But it's not as most people might think about keywords and keyword rankings. "I don't think they're tied to specific keyword rankings. It's just like as soon as someone mentions that the business was great and they use certain keywords, then that's relevant to the business."

He doesn't think it has anything to do with the actual keyword rankings.

Most people confuse that they search for something and then the reviews would be suggested on the map. There's some tiny little snippets above the location pins that repeat the parts of the review that you searched for.

"Most people think there is a direct correlation, but we've tested this so many times, there's no correlation. Nobody has ever found a correlation between that."

The keywords itself might impact rankings, but not on a keyword rank level.

For getting reviews, it depends on the niche. As a restaurant, you could put it on the tables. But if you're a service-based business, you could leave those QR codes on any of the equipment that's with the customer. Or put it on the car steering wheel after you got a job done.

"Our problem is not that we're lacking ideas, the problem is more that the client can actually do the stuff we want from him."

Obviously the best way is to insist personally after the job is done. "Here, can you leave a review? I'm going to wait. Just hand over your phone and scan the code and leave us a review now."

You will probably have the highest conversion rate with that if you insist on it. But it depends a lot on what type of person you are.

The AI and LLM Reality Check

I asked Tim if he's doing anything different for AI overviews, AI mode and LLMs like ChatGPT.

"We did a little bit more PR ever since. But to be honest, the research on ChatGPT, the AIOs are quite easy, if you ask me. That's just very good SEO and you will be featured."

But ChatGPT is very different. Most people believe that you have to be very prominent. You have to boost your fame. You have to get a lot of backlinks. You have to get a lot of brand mentions, branded searches, maybe backlinks and PR and features and unstructured citations.

"That's believed to be the way it works, but I haven't seen real evidence that this is actually what works."

Every time he's searching for their clients with their primary keywords, he's getting a ton of shit results in all three different ways. You can search locked out of ChatGPT, you can search locked in without a plan, and you can search with a ProPlus plan.

"You will get four different search results, which is incredible, but all of them don't really show me great results. You get 3.8 star businesses recommended."

That tells him we're not there yet and nobody knows what are the actual factors.

From a logical point of view, it makes a lot of sense. Backlinks, branded searches, brand mentions, structured citations. Everything makes a lot of sense. If you ask the AI, it will tell you the same.

"But what it actually does is very different. It's very different from what everyone believes."

From three months ago, he did one search and it listed seven businesses and there were 32 mistakes in these rankings. Not good or bad. Wrong. Wrong direction link, wrong website links. "It even made up a business, like it made it completely up."

He posted about it. 32 big mistakes. "How is this even possible? How can people trust this?"

Maybe they need to do another podcast in a year. But currently he doesn't trust all these tips on how to rank in AI. "I can only guess. That makes a lot of sense in the future, but how it is now, I don't know."

Tim's Message: Focus on Profits, Not Just Rankings

I asked Tim for his message to local marketers and local business owners.

"I think one thing is that the majority of people focuses too much on rankings and not conversions or profits."

When he started his SEO journey in that Google Ads space, it was always about get impressions, get clicks, get conversions and profits. You optimize in that order.

"It's kind of like the same with SEO as well. You just have to get noticed somewhere, rank high, improve your rankings, get more visibility, then convert that traffic into a lot of money."

Most business owners only focus on rankings and not so much on the conversions and the profits at the end.

Usually what happens when they start working with Tim is they obviously get better rankings. That's great. That's what they do. They get them more visibility.

But at some point, they're like, I wish we could make much more money with all those rankings. I'm not sure if it's worth it.

When you look at their business and at their offers and what else they do in their business, there's usually something entirely wrong. They're happy to pay for SEO services, "But what they also need is some business advisor who tells them, your offer sucks and your other channels are not really nice and you don't have an email marketing campaign."

It's so important to look at all these things equally. "Like rankings is nice visibility, but if you're ranking first and you're not converting, you can get the best rankings in the world. You don't need them."

Rankings, conversions, profits. That's something people should consider.

My Main Takeaway

This conversation with Tim completely changed how I think about consistency and conversion optimization. The biggest insight is that he had a monologue for six months in his Facebook group before it took off. Most people would have quit after a month. Tim kept showing up every single day.

The conversion optimization point is critical. 90% of local businesses don't optimize their above the fold section properly. That's free money they're leaving on the table. Keyword relevant heading, value propositions in bullet points, clear CTA with a contrasting color, and social proof. That's it.

And the AI/LLM reality check is refreshing. Most people are speculating about what works to rank in ChatGPT. Tim actually tests it and sees terrible results. Wrong links, made up businesses, 32 mistakes in one search. We're not there yet and anyone claiming they have the answer is guessing.

But what resonated most was the focus on profits, not just rankings. You can rank number one for everything and still go out of business if you're not converting that traffic and making money.

Thanks for reading, and if you found this valuable, make sure to check out the full podcast episode. Tim drops even more tactical local SEO advice that I couldn't fit into this recap.

You can find Tim on Facebook and LinkedIn by searching for his name Tim Kahlert. Make sure to join his Local SEO Hustlers community at localseohustlers.com and his Facebook group Local SEO Strategies and Google Business Profile Help with Tim Kahlert.