Vlog #229: Amy Toman On Helping Small Businesses Succeed In Google Local Search

In part one we learned about Amy Toman and her **** for small business. We dug more into that **** in part two and also spoke about helping small businesses with local optimization, even with low budgets. Plus, we spoke about the Google Product Experts community.

Most local SEOs care deeply about small businesses, she said she does a lot of side work for solo businesses and small attorneys that need to get their names out there. She does a lot of local optimization on their websites but also does a lot on the Google Business Profiles listings for their businesses.

The cover images need to be different based on the business category. She just loves it when the people she helps come back and realize what magic you have done for them across Google Maps and local search. Watching these small businesses gain in traffic by making minor changes excites her.

She said that despite these businesses having low budgets, she can help and direct them in the right direction. Most of the time, it is explaining to the business what they need to do by explaining it or sending them a resource.

We then dove into the local SEO community and how much of her time she gives away for free to help these local businesses. She is a huge fan of the Google Product Experts, and they are so giving and generous with their time. It does help them because they see the bigger issues before most in the industry. So it does help them with their clients by helping others for free.

We also spoke about some of the people who post take it out on the Google Product Experts. Google Product Experts do not work for Google, but the local businesses that post there do not work for Google. So they take it out on these people who are answering their questions for free.

There are so many issues that they need to deal with, across frustrated businesses, confusing help documents, bugs, and then all the spam.

To learn more about Amy, you can follow her on Twitter @BubblesUp and on LinkedIn.

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Forum discussion at YouTube.