So in this video, I briefly just wanted to explain what local SEO, aka search engine optimization actually is. So I've gone over to Google and I'm actually using my hometown as an example. I live in a town called Mattoon, and I'm over in Massachusetts. So I just typed a real simple search, you know, if I was looking for a plumber, in my local town, this is probably exactly what I would do, I would go to Google. And I would type in plumber Mattoon Ma. And I'm going to explain kind of what you're going to see here, and what I'm showing in the search results.

So you can see all these little yellow ads. And these are basically running what's called Google AdWords. If you're not familiar with Google AdWords, that's Google's ad platform. And generally, the people running these ads have to pay every time somebody clicks on this. So if I click on any of these ads, they could pay anywhere from a couple dollars all the way up to you know, it could be $30 in more per every click, depending on how competitive your business industry is. Obviously If you're a small business owner, you could try this.

But there's a lot that needs to go into it. And it can be very, very expensive. I actually work with a search engine marketing company as my day job. And that's what they do, they actually work with a lot of plumbers. And generally they charge you know, it could be upwards of 500 to $1,000 or more just to manage the AdWords accounts. And then you're usually needing to spend anywhere from 500 to $1,000 or more in your budget every month, to really gauge whether or not it's going to work for you.

Granted, you're going to see a huge ROI. You know, if you're working with someone that really knows what they're doing with Google AdWords, where you're gonna find is that, you know, if you're a small business owner, you know, for someone like me, I would feel very nervous about going and investing, you know, a couple thousand dollars into something, you know, just to kind of try it out and see whether or not it's going to work for me. So it's really just something you have to consider, you know, if you're at the point in your business you feel you can do that. I'm going to talk a little bit more about later on. But in terms of local SEO, below that you see this map of, you know, this is basically showing with doing. And then what you see here three businesses, this is essentially what we're going to be focusing on getting your business up into this local map pack.

Now, on the right, we also have more ads all the way on the right side there, those are all additional ads running with the Google AdWords. And then below that, we have what's called the organic listings. So for example, Canon and percona, they're actually showing number one in the organic listing, as well as number one in the map pack. So they're probably getting a lot of calls for free. They're not paying anything for Google AdWords. As you can see here, I don't believe I see any ads from them.

And they basically have, you know, two positions here on the first page, giving them some traction, and they're probably getting some phone calls from that and getting business. So I'm going to be kind of showing you some things that you can do to eventually get yourself up into this map pack. And really all the That are going to allow you to do that. You can also see here, if you click on More plumber, you're going to see a lot more listings. And as you can see, there's a lot of plumbers in the Mattoon area. It looks like we've got, you know, there's three pages worth.

So there's got to be, I would say, probably 50 Plus, you know, probably in the 40 to 50 plus range, plumber businesses. So you know, someone like Jeff potvin or Paulie Martin, they're actually not really showing up unless someone clicks that more plumber button. So really, what's going to happen is, once you set up your Google business page, from the start, you're probably going to be kind of sitting with some of these guys, you know, way down below, like these guys, Dean or Vila, you know, just some of these other companies that really just aren't as high up. And all the things that I'm going to explain to you are going to kind of reflect and show you how to be able to kind of compete with some of these other guys. So that's basically what local SEO is, and that's what I'm going to be showing you how to do.