Krystal Taing 📍 How to be a GBP Platinum SEO

As a local search practitioner and Google Business Profile Platinum Product Expert, I help brands and agencies craft successful local search solutions.
 
Krystal is the Global Director of Pre-sales Solutions at Uberall.
 
She has over a decade of experience in local search and is passionate about helping brands manage hybrid customer experiences.
 
She is a Google Business Profile Platinum Product Expert and faculty member at LocalU.
 
Please welcome Krystal Taing.

Watch the full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgRr2Ewn5pA

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---------------------------------------------
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Page Optimizer Pro - https://seo.video/pop
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Transcript

Hey everyone! I'm back with another episode of my SEO Knowledge Bomb podcast. Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Krystal Taing, a local search expert and Google Business Profile Platinum Product Expert.

Krystal dropped some serious knowledge bombs during our chat. I wanted to recap the key takeaways for you all.

First off, Krystal explained there's no "secret sauce" or tricks to ranking #1 in Google. It's about deeply understanding your brand, customers, and crafting content that meets their needs. Testing different optimizations to see what works for your site is crucial too.

Krystal first got into SEO back in 2010-2011 by accident! She was working at an e-commerce company managing their product catalog. But after a major Google update, she had to quickly learn SEO to recover lost rankings. This trial by fire made her fall in love with SEO analytics and seeing how small tweaks directly impacted results.

In terms of learning SEO, Krystal recommends finding an agency or individuals you align with philosophically. There are no "SEO gurus" who know all the answers. Surround yourself with smart people willing to test, analyze data, and collaborate. She personally learned a ton from industry pioneers like Mike Blumenthal, Joy Hawkins, Darren Shaw and more.

One of Krystal's biggest SEO wins was for a major coffee chain. They already ranked well for generic terms like "coffee" and "lattes." But they wanted to capture searches for "breakfast" too. Krystal uploaded photos of breakfast foods to their Google Business Profile, tagged them accordingly, and drove a surge in breakfast-related searches!

On the topic of Google Business Profile optimization, Krystal recommends all businesses focus on:

• Complete and accurate business information
• Engaging photos of products, services, interiors, etc. Smartphone photos are fine!
• Generating at least 10+ reviews, responding professionally to any negative feedback
• Linking to a properly optimized location page on your website

Speaking of reviews, avoid any shady practices to generate fake reviews. Instead, provide an amazing customer experience! Then politely ask happy customers to leave reviews on Google, Facebook, Yelp etc. Aim to beat your competitors' review volume and respond empathetically to any negative comments.

For local SEO beyond Google Business Profile, Krystal suggests citation building across major directories like Yelp, Apple Maps, Facebook and more. Tools like Uberall can automate this tedious but important process.

No local SEO strategy is complete without optimized location pages on your website. These allow Google to better understand your business offerings compared to your limited Google Business Profile. For service area businesses especially, strong location pages are indispensable for ranking locally.

In terms of holistic local marketing, Krystal emphasizes the power of social media. Understand which platforms your audience engages with, whether that's Instagram, TikTok, Twitter etc. Social provides a different type of customer engagement compared to SEO.

For those looking to become local SEO pros themselves, Krystal advises fully immersing yourself in the community. Join forums, follow experts on Twitter and LinkedIn, and don't be shy to ask questions! The local SEO community is incredibly welcoming and willing to help newbies level up their skills.

Whew, that was a lot of invaluable information from Krystal! Let me know which SEO knowledge bomb was most useful for you. I'm always looking to bring on more seasoned experts to drop their wisdom. If you have any specific SEO topics you want covered, don't hesitate to let me know!