00:00Hey everyone, what's going on?
00:01Greg here again from TM Blast.
00:02So I want to talk about Apple Maps, Local SEO, and why Yelp is so critical to improve
00:07your keyword ranks, which will give you more impressions, more website clicks, and more
00:10phone calls for your business.
00:12So to start, I have a client, they're in New York City, they're a doctor.
00:15So I searched in Apple Maps for the keyword gynecologist, and I'm using Local Falcon to
00:19get this view.
00:20My client is 20 plus everywhere, which basically means they're not ranking at the top.
00:24Local Falcon uses DuckDuckGo for this, but this also translates directly into Apple Maps
00:29specific search.
00:30So they're not ranking at all for this keyword, which is gynecologist.
00:33Then I looked at the top couple listings that were ranking for the keyword gynecologist.
00:38So I clicked on each one, and I can see how the map was basically all green or mostly green
00:42for them.
00:44What I'd notice for my clients, once they're doing really well on Apple Maps, if you can
00:46rank for these non-brand keywords like gynecologist, gynecologist, near me, gynecologist, NYC, it's
00:53going to drive in more impressions, which will result in more website clicks and phone calls
00:57for your business.
00:58So I looked at the top three listings, and this is actually what I summarized.
01:02They all have a prominent Yelp listing that is displayed at the very top, and also the
01:07ratings and reviews in the bottom.
01:08So I can see reviews.
01:10Now, one thing to note is that it's not necessarily who has the most Yelp reviews or who has the
01:17best Yelp score.
01:18What I noticed, even with Google, is that it's consistent reviews on an ongoing basis will
01:24be more beneficial for your ranking.
01:26So someone could have 145 reviews, but let's say 120 of them came from a year ago, and now
01:33this year in 2025, they've only had a handful.
01:35Compared to another company that's been getting consistent reviews all throughout 2025, might
01:39even have a slight ranking factor in their favor because they're getting consistent and
01:44up-to-date reviews.
01:45It's more relevant, and it might be helping them rank a little bit better.
01:48But the point is that the top three that I saw all have Yelp that are showing.
01:53This is what I did next.
01:53Next, I went into my client's account, and I wanted to pull the main KPIs to really display
01:58how much of an opportunity we have here.
02:00Directions in the past 12 months is 438, website's 111, and phone calls is 190 out of 12 months.
02:07Next, I scrolled up a little bit, and I looked at the number of searches that people do before
02:12they tap on the location in the search results.
02:14Basically, what that means is let's look at TM Blast as the example.
02:18The brand name for TM Blast means absolutely nothing, but that would come up as a brand or name
02:23search.
02:23The category search for me would be like marketing agency, SEO, local SEO, et cetera.
02:29Notice that for my client, less than 20% of the time when people search for, they're using
02:35a non-brand keyword, which is why when you look at this over here, they have so little KPIs each
02:41month.
02:42Direction request on average is 37.
02:44We can assume most of this is coming from current clients that they have who are just using Apple
02:49just to click on directions just to get to their location.
02:51Website visits is nine for the month.
02:55That's very small.
02:56Calls is 16.
02:57Again, that's very small.
02:58That's less than, that's basically one every other day.
03:01And then 41 name searches, so that's the brand name like TM Blast, and then 10 searches are
03:05the non-brand part.
03:06There's a huge difference right there.
03:09So the reason why I'm recording this is that when you're thinking about ways to grow your local
03:14business, get more phone calls, get more leads, get more bookings, whatever the goal is.
03:19First step is you want to get on Yelp and fill out your basic information.
03:23I know there's a lot when it comes to Yelp.
03:25I hear this from every client of mine.
03:27There's a love-hate relationship with this platform, and I get it.
03:31However, I look at it and say, this goes beyond Yelp.com.
03:35If Apple is pulling in Yelp for their reviews, you have to get on that platform.
03:39Next is you want to encourage users to leave reviews on Yelp.
03:42So we all know Google reviews, 90% of the leads are going to come from Google Maps, but
03:48you really want to focus on encouraging a diversity of reviews on different platforms
03:53like Facebook, TripAdvisor, Yelp, TrustIndex.io, et cetera.
03:59Get reviews, but specifically for this, encourage people to start leaving reviews on Yelp, and
04:03then you can respond to them as well.
04:05Next, upload photos to Yelp.
04:07So the reason why I share this is that Apple will actually pull in your profile, and they
04:12will actually bring in the photos that are on the platform.
04:16So photos of your location, of your team, of the service you provide, these are all going
04:21to be engagement factors, and they're also being brought into by Apple Maps.
04:24So that's going to be a ranking factor.
04:26Next, track the results using Local Falcon.
04:28So I use it for all my clients.
04:30I track the keywords, usually on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.
04:33I'm just trying to get an idea of if the changes we make are improving our share of local
04:37voice, which then have more phone calls, website clicks, and leads.
04:40And then finally, the track the people search category, I think is actually a really important
04:44KPI, so I'm going to go back to this.
04:46If in the last 12 months, I can say, okay, we have 124, so divided by 12, that's around
04:5110 or so people each month are searching for a non-brand keyword.
04:55I would look at that and say, that's the baseline because we're not really ranking.
04:59If we can increase that from 10 to 100, so all of a sudden now we're getting from more
05:05and more people now finding us for non-brand search terms, then these other metrics over
05:10here are going to naturally increase, phone calls, website clicks, people clicking on
05:15photos, and even directions too.
05:16If you can see that increase that happens based off the non-brand searches are improving because
05:20your ranks are improving, it kind of all goes together.
05:24So really in summary, I'm creating this video just because I look at a lot of local accounts
05:29that I have.
05:30The ones that are doing the best on Yelp obviously have photos, they have a description,
05:35they have all the filters, they're responding to reviews on Yelp.
05:40But the ones that are really struggling, in my opinion, are the ones that are not on
05:43Yelp.
05:44So we can do all the other hacks we can do with description, the filters, the photos,
05:49the showcases.
05:50But if you're consistently not growing on Apple and your top competition is on Yelp and they
05:56seem to be always outranking you for your terms, you may want to invest this month or
06:00two on Yelp, maybe run some Yelp ads as well, and see what that can do for your rankings for
06:04Apple.
06:04You can track the results and ultimately see to drive more website clicks, bookings, services,
06:10phone calls, back to your business.
06:14Anyway, thanks for watching this video.
06:15Let me know if you have any questions and as always have a good rest of your day.
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