Darren Shaw

Whitespark

Whitespark builds online tools and provides services that help businesses and agencies with local SEO. We're known for our Local Citation Finder, Local Rank Tracker, Citation Building & Audit Services, and Local SEO Consulting. Our team often collaborates with other industry leaders and frequently presents at top SEO & Marketing conferences in North America.

Founder

University of Alberta

Networking and system administration and operation, development and management of the relational databases, GIS database development, web site development and maintenance.

Research Computing Coordinator

Hi, I'm Darren! 👋

I've been doing web development and SEO for 27 years (yes, before Google existed)

A bit about me 👇
🔹 Founder of Whitespark: local SEO software and services.
🔹 Local SEO educator with 36,000+ newsletter subscribers, 8,000+ YouTube subscribers, and 2,000+ email course sign-ups
🔹 In charge of the annual Local Search Ranking Factors Survey, one of the most cited resources in local SEO
🔹 Speaker at local search conferences around the globe and contributor to SEO publications

This is annoying. 
Via Jason Hennessey on Facebook: “If you’ve noticed a drop in calls from your Google Business Profile, it could be because Google is currently testing the removal of the call button from organic listings while keeping it active for paid placements.”

Founder of Whitespark. I share local SEO tips and strategy. Lead researcher behind the annual Local Search Ranking Factors survey. Get everything you need for better local SEO at whitespark.ca

graphical user interface, text, application

Here’s a local SEO tip that 99% of NEW businesses miss 👇 

Create your Google Business Profile 90 days BEFORE you open your doors.

Business owners often build buzz on social media before opening their business, but they forget about Google, which is a big mistake. 

Here’s why:

When potential customers google your new business, they should find information about it ON GOOGLE. 

And your Google Business Profile has a ton of features to help you build buzz and excitement about your soon-to-open business.

Here’s what to do:

- Create a Google Business Profile for your new business.
- When asked to verify, choose “Verify later”.
- Edit the Profile and set an official grand opening date on your Google Business Profile.
- Create Google Posts with information about your business, promoting the grand opening.
- Add photos and videos.
- Optimize your Google Business Profile completely: add business hours, social links, etc. Basically, fill out every section on your GBP!
- Finally, you'll need to verify the business if you want it to appear in search results.

And here’s a nice bonus you get when you follow this process: Once your business opens, Google will display a "Recently opened" tag on your Profile and in search results for 90 days.

If you follow these steps, you'll hit the ground running the day you open and have a huge head start toward building your rankings. Your competitors won’t even know what hit them.

No alternative text description for this image

Are you adding localities to your title tags? You should be.

What are localities? 🧐

Localities are areas/neighborhoods. Adding localities to your title tag means adding a bunch of neighborhood names to the end. Click through the carousel for all the details.

I know some people don’t agree with this (Cyrus S. 😘), but I will die on this hill. Come at me 👇

Are you adding localities to your title tags? 🤔

There is no such thing as a duplicate content "penalty".

You know those sites that use the exact same content on hundreds of "location" pages and they just change out the city name?

Spammy, right?

Well guess what? IT WORKS. These pages rank and drive traffic, so if you're short on time, I wouldn't discount this strategy.

BUT, Google prioritizes unique, specific firsthand experiences (E-E-A-T).

So, while the easy/fast version where you just change the city name will get you ranking, it's definitely better to invest the time to create original content from your own experience. These pages will perform even better.

Taplio

Darren Shaw's Linkedin Analytics

What is Darren talking about?

Who is engaging with Darren

's Best Posts (last 30 days)

Want to drive more opportunities from LinkedIn?