Transcription
What's up guys? So in this video, we are going to decode Google's API leak of 2024. What happened was one of Google's engineers accidentally leaked many sensitive GitHub documents. It got hacked, and it basically shook the entire SEO world. Many famous SEOs started decoding it, and it's been called "Google's Gold Mine," which famous SEOs like Sean Anderson have decoded.
And in this video, I'm going to show you the most important tactics that we can glean from that API leak, how you can apply it to local businesses. In my case, I build local lead gen websites, generate leads for local businesses, and I get paid passive income for doing so. And I'm going to share with you practical strategies that you can apply today that will allow you to get better rankings in Google. All right, Google's Gold Mine decoded. How to rank local businesses using Google's own playbook. To show you guys I know what I'm talking about, I've been doing rank and rent or local lead generation over the last 11 years. Just in the last six months alone, I've ranked all these 150 local lead gen sites. This is my call tracking platform where I'm tracking every phone call that my sites generate. These are all calls that just came in today, February 19th. This dashboard API connects into my client CRM. Right now, we have $600,000 worth of estimates out, $20,000 concrete jobs, $240,000 ADU project, which I'm going to show you my site that generated this lead. Here you can see some of the commissions that these sites are generating. For this one drywall job, I got paid $1,000 in commission. This was a $900 commission for a flooring job. And there's more you can see here for my roofing sites.
And I've been teaching this model for years. It's one of the best online business models out there. But the success of this business model is all going to depend on your ability to rank in Google. And this is where I have an edge because I'm somebody that's constantly studying this stuff. I look up patents, and the API leak is actually one of the big ones that is very important to study.
So, what is Google's Gold Mine system? It was basically decoded by a few different famous SEOs, one with Sean Anderson. And we call it the Gold Mine because for the first time ever, the API leak revealed Google's inner workings of how their algorithms are actually working, instead of just theories. We always knew as SEOs that content quality and backlinks were always going to be important. We have tested it for years and years. This indeed does work in the real world. But other than that, other ranking factors were oftentimes various theories. But the API leak finally confirmed or unconfirmed some of these theories, and that's what we're going to cover in this video. You're going to learn the importance of how to apply the best site title. And probably the most important part of the API leak was understanding the Nav Boost, which revealed that Google is indeed measuring user behavior signals using the Google Chrome browser data. Again, this was always just a theory, but the API leak did confirm that all these users using the Google Chrome browser, Google is also using the data that the Chrome browser is recording and able to determine the behavior of every user using that browser and visiting different various sites on the internet. Worldwide, Google Chrome is used by 70% of users. That's a lot.
So, we're going to talk about what does that mean? What is Nav Boost? How can we take advantage of it? In fact, Nav Boost eventually becomes the most important ranking factor for your site. We're going to talk about Block Bird. Google's now using advanced language algorithms to understand the content. And so, it's important to understand how to structure your content in a semantically relevant and contextual way. We're going to talk about Radish Snippet Brain, which is more or less how your site ends up as a featured snippet, which is less used today because it's now AI overview, but it's the same mechanism in which how Google finds sites and passages of content on your site that deserves to be in the featured snippet or AI overview. And this is the same way that large language models, ChatGPT, and all these other models are using as well. So when you nail this, you end up showing up when people search for services or products inside ChatGPTs.
So, next, it's important to really understand that Google is using a three-stage evaluation pipeline. Meaning that there's millions of websites on the worldwide web. Google can't run all the algorithms for every single website. It's got to be selective. Otherwise, it becomes too costly for Google. Google is always trying to save on its cost because at the end of the day, Google is an advertising business. And it's important to always look at Google from a business perspective to really make sense of all their algorithms and different, let's say, false flags that they also publish during their core algorithm updates. Sometimes it's a scare tactic, sometimes it's a smoke screen to scare off marketers and SEOs. But all that to say is first, they do a sort of preliminary algorithm, which is more cost-effective, cheap to run. Look at your title tag, H1, H2 tags on your site, maybe some of the internal link structure of your page, and it tries to determine if your site qualifies as relevant to a specific search query.
Next, it's going to run BlockB and various other algorithms to understand and read your content to make sure it semantically makes sense, it has the right context, it's covering the right types of topics, and does it have accuracy? Does it have certain unique information on your page that makes you deserving of getting on page one, or are you covering the same exact type of content that all the other sites already on page one is covering? Then, as your site passes those checks and it goes closer and closer to page one, then Google will start measuring behavior signals on your site using Nav Boost. And the most important click to earn from users at this stage is what's called the last longest click, which signifies to Google that you've completely satisfied the user's search intent. We're going to talk about how we can accomplish that on some of our sites.
Okay. So, why this matters most for local businesses in so many different ways, right? And local business at the end of the day is all about conversion. Converting that traffic to a lead to a customer. First, you have to know how to rank it. Then, you have to have the right types of content on the page so that customer feels compelled and persuaded to call the company. And this begins to show that Google is not just a simple algorithm where it's just measuring backlinks and content length or keywords in the right places. Most local businesses can't even get the title and the H1, H2s correct, let alone all the other factors. In local, most businesses do pretty half-ass jobs on their sites. So when you can nail all these different factors, you really do have a huge competitive advantage.
One of the things that I make sure I do for every local lead gen site that I build is I build hyper-location relevant things like you see here, where I'm covering all the different sub-cities all around the main city because I know that Google has a knowledge graph that understands that Glendale, California is near all these cities. So when I begin covering all these other cities, I'm becoming more and more hyper-relevant. So, first step to really engineer is to make sure you have the right site title, H1, H2. So, meaning, let's go to this Glendale site again. I have "Glendale Quality Windows" because I have the city as part of the brand name. I don't really need to repeat "Glendale California" again in the title. But as you can see, Glendale really is the first word that comes up, and then the main keyword, "window." And then I have other important keywords for this niche like "commercial" or "window replacement." I repeat the same words in the H1 title here. And I have other important keywords placed with H2s, H3s. I go much deeper into each type of windows, each type of topics related to windows or window replacement. So, like before you worry about anything else, you really need to nail H2s, H3s. All the H3s that are under H2s really need to make sense and are helpful. And any words you use in the H2 and the H3 should really not have too many extra words, but it should be really keyword-centric. Any of the sub-city pages that we create is going to have coherence, meaning that I have the city as part of the URL. I have the city repeated in the page title, and I have the city repeated again in the H1.
Strategy number two is to optimize for a satisfied click. This is where most local businesses are falling short. An example of a good click is somebody clicks on your site, they stay on your site for a while because you have good content. They read different parts of your content. They might click on some of the links and find out more info. This is called dwell time. And when other people go on to other people's sites and they're much lower quality and there's nothing worth looking at and they leave the page without spending that much time on it, this is a very bad user signal. It's called pogo-sticking. When somebody lands on a site and goes right back to the SER and goes to another site and spends more time on another site, I don't care how strong your backlinks are. I don't care how great you think your content is. If people are staying on other sites longer than your site, you will not win long-term. A lot of SEOs speculated this to be true for a while now, but with Nav Boost, we truly understand that actually the most important click to really get is what's called the last longest click, which means that your site is so good and your product or service does such a perfect job at satisfying that user's search intent, that person stops their entire search journey. So, let's say that someone is searching for a service, they've been searching for a while, they've been clicking on other sites, and they land on your site, they call the company or they opt in or they do some sort of a, if it was like a product site, they buy something, they're going to stop searching for that, right? At that point, they might go to YouTube, they might go to TikTok, they might start a different type of search journey for another type of service, and that signals to Google that your site was the last site that satisfied that user intent. And when you can collect more of these, you essentially become unstoppable.
Now, in my community, I have many different strategies to get these clicks as much as possible, but I can share some of those kind of things with you now, which are things like when it comes to ADU, the zoning laws and the permits are one of the most top frequently asked questions, and doing a good job of answering those questions. We actually built specific pages that answer these questions deeper that we should actually link to from this section. This is a whole page dedicated to ADU zoning and code compliance. So, if that page was linked to from the FAQ section of the homepage, when somebody has those kind of questions and they go deeper and deeper into the site, that's going to cause people to increase dwell time on the site. Other things are obviously like great pictures go a long way. A good site layout so that your site actually looks professional that makes people want to call the company as opposed to a poorly built site. Before and after photos are extremely powerful as well. And again, there's more elements that you can place on the site that causes people to stay longer on your site. So again, it's not all about words or content or even content length anymore. It's about even site design, having good utility on your site that causes people to stay longer and ultimately help that customer. Because depending on any service or product or niche, there are certain things that people are commonly needing answers to, and if you do a better job at answering those questions that your customers might have, that's how you really win the game long-term. And Google can be measuring the click signal for months and months at a time. This is what builds historical data, and they can be saving this for months and years of user behavior signals on your site. And I personally love the fact that Google is measuring this because this gives me the ability to create even more advantages and separation from my competitors that they can't easily duplicate, nor could they easily figure out what I'm doing on these sites to satisfy that to win over those powerful click signals.
All right, so the API leak also confirmed that there is such thing as the penalty box. Many SEOs have suspected this, and these are some of the things to watch out for. Keyword stuffing at the page title. Don't repeat words at the site title level, right? Naturally, include other related keywords in the home construction niche. Many of the titles you might want to add words like "contractor," and obviously, you want to add the city as well. Avoid creating identical templated titles across multiple pages. This is where programmatic SEO can become problematic. Try to mix up various titles and don't use the same template each and every time. Don't use titles that are excessively too long. And just make sure that the title is unique. It will attract that click, but make sure it has to be highly relevant to the content on that page.
So, there's a factor called the Gold Mine Location Factor as well, which in local, we can create all those dedicated service areas and the sub-city pages to accomplish this. The example I came up with is like "adu-builder-anaheim," but I don't like repeating the main keyword again when the main keyword is already part of our domain name. So I like to just put "/anaheim-ca." As you can see, all the page titles for each different city is slightly different. Critical rules: no find and replace, so don't just swap city names in a template. Blockb will detect this as low-quality content. Local specific details, like for example, if it's ADU, include specific zoning codes, local landmarks, and permit requirements for each city. And do your best to create some unique value for each page. It should stand on its own as much as possible and add unique valuable resource for that specific city. The more this you can do, not only will it help you rank for that city with a sub-city page, but you're building even more context and relevance for your entire site. Because when Google can begin trusting some pages on your site, it'll begin running more advanced algorithms for your other pages. And that trust begins to carry over to your main site as a whole.
So, more stronger relevance when you get the GBP, you can create these three things to increase the relevance. Ensure that the business name is actually repeated as the H1 tag on your homepage. The business name that's listed on your GVP. This will become the actual business brand name that Google will extract into their knowledge graph. Make sure the category is the right category on the GVP that matches your niche. Service area precision. So define service areas and GVP like all the different cities, and make sure it matches the various location pages that you have created on your website.
We talked about this already, but this is the feedback loop cycle. You know, the good feedback is you optimize great titles, the URLs match the H1 and the title, and the content goes deeper into that topic. It wins the first algorithm because you pick the right title, people click on your page more than other pages, increasing your CTR. And then when people land on your page because you have useful resources on your page, people stay longer on your site. So you record those good clicks, and this gives you a ranking boost. Now, the bad cycle of that is you use very generic titles that people don't really click, low CTR. And when people land on your site, it's not a very quality site, and so it has a high bounce rate, people leave your site, and that records as a bad click. And no matter what else you do on the site, even building more backlinks, you will start to lose your ranking.
All right, so this is the 30-day action plan. So, first, audit and repair your site. So, the first thing to pay attention to is make sure your title tags are relevant to every page on your site. Eliminate keyword stuffing. Think about including other keywords that are important to rank for at the title level. For example, I have this concrete site for Fullerton, California. So, I put "Fullerton Elite Concrete," and I didn't just end there. I stuck other important keywords related for this niche such as "driveways," "sidewalks," "patios," "stamped," and "resurfacing." And I repeated that also at the H1 level. I also added the words "residential" and "commercial" because I also want to rank for anytime somebody searches for anything commercial, concrete, and Fullerton.
Next, we can increase more local signals. We just talked about optimizing the GBP and making sure there's a match with categories and your website's H1s and H2s. Local schema. It's still amazing that a lot of businesses miss this easy win, which is you should have a local schema on the homepage of your site. NAP consistency. So, the business name, address, phone number should be at the footer of your site, and the NAP should exist in other directories.
Next, content expansion. So, you should have sub-city pages. Here it says create three to five pages for top cities, but I create more like 20 to 30 sub-city pages. Have unique content on your pages as much as possible. 50% of your content might be similar to other pages that exist on the internet because you have to cover that topic. But towards the bottom of your page, in the micro semantics, you can add more unique content to signal to Google that you're not like everybody else.
Okay. Internal linking. I have a specific rule for this that I teach my students, but basically, you don't want to link to too many pages from your homepage. Most of the sub-city pages and all the off-pages, if they're not important, the link structure should be in a way where the links are going towards your homepage, not the other way around. And next, finally, the UX signal in the Nav Boost. So, having things like quote forms and phone numbers that are easy to click for the user, ensuring that the page loads fast, ensuring you have certain elements, especially on your homepage, that makes users want to stick around. And I have a lot of different strategies for this, but any one of you guys can begin analyzing some of the top-ranked companies in some of the most competitive niches. And you can see different things that they've done to provide resources that are extremely helpful to the customer. And you can begin to really see that the customer would stay longer on this site to read through this content or this resource. On a lot of my local lead gen sites, I've provided a section about the general pricing of the service depending on the area. I talk about our special process of completing the job, how long it's going to take, some before and after pictures. All of those things will increase user behavior signals, and ultimately, that is the thing that creates long-term ranking domination.
All right, so I'll leave with the bottom line, which is the Google's Gold Mine isn't about tricking the system. It's about providing the clearest, most relevant signal that you are the best local answer through the Google API leak. Understanding that Google is measuring more things than just content and backlinks should really be great news if you're a business owner or if you're somebody that's really doing SEO at a high level because it shows that Google actually rewards really good sites. I am glad that Google is measuring things like Nav Boost through the Chrome browser data because if Google didn't do that, then SEO would be dominated by people that are doing spammy tactics, manipulating PageRank with backlinks. I've recently even discovered various patents that prevent CTR from working. Google is actually keeping track of what kind of profile is doing the clicks. If the click is coming from users that don't have any history or age, it's not going to count those clicks. And ultimately, the SEO strategies that's going to win at the end of the day are going to be strategies that work with Google and understanding Google's patents as opposed to treating Google as a company that you can try to game and manipulate their systems.
But does that mean I do completely quote-unquote white hat tactics? No. I'm an SEO at the end of the day. I'm here to make my clients a lot of money, and I'm going to do the tactics that are the most effective, but layer it with other tactics that create long-term results. So, with that being said, if you're somebody that wants to make money with SEO, rank and rent, or lead generation, click the link in the description and find out more info about my coaching program. If you're a business owner that wants SEO or needs more leads, click the second link in the description. I am currently offering SEO for businesses that's a right fit for us as well. Subscribe to the channel. Ask me any questions in the comments. I will personally answer them. And I will see you in the next video. More great videos coming.