122: The Fastest Way to Get More Local Clients

In this episode, Jules White explores how AI search and Google’s AI Overviews are changing the way people find local businesses, and why there’s no need to panic.

Rather than chasing social media or worrying about traffic drops, Jules shares why focusing on your core website pages and aligning them with your Google Business Profile can lead to more qualified enquiries and steady visibility.

Key Takeaways:

• AI search and zero-click results: Why fewer clicks can still mean stronger, more qualified traffic.
• From keywords to clarity: How Google now focuses on understanding real businesses, not just matching words.
• Why local SEO is a huge opportunity: The power of showing up when people nearby are actively searching.
• Google Business Profile basics: Categories, services, consistency and reviews all strengthen your visibility.

If you’re a local business owner who wants more consistent enquiries without relying on social media, this episode will help you refocus on the foundations that actually bring clients in.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Episode 116: How to Get Found on Google by Local Clients
• Find out more about The Website Growth Club, including access to the Schema Wizard mentioned in the audit
• Book a Website Potential Discovery Call to find our how you can work with Jules to grow your website traffic & sales.

Transcript

Introduction

Jules White: Hi, welcome back to the Website Success Show. If your local business needs to be showing in AI search, then this is the episode for you.

I’m sorry if you can hear the dog snoring in the background. She’s here fast asleep in her bed and snoring rather loudly.

You probably won’t hear it on the recording, but just in case you can.

The Changing World of Search

Jules White: So the world of search is changing; things are definitely switching daily and seeing new things, new things happening every, oh, every week. Basically something different is happening in the world of search.

But we don’t need to panic about this because the things that we do to make sure that our website and our Google Business Profiles are actually showing up when we want them to, when people are searching for what we sell. Or searching for a solution to their problem in relation to what we do, then the work that we’re doing on our SEO and our Google Business Profiles is helping us to stay relevant regardless of whether the way that people search is actually changing.

I’ve noticed this week when I’m searching Google, that I now have to swipe up a couple of times to get past the AI overview. It’s almost like Google wants to keep us in that AI overview at the top of the page, especially on my mobile.

It’s a bit different on desktop. But yeah, I’ve really, I’ve noticed that this week and a lot of people won’t do that.

Like a lot of people will think, okay, that’s it. I’ve searched for something and Google’s given me these answers, and there’s no more search, no more answers.

So, it’s, it’s really interesting. I think, you know, certainly as I say, the thing, the way that people are searching for things is changing, but people will always search.

So we always need to make sure that our content, our websites, our Google Business Profile is set up in a way that we actually are the ones showing up in the searches.

Zero Click Searches and AI Overviews

Jules White: One of the big things with showing up in AI overviews and getting recommended by tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini, Perplexity, whatever AI search tool people are using is it can often result in what’s called a zero-click search. This is where people get the answer to their questions within the overview, and they don’t need to click through to a website.

So if you think back, back in the day, we used to actually have to click through to a weather website to find out what the weather was gonna be like today. Whereas now, and for many years, Google has answered those kind of questions.

This is like the next step of that, really; Google is answering so many questions within the AI overview. And this is why a lot of websites have found that a lot of their traffic has dropped off a cliff, especially websites like blogs where a lot of the information on their website stuff was like those informational search intent queries, not where people are actually looking to go through and buy something.

Which is one of the reasons I recommend with my clients that we don’t focus on blogging to begin with. We start off making sure that they’ve optimised their core pages of their website.

Then they’ve created maybe some case studies on their client wins and successes and how much their clients have, how they’ve helped their clients, basically to transform into where they want to be and help them to actually get the results that they want. So we focus on those kind of pages first.

And the other pages that we need to create that support those core pages of our website, like our homepage or about page, our services pages. And that’s why I always suggest people start with those first, because those are pages that have a much higher buying intent.

So people actually want to go through and make a purchase. They’re a bit further down the funnel of actually buying from us, further along their buyer’s journey.

And if we show up in that AI overview and people click through to our website, then they’re much, much more likely to actually buy from us at that point. Because the AI has already done the qualification.

They’ve already done the research for the person, whereas before, they would’ve gone through and clicked through to a few different websites, which actually are much stronger. And this is what clients are finding is happening: they may have a drop in overall traffic on their website, but the traffic that is coming through is a lot more likely to convert.

So in the past, SEO was all about keywords. It was about just making sure that the words on our website were right and were connecting with what people were searching for.

But Google has got smarter and smarter over the years, and now it’s all about clarity. So Google wants to understand about your business.

Who you are, what you do, where you do it, and how everything all connects together and how it connects to the wider world. And the clearer those connections are across your website, your Google Business Profile and your wider web presence, then the much more likely you are to be recommended by search and by AI tools as well.

Why Local SEO Matters

Jules White: Now, the reason that this really matters for local businesses is because over 46%, over 46% of all Google searches have local intent. So local businesses are one of the areas that are so much easier to optimise for SEO and for connecting with people when they’re actually searching for what you do than just trying to compete against the whole of the internet really.

So according to Google, over 90% of consumers have used the internet to find information about a local business in the past year. I don’t think that’s particularly surprising.

Most people use the internet to find out about something that they want to buy, and a lot of that will be local. So, yeah.

Some other interesting stats here. So 76% of people who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a business within 24 hours.

So that is really a strong signal of why we need to be those businesses that are showing up when people are searching locally to us. 58% of local businesses currently don’t optimise for local SEO, despite the fact that it’s got a really good return on investment potential.

And I see this time and time again when I’m having conversations with people, when I’m networking, when I’m out talking to business owners who are sick of posting on social media, but they’re doing it all the time because they’ve been told that they need to. They’ve been told that they have to post, they have to do reels, they have to do all of the stuff that they are not finding they’re getting any return on it, and yet all the while they’re ignoring their Google Business Profiles.

They’re ignoring the things that can actually bring clients into their business a lot faster than social media.

Social Media vs SEO

Jules White: Now, if you decide to use social media as a way to market your business, it’s very active marketing. So it feels like it’s something where we are doing and it is active; we are doing, we’ve gotta keep posting, keep feeding the algorithm to actually get it to perform for us.

But it doesn’t always mean that you get an immediate return on investment, whereas we can sometimes feel like that’s gonna happen. Like I’m gonna do a post and it’s gonna lead to a client.

And usually it doesn’t work that way. And I think this is the contrast where people often think that SEO is the slower way to get business.

Social media is the faster way, but usually it doesn’t translate to that. So it is very rare, unless you’ve actually built up that authority on social media, you’ve got a big following of relevant people.

So not just vanity metrics. In one of the group WhatsApp chats I’m in, somebody was posting this morning.

She’d had someone helping her with her LinkedIn profile and she was showing the results that she’d got from that. And it was basically just an increase in followers, increase in interactions with her profile.

And of course, I’m in there and I’m that annoying person who then says: Just, I’m really interested to know, does that, has that related to sales in your business? And are you tracking that?

Are you tracking how that’s actually converting into sales in your business? And it was a really interesting conversation because she said that she was fully booked and she didn’t actually need sales, so she was building authority for future plans in her business.

And I then sort of went back and said, well are you then getting people off of social media? Are you getting people onto your email list and building up some content that you own?

Because otherwise, if you’re building these vanity metrics almost where you’re just, oh, just like collecting followers, really. That could go away immediately.

If the algorithm changes or if your account gets shut down, or if it just decides that it doesn’t wanna share your content, which is one of the big things that seems to happen, then you’re kind of stuck. You’ve put all this hard work in and you’ve then lost it.

Whereas getting people across to your email list to actually become more connected with you then, at least if something does happen, you can then go through and actually connect with them. You know, if you lose your LinkedIn account, then at least you’ve still got a way to connect with those and to reach out to those potential leads and customers.

Anyway, that’s today’s tangent. I dunno how I’ve ended up talking about LinkedIn, but it’s all related.

Basically what I was talking about was the fact that people are spending so much time on social media and sick of it, hate it. Like this is a conversation I have multiple times a week is how people actually hate the fact that they have to do it and they’re still not actually getting clients and customers or getting leads that are, you know, growing their email list.

Connecting with people in a way that they can actually reach out to them when they need to, when they’ve got something to sell, they can’t nurture them outside of that social media. All that to say, don’t ignore your Google Business Profile.

If you’re a local business and you need more of a steady stream of clients coming into your business, your Google Business Profile is one of the fastest ways to show Google that key information about what you do, where you are, how you relate to what people are actually searching for.

Understanding Google Entities

Jules White: So now the way that things have changed in terms of what Google actually looks for, whereas before Google did used to just look at the words on people’s websites. Now Google actually understands something called entities.

And this is really important moving forward as we are moving more into Google understanding the context and how things actually relate to each other. So Google has built out this giant map of all of the things that exist.

So people, places, things that exist in the world and how they relate to each other. And this is called Google’s Knowledge Graph.

This is kind of like talking to Google in a language that Google understands. Keywords are what people type in, and entities are the real things that Google understands exist in the world.

What’s most important for Google is clarity and consistency, and your Google Business Profile helps to strengthen your business as that exists as this real entity in the world and how you link to other things such as the services you offer, the products you sell, the problems that you solve for people. And by optimising your Google profile, this can help you to put the right things on your website and set up your website in a way that is gonna help to actually confirm your business as a real defined thing that Google can understand.

Google Business Profile Benefits

Jules White: And this is why I’m a little bit obsessed with Google Business Profiles because there is so much potential with them. I offer Google Business Profile intensives where I work with clients, and it’s one of the fastest ways to help Google to clearly understand what you do.

And that’s why whenever I’m talking to local business owners, if they haven’t done the work to actually optimise their profile and link that back to their website as well and tie that in with their website, then that’s often where we’ll start when I’m working with people one to one. And when I run a Google Business Profile intensive, what we are doing is just tightening up your business identity inside Google.

So we are making it really, really clear what you do, who you help, where you are located, what treatments or services you specialise in, how we tie that in with your website, and how to get Google to trust that this is really what your business does. And that you are the person that should be recommended in your local area for what you do.

And quite often when I’m working with people on this, and we are actually working through a Google Business Profile intensive, clients get light bulb moments. Because we look at the categories and we look at the services that Google understands in relation to what you do.

And quite often we end up skirting around things on our website. We are not necessarily clear on the fundamental basic language that we need to have on our website.

Case Study: Rapid Transformational Therapy

Jules White: So like recently I was working with a client who offers Rapid Transformational Therapy and we’d been working for a while on the right sort of search terms to be optimising their website for. But once we actually looked at their Google Business Profile, we recognised the fact that Google associates what they do with hypnotherapy.

So we were able to then plug that into their website almost. So making sure that their Google Business Profile has the category set up as hypnotherapy.

There were other categories that also applied like life coaching, counselling that could have applied with this client. But what we hadn’t mentioned on their website was hypnotherapy, and there’s no sort of one right or wrong way with this.

It, you have to go with what’s right for your business. By mentioning hypnotherapy on their website and tying that in with their Google Business Profile, this was a real light bulb moment for the client because they hadn’t really thought about that before.

Rather than sort of dressing it up as a magical thing and as something that Google can’t really understand, it can understand the type of therapy that they offer, you know, to a certain extent. In relation to what people are actually out there searching for in terms of either the solution to their problem or searching for hypnotherapy to help them with their problems.

If we are not mentioning that on their website, then we are making it harder for Google to actually understand their business. And I had a message from the client this morning saying that they just had a surprise discovery call booked and they’d found them through Google.

So I always love that when we start making these changes both to Google profiles and to websites as well, and we start getting those results coming in. And that’s the goal with all of this, is that it helps to set our business up in a way that regardless of whether we feel like posting, we feel like creating new content, the things that we’ve already done and we’ve optimised for are then bringing people in when they’re actually searching for what we do.

It’s a bit of the opposite to actually shouting about what we do and just hoping that people want us; people are out there searching for businesses like yours. And if you make sure that you are set up to actually show up in those searches, then that can bring clients into your business day after day.

And when we set up your Google Business Profile, we can set up tags so that we can actually see this in your Google Analytics. And we can specifically see that increase in clients that are coming through from Google Business Profile through to your website.

And when I’m looking at client’s analytics, I see this time and time again that their Google profile is bringing them a lot of clients and customers. I see it in my own Google profile as well, my own analytics.

I see that people are coming into my website through my Google Business Profile. I actually went in and did a little bit of optimising on my own profile recently, and I added in every service and every category that was in relation to my business.

I need to go back in and do some more work on it and actually add some descriptions into those services that I’ve added in. But already, even from just going in and updating that, I’ve already seen that I’m getting a lot more visitors to my Google Business Profile and click-through to my website from me doing that.

So that’s fantastic. I have made the decision three weeks ago to break up with social media and I’ve had the best month of my business for the last year, and I’m so excited about that.

I, as I say, I am not gonna go off on another tangent about social media. I’ve got a whole series of episodes around social media being optional, but I’m very passionate about this.

If you haven’t optimised your Google Business Profile and you are a local business and you are posting on social media, before you do another post, please just take some time, think about your Google profile, think about the things that are missing from it. And help to strengthen your signal about what your business does for the people that are out there searching around what you do.

How to Optimize Your Google Business Profile

Jules White: So how do you actually optimise your profile? First of all, start off with filling in everything, all of the sections that you can see on your profile that relate to your business.

Go in and fill them all in. Make sure that your name, address, and phone number are consistent throughout everywhere that you are online.

So make sure it’s on the footer of your website if you are a pin-in-the-map business. If you’ve got a physical location, if you’re a service area business, make sure you’re mentioning the service areas on your website.

Also other places as well. So if you’ve got social media profiles, if you’ve got local listings, directory listings, if you’re on Yelp or Yell or your local Chamber of Commerce, if you can get your address on there.

All of those things help to strengthen that name, address, and phone number part of the profile. But make sure that it’s consistent so you’re using the same language there as you’re using everywhere else.

Make sure that you select the categories that are relevant for your business. Primary category is one of the things that’s most important to select.

If you feel like you’ve got the wrong primary category, be a little bit hesitant about changing it, especially if you don’t have a pin in the map and you don’t have a physical location because changing your primary category can trigger sometimes a re-verification. And the last thing you wanna have to do is re-verify.

So it’s something that I wouldn’t change your primary category on a whim. You need a strategic decision about whether that’s the right thing to do.

When you’ve added your categories, you can then add services and the different categories will unlock different services that you can add in that relate to what you do in your business. Make sure if you get reviews that you are asking for reviews regularly.

You’re getting a steady stream of reviews coming into your profile and reply to those reviews. That’s really important from a customer service point of view, from a Google seeing that your profile is active point of view.

It’s really important to do that. Make sure your opening hours and your products and those kind of things, you’ve updated those as well.

You can actually add your services in as products. So if you think about the service part of Google Business Profiles, if you were a salon or you were offering facials, then that would be a service that you offer.

And you can have in there, you’d find other services like advanced, advanced, maybe anti-ageing facials and things like that. But then you could if you have a specific facial that you do, like when I was back in the salon.

We did facials, but then we did specific Clarins facials. You could add those in as a product on your profile, and that will all help the things that actually then show up in Google search results.

And people can actually click on the product, and you can link through to a page on your website. And I would suggest doing that, linking through to a specific page on your website that relates to that particular facial.

That sends really strong signals to Google about you offering those particular services. Check for your suggested edits as well.

So even if you do nothing else with your profile, but check in once a month or so just to make sure that you haven’t had any suggested edits that either Google has suggested or any member of the public has suggested. Anyone can go in and make suggestions about your Google profile.

So it’s really important that you do log in every now and again. If you get any emails from Google around your profile, make sure you pay attention to them.

Because the last thing you wanna do is somebody goes in and changes your address or marks your business as permanently closed, which I have seen happen in the past. And then you don’t even realise that your profile is suddenly not performing for your business.

Now, if you’re a business that isn’t eligible for a Google Business Profile, so if you are a product-based business, then you can still use your competitors’ Google Business Profiles to go in and spy on them. I talked about this back in episode 116 about how to get found on Google by local clients, and I talk about how you can go in and spy on your competitors.

And you could look at people who do have Google Business Profiles even if they aren’t just e-commerce businesses, then that’s something that you can still do. And I know this can feel like a lot of work when you look at your profile and you look at all the different categories and all of the different services that you need to add and update and add your information into.

It can feel like a lot. But you only need to do this once.

Once you’ve been through and updated all of this, then realistically, unless your business massively changed and massively evolves, then you shouldn’t need to go back in and make too many adjustments to this. Maybe you will if you update your pricing and things like that; you might wanna go back in and just also check that things are still as you want them to be.

But this isn’t like social media. This isn’t something where you’ve got to keep posting, keep paying for ads, keep doing things to keep those people coming in and finding your business.

So by doing all of this, going through and making the most of your profile, what you’re doing is just strengthening how clearly Google understands your business in Google’s own language about how people search. Everything will then be connected together better, which makes it much easier for you to be that recommended business, whether that’s in a Google search or in AI search.

So thinking about this, looking at your Google Business Profile, looking at your website, is it crystal clear what you do? Have you got a dedicated page for each of your core services?

Does that then link to your Google Business Profile? Is the wording you’re using on your Google Business Profile aligned with the wordings that you’re using on your website as well?

And are you using consistent information everywhere online?

Next Steps and Resources

Jules White: If getting clear on this is difficult for you, then there are a few ways that I can help you. I help clients who want to take charge of your visibility.

If you’re done with ineffective marketing and you want your website and your Google Business Profile to bring a steady stream of clients into your business, no more endless creating content, posting and just hoping and getting little back from it. So you can join us in the Website Growth Club for step-by-step lessons and group support, and feedback from me as you actually implement these on your website.

Or one-to-one consulting if you prefer more tailored help and support for your unique business. So book a website potential discovery call and find out more about how I can help you make your website your hardest working team member, cause you get to build a business on your terms.

And social media is optional.