AI SEO & Business Automation Podcast

James Dooley: GBP Optimizer. Today I am joined with Mike Martin, who is the founder of the tool that manages multiple Google Business Profiles. Mike Martin, I want to get started straight away. Why have you created this tool, and why have you moved away from traditional SEO into being obsessed, I would say, with Google Business Profiles nowadays?

Mike Martin: It probably started about a year ago. Me and my business partner were looking at AI and how it is coming on. We are massive into AI. We play with all the tools, everything that you can think of out there. We are always playing with it, looking at it, trying to break it and trying to build things with it. We very quickly realised about a year or a year and a half ago that most of the things that we offer as digital marketers, as SEO agencies and things like that, are going to become not obsolete, but commoditised.

Mike Martin: If I offer somebody a five grand website and a 15-year-old kid can come in and do that same five grand website for 300 quid, then we are in a situation where there is no value in the service anymore. Once everybody can do it, it becomes worthless. We realised that very, very quickly. With Google Business Profiles, you have to integrate with Google and you have to be approved by Google.

Mike Martin: I do not know if you saw it, but in March they released a blog called Ask Maps on the 12th of March on Google’s blog. What they have done now is create something called Ask Maps, which integrates with your map. So when somebody is driving around, if I want to do something now, I will pick my phone up and speak to AI. If you speak to AI now, Gemini actually integrates with your Google Map. So if you are driving along and you say, where is a good vegan restaurant in the local area that I want to go to, it will give you a list of restaurants. But it uses real information.

Mike Martin: All of the AIs are still using almost fake information, or they will just wing it on occasion, whereas Google has integrated with Maps so that they can sink it. We can see that they are going in that direction. They have moved the AI search to the left and left the normal search to the right. So we are looking at it from that perspective. Plus, the speed you can get results is ridiculous.

Mike Martin: I just got a client this morning. He has just sent me four pictures, and he set it up two weeks ago. He has only done the image optimisations and nothing else. He has gone from position 12 or 15 in week one to, within week two, an average position of four, which is still invisible on Google Maps. But obviously, we feel it is the only thing that is not going away. It is not going to disappear.

James Dooley: Anyone who is watching this, make sure you check out the link in the description. Mike Martin and I have a big rant in another video about whether AI is going to make SEO obsolete. I strongly recommend watching it. But specifically, let us stay on the subject of Google Business Profiles.

James Dooley: With regards to Google Business Profiles, I am seeing it myself. Obviously, I do a lot of local lead generation. I am in complete agreement that it has become more and more important to try to get that Google Business Profile ranking and get yourself in that map pack, especially for certain industries.

James Dooley: But for anyone who is watching this, why do they need GBP Optimizer? If you have got multiple Google Business Profiles, or what used to be called Google My Business, what does it do? What makes your tool different to others, or different from just optimising in general in Google Maps? What does it do?

Mike Martin: Basically, if you go and read, now nobody is going to do this, but if you go and read Google’s actual terms of service, where they tell you exactly how to rank Google Business Profiles, exactly what to do and exactly what not to do, and what breaks their terms, we have pretty much gone in, read through the whole thing from start to finish, figured out exactly what they want you to do to rank your Google Business Profiles, automated everything that can be automated, and then got it to a point where you are not breaking any terms of service, but you are doing everything as automated as possible.

Mike Martin: The manual actions that are required to remain within the terms of service stay there. So it is a very simple checklist. As soon as you connect your profile, it gives you a score out of 100. You just literally go in and it gives you a checklist to fill in. Once that score is 100, you know your profile is complete properly.

Mike Martin: Some of the things that are really important are real-world ongoing actions. For example, uploading images on a regular basis every single day, uploading posts on a regular basis every single day, and chasing reviews regularly, but streamlining them. Not doing 50 all at once and then nothing for two or three weeks, because that will get you banned. But if you are doing it on a daily basis, if you are sending out an email every day or every two days and then responding to the reviews, that works better.

Mike Martin: What we do is make it so that you can upload 50 pictures and schedule them to be uploaded over the space of one a day for 50 days. You can click a button with AI, write all your posts, and schedule them daily, weekly, monthly, whatever you want. It is the same with testimonials. You can get 200 emails, drop them in, click a button, and it will drip them out over the next 30 days so that your reviews are coming in gradually over a period of time. Obviously, you want to get the reviews as close to the sale as possible.

Mike Martin: With Ask Maps that has just come out for Google, we have also created a Q&A section. What Google did is take the API for the Q&As away, and they have done that because of Ask Maps. So now, when you feed the Q&As into the posts of the business, that is being fed into Gemini and ranking your Google Business Profiles for all sorts of different questions and answers that people ask on the phones in the real world.

Mike Martin: We are massively focused on this. What we are finding is, and you will have to agree on this, it is the only way for a local business to rank within a month or two for keywords like plumber, roofer, plumber near me, electrician near me and locksmith near me. As SEOs doing it on a website, we would go for locksmith location, plumber location, plumber in location, emergency plumber and so on. With this, within a month you can rank for plumber near me, which Google pushes you towards ranking for.

Mike Martin: In addition to that, because of the way it is created and because they nearly always sit above the websites, you are getting 10 times more traffic. So your customers are seeing way more leads, sales and clients. 99% are now real-world businesses. As you know, with lead gen, it is almost impossible to build them. But if you are running a real business, there is no more cost-effective way on the planet for a local business to generate leads, sales and clients.

James Dooley: To be fair, I am not having any rant with you in this video. I completely agree. I think Google Business Profiles are very important. Any near me type of search, it is showing up for. It is starting to pop into a lot of the LLMs and the AI overviews as well, where it is pulling in the maps.

James Dooley: Like you said, when you are actually using GBP Optimizer and being able to drip feed the photos and drip feed the posts, I am asking you the questions of what does it do, but I obviously know what it does. I use it all the time for multiple Google Business Profiles. I love the idea that we can load in all of our clients and it drip feeds the reviews, where it is asking them for the reviews, and that review velocity that is being built up is incredible.

James Dooley: I completely agree. I think it is very, very important. With regard to the numbers, you have obviously been in the SEO industry for a long time. You have been in the local lead generation market for a long time and you have gone all in on Google Business Profiles. How many more leads are you seeing now coming from Google Business?

James Dooley: If people are watching this and they have a local website and they do not have a Google Business Profile, but they might be able to get one created, can you explain the importance of having one versus ranking, let us say, position number one organically for a website, and why they should have a GBP or Google Business Profile as well?

Mike Martin: If you do most searches, anybody watching, the first thing I would ask you to do is go and search industry location, wherever you are, whatever industry you are in, whatever local business industry you are in. What you will find probably 90, 70, 99% of the time is that there are three maps that sit directly above the websites. They have now got text messages, click to call and booking appointments. Most of the local traffic goes to those top three positions.

Mike Martin: Even if you get the number one position as a local business for your keyword, it will always be keyword location. So if I go in and type dentist near me, I am going to get the National Health Service in the UK. That gets 114,000 searches. For you to rank that with a local business website is almost impossible. But I can outrank within weeks dentists near me in my area.

Mike Martin: Then by doing what we teach you to do, rather than spending 30 to 60 minutes a day, it takes you about 30 to 60 minutes a month and everything is done. It ranks really, really easily. Businesses can do it themselves if they use our tool. If they do not know about our tool, the way we sell it to businesses is very simple. We teach them. We get them on a call and we teach them exactly what they have to do. You do this every day, you do this every day, you do this every day, and it will take you about 30 to 60 minutes a day. Or pay us 500 quid a month and we will do it for you, and that takes us about 30 minutes a month. But the first thing is about two hours.

Mike Martin: I own Magic Page Plugin, I own Local Content Engine and I own Lead Simplify. For me to be going all in on Google Business Profiles is pretty stupid. I did a video last week which lost me about 15 grand in monthly recurring revenue within about four hours of putting it up. But I feel that people need to understand and need to know. Magic Page Plugin, I have had that for 10 years. It was industry-leading when it first came out, and it is still a brilliant tool and it can still generate loads of leads.

Mike Martin: But what I find is that if somebody builds a Magic Page Plugin website, they are not messaging me within two days saying, oh my god, look at what I am getting. They are not messaging me within two weeks saying, have you seen my rankings? They are not messaging me within a month saying, I cannot believe my phones have exploded and I am getting loads of customers. That is what is happening with Google Business Profiles and GBP Optimizer. That is the difference.

James Dooley: I completely agree. Anyone who is watching this, make sure you head over to gbpoptimizer.com. This is Mike Martin’s new tool and he has gone all in on it with regards to Google Business Profiles. I do a lot of rank and rent. I do a lot of local lead generation. I am in complete agreement, if I am being honest with you. The importance of having Google Business Profiles is key. It is generating so many more leads than it used to.

James Dooley: I believe people are getting faster down the funnel with regards to AI answers and then starting to get these maps being seen a lot more. They are getting a lot more calls. They are getting a lot more enquiries. The big one for me, what I love about GBP Optimizer, is the fact that they have gone to town on understanding the limits of what it can do. The amount of Google Business Profiles that I used to get suspended, and now Mike Martin’s tool holds me back from doing certain things, like spamming 10,000 posts, photos and reviews. It has got the limits. So I strongly recommend going over, especially if you are running multiple Google Business Profiles. Go over to gbpoptimizer.com.

James Dooley: Mike Martin, it has been an absolute pleasure. Cheers, mate.