GBP Optimiser Manage & Scale Google Business Profiles James Dooley Interviews Mike Martin

James Dooley: GBP Optimizer. Today I am joined with Mike Martin, who is the founder of the tool that is managing 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, let us say, traditional SEO into being obsessed, I would say, with Google Business Profiles nowadays?

Mike Martin: It probably started about a year ago. My business partner and I were looking at AI and how it is developing. We are heavily into AI. We play with all the tools, everything you can think of out there. We are always testing it, looking at it, trying to break it and trying to build things with it. We realised very quickly, about a year to a year and a half ago, that most of the things we offer as digital marketers, SEO agencies and businesses like that are going to become, not obsolete, but commoditised. So the value changes. If I offer somebody a £5,000 website and a 15-year-old kid can come in and do that same £5,000 website for £300, then we are in a situation where there is no value in the service any more. Once everybody can do it, it becomes worthless. Then we realised very quickly that Google Business Profiles require integration with Google and approval by Google. 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. Basically, 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 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. All of the AIs are still using almost fake information, or they will just wing it on occasion, whereas Google have integrated with Maps so that they can think it through properly. So we can see that they are going in that direction. They have moved AI search to the left and left normal search to the right. We are looking at it from that perspective, and the speed you can get results is ridiculous. I just got a client this morning. He sent me four pictures. He set it up two weeks ago and 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. Specifically, let us stay on the subject of Google Business Profiles. 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 get that Google Business Profile ranking and get yourself in that map pack, especially for certain industries. 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 is it that it does and what makes your tool different to others, or even just not optimising in general in Google Maps? What does it do?

Mike Martin: Basically, if you go and read, and 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. 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 literally go in and it gives you a checklist to fill in. Once that score is 100, you know your profile is complete properly. Some of the things that are really important are real-world ongoing actions. So, 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 is the right pattern. So what we do is make it possible for you to upload 50 pictures and schedule them to be uploaded over the space of one a day for 50 days. You can click a button, get AI to write all your posts and then schedule them daily, weekly, monthly, whatever you want. The same applies 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. Then with Ask Maps, which has just come out for Google, we have also created a Q and A section. What Google did was take the API for the Q and As away and they have done that because of Ask Maps. So now when you feed the Q and As into the posts of the business, that is fed into Gemini and helps rank your Google Business Profiles for all sorts of different questions and answers that people ask on their phones in the real world. We are massively focused on this. What we are finding, and you will have to agree on this, is that 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. We all, as SEOs, doing it on a website would go for locksmith location, plumber location, plumber in location, emergency plumber and so on. But with this, within a month, you can rank for plumber near me, which Google pushes you towards ranking for. In addition to that, because of the way it is created and because the map listings nearly always sit above the websites, you are getting 10 times more traffic, so your customers are seeing far more leads, sales and clients. And 99 per cent are now real-world businesses. As you know with lead generation, it is almost impossible to build them, but if you are running a real business there is no more cost-effective way at all 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 is showing up for them. It is starting to appear in a lot of the LLMs and AI overviews as well where it is pulling in the maps. And like you said, when you are actually using GBP Optimizer and being able to drip feed the photos, drip feed the posts, and actually, for me, I am asking you the questions about what it does, 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 review requests. It is asking them for reviews and that review velocity being built up is incredible. So yes, I completely agree. I think it is very, very, very important. With regards to the numbers, obviously you have 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 much more are you seeing now in leads coming from Google Business Profiles? If people are watching this and they have got 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 one organically for a website and why they should be having a Google Business Profile as well?

Mike Martin: If you do most searches, so anybody watching, the first thing I would ask you to do is go and search industry plus location, wherever you are, whatever industry you are in, whatever local business industry you are in. What you will probably find 70 to 99 per cent of the time is that there are three map results that sit directly above the websites. They have now got text messages, click to call, booking appointments. Most of the local traffic goes to those top three positions. Even if you get the number one position as a local business for your keyword, and it will always be keyword plus location, 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 dentists near me in my area within weeks. Then 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 and 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 teach them exactly what they have to do. You do this every day. You do this every day. You do this every day. You do this every day. It will take you about 30 to 60 minutes a day, or pay us £500 a month and we will do it for you, and that takes us about 30 minutes a month. The first part is about two hours. We are getting clients, and obviously you know I own Magic Page Plugin, I own Local Content Engine, I own Lead Simplify. For me to go all in on Google Business Profiles is pretty mad. I did a video last week which lost me about £15,000 in monthly recurring revenue within about four hours of putting it up. But I feel 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. It is still a brilliant tool and it can still generate loads of leads. 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. I am getting loads of customers.” That is what is happening with Google Business Profiles and GBP Optimizer. That is the difference.

James Dooley: Yes, completely agree. So, anyone who is watching this, make sure you head on 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. I believe people are getting faster down the funnel with regards to AI answers and then starting to get these maps seen a lot more. They are getting a lot more calls. They are getting a lot more enquiries. The big one for me, and 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 number of Google Business Profiles that I used to get suspended was ridiculous, and now Mike Martin’s tool holds me back from doing certain things. I am not going to spam 10,000 posts and photos and reviews and stuff like that. It has the limits. So, I strongly recommend going over there. Especially if you are running multiple Google Business Profiles, go over to gbpoptimizer.com. Mike Martin, it has been an absolute pleasure. Cheers, mate.