Joy Hawkins

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:00 AM

Today we have the fabulous @joy joining us here in chat for our 2x a month Ask Me Anything.

is the owner of the , , and , a Local SEO agency in Canada & the USA. She has been working in the industry since 2006, writes for publications such as Search Engine Land, and enjoys speaking regularly at marketing conferences such as MozCon, LocalU, Pubcon, SearchLove, and State of Search. You can or volunteering as a Product Expert on the Google business profile community.

I asked Joy what she likes to do in her off time and she said, "When I'm not working, I generally spend the majority of my time playing board games and pickleball. I'm also heavily involved with a charity over in Uganda that does counselling for war victims and refugees so I go over there once a year."

Today, while you can literally _Ask Her Anything_, she's particularly prepared to answer your Qs around the following topics:

• Local SEO

• Anything related to SEO

• Google Business Profiles

• Running an agency

Y'all sent me some good questions that I'll throw out if I don't see you asking them yourselves. I also had ChatGPT whip up based specifically on Joy's experience. And I'm curious guy, so I have some of my own that I'll toss in the ring as we go along.

But for now....

GAME ON!

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:00 AM

Hi guys! ????

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:00 AM

Thank you so much for spending your time with us today Joy!

I wanted to start off with some fun stuff so we can get to know you a little. What are you go to board games?

4 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:03 AM

I mostly play ones that I am assuming most people have never heard of. Marvel Champions (amazing if you're a Marvel fan), Scythe, Voidfall, Nemesis...and about 100 more

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:04 AM

100 more?! Will be looking out for your blog post where you put them in a table and rank them by enjoyability! ????

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:06 AM

you mean....like this? lol

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:07 AM

WHOA! Are you serious?! I should have known!!

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:03 AM

And our first "businessy" question comes from @2stephenvernon, What would you do differently if you were starting your local SEO agency over right now?

1 reply

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:04 AM

Operations-wise - never offer an unlimited vacation policy.

Marketing-wise - Start making videos much sooner.

Strategy-wise - Pick more specific niches to work in sooner.

Noah Apr 10, 2025, 9:04 AM

Hi Joy, one of the coolest parts of Sterling Sky is how we grew to be a way different company than what you set out to build. Can you share about your decision to “go Big” and how that’s tied to “Giving Back?”

3 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:05 AM

Yeah, i originally thought it would be a super small team of SEO nerds and we could just sit back and be super selective of who we work with and live a cozy life. But then I met this organization in Uganda (I Live Again Uganda) and went over to visit. And I realized fast that I have the rare opportunity to change a lot of lives - so I decided I did want to grow the agency so that we could give more to them.

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:09 AM

What kind of impact are you making through this program? Is it easy to see?

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:13 AM

Yeah, so we donate a % of our profit to them and I visit once a year. It's probably the most meaningful, thought-provoking time I have every year. It's hard to describe, but I think it's essential to constantly see how the huge majority of the world lives - it's not like us. They focus on trauma counselling for people who survived their 20-yr civil war.

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:06 AM

And from the very non-human word predicter, ChatGPT: "What are the most common mistakes you encounter when optimizing a Google Business Profile, and how can they be avoided?"

1 reply

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:08 AM

1. Picking the wrong categories. Use to help with this.

2. Having a location that is outside city borders or is at the same location as a competing listing (both are ranking killers). Avoiding this is researching and planning out new locations better.

3. Linking to your strongest-ranking organic page - see for more on that

Noah Apr 10, 2025, 9:06 AM

can you make folks smarter about how to get started testing? We test a ton and folks don’t get started probably because of fear / the time investment.

3 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:09 AM

It's a massive time investment. But stuff changes - a lot, and if you're not testing you cannot stay ahead. I like single-variable testing and my rule is usually to test in groups of 3. So make a single change on 3 different businesses in 3 different industries and watch what happens. Sometimes we also reverse the changes to see if the impact reverses. The key is to make sure you aren't doing anything else that would be helping that page.

Noah Apr 10, 2025, 9:10 AM

any particular tools useful for measuring impact?

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:11 AM

Places Scout is my go-to mainly because it tracks on mobile, and it takes screenshots which helps me confirm if it was just us that moved, or if everyone did. If the latter, it probably was not the thing we just edited.

Dorron Apr 10, 2025, 9:10 AM

Not a question I just want to thank @joy today for her time....I'm here to listen and learn

Brett Woodward Apr 10, 2025, 9:11 AM

For clients that you recommend building service area pages for, what data do you consult when deciding on the areas you want to target? I have a new client (personal injury lawyer) that takes cases all over a state/multiple states.

3 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:14 AM

I can tell you personal injury is a category where I'm seeing service area pages almost never work. It's too competitive unfortunately. I look at organic rankings on a grid and typically look for spots where they are red. Then I look at the SERP to see if the pages that rank are hyper-local to that city. But I only create a few before checking to see if those pages are even driving any traffic before creating more.

Brett Woodward Apr 10, 2025, 9:16 AM

Thanks! If you can answer a follow up (no worries if not), are there strategies that you think are a better choice for that vertical?

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:18 AM

Link building is one that we always do for lawyers

Noah Apr 10, 2025, 9:11 AM

I love how you think strategically. When I joined Sterling Sky, I was immediately taken with how you approach optimization working from Pages first. Can you tell us about that?

3 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:14 AM

Onsite is generally faster and easier to get results with than link building. It's always my go-to first because I want to do the stuff that makes the biggest impact the fastest to earn the trust of the clients.

Noah Apr 10, 2025, 9:16 AM

I noticed that you work from the pages out vs starting from the keyword. Is that right?

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:19 AM

correct. We pick the pages based on which ones convert the best/highest

Jitender Apr 10, 2025, 9:12 AM

Hey Joy, What do you think about Google Cloud Stacking and building cloud stacks using tools like ? Have you seen any impact on rankings in the map pack or organic search from this approach? I'm currently researching Google Cloud Stacking and cloud stack link building, but I haven't found any trusted resources or case studies that show real results from using stacks.

1 reply

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:15 AM

I have not dabbled with this at all. I did track a case though where a Google Doc was ranking on Google for "SEO Toronto" and this is what they were doing. At one point they were on page 1, but it did not stick. Personally, I like to focus more on things that aren't going to undo over time

Dorron Apr 10, 2025, 9:13 AM

Ok actually @joy I do have a question...since your testing on the length of titles a nice cohort of time has passed...learn anything new?

3 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:16 AM

It still works well. I tried actually shortening one a couple of months ago to see what happened and all it resulted in was rankings tanking lol.

Dorron Apr 10, 2025, 9:17 AM

So we have correlation and causation and have you found anything new about the modifiers you implement in the titles

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:18 AM

nope - everything we put out in that article/video still works the same

Noah Apr 10, 2025, 9:13 AM

WHo are some of the folks that you follow to get smarter?

1 reply

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:16 AM

Kyle Roof, Matt Diggity, Wil Reynolds, Lily Ray

Noah Apr 10, 2025, 9:13 AM

Tell us about your favorite hobby (cause it rocks).

2 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:16 AM

Board games are #1. Pickleball would be #2.

Noah Apr 10, 2025, 9:18 AM

can you share any pics of your table / wall (cause it’s rad)?

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:14 AM

@2stephenvernon also asks a follow-up from your recent webinar, "On the Webinar with Wil on Tuesday, Wil said the first channel he would cut down on budget would be SEO. I get the thought process (connect with real humans and most SEO in his eyes is crap) - a lot of local service businesses don't have content that is shareable. What is your rebuttal on why SEO is important and SHOULDN'T be cut back on?"

1 reply

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:17 AM

yeah so a small caveat is that he was definitely talking about a B2B company, and I would 100% agree that LinkedIn is killer for B2b. I'm not sure it is for our clients though. We're currently running a pilot on it to find out (for a lawyer). I do think, however, that there is a good chance that SEO will be less important in the next 5 yrs. Time will tell.

Noah Apr 10, 2025, 9:14 AM

What are some really turbulent trends you can share about Local SEO right now?

1 reply

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:18 AM

AI Overviews. They are starting to recommend specific businesses. They are also starting to show for a lot of commercia/money keywords.

Jitender Apr 10, 2025, 9:18 AM

Thanks for your response about cloud stacks. I’d love to know - what are your current go-to local SEO strategies for ranking home services websites and their Google Business Profiles (Map Pack)?

3 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:22 AM

service area pages, interviewing clients to get case studies/job details, and link building

Jitender Apr 10, 2025, 9:26 AM

@joy Are there any local SEO tactics that used to work for home services but you’re now avoiding or seeing less impact from?

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:38 AM

I definitely avoid setting up listings as SABs now that I know it's a ranking killer

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:18 AM

@timothy.folsom asks: "With the high-rate of GBP suspensions right now, and the backlog of suspension appeals, what GBP edits do you feel are safe to make right now, and what edits would you suggest holding off on (for the time being) unless absolutely necessary?"

1 reply

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:22 AM

I'm avoiding any phone, name, or address edits.

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:20 AM

@upyourseogame asks, "How much effort do you put into national kind of content, i.e. information that could apply anywhere, on local sites?"

3 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:22 AM

Quite a bit. Getting traffic to these pages is a great way to build up authority and then you can use these pages to link to the ones that actually make you money

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:23 AM

How well do local companies rank on national, say informational, queries?

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:24 AM

some of them pretty well. A lot better than it was 10 years ago

Noah Apr 10, 2025, 9:21 AM

How have you built company culture? How should agencies manage employee workloads? Any key employees helping you with operational efficiency?hahahahahahahahhahahahahahah.

17 replies

Noah Apr 10, 2025, 9:21 AM

spitting out drink

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:22 AM

lol

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:23 AM

nah, we don't have anyone like that here ????

Noah Apr 10, 2025, 9:23 AM

seriously though. Our culture is pretty amazing.

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:24 AM

company culture is not really my thing - I defer that over to Dave (VP) because he's about 10x better w/ people than I am. For workloads we require employees to log 6 hours of work a day.

Dorron Apr 10, 2025, 9:24 AM

Please move these comments to the shameless plug thread

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:24 AM

and I also hate operations, so @noahlearner helps us build some amazing tools to help with that.

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:25 AM

@joy Name your favorite of Noah's tools!

Noah Apr 10, 2025, 9:28 AM

a lot of what I do is like taking care of the plumbing honestly.

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:28 AM

So...a working toilet perhaps?

Dorron Apr 10, 2025, 9:30 AM

This went downhill faster than I thought

Noah Apr 10, 2025, 9:31 AM

@upyourseogame that was actually one of my biggest daily challenges managing a bike shop. Just ask @brett

Dorron Apr 10, 2025, 9:32 AM

And what did said clogged toilet teach you about the journey of local search for a plumber?

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:34 AM

Currently it's our sales dashboard because I use it a lot. I can see leads & sales by month and source.

Noah Apr 10, 2025, 9:35 AM

what’s weird about living in a small town is that they were all in our phone based on 3 generations of relationships.

Boris Kuslitskiy Apr 10, 2025, 9:39 AM

I was wondering how to phrase "How do you handle prolonged exposure to Noah?" but couldn't nail it down. Glad Noah beat me to it.

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:49 AM

I'll start classes on it

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:24 AM

Can you share insights into your pricing strategy for local SEO services and the rationale behind your starting price points?

3 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:26 AM

So we definitely price based on hourly estimates but i'm leaning more towards pricing now that is value based. For example, Noah's time is worth more than someone who we started as entry-level, so if it's a task only Noah can do, it is worth more. For the client, we just tell them a flat rate so it's not hourly to them. Our pricing starts at $2800/month.

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 10:15 AM

Do you find that it's harder to get results for clients who are on the lower end of the billing scale?

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 10:17 AM

totally

Stephen Vernon Apr 10, 2025, 9:25 AM

Steal, Clone, Shoutout.

Who would you steal from another agency, who would you clone on your current team, and who deserves a shoutout on your current team?

6 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:27 AM

I mean, i'm not gonna name someone - what if their boss is in here? undefinedrolling_on_the_floor_laughing: But there are quite a few employees that I approached about jobs who worked at other agencies. I think I actually offered @noahlearner a job annually for about 3 yrs lol. I would clone him, my 2 VPs (cc'ing @colan.nielsen because he's in here), and my assistant if I could.

Colan Nielsen Apr 10, 2025, 9:30 AM

It's too bad VP number two isn't here so he could see this.

Noah Apr 10, 2025, 9:30 AM

I was totally going to put that in the preciate channel for Dave.

Carrie Hill Apr 10, 2025, 10:11 AM

Knife to the heart over here undefined undefined undefined

Carrie Hill Apr 10, 2025, 10:15 AM

Tbh she sorta inherited me with LocalU - we were kinda a package deal LOL

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 10:17 AM

You made the acquisition decision easier for me ????

Mitch Apr 10, 2025, 9:26 AM

I am very new to local SEO and SEO in general so this may be a basic question. What is best practice for a brick and mortar company with multiple locations in one state/province in terms of making it clear they are in different areas? Is putting something in the name a good idea like the street or a town? Or just hoping people look at the address?

2 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:28 AM

Make sure you list the addresses of their locations in the footer. Also embed a map of their GBP on pages you've optimized for that town.

Mitch Apr 10, 2025, 9:30 AM

Ty.

Lawrence Parmisana Apr 10, 2025, 9:26 AM

Thank you so much, Joy, for all your efforts in educating others through the content published by SterlingSky. I'm curious, what are your thoughts on the recent shifts in Local Pack rankings and the direction that Google is taking for local businesses with the AI-related improvements?

4 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:29 AM

I don't know how AI is going to replicate all the user generated content we have in Maps. It's what makes maps so good. So right now, I'm not seeing any shifts there but we are starting to track AI traffic for clients in case people actually do start shifting to chatGPT

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:30 AM

How are you tracking that @joy just with sources in GA? Or do you have a specific setup?

Lawrence Parmisana Apr 10, 2025, 9:35 AM

Thank you! At the moment, with our obsession with tracking local pack results on a daily basis, we have seen old/outdated GBPs ranking for Position #2 or even sometimes, #1.

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:36 AM

Dorron Apr 10, 2025, 9:26 AM

@2stephenvernon Genius I'm renting that "Steal, Clone, Shoutout"™

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:27 AM

Do you ever "fire" clients? Or do you have a pretty good "sniffing" process that weeds them out in the sales process?

3 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:31 AM

We absolutely do. It's hard though. I actually found that i'm terrible at it and end up pissing people off. Like clients don't like being told they can't work with us. I had a guy who was miserable actually blow up at me when I told him we were cancelling his contract. At first, I was like this makes zero sense, this guy isn't even happy with us. But it was his ego - he didn't want to be told what to do. But he was making my team miserable - making me miserable, so i decided to refund him all the money he paid us (5 months worth). It was the only option I decided that would make him leave for good. After that, I assigned this task of breaking up with clients to someone who is a lot better and smoother than me. I'm really awful at it.

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:36 AM

I'm sure you don't have enough of those to hire an official Break Up Manager, yeah?

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:38 AM

lol no definitely not. But the guy we have doing it now is like 100x better at it.

Noah Apr 10, 2025, 9:29 AM

Can you share anything from our red flag process?

1 reply

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:32 AM

Yeah, we have account managers fill in a survey every month asking 4 questions:

1. Are leads up month-over-month

2. Are leads up year-over-year

3. Is the client happy

4. Does the client trust us.

If we get 3 months in a row with any nos, it gets sent up to a member on the senior leadership team to look at and we often switch out the strategist on the account and use it for training time as well.

RP Apr 10, 2025, 9:30 AM

How can you validate a good link builder? Digital organic PR I assume is best but so hard, especially with limited resources. So, assuming you had budget, how would you choose a PR agency that builds quality genuine links that are not likely to get marked as spam?

2 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:33 AM

So the types i'm heavily focusing on right now are earned media + contributing content but to other small business sites - not guest posting sites. Expired domains can also work even though it's labelled as spammy, it absolutely does not have to be.

RP Apr 11, 2025, 2:11 AM

Thank you for your reply Joy !

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:33 AM

From an _anonymous_ member: "Have you tested the grey-hat approach of direction-requests on GBPs to see if it has any impact on rankings? Any other thoughts on the approach?"

And you can answer anonymously too if it helps Joy. undefined

3 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:34 AM

It 100% works. I watched Holly Starks' presentation on it in person where she explained it all step-by-step. I don't do it though.

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:35 AM

I see this: do you have a link to said presentation?

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:37 AM

No, it was in Toronto a couple of years ago. But my tl;dr on CTR manipulation is I don't do it because i don't want my clients having all their ROI undone when they leave, which is what happens if you stop doing CTR manipulation. More on that here:

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:37 AM

ChatGPT: "What emerging SEO trends do you believe will have the biggest impact on local SEO in the near future?"

1 reply

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:39 AM

AI Overviews for sure. they're extremely unpredictable and they change so often it is tough to measure.

Dorron Apr 10, 2025, 9:38 AM

@joy Has there ever been a time where you advised a client not to do local SEO because they were a single location national business and why?

9 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:39 AM

Yep. We turn away people regularly if their revenue isn't high enough. For example, if they were doing a million in revenue, i would say it is gonna be tough to get an ROI even at $2800/month (our lowest package)

Dorron Apr 10, 2025, 9:41 AM

Appreciated...follow up when is local SEO not right for a client aside from budget constraints and having champagne dreams and a beer budget

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:45 AM

Probably when their cost per sale is not high enough to ever get an ROI. For example, we no longer work with locksmiths because their lifetime value of a customer is not high so the volume we would have to get them to get an ROI is insane.

Dorron Apr 10, 2025, 9:46 AM

This is exactly how I got into SEO was working for a locksmith referral agency...taught me everything you shouldn't do and I learned from that what to do.

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:49 AM

lead gen? Like fake GBPs?

Dorron Apr 10, 2025, 9:50 AM

Yup all of the above and even worse VOIP

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:51 AM

haha sounds fun. I feel like starting with blackhat stuff makes you smarter ????

Dorron Apr 10, 2025, 9:56 AM

You can only know what to do when you know exactly what not to do and to test by single metrics what works...the Jurassic park method...they are testing the fences for weaknesses

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:57 AM

100%. I had a fake listing once and then it got suspended. I miss testing things on it lol

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:39 AM

So, we've talked about content in a couple different contexts, but which types of content have you found _most_ effective for driving local SEO results?

5 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:45 AM

Customer stories, hands down.

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 10:12 AM

Wow! Super simple, but great insight! How easy is it for customers to actually fulfill on this kind of content?

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 10:17 AM

We interview them and transcribe the call.

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 10:19 AM

Have you seen @nicolas's Interview Driod tool?

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 10:20 AM

I did not. Thanks!

Chai Fisher Apr 10, 2025, 9:41 AM

Do you think SEO job seekers need a website, even if they aren't freelancing and are looking at in-house roles?

1 reply

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:46 AM

if you have no plan on getting business on your own, probably not

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:41 AM

Joy will be back in 5

Dorron Apr 10, 2025, 9:41 AM

Snack time...anyone bring Reese's?

3 replies

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:43 AM

I've got some of these...

Dorron Apr 10, 2025, 9:44 AM

The fancy kind works

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:46 AM

Needed some caffeine

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:42 AM

Hypothetically, let's say that everyone here was willing and able to send a link to your website...to what page and with what anchor text would you suggest? (just curious to see what you're working towards)

16 replies

Noah Apr 10, 2025, 9:42 AM

we got mad links.

Dorron Apr 10, 2025, 9:43 AM

Please move this discussion to shameless link building

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:43 AM

Shared content

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:46 AM

I wanna rank for local SEO agency nationwide in Canada and the USA

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:47 AM

lol lofty goals i know

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:47 AM

i think we have it in Canada for most areas

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:47 AM

feel free to send me all your links ????

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:47 AM

❤️

Chai Fisher Apr 10, 2025, 9:47 AM

As an in-house role seeker, I don't personally have a website besides my LinkedIn. I have been trying to build authority on it up, and have driven traffic and engagement up about 600% in the past few weeks.

I've had lots of SEOs interested in talking to me and mentioning me. Which is AWESOME! But my conversions aren't going towards what I REALLY want, which is hiring managers reaching out in the DMs.

Your question is really thought provoking, though. Probably a link to my LinkedIn page with the anchor text 'ai seo strategist'.

Dorron Apr 10, 2025, 9:49 AM

Or a Google form works magic @celiaafisher takes two seconds in gpt (no it doesn't)

Chai Fisher Apr 10, 2025, 9:50 AM

@100percentorganicseo (throws up) I am reeling from yesterday

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:51 AM

It's best to control your audience as much as you can. Like, SEOs leaving Twitter didn't really help my engagement there, nor was it something I predicted. So like if all my eggs were in the Twitter basket, that could have been scary. So I would definitely have an email list you control

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:51 AM

Twitter rebounded pretty fast but it still had that "dying" look for a bit last year

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:53 AM

I'm still baffled by the whole SEOs leaving twitter thing. It was like, hey guys, let's leave this place where everyone is and start over in that new place that's kinda like this one. Who started that? Rand?

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:56 AM

lol no idea, but I really keep politics and work separate and that account is strictly work for me. I wish more ppl did that. I just wanna see SEO posts in my feed!

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:57 AM

Same

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:45 AM

From @timothy.folsom: "How do you measure when a client has maximized their GBP's SOLV to determine when it's time to create another GBP?"

1 reply

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:48 AM

When there is no opportunities left for their money keywords. Money keywords are what I call the top 5-10 keywords that convert the best and have the highest volume. Every business has them.

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:47 AM

So, one thing I've always found hard with agency work (any work for that matter with my ADHD) is juggling multiple clients (last place I left I had about 14-15. So, how do you balance aggressive client acquisition (assuming you are indeed aggressive with it) with the need to keep your team from being overextended?

3 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:48 AM

So we actually have a tool (that @noahlearner built) that tells us our capacity so I can easily see how many more clients we can take on

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 10:11 AM

And do you get feedback from client managers or are you just using an estimated time that each client takes to assign how many each team gets?

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 10:12 AM

we time track in harvest, so we know exactly how long we spend on everything

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:48 AM

And other from @timothy.folsom: "What are your thoughts on reciprocal links between similar local businesses (such as a pool company and a landscaping company) to improve rankings and digital footprint?"

1 reply

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:49 AM

No problems I can see, but it's better if it's with content that is actually going to provide expertise

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:50 AM

Joy, what's your favorite food? ????

2 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:52 AM

Coffee. That's a food right?

Dorron Apr 10, 2025, 9:52 AM

It's bean juice so yes it counts

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:50 AM

Speed round?! Biggest win? Biggest failure?

4 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:52 AM

Biggest win would probably be the ppl who I've hired - and I can't name one, there are too many I'm proud of.

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:53 AM

Biggest failure - hard to choose one, but I'd probably say offering an unlimited vacation policy. It was a horrid idea and rolling it back was not easy.

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 10:08 AM

Taken advantage of? Our experience with that was that people actually took less. Weird? Guess it's a psychological thing, people didn't want you to think they were lazy or something?

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 10:11 AM

Yeah i was told it would result in less, but it was quite the opposite

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:51 AM

If you could get a link from one site, what would it be?

1 reply

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:53 AM

Forbes! jk

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:52 AM

Best day ever?

2 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:53 AM

like at work specifically?

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 10:07 AM

just ever!

Stephen Vernon Apr 10, 2025, 9:52 AM

What is one business book you'd recommend everyone read?

3 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:53 AM

so I actually don't read business books much. The only book I actually spend any time reading is the Bible. I'm odd, I know ????

Stephen Vernon Apr 10, 2025, 9:54 AM

Favorite book of the Bible and why?

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:55 AM

Romans - because it is the most challenging

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:53 AM

Proudest moment in life?

1 reply

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:54 AM

I actually think it's coming this year. One of my VPs is coming to Uganda with me and watching both my dreams/visions for the company collide is gonna be pretty amazing.

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:54 AM

Favorite TV show? Movie?

1 reply

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:54 AM

Friends or Smallville. Armageddon

Dorron Apr 10, 2025, 9:54 AM

Favorite team member that has the letters "N" and "H" in it?

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:54 AM

Video games at all? If so, fav?

4 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:55 AM

Mario Kart or Overcooked

Boris Kuslitskiy Apr 10, 2025, 9:56 AM

Ah, the "Friends and Family but make it spicy." options.

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:57 AM

I'm careful who I play with. I get very mean.

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 10:00 AM

Shared content

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:56 AM

If you had to start all over from scratch, what would you do to make 1 million bucks the fastest (not so rapid fire perhaps)?

1 reply

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 9:57 AM

So I'm not a "get things fast" type of person. I'm all about long-term. So when we started investing in YouTube, it took almost 2 years before we started getting leads and now it's one of our top referral sources. So I've found some of the best things in life you have to plan and wait for.

Brett Woodward Apr 10, 2025, 9:57 AM

Thanks for the insights Joy!

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:57 AM

@mr.rik.powell asks: "If you had a gym website which serviced the local area, what would your top 3/5 things be to improve the site and increase visibility? It can be SEO, outreach or Paid search (PPC)! (But ideally not paid as prefer organic!)"

1 reply

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 10:00 AM

Add lots of photos and examples of things that you can do at the gym. The more details the better. Don't just say "hey i have a yoga class". Talk about what type of yoga it is, how long it is, who it's for, a story of someone who goes and how it changed their life.

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 9:58 AM

@mr.rik.powell: "Would you say that for small local businesses they should invest in local marketing (online and offline) once they have covered the SEO fundamentals, instead of churning blog content/social media content for example? I want to add overall value to a local business, not just SEO advice!"

1 reply

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 10:00 AM

Look into Reddit (currently doing this)

Jitender Apr 10, 2025, 10:00 AM

@joy If you had to prioritize just 5 high-impact actions to improve visibility and lead generation for a home services business in a competitive local market, what would they be and why?

1 reply

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 10:01 AM

Onsite (things like titles, h1s, simple stuff), content (case studies/jobs), building a few links by contributing expert commentary to other businesss' sites, making service area pages, and asking for photos with reviews

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 10:02 AM

That's the top of the hour folks!

Let's all thank @joy for joining us today!

And Joy, anything you'd like to leave us with? Last nuggets? Fun sayings? Selfless promotions?

Dorron Apr 10, 2025, 10:02 AM

@joy my social media client has a question...how do manaage local SEO for franchisees when there are corporate guidelines but yet the local franchise needs a stringer presence without competition of the other local franchises

2 replies

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 10:04 AM

One of our biggest clients is a franchise. The individual owners hire us and we keep our internal processes updated to try and comply with their guidelines. So we have built out separate templates for those specific clients.

Dorron Apr 10, 2025, 10:05 AM

Thank you...have an amazing inspirational day

Ryan Mendenhall Apr 10, 2025, 10:05 AM

Also, if anyone missed our chat with Joy and still has questions, she'll hop back in here and there throughout the day to wrap up any stragglers. Thanks all for your fun participation. I think that was the fastest paced AMA we've seen so far!

Noah Apr 10, 2025, 10:13 AM

Great Job @upyourseogame and @joy et all! Great convo.

Dorron Apr 10, 2025, 10:14 AM

Thank you @noahlearner team member of the decade

2 replies

Noah Apr 10, 2025, 10:15 AM

Nahhhh. I’m just lucky to be here.

Dorron Apr 10, 2025, 10:18 AM

Same and appreciative

Adrienne Kmetz Apr 10, 2025, 11:23 AM

Apologies for the lateness ???? @joy How has specializing in local search affected your relationship with your community or sense of place? When I worked in solar I started noticing amazing roofs around town.

Do you have any side projects / hobbies?

Where do you like to make new connections?

Thank you so much for your time and energy ????

1 reply

Joy Hawkins Apr 10, 2025, 12:21 PM

I haven't had it affect my community too much. Hobbies are mainly board games and pickleball. My favorite place to make new connections is in-person at conferences.

Ask Me Anything with
Joy Hawkins

Sterling Sky

10 Apr 2025 9:00 AM MST

Our Values

What we believe in

What has no home here

Sign up for our Newsletter

Join our mailing list for updates

Apply now to join our amazing community.

The SEO Community © 2025
Sitemap
Terms of Service
Privacy Policy
Update cookies preferences

Ask Me Anything with Joy Hawkins

Sterling Sky

10 Apr 2025 9:00 AM MST

Our Values

What we believe in

What has no home here

Sign up for our Newsletter

Join our mailing list for updates

Apply now to join our amazing community.

The SEO Community © 2025 SitemapTerms of ServicePrivacy Policy Update cookies preferences

Ask Me Anything with
Joy Hawkins

The SEO Community © 2025
Sitemap
Terms of Service
Privacy Policy
Update cookies preferences