SEO for Couch and Furniture Flippers: Get More Leads, Sell Faster & Build a Profitable Business

okay uh we are recording so to preface the conversation today I think SEO is a new frontier for couch flipping that's relatively unexplored that has a lot of potential um so it's great that you know you can post on Facebook Marketplace and you can attract people to your listings and your storefront with relatively low investment just basically the time that you're putting into it um but if you think about it you're maybe reaching 10 20% of the overall addressable Market if you're just focused on Facebook Marketplace and because Facebook is low barrier entry AKA anyone can post on there with relatively low cost um that 10 20% of people that you're getting in front of while it's free there's more competition for it SEO is something that's more technical requires more investment over a longer period of time it's higher burier to entry and frankly it's probably more people that are searching for products on Google than they are on Facebook and so I think this is an underappreciated opportunity that if utilize correctly could yield dividends for a lot of your your flipping businesses um as mentioned before we are going to be doing a live audit of the counter cycle as many of you know this was one of the few and early Acquisitions of a cou flipping business and a majority of their attraction was based off of SEO so a lot of the products that they were sourcing and a lot of the leads the customer leads that they were getting all originating from Google search uh so Manual's going to do a quick presentation he's going to break down uh you know some of the basic aspects of local SEO and SEO and then we're going to dig into the website and we're going to talk about how this can be implementable within your own businesses to unlock this new frontier ofing so this is the homepage we see right off the bat that we know for sure what the website is about and what they deal with and you don't believe how many websites you know you need to scroll down or you know try to understand spend sometime understanding what the website is all about and what they do obviously in the name uh the name kind of like tells it as well a side note here that I would like to make is contrary to what you might hear from Google saying that the exact match domain don't influence the search results let me tell you from my experience and from other colleagues of mine exact match domains meaning you know having your uh your main keyword your keyword and sometimes even the location in the website address URL can have a positive impact and give you an extra advantage over other competitors so having the word couch here couch couch cycled um instead of something like a cycle Furniture uh gives this website an advantage uh uxi as we said is part of the SEO so having clear call to action here and here definitely helps and it's a plus but we'll see here some uh some reviews we can see clearly and not you know go through a lot of steps the products so as a user you know this feel very pleasant this feels uh very professional and also feels very human we see here pictures with human something that's very popular right now A generated or something to generic stock options right so we can relate to these are humans you know I'm dealing with humans so I kind of like they seem nice it creates that that relationship we see here the Google listing which is the Google business profile and I'm going to take a look at that in moment as well so this is just the homepage a powerful footer I I believe for example one recommendation for this website would be to create a powerful footer to include keywords and links to those pages that I want to rank for in the footer as well so that will be an extra tip create a powerful footer you'll see that all the pages for the major website just look at Amazon you know you look at their footer they're like Mass it and this translate to to many other Industries as well right so you see here keywords and everything that's uh that's that's important another example I uh look is click up but I'm logged in I won't give that example so footer powerful footer can be U um this is my tip for one of the tips for for tonight okay so this is just I said the homepage we're not going to spend more time here we're going to look now at keywords uh and what they run for any industry has main keywords has secondary keywords and has different uh type of longtail keywords uh what happens is these are um discovered in the research research phase usually an SEO campaign starts with a with a package of 10 important keywords or 20 depending you start kind of like working from there right you define 10 important keywords that you like to rank better to show up on Google for and then start working on that so for example these are some major keywords from from uh from the industry that this website ranks for or not we'll see so we see that for example couch removal Dallas this website ranks number one with a homepage which is quite good for something like gentle use couch for sale Dallas uh it's ranking uh with the homepage but also in the local map pack which is the Google business profile which are the top three results uh that you often see just to Define this is the local map pack and you see that this takes more and more real estate up until a couple years ago you know you'll see uh different type of results and somewhere on the right or you know smaller the map packs as you can see right now these are taking more and more another thing that is worth mentioning and in US you see it the most is the AI overview uh AI over is uh something that's uh very personal in terms of the results that you'll see so the results I see will be slightly different than the results you will see but this takes up a lot of real estate as well and we see that it's actually linking back to to a website 800 G junk which is a fairly big site it operates across North America and has a lot of cloud so it's kind of like normal to uh for Google to decide okay I trust these guys because they're the biggest they're kind of like a um you know have a lot of authority so I won't be wrong if I feature them the question comes how does a smaller website with less Authority uh get featured there well firstly we can start by with the longtail keywords you know answering some of the questions that people in the who are in the research phase might ask and how do you get those well there are different tools that you can do that you could rely on more popular SEO tools such as sash M or HRS but right now there's this thing called chpt I'm pretty sure that everyone has used it so we can have a simple conversation hey what could be some some longtail keywords I can go for so that's just something that you'll need to be aware of and for long keywords you can actually get a chance of the on the AI overview or the feature Snippets we spend enough time uh using all this back to the map pack this is the map pack obviously it defers it's uh B it's based on proximity a lot right now I'm I'm on a VPN um in Dallas but I'm also logged in with my account so Google kind of gets all the signals just try to this results but this is very accurate we see here the first result is Junk King Dallas for for a keyword that's furniture removal we know that this website has this uh furniture removal this service in as a main uh service I assume so because Google assume so as well because it's actually the first keyword when uh when they read the website right uh where was I here right and we look at their their um Google business profile we see that they have web uh their website listed here they have the address very important area served uh they have images images by the owner images by uh I see this one mostly by the owner but users can uh can add images as well and that's a plus plus sign so for example if you can reviews I won't even mention the importance of reviews that goes without saying that you should get as many positive reviews on your listing as possible uh but we see here let's see if this one has some pictures from users right so this is important if you get your users to post pictures alongside the reviews that will be a positive signal to Google so if you have more pictures from users than your competitors you might have a chance of you know slly taking taking that rout and you can see how how uh important it is and how competitive it is uh this is probably a uh a side I'm not sure how many of you deal with the furniture removal I just had this open and obviously you can spend some money on Advertising as well this is an important aspect to consider because sometimes you know SEO can take some time if you're a new business in town until you get 100 reviews might take might take a while you know with paid advertising you might see results quite fast but it can get more more expensive we can take a look at the at a similar result for used furniture store or simply let's do used furniture D something that you know people might look like we see no surpris there are there any Dallas stores to sell use Furnitures I know maybe um Dallas furniture Bank uh this is if I'm not mistaken in my research it came up as a not for profit we see here the Facebook listings so goes without saying that you know I would recommend ensuring that you have a listing and you already have but don't uh disregard the importance and impact it has on the SEO we see again help and other websites but I'm going to spend some more time on the Google listings Google business profile because many times most users especially on mobile don't even get to the organic results the traditional organic results and just spend what every here we see that this listing has reviews mostly positive 4.8 apparently is the ideal score that you'll need to have we see what kind of web results from this website is there uh and they have a description they don't probably don't have they don't have question and answer so these are some missed opportunities let me see if I can find one with more information this one is uh taken from their website as well what these guys are doing is they use um all the information that you can add to your Google business profile so you can simply you know claim the business and have it there and showing up but if you want to have a chance to rank higher you need to leave no slots empty and they have a feature that's becoming more and more prominent this one for posting as you would on social media so actually you can post on Google some say it has uh less influence than many report from my experience I can tell you that um it's better to have it than not have it it's an extra layer of work but it's another tip that I share with you you know whenever you do a social media post if you have an Instagram account or whenever you post on on the marketplace consider posting it on your Google business profile as well as we can see this listing has that and they've added their social profil they have the and even list products in here again it's extra work but uh it will it will help you in in the long run before coming back so we started off with the keywords and we ended up on the Google my business because it was important and I didn't want to you know disregard the impact that something like this can have I said especially on mobile um you know the reality is many don't even go past that and they look at you know simply here they look they see they have a website they look at couple of pictures and they simply call or simple ask simply ask for Direction so any questions in regards to uh Google business profile and uh local SEO how much of the value in overall SEO do you think you can get just by being active on Google by uh gbb just on G GMB GBP without a website yeah exactly so like they uh flipper wanted to start being visible on Google search but didn't want to go through the overall process of you know starting a website and then doing everything required for SEO how much of the overall value do you think they could extract just by being really active on Google my business that's a solid question it can bring some value not as much as 10 years ago uh and Google feeds the information it kind of like ties it up with all the other entities that you have there's this thing called social signals right if you're very popular on Facebook that's also a signal for Google that your business is something that they need to consider if your website gets a lot of traffic and guess what Google kind of like has the data whenever you install Google anal itics Google search console or use a product like Chrome that you know is Google's property they can like know all that as well and they they link each each point so long answer confusing short answer would be you can get some traction but you'll get more from uh from U with having a website and uh putting significant effort in both local and the main site in some remote places because I work in Canada we have some really remote places where there's not that many population uh there's many listings that show up within the top three results that have no website so that's that's a reality but uh I wouldn't hope for much in a city like Dallas that's highly highly competitive with just the Google business profile with with no other U effort as in the website got it I have two questions uh I'm the one that owns the coule website by the way thanks um the first question is is it better to pick one or is it possible to rank really really well for two so for example we rank really well for used couches no matter where you are in the whole Metroplex I've built out like some shop pages in different cities and so we rank like one or two and used couch Irving use couch Plano Ed couch Dallas but since I made the decision to go for that keyword it seems like my used furniture keyword has gone down if that makes sense right so you are saying that you think that you take from from one place to put on the other place it seems a little bit that way yeah it seems so we need to that's a faird question and I often ask myself the same thing when I see those kind of results it doesn't dilute but for example in your business you don't have a location in in that area so most likely Google will look at it with a certain uh I call skepticism will be too much the answer is no it doesn't dute if you're going for other locations within your service service area it doesn't from one uh and puts it to the other there there are many other reasons why you might see that for example your home page or your other services I forgot what you mentioned have gone maybe a little bit down I often tell my clients you know if you look at and we see here for example the the keywords I just put Dallas but I can do a query for other searches as for other cities as well and see where you rank so obviously you rank for for more keywords I would say the competition is the biggest influence on local and uh yeah that's it and there's other things that you know uh influence the the results and what I wanted to say because I forgot looking at the keywords daily it's like looking at the stock market daily so that's why in the in the you're not going to end up well for sure uh that's why in a regular SEO campaign with an agency or with the consultant you have monthly meetings or sometimes by-weekly meetings where you look at the keywords you see uh how it U how it uh evolved and to be honest SE in 2025 is not the same as in 2020 and definitely not the same as in 2015 or 2010 what does it mean the results are even more more personalized than ever these tools are just third party tools uh it's fairly accurate but it's not not completely accurate so sorry so two people could look up use couch Plano and get different results even if they are in a same room you could see the different results if you're doing the same query from your Wi-Fi laptop and see a different results from your mobile uh cell phone yeah I've noticed that okay go ahead no finish your I was going to ask my second question uh if we see like the first results the then the third result the fifth result that's normal if you see you know yourself being the third and then on your cell phone not showing up at all or being on the fourth page or something like that then that's that's a different issue Al together but fluctuations between the first second third uh it's in a highly competitive domain such as yours where your competition doesn't like just do nothing there it's quite normal again coming back to what Google wants to to see what uh to offer their users the best answer for their query okay sweet thank you the other question was um how far out can you like what's the max reach you can get in the M pack M pack like for example is it even possible for me to rank in the top three 15 miles away in a big city that without in Dallas where there's 100 furniture stores within five miles that's a very good question uh I would say uh I would go for start with proximity so let's let's actually take a look right to see exactly um let's look at that Dallas here we're going to take a look at the map and I will tell you what my Approach would be uh so I would start with where I'm located and I would go one uh one uh location at a time if you can get an address there somehow to get a Google business profile with an address in that City let's say fourth Worth or Harington I'm not familiar with the geography there but if there's a possibility to get a listing there uh then you'll have even a higher chance but I will start from here and go as far as it makes sense and there are ways uh that you can even if you're here you can kind of like show up here there are ways it's not impossible it's something that you know you can discuss with with your Bay major look into uh what's called the gray area if not the dark dark area of SEO because most manipulation and stuff like that CTR yes that's one driving directions there's well they don't work that much anymore but they still work for example we're going into like the black hat right something that's against the Google guidelines but you have skin in the game and you kind of like know all these things and you know there's many that can swear that by using their tool you'll rank in one week in I don't know from Dallas to New York or something like that but no there are things that you can do uh it's a great area of course because because if Google picks it up it can also penalize and slap you and remove you completely from from the results as well but no don't uh don't give up you know and try to do it as naturally as possible and everything with moderation if that make sense what you did with the location pages is the first step and it's very important U other things that you what I would recommend doing being not so much against their guidelines is trying to get a Google business profile there if you have an address or can come up with an address uh to have a GBP there you'll have higher chance of doing so there's all kinds of experiments you know you can put the location page as your homepage for that Google business profile or the main homepage uh we can write and discuss a PhD this is all together just just on this these things I will be cautious would work with somebody who has done it um and to an extent it depends on the effort I'm usually honest to show up here in Alison for example might be simply to put an ads ad campaign with a couple of bucks a day as a budget Google as opposed to Facebook won't spend your money if there are no searches right okay thank you col I'm curious uh since you've been active with SEO for a while what percentage of your business do you think comes from Google versus other channels yeah um I should probably track this better and I have started but it's just like most of my sales are in person so I have to manually track it which I have started to do but to answer your question based on what I think um I'd say at this point um between add Google ads and SEO I would say at least 30 or 40% probably somewhere around there W uh one thing that I would say first thing and coming back to my presentation know whenever I set up all those things is do you track how many people click this or how many people people click call you and all those things um I do from my Google ads account I just started getting into the search console so I don't know if I I don't really have conversion tracking setup there yet yeah so you'll do it in Google analytics through the Google tag manager and usually if you work with somebody you know they set that up they at the beginning you know whenever the discovery calls happen you know we going to track because theoretically I talk to you like you'll be my client right you pay me on on some results one of them resulting in more business so for there's a way of telling if that person came from Google ads or from organic or even from Facebook or any other right on your website or where these people called and set up that tracking you know and looking at at the reports not daily for sure and I'm pretty sure you will fall into that rabbit hole of looking at your location