COVID-19 ramped up very quickly and is now dictating how brands connect with their customers. In fact, businesses have to get messaging in front of consumers faster than ever before—and those that handle this challenge well will reap the benefits moving forward. So let’s explore exactly what brands should be doing right now in the […]
Local platforms are proving to be a vital communication tool during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing businesses to quickly connect with their local audiences regarding store closures, special opening hours, additional health and safety measures, and more. Google is focusing its efforts on local—prioritizing certain features, disabling others—Yelp is supporting pandemic-affected businesses, and we have some […]
The sudden onset of COVID-19 is dominating headlines and impacting every aspect of life—and local listings are no exception during this very unusual time. You may have assumed that something as fundamental as your Google My Business (GMB) profile wouldn’t need to be altered, but the situation has already prompted Google to release a help […]
You won’t be surprised to learn that Google is essentially a monopoly in local search, controlling up to 95% of search traffic in certain verticals. That makes the search giant a critically important source of revenue for local businesses and enterprise brands with distributed local footprints. But local search is more than Google My Business […]
As far back as 2015, 97% of consumers were searching for local businesses online, with 93% of those searches triggering Google’s local 3-pack. It was obvious that local search was an enormous part of all online search—and in 2020, it’s easy to argue that all search is effectively local. After all, even when a query […]
You already know that online reviews matter. But do you know how much they matter? According to Moz’s latest Local Search Ranking Factors survey, review signals are more important than ever when it comes to local SEO. In 2015, review signals were weighted at 10.8% of a business’s overall ranking. By 2018, they had risen to […]
The specifics of local search have changed mightily since we sat down to write last year’s LPM predictions. In November 2017, most marketers were taking a desktop-first approach and worrying about citations. They didn’t yet have a full sense of the importance of reviews—and they weren’t really paying much attention to voice search at all. […]
The latter part of 2018 has been bustling for local search engine optimization. Google released a Google My Business App, changed how service-area businesses function in maps, and is now allowing users to follow Google My Business profiles as social becomes further ingrained into local search. To cap off a wild year in local search, […]
If you are seeing a drop in traffic to your website in 2018 I can assure you, you are not alone. With SERPs looking a lot more like the below and Knowledge Panels housing vast amounts of information, the reality of local search right now is a user can get a ton of information without […]
By now everyone is talking about voice search. We all know brands need to think about this, but when do you need to really kick it into gear? I think the answer is right now: at this point, ComScore is reporting that by 2020, 50% of all search will be voice. While I think this number […]
