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Scammers, black hat marketers, underhand tactics, pranksters etc, have unfortunately all been a part of the SEO industry, for quite some time. Local search is just as vulnerable, and it\u2019s a problem that\u2019s exacerbated by the growing complexity of the sector.<\/p>\n
According to the Local Search Association (LSA) headquartered in the US, \u201con average,\u00a0small businesses receive 24 sales calls each month\u00a0from someone trying to sell them advertising or marketing services. In many cases these sales reps make lofty or misleading claims. As a result, business owners don\u2019t know which marketing providers they can trust.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s becoming increasingly tricky for local businesses to understand the intricacies that make up local SEO, and likewise for marketers to explain the scope of work they need to undertake. Google local SEO ranking factors and algorithms, for example, have grown exponentially over the past couple of years. Keywords, once the main way for a marketer to get a client\u2019s website to the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs), is now a declining practice, rapidly being replaced with semantic (or intent-based) search. Voice search is booming and predicted to account for 50% of all search queries by 2020. It\u2019s a landscape that\u2019s continually shifting, and the promise of getting a client to the top of the charts is no longer as straightforward as it used to be. In many ways this creates further opportunity for small local businesses to be exploited by unethical marketers.<\/p>\n
For the future of the industry, and local search particularly, it\u2019s critical that marketers are careful to practice local SEO ethically. Here are a few reasons why we believe it\u2019s an issue that is growing in importance, which local businesses need to be aware of…<\/p>\n
Google isn\u2019t the only player<\/strong><\/p>\n For quite some time, talks regarding local SEO generally focused on Google optimisation. However, today Bing is bigger than ever and with Siri, Cortana, Alexa and Facebook search all offering strong competition, and ranking high on other search engines can be just as important as Google.<\/p>\n However, promising to maintain a competitive edge and market presence for a client across all of these search engines is unrealistic. \u00a0The big players have differing standards, algorithms and shifting policies, and what works for one, won\u2019t necessarily work for another. It\u2019s important that marketers make this clear to local businesses and are honest about there being no easy fix.<\/p>\n Voice search is booming and transforming SEO<\/strong><\/p>\n Traditional search taught us to communicate with search engines in crude, keyword-heavy phrases; a far cry from natural speech. But voice search is changing this and increasingly moving towards conversational and intent-based language, involving proper questions and answers.<\/p>\n It\u2019s critical that local business move away from keyword-laden copy, and instead make sure their website incorporates natural language. So the focus is to write for humans first, and search engines second. Since digital assistants often read web copy aloud in response to a user query, it\u2019s important that copy reads well, is clear and makes good sense. This marks a big departure from how local businesses have traditionally understood SEO, and it\u2019s the responsibility of marketers to bring them up to speed.<\/p>\n Critically, local businesses need to be wary of marketers offering average content. Compelling, well-written content utilising natural language is nowadays of utmost importance, supported by video, audio and images, etc.<\/p>\n \n Get exclusive insights into digital \n \n \n Stay Forward <\/h2>\n
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