Monthly Archives: March 2020

Posted by MiriamEllis

Local businesses know better than any other model what it means to fully participate in community life. You are the good neighbors who are there to serve, inspire, and sustain the people and traditions that make your town a unique and enjoyable place to call home.

As we explore this topic of what local businesses can do during the COVID-19 pandemic, I want to honor all that you have always done to take care of your community as a local business owner or marketer. Thank you.

In this article, you will find local SEO tips that could make a difference for your business in the coming weeks, innovative resources for support, advice from my own tight-knit community of some of the world’s best local SEOs, and some serious thinking about building a better local future.

Adhere to all regulations

First and foremost, start each day with a review of both local and national news to be sure you are complying with the evolving regulations for your city, county, and country. Policies designed to mitigate the harm of COVID-19 vary widely from region to region, and your business must keep informed of which forms of service you are allowed to offer in this dynamic scenario.

And, while social media can be a great connector within your community at any time, beware of misinformation and, sadly, scams in the days ahead. Get your news from sources you trust, and if you are not certain about interpreting a guideline, directly contact local authorities. This article does not take the place of laws and regulations specific to your community.

Communicate abundantly

The most helpful thing any local business can do right now, whether it’s deemed an essential or non-essential service, is to provide accurate information to its community. There are three key places to do this:

Google My Business

“More than ever, your Google Business Profile is a critical communication nexus with your customers”. —Mike Blumenthal, GatherUp

Local businesses know just how big a role Google plays as intermediary between brands and the public. This remains true during this difficult time however, Google’s local product is not running at full strength. Joy Hawkins’ article for Local University on March 23 details the limited support for or complete discontinuation of Google Q&As, posts, descriptions, reviews, and owner responses. It’s an evolving scenario, with local SEOs reporting different outcomes each day. For example, some practitioners have been able to get some, but not all, Google posts to publish.

As of writing this, there are four fields you can utilize to communicate current information to customers via GMB, but please be aware that some edits may take several days to go into effect:

Name

Google is allowing businesses to edit their business name field to reflect that they are offering curbside service, takeout, and delivery. For example, if your current name is “John’s Grill”, you are allowed to temporarily change your name to “John’s Grill — Delivery Available”.

Phone number

If regulations are keeping you at home but you still want customers to be able to reach you on your home or cell phone for information, update your work answering machine to reflect the changes and edit your GMB phone number to the appropriate new number.

Hours of operation

The discussion on how best to show that your business either has no hours or limited new hours is ongoing. I believe the best route for the present is to use Google’s method of setting special hours. This option should be especially useful for multi-location enterprises who can set special hours via the API.

Be advised, however, that there are some instances of agencies setting special hours for clients and then clients receiving emails from Google asking if the business has closed. This can alarm those clients. However, to date, it appears that when Google receives responses to this prompt that yes, the business is closed, they simply put a message about this on the listing rather than remove the listing entirely.

On March 25, Google implemented a “temporarily closed” button inside the “Info” tab of the GMB dashboard, as reported by Joy Hawkins. Utilizing this button may temporarily decrease your rankings, but you will be able to remove the label in the future and I strongly hope (but cannot guarantee) that this will remove any effects of suppression. I recommend using this button if it applies to your business because we must put safety first over any other consideration.

COVID-19 update posts

Google has newly created a Google posts type that you’ll see as an option in your GMB dashboard. While other post types have been published sporadically, I am seeing examples of the COVID-19 Update posts going live. Try to fit as much information as you can about the changed status of your business into one of these posts.

In addition to the edits you make to your GMB listing, update your most visible local business listings on other platforms to the best of your ability, including on:

• Bing: A “Temporarily closed” business status is available in the Bing Places dashboard. This is currently not available in the API.

• Yelp: Yelp has introduced a new field called “temporarily closed”. This is meant to be used by businesses which are or will be closed (but not on a permanent basis) due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Businesses need to indicate the “end date” for when this business status will end. Given the uncertainty surrounding timelines, Yelp is allowing users to provide an “estimate” for the end date which they can always update later. Special opening hours can be added on Yelp itself, too. Neither field is available in the API.

Website

Google My Business may be experiencing support issues right now, but thank goodness you still have full control of your website as a home base for conveying important information to the public. Here’s a quick checklist of suggested items to update on your site as soon as you can:

• Put a site wide banner on all pages of the website with key information such as “temporarily closed”, “drive-up service available 9-5 Monday – Friday” or “storefront closed but we can still ship to you.”
• Provide the most complete information about how your business has been affected by COVID-19, and detail any services that remain available to customers.
• Edit location landing pages in bulk or individually to reflect closures, new hours, and new temporary offers.
• Be sure hours of operation are accurate everywhere they are mentioned on the website, including the homepage, contact page, about page, and landing pages.
• If your main contact phone number has changed due to the situation, update that number everywhere it exists on the website. Don’t overlook headers, footers, or sidebars as places your contact info may be.
• If you have a blog, use it to keep the public updated about the availability of products and services.
• Be sure your website contains highly visible links to any social media platforms you are using to provide updated information.
• It would be a worthy public service right now to create new content about local resources in your community for all kinds of basic needs.

Social media and email

“Make it clear what you’re doing, such as things like home delivery or curbside pickup. And mention it EVERYWHERE. The companies that are being successful with this are telling people non-stop how they can still support them. Additionally, don’t be afraid to reach out to people who have supported you via social media in the past and ask them to mention what you’re doing.” —Dana DiTomaso, Kick Point

Whether your customers’ social community is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or another platform, there has never been a more vital time to make use of the instant communication these sites provide. It was Fred Rogers who famously said that in times of crisis, we should “look for the helpers.” People will be looking to your brand for help and, also, seeking ways that they can help, too.

If you can make the time to utilize social media to highlight not just your own services, but the services you discover are being provided by other businesses in your city, you will be strengthening your community. Ask your followers and customers to amplify information that can make life safer or better right now.

And, of course, email is one of the best tools presently at your disposal to message your entire base about changed conditions and special offers. My best practice advice for the present is to be sure you’re only communicating what is truly necessary. I’ve seen some examples of brands (which shall remain nameless) exploiting COVID-19 for senseless self-promotion instead of putting customers’ concerns and needs first. Don’t go that route. Be a helper!

Beyond your local business listing, websites, social media platforms, and email, don’t overlook offline media for making further, helpful informational contributions. Call into local radio shows and get in touch with local newspapers if you have facts or offers that can help the public.

Operate as fully as you can

“Find out what support is being made available for you at [the] government level, tap into this as soon as you can — it’s likely there will be a lot of paperwork and many hoops through which you’ll need to jump.” —Claire Carlile, Claire Carlile Marketing

While the social safety net differs widely from country to country, research any offers of support being made to your business and make use of them to remain as operational as possible for the duration of this pandemic. Here are six adjustments your business should carefully consider to determine whether implementation is possible:

1. Fulfill essentials

If your business meets local, state, or federal regulations that enable it to continue operating because it’s deemed “essential”, here are the ways different business models are adapting to current conditions:

• Some healthcare appointments can be handled via phone or virtual meetings, and some medical facilities are offering drive-up testing.
• Drivethrough, delivery, and curbside pickup are enabling some brands to offer takeout meals, groceries, prescriptions, and other necessary goods to customers.
• Supermarkets and grocery stores without built-in delivery fleets are contracting with third parties for this service.
• Farms and ranches can offer honor system roadside stands to allow customers to access fresh produce, dairy products, and meats with proper social distancing.
• Companies that care for vulnerable populations, banking, laundry, and fuel can implement and communicate the extra steps they are taking to adhere to sanitation guidelines for the safety of customers and staff.
• Brands and organizations that donate goods and services to fulfill essential needs are taking an active role in community support, too.

2. Evaluate e-commerce

If your local business already has an e-commerce component on its website, you’re many steps ahead in being well set up to keep selling via delivery. If you’ve not yet implemented any form of online selling, investigate the following options:

• If you have a credit card processing machine, the most basic solution is to take orders over the phone and then ship them, allow curbside pickup, or deliver them.
• If you lack a credit card processing service, PayPal invoicing can work in a pinch.
• If your site is built on WordPress and you’re quite comfortable with that platform, Moz’s own Sha Menz highly recommends the ease of the WooCommerce plugin for getting online shopping set up with PayPal as a built-in payment option. It allows easy setup of flat rate or free shipping and local pickup options. WooCommerce automatically sends order confirmation emails to both owner and customer and even supports creation of discount coupons.
• Pointy is a simple device that lets you scan product barcodes and have them catalogued online. Read my 2019 interview with the company’s CEO and determine whether Pointy plus shipping could be a solution to keep you in business in the coming months.
• If you’ve determined that robust investing in e-commerce is a wise move for the present and future, I found this 2020 overview of options from Shopify to Volusion to Magento very useful. Don’t overlook the Moz blog’s e-commerce category for free, expert advice.

3. Connect virtually

In my very large family, one relative has transitioned her yoga studio to online classes, another is offering secure online psychotherapy appointments, and another is instructing his orchestra on the web. While nothing can replace in-person relationships, virtual meetings are the next-best-thing and could keep many business models operating at a significant level, despite the pandemic. Check out these resources:

• UC Today provides an excellent guide to free video conferencing and collaboration.
• Business Insider has this tutorial on how to share rivate YouTube videos with anyone .
• I especially want to highlight the exceptional job Zoom is doing in building out an entire section of resources for how to conduct business virtually, whether you are a healthcare professional, an educator, or are managing employees who have transitioned to working from home.

4. Use downtime for education

If COVID-19 has somewhat or completely paused your business, it’s my strong hope that there will be better days ahead for you. If, like so many people, you find yourself with much more time on your hands than usual, consider using it to come out of this period of crisis with new business knowledge. Please make use of this list of resources, and I want to give special thanks to my friend, Claire Carlile, for contributing several of these suggestions:

• Moz is now offering free access to Moz Academy. Sign up for free courses to increase your SEO and local SEO education.
• Lily Ray is connecting marketers with businesses impacted by COVID-19 for free SEO and digital marketing consultation.
• Local Visibility System is offering pro bono local business consultation.
• Helping Small Biz Online is volunteering to consult with small, independent local businesses in the UK free of charge.
• Luke Carthy took to Twitter with an offer of free websites for small UK business owners.
• Data Driven is offering scholarships for access to their Google Skill Courses.
• In the US, some chambers of commerce are offering free economic recovery webinars.
• Here’s an amazing Search Starter Pack freelancers can sign up for to get access to tools and services in the coming months.

Begin working towards a stronger local future

“I would say generally it’s critical for business owners to connect with one another. To the extent they can join or form groups for support or to share ideas, they should. This is a terrible and scary time but there are also potential opportunities that may emerge with creative thinking. The ‘silver lining’, if there is one here, is the opportunity to reexamine business processes, try new things and think — out of necessity — very creatively about how to move forward. Employees are also a great source of ideas and inspiration.” —Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land

I’d like to close with some positive thinking. Local SEO isn’t just a career for me — it’s a personal belief system that well-resourced communities are the strongest. Every community, town, and city shares roughly the same needs, which we might depict like this:

In this simple chart, we see the framework of a functional, prepared, and healthy society. We see a plan for covering the basic needs of human existence, the cooperation required to run a stable community, contributive roles everyone can play to support life and culture, and relief from inevitable disasters. We see regenerative land and water stewardship, an abundance of skilled educators, medical professionals, artisans, and a peaceful platform for full human expression.

COVID-19 marks the third major disaster my community has lived through in three years. The pandemic and California’s wildfires have taught me to think about the areas in which my county is self-sustaining, and areas in which we are unprepared to take care of one another in both good times and bad. While state and national governments bear a serious responsibility for the well-being of citizens, my genuine belief as a local SEO is that local communities should be doing all they can to self-fulfill as many data points on the chart above as possible.

While it’s said that necessity is the mother of invention, and it certainly makes sense that the present moment would be driving us to invent new solutions to keep our communities safe and well, I find models for sane growth in the work others have already contributed. For me, these are sources of serious inspiration:

• Learn from indigenous cultures around the world about stewardship and community. Here is just one example of how knowledge is being applied by tribes in the Pacific Northwest during the pandemic. In my own state of California, a number of tribes are leading the way in mitigating wildfires via cultural burning, addressing what has become an annual disaster where I live.
• Look at the policies of other countries with a higher index of human happiness than my own. For example, I am a great admirer of Norway’s law of allemannsrett which permits all residents to responsibly roam and camp in most of the country, and more importantly, to harvest natural foods like mushrooms and berries. In my community, most land is behind fences, and even though I know which plants are edible, I can’t access most of them. Given current grocery store shortages, this concept deserves local re-thinking.
• Study the Economic Bill of Rights US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced but didn’t live to see passed. Had this been implemented, my local community would not now be suffering from a shortage of medical providers and denial of medical care, a shortage of nearby farms for complete nutrition, homelessness and unaffordable housing, and a widespread lack of education and essential skills. From a purely commercial standpoint, FDR’s bill could also have prevented the collapse of “Main St.”, which local search marketers have been fighting every day to reverse.
• Join organizations like the American Independent Local Business Alliance which exist to build more resilient local communities via methods like the Buy Local movement and community education. I strongly encourage you to check in with AMIBA for guidance in these times.

Other models and examples may personally inspire you, but I share my friend Greg Sterling’s opinion: now is the time to bring creativity to bear, to connect with fellow local business owners and community members, and to begin planning a more realistic and livable future.

For now, you will have to make those connections virtually, but the goal is to come out of this time of crisis with a determination to make local living more sustainable for everyone. You can start with asking very basic questions like: Where is the nearest farm, and how many people can it feed? What do we need to do to attract more doctors and nurses to this town? Which facilities could be converted here to produce soap, or bathroom tissue, or medical supplies?

I don’t want to downplay the challenge of forward-thinking in a time of disruption, but this I know from being a gardener: new seeds sprout best where the earth is disturbed. You have only to visit the margins of new roads being laid to see how digging is quickly followed by verdant crops of fresh seedlings. Humanity needs to dig deep right now for its best solutions to serious challenges, and this can begin right where you are, locally.

Please allow me to wish many better days ahead to you, your business, and your community, and to work by your side to build a stronger local future.

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Posted by rjonesx.

Building local pages in any amount can be a painful task. It’s hard to strike the right mix of on-topic content, expertise, and location, and the temptation to take shortcuts has always been tempered by the fact that good, unique content is almost impossible to scale.

In this week’s edition of Whiteboard Friday, Russ Jones shares his favorite white-hat technique using natural language generation to create local pages to your heart’s content.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, folks, this is Russ Jones here with Moz again to talk to you about important search engine optimization issues. Today I’m going to talk about one of my favorite techniques, something that I invented several years ago for a particular client and has just become more and more and more important over the years. 

Using natural language generation to create hyper-local content

I call this using natural language generation to create hyper-local content. Now I know that there’s a bunch of long words in there. Some of you are familiar with them, some of you are not. 

So let me just kind of give you the scenario, which is probably one you’ve been familiar with at some point or another. Imagine you have a new client and that client has something like 18,000 locations across the United States.

Then you’re told by Google you need to make unique content. Now, of course, it doesn’t have to be 18,000. Even 100 locations can be difficult, not just to create unique content but to create uniquely valuable content that has some sort of relevance to that particular location. 

So what I want to do today is talk through one particular methodology that uses natural language generation in order to create these types of pages at scale.

What is natural language generation?

Now there might be a couple of questions that we need to just go ahead and get off of our plates at the beginning. So first, what is natural language generation? Well, natural language generation was actually originated for the purpose of generating weather warnings. You’ve actually probably seen this 100,000 times.

Whenever there’s like a thunderstorm or let’s say high wind warning or something, you’ve seen on the bottom of a television, if you’re older like me, or you’ve gotten one on your cellphone and it says the National Weather Service has issued some sort of warning about some sort of weather alert that’s dangerous and you need to take cover.

Well, the language that you see there is generated by a machine. It takes into account all of the data that they’ve arrived at regarding the weather, and then they put it into sentences that humans automatically understand. It’s sort of like Mad Libs, but a lot more technical in the sense that what comes out of it, instead of being funny or silly, is actually really useful information.

That’s our goal here. We want to use natural language generation to produce local pages for a business that has information that is very useful. 

Isn’t that black hat?

Now the question we almost always get or I at least almost always get is: Is this black hat? One of the things that we’re not supposed to do is just auto-generate content.

So I’m going to take a moment towards the end to discuss exactly how we differentiate this type of content creation from just the standard, Mad Libs-style, plugging in different city words into content generation and what we’re doing here. What we’re doing here is providing uniquely valuable content to our customers, and because of that it passes the test of being quality content.

Let’s look at an example

So let’s do this. Let’s talk about probably what I believe to be the easiest methodology, and I call this the Google Trends method. 

1. Choose items to compare

So let’s step back for a second and talk about this business that has 18,000 locations. Now what do we know about this business? Well, businesses have a couple of things that are in common regardless of what industry they’re in.

They either have like products or services, and those products and services might have styles or flavors or toppings, just all sorts of things that you can compare about the different items and services that they offer. Therein lies our opportunity to produce unique content across almost any region in the United States.

The tool we’re going to use to accomplish that is Google Trends. So the first step that you’re going to do is you’re going to take this client, and in this case I’m going to just say it’s a pizza chain, for example, and we’re going to identify the items that we might want to compare. In this case, I would probably choose toppings for example.

So we would be interested in pepperoni and sausage and anchovies and God forbid pineapple, just all sorts of different types of toppings that might differ from region to region, from city to city, and from location to location in terms of demand. So then what we’ll do is we’ll go straight to Google Trends.

The best part about Google Trends is that they’re not just providing information at a national level. You can narrow it down to city level, state level, or even in some cases to ZIP Code level, and because of this it allows us to collect hyper-local information about this particular category of services or products.

So, for example, this is actually a comparison of the demand for pepperoni versus mushroom versus sausage toppings in Seattle right now. So most people, when people are Googling for pizza, would be searching for pepperoni.

2. Collect data by location

So what you would do is you would take all of the different locations and you would collect this type of information about them. So you would know that, for example, here there is probably about 2.5 times more interest in pepperoni than there is in sausage pizza. Well, that’s not going to be the same in every city and in every state. In fact, if you choose a lot of different toppings, you’ll find all sorts of things, not just the comparison of how much people order them or want them, but perhaps how things have changed over time.



For example, perhaps pepperoni has become less popular. If you were to look in certain cities, that probably is the case as vegetarian and veganism has increased. Well, the cool thing about natural language generation is that we can automatically extract out those kinds of unique relationships and then use that as data to inform the content that we end up putting on the pages on our site.

So, for example, let’s say we took Seattle. The system would automatically be able to identify these different types of relationships. Let’s say we know that pepperoni is the most popular. It might also be able to identify that let’s say anchovies have gone out of fashion on pizzas. Almost nobody wants them anymore.

Something of that sort. But what’s happening is we’re slowly but surely coming up with these trends and data points that are interesting and useful for people who are about to order pizza. For example, if you’re going to throw a party for 50 people and you don’t know what they want, you can either do what everybody does pretty much, which is let’s say one-third pepperoni, one-third plain, and one-third veggie, which is kind of the standard if you’re like throwing a birthday party or something.

But if you landed on the Pizza Hut page or the Domino’s page and it told you that in the city where you live people actually really like this particular topping, then you might actually make a better decision about what you’re going to order. So we’re actually providing useful information. 

3. Generate text

So this is where we’re talking about generating the text from the trends and the data that we’ve grabbed from all of the locales.

Find local trends

Now the first step, of course, is just looking at local trends. But local trends aren’t the only place we can look. We can go beyond that. For example, we can compare it to other locations. So it might be just as interesting that in Seattle people really like mushroom as a topping or something of that sort.

Compare to other locations

But it would also be really interesting to see if the toppings that are preferred, for example, in Chicago, where Chicago style pizza rules, versus New York are different. That would be something that would be interesting and could be automatically drawn out by natural language generation. Then finally, another thing that people tend to miss in trying to implement this solution is they think that they have to compare everything at once.

Choose subset of items

That’s not the way you would do it. What you would do is you would choose the most interesting insights in each situation. Now we could get technical about how that might be accomplished. For example, we might say, okay, we can look at trends. Well, if all of the trends are flat, then we’re probably not going to choose that information. But we see that the relationship between one topping and another topping in this city is exceptionally different compared to other cities, well, that might be what gets selected.

4. Human review

Now here’s where the question comes in about white hat versus black hat. So we’ve got this local page, and now we’ve generated all of this textual content about what people want on a pizza in that particular town or city. We need to make sure that this content is actually quality. That’s where the final step comes in, which is just human review.

In my opinion, auto-generated content, as long as it is useful and valuable and has gone through the hands of a human editor who has identified that that’s true, is every bit as good as if that human editor had just looked up that same data point and wrote the same sentences.

So I think in this case, especially when we’re talking about providing data to such a diverse set of locales across the country, that it makes sense to take advantage of technology in a way that allows us to generate content and also allows us to serve the user the best possible and the most relevant content that we can.

So I hope that you will take this, spend some time looking up natural language generation, and ultimately be able to build much better local pages than you ever have before. Thanks.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Posted by morgan.mcmurray

For the last few weeks, you’ve probably experienced an influx of emails from companies detailing how COVID-19 is affecting them and thus you, their customer. It’s… a lot, isn’t it? So today, we want to take a departure from the world of “how this affects us” and focus instead on actionable things we can all do to make things brighter for ourselves and our communities. This won’t be your regularly scheduled programming — we won’t be discussing SEO or marketing. Instead, we’re sharing ideas and advice from the folks at Moz who’ve been finding ways to be helpers as we all navigate this new normal.

Donate and shop

For those who have steady income during this time of economic uncertainty, it’s more important than ever to support local businesses and charitable organizations. Many employers, Moz included, offer charitable donation matching to make use of as well.

Food banks, shelters, and charities

You can donate money or call local organizations (like homeless shelters, food banks, and animal rescues) to see what items they most need. Mozzers have found several creative ways to contribute, including a super helpful spreadsheet of all the food banks in our area shared by Britney Muller. A few of us have volunteered to be pet foster parents, and Skye Stewart has even seen neighbors turn their “little free libraries” into pantries for those in need! 

Blood banks

If you’re healthy and able, consider signing up to donate blood. The blood banks in our area have received so many volunteers that they’re scheduling appointments weeks in advance — what a fantastic show of community support!

Buy gift cards or shop online

All of our favorite local salons, restaurants, bars, or home goods stores are likely suffering from recent closures. Gift cards give them support now and give you the option to shop later (or have your holiday shopping done a little early). Many local businesses also have online shops for you to browse from home. Shipping times are likely impacted, though, so be understanding!

Order take-out

Local restaurants are shifting to take-out and to-go order business models. If you can’t go pick up food, apps like DoorDash and Grubhub are offering no-contact delivery options.

Grocery shop

Stock up only with what you need for two or three weeks for yourself. You can also volunteer, like Mozzer Hayley Sherman, to make grocery runs for at-risk friends or family.

Stay healthy

This sounds like a no-brainer — of course we’re all trying to stay healthy! But it has to be said, as now we have to be a bit more creative to keep up our healthy habits.

Online workouts

With recent closures, local gyms and studios are offering online classes. Have you ever wondered what a yoga or dance class is like via Zoom? A few of us at Moz have found out, and it’s definitely different — but also surprisingly fun — to connect with all the other students in this new way.

Walk or run

We’ve been enjoying some unseasonable sunshine in the Pacific Northwest, making it the perfect time to fight cabin fever with a walk or run outside. Weather permitting, you can do the same! Just make sure to maintain social distance from other walkers and runners (even if they have a cute puppy with them — tough, we know).

Meditate

Meditation can help calm the anxiety many of us might be feeling right now. Dr. Pete recommends the Ten Percent Happier app for assistance, and apps like Insight Timer and Calm have dozens of free meditation options for you to choose from, too.

Keep eating fresh fruits and veggies

While it’s tempting to only stock up on non-perishable food like mac and cheese (I’m guilty of having several boxes stored in my pantry) and rely on supplements or Emergen-C, fresh produce is still one of the best options to get necessary vitamins and boost your immunity.

Go offline

Several of us at Moz have found it helpful to disconnect from the news cycle for a while every day, and we try to only pay attention to news from reputable sources. With so many voices in the conversation, this can be hard, which is why going offline can be so helpful.

Stay connected

Human connection remains important for maintaining morale and good humor, even if we can’t share the same physical space.

Check in

Call people you would normally see regularly, and reach out to those you haven’t seen in awhile. Mozzers are staying connected by calling into morning coffee hangouts and virtual team lunches — it’s been great to see everyone’s smiling faces!

You might start a weekly virtual happy hour or book club using free video conferencing software like Google Hangouts or Skype, or schedule some time to watch movies together with the new Netflix Party extension.

Join online communities

Social media groups or apps like Nextdoor allow you to meet your neighbors, share memes, and check to see if anyone needs anything like a grocery run, medicine, or just a virtual hug.

We’ve created channels in our company Slack for topics like parenting, wellness, gardening, and just general fun. These groups have really helped bring light and friendship to our shared situation. In the parenting channel, specifically, Moz parents have banded together to share resources and suggestions to help support each other in this new world of homeschooling.

Lean into empathy

We’re living through an unprecedented time, and one of the best things we can do is understand that sometimes, humans just need to be human. If you’re leading a team that’s working from home, you might find your employees keeping unorthodox working hours with school closures, disrupted schedules, and technical difficulties. Flex your empathy muscle, and consider enacting flexible policies that will reduce stress on your employees while making sure the work still gets done.

Let everyone know it’s okay to sign off during normal working hours to prioritize family time and child care. You can also schedule non-work-related check-ins, or build relaxation time into your schedules. Moz CEO Sarah Bird gave all employees a “Take a Breather” day to give everyone time to relax, make “quarantinis”, and adjust to our current reality. We all really appreciated that time!

This list of ways to help is by no means exhaustive, and we’d love to hear your ideas! Leave a comment or send us a tweet. We’re in this together.

What we’re doing

We’re committed to keeping as much normalcy in the routines of our community as possible, and that includes minimizing the impact of this crisis on our customers and employees. There will be no interruptions to our tool functionality or to our support team’s ability to serve our customers. We will also continue to publish helpful, actionable content — even if that means you see a few Whiteboard Fridays from the living rooms of our experts!

Employees at Moz have already been trained as a distributed team, which has prepared us well for a life of working from home — now a mandatory policy. We’re also given paid time off, including sick leave, and are encouraged to sign off from work when we’re feeling under the weather to rest and recuperate.

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Posted by Dr-Pete

The next few months are going to be uncharted territory for all of us, with serious challenges for both brick-and-mortar and online businesses. Many e-commerce sites are already facing a unique situation right now, and it looks something like this:

These are hand sanitizer results from Staples.com, and this screenshot is just a portion of the first page. I’m not picking on Staples — this page is representative of a problem across every major e-retailer right now. While there are many ways to handle out-of-stock and discontinued items under normal conditions, this situation is very specific:

1. Multiple similar items are out-of-stock at the same time
2. Retailers may not know when they’ll be back in stock
3. These products may not stay back in stock for long
4. Demand is high and continuing to rank is critical

From an SEO standpoint, it’s essential that these pages continue to rank, both for consumers and retailers, but in the short-term, the experience is also frustrating for consumers and can drive them to other sites.

Is this a technical SEO problem?

The short answer is: not really. We want these pages to continue to rank — they’re just not very useful in the short-term. Let’s take a quick look at the usual toolbox to see what applies.

Option #1: 404 (Not Found)

This one’s easy. Do not 404 these pages. These products are coming back and you want to sell them. What’s more, you want to be able to act quickly when they’re back in stock. If you remove the page and then put it back (and then, most likely, remove it again and put it back again), it can take Google a lot of time to reconcile those signals, to the point where the page is out of sync with reality. In other words, by the time the page starts ranking again, the product might already be out of stock again.

Option #2: 301 (Permanent Redirect)

As tools go, 301s still have a special place in our tool belts, but they’re not a good bet here. First, the product still exists. We don’t really want to move it in any permanent sense. Second, reversing a 301 can be a time-consuming process. So, just like with 404s, we’re likely to shoot ourselves in the foot. The only exception would be if a product went out of stock and that prompted the manufacturer to permanently replace it with a similar product. Let’s say Acme Essentials ran out of the 10-ounce Mountain Fresh hand sanitizer, so decided just to do away with that product and replace it with the 12-ounce option. In that case, by all means 301-redirect, but that’s going to be a fairly rare situation.

Option #3: 302 (Temporary Redirect)

This has got to be the one, right? Unfortunately, we’re still stuck with the timing problem if this product comes back in stock for a short period of time. Let’s say you’re out of the Acme Essentials 10-ounce Mountain Fresh, but you’ve got the Trapper Moe’s 10-ounce Spring Breeze in stock. Could you temporarily swap in the latter product from a search perspective? Maybe, if you could get the timing right, but now imagine the visitor experience. People would potentially still be able to search (on-site) for the Acme Essentials product, but then would be redirected to the Trapper Moe’s product, which could seem deceptive and is likely to harm conversion.

Option #4: ItemAvailability Schema

You can use the [availability] property in product-offer schemas to set options including: InStock, InStoreOnly, OutOfStock, and SoldOut. Google may choose to display this information as part of your organic result, such as this one (thanks to Claire Carlisle for this great example):

Good news — sloths are still in stock. Unfortunately, there are two challenges to this approach. First, while searchers may appreciate your honesty, you may not be keen to display “Out of stock” on your search result when everyone else is displaying nothing at all. Second, we’ve still got the timing issue. You can automate flipping from “In stock” to “Out of stock” in real time, but Google still has to crawl and update that information, and that takes time.

So, it’s basically hopeless?

If it seems like I’ve just ruled out all of the options, it’s because fundamentally I don’t believe this specific case is an SEO problem. Removing or redirecting pages in a volatile situation where products may go out of stock and come back into stock on a daily basis requires timing Google’s processes in a way that’s extremely risky.

So, if we’re going to keep these pages indexed and (hopefully) ranking, the key is to make sure that they continue to give value to your search visitors, and this is primarily a user experience problem.

Here’s an example of what not to do (sorry, unnamed big-box retailer):

Shipping is unavailable, but at least I can pick this up in the store, right? Nope, and for some reason they’ve auto-selected this non-option for me. If I accept the pre-selected unavailable option, I’m taken to a new screen telling me that yes, it is in fact unavailable. There’s absolutely no value here for a search visitor.

Here’s another example that might not seem so different, but is much more useful. Please note, while all of these elements are taken from real e-commerce sites, I’ve simplified the pages quite a bit:



The product is out of stock at my local store and not available for delivery, but it is available at a nearby store. That’s not ideal, and under normal circumstances I’d probably go somewhere else, but in the current environment it’s at least a viable option. A viable option is a potential sale.

Here’s an approach that gives search visitors another viable option:

It’s not the most visually-appealing layout, but that [Notify Me] button expands into a quick, single-field email form that gives visitors an immediate alternative. Even if they don’t buy from this store today, they might still enter their email and end up ordering later, especially at a time when supplies are low everywhere and people want alternatives.

This same page had another option I really like, an “Also available in” pull-down:

Unfortunately, these other options were also out of stock, but if this feature could be tuned up to only reflect similar, in-stock products, it could present an immediate purchase option. In this unique scenario, where demand massively outpaces supply, consumers are going to be much more amenable to similar products.

Obviously, these features represent a lot more work than a few 301 redirects, but we’re looking at a situation that could last for weeks or months. A few enhancements that give visitors viable options could be worth many thousands of dollars and could also help maintain search rankings.

What about internal search?

Obviously, the experience at the top of this post is less than ideal for internal search users, but should you remove those products from being displayed temporarily? From an SEO perspective, this is a bit tricky. If you block those products from being shown, then you’re also blocking the internal link equity temporarily, which could impact your rankings. In addition, you may end up with a blank page that doesn’t accurately represent your usual inventory. I think there are two options that are worth considering (both of which will require investment):

1. Let people filter out-of-stock products

I know that e-commerce sites are reluctant to hide products and want to maintain the perception of having a lot of available items, but they’re useless if none of those items are actually available. If you allow customers to easily filter out out-of-stock products, you address both problems above. First, visitors will get to see the full list initially and know which products you normally carry. Second, you can make the filter unavailable to search bots so that they continue to pass link equity to all products.

2. De-prioritize out-of-stock products

I’m not usually a fan of overriding search filters, as it can be confusing to visitors, but another option would be to push out-of-stock products to the bottom of internal search results, maintaining filters and sorts within the stocked and out-of-stock groups. This lets people see the entire list and also gives search bots access, but brings available products to the forefront. Visitors aren’t going to wade through pages of out-of-stock inventory to find the one available item.

No, really, what’s the secret?

I wish I could give you the magic HTML tag or line of .htaccess that would solve this problem, but when the situation is changing day-by-day or even hour-by-hour, many of our best practices fall apart. We can’t apply ordinary solutions to extraordinary problems.

In this unique case, I think the most important thing, from an SEO standpoint, is to maintain the ranking power of the page, and that probably means leaving it alone. Any technical wizardry we can perform ends at the point that search bots take over, and the process of re-crawling and re-caching a page takes time. Our best bet is to provide an experience that gives search visitors options and maintains the page’s value. While this will require investment in the short-term, these changes could equate to thousands of dollars in revenue and will continue to produce benefits even when life returns to normal.

What challenges are you facing?

As a Seattle-based company, Moz is painfully aware of the disruptions so many businesses and individuals are facing right now. How can we help you during this difficult period? Are there unique SEO challenges that you’ve never faced before? In the spirit of we’re-all-in-this-together, we’d like to help and commit content resources toward addressing the immediate problems our customers and readers are facing. Please tell us about your current challenges in the comments.

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Posted by rjonesx.

Modern SERPs require modern understanding. National SERPs are a myth — these days, everything is local. And when we’re basing important decisions on SERPs and ranking, using the highest quality data is key. Russ Jones explores the problem with SERPs, data quality, and existing solutions in this edition of Whiteboard Friday.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, folks, this is Russ Jones here again with another exciting edition of Whiteboard Friday. Exciting might be an exaggeration, but it really is important to me because today we’re going to talk about data quality. I know I harp on this a whole lot.

It’s just, as a data scientist, quality is really important to me. Here at Moz, we’ve made it a priority of the last several years, from improving the quality of our Domain Authority score, improving Spam Score, completely changing the way we identify the search volume in particular keywords. Quality is just part of our culture here.

Today I want to talk about a quality issue and probably the most important metric in search engine optimization, which are search rankings. Now I know there’s this contingent of SEOs who say you shouldn’t look at your search rankings. You should just focus on building better content and doing better outreach and just let it happen.

But for the vast majority of us, we look at our rankings for the purposes of determining how we’re performing, and we make decisions based on those rankings. If a site stops performing as well for a very important keyword, well, then we might spend some money to improve the content on that page or to do more outreach for it.

We make important decisions, budgetary decisions on what the SERPs say. But we’ve known for a while that there’s a pretty big problem with the SERPs, and that’s personalization. There just is no national search anymore, and there hasn’t been for a long time. We’ve known this, and we’ve tried different ways to fix it.

Today I want to talk about a way that Moz is going about this that I think is really exceptional and is frankly going to revolutionize the way in which all SERPs are collected in the future. 

What’s wrong with SERPs?

1. Geography is king

Let’s just take a step back and talk a little bit about what’s wrong with SERPs. Several years back I was a consultant and I was helping out a nonprofit organization that wanted to rank for the keyword “entrepreneurship.”

They offered grants and training and all sorts of stuff. They really deserved to rank for the term. Then one day I searched for the term, as SEOs do. Even though they rank track, they still check it themselves. I noticed that several local universities to where I live, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Duke, had popped up into the search results because they were now offering entrepreneurship programs and Google had geolocated me to the Durham area.

Well, this wasn’t represented at all in the rank tracking that we were doing. You see, the nationalized search at that time was not picking up any kind of local signals because there weren’t any colleges or universities around the data center which we were using to collect the search results.

That was a big problem because that one day Google rolled out some sort of update that improved geolocation and ultimately ended up taking a lot of traffic away for that primary keyword because local sites were starting to rank all across the country. So as SEOs we decided to fight back, and the strategy we used was what I call centroid search.

2. Centroid search sucks

The idea is pretty simple. You take a town, a city, a state, or even a country. You find the latitude and longitude of the dead center of that location, and then you feed that to Google in the UULE parameter so that you get a search result from what would happen if you were standing right there in that specific latitude and longitude and perform the search.

Well, we know that that’s not really a good idea. The reason is pretty clear. Let me give an example. This would be a local example for a business that’s trying to perform well inside of a small city, a medium town or so. This is actually, despite the fact that it’s drawn poorly, the locations of several Italian restaurants in South Bend, Indiana.

So as you can see, each little red one identifies a different Italian restaurant, and the centroid of the city is right here, this little green star. Well, there’s a problem. If you were to collect a SERP this way, you would be influenced dramatically by this handful of Italian restaurants right there in the center of the city.

But the problem with that is that these blue circles that I’ve drawn actually represent areas of increased population density. You see most cities, they have a populous downtown, but they also have around the outside suburban areas which are just as population dense or close to as population dense.

At the same time, they don’t get represented because they’re not in the middle of the city. So what do we do? How do we get a better representation of what the average person in that city would see? 

3. Sampled search succeeds

Well, the answer is what we call sampled search. There are lots of ways to go about it.

Right now, the way we’re doing it in particular is looking at the centroids of clusters of zip codes that are overlapping inside a particular city. 

As an example, although not exactly what would happen inside of Local Market Analytics, each one of these purple stars would represent different latitudes and longitudes that we would select in order to grab a search engine result and then blend them together in a way based on things like population density or proximity issues, and give us back a result that is much more like the average searcher would see than what the one person standing in the center part of the city would see.

We know that this works better because it correlates more with local search traffic than does the centroid search. Of course, there are other ways we could go about this. For example, instead of using geography, we could use population density specifically, and we can do a lot better job in identifying exactly what the average searcher would see.

But this just isn’t a local problem. It isn’t just for companies that are in cities. It’s for any website that wants to rank anywhere in the United States, including those that just want to rank generically across the entire country. You see, right now, the way that national SERPs tend to be collected is by adding a UULE of the dead center of the United States of America.

Now I think pretty much everybody here can understand why that’s a very poor representation of what the average person in the United States would see. But if we must get into it, as you can imagine, the center part of the United States is not population-dense.

We find population areas throughout the coastlines for the most part that have a lot more people in them. It would make a lot better sense to sample search results from all sorts of different locations, both rural and urban, in order to identify what the average person in the United States would see.



Centroid search delivers you a myopic view of this very specific area. Whereas sampled search can give you this blended model that is much more like what the average American or in any country or county or city or even neighborhood would see. So I actually think that this is the model that SERPs in general will be moving to in the future, at least SERP collection.

The future of SERPs

If we continue to rely on this centroid method, we’re going to continue to deliver results to our customers that just aren’t accurate and simply aren’t valuable. But by using the sampled model, we’ll be able to deliver our customers a much more quality experience, a SERP that is blended in a way that it represents the traffic that they’re actually going to get, and in doing so, we’ll finally solve, to at least a certain degree, this problem of personalization.

Now I look forward to Moz implementing this across the board. Right now you can get in Local Market Analytics. I hope that other organizations follow suit, because this kind of quality improvement in SERP collection is the type of quality that is demanded of an industry that is using technology to improve businesses’ performance. Without quality, we might as well not be doing it at all.

Thanks for hearing me out. I’d like to hear what you have to say in the comments, and in the SERPs as well, and hopefully we’ll be able to talk through some more ideas on quality. Looking forward to it. Thanks again.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Posted by briangormanh

If you’ve been an SEO for even a short time, you’re likely familiar with Google Search Console (GSC). It’s a valuable tool for getting information about your website and its performance in organic search. That said, it does have its limitations.

In this article, you’ll learn how to get better-connected data out of Google Search Console as well as increase the size of your exports by 400%.

Google Search Console limitations

While GSC has a number of sections, we’ll be focusing on the “Performance” report. From the GSC dashboard, there are two ways you can access this report:

Once inside the “Performance” report, data for queries and pages can be accessed:

This reveals one of the issues with GSC: Query and page data is separated.

In other words, if I want to see the queries a specific page is ranking for, I have to first click “Pages,” select the page, and then click “back” to “Queries.” It’s a very cumbersome experience.

The other (two-part) issue is with exporting:

• Performance data for queries and pages must be exported separately.
• Exports are limited to 1,000 rows.

We’ll look to solve these issues by utilizing the GSC API.

What is the Google Search Console API?

Now we know the GSC user interface does have limitations: Connecting query data with page data is tricky, and exports are limited.

If the GSC UI represents the factory default, the GSC API represents our custom settings. It takes a bit more effort, but gives us more control and opens up more possibilities (at least in the realm of query and page data).

The GSC API is a way for us to connect to the data within our account, make more customized requests, and get more customized output. We can even bypass those factory default settings like exports limited to 1,000 rows, for instance.

Why use it?

Remember how I said earlier that query and page data is separated in the “vanilla” GSC UI? Well, with the API, we can connect query data with the page that query ranks for, so no more clicking back and forth and waiting for things to load.

Additionally, we saw that exports are limited to 1,000 rows. With the API, we can request up to 5,000 rows, an increase of 400%!

So let’s hook in, make our request, and get back a more robust and meaningful data set.

Setup

Log in to the appropriate GSC account on this page (upper right corner). For instance, if my website is example.com and I can view that Search Console account under [email protected], that’s the account I’ll sign into.

Enter the URL of the appropriate GSC account:

Set up your request:

1. Set startDate. This should be formatted as: YYYY-MM-DD.
2. Set endDate.
3. Set dimensions. A dimension can be:
   • query
   • page
   • device
   • and/or country
4. Set filters (optional). A filter must include:
   • dimension (a dimension can be: query, page, device, or country)
   • operator (an operator can be: contains, notContains, equals, notEquals)
   • expression (an expression can be any value associated with the dimensions)
5. Set the rowLimit. With the GSC API, you can request up to 5,000!

The page shared in step one makes all of this setup pretty easy, but it can be tedious and even confusing for some. I’ve done all the fussing for you and have created JSON you can edit quickly and easily to get the API return you’d like.

Unfiltered request

The following request will be unfiltered. We’ll set our preferred dates, dimensions, and a row limit, and then make our request.

The order in which you place your dimensions is the order in which they’ll be returned.

The API will return data for desktop, mobile, and tablet, separated out. The numbers you see in the GSC user interface — clicks, for instance — are an aggregate of all three (unless you apply device filtering).

Remember, your dimensions can also include “country” if you’d like.

{

“startDate”: “2019-11-01”,

“endDate”: “2020-01-31”,

“dimensions”:

“query”,

“page”,

“device”

],

“rowLimit”: 3000

}

Filtered request

This version of our request will include filters in order to be more specific about what is returned.

Filters are stated as dimension/operator/expression. Here are some examples to show what’s possible:

• query contains go fish digital
• page equals https://gofishdigital.com/
• device notContains tablet

It looks like you can only apply one filter per dimension, just like in the normal GSC user interface, but if you know differently, let us know in the comments!

{

“startDate”: “2019-11-01”,

“endDate”: “2020-01-31”,

“dimensions”:

“query”,

“page”,

“device”

],

“dimensionFilterGroups”:

{

“filters”:

{

“dimension”: “device”,

“operator”: “notContains”,

“expression”: “tablet”

}

]

}

],

“rowLimit”: 3000

}

Choose a template, unfiltered or filtered, and fill in your custom values (anything after a colon should be updated as your own value, unless you like my presets).

Execute the request

So there you have it! Two request templates for you to choose from and edit to your liking. Now it’s time to make the request. Click into the “Request body”, select all, and paste in your custom JSON:

This is where you could manually set up your request keys and values, but as I stated earlier, this can be tedious and a little confusing, so I’ve done that work for you.

Scroll down and click “Execute.” You may be prompted to sign-in here as well.

If everything was entered correctly and the request could be satisfied, the API will return your data. If you get an error, audit your request first, then any other steps and inputs if necessary.

Click into the box in the lower right (this is the response from the API), select all, and copy the information.

Convert from JSON to CSV

Excel or Sheets will be a much better way to work with the data, so let’s convert our JSON output to CSV.

Use a converter like this one and paste in your JSON output. You can now export a CSV. Update your column headers as desired.

Query your own data

Most SEOs are pretty comfortable in Excel, so you can now query your request output any way you’d like.

One of the most common tasks performed is looking for data associated with a specific set of pages. This is done by adding a sheet with your page set and using VLOOKUP to indicate a match.

The API output being in a spreadsheet also allows for the most common actions in Excel like sorting, filtering, and chart creation.

Get more out of Google Search Console

GSC offers important data for SEOs, and the GSC API output offers not only more of that data, but in a format that is far less cumbersome and more cohesive.

Today, we overcame two obstacles we often face in the standard GSC user interface: the query/page connection and limited exports. My hope is that utilizing the Google Search Console API will take your analyses and insights to the next level.

While my JSON templates will cover the most common scenarios in terms of what you’ll be interested in requesting, Google does offer documentation that covers a bit more ground if you’re interested.

Do you have another way of using the GSC API? Is there another API you commonly use as an SEO? Let me know in the comments!

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Posted by Alex_Ratynski

For local businesses today, there are numerous different ways to market your brand online. The majority of your potential customers still use Google to find local businesses near them — businesses where they will spend their hard-earned money. In fact, 80% of searches with “local intent” result in a conversion.

This begs the question: “What’s the best way to catch the attention of local searchers on Google?” 

The answer: through Google Maps marketing.

What is Google Maps marketing?

Google Maps marketing is the process of optimizing the online presence of your brand in Google Maps, with the goal of increasing your brand’s online visibility.

When you search a query on Google that has local intent, you often see something like this:

Google Maps marketing utilizes a number of strategies and tactics to help your business become one of those three positions on local map packs.

Why is marketing important for Google Maps?

The reason every local business should care about ranking in Google Maps is simple: potential brand visibility.

It’s no surprise that Google is by far the most popular search engine. But what about Google Maps specifically?

One study found that nearly 70% of smartphone users say they use Google Maps most frequently. On top of that, out of the 3.5 billion searches that happen on Google each day, more and more are considered to have local intent. According to Google, 83% of U.S. people who visited a store said they used online search before going in.

Thus, any business that is serious about getting found in this day and age needs to utilize the power behind Google Maps marketing. This is why we at Ratynski Digital focus much of our local SEO time on getting our clients to rank both in Google Maps AND organic search results.

Before you can rank in Google Maps, make sure you have first set up and optimized your Google My Business profile.

What is Google My Business?

Google My Business (GMB) is a free platform provided by Google where local businesses can create a profile that is displayed across a variety of Google products.

In order to qualify for a GMB profile you must make in-person contact with your customers during your stated business hours. This may mean that you have a brick-and-mortar location where customers come to see you, or perhaps you travel to see your customers.

A GMB profile can display a variety of information about your business such as:

• Business name
• Business description
• Reviews
• Phone number
• Address
• Website
• Business category or industry
• Locations that you serve
• Business hours
• Products and services
• Photos

And much more depending on your industry!

The purpose of creating a Google My Business profile for your brand is to increase your rankings, traffic, and revenue.

How to set up Google My Business

Step 1: Head over to the GMB Page.

• Click on the blue button that says “Manage now” (be sure you are signed into your Google account).

Step 2: Create the listing and name your business profile.

• Name your new listing and start adding all of your important business information. 
• It’s important to note that before you create your GMB profile, you should familiarize yourself with Google’s guidelines. And please, don’t create GMB spam. Not only will creating fake or spammy listings offer a horrible user experience for your potential customers, but it also puts you at risk for penalties and suspensions.

Step 3: Add as much relevant information about your business as possible.

• Remember all those different types of information I mentioned above? This is when you get to add those to your profile. Take advantage of this free platform and try to include as much relevant information as you can. Keep in mind, you will want to avoid adding GMB categories that are NOT relevant to your business. You should also work to keep all of your Google My Business contact information accurate, and make sure that it matches your website.

Step 4: Verify your profile.

• If this is a brand new account, you will need to verify the physical address with a postcard that will be sent via mail by Google.
• If you are claiming a listing that already exists on Google Maps but is not verified, you may be able to verify the profile via email or phone.

Step 5: Pop the champagne — you did it! Easy peasy.

Now that we are all set up, let’s dive into Google Maps SEO.

Top Google Maps ranking factors

It’s important to have a firm understanding of Google Maps ranking factors before you can expect to see high-ranking results. Once you understand how it works, Google Maps marketing becomes as easy as operating your 7-year-old’s Easy Bake Oven.

Okay, maybe not that easy, but everything will be much more clear. For a deep dive, I recommend checking out Moz’s 2018 local ranking factors study, but I’ll cover the top factors here.

In a nutshell, there are eight ranking factors that contribute to ranking in Google Maps and the local pack:

1. Google My Business signals
2. Link signals
3. Review signals
4. On-page signals
5. Citation signals
6. Behavioral signals
7. Personalization
8. Social signals

It’s important to keep in mind that the local algorithm works differently than Google’s organic search algorithm. SEO queen Joy Hawkins does a beautiful job explaining these algorithm differences in-depth in this Whiteboard Friday.

Google’s local algorithm analyzes all of the signals listed above and ranks listings based on the following three areas:

• Proximity: How close is the business to the searcher?
• Prominence: How popular or authoritative is the business in the area?
• Relevance: How closely does the listing match the searcher’s query?

Now that you have a handle on how the local algorithm works and its many ranking factors, let’s talk about specific ways to optimize your GMB profile to improve your ranking in Google Maps.

How to optimize for Google Maps

To kickoff your optimizations, double check that ALL of your business information is filled out in full and 100% accurate. This includes adding the many services that you might offer as well as descriptions of those services.

Sherri Bonelli wrote a comprehensive post on optimizing the information on your GMB listing. She did a great job covering that topic, so I am going to focus instead on three more factors that will make the biggest impact in the shortest amount of time:

1. Get more online reviews

Reviews continue to be one of the most important components for ranking in Google Maps, but the benefit of building more reviews is not purely for the purpose of SEO (not by a long shot).

Reviews offer a much better customer experience. They help to build up social proof, manage customer expectations, and they can sell your product or service before you even get in touch with your customer.

With 82% of consumers reading online reviews for local businesses, every business owner needs to understand the importance and power of reviews.

Google understands the customer’s desire to read reviews before they visit a store or trust a brand. They have heavily factored reviews into the local algorithm because of this (reviews from both Google and third parties).

Keep in mind that the “review factor” is not simply a measurement of who has the most reviews. That is certainly a piece of the puzzle, but Google also takes into consideration many other aspects like:

• Whether a review has text along with the star rating or not.
• The words chosen to write the review.
• The overall star rating given to the business.
• The consistency of reviews.
• Overall review sentiment.

Business owners must regularly train themselves (and their team) to ask their customers for reviews. It’s important to set up systems and processes to make review generation a regular occurrence.

I also recommend setting up a process or purchasing a service that helps with review management. For example, Moz Local offers the ability to monitor the flow of reviews as well as comment and reply to those reviews as they come in (all in one cohesive dashboard). Always reply to your reviews!

Pro Tip: Don’t ask for a review too early. Too many businesses ask for a review for a product or service before their customer has had the opportunity to fully experience it (and actually benefit from it). Only after they have had the chance to solve their problem with your product or service should you ask for a review.

2. Build local links

Links are still one of the largest ranking factors in Google’s algorithm (both in organic ranking and in Google Maps). In fact, building local links is especially important if you want to rank in Google Maps.

It’s true that any link that isn’t marked as nofollow will pass “authority”, which will likely help with rankings. However, local links are especially important because they have a much higher probability of driving actual business.

One of the best ways to start building local links is to utilize your local relationships around town. Think about other businesses that you work closely with, organizations that you support, or even companies that might qualify as a “shoulder niche”.

For the highest success rate, start with businesses that you already have a relationship with or know well. You could offer to write or record a testimonial in exchange for a link, or perhaps you could co-create a piece of content that benefits both of your audiences.

Here’s exactly how to do it:

1. Create a list of niches that offer services that compliment (but don’t compete) with your business.
2. Consider how you might be able to incorporate these other companies into your content outreach.

For example, a carpet cleaning business may decide to create a really helpful piece of content about cost-effective ways to increase a home’s value in a specific market. They might include advice about landscaping, painting, and of course, carpet cleaning. Before writing the content, they could reach out to a few local painting, landscaping, or home service businesses in the area and ask if those businesses would be willing to collaborate on the content and perhaps add a link to their resource pages.

This process can also work even if you don’t have an existing relationship with the business currently. Here’s a basic outreach template you can use: 

Hello [NAME],

My name is [YOUR NAME] from [BUSINESS]. We are actually business neighbors in a way, as we are located not too far from you in [CITY]. I often pass by [THEIR BUSINESS] on my way to [LOCAL LANDMARK/DESTINATION].

I thought it was finally time to reach out and say hello, and let you know that if there’s ever anything you or your team need, please let us know.

Also, I am working on writing an article about [INSERT BLOG TOPIC HERE]. Since our businesses both serve a similar audience and compliment each other nicely, I was wondering if you’d like to be featured in the article?

I am going to include a section about [TOPIC ABOUT THEIR INDUSTRY], and would like to use a sentence or two with your advice coming from the [THEIR INDUSTRY]. It might even make a great addition to the resource page on your website. Please let me know if this is something you’d be interested in.

Either way, thanks for your time, and great to meet you!

[YOUR NAME]

Pro Tip: If you are working to build links on a budget, it may help to get approval for the link before you invest the time and resources in content collaborations.

3. Fight off GMB spam in the map

This final optimization is less of an “optimization” and more of a tactic. This tactic is powerful because unlike most GMB optimizations, the goal is not to do something better than your competition, it’s to remove the competitors that are trying to cheat their way to higher rankings. 

Just how powerful is this approach? Very.

Let’s take a look at this Google Maps SERP as an example:

At first glance, all of these listings seem legitimate. However, after about two minutes of investigating you can quickly discern that a few are fake. One of them doesn’t have a website and links to Nerdwallet, some are using fake reviews, and some are even using fake addresses (one is using the DMV’s address).

Now imagine you are DCAP Insurance (a real company) and you are trying to rank higher in Google Maps. If you successfully remove the top four spam listings, you have now jumped to the #1 position without making any additional optimizations.

Starting to see the logic behind this approach?

Unfortunately, Google Maps still has quite a bit of spam throughout its ecosystem. In fact, out of the top 20 spots in the example above, I was able to find seven fake listings and three more that were extremely questionable. This approach can work whether a listing is using an improper business name, keyword stuffing, or is a fake location entirely.

How to remove or edit Google My Business spam

Create a detailed record of each GMB listing you find and what edits are necessary. This will help later on if the changes keep getting reverted back.

Next, head over to Google Maps, find the listing, and click on “Suggest an Edit”.

Depending on the issue at hand you can either select:

• “Change name or other details”
• “Remove this place”

If you’re trying to remove keyword stuffing from a listing’s business name, you simply select “change name or other details” and make the necessary edits.

If you’re dealing with spam of some sort, you will need to select “Remove this place” and then select the exact issue from the drop-down list.

When suggesting an edit doesn’t get the job done

Unfortunately, submitting an edit about spam doesn’t always cut it. When this happens the best way to handle these spam listings is to use Google’s Business Redressal Complaint Form.

When using the redressal form, you’ll need to provide evidence before the required action takes place. For more information, be sure to check out this helpful resource.

Google Maps SEO checklist

At this point, you likely understand the importance of filling out your Google My Business profile to completion. But that’s not all it takes to rank in Google Maps — ranking requires comprehensive optimizations on a variety of levels and there is often not just one magic thing.

To help you cover all your bases, I created this Google Maps SEO Checklist that will help you pinpoint specific areas for improvement.

Tracking results and GMB analytics

Tracking your results is crucial in every aspect of SEO and online marketing, and Google My Business is no different. Most of your profile analytics will be found in your Google My Business account.

You can find this information by logging into your account and selecting “insights” on the far left side. Here is an example of what that looks like for Roadside Dental Marketing’s Google My Business account.

From there, you should be able to see things like:

• Which specific search queries triggered your listing.
• How often your listing appeared in Google search.
• How often your listing appeared in Google Maps.
• What kind of customer actions were taken (e.g. visiting your website, requesting directions, phone calls).
• Where customers are requesting business information from.
• Which days of the you week get the most calls.
• How many photos have been viewed, and how that number compares to your competition.

The one thing that GMB analytics does NOT offer is any sort of rank tracking. Thankfully, the brilliant people at Moz are working on Local Market Analytics (beta). LMA not only offers rank tracking on a local level, but it also contains a plethora of competitor information within a target market.

Conclusion

While covering the GMB basics is fine and dandy, comprehensive optimizations coupled with making ongoing improvements is what truly separates the wheat from the chaff. Regularly test different optimizations within your industry and market and closely monitor your results. If you’re ever in doubt, do whatever is in the best interest of your customer. They must always come first.

By investing in Google Maps marketing, you’ll be able to drive local leads to your business on a consistent basis. If you find yourself with any questions, let me know in the comments below or on Twitter and I will happily answer them!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

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Posted by rjonesx.

We’ve all been there. You’re the SEO on point for a project, and you’re also the one tasked with getting great content written well and quickly. And if you don’t have an expert at your disposal, great content can seem out of reach.

It doesn’t have to be. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Russ Jones arms you with the tools and processes to expand your content from prompt to paragraph to published piece.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, folks, great to be back here with you on Whiteboard Friday. Today we’re going to be talking about content expansion. It’s a term you probably haven’t heard before because I just made it up. So hopefully, it will be useful in the future for you. But I think you’ll get the gist of exactly what we’re trying to accomplish here.

How do SEOs produce great content when they’re not subject matter experts?

You see, search engine optimizers have this really bizarre responsibility. We are often asked by our clients to produce content about things we have no business writing about. As a search engine optimizer, we know exactly the kinds of things that make content good for Google, but that doesn’t mean we have any domain knowledge about whatever it is our customer does.

Maybe your customer is an artist of some sort or your customer runs a restaurant. You might not know anything about it, but you still might have a deadline to hit in order to get good content that talks in depth about some sort of topic which really isn’t in your wheelhouse. Today I’m going to talk about a couple of tricks that you can use in order to go from a prompt to a couple of paragraphs and then ultimately to a published page, to a good piece of content.

Caveat: If an expert can create the content, they should

Now I want to step back for a second and just make one thing clear. This is not the preferred way to produce content. If you can have an expert produce the content, by all means have the expert produce the content, and then you go to work optimizing that content to make it the best it possibly can be. That’s the way it ought to be done whenever possible.

But we know that’s not the case. The truth is that most small business owners don’t have the time to write lengthy articles about their services and their offerings and what makes them special and the kinds of things that their customers might need. They have a business to run. There’s nothing unethical about taking the time to actually try and write a good piece of content for that customer.

But if you’re going to do it, you really should try and create something that’s of value. Hopefully this is going to help you do exactly that. I call this content expansion because the whole purpose is to start from one small prompt and then to expand it a little and expand it a little and expand it even more until eventually you are at something that’s very thorough and useful and valuable for the customers who are reading that content.

Each one of the individual steps is just sort of like taking a breath and blowing it into a balloon to make it a little bigger. Each step is manageable as we expand that content. 

1. Start with a prompt

First, we have to start with some sort of topic or prompt. In this example, I’ve decided just bike safety off the top of my head. I’m here in Seattle and there are bikes everywhere.

It’s completely different from North Carolina, where I’m from, where you’ve got to get in a car to go anywhere. But with the prompt bike safety, we now have to come up with what are we going to talk about with regard to bike safety. We pretty much know off the top of our heads that helmets matter and signaling and things of that sort. 

Find the questions people are asking

But what are people actually asking? What’s the information they want to know? Well, there are a couple of ways we can get at that, and that’s by looking exactly for those questions that they’re searching. One would be to just type in “bike safety” into Google and look for PAAs or People Also Ask. That’s the SERP feature that you’ll see about halfway down the page, which often has a couple of questions and you can click on it and there will be a little featured snippet or paragraph of text that will help you answer it.

Another would be to use a tool like Moz Keyword Explorer, where you could put in “bike safety” and then just select from one of the drop-downs “are questions” and it would then just show you all the questions people are asking about bike safety. Once you do that, you’ll get back a handful of questions that people are asking about bike safety.

In this case, the three that came up from the PAA for just bike safety were: 

• Is riding a bike safe? 
• How can I improve safety?
• Why is bike safety important? 

What this does is start to get us into a position where now we’re building out some sort of outline of the content that we’re going to be building.

Build the outline for your content

We’ve just expanded from a title that said bike safety to now an outline that has a couple of questions that we want to answer. Well, here’s the catch. Bike safety, sure, we’ve got some ideas off the top of our heads about what’s important for bike safety. But the real thing that we’re trying to get at here is authoritative or valuable content.

Well, Google is telling you what that is. When you press the button to show you what the answer is to the question, that’s Google telling you this is the best answer we could find on the internet for that question. What I would recommend you do is you take the time to just copy the answer to that PAA, to that question. Why is bike safety important?

You click the button and it would show you the answer. Then you would write down the citation as well. But if you think about it, this is exactly the way you would write papers in college. If you were writing a paper in college about bike safety, you would go into the library, identify books on safety studies, etc. Then you would go through and then you would probably have note cards pulled out.

You would find a particular page that has an important paragraph. You would write a paraphrase down, and then you would write the citation down. This is the exact same thing. I’m not telling you to copy content. That’s not what we’re going to be doing in the end. But at the same time, it is the way that we take that next step of expanding the content. What we’ve done here is we’ve now gone from a topic to a couple of questions.

Now for each of those questions, we’ve kind of got an idea of what the target answer is. But, of course, the featured snippet isn’t the whole answer. The featured snippet is just the most specific answer to the question, but not the thorough one. It doesn’t cover all the bases. So what are some of the things we can do to expand this even further? 

2. Extract & explain entities

This is where I really like to take advantage of NLP technologies, natural language programming technologies that are going to allow us to be able to expand that content in a way that adds value to the user and in particular explains to the user concepts that both you, as the writer in this particular case, and they, as the reader, might not know.

My favorite is a site called dandelion.eu. It’s completely free for a certain amount of uses. But if you’re going to be producing a lot of content, I would highly recommend you sign up for their API services. What you’re going to do is extract and explain entities. 

Imagine you’ve got this featured snippet here and it’s talking about bike safety. It answers the question, “Why is bike safety important?” It says that bicyclists who wear their helmets are 50% less likely to suffer traumatic brain injuries in a wreck or something of that sort. That’s the answer in the featured snippet that’s been given to you. 

Well, perhaps you don’t know what a traumatic brain injury is, and perhaps your readers don’t know what that is and why it’s important to know that one thing protects you so much from the other.

Identify and expand upon terminology for your questions

That’s where entity extraction can be really important. What dandelion.eu is going to do is it’s going to identify that noun phrase. It’s going to identify the phrase “traumatic brain injury,” and then it’s going to give you a description of exactly what that is. Now you can expand that paragraph that you originally pulled from the featured snippet and add into it a citation about exactly what traumatic brain injury is.

This will happen for all the questions. You’ll find different terminology that your reader might not know and then be able to expand upon that terminology. 

3. Create novel research

Now the one thing that I want to do here in this process is not just take advantage of content other people have written about, but try and do some novel research. As you know, Google Trends is probably my favorite place to do novel research, because if there is any topic in the world, somebody is searching about it and we can learn things about the way people search.



Use Google Trends

For example, in this Google Trends that I did, I can’t remember the exact products that I was looking up, but they were specific bike safety products, like, for example, bike lights, bike mirrors, bike video cameras or bike cameras, etc. In fact, I’m almost positive that the red one had to do with bicycle cameras because they were becoming cheaper and more easily accessible to bicyclists. They’ve become more popular over time. Well, that’s novel research. 

Bring insights, graphs, and talking points from your novel research into your writing

When you’re writing this article here about bike safety, you can include in it far more than just what other people have said. You can say of the variety of ways of improving your bike safety, the use of a bike camera has increased dramatically over time.

4. Pull it all together

All right. So now that you’ve got some of this novel research, including even graphs that you can put into the content, we’ve got to pull this all together. We started with the prompt, and then we moved into some topics or questions to answer. Then we’ve answered those questions, and then we’ve expanded them by giving clarity and definitions to terms that people might not understand and we’ve also added some novel research.

Rewrite for relevancy

So what’s next? The next step is that we need to rewrite for relevancy. This is a really important part of the process. You see chances are, when you write about a topic that you are not familiar with, you will not use the correct language to describe what’s going on. I think a good example might be if you’re writing about golf, for example, and you don’t know what it means to accidentally hit a golf ball that goes to the right or to the left.

Find relevant words and phrases with nTopic

Which one is a hook and a slice? Now, those of you who play golf I’m sure know right off the top of your head. But you wouldn’t know to use that kind of terminology if you weren’t actually a golfer. Well, if you use a tool like nTopic — it’s at nTopic.org — and you write your content and place it in there and then give bike safety as the keyword you want to optimize for, it will tell you all of the relevant words and phrases you ought to be using in the content.

In doing so, you’ll be able to expand your content even further, not just with further language and definitions that you know, but with the actual language that experts are using right now whenever they’re talking about bike safety or whatever topic it is. 

Examine (and improve) your writing quality with the Hemingway app

The next thing that I would say is that you really should pull things back and take a chance to look at the quality of the writing that you’re producing.

This whole time we’ve been talking mostly about making sure the content is in-depth and thorough and covers a lot of issues and areas and uses the right language. But we haven’t spent any time at all talking about is this actually written well. There’s a fantastic free app out there called Hemingway app.

If you haven’t heard of it, this is going to make your day. [Editor’s note: It made mine!] Every writer in the world should be using a tool like this. You just drop your content in there, and it’s going to give you all sorts of recommendations, from correcting grammar to using different words, shortening sentences, passive and active voice, making sure that you have the right verb tenses, etc. It’s just incredibly useful for writing quality content. 

Two important things to remember:

Now there are two things at the end that matter, and one is really, really important in my opinion and that is to cite. 

1. Cite your sources — even if they’re competitors!

You see, when you’ve done all of this work, you need to let the world know that this work, one, isn’t only created by you but, two, is backed up by research and information provided by other professionals.

There is no shame whatsoever in citing even competitors who have produced good content that has helped you produce the content that you are now putting up. So cite. Put citations directly in. Look, Wikipedia ranks for everything, and every second sentence is cited and links off to another website. It’s insane.

But Google doesn’t really care about the citation in the sense that somebody else has written about this. What you’re really interested in is showing the users that you did your homework. 

2. Take pride in what you’ve accomplished!

Then finally, once you’re all done, you can publish this great piece of content that is thorough and exceptional and uniquely valuable, written well in the language and words that it should use, cited properly, and be proud of the content that you’ve produced at the end of the day, even though you weren’t an expert in the first place.

Hopefully, some of these techniques will help you out in the long run. I look forward to seeing you in the comments and maybe we’ll have some questions that I can give you some other ideas. Thanks again.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

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