2022 Local SEO Holiday Success: Essential Comforts in Leaner Times

Image credit: Stanley Zimny

I like nothing better than using this annual local SEO holiday column as a greeting card with messages of good cheer, great strategy, and healthy profit penned inside. With economists caroling “austere” and “scary” in their predictions for 2022’s 4th quarter shopping season, however, it’s not easy to be jolly. Doomsayers’ dirges have their point, but we’re in this together, and here’s my own ditty for courage, set to the chorus of Jingle Bells:

Local foot traffic is

Up now 20%

News is good in the neighborhood

If basics are your bent

Big brands (particularly those that trade in the trends of electronics) are not expecting a banner year for people buying new TVs or surveillance technology. Yet, if what your local business offers is help with basic needs and modest comforts, 2022’s holiday sales can be decent, if not a phenomenal spree. Let’s look at a solid strategy for stocking what folks want and communicating that you’re here to serve.

Food, warmth, wellness, and deals

Image credit: Michael Li

“Heat or eat” is the troubling slogan I’m hearing in multiple countries where economics have been allowed to create an artificial scarcity of energy resources on the back of a quite legitimate shortage of labor due to the pandemic. Until we all have our own nearby solar, wind and water power, we’ll continue to face fossil fuel-foolery that will eat up our paychecks and leave many in the cold this winter. All of us non-wealthy folk are feeling the pinch. We’ll be looking at the circle of our loved ones and deciding that instead of giving our favorite nephew electronics this winter, we will either pay part of his heating bill or knit him a very warm scarf.

A story I read recently in the Los Angeles Times sums this moment up well: a seller who previously dealt in luxury cosmetic gift baskets has altered his inventory to offer snack boxes. It makes sense in a time in which shoppers will be looking for ways to ensure that their friends and family have the necessary calories – not the curlicues – of life. This same vendor has also changed his marketing agency’s slogan from “we grow sales” to “we deliver peace of mind”.

2022 is the year to take a very close look at how much of your winter inventory and strategy can be rejigged to focus on food, warmth, wellness, and deals. Get a sense of the shopping season ahead from these eight points:

1. People are longing for health and strength

Fitness and gym membership sales are up as much as 20% as people try to become healthier to weather the extreme vagaries of recent modern life; gift cards that support wellness could do well.

2. Having enough to eat has become a major priority

The US food index increased 11.4% over the past year, with prices on some foods increasing by as much as 38%, meaning that gifts of food may be about as big of a luxury as many of your customers can afford to give this year. Could the brand you’re marketing partner with a local food producer for a selection of edible gifts?

3. Any source of warmth is cherished

Meanwhile, with utility bills off the charts around the world, items on lists like this one of how to stay warm without turning on the heater could make utilitarian items like layered clothing, warmer socks, thick hats, flannel robes, microwavable heat packs, hot water bottles, hot drinks, and soups attractive gifts for caring holiday shoppers. Skew your stock towards thoughtful essentials to be where your customers are this year.

4. Wise young folk are serious about de-consumption

It’s no accident that younger people are responding to the climate instability and energy catastrophe being created by the fossil fuel industry with the caring decision to reduce consumption. 50% of younger shoppers expect to buy more secondhand items as we close out the year. Assess whether re-stored, recycled, and thrift items could make up part of your inventory.

5. Reduced staff necessitates cutbacks and creativity

A challenge for local businesses in 2022 is the pattern we’ve been in since the pandemic began: labor shortages. If some staff are sick and others have quit to seek employment elsewhere, hours of operation may need to be cut. In that event, consider whether an after-hours kiosk outside the place of business could assist. If it’s honor-system based, you’ll need to trust that your community will pay for what they take. It could help you make a few additional sales in this extra challenging season.

6. Early shopping helps spread out purchases

Another trend that’s being widely-reported is of more than 1 in 10 customers shopping earlier this year. That’s a small percentage, of course, but it’s important to know that some of your customers could be trying to spread out their holiday purchases across the paychecks of multiple months, due to financial insecurity. This means that in-store and online features of holiday products could be helpful to some as early as the beginning of the 4th quarter.

7. Insecurity sometimes leads to splurging

I don’t have a statistic for this one, but I’m seeing talk around social media of some shoppers splurging in 2022 because they don’t know if they’ll be able to in 2023. I’m also noticing credit card offers ramping up. Anyone who grew up in the plastic-finance-fueled 80s can see the possibility of people spending what they don’t have as a way to comfort themselves and their loved ones, meaning some indulgent gifts may still sell well. I wouldn’t bet the house on this, though; it was noted that basic necessities were among the top sellers of the recent “Prime” day over at Amazon, with people buying diapers, toothpaste, and lunchboxes.

8. Deals are more welcome than any time in recent years

Finally, due to inflation and fears of recession, the majority of people are eager for deals and coupons, and local retailers may actually be in a good position to offer them this year. In 2021, one of the most significant challenges for nearly all businesses was shortages resulting from a very broken supply chain. While this issue persists in 2022, vendors in many industries are reporting a glut of inventory they need to move. In response, they are lowering prices and promoting coupons to catch the attention of shoppers who will be using the Internet over the next few months to find the best offers in town.

And that brings us to our strategic marketing checklist.

The Holiday Local Search Marketing Checklist

Image credit: Naotake Murayama

With your mindfully-curated inventory in place, you’re ready to serve up your offering to your community, and you have an absolute feast of options at your fingertips for getting the word out. Consider all of the following methodologies for promoting your local business this holiday shopping season:

✅ Website

Now is the time to be sure your website is offering maximum information in abundance:

• Update hours of operation to reflect holiday hours.

• Double check that store location info is correct in every place it is listed on the site, including headers/footers/side bars, contact pages, location landing pages, and about pages.

• Highlight every possible contact methodology, including phone, text, chat, forms, messaging, social and email.

• Highlight all fulfillment options, including in-store, buy-online-pick-up-in-store, curbside, home delivery, and shipping.

• Don’t buy the hype that COVID is “over”; feature your safest protocols and requirements to serve the maximum number of people in your community, including elders and the immune compromised.

• Audit all product landing pages to be sure that they are discoverable via site search and/or menu navigation and that shopping cart functionality is as simple as possible; to avoid cart abandonment, be up front about shipping/handling charges.

• Create sitewide or page-specific banners for your best deals of the season (coupons, free shipping, discounts, etc.) as customers will be looking for the least expensive options more than usual this year.

• Feature first and third-party reviews on key pages of the site (location or product landing pages) to let the public do the selling for you.

• Highlight when items that need to be custom made or shipped must be ordered to reach recipients before a specified holiday date.

• Highlight the greenest practices and most important community initiatives in which your local business is participating. Even in hard times, there is a growing trend of people shopping their values. Be sure to publicize if a percentage of your profits support local institutions like food banks, heat for elders, and other worthy causes.

• Consider creating an essentials guide section of the website to showcase inventory that meets the goals of providing warmth, nourishment, and comfort. Depending on your industry, consider creating a re-stored/recycled guide, too, for younger shoppers.

✅ Google Business Profile and other local business listings

Full-featured listings will be the online doorway to your offline business, with Google Business Profiles driving as much as 70%-80% of leads:

• Be sure fundamental contact information, holiday hours of operation, and branding are accurate across all business listings. Messy and time-consuming? Check out Moz Local for help across the board.

• Retroactively respond to any reviews that have been ignored in Q3 and make a schedule for daily checks of incoming reviews over the next few months. Respond with empathetic solutions to cited problems and grow your reputation for customer service excellence. Do not incentivize requests for customers to remove negative reviews.

• Integrate Pointy into your point-of-sales system if your inventory is made up of common, branded products, and be present in Google’s shopping platform which customers could be using this year like never before to compare prices. Remember that 2022 is the year in which Google confirmed that in-store product availability is a local visibility factor.

• Photograph key lines of your inventory as well as the exterior and interior of your store, and upload these images to your listings. Don’t have time to do it all? Get started by photographing stock that meets the food-warmth-wellness-deals criteria.

• Add your holiday-focused products to the Products section of your Google Business Profile.

• Throughout the holiday shopping season, publish a variety of Google Posts featuring your inventory and special deals.

• Pre-populate the Q&A section of your Google Business Profile with holiday-specific questions and answers such as “are you open on New Year’s Eve?” or “do you have candy canes?”

• Speaking of Q&A, Google Messaging now allows you to enter ten questions for providing automated answers. If you have messaging turned on, this is a great opportunity to respond promptly to common queries about your holiday offerings, even when short-staffed. Nice to know that this feature can also include links to pages of your website for more information.

• Video content just keeps getting more popular. Make a short holiday offers video and publish it to your listings.

• Be sure listing menus reflect holiday-related services and inventory.

• Look at the attribute section of your Google Business Profile, and add as many relevant signals (like Black-owned or wheelchair accessible) as possible.

• Google has confoundingly removed COVID safety information from their listings just in time for the holiday flu season. If you know health and safety are a priority for your customers, consider adding your sanitary measures to the business description or Posts.

• Google Business Profiles tend to steal the show, but in 2022, I would also recommend keeping a special eye on your listings on Nextdoor and Facebook.

✅ Social

Special thanks to my teammate, Senior Learning and Development Specialist Meghan Pahinui, for these timely and trending social media tips:

• Regularly share hours of operation on social platforms whether you’re offering special holiday hours or not.

• Share information about gift cards or gift certificates you offer along with how to purchase them.

• Share any information about sales, specials, or promotions you’re running in-store.

• Feature visual buying guides on platforms like Instagram or Twitter. For example, “gifts for dad” or “gifts for college students” which feature products you know are popular among those demographics.

• Create product spotlights on TikTok. Ask employees what they would purchase as a gift or what their favorite menu item is in a short video.

• Create “behind the scenes” videos for TikTok and Instagram which feature how a product is made or how your business prepares for the holidays.

• Create a hashtag and post it near checkout or on bag inserts encouraging customers to share their purchases. Be sure to include that their posts may be featured on your own social media accounts as UGC.

• Tweet to your followers asking them to share their recent purchases or meals. Be sure to interact with the posts and engage in conversation with your community.

• Create fun photo-ops in stores with backdrops or merchandise displays. Place a sign near these photo-ops encouraging people to share their photos on social media to generate buzz and foot traffic for others wanting to participate. Be sure you’re following along online, as well, so you can engage with the posts.

• Tweet to your followers asking what they are excited about for the holiday season and then reply with recommendations from your business. For example, someone may say they are excited to visit family and friends to which you may recommend travel accessories, games to play in a group, or gift cards they can purchase for those they are visiting.

✅ Real world Small business owners are the backbone of the US economy. You are essential and heroic for keeping communities supplied over the past few years of extraordinary challenge, and your real-world efforts deserve recognition and huge praise. Here are a few activities that could bring more attention and customers your way. Nov 26, 2022 is American Express Small Business Saturday. In 2021, shopping during this annual event reached an all-time high of $23.3 billion. If you’ve never participated in this tradition before, this is a great year to get started. If a Buy Local association doesn’t exist yet in your town, contact the American Independent Business Association to ask about how to start one, and take part in the growing Shop Indie Local movement. Send business to your peers and turn to them for support in trying times. If your town or county still has a local newspaper, reach out to reporters there with your business story, including tips for holiday shoppers who need help celebrating on a budget. Never undersell the expertise you’ve earned when it comes to serving the public in good times and bad. Popup shops are on the rise. In the big biz world, Target is hosting FAO Schwarz and Macy’s is hosting Toys R Us. Consider whether giving space in your storefront to local artisans, crafters, and food makers might bring in more customers this year who, once on the premises, could shop you both. Alternatively, if your town has a holiday pop-up street or district, your local business might participate with curated inventory that tends to do best at these events. A related trend is food and drink establishments styling themselves holiday pop-ups around town to offer unique experiences. Your voice as a business owner matters in speeding up our transition to affordable, sustainable energy. Coordinate with other local business owners in your community to let local officials know you are done with the instability of the fossil fuel economy and all the problems it is creating for your business and want your city to transition now. Then, team up with other towns in your state and take your lobby to the state level. Finally, remember that economists like all those I’ve linked to today, and marketing commentators like myself, are just regular people without any special powers over the future you are writing for your business. Predictions matter, but local business owners possess a hardihood and greatness that defies odds, again, and again, and again. I want to close with the story of Yvon Choiunard, who set up a blacksmith’s shop in his parents’ chicken coop to forge pitons for mountain climbers, which he sold for $1.50 each in 1950s money. He wanted to work at a job he was excited about and that would let him and his staff go surfing when the waves were right. This holiday season, the 83-year-old Chouinard is giving away all the shares of his $3 billion company, Patagonia, to a climate action trust, declaring, “Earth is now our only shareholder.” It’s the kind of story only a small business owner would be daring enough to write, and as we close out 2022 with eyes open and fingers crossed, I am wishing you Chouinardian grit, innovation, vision, and success.

Measuring E-A-T? — Whiteboard Friday

The level of trust users have in your brand’s expertise is an important component when vying for that #1 spot, but Google has been ambiguous about what E-A-T (expertise-authoritativeness-trustworthiness) actually is, and how it plays into your SERP rankings. In today’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, Lily Ray discusses the ways in which you can prove that all important “E” – expertise.

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

Video Transcription

Hi, there. My name is Lily Ray, and today we're going to be talking about E-A-T — expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. We're particularly going to be focusing on the E component, expertise. 

What is E-A-T?

So just to take a step back, E-A-T stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. It comes directly from Google's Quality Rater Guidelines, which is a document that they use to train human search quality evaluators that they use to conduct tests thousands of times every year to basically benchmark and see how well Google is doing in terms of meeting the expectations of its users. Throughout this document, Google uses E-A-T pretty much synonymously with good content quality, but they're looking for the raters to describe how well the content creators and the sites are meeting the expectations of users in terms of demonstrating good expertise, authority, and trust.

Google also has a document that's related to learning SEO. So if you go on Google Search Central, they have documentation related to how you can learn SEO, and they explicitly say that you should be providing content that has a lot of great expertise. In Google's documentation about core updates, they have an article that's called "What Webmasters Should Know About Core Updates." They share this article every time a new core update is rolled out, several times per year, and they explicitly say that you should get to know the Search Quality Rater Guidelines and particularly you should get to know E-A-T.

Google also owns YouTube, and YouTube has its own documentation about particularly how it elevates high-quality information in the video results. There's one section that's dedicated to how it combats misinformation on YouTube, and in that section, they talk a lot about the importance of authoritativeness in YouTube rankings. Google, also, in its documents about Google News and Google Discover, they talk about the importance of E-A-T.

So if you're a brand that wants to rank in Google News or Google Discover, Google extensively describes the importance of demonstrating good E-A-T throughout your content. 

Product reviews updates

The product reviews updates are a new series of updates that Google started to roll out in the past year. In these updates, sites that do product reviews or companies that do reviews of different products, Google is saying that in order to rank really well for this type of content, they're expecting to see expert-level content, and basically experts and enthusiasts who know the products really well are the ones that are going to rank a little bit better than people that are just maybe reviewing products that they haven't actually tried or spent time with.

Can you measure E-A-T?

So a lot of people in the SEO industry are curious how do we measure E-A-T because Google tends to be pretty ambiguous about what E-A-T actually is, how it's measured. So it's not a direct ranking factor. It's really important to understand that, unlike something like page speed or Core Web Vitals, which is very measurable, there's no E-A-T score. There's no way to know, on a scale of 1 to 100, how good is my E-A-T.

The only factors that Google has explicitly confirmed as ranking factors that contribute to E-A-T are PageRank and links. That being said, there's a lot of ways that E-A-T plays into the algorithms indirectly and a lot of things that Google has said that we can piece together to understand the role that E-A-T plays in the algorithms.

Google's expertise patents

So, for example, there's a variety of different patents that I've been researching with the patent expert, Bill Slawski, rest in peace, late patent expert Bill Slawski. Basically, there's a variety of different patents that describe the role that authoritativeness might play in the search results. So, for example, starting way back in 2007, Google registered for a patent that allows it to understand who the author is of a given piece of content and to rank that content according to the authoritativeness of that author.

More recently, there's a patent called website representation vectors, which Google applied for in 2018, and this patent allows Google to understand how authoritative a piece of content is or how authoritative a brand is and to rank that content accordingly. They also have a couple of different patents to identify who authors and experts are either by their writing style or by their tone of voice or their accent.

So Google is doing a lot of work to really kind of get an understanding of who everybody is and to understand the areas where they're credible or where they demonstrate expertise. The results of this is what Google has been doing across a lot of different products and throughout the course of many years in the SEO space, which is really trying to get an understanding of who the authors are, why they can be trusted, why they're credible.

There's a lot of different examples, for example dating back to Author Rank and Agent Rank, which was something around 2007. It's been a very big project for Google. Later, they had rel=author. They've had a lot of different manifestations of how they're basically identifying different authors in the search results and ranking content according to their authoritativeness. But what this boils down to is the role of experts in SEO.

I believe that this is where Google is really going. They're trying to get an understanding of who the authors are, why they can be trusted, what are the areas where they specialize, and what is the subject matter where they demonstrate true expertise. I believe that with the product reviews updates, which are relatively new updates by Google, this is an update where they're algorithmically trying to understand who is a true subject matter expert, who has actually done the work of putting together the research because they've actually spent a lot of time reviewing the products.

I believe that they're taking this type of approach to a lot of the different algorithms that they're using where they're trying to understand who's an expert that's actually done the research, they've spent time in the field, they've done a lot of this work. They're not just SEO people or content marketers who are doing keyword research and reverse engineering what's already ranking and kind of saying the same thing as everybody else.

In fact, there's another patent that Google has, which basically enables them to identify, when they have a bunch of pieces of content that talk about the same thing, if there's one piece of content that has something new, they're able to basically elevate the rankings of that piece of content because it's introducing something new to the conversation. 

What Google is doing with entities

So with all these patents and the ability to identify individual experts, we have to remember what Google is doing on a larger scale with entities.

So particularly with something like Google's Knowledge Graph, which allows them to understand 500 billion facts about 5 billion entities online, this is a way that Google can basically say, "This is a person, place, or thing. We know all these different information about them, and we know how they're connected to other entities." So this is a visualization of what that might look like.

There's a variety of different tools that are available online to visualize how these entities are understood, all the different attributes that might relate to these entities. So in this example, we have Joe Smith, and perhaps we know that Joe Smith has a certain hometown. He has a certain age. This is his career. This is the name of his wife.

These are the awards that he's won. This is the skills that he has. Google is able to start building out that profile for that entity, and that could play into, potentially, the way that Joe Smith ranks for different content that he's found in or perhaps how he's displayed in Google Knowledge Graph or Google Scholar. I personally believe that Google is connecting the dots between all these different Google products and evaluating E-A-T across all these different products when they're looking for somebody to rank on YouTube or somebody to rank on Google, depending on the query itself, depending on how much E-A-T is required for that query.

So if it's something where what we call your money or your life, it's very much related to health, it's related to finances, security, E-A-T is going to be much more important for those queries, and they're going to do this evaluation to say, "We know that we have all these different authors that we can choose from and different brands that we can choose from. We have this understanding of E-A-T on the entity level."

Incorporate experts into your SEO strategy

That's going to play a role in who they choose to rank for certain queries. So how can we factor this into our SEO strategy? Well, I think it's very important to focus on incorporating experts into your content strategy. So what my team and I do, for example, is we might work with a bona fide expert in a different area, bring that person into the conversation in terms of creating content.

There are also many examples where the expert themselves actually creates the content or starts a blog. I've seen, in my research, many, many examples of experts who are providing first-hand information about their area of expertise. In many cases, they're not necessarily linking out to other sites when they're citing their sources in terms of how they're putting together information.

They're actually breaking the news. They're providing the information. They're talking about what it's like to work in their respective fields. So they offer first-hand experience, and I strongly believe that Google is algorithmically trying to identify where that first-hand experience exists. They're providing original research, which is something that Google has been elevating algorithmically.

Google has actually said in the past couple of years that they're going to elevate the rankings of content that provides original research above the other people that are maybe linking back to that original research or citing it. There's nothing wrong with citing that research. It's just that Google is going to now kind of reward the source that's breaking the news. There's also, in the case of top stories for news sites, Google can apply a label that says "Highly cited," if it's the piece of news that all the other news sites are linking to.

In the case of experts, other people are often linking to them. So while it's definitely a best practice in SEO to link out to other sites and to cite your sources and to link to all the places that are helping you provide information, in the case of using expert-driven content, many people are linking to the expert. So you don't necessarily need to link out that much if you're the expert writing the content, because you're just sharing what you know about the area where you actually demonstrate expertise.

In the case of the experts that are doing very well with SEO, you can look at the link profile, and you can notice they're the ones breaking the information, and other sites are referencing them with links. They're also very focused on their niche. 

So one thing that Google is doing a lot of is that they are basically evaluating E-A-T on the website level, on the domain level. This is something that my team and I notice in our research. You can basically take something like a website's categories, a website's tags, a website's breadcrumbs. You can collect all that information, cross-reference it with the performance of how the site is doing for SEO with using Google Search Console or Google Analytics or another analytics tool, and you can start to visualize the different categories and subcategories and topics where a site tends to demonstrate a lot of expertise, where it tends to drive a lot of traffic.

You might notice that there are other areas or other topics or breadcrumbs or subcategories where your site is unable to rank. This is especially true for your money or your life sites. There are often cases where you're able to maybe perform well on topics related to like fitness and nutrition but maybe not as much when you talk about medical conditions or health conditions. Also, with expert sites, it's really important to include author bios.

So you want to talk about who that expert is. You should include their name in the content. If you have somebody else writing the content, try to incorporate the expert into that content strategy. So you can say, "This article was written by Sarah, but the expert reviewer was Joe Smith, and he came in to basically review the content." So that's a nice way to incorporate experts into your content strategy, and you can basically, with any of the clients that you work with or your company that you work with, work with the people who are actually the bona fide experts at your company and see if you can incorporate them into your content strategy even if it's just to say, "Can you please review this content and make sure it makes sense, make sure it's factually accurate? Can we include your name on it?"

In some cases, they might be skeptical to say, "Why do you want to include my name in your content? Why is the marketing team involving me in this process?" One thing that I've found very effective is to talk to them and say, "This is actually a personal branding strategy for you. If we put your name behind this, if we build this really nice profile for you on the website, you're probably going to have a really nice listing on Google that ranks for your name."

That often gets their attention, and that's something that they want to participate in. So that's kind of in line with what we call like a brand SERP. You can have the expert Google their own name, and you can say, "Are you satisfied with the way that it looks on Google?" We can influence that. If you really go deep into this strategy, you can ultimately help them get included in Google's Knowledge Graph, which is definitely something people love to show off.

When you Google your name, you get all this great information directly on Google about the expert. I believe that, tying it all together, when you have experts who Google understands who they are, Google understands all these attributes about them, and how much they can be trusted in a certain area, I believe that that process is something that Google is more and more incorporating into its evaluation in who gets to rank for certain keywords.

Conclusion

So tying it all together, I think expertise is becoming increasingly important. E-A-T is extremely important, especially for your money or your life websites. It's not going anywhere. It's something that Google references throughout much of its documentation. So think about not taking shortcuts when it comes to demonstrating E-A-T but really kind of doing an overhaul of your content strategy to make sure that real experts are collaborating with you in the content process.

So I hope you enjoyed the talk. My name is Lily Ray, and my Twitter handle is @lilyraynyc. So feel free to get in touch with me and enjoy the rest of your day.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

Beyond Title Tags: 5 Worthwhile SEO Tests that Seem “Untestworthy”

Is it testworthy, or is it untestworthy?

There’s a fine line between optimizations and experiments. Testing something is an exercise in curiosity, whereas optimizing a thing is an act of certainty.

If we know the outcome of a given activity before we perform that activity, we’re in optimization territory. For example, if you’ve discovered a load of orphaned pages, then the act of internally linking to those pages is highly likely to result in a positive outcome. We can deem this scenario, “untestworthy” (yes, I know that’s actually a word).

But, as we’ll discuss here, SEO includes a vast array of activities where the outcomes of our work are either uncertain or difficult to predict. Think about the last time you experienced a site migration. Were you certain that the new site would perform better than the original? This might be a scenario that we’ll deem, “testworthy.”

In short, a testworthy activity is one where we don’t know the ending until we measure our outcomes with data.

Measuring our SEO tests

The step-by-step measurement processes and techniques for conducting SEO experiments fall outside the scope of this article, so if you’re reading this and asking yourself, “how exactly do I run an SEO experiment from start to finish?”, here are a couple links to resources that can assist you in learning the nitty-gritty specifics of setting up and measuring SEO experiments:

• How to Start Running SEO Tests

• Your First Three SEO Tests

For each of the experiments below, I will assume a time-based measurement technique. Although some of the ideas here can be tested using an A/B split testing technique, not all of them can.

Curious about time-based techniques? I cover them in detail in this guide.

A word on statistical significance

One final note to remember. Statistical significance, i.e. when your results can be confidently attributed to your testing criteria, is a sexy concept, but one sobering reality of SEO testing is that statistical significance can only be achieved through rigorously advanced split testing.

Time-based SEO experiments provide us with directional learnings, not absolute conclusions. Advantages of experimenting in this way include the ability to react more quickly, use up fewer resources, and the flexibility to experiment in nearly all search environments where split testing cannot.

Here’s one way to visualize how non-significant tests remain valuable. On the left end of the spectrum, there are the crapshoot experiments: low confidence, low investment initiatives that provide less reliable insights. Further to the right, we can begin categorizing experiments according to higher confidence intervals and higher resource investments. Somewhere in the middle, there are a great many SEO tests that provide directional insights, even when our directional insights aren’t guaranteed with the promise of scientific certainty.

With this in mind, I’ve put together a list of five inconspicuous SEO tests that appear “untestworthy,” but are actually SEO tests disguised as optimizations.

Test in disguise #1: URL switching

A URL switch test is really very similar to SEO title testing. The idea behind URL switch tests is simple: like page titles, we know that URLs are heavily weighted ranking factors, so if we find that there are URLs that look under-optimized or misaligned with our target terms and search intents, then we can build a hypotheses for testing a new URL and redirecting the original URL.

Some of you might be silently blowing a fuse right about now, and for good reason. URL switch tests can be very risky. If your original URL has already generated a substantial number of links (internal or external) I would exercise extreme caution before running a URL switch test.

As you probably know by now, redirects have the potential to backfire, and if your test fails, cannot be rolled back to the original URL variant as easily as a title test can be rolled back.

But this shouldn’t scare you if you are running a URL switch test in lower-risk scenarios. I have seen many successful URL switch tests in scenarios where the target URL was either freshly-launched, had too few links pointing to it, or where the URL was so ineffective that an experiment was justifiably worth the risk.

How to run a URL switch test

1. Check the URL’s current traffic levels. Higher traffic levels = higher risk.

2. Check the URL’s internal and external links. Internal links can be updated, but external links can still lose strength as you pass them through a 302/301.

3. If the risk is within your level of tolerability, clarify what your new hypothesis and URL test variation will be.

   • Example hypothesis: Changing the URL string from a partial match string to an exact match string will align our page more closely with the target keyword and increase rankings and clicks for the target keyword.

4. Change the URL from the control URL to the variation URL.

5. Add a 302 temporary redirect from the control to the variation, submit the URL for re-indexation in Google Search Console (GSC), and benchmark the date that this is completed on.

6. Wait 2-6 weeks to measure the clicks before vs. clicks after for equal time durations and days of the week in GSC.

   • For example: If your measurement period (after data) begins on a Thursday and ends on a Sunday, then I recommend comparing with an equivalent time duration in GSC that also begins on a Tuesday and ends on a Sunday just prior to the experiment launch date (before data). For most websites, the click patterns on weekends will be lower than on weekdays. Using the same days of the week and time durations allows you to control for these differences in daily click patterns.

   • The optimal time-range is situation-dependent. Pages that generate high click volumes can be measured closer to the two-week time-frame, while pages that generate lower click-volumes will need to run longer.

   • Caution: If the risk to this page is high, you may want to check in periodically during the first few days to make sure that performance doesn’t drop unexpectedly.

7. When measuring performance, use the “compare URLs” feature in GSC. This lets you check both the control URL and the variation URL simultaneously.
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8. After you’ve gathered enough data to make a directionally-sound judgment call about which URL performs better, do one of the following:
   

9. • If the new variation performed better: Change the 302 temporary redirect to a 301 permanent redirect and update all internal links to reflect the new URL.

   • If the original control URL performed better: Remove the 302 redirect. [Optional: you may want to add a new redirect from the failed variation URL back to the original control URL to speed up the re-indexation process.]

10. Resubmit the final URL in Google Search Console and periodically monitor the performance after the test has ended to ensure that performance remains positive.

Test in disguise #2: Content refreshes

Isn’t a content refresh a given? We know that refreshing content is good for SEO, so why does it need testing? 

Yes, content refreshes are incredibly important and this is an activity that has been proven successful time and time again. However, not every content refresh yields positive results.

Even though it isn’t the norm, content refresh projects can occasionally result in traffic losses, and perhaps equally frustrating, many refresh projects can turn out neutral results. This means that all of that precious time and energy that we spent rewriting and republishing a piece of content failed to produce the outcome that we intended.

For these reasons, it’s important to figure out if our investments in these projects have achieved their desired positive outcomes or not. That’s where SEO testing comes into play.   

How to run a content refresh SEO test

1. Perform your content refresh project exactly as you otherwise would, according to your own content team’s workflow. Make sure to save all of the original files, in case you need to revert back to the original content.

2. On the date of republication, submit the page URL to Google Search Console to be re-indexed and benchmark the date.

3. Wait 2-6 weeks to measure the clicks before vs. clicks after in GSC.

   • Once again, keep in mind that the best time duration will vary based on the click volumes that each page receives.

4. After you’ve gathered enough data to make a directionally-sound judgment call about which URL performs better, do one of the following:

   • If the variation performed better: Congrats! Report the results to your team and keep the change.

   • If the control performed better: Reinstate the original content and files. Then, re-index the page and continue monitoring performance to look for rebounding traffic.

Test in disguise #3: Section rearrangement

A section rearrange test is just what it sounds like. The hypothesis for these experiments is that if we can reprioritize some of the on-page content, elements, or components, then we might be able to influence the page’s rankings and traffic coming in.

This can work particularly well, if the page section that addresses our audiences’ main search intents is either buried deep below the fold, or if it requires extra steps for the user to access that content.

For simplicity's sake, let’s use the example keyword: “email ideas for cold outreach.”

This keyword appears to have a lot of demand from users who are looking for specific email templates and phrasings that they can use in their outreach campaigns.

Now, let's assume that you’ve got a blog post on this exact topic, but the exact email templates and scripts that users are searching for are buried at the end of your posts, well past a dozen other sections of content that don’t satisfy their search demand. This might be a great case for running a section rearrange test.

The idea is, if you can reprioritize those pieces of information that users are looking for from the bottom of your page to the top of your page, Google is likely to notice the prioritized content as a better match for users to quickly access the information they want. Thus, rankings and traffic may improve in the same way they might improve with a content refresh project.

Added bonus: it’s faster than rewriting new content!

How to run a section rearrange SEO test

1. Look for pages that are underperforming, and that have addressed a users’ primary search intent somewhere deep within the page.

2. Rearrange the page sections in a way that might create a better experience or flow for the readers.

3. Launch the new page (but remember to save the original control page files), re-index in Google Search Console, and benchmark the date.

4. Wait 2-6 weeks to measure the clicks before vs. clicks after in GSC.

   • Again, keep in mind that the best time duration will vary based on the click volumes that each page receives.

5. After you’ve gathered enough data to make a directionally-sound judgment call about which URL performs better, do one of the following:

   • If the variation performed better: Congrats! Report the results to your team and keep the changes.

   • If the control performed better: Reinstate the original content and files. Then, re-index the page and continue monitoring performance to look for rebounding traffic.

Test in disguise #4: Content removal

This test is the SEO-equivalent of what CRO professionals call “a takeaway test.”

In digital marketing, there are times when less really is more, so the idea for this experiment is, if we just trim out certain items — whether those might be page elements, or less-helpful content sections — then the removal process could lend itself to creating a tighter, stronger webpage.

In a CRO-driven takeaway experiment, a CRO professional might notice certain elements that distract users or get in the way of a conversion path.

This concept works just a little bit differently for SEO if our goal is to improve rankings and traffic performance. For SEO, content removal experiments are just a matter of “trimming the fat” from our content and page elements.

When analyzing your top pages, ask yourself if you see any sections, paragraphs, or sentences which deviate from the information that the search audience really came for. You might be surprised to see how much of the content we create is actually worthless for our users.

How to run a content removal SEO test

Scan for high-value pages and posts that may be hitting a wall with rankings and traffic performance.

1. Make sure to analyze the top keywords and SERPs so that you can get very clear on which primary and secondary search intents the users predominantly wish to see and read about.

2. Scan your page’s content with a dose of radical honesty to look for content that diverges from the information that you might want to see if you were a reader.

3. If your investigation turns up content and/or elements that don’t help the users, remove them and make sure to save the original control page files, just in case the experiment results are negative.

4. Launch the new page, re-index in Google Search Console, and benchmark the date.

5. Wait 2-6 weeks to measure the clicks before vs clicks after in GSC.

   • Again, keep in mind that the best time duration will vary based on the click volumes that each page receives.

6. After you’ve gathered enough data to make a directionally-sound judgment call about which URL performs better, do one of the following:

   • If the variation performed better: Congrats! Report the results to your team and keep the changes.

   • If the control performed better: Reinstate the original content and files. Then, re-index the page and continue monitoring performance to look for rebounding traffic.

Test in disguise #5: Featured snippets

This activity is one of my all-time favorites.

Treating our featured snippet answers like an SEO test is one of the ways that my teams have been able to accrue competitively high volumes of traffic and clicks in recent years.

When our team began to treat our featured snippets as experiments, rather than optimizations, we were able to learn much more about how to write better answers, and we were able to create processes for scaling up to higher quantities of featured snippet experiments. This meant more “at bats” for acquiring the answer box rankings, which meant faster traffic growth.

Much has already been covered about how to optimize for featured snippets. I’ll simply add a process for testing your featured snippet copy.

What’s more, featured snippet tests are one of the rare instances where statistical significance is undeniably attainable because the success measurement is binary. Either your experiment resulted in acquiring the featured snippet, or it did not. (Caveat: Some longer tail featured snippets may also be impacted by your experiments, but the impacts are generally negligible if you are targeting a strong primary keyword.)

How to run featured snippet tests

1. Identify opportunities where featured snippets are appearing in the SERPs, and where one of your pages ranks within the top 5 positions but is not occupying the answer box. (Tip: some of the current rank tracking solutions such as STAT make featured snippet identification much easier.)

2. Sort and prioritize featured snippet opportunities according to the opportunities that represent the highest value to your website. I recommend considering the traffic’s audience and conversion potential alongside the potential search volume.

3. Rewrite the portion of your article where the featured snippet is being targeted. This step is another one where the full context of featured snippet practices span outside the scope of this article, so you may want to check out resources like this if you’re not already familiar with featured snippet rewriting.

4. Periodically check in on your target answer box(s) and traffic over the next several weeks.

5. If at first you don’t succeed, test again! The great part about answer box testing is that you rarely need to revert to your control, and you can keep swinging until you hit the home run. In some cases, we’ve had to make as many as ten or more rewrite attempts before successfully capturing the featured snippet.

6. Repeat this process to run more experiments the remaining featured snippet opportunities that were identified in step one.

More SEO tests in disguise

This list is far from exhaustive.

As I alluded to earlier in the piece, I think that just about anything which requires measurement is a form of testing to some degree, regardless of whether or not this activity can be measured to true statistical significance.

If your team is investing any serious resources into activities like core web vitals, internal linking, E-A-T enhancements, site migrations, Schema markup, or UX changes, it’s usually wise to do a retrospective before and after analysis on whether or not that investment yielded a positive payoff.

Stacking up those experiments to figure out where your bets are paying off, versus where they are not paying off will start to steer your strategy and SEO knowledge toward more profitable outcomes.

Beginner's Guide to Google Business Profiles: What Are They, How To Use Them, and Why

Google Business Profile is both a free tool and a suite of interfaces that encompasses a dashboard, in-SERP editing, local business profiles, and a volunteer-driven support forum with this branding. Google Business Profiles and the associated Google Maps make up the core of Google’s free local search marketing options for eligible local businesses.

Today, we’re doing foundational learning! Share this simple, comprehensive article with incoming clients and team members to get off on the right foot with this important local business digital asset.

An introduction to the basics of Google Business Profiles

First, let’s get on the same page regarding what Google Business Profiles (formerly Google My Business) are and how to be part of it.

What is Google Business Profile?

Google Business Profile (GBP) is the branding of a multi-layered platform that enables you to submit information about local businesses, to manage interactive features like reviews and questions, and to publish a variety of media like photos, posts, and videos.

What is GBP eligibility?

Eligibility to be listed within the Google Business Profile setting is governed by the Guidelines for representing your business on Google, which is a living document that undergoes frequent changes. Before listing any business, you should consult the guidelines to avoid violations that can result in penalties or the removal of your listings.

You need a Google account to get started

You will need a Google account to use Google’s products and can create one here, if you don’t already have one. It’s best for each local business to have its own company account, instead of marketing agencies using their accounts to manage clients’ local business profiles.

When a local business you’re marketing has a large in-house marketing department or works with third party agencies, Google Business Profile permits you to add and remove listing owners and managers so that multiple people can be given a variety of permissions to contribute to listings management.

How to create and claim/verify a Google Business Profile

Once the business you’re marketing has a Google account and has determined that it’s eligible for Google Business Profile inclusion, you can create a single local business profile by starting here, using Google’s walkthrough wizard to get listed.

Fill out as many fields as possible in creating your profile. This guide will help you understand how best to fill out many of the fields and utilize many of the features. Once you’ve provided as much information as you can, you’ll be given options to verify your listing so that you can control and edit it going forward.

Alternatively, if you need to list 10+ locations of a business all at the same time, you can do a bulk upload via spreadsheet and then request bulk verification.

Where your Google Business Profile information can display

Once your data has been accepted into the GBP system, it will begin showing up in a variety of Google’s local search displays, including the mobile and desktop versions of:

Google Business Profiles

Your comprehensive Google Business Profile (GBP) will most typically appear when you search for a business by its brand name, often with a city name included in your search language (e.g. “Amy’s Drive Thru Corte Madera”). In some cases, GBPs will show for non-branded searches as well (e.g. “vegan burger near me”). This can happen if there is low competition for a search term, or if Google believes (rightly or wrongly) that a search phrase has the intent of finding a specific brand instead of a variety of results.

Google Business Profiles are extremely lengthy, but a truncated view looks something like this, located to the right of the organic search engine results:

Google Local Packs

Local packs are one of the chief displays Google uses to rank and present the local business information in their index. Local packs are shown any time Google believes a search phrase has a local intent (e.g. “best vegan burger near me”, “plant-based burger in corte madera”, “onion rings downtown”). The searcher does not have to include geographic terms in their phrase for Google to presume the intent is local.

Most typically these days, a local pack is made up of three business listings, with the option to click on a map or a “view all” button to see further listings. On occasion, local packs may feature fewer than three listings, and the types of information Google presents in them varies.

Local pack results look something like this on desktop search, generally located above the organic search results:

Google Local Finders

When a searcher clicks through on the map or the “view all” link in a local pack, they will be taken to the display commonly known as the Local Finder. Here, many listings can be displayed, typically paginated in groups of ten, and the searcher can zoom in and out on the map to see their options change.

The URL of this type of result begins google.com/search. Some industries, like hospitality have unique displays, but most local business categories will have a local finder display that looks like this, with the ranked list of results to the left and the map to the right:

Google Maps

Google Maps is the default display on Android mobile phones, and desktop users can also choose to search via this interface instead of through Google’s general search. You’ll notice a “maps” link at the top of Google’s desktop display, like this:

Searches made via Google Maps yield results that look rather similar to the local finder results, though there are some differences. It’s a distinct possibility that Google could, at some point, consolidate the user experience and have local packs default to Google Maps instead of the local finder.

The URL of these results begins google.com/maps instead of google.com/search and on desktop, Google’s ranked Maps’ display looks like this:

In-SERP vs. Dashboard GBP Management

Until quite recently, the majority of Google-based local business listings were managed via the interface formerly known as the Google Business Profile Manager Dashboard, which looks like this:

However, small businesses with only one or a few locations are now likely to see this prompt when logging into the dashboard:

If you choose the “stay here” button, hopefully Google will continue to let you manage your listings within the traditional dashboard, though this dynamic is in flux and could change at any time. If, instead, you choose the “manage on search” button, you will have to search Google for the phrase “my business” or the name of your business, and then manage all of your Google Business Profile functions within search, like this:

Google is currently testing a variety of in-SERP prompts like the following to guide business owners through the process of editing their listings in the absence of a convenient dashboard:

It’s my feeling that Google has made this unnecessary complicated, treating small businesses unequally by not giving them the same dedicated dashboard that larger brands enjoy. If you prefer having all your GBP-related assets in a very convenient and organized single dashboard, check out Moz Local.

GBP Insights

The GBP dashboard also hosts the analytical features called GBP Insights. It’s a very useful interface, though the titles and functions of some of its components can be opaque. Some of the data you’ll see in GBP Insights includes:

• How many impressions happened surrounding searches for your business name or location (called Direct), general searches that don’t specify your company by name but relate to what you offer (called Discovery), and searches relating to brands your business carries (called Branded).

• Customer actions, like website visits, phone calls, messaging, and requests for driving directions.

• Search terms people used that resulted in an impression of your business.

There are multiple other GBP Insights features, and I highly recommend this tutorial by Joy Hawkins for a next-level understanding of why reporting from this interface can be conflicting and confusing. There’s really important data in GBP Insights, but interpreting it properly deserves a post of its own and a bit of patience with some imperfections.

If you’ve lost your dashboard and are now managing your listing in-SERPs, you can still get to insights from the prompt within search that is labeled “promote”, and what you see will look something like this:

When things go wrong with Google Business Profile

When engaging in GBP marketing, you’re bound to encounter problems and find that all kinds of questions arise from your day-to-day work. Google relies heavily on volunteer support in their Google Business Profile Help Community Forum and you can post most issues there in hopes of a reply from the general public or from volunteer contributors titled Gold Product Experts.

In some cases, however, problems with your listings will necessitate speaking directly with Google or filling out forms. Download the free Local SEO Cheat Sheet for robust documentation of your various GBP support options.

How to use Google Business Profile as a digital marketing tool

Let’s gain a quick, no-frills understanding of how GBP can be used as one of your most important local marketing tools.

How to drive local business growth with Google’s local features

While each local business will need to take a nuanced approach to using Google Business Profile and Google Maps to market itself, most brands will maximize their growth potential on these platforms by following these seven basic steps:

1) Determine the business model (brick-and-mortar, service area business, home-based business, or hybrid). Need help? Try this guide.

2) Based on the business model, determine Google Business Profile eligibility and follow the attendant rules laid out in the Guidelines for representing your business on Google.

3) Before you create GBP profiles, be certain you are working from a canonical source of data that has been vetted by all relevant parties at the business you’re marketing. This means that you’ve checked and double-checked that the name, address, phone number, hours of operation, business categories and other data you have about the company you are listing is 100% accurate.

4) Create and claim a profile for each of the locations you’re marketing. Depending on the business model, you may also be eligible for additional listings for practitioners at the business or multiple departments at a location. Some models, like car dealerships, are even allowed multiple listings for the car makes they sell. Consult the guidelines. Provide as much high quality, accurate, and complete information as possible in creating your profiles.

5) Once your listings are live, it’s time to begin managing them on an ongoing basis. Management tasks will include:

• Analyzing chosen categories on an ongoing basis to be sure you’ve selected the best and most influential ones, and know of any new categories that appear over time for your industry.

• Uploading high quality photos that reflect inventory, services, seasonality, premises, and other features.

• Acquiring and responding to all reviews as a core component of your customer service policy.

• Committing to a Google Posts schedule, publishing micro-blog-style content on an ongoing basis to increase awareness about products, services, events, and news surrounding the locations you’re marketing.

• Populating Google Questions & Answers with company FAQs, providing simple replies to queries your staff receives all the time. Then, answer any incoming questions from the public on an ongoing basis.

• Adding video to your listings. Check out how even a brand on a budget can create a cool, free video pulled from features of the GBP listing.

• Commiting to keeping your basic information up-to-date, including any changes in contact info and hours, and adding special hours for holidays or other events and circumstances.

• Investigating and utilizing additional features that could be relevant to the model you’re marketing, like menus for goods and services, product listings, booking functionality, and so much more!

• Analyzing listing performance by reviewing Google Business Profile Insights in your dashboard, and using tactics like UTM tagging to track how the public is interacting with your listings.

Need help? Moz Local is Moz’s software that helps with ongoing management of your listings not just on Google, but across multiple local business platforms.

6) Ongoing education is key to maintaining awareness of Google rolling out new features, altering platforms, and adjusting how they weight different local ranking factors. Follow local SEO experts on social media, subscribe to local SEO newsletters, and tune in to professional and street level industry surveys to continuously evaluate which factors appear to be facilitating maximum visibility and growth.

7) In addition to managing your own local business profiles, you’ll need to learn to view them in the dynamic context of competitive local markets. You’ll have competitors for each search phrase for which you want to increase your visibility and your customers will see different pack, finder, and maps results based on their locations at the time of search. Don’t get stuck on the goal of being #1, but do learn to do basic local competitive audits so that you can identify patterns of how dominant competitors are winning.

In sum, providing Google with great and appropriate data at the outset, following up with ongoing management of all relevant GBP features, and making a commitment to ongoing local SEO education is the right recipe for creating a growth engine that’s a top asset for the local brands you market.

How to optimize Google Business Profile listings

This SEO forum FAQ is actually a bit tricky, because so many resources talk about GBP optimization without enough context. Let’s get a handle on this topic together.

Google uses calculations known as “algorithms” to determine the order in which they list businesses for public viewing. Local SEOs and local business owners are always working to better understand the secret ranking factors in Google’s local algorithm so that the locations they’re marketing can achieve maximum visibility in packs, finders, and maps.

Many local SEO experts feel that there are very few fields you can fill out in a Google Business Profile that actually have any impact on ranking. While most experts agree that it’s pretty evident the business name field, the primary chosen category, the linked website URL, and some aspects of reviews may be ranking factors, the Internet is full of confusing advice about “optimizing” service radii, business descriptions, and other features with no evidence that these elements influence rank.

My personal take is that this conversation about GBP optimization matters, but I prefer to think more holistically about the features working in concert to drive visibility, conversions, and growth, rather than speculating too much about how an individual feature may or may not impact rank.

Whether answering a GBP Q&A query delivers a direct lead, or writing a post moves a searcher further along the buyer journey, or choosing a different primary category boosts visibility for certain searches, or responding to a review to demonstrate empathy wins back an unhappy customer, you want it all. If it contributes to business growth, it matters.

Why Google Business Profile plays a major role in local search marketing strategy

As of mid-2020, Google’s global search engine market share was at 92.16%. While other search engines like Bing or Yahoo still have a role to play, their share is simply tiny, compared to Google’s. We could see a shift of this dynamic with the rumored development of an Apple search engine, but for now, Google has a near-monopoly on search.

Within Google’s massive share of search, a company representative stated in 2018 that 46% of queries have a local intent. It’s been estimated that Google processes 5.8 billion global daily queries. By my calculation, this would mean that roughly 2.7 billion searches are being done every day by people seeking nearby goods, services, and resources. It’s also good to know that, according to Google, searches with the intent of supporting local business increased 20,000% in 2020.

Local businesses seeking to capture the share they need of these queries to become visible in their geographic markets must know how to incorporate Google Business Profile marketing into their local SEO campaigns.

A definition of local search engine optimization (local SEO)

Local SEO is the practice of optimizing a business’s web presence for increased visibility in local and localized organic search engine results. It’s core to providing modern customer service, ensuring today’s businesses can be found and chosen on the internet. Small and local businesses make up the largest business sector in the United States, making local SEO the most prevalent form of SEO.

Local SEO and Google Business Profile marketing are not the same thing, but learning to utilize GBP as a tool and asset is key to driving local business growth, because of Google’s near monopoly.

A complete local SEO campaign will include management of the many components of the Google Business Profile profile, as well as managing listings on other location data and review platforms, social media publication, image and video production and distribution, and a strong focus on the organic and local optimization of the company website. Comprehensive local search marketing campaigns also encompass all the offline efforts a business makes to be found and chosen.

When trying to prioritize, it can help to think of the website as the #1 digital asset of most brands you’ll market, but that GBP marketing will be #2. And within the local search marketing framework, it’s the customer and their satisfaction that must be centered at every stage of on-and-offline promotion.

Focus on GBP but diversify beyond Google

Every aspect of marketing a brand contains plusses, minuses and pitfalls. Google Business Profile is no exception. Let’s categorize this scenario into four parts for a realistic take on the terrain.

1) The positive

The most positive aspect of GBP is that it meets our criteria as owners and marketers of helping local businesses get found and chosen. At the end of the day, this is the goal of nearly all marketing tactics, and Google’s huge market share makes their platforms a peerless place to compete for the attention of and selection by customers.

What Google has developed is a wonder of technology. With modest effort on your part, GBP lets you digitize a business so that it can be ever-present to communities, facilitate conversations with the public which generate loyalty and underpin everything from inventory development to quality control, and build the kind of online reputation that makes brands local household names in the offline world.

2) The negative

The most obvious negative aspects of GBP are that its very dominance has cut Google too much slack in letting issues like listing and review spam undermine results quality. Without a real competitor, Google hasn’t demonstrated the internal will to solve problems like these that have real-world impacts on local brands and communities.

Meanwhile, a dry-eyed appraisal of Google’s local strategy observes that the company is increasingly monetizing their results. For now, GBP profiles are free, but expanding programs like Local Service Ads point the way to a more costly local SEO future for small businesses on tight budgets

Finally, local brands and marketers (as well as Google’s own employees) are finding themselves increasingly confronted with ethical concerns surrounding Google that have made them the subject of company walkouts, public protests, major lawsuits, and government investigations. If you’re devoting your professional life to building diverse, inclusive local communities that cherish human rights, you may sometimes encounter a fundamental disconnect between your goals and Google’s.

3) The pitfall

Managing your Google-based assets takes time, but don’t let it take all of your time. Because local businesses owners are so busy and Google is so omnipresent, a pitfall has developed where it can appear that GBP is the only game in town.

The old adage about eggs in baskets comes into play every time Google has a frustrating bug, monetizes a formerly-free business category, or lets competitors and lead generators park their advertising in what you felt was your space. Sometimes, Google’s vision of local simply doesn’t match real-world realities, and something like a missing category or an undeveloped feature you need is standing in the way of fully communicating what your business offers.

The pitfall is that Google’s walls can be so high that the limits and limitations of their platforms can be mistaken as all there is to local search marketing.

4) The path to success

My article on how to feed, fight, and flip Google was one of the most-read here on the Moz blog in 2020. With nearly 14,000 unique page views, this message is one I am doubling down on in 2021:

• Feed Google everything they need to view the businesses you’re marketing as the most relevant answers to people in close proximity to brand locations so that the companies you promote become the prominent local resources in Google’s index.

• Fight spam in the communities you’re marketing to so that you’re weeding out fake and ineligible competitors and protecting neighbors from scams, and take principled stands on the issues that matter to you and your customers, building affinity with the public and a better future where you work and live.

• Flip the online scenario where Google controls so much local business fate into a one-on-one environment in which you have full control over creating customer experiences exceptional enough to win repeat business and WOM recommendations, outside the GBP loop. Turn every customer Google sends you into a keeper who comes directly to you — not Google — for multiple transactions.

GBP is vital, but there’s so much to see beyond it! Get listed on multiple platforms and deeply engage in your reviews across them. Add generous value to neighborhood sites Nextdoor, or on old school fora that nobody but locals use. Forge B2B alliances and join the Buy Local movement to become a local business advocate and community sponsor. Help a Reporter Out. Evaluate whether image, video, or podcasting media could boost your brand to local fame. Profoundly grow your email base. Be part of the home delivery revival, fill the hungry longing for bygone quality and expertise, or invest in your website like never before and make the leap into digital sales. The options and opportunities are enticing and there’s a right fit for every local brand.

Key takeaway: don’t get stuck in Google’s world — build your own with your customers from a place of openness to possibilities.

A glance at the future of Google Business Profile

By now, you’ve likely decided that investing time and resources into your GBP assets is a basic necessity to marketing a local business. But will your efforts pay off for a long time to come? Is GBP built to last, and where is Google heading with their vision of local?

Barring unforeseen circumstances, yes, Google Business Profile is here to stay, though it could be rebranded, as Google has often rebranded their local features in the past. Here are eight developments I believe we could see over the next half decade:

1. As mentioned above, Google could default local packs to Maps instead of the local finder, making their network a bit tidier. This is a good time to learn more about Google Maps, because some aspects of it are quite different.

2. Pay-to-play visibility will become increasingly prevalent in packs, organic, and Maps, including lead generation features and trust badges.

3. If Apple Maps manages to make Google feel anxious, they may determine to invest in better spam filters for both listings and reviews to defend the quality of their index.

4. Location-based image filters and search features will grow, so photograph your inventory.

5. Google will make further strides into local commerce by surfacing, and possibly even beginning to take commissions from, sales of real time inventory. The brands you market will need to decide whether to sell via Google, via their own company websites, or both.

6. Google could release a feature depicting the mapped delivery radii of brick-and-mortar brands. Home delivery is here to stay, and if it’s relevant to brands you market, now is the time to dive in.

7. Google has a limited time window to see if they can drive adoption of Google Messaging as a major brand-to-consumer communications platform. The next five years will be telling, in this regard, and brands you market should discuss whether they wish to invite Google into their conversations with customers.

8. Google could add public commenting on Google Posts to increase their interactivity and push brands into greater use of this feature. Nextdoor has this functionality on their posts and it’s a bit of a surprise that Google doesn’t yet.

What I’m not seeing on the near horizon is a real commitment to better one-on-one support for the local business owners whose data makes up Google’s vast and profitable local index. While the company has substantially increased the amount of automated communications it sends GBP listing owners, Google’s vision of local as an open-source, DIY free-for-all appears to continue to be where they’re at with this evolving venture.

Your job, then, is to be vigilant about both the best and worst aspects of the fascinating Google Business Profile platform, taking as much control as you can of how customers experience your brand in Google’s territory. This is no easy task, but with ongoing education, supporting tools, and a primary focus on serving the customer, your investment in Google Business Profile marketing can yield exceptional rewards!

Ready to continue your local SEO education? Read: The Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide.