What are some strategies/tactics that are working particularly well for you at the moment?
Andrew Shotland, LocalSEOGuide.com:
GMB Posts are one of the more interesting opportunities in local SEO these days. The control you have over the messaging allows for a lot of creativity. In particular, we are seeing traction in cases where branded searches are \”leaking\” clicks to other domains in the SERPs. GMB Posts are a great way to attract more engagement and clicks from potential customers who are already searching for your brand and may be in buying mode. With SEO, it\’s often the case that there\’s just as much opportunity to milk the keywords you already rank well for as there is in going after new keywords. We are also seeing a lot of improvement with multi-location brands where we are rewriting location pages to be more relevant. It doesn\’t matter if you have two locations or 2,000. This tactic can improve existing rankings as well as make it eligible to rank for additional queries.
Andy Kuiper, Andy Kuiper Internet Marketing:
Seeking a consistent flow of positive-sentiment reviews on your GMB page. BBB listings *surprising find* paid/unpaid doesn\’t seem to matter. Ensure as much completeness and engagement of the GMB page as possible.
Andy Monte, Directive Consulting:
Targeting specific, long-tail keywords that have a high amount of \”related keywords\” associated with them is a great tactic to make sure you show up in the SERP. If the keyword is long-tail and specific enough, ranking usually isn\’t too difficult (however, usually these keywords have a low search volume), but if you can find ones with a fair amount of \”related keywords\” – you can actually rank for most of those related keywords and get traffic from them as well, which usually more than makes up for the low search volume.
I remember targeting one keyword that had a monthly search volume of 30, but because there were over 200 \”related keywords,\” I was able to rank for all of them. After the first month of being published, that one page now generates over 2,000 organic users a month.
Ben Fisher, Steady Demand:
1. Convincing clients to have a physical location that is located in the city in which they want to rank for has worked out very well. I use the method of starring the current location on maps, then searching the city name in maps.google.com. It is very easy to see the city boundaries. Once a client moves (or adds a new location) to be within the boundaries we see an increase in calls and visibility.
2. Semantically rich content in GMB Posts and G+ content/engagement has proven to still be effective (editor’s note: G+ shutdown announced). The more you can do to teach Google about your business, the better off you are going to be. We have done case studies that show how these activities can influence ranking: Google Posts Impact Ranking [Case Study] and Local SEO Boost with Mike Blumenthal [Case Study].
3. Native reviews on GMB still have a high impact on ranking. Reviews (along with an owner’s response) show that consumers trust a business, and trust is a foundational factor in ranking.
4. Attacking spam is a great tactic. Not only does it help clean up Google Maps, but the effect on your client’s ranking is almost instantaneous. This does not work in every industry, but for lawyers and service-area-businesses like HVAC, it is highly effective since spam is so prevalent there. Location spam is pretty easy to detect and remove, but business name spam, not so much.
Blake Denman, RicketyRoo Inc.:
Local brand building: For roughly the last 18 months, we\’ve been shifting the conversation with clients from link building to local brand building. Instead of just focusing on the overall value of a link or link building strategy, we\’re finding ways of getting a local brand involved with the local community that will also earn links, social shares, and gets the brand in front of potential customers.
Reviews: We all know that reviews are critical to any local business. We\’ve found that different strategies work for different clients. Some clients do great with a third-party tool like GatherUp while others do much better with SMS review building. Incentivizing employees is also a tactic that works well in some industries. You can give a bonus to individuals if a review mentions their name or make it a bonus for the entire team
Brian Barwig, AttorneySync:
Local link building. Find local links that are relevant to the site you are building links for.
Brian Smith, Rio SEO:
We have had success in providing relevant real-time material that expands a brand\’s ability to connect with users beyond NAP. Items that we have focused on this past year include.
– Expanding content to include localized items like landmarks, historical buildings, and popular streets/highways.
– Monitoring and responding to reviews to help influence consumer journey in discovering local businesses.
– Publishing local events to engage consumers and expand content on local landing pages.
– Google Posts and it\’s ability to showcase promotions and increase local visibility beyond ranking.
Carrie Hill, Ignitor Digital Marketing, Inc.:
(Depending upon market and niche) Cleaning up GMB listings for competitors by reporting GMB listing spam, review spam, and editing listings that are keyword stuffing is pretty effective for us.
Aligning GMB Category, landing page content/optimization, and making sure addresses/phone numbers are consistent from GMB to all pages/locations on website.
It\’s really surprising how just the simplest things make a big difference.
Casey Meraz, Juris Digital:
Working in competitive legal niches where there is a lot of spam we tend to focus a lot of our efforts on link building and earning links to Google My Business landing page URLs. The strategy that has had the biggest impact is getting links from locally relevant and authoritative websites. The best links come from the same niche and domains serving the city our clients are in. Typically the strategies we focus most on are community driven events with promotion and outreach such as free cab ride programs on holidays which is a great PR and link building tactic when executed correctly.
There is a lot of spam and the problem is growing with Google My Business listings. Another competitive tactic is to constantly search for keywords your clients want to rank for. When you see spammy listings you need to report them right away and keep doing so every time you see them. When spammers are beating you or ranking for keywords they shouldn\’t you can really have a positive impact on local pack rankings just by reporting spam.
Colan Nielson, Sterling Sky:
Internal linking is still very effective for both local organic and local pack rankings. We have seen several cases where adding an internal link in the right place has boosted rankings almost immediately.
Conrad Saam, Mockingbird Marketing:
I\’ve been having a lot of success emphasizing Google reviews and removing superfluous content across sites.
Cori Graft, Seer Interactive:
Good, old-fashioned link building seems to have improved local pack performance even more this year than in recent memory, which supports the theory that Google continues to bring the local and traditional algorithms / ranking signals more closely together. What we\’re calling \”Behavioral\” signals in this survey also continue to help results — specifically, driving branded search interest. We\’ve seen a strong correlation between branded search activity and improved rankings in both pack and localized organic rankings.
Dan Leibson, Local SEO Guide:
Really we are focused on more or less the same stuff as always:
– Is Google properly crawling and indexing your site?
– Is your site relevant and authoritative for your vertical and geo?
– Do you have pages targeting the search queries you want to rank for?
– Do you have a competitively strong backlink profile?
– How does your Google My Business profile(s) look?
Depending on the answers, a technical SEO audit, content strategy/creation/marketing, or link building may be the best bet.
Dana DiTomaso, Kick Point:
Google Posts! We\’ve seen gains for clients in competitive niches after consistent posting. The posts don\’t have to link to their site, but it appears that they should be topical and posted consistently.
David Mihm, ThriveHive / Tidings:
In the search results I look at regularly, I continue to see reviews playing a larger and larger role. Much as citations became table stakes over the last couple of years, reviews now appear to be on their way to becoming table stakes as well. The local packs for mid-to-large metro areas, and even industries where ranking in the 3-pack used to be possible with just a handful of reviews or no reviews, now feature businesses with dozens of reviews at a minimum — many within the last few months. This speaks to the importance of a steady stream of feedback.
Whether the increased ranking is due to review volume, keywords in review content, or the increased clickthrough rate those gold stars yield, I doubt we\’ll ever know for sure. I just know that for most businesses, it\’s the area of local SEO I\’d invest the most time and effort into getting right — and done well, should also have a much more important flywheel effect of helping you build a better business, as the guys at GatherUp have been talking about for years.
David Wallace, Search Rank:
Besides foundational tactics such as having a verified and complete GMB listing with matching NAP across both GMB listings, website and local search data sources (e.g. Yelp, Foursquare, etc.), strategies and tactics that have been working well as of late include making sites secure (https), ensuring that they load quickly (pagespeed), making sure they are responsive for desktop, tablets & mobile, and continuing to develop quality content that is relevant to business and interesting/resourceful enough to generates social shares as well as attract inbound links.
Dev Basu, Powered By Search:
Because citations are largely commoditized at this point and are therefore table stakes, we\’ve been getting great mileage from focusing on local link building at scale by supporting events, publications, and associations that are the pillars of the local community.
Eric Rohrback, RedShift:
Local landing/location pages still work very well. If there are searches you\’re targeting that have local intent, creating a specific page for the office can help battle stronger domains (especially if they do not have any local/office pages).
Writing specific schema markup (JSON is easiest to manage), can give some separation if everything else is equal but won\’t be something that will move the site from page 2 to top of 1.
Site speed optimization and technical optimization have always worked, and will continue to be an important part of our job. Optimizing internal linking, page content, markup, and reducing problems like broken links or redirect chains each month has been a key part of our client work.
Greg Gifford, DealerOn:
For us, geo optimization is still killing it. Lots of Local SEOs say it\’s old school and doesn\’t matter, but for almost all of our clients, it still makes a massive difference. We concentrate more on geo-relevance of the entire base of content on the site, not just throwing location keywords into titles/h1s/etc. Local links are a huge game changer as well. But, for \”new\” things that are really killing it, we\’re having amazing success with Google Posts.
Gyi Tsakalakis, AttorneySync:
Meh, links. In other words, topically and locally relevant links continue to work particularly well. Not only do these links tend to improve visibility in both local packs and traditional results, they\’re also particularly effective for improving targeted traffic, leads, and customers. Find ways to earn links on the sites your local audience uses. These typically include local news, community, and blog sites.
Joel Headley, Patient Pop:
Reviews: soliciting reviews across a diverse number of sites while creating fresh content through reviews/testimonials on-site or via third-party publishers.
Joy Hawkins, Sterling Sky:
Using a review tool to ask every customer to leave you a review is a necessary element these days. We\’ve also had a ton of success consolidating content and improving the overall quality of content on SMB sites. Of course, eliminating spam is also a high-impact strategy we use a lot. We have also seen some huge wins from setting up better internal linking structures on sites.
Lisa Kolb, Acorn Internet Services, Inc.:
The travel/lodging industry is so different from other business types. We have been forced to place a high importance on Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) and Google Hotel Finder (GHF) participation for our clients\’ Local Pack and Maps listings. Without OTA and GHF availability, it is virtually impossible to rank in competitive areas for the 3-pack, and difficult to place higher than competitors in the top 10 results in the Maps listings.
Marcus Miller, Bowler Hat:
Building domain authority seems to be the area where we have most focus recently. I think this is in part due to a shift towards more traditional signals (in addition to foundational Local SEO signals) but also due to the maturity in the marketplace. Once everyone has their content, technical SEO, and local SEO dialed in, authority building is the next logical step.
Mary Bowling, ignitordigital.com:
1. Eliminating thin content by removing or combing pages.
2. Eliminating worthless content by looking at Google Analytics and Search Console for unvisited pages.
3. Beefing up internal links and CTAs on well-visited pages.
4. Cleaning up the technical messes caused by http/https, canonicalization, redirects, robots.txt/NoIndex, inaccurate sitemaps, broken links, etc.
5. Improving internal linking, especially on sites built with a very flat structure.
6. Improving and optimizing WordPress category pages.
Mike Blumenthal, GatherUp:
Well, I don\’t use them but a solid name spam is still very useful….
Miriam Ellis, Moz & Solas Web Design:
Full management of the GMB listing, including Post, Photos, Q&A, Reviews, etc. Unfortunately, I also see undetected/un-punished spam tactics working well for local businesses.
I would also predict that 2019 is the year in which we will all start exploring unstructured citations/linktations to their fullest. These plum mentions in high authority local/industry publications are rewarding!
And, despite Google\’s de-emphasis of free, organic website results over time, keep investing in topical content development. It feeds both your local and organic rankings.
Finally, though you will encounter articles saying, \”This factor isn\’t working anymore,\” don\’t overlook table stakes, like basic citation accuracy and monitoring. They may not be especially exciting, but they are your ante in. Once you have the basics in place, you can bring your more creative marketing ideas into play.
Nick Pierno, Whitespark:
– High volume of content on home/landing/service pages (with good page layout and design, so users aren\’t simply landing on a wall of text)
– Super prominent contact forms and phone numbers (seems obvious, but still so often overlooked)
– Working with businesses that actually have their keywords/locations in their DBA 😛
Phil Rozek, Local Visibility System, LLC:
On top of the pillars of link-earning, review-rustling, and getting half-decent copy onto clients’ sites, two things:
1. What I call “spam patrol”: submitting user edits on spammy competitors’ GMB listings so that they play by the same rules you do. If your edits (most likely, edits to the business name) get approved, competitors’ rankings won’t go down right away, and they probably won’t go down as much as you’d have liked, but you will have an effect over time. Thin the herd enough and you may see that newcomers and would-be spammers are deterred.
2. In-depth content on your “niche” services. Every year I think I’m about to see the end of ranking for those with relative ease. Every year I’m amazed at how few businesses got the memo. That’s an opportunity for you, especially given that Google seems to return local-pack results for more and weirder search terms every year. Sprinkle some of that niche content on your homepage or other “big” pages, and err on the side of internal linking to it generously.
Search Influence Team, Search Influence:
I have seen visibility improve when following Google\’s lead. In other words, they rolled out the Posts feature broadly and I have seen activity on the listings increase as a result. Furthermore, they have added business descriptions, attributes, and other features over the past year or so. It is overwhelmingly obvious advice to use the fields Google rolls out but it is also the most effective in my experience.
The addition of photos and videos seems to have a positive impact as well. With the metrics for photos included in the GMB insights it makes sense to expand the quality and quantity of photos used on listings.
One thing that is hard to quantify, at least in the way this survey is formatted, is that Google wants users and the owners of listings to be active. In other words, using the listings as a business hub, à la Yelp. By managing the listings more proactively (answering questions, utilizing posts, responding to reviews) you are sending some signals locally that you are engaging with customers as well as actively maintaining your listing information. I think this is as relevant as anything since Google is moving to keep us on Google services longer without a site click-through.
Tim Capper, Online Ownership:
In the travel market, in-depth city / attraction guides with integrated walking maps are working well – attracting visits and links.
For the health market (after medic) tracking down and properly attributing research, conference, and science papers has resulted in a significant increase in positions and traffic.
In the manufacturing sector, published tech specs and guides are still working well.
Andy Monte, Directive Consulting:
Ben Fisher, Steady Demand:
Blake Denman, RicketyRoo Inc.:
David Mihm, ThriveHive / Tidings:
Marcus Miller, Bowler Hat:
Comments about where you see Google headed in the future:
Adam Dorfman, Reputation.com:
Oh boy. No comment for this local survey but I just wrote a blog post for the Reputation.com website that should go up next week on Google\’s 20th anniversary announcement. In short, it\’s the same story of Google trying to control all information people require whether they are actively looking for it or not.
Andrew Shotland, LocalSEOGuide.com:
It\’s pretty clear that Google is going to continue to increase the time searchers spend within Google\’s systems at the expense of sending them to your site. The good news for you is that Google is really great at building incredibly complex systems that tend to break. So on the one hand, you\’ve got SkyNet seemingly going sentient. On the other hand, SkyNet seems less intent on destroying humanity than it is on replacing our client\’s GMB photos with cat pictures. In SEO, we are all John Connors.
Andy Kuiper, Andy Kuiper Internet Marketing:
I think Google is trying to get SMBs comfortable with using the GMB backend. I see a future where SMBs will be using a GMB app every day — for dealing with leads, handling appointments, responding to reviews and Q&As… and in the not-so-distant future, perhaps even handling financial transactions via the app.
Andy Monte, Directive Consulting:
Overall, Google seems to be adding more value and authority to factors that aren\’t in our control such as links, reviews, and user engagement metrics. I\’m sure this stems from cracking down on spammy SEO tactics, but nevertheless, this is going to affect the SERP and in turn, change the way that we approach clients with on-page tactics.
Aside from that, Ads and Featured Snippets are becoming more and more prevalent in the local search landscape, so as SEOs, we can no longer silo our efforts into \”SEO\” and \”PPC,\” but need to do a better job of creating a cohesive digital marketing strategy for our clients that leverage both the organic and paid channels to achieve our goals.
Ben Fisher, Steady Demand:
Becoming not as link-dependent:
Google has been transitioning away from links being a key determining factor since 2013 to a more semantic/trust/KP approach. Since they are a mobile-first company and moving more toward the single-answer solution, Google has been developing ranking factors that are not so link dependent. Semantic content, in-store visits/transactions, and third-party validation are much more important. Even the website I feel in time will become less important as it is one of the weaker trustworthy sources.
Emphasis on Google My Business:
I would not be surprised if we see the evolution of GMB accelerating. It is feasible that we will see more options come to businesses that continue to enhance the transactional layer that Google has become. Will we see more booking/appointment options come to service-based businesses? Tighter integrations into other Google products? Posts will continue to grow with new features. User-generated content like Q&A will become more frequent.
Greater focus on local:
Google\’s focus has always been answering a user’s question directly on the SERP. With the continued rise of mobile and even digital assistants (which is still wonky and young), we are moving closer to a place where there will be little-to-no friction for a user to find an answer and make a transaction. Local plays a major role in this. Get a ticket for movies, make an appointment, purchase a product for retail, book a table for restaurants, and get a quote for home services, see a local business inventory.
Blake Denman, RicketyRoo Inc.:
More features rolled out to Google My Business. More importance on the sentiment, reviewer authority, and words associated inside of reviews to influence ranking. Links are still going to be important, but businesses should focus on topical or locally relevant websites. Businesses should also focus more and more on structured data.
Brian Barwig, AttorneySync:
Trying to get away from links but that is going to be a while.
Brian Smith, Rio SEO:
Google continues to minimize the user\’s time spent on a brand\’s/company\’s website. In general, Google seeks to provide all aspects of what a consumer needs to know about a local business by adding an array of information into its Knowledge Panel for users to consume.
These moves are all great for user experience, but it presents new challenges to the modern day brand marketer on how you set yourself apart from the stable of competition that operates within your local market.
Personalization factors on a business\’s website become even more critical moving forward, as Google My Business becomes a new homepage for your business. Items like business events, appointment bookings, 1st party customer reviews, and ordering become more of a mainstay instead of leading edge within the business vertical you serve.
Carrie Hill, Ignitor Digital Marketing, Inc.:
I think Google is going to continue to push things they can monetize. LSAs will become more widespread and prominent, taking over the GMB like they do for hotels and a few other niches is going to happen in more and more categories.
Casey Meraz, Juris Digital:
I hope Google starts really putting more effort into combating spam in local results and specifically starts being more strict with businesses that continually keyword stuff.
I don\’t think there is any doubt that we will see more monetization of local results over the next few years.
Colan Nielson, Sterling Sky:
Google will continue to add features to the SERPs that will eventually make it pointless to leave Google to learn more about a business and contact a business via their website. In other words, business owners will need to invest a significant amount of effort optimizing their \”Google Homepage\” and less emphasis on their actual website.
Conrad Saam, Mockingbird Marketing:
If the trend continues, Google will keep making way for ads and push down organic results. Although this can only go so far, since Google must on some level appreciate the importance of balancing organic and paid search results to keep user trust.
Cori Graft, Seer Interactive:
Nearly all of Google\’s recent updates to Maps and GMB features are focused on getting people to interact more and communicate better with businesses through listings and Search. Q&A, updates to their Reviews guidelines, Messaging, User-Submitted Attributes, Posts, \”Popular Times\”… all of these features aim to accomplish the same general goal: to give consumers a more direct way to make informed decisions about where to visit through Search. I\’m not convinced that the algorithm is as advanced as we SEOs like to think it is with regard to actually processing these behavioral signals, but I believe that based on Google\’s recent feature releases, it will be soon enough.
At the end of the day, Google wants to help its users have the best possible experience. I believe businesses who take advantage of these opportunities to connect with customers, answer their questions, and truly build a connection will be rewarded in Search and IRL.
Dan Leibson, Local SEO Guide:
As Google held their 20th anniversary event, they made it clear that they are “all in” on the Knowledge Graph. More and more, Google wants to be able to provide the answer to questions. While that may not have the most direct impact on local businesses and traditional local search just yet, I\’m sure it will. Successful businesses can tailor their content strategy to how Google is thinking about search. For instance, if Google isn\’t showing local sites for the top-of-funnel informational searches, it might not be worth it to invest in that type of content to fuel your search traffic growth.
Dana DiTomaso, Kick Point:
More behavior signals, less focus on on-page optimization. GMB will become the entity for the business with the website a secondary, supplemental piece.
David Mihm, ThriveHive / Tidings:
I continue to see engagement as the driving factor of rankings moving forward, and entity authority as the concept that Google is trying to mirror in its rankings.
With more than 50% of all mobile searches not resulting in a website click-through (and a huge chunk of those being local searches) Google simply has to rely on signals outside of traditional websites and links to form the basis of an effective algorithm. It knows more and more about so many of us — the brands we search for, whose newsletters we read, videos we watch on YouTube, whose locations we call for reservations, and visit in person with our location-enabled phones.
Whether or not those brands are being rewarded on an individual search basis via personalization (beyond the obvious proximity factor) I\’m not so sure. But in aggregate, if I\’m Google, I\’m looking for any signal that indicates the popularity of a given entity — combined with content semantically related to what someone is searching for — and shooting the entities that win those signals up to the top of my SERP.
David Wallace, Search Rank:
Unfortunately, the one thing I see Google continuing to try to do is to keep users on their site by providing searchers answers to their queries without ever leaving Google. This is done of course by Google scraping content from other websites and displaying search results so that the searcher does not need to visit the website the content is pulled from. This presents a continuous challenge for online marketers who are looking for ways to drive traffic to their websites.
Dev Basu, Powered By Search:
Paid Search taking up more virtual real estate than ever before, it\’s high time for brands to integrate their Organic and Paid Local Search. A lot of our clients are coming to us for a holistic approach to end-to-end enterprise local search. One of the areas we\’re focusing on is doing all we can to speed up the customer experience on mobile.
Eric Rohrback, RedShift:
Better understanding of our content and context of our content (see: Google Duplex).
Greg Gifford, DealerOn:
I think we\’re going to see more of the \”GMB is your new home page\” direction. I think Google is going to put more and more value on showing as much as they can in the Knowledge Panel and SERP to keep users on Google. I think many small local businesses will end up with more conversions from their KP than from their website.
Gyi Tsakalakis, AttorneySync:
Where I hope Google is headed: The most basic spam is less and less effective (particularly keyword-stuffing the business name field).
Where I see Google headed: Ads. More ads in local packs. More types of local / SMB ad types. I\’m with Blumenthal and Mihm — Google wants to be the transaction layer of the web.
Joel Headley, Patient Pop:
Google wants the online marketing experience to be end-to-end performed on their platform where awareness, discovery, and ultimately conversion can all happen via Google products.
Joy Hawkins, Sterling Sky:
I expect Google to continue launching more features for Google Posts and would predict that they will start playing more into ranking in the future than they do currently. I also expect that 3-pack ads are here to stay and would be surprised if Google doesn\’t continue to launch Local Services ads in more countries and industries in 2019.
Lisa Kolb, Acorn Internet Services, Inc.:
Google continues to institute options, products and services that over time have incrementally reduced the ability for an individual lodging property to sell rooms directly via Google’s Search products. For years, we have seen Google continue to make efforts to keep users on their platform for longer and longer periods of time. The longer a potential guest stays on a Google-controlled display, the more likely they will book with a Google affiliate or Google Hotel Ads directly, and in return, Google will receive a fee from that third party. Google wants to be the end-all for any online sales.
Marcus Miller, Bowler Hat:
In the small business space, my belief is that Google will continue to try and give users what they need without having to move on to a business’s website: information, messaging, and contact details. This works well for users in a hurry and ensures Google keeps the user in their ecosystem as long as possible.
Mary Bowling, ignitordigital.com:
Google has figured out many ways to algorithmically reward what it understands to be the best businesses of their type within any given market area. Going forward, the most powerful ranking strategy will be to actually become one of those best businesses and to ensure Google knows about it.
Mike Blumenthal, GatherUp:
From where I sit, with the advent of mobile first indexing, Google is moving more and more into gathering information for their Knowledge Graph. Local is the leading edge of that effort. The KG is considerably more flexible and looks further afield for information about a local entity. More and more results will include various aspect of the Knowledge Graph and the differences between local ranking and organic ranking will increase.
Miriam Ellis, Moz & Solas Web Design:
Savvy local businesses will stop viewing Google as their benefactor and rightly view them as their top competitor. It\’s a competitor that sometimes does you favors (sends you phone calls, leads, traffic, makes your good reputation highly visible to the consumer public, etc.), but it\’s also a competitor that wants to position itself between your business and every dollar it earns, while often failing to meet basic standards of protecting your brand from illegal/irresponsible damage. What other entity, apart from Amazon, has this economic power?
So, yes, you have to play in Google\’s ballpark, but anything you can do to diversify beyond the game this matchless competitor is playing is a win for your business. Focus on your real-world relationships as a community resource and benefactor. Build reputation via WOMM. Build that email list. Join an independent local business alliance and strengthen your local economy. Investigate co-ops, unions, and other opportunities that actually have your community\’s welfare at heart. Participate as much as possible at a local level, off the web, while you continue to devote the necessary resources to digital marketing. You can have it both ways, and that\’s good news!
Nick Pierno, Whitespark:
Obviously Google continues to increasingly satisfy users\’ needs without their needing to leave the SERPs. I expect this effort to continue. They\’ll also continue trying to make Google Ads more accessible (and appealing) for small/local businesses.
Nyagoslav Zhekov, Whitespark:
Google seems to be headed (and has been headed for a while now) towards monetization of as much search results real estate as possible. The latest algorithm update, for instance, appears to have made videos (especially videos on YouTube) a lot more prominent in local search results, and probably in general organic search results, too. The direct implication is that Google gets one more of its properties very high and very visibly in the organic (non-paid) search results.
Phil Rozek, Local Visibility System, LLC:
Search Influence Team, Search Influence:
As I mentioned above, since selling ads is their game, it follows that they want to keep you on the page as long as possible. The impacts felt on GMB are all actions to aim for this goal, in my opinion.
Tim Capper, Online Ownership:
Hyperlocal, trying to keep users within Google.
This content was originally published here.