Transcript of What Local Businesses Need to Know About the State of Local SEO

Transcript of What Local Businesses Need to Know About the State of Local SEO

Neil Crist: We surveyed I think roughly around 1,800 marketers, local marketers. Neil Crist: No, actually I think I’m saying the inverse, the point I was trying to make which is, what we’re seeing is this case where because local is a personalization aspect of any search regardless of device that you’re on, we’re seeing that personalization aspect taking part in determining what shows up in the search engine result pages, regardless if it’s a local search or not. John Jantsch: Let’s talk about- Neil Crist: Yeah. Yet it still seems that it doesn’t matter how many reviews you have or how good you are, all the social signals in the back links, proximity is still such a big factor that you might not have much range. I would always say with any local business, both as part of Moz and as a colleague of folks that own local businesses, I would say without question that you should make sure that your details, your profile is well appointed on Google My Business. I’m starting to see knowledge panels show up for local businesses for organic searches. John Jantsch: It’s interesting though, because back to an earlier point, a lot of times that knowledge panel will say people also look for your five competitors listed right here. Neil Crist: Within local, we know that link building is important, right? John Jantsch: Neil, where can people find out more? John Jantsch: Well, Neil, thanks for taking the time.

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Transcript

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John Jantsch: Perhaps one of the hottest things in marketing today is local SEO. In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, we’re going to visit with Neil Crist. He’s the Head of Product and Engineering at Moz, probably knows more about local SEO and the industry insights around SEO than most people.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Neil Crist. He is the Head of Product and Engineering at Moz. We’re going to talk about their annual State of Local SEO, industry insights for a successful 2019. We’re going to be all over the place with local SEO and you guys know how I love to talk about that. Neil, thanks for joining me.

Neil Crist: Thanks John for having me.

John Jantsch: I said this was an annual survey and I think it is, isn’t it? Is this something you do or have done for a number of years?

Neil Crist: You know, we’ve done a number of studies on annual basis. We’ve done local ranking factors, local SEO predictions, et cetera. This is somewhat of a new one in that we decided we wanted to look at the local landscape from a marketing perspective and get points of view on how the local landscape is changing from both search and then more broadly marketing as well.

John Jantsch: Who did you survey then? Just to get a baseline on some of the results we’re going to talk about.

Neil Crist: We surveyed I think roughly around 1,800 marketers, local marketers. These are SMB marketers. There’s some embedded within enterprises but mostly skewed toward SMB.

John Jantsch: Yeah. I know it’s about a third were called themselves small business focused agencies, which is really in our sweet spot for a lot of listeners. These were really the insights from them and being one of them, I’m going to say, that doesn’t mean they’re right.

Neil Crist: That’s good point.

John Jantsch: For context, let’s just start with, because you mentioned the ranking factors. Right now today, and I have to emphasize that today because it might change tomorrow, what are the most important ranking factors for small business as far as Moz has discovered?

Neil Crist: Well, in terms of local specifically. There are number of things that I would touch on about that. I think if I were to take one step back from it, I think to connect it to why we did this study, it really was about this notion that local continues to change in a pretty dramatic way in terms of local search. Part of our work that we’ve been doing at Moz is really diving into an understanding the increasing role that local is playing not just in local search but in every type of search. Right? Local is becoming a core ranking factor regardless of if it’s a local business or not. In our minds, part of this study was really to get inside the heads of marketers to understand do they understand the change in landscape? Do they understand the complexity? By and large, what we found is they understand the complexity, but in terms of double clicking down into the details, they have trouble prioritizing across the 15 plus tactics they could employ to impact local search.

John Jantsch: Let me clarify something. Are you suggesting then that if I’m a national business and I don’t, maybe I don’t even have an office necessarily like I’m a consultant or something, it doesn’t really matter where I work? Are you suggesting that good solid local ranking factors that happen to be with where I am are going to help me rank nationally?

Neil Crist: No, actually I think I’m saying the inverse, the point I was trying to make which is, what we’re seeing is this case where because local is a personalization aspect of any search regardless of device that you’re on, we’re seeing that personalization aspect taking part in determining what shows up in the search engine result pages, regardless if it’s a local search or not. What I mean by that is we have cases today where we have clients, large national brands that have local locations and they’re competing with non local results for their products and their services. Even though we have brands that aren’t local or online market places that aren’t local, they are actively competing in that local search use case. The lines are blurred. Then you enter in a local marketer who now is trying to compete in local but then also has national brands and then also has even non local brands competing for space. It becomes a very active landscape.

John Jantsch: Well, and let’s not forget to throw in the aggregators that are out there doing the 10 best blah, blah, blah in their city. I mean, they’re essentially national lead aggregators and they’re messing up the local results. It seems like Google right now likes them.

Neil Crist: That’s right. I think local data has been a very messy landscape for quite some time. I do think that Google is making good moves towards trying to find sources of truth that it can rely on, which is I think in the longterm going to help in local search. Today that’s not the case, but we’re at least seeing movements in that direction.

John Jantsch: Well, I think ironically they were part of the problem.

Neil Crist: Yes.

John Jantsch: Going from Places to Google Plus to whatever it is, but I think they finally landed, it seems like that. Doesn’t it? With Google My Business, they seem serious this time.

Neil Crist: Yeah, I agree with you. Google My Business I think is a confluence of a couple things. One is with local searches being so close to the intent to purchase, I think Google has really gotten a handle on the monetization opportunities that exist in that local search use case. Right. Also, I think there’s a secondary effort for Google to maintain a really positive experience for searchers that are searching in the local context. Some of it’s having effects that local marketers might not like. Right? One example of that would be you search for a particular good or service and you actually find a business but you never do visit their website, but you actually may end up clicking the call. You may actually end up clicking to navigate and become a customer of that local business, but there won’t be any attribution to the website, right? Those traditional metrics get thrown sideways but when you look at the experience that Google is trying to promote, they’re trying to create a consistent ability for a person searching to find what they’re looking for and take action because it’s so close to that transaction.

John Jantsch: That seems awfully generous. I think what they’re trying to do is control the transaction itself. You look at local search ads and somebody can actually be all the way to a truck coming to their house and not even know who … I mean, they’ll know who they’re working with, but that the entire transaction has gone through Google.

Neil Crist: Without question. I think I was taking the customer experience first point of view, which is an argument, but you’re right. The disintermediation potential there in what’s happening today in certain verticals is absolutely a byproduct. I think for local marketers, I think one important thing to do is understand depending on the vertical that they play in and the geography, right? Because those have a factor as well. Understanding the dynamics of local search, even to the point where I would say, become a customer and search for your goods and services on different devices. Ask questions on Google, look for topics surrounding the area that you work in and that you serve and really start to understand what is showing up in search engine results, and what should I understand, what kind of contents popping up? Are there featured snippets that show up that I should be aware of as a local marketer? Those sort of things.

John Jantsch: Then do repeat the entire process in incognito mode.

Neil Crist: Exactly, incognito mode, even employ friends because we see personalization creating lots of variability in what that search result looks like.

John Jantsch: Let’s talk about-

Neil Crist: Yeah. Go ahead.

John Jantsch: I was going to say, I want to jump to proximity. In today’s world, especially so many people on a mobile device searching for stuff and the maps listing basically takes over the entire screen, for certain types of home service businesses that maps listing has become live or die, I think in some cases. Yet it still seems that it doesn’t matter how many reviews you have or how good you are, all the social signals in the back links, proximity is still such a big factor that you might not have much range.

Neil Crist: Right. Definitely for certain types of searches, proximity wins when it’s tight, when it’s clearly a local search signal. I would say though, the types of content you’re referring to like reviews that there’s some new content types on Google My Business like question and answers and that type of content is playing a factor. There have been some test done within the local search community that’s starting to prove out that….

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