Trends Want free local optimization services by one of the top 15 experts in the world?
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Gold Member Gives Back Sweepstakes
dbaPlatform Chief Product Officer Yan Gilbert has just been awarded Google Gold Product Expert status and we decided to put his expertise to work. Every quarter he will choose businesses to work with– free of charge– and document their meteoric rise to Google local domination. Businesses will be chosen at random based on a submission to the dbaPlatform Local Search Discussion Facebook Group.
Industries How many times have you heard this question?
“Why is it that when I Google myself, I never show up?”
The managers of the locations you optimize judge their local SEO reports in broad strokes. But local SEO is surprisingly fine-tuned.
Searching the same keyword phrase in Google from different locations will turn up varied results. In fact,
Management In order to know if your local business internet marketing efforts are sound, track your Google My Business profile. properly.
We say “properly” because if you leave it up to Google to give you complete and accurate data while looking at your Google My Business Insights information, you are seeing only part of the picture.
Why you should add extra UTM tracking to your Google My Business profile.
The best part of internet marketing is the ability to track data related to your campaigns. However, tracking your company’s Google My Business data is an often neglected part of local SEO marketing effort. Basing decisions on incomplete or incorrect data will waste precious resources that smaller companies do not have.
Most people rely on Google Insights data to help them understand how their listing is getting found, but this is not a good idea. The data that Google provides about your Knowledge Panel clicks and impressions is incomplete and just plain bad.
Trends Google Local results have become more sophisticated.
Google has collected more information about businesses while at the same time improving its algorithm to better understand searcher intent. This has led to a proliferation of different kinds of local results that can turn up in a search.
This difference in results impacts the number of customers that choose your business over a competitor. Below you will see examples of searches for a company named Kawartha Dairy, that are all very similar but bring up very different results, so keep your eye out.
Let’s take a look at one company and the various searches that are displayed depending on the search query.
Trends Google has told us that the main factors that determine local ranking are:
Relevance
Proximity
Prominence
See Google’s description of relevance, distance, and prominence:
Trends Local Falcon Now Available with dbaPlatform
dbaPlatform is excited to announce their acquisition of Local Falcon. This company developed the powerful Local Rank Tracker, designed specifically for Google Maps and used to help visualize local map rankings as a more accurate reflection of actual search use.
Management Google has been stepping it up in the local search game by providing many features to help enhance business listings and local search results. One of the most recent enhancements is the Google My Business Post feature. The Google My Business Post increases your directory real estate. It’s the online equivalent of installing a billboard atop your building. Businesses can now connect with customers quickly by offering a coupon, sharing information about an upcoming sale, or letting them know about new products.
Management The Low Hanging Fruit is Local Directory
If the business/es you manage is/are local, then Google My Business is a sure-fire way to boost your off-page SEO. Many businesses just aren’t aware of the power of this newer social platform/directory and haven’t taken the time to claim a profile and fill-it-in, never mind optimize it. And they definitely don’t know the secret squirrel tricks to getting a pro advantage. Even if you know tricks like geotagging, let’s put them in perspective.
Management Google My Business is everything.
Local search is the most influential tool in your marketing tool kit. After all, 1 in 3 online searches has a local intent and research by Bright Local consistently ranks local search as the #1 highest ROI (return on investment) strategy available to businesses today. Google’s own offering in local search, a.k.a. Google My Business, is undoubtedly the most powerful of all the available platforms with 70–90% of the search engine market share. Google My Business gives the center stage of the search results page to local businesses which allows small businesses to trump the organic search results. Plus — it’s easy and totally free! (If your time isn’t money.)
