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7 Ways To Improve Local SEO & Attract New Business

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7 Ways To Improve Local SEO & Attract New Business

There is a big difference between the way standard organic SEO works and the way we should approach Local SEO.

Not only is searcher intent likely different, the algorithms Google uses to show the map pack differs from the main organic algorithms.

In this article, I’ll be taking you through the ways you can win new customers and improve your visibility through local SEO.

Top Ways To Improve Your Local SEO

1. Keep An Eye On Your Competitors’ Google Business Profile Q&As

Google Business Profile (GBP) has a great function that can do wonders for growing new business – the questions and answers feature.

If you use it well for your own organization, it can help convert customers who are otherwise on the fence.

But don’t stop there. Spend time researching your competitors’ Q&As, too. See what your potential customers are asking others in your industry.

How GBP Q&A Works

On your Google Business Profile, you may notice an “Ask a Question” button. Once clicked, users are taken through to a screen that allows them to submit a question.

Screenshot from Google Business Profile, September 2022

This next bit is key. The question does not get submitted to the owner of the profile. It gets submitted to the profile. That means it is visible to anyone who sees a Google Business Profile listing.

Once a question has been posted to your competitors’ Google Business Profile listing, you will be able to see it.

And once the question is answered, that information – and the engagement – is there for all in the future to see.

How Does This Help Build New Business?

These questions are a great way to encourage new business from local searchers. Questions are likely to be asked by people who have never visited that business before but are in your target market.

They are already engaging with the brand but need a bit more information before they commit to a visit.

For Your Own Listing

On your own GBP, you can use this opportunity to converse with a potential local consumer who is far down the conversion funnel.

If they are at the stage where they have found you and are considering you enough to ask some questions, a thoughtful response may be all it takes to see them walk through your doors.

On A Competitor’s Listing

Look at what questions your competitors’ customers and potential customers are asking. Use this to better fill out the information on your own profile and website.

If you are noticing a lot of questions being asked about the availability of gluten-free pizza from other pizza restaurants in your area, for example, you want to make sure you highlight your gluten-free products on your site and listing.

This type of research can keep you one step ahead of local competitors, especially if the questions they have been asked are slightly negative in tone.

Consider this question: “Do you still play loud music?”

If a potential restaurant-goer sees that question asked of another business, it immediately makes them consider the environment they will be eating their meal in.

It may make them wonder if they will really be able to enjoy the catch-up with their friends over a meal as they have planned.

Answer the questions being asked of your competitors on your own website and GBP before anyone asks. State in your description that customers will enjoy a meal accompanied by relaxing, ambient music.

This can put you at a significant advantage over your competitors for winning new business in your geography.

When you proactively answer a potential customer’s question before they even have to ask it, you demonstrate that you understand their needs and wants.

2. Tweak A Google Product Listing To Get More Exposure

Google allows businesses with GBP to upload details of the products they offer. This can be viewed by potential customers on both mobile and desktop search results.

The listings appear in the GBP in a carousel format on Maps and in both a carousel and under the Products tab in Search.

Both formats allow users to click on the product cards for more detail, to call, or visit the website.

How GBP Product Listings Work

Uploading your products to a Google Business Profile has gotten simpler. Google has released a new way of doing this called “Pointy.” Pointy is a device that is plugged in between the barcode scanner and the point-of-sale device. As products are scanned in, Pointy adds them to Google.

This is a quick way of uploading your product inventory to your Google Business Profile. There are restrictions around this, however, as Pointy is only available in some countries and also isn’t suitable for products without barcodes (bunches of flowers, for instance).

It is still possible to upload products manually. Simply sign in to your profile and click Edit Profile > Products > Add Product.

How Does This Help Build New Business?

You may be looking to showcase some products over others for a variety of reasons. You may have a surplus of stock in one of your locations, for example.

Bringing that stock to the forefront of that location’s GBP listing will help alert local customers to it. It will allow you to target specific products more to relevant audiences, dependent on their location.

For instance, seasonal products may be better served first. Perhaps the geographic location of your car repair shop is set for an unseasonal snow flurry. Edit your snow tire listings to bring them to the beginning of the carousel.

This could enhance the visibility of your product at just the right time for a new customer in your target location to see them.

3. Use Google’s Business Messages While You Can

Google Business Profile can include functionality that allows businesses to correspond with customers straight from the SERPs.

When activated, GBP will display a Message button that users can click on to start direct messaging with the business.

How GBP Business Messages Work

This functionality has existed since 2017 in Google Business Profile and since 2018 in Google Maps. It has only recently made it onto the desktop, however.

If you are an owner of a GBP, you should see the option in your desktop dashboard to Turn on messaging under the Messages tab.

Google My Business Turn on messaging option.

You can then set items like an initial auto-responder to be sent out when a visitor first messages you are using this service.

To make sure the service is a timely one, Google recommends you reply to all messages within 24 hours.

If you don’t, Google may deactivate the messaging service on your account. Your response times can also show in Google Search and Maps.

Google may display ‘Usually responds in a few minutes,’ ‘Usually responds in a few hours,’ ‘Usually responds in a day,’ or ‘Usually responds in a few days,’ depending on your average reply time.

How Does This Help Build New Business?

Not everyone has the time (or inclination) to call up a business they have yet to engage with. Allowing potential local customers to message you straight from your GBP is an excellent way of streamlining conversations with them.

If you respond quickly, your chances of that potential customer converting are greatly increased.

This is of particular use to local businesses that perhaps don’t use centralized call centers or messaging. It can be another touch point that shows the personalization of the business based on the location that the consumer is in.

Consider the offers, services, and tone of voice that might be most appropriate to your customers in that particular geography. This is your opportunity to highlight again how well you know your customers.

Make use of the local name for the area your business is in. Talk about the specific events and charities you support in the area.

Any additional indication that your business serves the local population specifically can help to reinforce your relevance to the potential customer who has contacted you.

Now that the functionality is available in such a wide range of places on the web, it would be a wasted opportunity not to engage with your potential customers in this way.

4. Update Your GBP With All Relevant Newly Available Attributes

Google keeps updating the features available through its Google Business Profile property. Make sure you keep your listing fully populated with the relevant attributes as they become available.

How Do New Attributes Work

Google frequently adds functionality to Google Business Profile that your business might be eligible to use. Not every new feature is available to all types of businesses, however.

Whether you can access new updates depends on what category is set as your primary in GBP.

To keep up to date with what new features are becoming available and who is eligible for them, visit Google’s GBP announcements page.

How Does This Help Build New Business?

With any new change to Google Business Profile, early adoption will put you ahead of the pack. Although these attributes will not necessarily affect your rankings in the map pack, they can make your business more attractive to prospective local customers.

For instance, attributes can include details of the business’s ownership. For example, it’s possible to include attributes like “women-owned” and “black-owned” to your Business profile.

Google also introduced the option to denote a business’s support for the LGBTQ+ community through “LGBTQ+ friendly” attributes.

A business showing that it is inclusive and supportive of minority groups can help members of those groups to feel welcomed. For some people, knowing they will be welcomed at a business can be the difference between them visiting there instead of a competitor whose support isn’t guaranteed.

LGBTQ+ Support AttributeScreenshot from Google Business Profile, September 2022

5. Join Local Marketplaces And Forums

The key to marketing your local business well is understanding what your audience is looking for. A great way of understanding your target market is by spending time where they are.

This includes online.

Make sure you register your business in local directories and forums. This is not so much for the traditional citation benefit. It’s so you can be amongst your prospective customers, hearing what they are talking about.

How Local Marketplaces & Forums Work

Online Marketplaces

Look on platforms like Facebook for marketplaces relevant to your location and products. You don’t necessarily need to be engaging with the audience to learn more about who they are and what they respond to.

For instance, if you sell locally created craft products in your store, you can get a feel for how much your audience is willing to pay for products by seeing what similar items are being sold for in your town’s Facebook Marketplace.

By watching what your local audience is saying about prices, quality, shipping, and sourcing of products, you can begin to understand more about your audience’s preferences.

Forums

If you are a local pizza restaurant, you would do well to join Reddit subreddits for your city and read the threads that talk about restaurants in your area.

What is your local audience saying about your competition? Are they sick of pizza restaurants and really want someone to bring something new to the area?

Perhaps they are enthusiastic about local independent shops and want to support them more.

How Does This Help Build New Business?

This kind of information can help you to tailor your search marketing strategy, tone of voice, and more.

Go to places where your target audience members are talking freely about your local area. Find out what they want from their local businesses.

If you are feeling brave, you can even interact with your audience on these platforms. This has to be done sensitively and authentically.

Most people don’t want to be mined for information without their consent. Be open and honest when reaching out for feedback on these sites.

The more you can watch and learn from your audience, the more likely you are to be able to offer products and services they will respond well to.

6. Don’t Neglect Bing, DuckDuckGo, And Others

Google is not the only search engine you need to be concerned with. There are others, too, that might be the first port of call for users looking for information on local businesses.

How Other Search Engines Work

You may see the vast majority of the organic traffic going to your site coming from Google. Don’t forget that you might not be tracking all of the ways customers discover you through search.

Your profile showing in the SERPs might not generate a click. As a result, it will not show up in your web analytics program.

So, unless you are measuring impressions across different search engines, you will not know that your business has been seen on the likes of Bing or DuckDuckGo.

DuckDuckGo’s maps are powered by Apple Maps. Therefore, if you want your business to appear in the DuckDuckGo local map pack, you will need to have your business set up with an Apple Maps Connect profile.

Similarly, Bing uses Bing Places to power their local map functionality. Setting up and optimizing a Google Business Profile listing will not help you with increasing organic visibility on Bing.

We are seeing an increase in the popularity of other search engines over time, and for some locations, Google is not the primary search engine used.

If you have physical stores or business locations outside of the U.S., you should look at which search engines are also popular in those regions.

Make sure you utilize the local map functionality of these other search engines.

How Does This Help Build New Business?

Yet again, being where your competitors are not will put you in good stead.

If your competitors are not appearing in the Apple Maps results in DuckDuckGo, you are going to be far more likely to win the business of local searchers using that platform.

7. Keep An Eye On Your Reputation

You may be keeping a close eye on the reviews left on sites like TripAdvisor. You even check your own Google Business Profile listing regularly.

But are you keeping on top of some of the other places in the SERPs which might be giving potential customers an outsider’s view of your business?

How Reputation Monitoring Works

Top and middle-of-the-funnel local search queries, such as [car mechanic telford], can bring back a variety of features in the SERPs.

Prominently Featured Review And Directory Sites

Take a look at this SERP result:

Prominently Featured Review And Directory SitesScreenshot from search for [car mechanic telford], Google, September 2022

The top carousel lists large directories, social media sites, and niche directories. This gives potential customers access to information about your company – and potentially even reviews – on sites you may not even be checking.

Aside from the inaccurate data about your company that these sites may contain, what have customers, former employees, or even competitors said about you?

Given that links to these sites appear as the first feature in the Google SERPs for this query, it would stand to reason they may get a lot of visibility from your potential customers.

People Also Ask

If customers are in the process of narrowing down their choice of business, they might start searching for specific information about those businesses. That can often trigger a “People Also Ask” feature to appear.

When searching for [is (name of a mechanic) in Telford any good], the following PAA box appeared, talking specifically about that brand.

PAA for car mechanic brand.Screenshot from Googe search, September 2022

That first “People Also Ask” question is, “why is [brand] so expensive?” That does not inspire much confidence in the value for money of this particular mechanic.

Although there is not much you can do to control what questions appear in the “People Also Ask” section, it is important to try to influence the perception of those who may click on this question.

Write a page addressing this question and try to get it ranking. That way, when someone interested in your local business clicks on this question, they at least will see your response around “the quality service,” “not compromising by using cheap parts,” and “highly-skilled technicians who you pay well for their expertise.”

How Does This Help Build New Business?

It is crucial to remember that what a potential customer sees about you may not just be the information you are writing on your website or Google Business Profile listings.

It might not even be the reviews left on sites you are closely monitoring and responding to.

A potential customer will be influenced heavily by others’ opinions and experiences of your business. Local businesses tend to attract a lot of reviews because they are promoted by sites that encourage them to be left.

A negative perception of your business will likely be the difference between you winning or losing a new customer.

Always monitor the SERPs around your core lead-generating search terms. Identify where negative perceptions of your business could be formed.

Conclusion

There are many aspects of SEO that you need to consider if you want your business to do well with your local audience.

How your website appears for searches with local intent in Google Maps and the standard SERPs can make or break your business.

If you want your brick-and-mortar business to succeed online, make sure you develop a robust local SEO strategy.

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Should You Invest In Twitter Blue Or Meta Verified?

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Should You Invest In Twitter Blue Or Meta Verified?

Twitter plans to end its legacy verified program at the end of this month. To continue having a verified blue checkmark, you must subscribe to Twitter Blue, now available globally.

You can check any blue checkmark on Twitter to see if it is a Twitter Blue or legacy verified checkmark by clicking or tapping it.

Screenshot from Twitter, March 2023

Twitter Blue Benefits And Eligibility

Eligibility requirements for a verified blue checkmark include having a confirmed phone number, an account older than 90 days, and no changes to your name, username, or profile picture within 30 days. Accounts with a verified blue checkmark cannot engage in misleading or deceptive practices, such as impersonating someone else or using fake identities.

The premium subscription plan offers Twitter users several exclusive features, including the following.

  • A verified blue checkmark.
  • The ability to post longer Tweets and longer videos.
  • The chance to undo a Tweet before it’s sent.
  • The chance to edit some Tweets within the first 30 minutes.
  • A feed of Top Articles shared by those you follow and the people they follow.
  • Account security with two-factor authentication via SMS or authentication apps.
  • Increased visibility when you reply to other users’ Tweets.

Pricing varies based on your country and device. In the United States, it is $8 – $11 monthly.

Twitter also offers distinct profile labels for organizations (a gold checkmark), government officials (a gray checkmark), and other account types.

Meta Verified Benefits And Eligibility

Meta is also rolling out a paid subscription bundle, Meta Verified, that includes verification of Facebook and Instagram profiles.

Eligibility requirements on Facebook and Instagram include having an active profile with your real name and profile photo matching your government-issued ID.

Two-factor authentication must be used to secure your account, and your account must always adhere to the Terms of Service and Community Guidelines for each network.

The paid subscription offers Facebook and Instagram users several exclusive features, including the following.

  • A verified checkmark that lets your audience know you are who you say you are.
  • Exclusive stickers to use on Facebook and Instagram.
  • 100 stars per month to support your favorite Facebook creators.
  • Help from a real person when you experience issues with your account.

Pricing varies based on the device you sign up on and is limited to select users over 18 years old in the U.S., New Zealand, and Australia. It is $11.99 – $14.99 monthly.

The Downsides To Paid Verification

While it offers people who never had the chance to be verified in the past the option to pay for the blue checkmark, paid verification is controversial for several reasons.

For starters, many Twitter Blue users complain that they haven’t noticed an increase in engagement since paying for the subscription and feel they are now paying to be ignored.

Another major concern is the lack of distinction between notable public figures and people who have paid for the checkmark. Previously, accounts had to belong to prominently recognized individuals or brands based on news coverage, industry references, and audience size. Now, notable accounts will have to pay for verification with everyone else.

This new false “notability” could allow bad actors to spread misinformation and scam people based on the account’s status as a verified profile. Some agencies have released consumer alerts in response to growing reports of scams committed by Twitter blue verified accounts.

While these actions violate social platforms’ terms of service and community guidelines, these verified accounts could continue spreading misinformation and scamming others until someone reports an issue. A lot of damage could be done in the time it takes for someone from the social network to investigate reported users.

Some Twitter users strongly oppose paid verification. Some accounts have launched campaigns encouraging others to block Twitter Blue users to decrease the reach of accounts with the paid blue checkmark.

Should You Invest In Paid Verification From Twitter Blue Or Meta Verified?Screenshot from Twitter, March 2023

Others will dismiss opinions shared by users simply because the account has a Twitter Blue verification.

Should You Invest In Paid Verification From Twitter Blue Or Meta Verified?Screenshot from Twitter, March 2023

Is Paid Verification Right For You?

It’s important to weigh the benefits of being verified through Twitter Blue or Meta Verified and the potential implications of paying for notability on social media.

As a social network user, it’s also important to remember some basic safety rules.

  • Regardless of verification status, never give out personal information or account details to other social media users.
  • If you are asked to send money for a specific cause or reason, research it outside social media to ensure it is a legitimate request, not a scam.
  • Fact-check information before you share it with others to prevent spreading misinformation to larger, susceptible audiences. This especially applies to images and video thanks to AI content generation.
  • Utilize two-factor authentication to secure your accounts and save your backup/recovery code for Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, just in case.

Featured Image: Fantastic Studio/Shutterstock



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WordPress WooCommerce Payments Plugin Vulnerability

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WordPress WooCommerce Payments Plugin Vulnerability

Automattic, publishers of the WooCommerce plugin, announced the discovery and patch of a critical vulnerability in the WooCommerce Payments plugin.

The vulnerability allows an attacker to gain Administrator level credentials and perform a full site-takeover.

Administrator is the highest permission user role in WordPress, granting full access to a WordPress site with the ability to create more admin-level accounts as well as the ability to delete the entire website.

What makes this particular vulnerability of great concern is that it’s available to unauthenticated attackers, which means that they don’t first have to acquire another permission in order to manipulate the site and obtain admin-level user role.

WordPress security plugin maker Wordfence described this vulnerability:

“After reviewing the update we determined that it removed vulnerable code that could allow an unauthenticated attacker to impersonate an administrator and completely take over a website without any user interaction or social engineering required.”

The Sucuri Website security platform published a warning about the vulnerability that goes into further details.

Sucuri explains that the vulnerability appears to be in the following file:

/wp-content/plugins/woocommerce-payments/includes/platform-checkout/class-platform-checkout-session.php

They also explained that the “fix” implemented by Automattic is to remove the file.

Sucuri observes:

“According to the plugin change history it appears that the file and its functionality was simply removed altogether…”

The WooCommerce website published an advisory that explains why they chose to completely remove the affected file:

“Because this vulnerability also had the potential to impact WooPay, a new payment checkout service in beta testing, we have temporarily disabled the beta program.”

The WooCommerce Payment Plugin vulnerability was discovered on March 22, 2023 by a third party security researcher who notified Automattic.

Automattic swiftly issued a patch.

Details of the vulnerability will be released on April 6, 2023.

That means any site that has not updated this plugin will become vulnerable.

What Version of WooCommerce Payments Plugin is Vulnerable

WooCommerce updated the plugin to version 5.6.2. This is considered the most up to date and non-vulnerable version of the website.

Automattic has pushed a forced update however it’s possible that some sites may not have received it.

It is recommended that all users of the affected plugin check that their installations are updated to version WooCommerce Payments Plugin 5.6.2

Once the vulnerability is patched, WooCommerce recommends taking the following actions:

“Once you’re running a secure version, we recommend checking for any unexpected admin users or posts on your site. If you find any evidence of unexpected activity, we suggest:

Updating the passwords for any Admin users on your site, especially if they reuse the same passwords on multiple websites.

Rotating any Payment Gateway and WooCommerce API keys used on your site. Here’s how to update your WooCommerce API keys. For resetting other keys, please consult the documentation for those specific plugins or services.”

Read the WooCommerce vulnerability explainer:

Critical Vulnerability Patched in WooCommerce Payments – What You Need to Know



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How Do You Clean Up Content Without Effecting Rankings?

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How Do You Clean Up Content Without Effecting Rankings?

Today’s Ask An SEO question comes from Neethu, who asks:

My website is almost 20 years old. There are lots of content. Many of them are not performing well. How do you effectively clean up those content without effecting rankings?

Contrary to what some SEO pros tell you, more content is not always better.

Deciding what content to keep, which content to modify, and which content to throw away is an important consideration, as content is the backbone of any website and is essential for driving traffic, engagement, and conversions.

However, not all content is created equal, and outdated, irrelevant, or underperforming content can hinder a website’s success.

Run A Content Audit

To effectively clean up your website’s content, the first step is to conduct a content audit.

This involves analyzing your site’s content and assessing its performance, relevance, and quality.

You can use various metrics such as traffic, bounce rate, and engagement to identify which pages are performing well and which ones are not.

Once you have identified the pages that are not performing well, it’s important to prioritize them based on their importance to your website.

Pages that are not driving traffic or conversions may need to be prioritized over pages that are not performing well but are still important for your site’s overall goals.

Distinguish Evergreen Vs. Time-Sensitive Content

Additionally, it’s important to consider whether a page is evergreen or time-sensitive.

You can update or repurpose evergreen content over time, while you may need to remove time-sensitive content.

After prioritizing your content, you can decide what action to take with each page.

For pages that are still relevant but not performing well, you may be able to update them with fresh information to improve their performance.

For pages that are outdated or no longer relevant, it may be best to remove them altogether.

When removing content, implement 301 redirects to relevant pages to ensure that any backlinks pointing to the old page are not lost.

Monitor Your Stuff

It’s important to monitor your search engine rankings after cleaning up your content to ensure your changes do not negatively impact your SEO.

But don’t just look at rankings.

Content optimization projects can affect traffic, conversions, navigation, and other items that impact your overall search engine optimization efforts.

Watch Google Analytics closely. If there are traffic declines, you may need to re-evaluate a few changes.

It’s important not to have a knee-jerk reaction, however.

Before you throw out your optimization efforts, be sure that the changes you made are actually what is causing a drop – and make sure those changes are stable within the search engines index.

Remember that it may take some time for your rankings to stabilize after a content cleanup, so it’s important to be patient and monitor your website’s performance over time.

To further optimize your content cleanup, consider using Google Search Console to identify pages with high impressions but low click-through rates.

These pages may benefit from content updates or optimization to improve their performance.

Additionally, consolidating pages that cover similar topics into one comprehensive page can improve user experience and help avoid keyword cannibalization.

In Summary

Cleaning up your website’s content is crucial for maintaining a high-quality site.

By conducting a content audit, prioritizing your content, and deciding whether to keep, update, or remove the content, you can effectively clean up your site without negatively impacting your rankings.

Remember to monitor your rankings and be patient as your site adjust.

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Featured Image: Song_about_summer/Shutterstock



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