SEO

Google Business Profile Optimization For The Financial Vertical

Published

2 months ago

January 31, 2023

The financial vertical is a dynamic, challenging, and highly regulated space.

As such, for businesses in this vertical, optimizing local search presence and, specifically, Google Business Profile listings requires a greater level of sensitivity and specialization than industries like retail or restaurant.

The inherent challenges stem from a host of considerations, such as internal branding guidelines, accessibility considerations, regulatory measures, and governance considerations among lines of business within the financial organization, among others.

This means that local listings in this vertical are not “one size fits all” but rather vary based on function and fall into one of several listing types, including branches, loan officers, financial advisors, and ATMS (which may be inclusive of walk-up ATMs, drive-through ATMs, and “smart ATMs”).

Each of these types of listings requires a unique set of hours, categories, hyper-local content, attributes, and a unique overall optimization strategy.

The goal of this article is to dive deeper into why having a unique optimization strategy matters for businesses in the financial vertical and share financial brand-specific best practices for listing optimization strategy.

Financial Brand Listing Type Considerations

One reason listing optimization is so nuanced in the financial vertical is that, in addition to all the listing features that vary by business function as mentioned above, Google also has essentially different classifications (or types) of listings by definition – each with its own set of guidelines (read “rules”) that apply according to a listing scenario.

This includes the distinction between a listing for an organization (e.g., for a bank branch) vs. that of an individual practitioner (used to represent a loan officer that may or may not sit at the branch, which has a separate listing).

Somewhere between those two main divisions, there may be a need for a department listing (e.g., for consumer banking vs. mortgages).

Again, each listing classification has rules and criteria around how (and how many) listings can be established for a given address and how they are represented.

Disregarding Google’s guidelines here carries the risk of disabled listings or even account-level penalties.

While that outcome is relatively rare, those risks are ill-advised and theoretically catastrophic to revenue and reputation in such a tightly regulated and competitive industry.

Editor’s note: If you have 10+ locations, you can request bulk verification.

Google Business Profile Category Selection

Category selection in Google Business Profile (GBP) is one of the most influential, and thus important, activities involved in creating and optimizing listings – in the context of ranking, visibility, and traffic attributable to the listing.

Keep in mind you can’t “keyword optimize” a GBP listing (unless you choose to violate Business Title guidelines), and this is by design on Google’s part.

Because of this, the primary and secondary categories that you select are collectively one of the strongest cues that you can send to Google around who should see your listing in the local search engine results pages (SERPs), and for what queries (think relevancy).

Suffice it to say this is a case where quality and specificity are more important than quantity.

This is, in part, because Google only allows for one primary category to be selected – but also because of the practice of spamming the secondary category field with as many entries as Google will allow (especially with categories that are only tangentially relevant for the listing) can have consequences that are both unintuitive and unintended.

The point is too many categories can (and often do) muddy the signal for Google’s algorithm regarding surfacing listings for appropriate queries and audiences.

This can lead to poor alignment with users’ needs and experiences and drive the wrong traffic.

It can also cause confusion for the algorithm around relevancy, resulting in the listing being suppressed or ranking poorly, thus driving less traffic.

Governance Vs. Cannibalization

Just as we already discussed the distinction between the choice of classification types and the practice of targeting categories appropriately according to the business functions and objectives represented by a given listing, these considerations play together to help frame a strategy around governance within the context of the organic local search channel.

The idea here is to create separation between lines of business (LOBs) to prevent internal competition over rankings and visibility for search terms that are misaligned for one or more LOB, such that they inappropriately cannibalize each other.

In simpler terms, users searching for a financial advisor or loan officer should not be served a listing for a consumer bank branch, and vice versa.

This creates a poor user experience that will ultimately result in frustrated users, complaints, and potential loss of revenue.

The Importance Of Category Selection

To illustrate this, see the example below.

A large investment bank might have the following recommended categories for Branches and Advisors, respectively (an asterisk refers to the primary category):

Branch Categories

*Investment Service.
Investment Company.
Financial Institution.

Advisor Categories

*Financial Consultant.
Financial Planner.
Financial Broker.

Notice the Branch categories signal relevance for the institution as a whole, whereas the Advisor categories align with Advisors (i.e., individual practitioners.) Obviously, these listings serve separate but complementary functions.

When optimized strategically, their visibility will align with the needs of users seeking out information about those functions accordingly.

Category selection is not the only factor involved in crafting a proper governance strategy, albeit an important one.

That said, all the other available data fields and content within the listings should be similarly planned and optimized in alignment with appropriate governance considerations, in addition to the overall relevancy and content strategy as applicable for the associated LOBs.

Specialized Financial Brand Listing Attributes

GBP attributes are data points about a listing that help communicate details about the business being represented.

They vary by primary category and are a great opportunity to serve users’ needs while boosting performance by differentiating against the competition, and feeding Google’s algorithm more relevant information about a given listing.

This is often referred to as the “listing completeness” aspect of Google’s local algorithm, which translates to “the more information Google has about a listing, the more precisely it can provide that listing to users according to the localized queries they use.”

The following is a list of attributes that are helpful for the financial vertical:

Online Appointments.
Black-Owned.
Family-Led.
Veteran-Led.
Women-Led.
Appointment Links.
Wheelchair Accessible Elevator.
Wheelchair Accessible Entrance.
Wheelchair Accessible Parking Lot.

The following chart helps to illustrate which attributes are best suited for listing based on listing/LOB/ORG type:

Image from Rio SEO, December 2022

Managing Hours Of Operation

This is an important and often overlooked aspect of listings management in the financial space and in general.

Hours of operation, first and foremost, should be present in the listings, not left out. While providing hours is not mandatory, not doing so will impact user experience and visibility.

Like most of the previous items, hours for a bank branch (e.g., 10 am to 5 pm) will be different than those of the drive-through ATM (open 24 hours), and that of a mortgage loan officer and financial advisor that both have offices at the same address.

Each of these services and LOBs can best be represented by separate listings, each with its own hours of operation.

Leaving these details out, or using the same set of operating hours across all of these LOBs and listing types, sets users up for frustration and prevents Google from properly serving and messaging users around a given location’s availability (such as “open now,” “closing soon,” or “closed,” as applicable.)

All of this leads to either missed opportunities when hours are omitted, allowing a competitor (that Google knows is open) to rank higher in the SERPs, or frustrated customers that arrive at an investment banking office expecting to make a consumer deposit or use an ATM.

Appointment URL With Local Attribution Tracking

This is especially relevant for individual practitioner listings such as financial advisors, mortgage loan officers, and insurance agents.

Appointment URLs allow brands to publish a link where clients can book appointments with the individual whose listing the user finds and interacts within search.

This is a low-hanging fruit tactic that can make an immediate and significant impact on lead generation and revenue.

Taking this another step, these links can be tagged with UTM parameters (for brands using Google Analytics and similarly tagged for other analytic platforms) to track conversion events, leads, and revenue associated with this listing feature.

Editorial note: Here is an example of a link with UTM parameters: https://www.domain.com/?utm_source=source&utm_medium=medium&utm_campaign=campaign

Image from Google, December 2022

Leveraging Services

Services can be added to a listing to let potential customers know what services are available at a given location.

Screenshot from Google, January 2023

Services in GBP are subject to availability by primary category, another reason category selection is so important, as discussed above.

Specifically, once services are added to a listing, they will be prominently displayed on the listing within the mobile SERPs under the “Services” tab of the listing.

Screenshot from Google, January 2023

This not only feeds more data completeness, which benefits both mobile and desktop performance, and increases engagement in the mobile SERPs (click to website, call, driving directions) which are bottom-funnel key performance indicators (KPIs) that drive revenue.

Google Posts

Google Posts represent a content marketing opportunity that is valuable on multiple levels.

An organization can post relevant, evergreen content that is strategically optimized for key localized phrases, services, and product offerings.

While there is no clear evidence or admission by Google that relevant content will have a direct impact on rankings overall for that listing, what we can say for certain from observation is that listings with well-optimized posts do present in the local SERPs landscape for keyword queries that align with that content.

This happens in the form of “related to your search” snippets and has been widely observed since 2019.

This has a few different implications, reinforcing the benefits of leveraging Google Posts in your local search strategy.

First, given that Post snippets are triggered, it is fair to infer that if a given listing did not have the relevant post, that listing may not have surfaced at all in the SERPs. Thus, we can infer a benefit around visibility, which leads to more traffic.

Second, it is well-documented that featured snippets are associated with boosts in click-through rate (CTR), which amplifies the traffic increases that result from the increased visibility alone.

Additional Post Benefits

Beyond these two very obvious benefits of Google Posts, they also provide many benefits around messaging potential visitors and clients with relevant information about the location, including products, services, promotions, events, limited-time offers, and potentially many others.

Use cases for this can include consumer banks that feature free checking or direct deposit or financial advisors that offer a free 60-minute initial consultation.

Taking the time to publish posts that highlight these differentiators could have a measurable impact on traffic, CTR, and revenue.

Another great aspect of Google Posts is that, for a while, they were designed to be visible according to specific date ranges – and, at one time, would “expire” or fall out of the SERPs once the time period passed.

Certain post types will surface long after the expiration date of the post if there is a relevancy match between the user’s query and the content.

Concluding Thoughts

To summarize, the financial vertical requires a highly specialized, precise GBP optimization strategy, which is well-vetted for the needs of users, LOBs, and regulatory compliance.

Considerations like primary and secondary categories, hours, attributes, services, and content (in the form of Google Posts) all play a critical role in defining that overall strategy, including setting up and maintaining crucial governance boundaries between complementary LOBs.

Undertaking all these available listing features holistically and strategically allows financial institutions and practitioners to maximize visibility, engagement, traffic, revenue, and overall performance from local search while minimizing cannibalism, complaints, and poor user experience.

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Related Topics:business Financial Google optimization Profile seo Vertical

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TikTok CEO To Testify In Hearing On Data Privacy And Online Harm Reduction

Published

5 hours ago

March 22, 2023

EntirewebNewsBot

TikTok CEO To Testify In Hearing On Data Privacy And Online Harm Reduction

TikTok CEO Shou Chew will testify in a hearing before the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce this Thursday, March 23, at 10:00 a.m. ET.

As CEO, Chew is responsible for TikTok’s business operations and strategic decisions.

The “TikTok: How Congress Can Safeguard American Data Privacy and Protect Children from Online Harms” hearing will be streamed live on the Energy and Commerce Committee’s website.

According to written testimony submitted by Chew, the hearing will focus on TikTok’s alleged commitment to transparency, teen safety, consumer privacy, and data security.

It also appears to broach the topic of misconceptions about the platform, such as its connection to the Chinese government through its parent company, ByteDance.

Chew shared a special message with TikTok yesterday from Washington, D.C., to thank 150 million users, five million businesses, and 7,000 employees in the U.S. for helping build the TikTok community.

@tiktokOur CEO, Shou Chew, shares a special message on behalf of the entire TikTok team to thank our community of 150 million Americans ahead of his congressional hearing later this week.♬ original sound – TikTok

The video has received over 85k comments from users, many describing how TikTok has allowed them to interact with people worldwide and find unbiased news, new perspectives, educational content, inspiration, and joy.

TikTok Updates Guidelines And Offers More Educational Content

TikTok has been making significant changes to its platform to address many of these concerns before this hearing to evade a total U.S. ban on the platform.

Below is an overview of some efforts by TikTok to rehab its perception before the hearing.

Updated Community Guidelines – TikTok updated community guidelines and shared its Community Principles to demonstrate commitment to keeping the platform safe and inclusive for all users.

For You Feed Refresh – TikTok recommends content to users based on their engagement with content and creators. For users who feel that recommendations no longer align with their interests, TikTok introduced the ability to refresh the For You Page, allowing them to receive fresh recommendations as if they started a new account.

STEM Feed – To improve the quality of educational content on TikTok, it will introduce a STEM feed for content focused on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Unlike the content that appears when users search the #STEM hashtag, TikTok says that Common Sense Networks and Poynter will review STEM feed content to ensure it is safe for younger audiences and factually accurate.

This could make it more like the version of TikTok in China – Douyin – that promotes educational content to younger audiences over entertaining content.

Series Monetization – To encourage creators to create in-depth, informative content, TikTok introduced a new monetization program for Series content. Series allows creators to earn income by putting up to 80 videos with up to 20 minutes in length, each behind a paywall.

More Congressional Efforts To Restrict TikTok

The TikTok hearing tomorrow isn’t the only Congressional effort to limit or ban technologies like TikTok.

Earlier this month, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) introduced the RESTRICT Act (Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology), which would create a formal process for the government to review and mitigate risks of technology originating in countries like China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela.

Organizations like the Tech Oversight Project have pointed out that Congress should look beyond TikTok and investigate similar risks to national security and younger audiences posed by other Big Tech platforms like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta.

We will follow tomorrow’s hearing closely – be sure to come back for our coverage to determine how this will affect users and predict what will happen next.

Featured Image: Alex Verrone/Shutterstock

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SEO

How Is It Different From GPT-3.5?

Published

12 hours ago

March 22, 2023

EntirewebNewsBot

GPT-4, the latest version of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s language model, is a breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) technology that has revolutionized how we communicate with machines.

ChatGPT’s multimodal capabilities enable it to process text, images, and videos, making it an incredibly versatile tool for marketers, businesses, and individuals alike.

What Is GPT-4?

GPT-4 is 10 times more advanced than its predecessor, GPT-3.5. This enhancement enables the model to better understand context and distinguish nuances, resulting in more accurate and coherent responses.

Furthermore, GPT-4 has a maximum token limit of 32,000 (equivalent to 25,000 words), which is a significant increase from GPT-3.5’s 4,000 tokens (equivalent to 3,125 words).

“We spent 6 months making GPT-4 safer and more aligned. GPT-4 is 82% less likely to respond to requests for disallowed content and 40% more likely to produce factual responses than GPT-3.5 on our internal evaluations.” – OpenAI

GPT-3.5 Vs. GPT-4 – What’s Different?

GPT-4 offers several improvements over its predecessor, some of which include:

1. Linguistic Finesse

While GPT-3.5 is quite capable of generating human-like text, GPT-4 has an even greater ability to understand and generate different dialects and respond to emotions expressed in the text.

For example, GPT-4 can recognize and respond sensitively to a user expressing sadness or frustration, making the interaction feel more personal and genuine.

Screenshot from OpenAI, March 2023

One of the most impressive aspects of GPT-4 is its ability to work with dialects, which are regional or cultural variations of a language.

Dialects can be extremely difficult for language models to understand, as they often have unique vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation that may not be present in the standard language.

However, GPT-4 has been specifically designed to overcome these challenges and can accurately generate and interpret text in various dialects.

2. Information Synthesis

GPT-4 can answer complex questions by synthesizing information from multiple sources, whereas GPT-3.5 may struggle to connect the dots.

For example, when asked about the link between the decline of bee populations and the impact on global agriculture, GPT-4 can provide a more comprehensive and nuanced answer, citing different studies and sources.

Screenshot from OpenAI, March 2023

Unlike its predecessor, GPT-4 now includes a feature that allows it to properly cite sources when generating text.

This means that when the model generates content, it cites the sources it has used, making it easier for readers to verify the accuracy of the information presented.

3. Creativity And Coherence

While GPT-3.5 can generate creative content, GPT-4 goes a step further by producing stories, poems, or essays with improved coherence and creativity.

For example, GPT-4 can produce a short story with a well-developed plot and character development, whereas GPT-3.5 might struggle to maintain consistency and coherence in the narrative.

Screenshot from OpenAI, March 2023

Screenshot from OpenAI, March 2023

4. Complex Problem-Solving

GPT-4 demonstrates a strong ability to solve complex mathematical and scientific problems beyond the capabilities of GPT-3.5.

For example, GPT-4 can solve advanced calculus problems or simulate chemical reactions more effectively than its predecessor.

Screenshot from OpenAI, March 2023

Screenshot from OpenAI, March 2023

GPT-4 has significantly improved its ability to understand and process complex mathematical and scientific concepts. Its mathematical skills include the ability to solve complex equations and perform various mathematical operations such as calculus, algebra, and geometry.

In addition, GPT-4 is also capable of handling scientific subjects such as physics, chemistry, biology, and astronomy.

Its advanced processing power and language modeling capabilities allow it to analyze complex scientific texts and provide insights and explanations easily.

As the technology continues to evolve, it is likely that GPT-4 will continue to expand its capabilities and become even more adept at a wider range of subjects and tasks.

5. Programming Power

GPT-4’s programming capabilities have taken social media by storm with its ability to generate code snippets or debug existing code more efficiently than GPT-3.5, making it a valuable resource for software developers.

With the help of GPT-4, weeks of work can be condensed into a few short hours, allowing extraordinary results to be achieved in record time. You can test these prompts:

“Write code to train X with dataset Y.”
“I’m getting this error. Fix it.”
“Now improve the performance.”
“Now wrap it in a GUI.”

6. Image And Graphics Understanding

Unlike GPT-3.5, which focuses primarily on text, GPT-4 can analyze and comment on images and graphics.

For example, GPT-4 can describe the content of a photo, identify trends in a graph, or even generate captions for images, making it a powerful tool for education and content creation.

Screenshot from OpenAI, March 2023

Imagine this technology integrated with Google Analytics or Matomo. You could get highly accurate analytics for all your dashboards in a few minutes.

7. Reduction Of Inappropriate Or Biased Responses

GPT-4 implements mechanisms to minimize undesirable results, thereby increasing reliability and ethical responsibility.

For example, GPT-4 is less likely to generate politically biased, offensive, or harmful content, making it a more trustworthy AI companion than GPT-3.5.

Where Can ChatGPT Go Next?

Despite its remarkable advancements, ChatGPT still has room for improvement:

Addressing neutrality: Enhancing its ability to discern the context and respond accordingly.
Understanding the user: Developing the capacity to understand who is communicating (who, where, and how).
External integrations: Expanding its reach through web, API, and robotic integrations.
Long-term memory: Improving its ability to recall past interactions and apply that knowledge to future conversations.
Reducing hallucination: Minimizing instances where the AI is convinced of false information.

As ChatGPT continues to evolve, it is poised to revolutionize marketing and AI-driven communications.

Its potential applications in content creation, education, customer service, and more are vast, making it an essential tool for businesses and individuals in the digital age.

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Should Congress Investigate Big Tech Platforms?

Published

19 hours ago

March 22, 2023

EntirewebNewsBot

Should Congress Investigate Big Tech Platforms?

This week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a full committee hearing with TikTok CEO Shou Chew to discuss how the platform handles users’ data, its effect on kids, and its relationship with ByteDance, its Chinese parent company.

This hearing is part of an ongoing investigation to determine whether TikTok should be banned in the United States or forced to split from ByteDance.

A ban on TikTok would affect over 150 million Americans who use TikTok for education, entertainment, and income generation.

It would also affect the five million U.S. businesses using TikTok to reach customers.

Is TikTok The Only Risk To National Security?

According to a memo released by the Tech Oversight Project, TikTok is not the only tech platform that poses risks to national security, mental health, and children.

As Congress scrutinizes TikTok, the Tech Oversight Project also strongly urges an investigation of risks posed by tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Google.

These platforms have a documented history of serving content harmful to younger audiences and adversarial to U.S. interests. They have also failed on many occasions to protect users’ private data.

Many Big Tech companies have seen TikTok’s success and tried to emulate some of its features to encourage users to spend as much time within their platforms’ ecosystems as possible. Academics, activists, non-governmental organizations, and others have long raised concerns about these platforms’ risks.

To truly reduce Big Rech’s risks to our society, Congress must look beyond TikTok and hold other companies accountable for the same dangers they pose to national security, mental health, and private data.

Risks Posed By Big Tech Companies

The following are examples of the risks Big Tech companies pose to U.S. users.

Amazon

Amazon has made several controversial moves, including a partnership with a state propaganda agency to launch a China books portal and offering AWS services to Chinese companies, including a banned surveillance firm with ties to the military.

Apple

Independent research found that Apple collects detailed information about its users, even when users choose not to allow tracking by apps from the App Store. Over half of the top 200 suppliers for Apple operate factories in China.

Google

The FTC fined Google and YouTube $170 million for collecting children’s data without parental consent. YouTube also changed its algorithm to make it more addictive, increasing users’ time watching videos and consuming ads.

TikTok

TikTok employees confirmed that its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, is involved in decision-making and has access to TikTok’s user data. While testifying before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Vanessa Pappas, TikTok COO, would not confirm whether ByteDance would give TikTok user data to the Chinese government.

Conclusion

While the dangers posed by TikTok are undeniable, it’s clear that Congress should also address the risks posed throughout the tech industry. By holding all major offenders accountable, we can create a safe, secure, and responsible digital landscape for everyone.

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