Based in the UK, Brownbook is a global business listings database offering free listings for businesses. Established in 2007, Brownbook is a large, well-respected listings database that helps businesses both large and small get listed, noticed, and reviewed. Whether you’re looking to build citations and improve SEO or trying to get noticed by more customers, Brownbook is well worth your time. Account Creation
Creating a Brand New Listing
Viewing and Editing Your Managed Listings
Claiming an Existing Listing
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There’s no denying it: publishing updates (aka Google Posts) on Google Business Profile is a real pain. You simply want to share all the cool stuff happening at your business (or your clients’), but the process is a major time suck. There’s no scheduling option, so you have to keep logging in every time you want to make a post. And if you have multiple locations to update? Good luck, because you’re stuck posting the same content over and over again to each location. Thankfully, managing your Google Business Profile is about to become a whole lot easier and more efficient with our latest creation: GBP Post Scheduler. This simple to use tool is a game-changer for scaling up Google Posts, offering effortless scheduling, multi-location distribution, and an exciting feature we can’t wait to tell you about: AI content generation. Effortless Post SchedulingSave valuable time and ensure your GBP is always full of engaging content with scheduling. No more manual posting every few days or last-minute rushes. Updates, offers, events—whatever you need to let customers know about—GBP Post Scheduler will have you covered. You can schedule each post to go out at the exact right time and set relevant expiry dates to ensure a consistent stream of content for potential customers to engage with. You’ll get full visibility of what’s live, what’s scheduled, and what’s expired from a single dashboard. It’s as easy as setting it and forgetting it! If you need to make changes, it’s just a case of editing anything that’s already scheduled or deleting anything that’s live. It’s really that simple. Multi-location DistributionIf you’re working with a multi-location brand, there could be instances where you need to push the latest national promotions to every location at once. As we mentioned earlier, Google forces you to do this one location at a time. Yuck! But GBP Post Scheduler was built with scale in mind. Now you can publish a post to multiple locations simultaneously, saving you potentially hours of tedium. Ensure consistent content across your entire network of locations (or just a select few) in a few clicks. AI Content Generation: GBP x GPT!Say goodbye to writer’s block with our AI content generation feature. Our brand new integration with GPT ensures that you always have engaging and captivating content at your fingertips. Simply give us a description of the message you want to put out, and in seconds, our AI writing assistant will give you caption ideas to run with and optimize. Watch as your posts maximize engagement and attract attention like never before. It’s the perfect blend of human brilliance and AI wizardry! GBP Post Scheduler is the first in a series of innovations that will harness AI to revolutionize the way you do local SEO, helping you save time, uncover valuable insights, and create highly effective marketing strategies. You can expect to see more AI-powered features hitting BrightLocal soon. Powering up Listings ManagementGBP Post Scheduler is now available as a brand-new Publishing Pack add-on for all subscribers. Our Publishing Pack also includes our other latest tool, Active Sync, which allows you to sync your business information across Google, Bing, Facebook, and Apple. You can easily update information across each listing (like opening hours) and protect them from rogue external edits to ensure customers are seeing the most accurate and up-to-date information when discovering your business. GBP Post Scheduler takes our listings management capabilities to the next level, but here’s the good news: We’re keeping the add-on price the same at just $8 per location. That’s up to three times cheaper than the likes of Yext and Moz Local. Both GBP Post Scheduler and Active Sync are also available as a standalone with our subscription-free account: Simply Listings. Join our Listings Management webinarWe’re excited to present GBP Post Scheduler and Active Sync in two upcoming webinars. We’re running two sessions, one tailored for agencies and one for businesses. In each webinar, we’ll cover:
Agency webinarBoost Your Agency’s Revenue: Discover the Active Sync AdvantageJuly 12, 2023 at 9:00 am PT / 12:00 pm ET / 5:00 pm BST Business webinarBoost Your Online Presence: Drive Greater Visibility, Engagement, and Leads From Your ListingsJuly 19, 2023 at 9:00 am PT / 12:00 pm ET / 5:00 pm BST How GBP Post Scheduler WorksUsing GBP Post Scheduler is a breeze. Watch this short video tour or read on to learn more. From the top navigation you’ll be able to access the GBP Post Scheduler overview dashboard, where you can:
To use GBP Post Scheduler for a location, make sure you have purchased a Publishing Pack and set up the GBP connection. Once that’s done, you’re all set to efficiently manage your posting. Posting to a Single Google Business ProfileTo post to a single profile, you can either navigate to the relevant location via the GBP Post Scheduler dashboard by clicking ‘View,’ or you can find it in the left-hand navigation when you’re in a location. Once you’re there, you’ll be presented with a dashboard that displays all the posts for this particular Google Business Profile. You’ll see what is:
Clicking ‘Create a New Post’ will open a modal where you can post an update, offer, or event. If you want to learn more about each post type, you can refer to our guide to Google Posts. Everything you see in Google is recreated here to provide a seamless experience. You can add captions, images, buttons, start dates, and end dates, just like when posting directly from Google, but with the all-important added ability to schedule your posts. Once you’re satisfied with the content, you can choose the exact date and time for the post to go out. However, if you prefer to publish immediately, you can simply click ‘Post Now.’ Generating Content with AIGenerating AI content is incredibly simple and efficient with our AI writing assistant. Instead of manually crafting the title or caption for your post, you can provide us with information about the update, offer, or event, and then click the ‘Generate content using AI’ button. Within a few seconds, you’ll receive a caption generated by GPT-4. From there, you have several options: use the suggested content as is, make edits to customize it according to your needs, or even start afresh with a new prompt to explore different possibilities. The quality and relevance of the AI-generated content are greatly influenced by the details you provide in the prompt. Be sure to include all the relevant information about your update to achieve the best possible results. This feature is a valuable time-saver, particularly for large-scale posting, allowing you to create compelling content that resonates with your audience. Bulk Posting to Multiple ProfilesImagine having a national promotion that you want to distribute across your entire network of locations. Previously, this task would take hours of your time. But with our bulk posting feature, you can accomplish it in a matter of minutes. It’s as simple as selecting two or more locations from the overview dashboard and clicking the ‘Create Bulk Post’ button located in the top right corner. You can use the search bar to quickly locate specific locations. Once you’re in the bulk posting mode, you’ll follow the same familiar steps: selecting the post type, adding your content, and deciding whether to schedule the publish date or publish instantly. Whether you manage a few or hundreds of locations, GBP Post Scheduler will be a real time-saver, ensuring compelling content reaches your customers on every profile. Get started now by adding our new Publishing Pack to your plan to get access to both Active Sync and GBP Post Scheduler. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/uKam361 Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ Boost Your Online Presence: Drive Greater Visibility Engagement and Leads From Your Listings6/30/2023 Despite predictions over the years to the contrary, local citations and listings management haven’t gone anywhere. Sure, building citations is more of a foundation-building tactic than a rocket-to-the-moon quick win, but it’s still considered a key local SEO ranking factor. Not only are they still important, but they’re still misunderstood, whether that’s by the businesses that need them or the agencies that are trying to sell them. Many big SEO agencies still don’t understand the real difference between local SEO and traditional SEO, for starters, let alone why local citations and business listings are still more important for some businesses than they are for others. But, here’s the thing, there’s an art to selling these services to stakeholders or clients. You need to sell the value, without overselling it. As experts in selling citation-building services and listing management, with years of experience, we know a thing or two about the mistakes people make. So here’s how to do it properly. 6 Tips for Selling Local Citations Services and Listings Management1. Educate, Educate, EducateSo let’s start with the truth here: many people simply don’t know what local citations are, or why they form part of a strategy. We often find this to be true of both the businesses themselves and those that are doing the selling. A few people understand the concept, but then don’t understand the importance, or why they’re still useful in 2023. The simplest thing to do is to educate. People talk about listings, citations, links, and Google Business Profiles… but they don’t understand the differences between them. Read: Learning Hub – What Are Local Citations? 2. Don’t Sell Listings and Citations as Link BuildingThe truth of it is, many businesses are completely mislead when it comes to local citations. A lot of people still talk about business directories like they’re link building. Sure, back in the day if you added your site to a hundred directories it was part of your link building campaign. But citation building isn’t quite the same thing. Yeah, links are involved, but there’s more to it than that. Get the terminology right
Tell your clients what listings are and what citation building actually is and cover how it differs from link building. If you don’t know yourself, then read about local link building here. Remember, they’re not links in the traditional sense, so they shouldn’t necessarily be used as link building. This means that when you build citations, if you’re buying a batch from a service like BrightLocal, they’ll all come through across a short period of time. Agencies in particular have a habit of asking to buy batches so they can report on supplying clients with a certain number a month. So, if you’d hoped to pay a one-off fee and then trickle out links to clients over a number of months, you’re looking at the wrong thing. Get out there and build actual links. 3. Don’t Oversell Them, and Be HonestCitations aren’t going to take your client to the moon, so stop telling them they will. We regularly get asked the classic SEO question “How quickly will this make me rank number 1?”, which further highlights both a misunderstanding and a complete misrepresentation of listings to businesses. Citations and listings won’t propel your business to the top of the local rankings. But they will provide you with a solid base to build from. Google generally prefers businesses to have a solid listings profile so it can verify information about your business. It’s simply the first rung on the ladder. Being dishonest with your clients is just going to lead to anger or disappointment when the work you deliver doesn’t fire them to the top of the SERPs as you promised. But it doesn’t mean you can’t show them real value. 4. But Really Show the ValueThis makes it sound like there’s no point in building citations and listings in 2023. But the reality is they offer so much more value than just a link. We have a lot of experience at selling in the true value, to help agencies and their clients really understand what it is they’re buying.
For local citations, we find that the true value comes in highlighting the brand perception.
For local citations, we find that the true value comes in highlighting the brand perception. You need to make sure your external listings are all accurate—if you have name, address, and phone number (NAP) inconsistencies, it’s going to look bad to prospective buyers. Actively building your own citations and managing them will help your information stay accurate. Sure, that takes a lot of time and effort, but it’s where services like Citation Builder and Active Sync come into play. If you’re selling in more advanced listings management services, outside of just a one-off citation-building campaign, then things can get a little more complex. The value is still a great place to start, though. 5. Consider Angling Citations and Listings DifferentlyWhen we’re talking to potential clients we often find it easier to make these two things different. For building citations, the conversations we have usually focus on the following:
For listings management, we center conversations around the following:
6. Audit Your Potential Client’s Current StandingBefore you even start selling though, you need to get prepared. The most critical thing to do is audit your potential client’s current standing in terms of local citations and listings. It’s no use approaching someone if they’ve already got a flawless listings profile. But the truth is that many local businesses don’t. Highlight the issue and you’re on to a winner. Do something like this:
What else is important?Outside of these tips, before you start selling citations we’d recommend getting to know the whole process yourself. Understand:
It’s also worth pointing out that a lot of the bigger, more successful agencies don’t actually know much about local SEO. A shocker, I know. If you’re one of those agencies, and you’re doing local work for clients, then spend some time getting educated. There’s plenty of resources out there, like BrightLocal Academy and local SEO learning hub. Learn: BrightLocal Academy – How to Clean Up and Manage Local Business Listings If you really don’t have the time though, and you’re not sure you can sell in a service you know is needed but aren’t as confident about, don’t be afraid to hand over the communications to people that do. We often work directly with agency’s clients to do this, helping clients sell the service that’s needed. Your “Too Long, Didn’t Read” Tips for Selling ListingsBasically, what it all really boils down to is three simple things:
If you do that, you should be on to a winner. If you need support with any of the steps, whether it’s a citation-building service or listings management, BrightLocal is here to help. We’re experts in both selling the value and actually doing the work so that we can help agencies at every step of the process. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/uyEBiZ1 Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/
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via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/VQrNJHO Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ AI has officially entered the chat. In the last few months, we’ve seen a dramatic acceleration of generative search added to search engines, online products and services, and as SEOs, we wanted to understand how AI effects our roles in an industry that’s been majorly impacted by the new technology. We asked the experts how they’re using AI at the moment, and how they think SGE will change the landscape of local search. (One small caveat—in the past few weeks we’ve seen new features and functions added to SGE. By the time this piece goes live, we’re sure there will have already been some major changes!)
Ben Fisher Founder and VP of Marketing at Steady Demand What are you doing with AI at the moment? What tactics are you currently using? AI is a great assistant for our SEO team. They use it for research, some technical tasks, and coming up with ideas for our writers. We don’t use AI for anything that is forward facing like blog post content, and our clients prefer it this way. We play with prompts every day and create a vault of useful prompts. AI assistants can save us a lot of time, especially with the right prompt. Our SEO team can focus more on strategy and critical thinking/analysis because AI can execute many tasks to save time. Overall, AI assistants can be a valuable asset to any SEO team. They can help SEO professionals save time, improve the quality of their work, focus on more strategic and creative tasks, and stay ahead of the curve. Despite AI’s impressive capabilities, the human touch remains integral to our processes, ensuring that our strategies are not only data-driven but also empathetic and user-centric. What do you think about SGE? How do you think SGE will change the landscape of local search? There is a glimmer of hope for the local SEO profession, as the 3-pack results appear to be the same as what you would see in a regular search. However, I think that as Google learns, there will be new winners and losers. Unfortunately, I think that SMBs will suffer, as the real estate they were used to will be replaced by new features.
Dayna Lucio Strategist, SEO at Amsive Digital What are you doing with AI at the moment? What tactics are you currently using? Mainly it’s been a lot of testing of different platforms to understand the capabilities and differences of each. Right now, I’ve been using AI to help streamline processes such as summarizing data, mapping cities to zip codes for local tracking, or building regex filters for GSC. It’s also been helpful in brainstorming ideas for content such as sourcing questions for FAQs or coming up with metadata tests. I think in general things are moving really fast—something new seems to come up every day! Brands should definitely be thinking about how platforms like BingChat, Bard, ChatGPT, and SGE are providing information about their company, products, or services, and what types of content gaps need to be filled or opportunities they can explore. What do you think about SGE? How do you think SGE will change the landscape of local search? I think what we’ve been able to see so far has been interesting, the local examples that Google shared with the comparison layout between restaurants definitely shows how this can be used on a local level. However, I think it more or less is continuing to showcase the things we already stress in local SEO—provide the information that users are looking for on GBP profiles and within on-page content and continue to pay attention to reviews, because this is another way that Google is highlighting those. Like anything with Google, I expect there to be multiple tests and changes as time goes on, so its hard to say what the impact will be. Once more people have access to SGE I think it will be important to test different types of queries and questions about local businesses to see how the answers and layouts changed based on what’s being asked.
Amanda Jordan Director of Digital Strategy at RicketyRoo What are you doing with AI at the moment? What tactics are you currently using? I currently use AI to help generate ideas and consider new ways to think about data. Right now I think the best use case for many AI tools is for SEOs to understand how generative AI actually works. Knowing the capabilities and limitations of this technology can help us understand what to expect from Search in the future. What do you think about SGE? How do you think SGE will change the landscape of local search? I hope SGE is the end of sites being filled with generic content. My hope is that SGE will encourage websites to focus on unique, personalized, and usable content for users. I believe truly understanding your customers and being obsessed with the customer experience will be extremely important in the future.
Jess Peck Machine Learning Engineer at Local SEO Guide What are you doing with AI at the moment? What tactics are you currently using? We’re currently using machine learning for a series of tasks: analysis, clustering data, forecasting, text analysis, and to an extent content generation. We use several different ML techniques including lda, keyword extraction, text summarization, and technologies like using Google’s APIs and TensorFlow. Like many people, we are also using LLMs like GPT, though not entirely relying on them. For example, we tend to chunk our outputs, and then use other ML techniques to check the input matches the output, and check for plagiarism: we use knowledge graphs and entity extraction to try and streamline parts of these processes. What do you think about SGE? How do you think SGE will change the landscape of local search? Despite being a machine learning engineer in practice I’m deeply ambivalent about SGEs. I don’t actually think these kinds of experiences usually improve sites, and it still feels like Google is scrambling to catch up while ChatGPT eats it’s lunch. While I do think SGEs are a logical next step for Google and other search engines I also see it as a way for Google to wash its hands of the consequences of serving certain data to the public. LLMs are trained on all of us, so surely it’s all our fault when they go astray? I think an ideal scenario would have Google back away from OpenAI style chatbots and towards using a combination of LLMs and extractive data to continue down the conversational path they have been going down, but how can that be done without robbing sites of their advertising? Fundamentally if your site relies on visitor metrics you must focus on unique aspects that cannot be replaced by a machine. I think UGC might end up being extremely useful: sites like Wirecutter that specialize in human, comprehensive reviews: small hobbyist sites with a human touch. The race is as it has always been: do it better than Google, and invite people into your site.
Andy Simpson Senior SEO Specialist at Digital Law Marketing
What are you doing with AI at the moment? What tactics are you currently using? Our team is currently learning how we can use things like ChatGPT as a tool for SEO. We’re definitely not using it for creating site content, we have our own brilliant content team for that. They have been using ChatGPT for some content outlines and ideas but we’re a firm believer in creating good, unique content, unlike the content spewed out by ChatGPT. Bing Chat and Google’s Bard are way off the mark when it comes to anything related to content creation. Very recently we used ChatGPT to expand and suggest additions to our local business schema, it’s fantastic for writing the code for FAQ and HowTo schema, we verify what’s produced but it’s been very good to date. Will Reynolds very recently posted how you can use ChatGPT to help with internal link-building suggestions, it’s a great video to watch and make you start thinking about how you can use ChatGPT as a tool for SEO. What do you think about SGE? How do you think SGE will change the landscape of local search? Not an easy one to answer in just a few lines, I recently voted “Meh” to Lily Ray’s question on Google’s SGE, BUT I do like it! It’s “meh” because it’s good but not great and that’s not surprising as this is Version 1.0 of whatever SGE will be eventually before it’s launched to the masses. There’s no doubt it will be launched but in what iteration we don’t know yet. SGE is only open to those that want to take a look at it, it’s not open to the general public yet, so I’m not too worried about what we are currently seeing i.e. I am not panicking if my client does/does not display in results displayed by SGE—it’s nice when they do and interesting to see what does display when they don’t. As someone who’s been doing SEO for more than two decades, it’s great to have a new toy to play with. SGE (and Google’s Bard) is seeing constant updates and changes, so what we see this week can be different the following week. It’s an exhilarating time to be in the local search space, how will it change the landscape of local search and/or search in general? At this moment in time, depending on the search query, it dominates the top of the desktop/mobile search experience, users are going to either ignore it and think “what the hell is this” until they get familiar with it OR they won’t scroll down to the 10 blue links below, and the organic SERPs will be lost to many users forever… let’s just see where this ride takes us! Conclusion:Overall, it looks like AI is a great tool to help SEOs manage processes, generate top-level ideas, and help structure content. But, we’re all clear that generative AI should not be a replacement for content creation. Additionally, SGE proves an exciting time for local search specifically, with a general sense of optimism around it. Let’s see what happens in the coming months! via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/xR2Dvet Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ It’s a question we see time and time again: “How many categories do I need on my Google Business Profile?”. Business owners or listing managers have been able to add up to nine additional categories to support a Google Business Profile for some time now. We know that Google Business Profile (GBP) signals are imperative to your local rankings, including choosing the most accurate and relevant primary business category. In fact, local search experts also cite additional categories within the top 15 individual ranking factors within the Local Pack and Local Finder. But, so far, there has been little in the way of hard evidence to show whether using more categories directly impacts your local rankings. Using our very own Local Search Grid (LSG), we studied the local rankings of 1,050 business locations. The aim was to identify any possible relationships between additional business categories and local ranking performance. Wait… what are Google Business Profile categories? Google Business Profile business categories tell Google—and prospective customers—what type of business you are. When setting up your GBP, you must choose a primary category. But, of course, not every type of business will fit into just one! Which is why you can add up to nine additional categories. And what is Local Search Grid? Local Search Grid is BrightLocal’s visual rank-tracking tool. Using a color-coded grid format, it provides business owners with a birds-eye view of local ranking performance within a customized vicinity, so you can track against local competitors. In this study, we will be discussing average map rankings as the measure of local rankings. LSG pinpoints the specific areas where you have high, medium or low-ranking points, and details your map rank for each grid point. Therefore, the average map ranking is the average of all grid points and will often contain decimal places. How many additional categories are businesses using?To start off, we wanted to find out how many additional categories different business types were using on average. Then, we took the 15 top-ranking locations from each primary category set and compared the averages.
You can see that there is a broadly positive correlation between top-ranking business locations using more GBP categories. For five of the seven primary category sets analyzed, the top-ranking business locations are using a higher number of categories on average. The two areas where we can see the opposite, however, are with the primary categories, Electrician and HVAC Contractor. Interestingly, both of these categories sit within the Service Area Business (SABs) and Trades industry. One way of looking at these results is that, hypothetically, if you were looking for an electrician or HVAC contractor, that’s kind of the main criteria of your search. For a day spa, however, you might be more interested in other specifics, such as having a beauty salon or massage parlor on site. The same goes for a department store, where you may be interested in anything from home goods and furniture to women’s clothing and brand outlets. Another possibility for SABs is that, as contractors tend to work as sole traders, they might be the only ones responsible for managing and updating their Google Business Profile information. Taking the time to optimize listings may not always be top of the priority list, which could explain why it’s so common to see just a primary category set. So, how many categories should they be using?SEO Analyst, Elizabeth Rule, recently discussed the topic with Claire Carlile during one of our Local Search Clinics. Elizabeth Rule on number of GBP categories SEO Analyst at Sterling Sky
“Your primary category is going to hold the most weight by far; you want that to be the most important service category for you. The other nine all hold the same weight, but they are going to directly impact your ability to rank for queries related to that category. “Say you’re a dentist, you’re probably going to want your main category to be Dentist. But, if you specialize in children’s dentistry, you’re going to want to add that as a secondary category as that is going to directly impact your ability to rank for children’s/pediatric keywords. “If you have nine categories that are relevant, add them all. It will help your rankings for each one. But if you don’t have them all, don’t add them. You want to rank for the categories that matter to you.” via the Local Search Clinic webinar, March 2023 What are the average map rankings per number of additional categories?Onto the burning question: just how do businesses rank locally when making use—or not!—of additional categories? You’ll note that, while you can add up to nine additional categories, we have grouped 5+ categories together within our data. This is because the number of business locations using five or more business categories was too low to provide wholly representative data points. There just aren’t a lot of businesses out there using more than five additional categories!
Essentially, the chart above shows that businesses have a better chance of improving their local rankings simply by using additional categories in the first instance. Business GBPs not using additional categories have the lowest average map rankings. Meanwhile, we can see that the average map ranking improves when using one or more additional categories. Most notably, the sweet spot for GBPs seems to be having four business categories, where local rankings averaged 5.9. If you think about it from the perspective of a would-be customer with specific requirements, adding categories that match as closely as possible to these provides more relevant, helpful results. Taking the generic primary category of ‘Lawyer’ for example. It’s quite likely that a user would have a particular area of law in mind for their requirements, such as personal injury or family law. A note on Products, Services, and Categories in Google Business Profile While many GBP category names match closely with those of particular services, it’s important to note that Products, Services, and Categories are separate entities that can be added to your profile. Does the relationship between local rankings and GBP categories vary by industry?Next, we took each set of primary categories and calculated the average map rankings per number of additional business categories. Beauty and Wellbeing: Day Spa
We’ve already highlighted why it makes sense for Day Spa GBPs to make use of several additional categories, as it’s likely that there are many that relate to the available products and services on site. Our findings also show that using additional categories appear to have a positive effect on local rankings, as Day Spa GBPs using four additional categories held an average map ranking of 5.4. If you conduct a local search for ‘day spa near me’ or similar, the results shown in the Local Pack or within Google Maps don’t necessarily place businesses with that primary category at the top. Google recognizes, for instance, where similar categories (like massage spa, sauna, beauty salon) might also show relevant results. So, it’s a good idea to keep how your audience might be searching in mind. Additional Categories to Consider for Day Spa There are a whole host of health and beauty-related categories that may apply to a Day Spa business. Here are just a few examples:
Healthcare: Dentist
For this primary category, there doesn’t seem to be a ‘smoking gun’ or a clear pattern to determine whether there is a relationship between the number of additional categories and dentists’ local rankings. Our data suggests that using more than one additional category is better for local ranking performance than none at all, but there is an anomaly in the data for three additional categories. Of course, it’s important to always reflect the most accurate information possible—especially within regulated health industries. Additionally, many additional categories related to the field of dentistry require demonstrated certification and available services, such as cosmetic dentists or dental implant providers. Additional Categories to Consider for Dentist There are some more generic additional categories available that might help more clients find you, such as:
Legal Services: Lawyer
For GBPs using Lawyer as their primary category, our findings show the highest average map ranking (5.9) comes from those using one additional category in place. This is closely followed by those using four additional categories, with an average map ranking of 6.0. While the results for GBPs using two and three additional categories show lower average map rankings than these, it still follows that using any amount of additional categories yields better results in rankings than none at all. Additional Categories to Consider for Lawyer There are a variety of law-specific categories available, so it’s a good idea to consider areas of specialism. Here are some examples:
Real Estate: Real Estate Agent
This data set didn’t contain enough data to represent three or four additional categories, so we’ve combined the average map ranking for 3+ additional categories. However, the results show a clear relationship between using more additional categories and better local rankings. Of all the industries we studied, this pattern appears to be the most consistent in terms of showing incremental gains. Additional Categories to Consider for Real Estate Agent If you’re a realtor with a GBP primary category set to Real Estate Agent, consider choosing some additional categories that are relevant to your field and will help prospective clients find you. Here are just a few examples that could work for you:
Retail: Department Store
The Department Store set was interesting to analyze as, although we didn’t have representative enough data to reflect five, six, eight, or nine additional categories, we noted that 33% of the GBPs studied here used seven additional categories, while none of them used two additional categories! But for the purpose of consistency, we have continued to show ‘5+’ additional categories. As noted previously, for the type of retailer that generally offers a multitude of products to its customers, it makes a lot of sense that many Department Store GBPs would utilize the ability to add more relevant categories. Moreover, our findings show that the Department Store GBPs with four additional categories have the best average map ranking of 5.3. Additional Categories to Consider for Department Store If you manage the GBPs for Department Store retailers, consider if there are additional categories that relate to your business’s products or services. Examples include:
Service-area Businesses: Electrician and HVAC ContractorElectrician seems to be the primary category that goes against the curve the most. Our data found that the GBPs with five or more additional categories had the lowest average map ranking, at 7.9. Meanwhile, the top two average map rankings can be attributed to three and zero additional categories. As discussed within the first section looking at how many categories businesses were using on average, we noted that electricians were generally using the least—in fact, mostly zero. The top-performing GBPs using Electrician as a primary category used an average of 0.5 additional categories. So, in this case, it does not appear that there is a relationship between the use of additional categories and local rankings within this business type. For HVAC Contractor, the results are more evenly spread. However, unlike the Electrician category, we found that zero additional categories led to the lowest average map ranking, at 8.0. The top two numbers of additional categories are four and two, although it’s worth noting the drop in average map ranking in the middle with three additional categories. Either way, the data here suggests that using at least one additional category for your HVAC Google Business Profile will be more advantageous in local rankings. Additional Categories to Consider for HVAC Contractor A HVAC Contractor may naturally work across a multitude of trades and services, so consider additional categories that may align with these—as well as how customers might be searching. Examples:
What can we learn from this data?The key takeaway from these findings is that, when it comes to GBP categories, more is generally more… helpful. Google doesn’t provide a complete list of the business categories available, but there are around 4,000 in total! So, when setting up or optimizing your Google Business Profile, don’t look at selecting the categories as a quick or menial task. If you’re not sure how to choose the categories that best fit your business, there are several things you can do:
SummaryLet’s face it, the Golden Rule of optimizing for search will always be to have your audience in mind (E-E-A-T, people!), so don’t try to game the system by adding irrelevant categories and services. And remember, while we know that categories are key GBP signals that can influence your local rankings, there will always be other factors at play, such as:
Did you find this study useful? Do you have any hot takes on the topic? Let us know your thoughts in our Facebook community, The Local Pack, or tweet us at @BrightLocal. MethodologyTo carry out this study, we selected seven primary categories to focus on:
For each category, 15 business locations were chosen from a random location in the US, for a total of 105 locations. We then set up a report for each location in LSG, using the following criteria:
Grids were only adjusted if automatically placed over large bodies of water, national parks, etc. From each report, we took the average map ranking and the number of additional GBP categories used for each location, plus the first nine top competitors listed. This created an overall sample of 150 locations per primary category, for a total of 1050 locations within the study. A Note on Keywords Used in LSG ReportsWe chose the above primary categories as some of the most ‘generic’ within their respective industries so that we could conduct keyword research and apply the same list of 10 keywords for each location’s report.
via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/WHriAUD Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ In the first episode of the fresh season of ‘Adventures in Local Marketing‘, new host Claire Carlile picks the brain of Eximo Marketing’s Andi Jarvis. We discuss what makes for an impactful local marketing strategy, what marketing clichés he’d stick in Room 404 forever, and what goes wrong when no one really understands strategy. Listen to learn:
Watch the InterviewResourcesGood Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why it Matters: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Good-Strategy-Bad-Difference-Matters/dp/1846684811 Mark Ritson: https://www.marketingritson.com/ Subscribe Today!If you like what you hear and want instant access to the latest episodes, be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts:
via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/XUN0RA9 Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ Competitor analysis for local SEO takes time and effort but it can be incredibly rewarding. In this overview, we’re going to show you how to use BrightLocal’s tools to cut the time it takes to perform detailed local competitor analysis in half. It’s time to unravel your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses so you can outshine them. For the sake of this example we’re going to do some competitor analysis for a law firm. All of their reports have been set up in BrightLocal using the keywords they want to target. Our first port of call is Google Business Profile Audit. So, let’s begin. Step One: Compare Your Google Business Profile vs Your CompetitorsGoogle Business Profile Audit can tell us who the law firm is competing against in Google Business Profile (GBP) and possible ways to outrank them. Each keyword entered during the report setup process is given its own tab. In each keyword tab, we can see a table of the top 10 law firms that are ranking for that keyword in their location. Each table reveals nuggets of information about the law firms competitors based on common ranking factors in local searches. This includes the number of citations, links, and reviews they have, their star ratings, the number of photos on Google, the primary business category they’re using, and their website authority. This law firm is at the top of this list making it easier to compare its performance to those in the top 10, and giving us some really actionable insights. For example, in each keyword tab, we can look out for where the competitors are scoring higher and make a note of it. They’re doing well for the keyword ‘family lawyer’ (see above), but how are they doing for other keywords? Below, we can see they are ranking in seventh position for the search term ‘best lawyer’. We can also see who their three main competitors are because they rank in first, second, and third positions. Working our way across the table we can see that our law firm has more citations and website authority than the top three companies, but fewer reviews, so they could think about running a review generation campaign. Read: Learning Hub – Generating Reviews for Local Businesses They also have a different primary category from the majority of their competitors, so if ranking for this particular keyword was really important to them, they could consider changing their primary category to ‘law firm’ as well. Now that our law firm knows how to optimize its Google Business Profile to get ahead of the competition, let’s find out how they can improve their website content to help them further. Step Two: Review Content OpportunitiesThe Chosen Competitors tab in a Local Rank Tracker report is a great way to see how this law firm’s rankings benchmark against their competitors for different keywords in different search engines. For example, our lawyer added one competitor when they set up their report, (you can add up to a maximum of four competitors per report). We can see our law firm, Sodoma Law, in the first column and then the chosen competitor, Collins Family Law Group, next to it. To get a comprehensive picture of how our lawyer’s competitors are outranking them for particular keywords, we can examine the table in each search engine tab for the lawyer’s most important keywords. For example, in the Local Pack tab, this lawyer is ranking fourth for the keyword ‘divorce lawyer’, and the competitor is ranking first. If they want to go after that keyword and knock one of the top ranking sites off their top spots then a good approach would be to optimize their website for the keyword ‘divorce lawyer’ or even create a dedicated landing page about the services they offer in this area. An in-depth guide to creating one-of-a-kind location pages. Step Three: Audit Local CitationsLocal citation analysis is an essential part of any competitive analysis because local citations impact rankings. In a Citation Tracker report, there’s a tab called Competitor Citations. Here, you see a list of citations and business mentions that are present for our law firm’s top five competitors, excluding any that our law firm already has. To discover who the competitors are, we can simply click on the red pins. For a better understanding of the citations that are worth us registering for, we can take a look at the Citation Authority and Citation Value columns. Citation Authority is based on Domain Authority, a metric calculated by a third party, Moz. It’s the SEO score for a website and a prediction of its ability to rank well in search engines. This is calculated out of 100. The higher the number, the more influence that site may have. Citation Value is unique to BrightLocal. It’s determined using the frequency with which a website appears in citation records. The more a website is used as a citation source, the higher its value. These values are calculated from unique research conducted by BrightLocal. If there are any citations in the table that have high Citation Value and/or Citation Authority scores, they would be good to go after first. To do that, in the column called ‘Actions’, click the ‘+’ icon and you’ll be taken straight to the citation site. Once there, you should be able to fill in your business details to register a citation request. Keep in mind that your citation may not be added to a directory immediately. Once citations are done and dusted we can move on to monitoring our local competitor’s rankings. Step Four: Monitor Local Competitor’s RankingsLocal Search Grid tells us how well we’re ranking for specific keywords compared to our competitors, giving us an idea of who we’re actually competing against so we can start to build a strategy for improvement. In the geogrid, you can see how our law firm is ranking across the area that we set. When we hover over the dots, we can also see the main competitors for that particular spot. To understand how we might outrank them, we can click on the dot and get a list of the top competitors along with information on their proximity, number of reviews, and star rating. If we notice that we have a lower number of reviews and star ratings than the competitors, for example, then a good course of action for our strategy would be to carry out a review generation campaign. This is also a great place to spot name spam. If we notice that a business ranking above us has used emojis or keywords in their business name, also known as keyword stuffing, we can click the Flag button which takes us straight to Google’s Redressal Complaint Form. If they have been using name spam then Google will penalize them. They’ll move down in rankings and we will move up. Below the geogrid is a competitors table which shows us a list of the top 10 competitors that are ranking in the geogrid and the following information for each of them:
So, how can you use this Local Search Grid data?Our law firm has considerably fewer links and reviews than the top three-ranking competitors for the search term ‘law firm near me’. They’re also using a different primary category in the Google Business Profile. They have ‘family law attorney’ and the top two competitors have selected ‘law firm’. So, two points of action from this would be to update their primary category in Google Business Profile and to initiate campaigns for both link and review generation. We can also look out for keyword stuffing here again too and report any suspicious businesses using the Flag button. Additionally, we can use the info in the competitor’s tables to understand if we can actually expect to rank for a particular keyword across a whole grid. This is great for setting expectations for ourselves and for our client. We can click on each competitor in the table to see if there’s a single competitor who dominates for that keyword. If not, then there’s no point expecting to get green across your whole grid. If we notice that the law firm is not ranking at all for a keyword at their direct location on the geogrid (marked with a blue pin), then this could mean they’re being filtered by Google. Filtering happens when there is more than one business going after the same keyword at a single address. For example, if there are multiple businesses at the same address using the same primary category on their Google Business Profile, Google will only rank one or two of them and filter out the rest. Your guide to managing multiple businesses that share an address. Let’s say there’s a dental practice and they have five dentists working for them. In their Local Rank Tracker report you notice that they aren’t ranking at all at their address (i.e. the dot is red where their blue location pin is just like in the image above). When you click the red dot you see that there are two dentists from the practice ranking above them which means they have their own GBPs set up. When you check in Google you can see that the two dentists are using the same Google Business Profile category as the main practice and that’s why Google is filtering the main practice. The main course of action here is to optimize the two dentists’ GBPs for a different keyword. One might specialize in teeth whitening for example and so that could be their primary category in their GBP instead. Watch: BrightLocal Webinar – Live Google Business Profile Audit with Colan Nielsen Step Five: Link and Website AuthorityLast up is Local Search Audit, a great all-around tool for auditing potential and existing clients and working out what areas of their online profile they need to work on or prioritize. So, how can you use it to gain information about our law firm’s competitors? In a Local Search Audit, under the ‘Links & Website Authority’ heading, we can find the average score for our competitors, as well as our business scores on the following:
Our aim should be to rank higher than the competitor’s average for each of these, so this table gives us great insight into where we might want to prioritize our efforts first and in the future. For example, if our Link Count is below the competitor’s average as it is in the above example, then embarking on a link-building campaign would be a worthwhile endeavor. Learn: BrightLocal Academy Course – How to Master Local Link Building ConclusionAs we’ve learned, conducting competitor analysis for local SEO requires significant time and effort, but with the help of BrightLocal’s tools it can be made easier and the potential rewards make it truly worthwhile. By meticulously examining each competitor and documenting various factors that have contributed to their success, you can glean valuable insights and overtake them in local search. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/aVhOMzb Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/ |
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