Moving Your Business Location For Dummies

At this late date, if you are not taking care of your local listings on the Web when you move your business, congratulate yourself for being royally out of touch with how business works in 2017. Last week I headed over to my dentist, Home Page DDS, for a cleaning and on the way recalled when I was there in November he had mentioned he was moving locations. While driving, I asked both Apple Maps and Google Maps for his…

Proximity, The Number 1 Local SEO Ranking Sub-Factor

The 2017 Local Search Ranking Factors, a survey of Local SEO professionals on what they think it takes to rank in local search, was just released at MozCon Local/Local U. Andrew and I both love participating in the survey, as it’s a chance to see what the Local SEO hive mind is thinking. I highly recommend checking it out to see how people are thinking about local search rankings. Coming out of the 2017 version, the talk of the town…

“Near Me” Local SEO Ranking Factors

If you have been paying attention to the countless pieces put out, you know that “near me” searches to find a local business are climbing rapidly. Just check out how Google Trends evaluates the search trend of the term “near me” for their search engine: Not only has “near me” risen as a whole, but specific near me searches have also skyrocketed: These searches are being heavily driven by mobile searches and the proliferation of using mobile devices, like smartphones, as a primary…

Google My Business API Now Takes Menus

The Google My Business Help blog now says you can add a menu to your GMB listing via the API according to the new menu guidelines for Google My Business. According to the guidelines, there are two kinds of menus:

Why I’m Not Going to #StopCrapOnTheMap

There has been a big push by some in the local search space to have Local SEOs vigorously engage in reporting “spam” on Google Maps/Google My Business. The GMB profiles in question are ones like this: Per the screenshot, they are violating Google’s guidelines with their name and by breaking the no adult content rule and thus are eligible to be removed if reported. This is something that I find very interesting, for a few reasons: I don’t think it’s spam…

Why is $GOOG so Obsessed with Afternoon Tea?

Google has long been trying to compete with Yelp on the local review front, however, getting community involvement has always seemed like a challenge for them. After Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman’s recent embarrassing exchange with the affable Mike Blumenthal on Twitter, I switched off of Yelp and took my talents to GMB, and I have to say, they are not killing it on the Local Guide front. As a Local Guide, $GOOG will sometimes ask you specific questions about a place…

Can You Trust The Google My Business Guidelines?

It’s a question I constantly think about, especially in terms of how to counsel our current and prospective clients. Now, upfront, I will admit to being a bit of a skeptic. Google’s guidelines are what make the most sense for them in running their business, not what makes the most sense for our clients’ businesses. I’m a big believer that our obligations are to our clients and not our benevolent overlords at $GOOG, so we set out to do a test on a…

The Great Google Plus Local – Google My Business Decoupling of 2015

I was at Shea Stadium during the NYC blackout of 1977. It’s was pretty cool. The lights went out at Shea first so we got to watch all of Manhattan go dark one block at a time – we were high up in the cheap seats. When big events happen, what we were doing, where we were, etc. often stick in our memories. The recent separation of Google My Business and Google Plus is not one of those events. A reporter…

Seriously, Track Your Google My Business Pages

With all the recent shakeups in SERPs/local SEO it’s becoming increasingly important to have visibility into the performance of all your search channels, including a search engines local search. These days, rank tracking alone won’t get the job done,  so I’m a big believer in tracking clicks from a Google My Business page to a website. I’m constantly surprised that this is not something that all local SEO’s are doing, especially considering that Google rankings don’t measure the actual impact…

How To Scale Google My Business Support for Enterprises

Managing multiple GMB accounts is a tricky beast. I shared a few tips on SearchEngineLand for how we do it. See How To Scale Google My Business Support for Enterprises Like a Boss. TL:DR version: Hire people who know what they’re doing Have an escalation path Use an agile project management tool Create a knowledge base and keep it up to date Calendar everything so you know when you hit up GMB support and when you need to do it…