Do you recall a few weeks ago when I talked with you about Bing, and the fact they are no longer featuring Yelp reviews as their primary review source? This is still the case, and now Bing seems to be making another change, or at least testing a change to the local panel.

Is Bing Testing Adding Questions & Answers to Their Local Panel?

Search Engine Roundtable reports that Bing has added Questions & Answers in their local panel. Unlike the Google Questions & Answers section, Bing seems to be pulling the question and the answer from the business’ website. Since I can only recreate the results mentioned in the article above on the exact same listing out of the 10 I checked, at this point I’m considering this as something Bing is testing. You can see it for yourself here.

That Bing is pulling the question and the answer from the business’ website can be quite powerful. If they were to roll this out to all Bing listings and pull more questions and answers, this could really help local businesses to answer the common questions they get from customers directly in the local panel.

Let’s switch gears now and discuss the Google Questions & Answers section.

Google Questions & Answers Shouldn’t Be Ignored

I’ve talked with you about Google Questions & Answers before. When Google first added this feature in 2017 it was only available on Android devices. Later Google rolled it out to iOS, and now it’s available on desktop too.

At this point, a consumer and business owner can ask and answer questions through desktop or mobile directly on the business’ Google My Business listing. Questions and answers cannot be added to the business’ listing through the Google My Business (GMB) dashboard.

At Advice Local we know how important it is for our agency, brand and franchise partners to be able to monitor, respond and easily add Questions & Answers to a GMB listing. And we have the solution to make it all possible. Through our Enhanced Google My Business tool you can schedule Questions & Answers to publish to a single Google My Business listing or multiple listings – which is perfect for brands and franchises. We feature how it works here.

Google Questions & Answers Feature Is Quite Powerful

The questions and answers section within a business’ GMB listing can be powerful indeed. We can only hope that Bing rolls it out to all their listings. For those of you that are not creating Bing listings for the local businesses you represent, we can help with this. We actually include creating a Bing listing within our listing management solution at no additional cost.

Beyond your adding questions and answers to a GMB listing for the consumer to view, Google also uses artificial intelligence (AI) to answer questions a consumer may ask within this section of a business’ GMB listing.

Google Pulls Answers From Reviews

Shown above is the suggested answer a consumer would get if asking about the business’ speed of service. As you can see, the suggested answer is pulled from the reviews section of the business’ Google My Business listing. Also, note that while the question is about their speed of service, the AI determines that a review that includes fast and prompt service is the best answer. This is so powerful – and proves without a doubt why a business needs to not only actively get reviews, but to monitor and respond to them.

Google Pulls Answers From Google My Business Posts

Google also pulls answers to these questions asked by consumers from Google My Business posts. In this example, the question is what are allergy symptoms, and Google’s AI pulls up a Google My Business post as the suggested answer.

This is another example of why you need to be adding Google My Business posts to a business’ GMB listing on a regular basis. And these posts should include questions and answers to the most common questions that relate to your clients’ businesses.

I shared a case study awhile back on how adding Google My Business posts and photos helps a business get more maps and search views. Today’s revelation is another example of just how important it is to add GMB posts to a business’ listing.

Getting a Question Featured for the Business Listing

Do you have a question on a business’ GMB listing that you want featured? Upvotes help make this possible. You can get correct answers featured on questions that have multiple answers with an upvote also. Focus on getting three upvotes for the question you want featured – same applies to get the correct answer featured.

What Steps Are You Going to Take to Leverage Questions & Answers?

We’ve covered quite a bit about Questions & Answers today. I recommend you put a process in place to get questions and answers written for your client’s Google My Business listing and uploaded on a schedule. You also need to be getting reviews and publishing Google My Business posts.

Why You Should Use #GoogleMyBusiness Questions & Answers by @BernieColeman #SEO #GMB
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We know that this takes quite a bit of effort – especially if you’re managing multiple Google My Business listings, as many of our Advice Local partners do. It’s time to request a demo – learn about our listing management solution, all the features available to help you manage your clients’ Google My Business listings, including our Google My Business tool, plus much more.

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If you are like the majority of other local marketers in the world – anytime a ranking factor report relating to local comes out you head right over to give it a read. While you may not agree with everything said in the report, it’s important to read it, consider the information presented, then test it for yourself.

In December of 2020, Darren Shaw of Whitespark shared a summary of his analysis of the 2020 Local Search Ranking Factors. The study is compiled based on answers to key survey questions from a group of local search experts.

At Advice Local we wanted to share our insights on the study and our recommendations for 2021. We have actually been sharing many of those recommendations and tools to support them over the last few months, especially relating to Google My Business optimization. Keep reading and you’ll understand why.

2020 Local Search Ranking Factors Results

Whitespark compiled the answers from those local search experts to determine how much of each signal impacts a business’ placement in the local pack/finder. The summary of the results are as follows:

• Google My Business Signals 33%
• Reviews Signals 16%
• On-Page Signals 15%
• Link Signals 15%
• Behavioral Signals 8%
• Citations Signals 7%
• Personalization Signals 6%

At Advice Local, we read these reports just like you – and evaluate what has been working versus what hasn’t. In fact, in 2019 we compared the 2018 report results to the actions we took and found quite similar results. You can see our thoughts and get suggestions for the Local Ranking Factors for 2019 here. Since the report doesn’t come out every year, we didn’t create one for 2020.

Today however, we would like to address the results from the 2020 Local Search Ranking Factors Study and apply context, which you can then use in 2021 to help your local business clients place more often in the local pack and Google Maps.

Google My Business Is the Highest Ranking Signal

Take a look at the highest signal – Google My Business at 33%. This isn’t surprising at all to us, and we’re sure it isn’t surprising to you either. Google is adding more and more features to keep consumers on search results and in Google Maps for longer and longer. They are even pulling information from a business’ website to keep the consumer dependent on them. Remember zero-click search? The Google My Business (GMB) listing results in less clicks to a business’ website, but it’s still important to have a well-optimized website. Here we discuss zero-clicks & the GMB listing, and the why.

Reviews, On-Page & Links Are the Next Highest Signals

Notice Reviews, On-Page and Links are the next highest ranking signals. Let’s dig a little deeper into why these percentages are so high.

Reviews Signals 16%

Besides the experts that participated in Whitespark’s study, other studies indicate reviews are what consumers trust. Check out BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey from 2020. The study reveals that “only 48% of consumers would consider using a business with fewer than 4 stars.”

On-Page Signals 15%

This relates specifically to the business’ website, with items such as presence of the business’ NAP (name, address & phone number) on the business’ website, website optimization – items like H1s, H2s, EAT (expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness) within the website’s pages & posts – and obviously keyword optimization without keyword stuffing. We’ve talked about EAT quite a bit lately, we have a case study on EAT, an infographic and a guide. If you haven’t checked them out, head over to our website.

Link Signals 15%

This is all about the quantity, quality and authority of the websites linking to your clients’ websites. While Whitespark removed social signals from the 2020 Local Ranking Factors Study, stating that “we don’t think social signals directly impact your local rankings,” at Advice Local we want to add that this doesn’t mean that having links to your business’ website from social media sites is of no importance.

Search engines trust the authority of sites like Facebook, so it’s a no-brainer to post on them, plus they drive traffic to your business’ website, which sends many other positive signals to Google for organic search placement of a website’s pages and posts beyond the local pack.

Behavioral, Citations & Personalization Are the Lower of the Scores

Just like a pie you can slice many different ways, you only have one pie. You can’t slice up how search engines work and consumer behavior into even slices, so therefore someone comes in with a lower score. And with Google My Business taking 33%, there isn’t much left for the other signals. It’s that simple.

Behavioral Signals 8%

Think click-through rate, clicks to call, check-ins, etc. Behavioral signals are actions the consumer actually takes to interact with the business. With privacy and the use of cookies and browsers that block tracking, it makes sense the behavioral signals would take a hit compared to the 2018 results, which were 11.5%.

Citation Signals 7%

While citation signals are one of the lower signals, they are still highly relevant. The report says that citations only account for 7%. You may think, “Wow only 7%, do I need to stop doing listing management for my clients?” Well – absolutely not! Think about the consumer for a moment. The person that actually buys from the business.

The fact is, consumers don’t trust a business if the information about them isn’t consistent. Consumers don’t like getting lost when trying to find a business. If you stopped offering listing management to your clients, old business data would inevitably creep back onto the web.

Mapping apps would take people to the wrong locations, and phone numbers would no longer be accurate. And if the phone number isn’t correct, how could the consumer actually call the business, make an appointment, and so on?

BrightLocal’s Local Citations Trust Report revealed the following:

• 80% of consumers lose trust in local businesses if they see incorrect or inconsistent contact details or business names online
• 40% would give up looking for a local business that they couldn’t find because the address was wrong online
• 68% of consumers would stop using a local business if they found incorrect information in online directories

Relating to citations on the Whitespark website, along with his summary of the study, Darren Shaw says:

• We continue to regularly receive comments from customers that tell us that they built citations with us and it had a positive impact on their rankings.
• In a case study I did for my 2019 Mozcon presentation, we stopped doing SEO work, but their rankings continued to double, and then triple over the course of the next year with zero additional SEO work being completed.
• I have heard many opinions, but have yet to see any compelling data that proves that citation building and citation cleanup has less value than it used to.
• I have seen some compelling research from Uberall on the value of citations that they will be publishing in the new year.

Simply put, while citations are coming in with a lower signal, they are still extremely important to ensure the businesses you represent are getting found by consumers seeking their products and services.

If the consumer can’t find the business on directories, in mapping apps or in their in-dash navigation, how can they:

• Call the business
• Frequent the business
• Buy the business’ products and services

They can’t. It’s that simple.

Personalization Signals 6%

Personalization comes in with the lowest percentage, which isn’t too surprising, because while consumers love a personalized experience, it has a tendency to creep them out a bit. With less and less access to using a consumer’s search history, how can a business truly provide for such an experience? It’s not easy – there’s a thin line between personalization and invasion of privacy, and the balance hasn’t been achieved yet.

Local Search Ranking Factors – What’s Important in 2021 by @BernieColeman #SEO
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What Are Your Next Steps to Help Your Clients Place in Local Searches?

What are you going to do differently to help local businesses, brands and/or franchises to place higher in local search in 2021? Obviously, Google My Business optimization needs to take center stage, along with reviews and the business’ website.

Make sure you don’t forget about those citations, because if the consumer can’t find the business they certainly can’t buy from it. Request a demo today to learn all about our GMB claiming service, GMB tool, listing management and voice search solutions.

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Over the past several months I’ve been taking you on quite the journey into Google My Business, and leveraging EAT to help a business appear more often in maps. I even shared a case study on Google My Business and EAT.

Last week we spotted some news about store locators on a study (and a mention of our Advice Locator Pages) that was recently conducted on their value. Today, we’re going to discuss another important component of local – and this time in relation to the business’ website, a store locator map and location pages.

Location Pages Are Important

As you may know, location pages can be extremely powerful in helping a business that services multiple geographic areas to place in search results. For brands and franchises, using them can be quite helpful.

As digital marketers, in the past we would build individual locations pages on a business’ website for each location they have or service. Depending on how many locations (or the service area), it can be quite time consuming and tedious – and it can be expensive, as a web developer or someone with web developer skills is required to create each page.

With a store locator such as ours, these pages can be created dynamically through the store locator technology. The page automatically appears on the business’ website through the code snippet that is added to the website. This makes it simple for the business and/or the agency representing the business to easily add new location pages to the business website – without the need for a web developer. A store locator also makes it easy for the customer of the business to enter their ZIP code on the business’ website and find the location closest to them, or to learn if they service their area. Customers love this convenience.

Using a Store Locator to Help a Service Area Business

One of our Advice Local partners has given us permission to share how they’re going to be using our proprietary technology, Advice Locator Pages, to help a brand that delivers products to their customers’ homes.

This brand has a single business location, but they deliver to 44 ZIP codes surrounding their business location. Manually creating a service area page for each of these locations would require quite a bit of web development time, and each time the business would like to add a new ZIP code it would require more web development. Our partner has solved this issue for their client with a store locator.

With some modifications to Advice Locator Pages, we are helping to highlight the business’ delivery service and online ordering capabilities on each location page. The technology team at Advice Local is integrating all the important schema and technical elements required to help these pages place in keyword and proximity searches. Meanwhile, the partner is getting all the keyword-rich content written to populate the store locator.

Store Locators Are a Franchise’s Best Friend

Traditionally, store locators are used to help a business place in search and drive traffic to their brand or franchisees’ physical locations. Consumers that visit a business’ website value locators also, as it helps them find the location closest to them.

This same partner is also using our store locator for a franchise who has brick-and-mortar locations around the United States. The locator will serve as the franchise’s page on the corporate site, and help each location place in search results for the cities/ZIP codes that have the service area.

To see other examples of how a store locator can be used to help a brand or franchise get visibility, look here on Street Fight, where they share how L’Oréal is uniquely using their store locator, and how another business started using a store locator when COVID-19 became an issue.

We Have Store Locator Resources to Help You

We have a guide, Putting Multi-Location Businesses on the Map, that shares quite a few tips and tricks that can really help you help your brands and franchises get found in local searches.

At Advice Local, we are dedicated to providing superior listing management solutions for our partners. If you haven’t had a demo recently, request a demo today – you will not be disappointed.

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Hopefully you have heard of Google EAT by now, but you may be wondering just how to effectively apply it to a Google My Business listing? Expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-A-T) can be extremely powerful in helping a business to gain Google’s trust. Today I’ll walk you through understanding EAT at a high level, provide you with an important infographic which you can save and share with your team – and the opportunity to download our guide to learn even more about EAT.

Google EAT’s Role With a Google My Business Listing

According to a study completed by BrightLocal, the average business’ Google My Business listing is found 152 times in direct searches and 852 times in discovery searches, translating to discovery searches being 84% of total searches. This means that in search, consumers are more often looking for a product or service, and not a specific business. If a business wants to be “discovered” then it must understand how to apply expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness to their Google My Business (GMB) listing.

Here’s a brief explanation of EAT as it relates to a GMB listing:

Expertise

Businesses can’t just tell people that they are experts in their field or industry, they have to prove it. Expertise means that a business is showing that it has a total knowledge of their product, service or skill – and this knowledge should be shown across multiple social media channels.

Authoritativeness

When consumers are looking for answers, they go to the business that is an authority in that area. To become the authority, a business needs to show that they are reliable and can be trusted, which comes through by maximizing the usage of features available within a Google My Business listing.

Trustworthiness

It can certainly be challenging to prove trustworthiness to both consumers and Google, but it can be done. To exude trustworthiness, all activity across every social media channel and anywhere online must be honest, transparent and real.

The action steps outlined in this infographic will lead a business to gain the trust of both Google and consumers.

Applying EAT to a Google My Business Listing Infographic

How to Apply EAT to a Google My Business Listing by @BernieColeman #SEO #GMB #Infographic
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So now that you know businesses must have expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness – and got tips on how to add E-A-T to a Google My Business Listing – what will you do next?

The Google Authority Score Is Impactful

The Google Authority Score (GAS) created by Advice Local is an algorithm designed to help our partners to better understand how well the GMB listings they manage are performing in the local pack and Google Maps.

GAS is calculated based on the following factors:

• Brand Influence
• Engagement Visibility
• Influence Velocity
• Q/A Quality
• Reputation Health

At Advice Local we started as an agency, and so we know exactly what’s involved in managing a business’ Google My Business listing. Today our clients are local marketers, agencies, brands and franchises. Our priority is providing superior listing management solutions and tools to help our partners better serve their clients.

The Google Authority Score is one of the features available to all our partners within the Advice Local dashboard.

Powerful Google My Business Tool

We can’t offer a score such as this without a tool to help our partners achieve the best results for their customers, which is why we offer our Enhanced Google My Business tool. This tool makes it super-simple to manage Google My Business listings for single location or multi-location businesses such as a franchise.

Some of the features of our Google My Business tool include:

• Scheduling Google My Business posts
• Publishing EXIF data-optimized images
• Adding & answering Google Questions & Answers
• Monitoring & responding to GMB reviews

And all of this can be completed from a single platform – instead of logging individually into each client’s Google My Business listing.

We Have a Google My Business Guide for You, Too

Just like we can’t give you a score without a tool, we can’t give you a tool without guidance on how to apply it – and its benefits! Download our guide, Applying E-A-T to a Google My Business Listing today. Whether you are an Advice Local partner or not, you’ll get actionable insights, examples, plus learn exactly how you can apply expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness to a Google My Business listing to help it appear more often in Google Maps.

If you are not a current Advice Local partner, or would like to get a behind-the-scenes look at our listing management technology, request a demo today.

Share This Google My Business Infographic on Your Website

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What are you doing in 2021 to better help your local business clients? We accomplished a lot at Advice Local in 2020 to make it easier for our agency & local marketing partners to help their clients get found in Google Maps and organic search.

Advice Local’s 2020 Year in Review

Today we would like to do a 2020 Year in Review with you.

1. Breakthrough Voice Profile Technology Is Now Available on Judy’s Book

Each business listed in Advice Local’s technology has all of the following applied to their business’ listing on Judy’s Book in real time – and it’s all done automatically.

• Local Business Schema
• Review Schema
• FAQ Schema
• Speakable Schema

2. First-Class Conversational Voice App Technology Is Now Available

For platform partners, this technology integration is available in your partner dashboard. You can create a voice app for any active business listing within our technology.

• Using the business’ information in our technology, we’ll create a list of frequently asked questions and answers.
• Features such as adding a Welcome Message, Help Message and Exit Message are options also.

Once finished completing the app information, you simply place the order. Get more details on our voice app technology here.

3. Add Markup That Voice Assistants Love to a Local Business Website

Within the Advice Local dashboard, for each business’ active listing, there is a section entitled Voice Search Data. Within this section a JSON-LD script is available for copying & adding to the business’ website. This enables voice assistants to answer frequently asked questions about the business in voice queries. And here’s more on adding Local Schema, FAQ Schema and Speakable Schema to your clients’ websites.

4. Winning With Voice Search – Tips & Tricks Download

Voice search is more important than ever. Statista estimates that more than 8 billion voice assistants will be in use by 2023. This download, Winning With Voice Search, walks you through how to make this information available to voice assistants – and in a format they can understand.

5. Google My Business Management Just Got Easier

Our Enhanced Google My Business tool makes it easier for you to manage multiple Google My Business listings from a single dashboard. Through our tool you can schedule GMB posts, upload images that include EXIF data to the GMB listing, add questions & answers, respond to reviews, access 18 months of historical insights data and more.

6. Google My Business Sync Keeps Your Client’s Listing Up-to-Date

Google My Business Sync (or GMB Sync) is available for all partners through the dashboard. We do not require the use of our GMB Claiming service to access this feature. You can easily update the GMB listing information through our dashboard or simply sync the data to our listing management solution to monitor it. GMB Sync makes it easy to keep your client’s Google My Business listing up-to-date.

7. Advice Local Introduces the Google Authority Score

Advice Local has developed an algorithm called the Google Authority Score (GAS) which is available to our partners exclusively. This score calculates how well a business’ Google My Business listing is performing in Google Maps. The score is calculated based on the usage of the features within a business’ GMB listing.

8. Get the Secrets to Increasing a Business’ Online Authority

Google’s E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness) is a component of how Google directs its Search Quality Raters to evaluate a website’s content. Our newest download, Applying E-A-T to a Google My Business Listing, walks the reader through how to apply E-A-T to a business’ Google My Business listing to help it appear more often in the Local Map Pack, also referred to as Google Maps.

But Wait, There’s More to What Advice Local Has Accomplished in 2020

Above, we’ve summarized the most impactful moments that are helping our partners to better serve their local business, service area businesses and brand clients. Some of our additional accomplishments include:

• Welcoming new directories and data providers into our network
• Upgrading our API connections so we can share a business’ attributes beyond the name, address & phone number (NAP)
• Switching some directories from an API partner connection to a direct API connection

The future is bright for local businesses. It’s important that you have a partner that is providing best-in-class listing management & technology solutions.

#AdviceLocal’s 2020 Year in Review – What Did You Accomplish? by @BernieColeman #SEO
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We have a solid 2021 roadmap, and we’ll be continuing to roll out new features and improvements to our technology over the coming months. If you haven’t taken a tour of our technology recently, it’s time to act. Request a demo today – you’ll be pleasantly pleased with our listing management solutions.

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