End Your Spammy Competitors for Good & Citation Consistency vs. Citation Building

This email is full of powerful insights into local SEO

Author

Gabriela Aleksova
February 20, 2024

Let’s start your Monday with some in-depth observations

We’re taking you on the more technical side of local SEO this time.

Let’s learn a little something about spam fighting, the changes to Google’s results page over the past 10 years, and citation consistency vs. citation building 👇️ 

1. How to outsmart local spammers

Phil Rozek recently wrote about some clever loopholes in Google Maps' "suggest an edit" to improve your spam fighting success rate.

  1. Report each issue you notice separately.

    If you keep reporting the same issue, Google will think that's the only thing wrong with the Profile. But if you tell them about each problem you see, it’s more likely that they’ll agree on at least one of them.

  2. If the first edit doesn't work, try reporting the Profile for different, but related reasons.

    If a business is stuffing keywords in their GBP name and “Offensive, harmful, or misleading” doesn't work, try "Doesn't exist here".

  3. If an edit is pending for a while, don't assume it was rejected.

    Try reporting the Profile again. And if you can get another person to report it as well, there's an increased chance your edits will be approved.

Note: This is solid advice, but, as Phil puts it himself, even these additional steps won't guarantee that Google will approve your reports.

60% of the time, it works every time 😉

Did you know you could attach an image when suggesting an edit? Dalton Luka on LinkedIn says this can increase the success rate of your reports to 85% 😱

2. How to rank at the top of Google’s ever-changing results page

How have Google's search results changed over the past 6 years, and how can you stay on top?

Andy Crestodina wrote an awesome article documenting the changes Google's SERP has undergone in the past 10 years. Here is my summary 👇️

This gif illustrates the transition from "ten blue links" to a more dynamic, visual and interactive page:

Andy says that these changes have fed into users' "zero-click" search tendencies:

  • The organic results have been pushed down

  • Rich snippets and visual results let you get all the information you need without having to click on anything

  • And when you DO click, it's likely on another Google product (YouTube, ads, Shopping, etc.)

The takeaway?

If you want to keep getting organic traffic to your website, you should:

  • Make your website more engaging: use different content formats, images and videos.

  • Write magnificent title tags. If you want those clicks, you better sound convincing.

  • Write content around questions that don't have a straight-forward answer (that can be summarized by Google in a rich snippet, an "Also asked" question, or an SGE result).

Read my additional thoughts regarding LOCAL rankings on Twitter and LinkedIn.

3. Citation consistency has NOT mattered for SEO for over a decade.

Don’t get me wrong. Citation building is still valuable, and there are still good reasons to keep your citations consistent on some key sites, but there is no need to keep your citations consistent across the whole web.

Citation consistency used to be an important local SEO factor, but not anymore. So what changed?

In the early days of local search, Google had all the businesses in a standard database. In order to get the benefit of a citation, it was important for your primary name, address, and phone number to match perfectly with your business listing in that database.

But in 2012, Google switched from a database of businesses to a knowledge graph of business entities…

Keep reading on LinkedIn or Twitter to learn why this switch changed everything.

4. How to add social media icons to your GBP

Swipe through the carousel on Instagram.

5. And a wee meme for dessert

Google is deleting more than 20 million small business websites in 10 days.

If you or anyone you know wants to keep their Google Business Profile website, our tool can help 👇️ 

I share all sorts of local SEO content every day. Follow me on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram so you don’t miss the next helpful post!

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