Google's Testing Lots of New Things + Guinea Pigs! 🐹

also, I'm on my way to Bulgaria right now

Author

Gabriela Aleksova
May 13, 2024

Hey there!

Did you know that half of Whitespark’s team is Bulgarian?

I’m actually en route to Bulgaria as we speak! How cool is that?

Anyway, here’s what’s going on with local SEO this week 👇️

1. Google may be replacing LSA reviews with GBP reviews

Mike Blumenthal from Near Media recently shared the following Google message received by a UK user:

Pray to all your gods that they actually replace LSA reviews with Google reviews.

LSAs are riddled with abuse and fake reviews, and Google does nothing about it. This would be a huge improvement.

Read the full post on Near Media.

2. How can you get more quality backlinks & citations?

One of my favorite strategies is what I call the "Rolodex method". Here's how it goes:

  1. Open your phone's contacts.

  2. Identify business owners with websites.

  3. Think of why they might link to your business.

  4. If it makes sense, send them a proposal detailing where you'd like your link placed and what text you'd like.

Since you know them personally, your success rate will be 10X higher than other link outreach methods. Simple, but effective.

And if you want to see this method in action, you should check out this video where we review Anne's existing backlinks and discuss more effective strategies for getting backlinks 👇️

3. Google is testing only displaying local results for “near me” searches on mobile.

Scroll through this carousel to learn more 👇️

Head over to Instagram for more informative carousels!

5. Buttercup, Steve and I explain review recency

Watch this short video to learn what this ranking factor is and why it’s important 👇️

@darrenshawseo

Here's a local SEO ranking factor that you need to know - Review Recency. #seo #localseo #googlebusinessprofile #googlemybusiness #small... See more

Don’t miss the posts that don’t make it into these weekly recaps by following me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok!

Darren

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