Newsletter #28

Whitespark Local Insider

June 29, 2017

Whitespark's Monthly Local Search Newsletter

Local InsiderJune 2017

Want a Free Citation Audit and Cleanup?We are planning to conduct a new case study for a business who is just about to move locations, but hasn't yet. If you are or know of a business in this situation and would like to volunteer, please email Darren to discuss. As part of the study Whitespark will update all of your listings on our Top 50 sites at no charge. Cheers,Team Whitespark

From the Blog

How to Rank in Cities Where you Don’t Have an AddressAs a local business or service area business it is very common to want to rank for a neighbouring city in search results. While you may never be able to show up in local pack results, it is possible to achieve top local organic placement.Targeting local organic results for areas you serve outside of your current location requires creating well thought out and planned city landing pages. If you invest time and energy into building an awesome, informative, and relevant page, then you have the chance to earn solid traffic and drive leads without having to open a physical location in these cities.

The city page strategy is nothing new, however, it is often overlooked, or is executed poorly by some businesses (and consultants), which can lead to underwhelming results. In light of this we’ve decided to put together a list of ways to help you improve and create awesome city pages.

In this podcast Darren Shaw, and Megan Hannay of zipsprout discuss how the best way to increase local rank these days via manual, not automated solutions. How increasingly, there is a push for businesses to focus on what they do best, and to create quality products and positive experiences.

The countdown to MozCon has begun, if you don't already have your ticket save $50 by using this special discount code: mozfriend100

Around The Web

Rachel Howe interviewed some of our favourite Local SEO experts to discuss common online marketing and SEO questions that local businesses face daily. There is a lot of information and great advice from those in the trenches, so if you are struggling with any of these questions, there are helpful answers in this article. 

While there is not one straightforward solution for dealing with an unwanted or precarious Google My Business listing, Miriam Ellis, has some of the most common scenarios that you may encounter and tips for how to handle each case. 

In her pursuit to help stop the never ending spam that gives local SEO a bad rap, and takes advantage of unsuspecting business owners, Joy Hawkins has a list of the lies the infamous Point Break Media is telling as part of their robocall scam. 

Google's post feature is now available to all businesses. Use this feature to share daily specials, promotions, events, or introduce new products.

 

Sergey Alakov reported earlier in May Google testing a new hotel review formats that breakdown reviews by traveller type. Google has since confirmed this new format. Check out this post for details on the new interface and some of the features. 

Google is rolling out two new local search features in the search results. Barry Schwartz has noticed them, how about you? 

Greg Sterling distills some key findings from studies released by both of these powerful local search and review sites on what drives engagement and conversions. 

Google has been handing out manual penalties for spammy structured data markup, Emily Smith has steps to help your site recover. Even if you haven’t received a penalty, it’s good to know if you’re following Google’s guidelines. 

David Mihm and Mike Blumenthal discuss how business owners can leverage Facebook to achieve gains inexpensively, once they realign their expectations of the platform.

Upcoming Conferences

MOZCONJuly 17 - 19, 2017Seattle, WA

CONNECT TO CONVERT - LEADS CONAugust 21 - 23, 2017New York, NY