Newsletter #3

Whitespark Local Insider

March 18, 2015

Whitespark's Monthly Local SEO Newsletter

Local Insider

March 2015

The first day of spring is fast approaching (March 20 - woot woot) and we can't wait. Spring is the time for new beginnings, a fresh start, and that beloved annual cleanup. Oh how we love a good spring cleaning. Have you considered what kind of cleaning your Local SEO requires? Perhaps it's in need of a content refresh or a new review strategy, maybe your website could use a little rejuvenation (is it mobile-friendly? are you using Schema markup to its full potential?).How is your citation profile looking? This is one cleaning project that never seems to become effortless. Do you know if you have duplicates, incorrect, incomplete or missing listings on the top directories? If you can't remember the last time you reviewed your citation profile then this could be your perfect spring project. If citation cleanup feels like a chore that is unmanageable, you can always enlist the help of our awesome citation audit and cleanup team.If your local SEO has been feeling a little lackluster or at a standstill, a spring cleanup could be just what you need to bring it back to life. Happy cleaning!Cheers,The Whitespark Team

Recent Blog Posts

How to Destroy the Zombie Pages That Are Creeping on Your Website!

Zombie pages are the living dead that creep into the websites of local businesses, infecting them with ugly, boring, lifeless content that will have a very hard time ranking for anything. You've seen them. You know them all too well. Wherever you find them, they must be killed and buried once and for all. Read More.

Dear Google, Stop Using Business Name as a Local Ranking Factor

Google, stop putting so much weight on the business name as a ranking signal. I can see that there are some benefits to using it in the algorithm, however; the fact that you can go into GMB and add a keyword to the business name and see an immediate and significant increase in rankings shows that Google is giving this signal too much power. Read More.

Local SEO Around The Web

Google Maps Upends Primary Data Suppliers - YP.CA Is Out

It has been confirmed that YellowPages.ca is no longer Google’s primary data supplier for business listings in Canada. But the story appears to be bigger than that and likely includes new terms in many countries whereby Google is now owning rather than licensing their business listing data.

How Much Traffic Will You Lose From The Upcoming Mobile SEO-Pocalypse?

Google's mobile-friendliness update is coming this April, but should you be rushing to make your site mobile-friendly? Columnist Bryson Meunier explains how to estimate the impact on your site.

Google’s About To Close Your Local Doorway Pages

Google published “An update on doorway pages”. The post implies that Google will soon be updating its algorithm to weed out offending doorway pages from the SERPs.

Aggregating Intent

Successful search engine optimization strategies must aggregate intent. Aggregating intent and understanding how to decode, identify and present active and passive intent from query syntax is vital to success in search and beyond.

Customizing Your Knowledge Graph

The Knowledge Graph is Google's system for organizing information about millions of well-known "entities": people, places, and organizations in the real world. Companies and people can now customize their own data in the Knowledge Graph by adding structured data markup to their official website.