SEO News

Posted by MiriamEllis

If you work in Local SEO, chances are you’ve been fielding tons of questions from clients since Google rolled out the Pigeon update in late July.
Need a little extra support providing sound advice in what are still the early days of this development that has caused both organic and local ranking shakeups? Here’s your chance to learn what six of the finest Local SEOs on the map are telling their own clients and readers about Pigeon, followed up by a checklist aimed at helping you Pigeon-proof your local presence. Read closely, and I believe you’ll find some gems of wisdom from these generous pros!

Mike Blumenthal says…

With Pigeon, it’s important to understand that several things happened at once and you need to understand which of those things happened so that you can respond appropriately.

One major change was a shifting of the calculations for distance around a search. Typically, but not always, Google reduced the search radius.

If you are no longer included in the search radius you have several choices (besides opening another office). The one that makes the most sense is learn what geographic areas you are showing in and emphasize those AND find the less competitive categorical searches where you can compete to get some visibility. “Jewelry Appraisals” might not be as lucrative as “Jewelry” in a given market, but if you can dominate the search, it can lead to long term sustainable client acquisition. Figure out what these phrases are and be sure that you have both the right site content AND the right categories at places like YP.com and elsewhere.

The other change was a reordering of search results with some listings losing rank even though they are still within the new search radius.

If you lost rank but are still within the search radius then you need to do the things that Google is looking for. When in doubt, go back to the basics of internet marketing and be sure that you are participating in activities that make your business more visible on-line – becoming more citation worthy and linkable in your local market. In essence become newsworthy in your local market.

Mary Bowling says…

This is the gist of what I have found myself saying repeatedly over the past few weeks to clients:

1. Just because obvious spam is being rewarded in the SERPs, don’t think that you should spam, too. If you’re concerned about spam in the local packs that affect you, report it. The more people you can get to report it, the more likely it is to be examined and, hopefully, demoted.

2. Brands with their own directories of locations (or store finders) should do whatever is needed to boost their potential for ranking well, which will help both the brand website and the individual locations. The website needs to be structured to push PageRank down to all of the location listings. The directory section must be thoroughly crawlable and well-optimized at every level. The location listings themselves must have plenty of unique, location-specific content that visitors find interesting and valuable.

3. Make certain you are in the directories that are ranking in or above the local packs for the terms you’d like to rank for. Regardless of your feelings toward Yelp, most businesses need to maintain accurate and complete listings there, preferably accompanied by good reviews.

4. To appear in the shrunken local packs, you must now rank in the top 3 positions, which are usually influenced by organic rankings. So keep working on your organic rankings via valuable, well-optimized content and incoming links from other good websites.

Linda Buquet says…

My advice? The Pigeon has flown the coup, but has not landed yet! There is too much flux for any of us to make sense of yet. I’ve been sharing tracking screenshots at the Local Search Forum and we have 200 Pigeon analysis posts so far. All I can say is that hopefully by the time this bird is tested and/or trained it will settle into something equitable for users and business owners alike. So no solid advice can be given now, except to keep working on best practice strategies, which will always help in the end.

A couple of unique and more recent observations:

1. After doing lots of Pigeon analysis, I’m almost positive that Google is testing at least 3 versions of Pigeon on different datacenters and rotating results – maybe for AB testing. I say this, in part, because all the Google datacenter IPs I can find are still showing the old pre-Pigeon results and many of the tools I use that send me screenshots or ordered pack results are still showing the old algo ranking order as well. Classic Google maps is showing the old ranking order too, because it’s using a different datacenter than Google search. Here is a detailed post with all my observations and screenshots to back them up:

Pigeon Analysis – New Insights about this Crazy Google Local Algo & the Constant Flux

So that would account for the crazy constant flux we are seeing. Depends on which of the rotating datacenters you hit. I repeat – the Pigeon has not landed!

2. Duplicate discovery has changed and Pigeon is now hiding lots of dupes. Those dupes can still rank and mess you up but are just harder to find. (h/t to Joy Hawkins for this discovery.) The old map search for phone # may only surface 1 listing even though there are 6. There is a long post about the various ways to search now, including a couple new ways at my forum. So if you deal with doctors, dentists, attorneys, just be aware that if your standard method of dupe discovery shows 0 additional listings – it does not mean they are not out there. They are just in hiding! (Plus Pigeon is handling dupes differently too, but I think going into that will make this too long.)

Phil Rozek says…

You have to figure out which strain of Pigeon Flu has got you down. 

Is Google showing only 3-packs, and now your #5 ranking doesn’t get you on page one? Don’t panic and change your strategy; you’re on the right track.

Have you been knocked out of the 7-pack by spammy results? Not much you can do, but Google will probably fix it anyway.
Hang tight and work on your non-Google Places visibility efforts.

Lost your rankings in the big city? Well, your first priority always should have been to be King or Queen of your immediate area first and foremost. (And if that doesn’t bring you enough phone calls, then you

need to earn more reviews and make your site stickier.)

In my experience, Pigeon is a wake-up peck.

Andrew Shotland says…

Our best advice to clients is to keep calm and carry on. We are still seeing a lot of changes in the local SERPs on almost a daily basis. So adjusting tactics while the game board is still moving seems ill-advised. In cases where things are really broken – and we’ve seen a bit of that (e.g. multi-location brands that have a 100-mile-away location ranking for <brand>+<city> queries even though they have a location in the searched city) – we are definitely hitting Google My Biz Support and making sure there’s nothing screwy on the NAP side that could be causing this. 

Thus far the big fix we are seeing to defeating spammy results in the local packs is to get links, which unfortunately is going to lead to a whole new wave of local link SPAM, because it appears to be working, for the moment.

My best advice to clients would be to do “real local SEO sh*t”. Lots of local SEOs, especially at large firms, have focused on the local part of the algorithm to the exclusion of localized organic search. The Pigeon update, with its fusing of the local and organic ranking factors, appears to push us back to basic SEO tactics. Get good, local, links. Create quality content. Eliminate technical issues on your website and Google My Business page. Do this and you will be ahead of the vast majority of local businesses in the turd covered post-pigeon landscape.

Nyagoslav Zhekov says…

I do believe it is very early to comment on an update that appears to be as impactful as “Pigeon” (I really dislike the name, and I don’t think it fits too well), partly because I do not even think the SERPs have settled down yet, and partly because very little targeted testing and research has been done to date.

The only thing we know for sure is what Google shared (
indirectly):

“Google has released a new algorithm to provide a
[sic]more useful, relevant and accurate local search results that are tied more closely to traditional web search ranking signals.”

“…Google said that this new algorithm improves their distance and location ranking parameters.”

The first part could be interpreted as Google now giving more value to the “traditional” organic ranking factors (website-related ranking factors).
This could be seen as a sort of a “follow-up” on Venice, which significantly impacted the type of local SERPs (major shift from “pure” to “blended” SERPs). Pigeon had significant impact on the display of local “packs” in the local SERPs, too (23.4% drop in local packs display).

The second part of Google’s “announcement” could be interpreted as an attempt to further “localize” the search results, wherever it might make sense. There have been
observations of “tightening” of the radius of the displayed local search results, and experts generally agree that the update had a serious impact on the hyper-local search results.

What a business owner should do? My advice – do what you have been doing up to now. A strong, end-to-end, local SEO campaign, without cutting corners, and without stressing on one aspect while neglecting the rest, is the most sustainable way to win in the long term, and practically the only way not to have to worry every time Google update their algorithms.”

My 6-point Pigeon-proofing checklist for local businesses

Stay alert. Experts agree that the dust has not settled on this update, so this would not be the right time to react with a complete 180 in your marketing strategy. Stay tuned in to local blogs and fora and monitor the SERPs on a regular basis to watch things progress in the coming weeks and months. Based on past experience, I would not be at all surprised to see Google continue to turn dials up and down with this update. Don’t panic like a birdbrain and start making major changes, but do keep up-to-date!

If your radius has shrunken for your core terms, you may need to consider focusing more effort on less competitive terms to try to make up the difference. Among other things, this could include changing a category on your Google My Business page, building new content that proves your relationship to these topics and earning new reviews and links that cement your presence in reference to these somewhat lesser terms.

If your 7-packs have shrunken to 3-packs, striving to build greater organic authority may help you more than purely local signals like citations and reviews. No mystery here – make your website as clean, fast, usable and rich in information as you possibly can, and brainstorm for those ideas that will set you apart from more sluggish or boring competitors, making your business link-and-shareworthy.

If more spam seems to be rearing its ugly head in your important SERPs, report it! You have several vehicles for doing so. In Google Mapmaker, search for a spammy business, click the ‘edit’ link and then the ‘report this’ link. Provide as much detail as you can, documenting and proving that the listing contains spam. Or, while signed into your G+ account, find the spammy Google+ Local page, click the downward pointing in the row of icons beneath the business NAP, choose the report/block option and then fully describe the issue. If you notice widespread spamming, you might want to consider reporting it via a thread at the Google And Your Business help forum in hopes of getting the attention of Top Contributors and/or staffers.

Because Pigeon appears to be giving more emphasis to local business directories for more searches now, it is more important than ever to have clean, consistent citations across the board. Do your most important keyword searches and see which directories are appearing high in the SERPs for these terms. Be sure you’ve got a fully-filled out listing on these directories and that the data on it is good and correct.

Local SEO strives to build a web-based mirror-image of local business communities – but don’t forget that it is only a reflection of the offline world. Citation building, content development, link earning, review acquisition – these are all incredibly important tasks, but they do not take the place of the service you offer and relationships you are building in the real world with face-to-face customers and associates. 

Becoming ‘a name’ in your neighbors’ households by dint of your excellence should always be your #1 priority. So, give that better-than-expected customer service, launch that new in-store campaign, join that local business association and go to those local events and seminars! Become a vital local resource to your neighbors and you’ll be standing in a strong place, no matter what updates may come your way.

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Posted by Isla_McKetta

In a post-Hummingbird world, we all know content matters. But many SEOs are still trying to work around this update because we think we don’t have the tools to gauge content quality.  If you’ve said, “I’m not a writer,” or, “How do I know what will resonate with my audience?” And even, “Content is hard and takes time; do I
really have to?” You might be suffering from content anxiety.

Content quality anxiety can come in many forms:

1. What is content, really? 
2. I hired a content team or agency. How do I know if they’re any good? 
3. How can I calculate the value of content?

Help is available.

Read on for your guide to understanding what makes good content (and improve your SEO in the process).

1. What is content, really?

First, just to make sure we’re on the same page, a quick operational definition: Content is the sum of all of the words, images, videos, and audio on your site, social pages, emails, and beyond. A good content creator is thinking about everything from the language on your newsletter subscription text to the tone in your order confirmation email or even the wording on your delivery envelopes.

2. I hired a content team or agency. How do I know if they’re any good?

In-house or agency, knowing if a content creator or team is up to snuff can be one of the most intimidating things for non-creatives. While there are a lot of tips and tricks to
creating great content, there is no secret code for recognizing great content. Use these guidelines and you’ll be golden.

Are the ideas original?

If you want your content to stand out in the crowded Internet (and who doesn’t), you’re going to need original ideas and content. Before you even decide whether you like the ideas, do a quick pass through your memory. If your content team’s first set of big ideas sounds uncannily familiar, dig deeper.

The tricky part about this is that every wedding provider in this SERP is trying to speak to a very common need that brides have: finding creative ideas for a fall wedding. But your content team or agency should be able to help your customer find that information in a new and exciting way. It’s okay to insist on originality.

Is the content appropriate for your audience?

You also don’t want your ideas to be so shockingly original that you and your audience can’t relate to them. For example, if I was to suggest an interactive game based around
Waiting for Godot for your dog food business, I’d expect you to cry bullshit unless your audience is entirely composed of literary professors and playwrights.

Do you feel like the content adds value to your site?

Shiny objects can be great for attracting new visitors to your site. Make sure that big new idea attracts the kind of attention you want.

Big content is an investment. And while it’s great to take some risks, your content team should be able to convince you what value that content adds and make a case for how it might be received.

Does your content tell a story?

This one isn’t strictly a necessity, but do not underestimate how far a good story can go to making your content memorable. This can take the form of an anecdote that illustrates the point, or the whole page can be a story in itself. 

In the case of Warrior IPA from Left Hand Brewing, the beer becomes a character. And while it would have been hard to fit a full beginning, middle, and end in one paragraph, hints of this warrior’s story pair perfectly with the illustration on the label. This product description is so good that the beer nerd info is purely a bonus.

Does it raise the hairs on the back of your neck?

Probably the best test of content ever: pay attention to how you feel when you first experience the content. Trust your gut. If you’re engaged and can’t get enough, it’s good content.
In
this example from the Distilled blog, Harriet Cummings reaches deep into the soul of someone who wants to be a better public speaker and pulls all the right strings to cement that engagement.

You don’t have to know why a piece of content blows your mind (that’s the content team’s job), just pay attention to how it makes you feel.

Is it Internet-friendly?

Reading content online is a lot harder on the eyes than reading on paper. Breaking up the text with headings, bullet points, images, and shorter paragraphs helps keep your customers on your page.

As for non-text content, make sure your images, video, and audio all load well and as quickly as possible.

Does the writer use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation?

We’ve all seen examples of a gorgeous, well-planned infographic that’s perfect except for just a few typos. You may not be one of those sticklers who judges the work of others based on proper grammar, but you can bet that someone in your audience is using grammar, spelling, and punctuation as a measure of the quality of your content. 

This is my final impression of one of the most gorgeous interactives I ever saw online. Sad face.

Do you immediately want to share the content?

One of your goals involves social shares, right? Or at least you wouldn’t be sad if you got a bunch of them. If you’re excited to share whatever you’re reading, others will be too. If you find it dull, well…

3. How can I determine the value of content?

How do you prove the value of something that’s everywhere, anyway? There are lots of possible answers. As an SEO, you probably understand most of these measures already, but here’s how to tweak them to evaluate content. You’ll likely want to use overall traffic plus a combination of the things below depending on what type of content you’re focusing on.

Attribution modeling

While content is everywhere on your site, the things most of us think of as content (blog posts, landing page text, and yes, even infographics) are rarely the last touch before a conversion. Attribution modeling helps you assign a portion of the value of a conversion to all the pieces of content that a visitor sees before converting.

For example, if they read a blog post, click through on an email, and read an FAQ, you can give each of those touches partial credit. Read more about
attribution models.

A/B testing

A/B and multivariate testing are great ways to measure the value of some forgotten areas of content like the text in form fields and pop-ups. These tests can also tell you when you don’t actually need content in those areas. Don’t forget that less can be more.

Social shares

Engagement matters and social shares are definitely one way to measure engagement. Of course social shares are probably a better measure of blog posts and product descriptions than of the copy you use in the checkout process.

Links

In a perfect world, great content earns links. Don’t assume your content is valueless if you aren’t earning links, but do celebrate when it does. Use Open Site Explorer to find and keep track of links.

Comments

Yes, it does seem like fewer people are commenting on blogs these days. But, as with links, this just means the comments you do get, usually a signal that a reader is deeply engaged, are all the more valuable. Dan Shure explains this in depth in
The Broken Art of Company Blogging (and the Ignored Metric that Could Save Us All).

One Metric

Our blog editor, Trevor Klein, has developed and refined a personalized metric for Moz called the
One Metric. This system combines a variety of the signals above and then weights them to give a quick overview of what’s succeeding and what’s failing. We’ve already been using that information to inform decisions about future content efforts.

Caveat

The success of content cannot always be measured in numbers, and if you invest only in projects that have a predictable rate of return, you’re missing opportunities. Rand calls this
serendipitous marketing. Just make sure as you’re considering the value of your content that you leave room for Serendipity.

Is this SEO?

Yes. Remember how I mentioned the Hummingbird algorithm up above? I know that this is the algorithm update most of us would like to forget, because we think it’s so much easier to spot spammy links than quality content. But it’s really a lot simpler than that. Google is looking for content that answers users’ queries. And according to Marie Haynes, “Google’s goal with all of these algorithm changes (Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird) is to encourage webmasters to publish content that is the best of its kind.”

So if you’re an SEO (or anyone else) with content anxiety, let it go. You have the tools to tell when content is good and to select a team that knows what makes it great. Go ahead and let that team try to sell you on an idea. You can trust yourself to make the final call on whether or not it’s actually worthwhile.

And if you’re part of a content team that’s trying to make the case for your big ideas, please join me on September 9 for “The Storytelling of Content Strategy.” This Mozinar will cover one method of creating more engaging (and persuasive) strategy docs.

Do you ever experience content anxiety? What are your measures of content quality? Has a particular experience with content made you either gun shy or wildly enthusiastic about content? I’d love to hear your stories in the comments.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!