Office Hour #15 - Key updates in local SEO trends, search data insights and more

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Good morning everyone to another session of Synup's office hour. I'm Niladri, I run marketing at Synup and I have my colleague here, Akshita, who runs all our content efforts. So let's jump into what has been going on over the past couple of weeks, any highlights.

So some of you may have already noticed or be aware that Apple launched a web version of its Maps app, still in beta. It's Kind of good news for users who prefer something other than Google Maps on their desktop computers. For now, users can get driving directions, walking directions, find great places and use useful information, photos, hours, ratings, and reviews of certain businesses.

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Apple is also working on its own ratings and review system similar to Google, I believe. You can also take order actions like ordering food directly from Apple Maps, place cards, browse curated guides. There will be additional features like look around that will be launched in the coming months as for Apple.

Initially, it was launched in July. It was working on Safari, Chrome and Edge for Windows. But right now they have added support for Firefox and Edge for Mac as well.

What I think about it, well, they are clearly trying to reduce dependency on Google Maps. And it's not far when they will try to monetize Apple Maps just like Google did. Local SEOs, we should not ignore it.

The very basics you can do is keep a tab of what's appearing on Maps for your customers. Make sure that information is submitted and accurately represented because Apple has been running around with creating a search engine for a while now. But reportedly got complacent with Google's $20 billion annual revenue share deal.

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This was part of the DOJ findings that Google payments kept Apple from fully competing in search. And at the same time, some experts estimated it would need to spend around $6 billion on their balance per year on top of existing spending to operate a general search engine. It was also revealed in the former trial that Apple currently maintains a search index of several billions of websites.

I think it's more than ready to jump into the foray of search. Local is a good way to begin to solidify their positioning before they move into general searches. Only time will say what's in store for them and us who are optimizing for Apple or Google or whatever.

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There was a recent update for related local services ads, if you're running them. Local services ads began starting August8th. Hi, Mingus.

Before we move on to the next update, I think Jane has a question. Can I read it out to you? Sorry. I'll check it.

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I'm assuming that updating Apple Maps relies on data. Yes, we do submit information to Apple Maps. Initially, we had a feed.

Then, I think several months ago, we integrated the API. So any information you submit to sign up gets automatically submitted to Apple Maps if it's within your plan, Jane. I hope that answers the question.

And anytime they add any additional categories for any additional features, they will slowly be added to sign up as well. So back to local services ads. Starting August 8th, that is last week, Google made an announcement related to local services ads.

They have started selecting photos from local services ads profiles of the businesses to show them in ads. The photos are selected based on their likelihood to increase engagement with the ads based on Google's own algorithm. A few things to note.

Adding photos to your local services ads can help improve your ad ranking as per Google. We have seen that happening with GDP as well. Fully optimized profiles convert better.

Google recommends uploading at least three to five images to the local services ads profile on the budget page. Photos must be of high quality, relevant to your work, original and not copied or stolen or AI generated. The AI generated part has been added by me, not by Google, and they were not very explicit about it.

Ads won't always include a photo depending on the user query and other factors. So if you're running over local services ads, then you might want to make a note of it and try to add those photos to your customer profiles in local services ads. And if you're someone who is not offering this as a service, maybe it's time to look into it because a lot of businesses are requesting information related to local services ads.

I'm sure if this is something that you have come across recently, this is the annual Ernst & Young did a survey recently of consumer index, consumers return to physical stores for personal service, even as AI and tech revenue rationalizes online shopping. So what's going on here? Well, we've all successfully survived the pandemic. And during the pandemic, a lot of analysts and keyword warriors predicted the decline of local retail completely.

Stores are going to shut down, businesses are going to close, but kind of like a doomsday conspiracy. But this did not quite happen. Okay, there are some businesses that had to shut down, their lives were lost, but not to the extent that what certain analysts were predicting.

So the recent survey by Ernst & Young, they surveyed around, I think, 23,000 consumers across like 20 countries that highlighted the importance of physical stores. 57% of shoppers prefer to see, touch and feel items before buying. Nearly 70% seek expert advice on high value purchases in store.

61% said they visit stores exclusively for promotions. Shoppers are actually ambivalent about AI, with many expressing frustration and distrust on AI-based online shopping experience. I'm one of those shoppers.

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So should we discard retail? Should we discard digital? What should we do? We should be doing both. We shouldn't be discarded either of them. It's about combining your online and offline strategy.

Retailers with both are stronger, including in search. Consumers are more likely to buy online if they can return items to a local store that can, in turn, boost confidence and trust in the brand. Now the key challenge is integrating technology to enhance customer experience without compromising it when it happens.

So do not advise clients to just go digital for the sake of it or just go, you don't need to do digital because you have a retail store. If they're a local business, they need both. They can use all the help that they can get.

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Okay, thanks for sharing the link, Akshita. Now let's go to the next deck. I was chatting with a few clients over the past couple of weeks and most of the conversations revolved around ranking.

I want to rank for this, I want to rank for that. I've noticed that too often people get so focused on ranking that they completely lose sight of what really matters. They are constantly changing the next silver bullet, whether it's optimizing a single page or services page or a single element on their GVP, trying out different tricks to boost their ranking.

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You need to realize at the end of the day, you're working with other human beings. You're optimizing content, you're optimizing websites, you're optimizing for people to find information that you share useful or find information that they're seeking. So you need to optimize for both aspects.

You need to optimize for search without which you are not going to get the traffic. But focusing solely on ranking factors may again in turn increase your visibility, but it won't necessarily lead to more leads or sales or phone calls. Similarly, on the other hand, if you concentrate only on conversion factors of your website, spending a huge amount of money on fancy tools for CRO or conversion rate optimization, you may boost conversion or sales to a certain extent, but you won't really see any improvement in search visibility.

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So this tip of the week is kind of set up for that. I was, we extracted a list of Google posts, as an example, with our help in our database and engineering teams. I wanted to see what people are posting, what people are publishing.

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And a lot of people are posting some good solid content on Google posts. But the problem is a lot of people have started using Google posts as a social media posting tool. They are different.

They are not the same. Some of the features that Google provides you might replicate some of the features that you have in Facebook and Instagram or Twitter as an example, but it's not really a social media platform. The purpose of Google business is primarily to get in front of possible customers and convert them into clients.

Okay. So the preachy kind of information that we really associate with LinkedIn, where you talk at the customer rather than to the customer does not really work with Google My Business. So a simple slide to show what to post and what to avoid.

So let's go through what you should post on a regular basis, right? Special deals. Yes. If you are running special deals or offers of any kind, make sure you specifically mention the percentage of discount that they are guaranteed or the special offer pricing with your post.

Don't keep them guessing. Okay. You might think that you're going to do a generic post about a special offer or call us to find out about the special offer.

They're probably not going to call you. But instead, if you tell them they're going to get a 25% off, seasonal discount or 15% off or this was the current price. This is the new price that you're going to get something at.

Running a special offer like that will always give you better mileage with your messaging. Products and services posts. I Really like those.

You have a specific service that you want to highlight or a new product that you want to push. Definitely post about them. There's one thing that people miss out on posting is sharing good reviews.

Yes, customers can see the reviews you're getting on Google, but you do get certain feedback via email or social media. Go to Canva, create a nice little blurb or an image file that you can post and share along with your Google post. That will kind of boost the confidence of new customers.

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And they might take that additional step of contacting you to do business with you. If you have won any new awards or certificates that you should talk about, go ahead, post about it. Another Thing I like people doing is case studies along with reviews.

I don't see a lot of local businesses doing case studies, but if you are doing case studies, may try doing it, sharing them on a Google post. I would even recommend sharing videos of customer testimonials or excerpts from those testimonials in your Google post. Now, the things that you should not be posting and I saw a ton of businesses still doing it.

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The sharing of blog posts and optimized articles on Google business posts and links to their blogs does not really help convert new customers like that. Generic company news, new hires, no one is bothered about them. They don't want to know, especially if you can post them on your website.

You can create a specific section for it, but getting them on Google post is basically worthless. Then I see a lot of people, certain people doing a lot of keyword stuff posts on Google, hoping that they're going to run. That's to me a strict no-no.

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People are going to get confused. They think you're a primary business and not do business with you. Then generically, the stuff that we get from our friends and family members at time, every morning you wake up, I see good morning messages, good wishes, seasons, greetings.

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There's a time and space for that and Google post is not the space for that. Recruitment post, if you're trying to hire somebody, Google post is not the right place to post that information. I don't think anyone has ever gotten hired from looking at a Google post on a local business.

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I doubt it. Think of it this way, as someone who isn't a local business owner, but does look at posts given business information. I feel most of these would be obvious to anyone who is actually looking for business.

If I go to a business, I want to see what specialty they have. Be specific about it. Highlight what you offer.

Start thinking like potential buyers than service providers. You might come up with better posts. A lot of people are.

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Okay. We can create a simple checklist and provide it to you with examples. I'll do a post this week on our blog as well.

We'll share the link so that you can forward it to your customers if they are doing this on their own as well. Okay. Connected to the same conversion theme and ranking theme, I started taking a look at a lot of websites and started looking at their title tags.

Most of the title tags that I've seen, except for the homepage, for the interior pages and content pages, service pages, they've become very B2B-like and very SaaS-friendly as if it's a software business. At the end of the day, you're running a local business. You're Optimizing websites for local business, for that local business, for within an area, for a neighborhood or a city.

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So, for your most important cities and if you have built pages for that. Okay. There's another message or question, I think.

Okay. Yes. Sorry.

So, make a list of neighborhoods and localities that are within the area. The popular ones, you can easily search Google, you can look for information. If you stay within that area, you'll probably know the neighborhood better than most SEOs from different cities, states, or countries.

So, start adding those localities to your title tags. Okay. For five minutes, stop thinking about how much Google is going to display.

Okay. Google will probably display 20 or 120 characters and cut off the rest. But try and see if adding neighborhoods and areas to your title tags creates a difference in both search and conversion, click-through rates.

Try doing it for once because I tried doing it for a couple of websites in the past one month and I got results out of it. There was a study done by a gentleman called Joel Hadley about click-through optimization. If I can find the name or his interview, I'll probably send it across when Akshita sends out the notes for the day.

But when you're optimizing for any city, try and build a list of the top neighborhoods and areas for each city you want to rank in and add it to the end of the specific pages of your title tags. Do that throughout the site without question. See if it makes a difference.

It probably won't make your Google business profile page automatically rank higher, but you will get some benefits out of organic search results as well. Okay. That's for tips for the week.

Tools. Yes. I see a lot of my colleagues struggling with chat GPT.

I see a lot of people struggling with Excel Sheets and Google sheets. So this is for both the crowds. If you like working with Excel sheets, you can go and add this plugin that will help you add GPT to your Google sheets and make it easier for you to automate a lot of tasks.

But if you're like me, you don't really work alot with Google sheets. I still prefer old school Microsoft Excel on a Windows Computer at times because all the shortcuts work. And I found this neat little plugin tool called numerous.ai. And I used it yesterday to write like automate title tag generation for like 50 or 60 pages.

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Then I started editing it manually, but it saved a ton of time for me. Okay. You can do such organized digital marketing campaigns, summarize, categorize, classify, cleanse information, stay, expand, collaborate on prototypes.

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So they have a neat little demo tutorial over here on their website. Give it a shot. If you find more use cases for it, let me know.

I found it useful for writing title tags. I Have written ad copies for it, for our campaigns and done some stuff with numbers as well that we extracted from our system. We found it really, really useful.

So give it a shot. And that's it from me for today. I'm open to any questions that you might have based on what we have shared so far or anything in general.

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That was great. And we can have questions in the chat. Also, one more thing I also wanted to remind you is that we have alot of our customers and clients joining these sessions, but really, if you want to invite someone else from your team or network to join them, it's open doors for everyone.

Thanks everyone. Doesn't look like we have any questions today, Akshita. Okay.

Thanks everyone. As usual, you'll get all the meeting notes, transcripts, and videos. Typical services breakdown that you have seen for local SEO.

What is the short list that is fascinating with customers? George, honestly, there are a bunch of them. If you can drop the mean email, I'll send you information that I've come across. But more and more people, what I see, are going away from customizing a lot of services and they are basically productizing it.

They're all doing these packaged services, not like what we used to see earlier, but a lot of people are seeking help with content creation. Businesses still don't know how to use GVP properly. I see a lot of new entrants and requests related to GVP optimization, that is Google Business Profile Optimization, Website Optimization.

Okay. So I used to see a lot of agencies offering services based on keywords. They still do.

But I see more and more teams moving away from that typical customized SEO packaging nowadays. And there's a lot of agencies that I see, smaller agencies who are basically widely doing some other service. Because there's a huge problem with hiring, maintaining, resourcing, etc.

But I will send over information that I found. Akshita, did you get

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