Synup Office Hour #11 - 11th June 2024 | Discussing recent google leaks, citation relevancy and more

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Great, good morning everyone. Another session of our office hour. This is like episode 11.

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It's me, Niladri. I run marketing at Synup and along with me we have Akshita who is a content marketing manager and works with me on every piece of content that we ever produce. Okay, let's jump right into it.

 Industry updates. Lot of buzz is still going around related to the Google API leaks. Lots of skeletons tumbling out of the closet as you call it or there are some good hints and tips that we can all learn from.

 Might already be practicing some of them but we'll go over them on the next slide. But updates from the industry. Google, there was this rumor a few weeks ago where it stated that Google is going to stop indexing websites that are not mobile friendly.

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Well, there were words from the Google team themselves. John Mueller and Gary Weiss all reached out and mentioned that Google will continue indexing websites that are not mobile friendly. It's always been the case and they are not making any changes to it until now unless you specifically mention in your robots.txt file that they are asking Google not to crawl your website.

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So there's no change happening. Okay, so anything that's going around in the industry is stating that, oh, Google is going to stop entertaining websites that are not mobile friendly. They will stop crawling.

They're going to stop ranking. It's all just a rumor. I'll send you the notes that we have from Google's team.

 You can read through it after the call and that can help you calm everybody's nerves if somebody's agitated about it. But that's it. Remember something that it's our job as marketers to make sure that websites are mobile compatible.

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If you look at the technographic data on Google analytics and see the technology people are using, I've seen a distinct expansion in the amount of people who browse our website through mobile. Even Google's own data mentions that about 60% of searches happen from mobile devices. So if you have issues with your website where people cannot, it's slow on mobile devices or the content is not clearly visible, images are not optimized for mobile, then you're bound to face issues with conversion.

 If the click to calls are not working, the call to actions are not working, it is a problem. So my suggestion is keep checking mobile traffic for your client's websites and prioritize the pages to optimize that are receiving a lot of traffic that are important pages. If you want to do well in search, you should optimize your website on mobile and not just your client website, even your agency website.

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Take a look at them. I believe there's a new standard for saving and optimizing images, not just JPEG. I think ChargedGPD is also using it, WebP format.

 I can send over more information about it, but for the time being, nothing to get scared about. Your websites, even if they are not mobile compatible, Google will crawl them, scrape them and try to rank them if they are worth it. Another bit of news that I came across is after the people, okay, there's a message.

Okay. There was this, a lot of people are running local services sites. Earlier, we were able to set up a campaign type in Google AdWords campaign called local campaigns.

 What that would do is it will show up the ads only on local pack and finder results, local pack results that you get or your map pack or your local finder results. But apparently Google discontinued them and rolled them into the performance map campaign. So there are no ways to run just local pack ads in isolation, which is separate from local services ads.

 Don't get them mixed up. So if you still want to do it, you will have to run a full fledged image campaign to show up on local results as well. This is something that I saw yesterday, there was this, Google seems to be testing five pack results instead of the regular three pack results that we get on maps when you're searching for a local business or service.

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I believe that could be temporary or that could be the new thing once Google decides to roll it out. We are still not sure, so we'll keep an eye on it and let you know if you find anything else. The one thing that I did notice since our last conversation about Google's changes in local search results is the AI overview queries are reduced drastically and it's pulling on better results.

 It's basically pulling up information from much more authoritative websites so that I've seen a huge reduction in the amount of AI overview we get from especially for medical or health related queries. Maybe Google realized that they could be sued for surfacing incorrect information. They might have taken preventative action, but that does not mean that AI overviews are going away.

 They are still there. They still show up for users who are logged in and the quality of it will probably improve over time. That's it for the updates from the industry.

 Now, let's go to the tips. So, there were a lot of conversations we had. We did this entire session about Google leaks and the API and what it intends for the industry.

Is it going to change what we practice? I think 80 to 90 percent of us know the basics well, especially the ones we have been doing this local SEO, local search and SEO for years. So, there are a few learnings to take home from. I came across this really good article from NearMedia that will link to and provide you the information after the call.

 Akshata is going to send over the links and everything that we talk about by tomorrow. Any tools we discuss, any articles we discuss in detail along with my notes. So, here is my takeaway from this Google leak.

 There are pertinent sections for local search. So, one, linking to important pages from high traffic pages. Find out the pages that you are getting a lot of traffic from.

 From them, try to internally link to other important pages that you want to surface. Maybe there are internal pages that are not part of your main navigation or your homepage links, but you want to get traffic to those pages. So, try to link to them from already ranking and traffic generated pages.

 This internal link scouting that you need to do, it's not just a one-time task. You need to keep doing it over and over again. As you add more pages to a website, as the website grows over time, you'll have to keep doing it so that you diversify your traffic and diversify the content.

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You can link to these key pages from high traffic pages from your main navigation. Basically, this approach aligns with that concept of on-site prominence. If you want some content to be prominent on your website, you have to link to them from the most important sections.

 Another thing that I came across was localized content silos. So, what does it mean? So, there's this specific module within the API that says country geolocation module. Basically, it references the list of locations assigned to a document.

 It's kind of ambiguous, possibly relating to an intra-country or across metros and states or provinces. But I think you can try and create better location-targeted pages if you create better localized content and link them all together. For example, if you're targeting a specific city or a state or multiple city or state within a state for a client, I think you should start doing, if you're already familiar with neighborhood-specific or speed-specific content and start internally linking them from the city-specific pages.

 Then you can internally link to the city-specific pages from the state-specific pages that you are doing. Try it out for a couple of clients, see if it works. Another thing that I came across that a lot of us do not pay a lot of attention to is the anchor text for internal linking.

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Most often than not, the words that I usually come across while auditing websites are linked to another piece of content from a particular page on the same site. We just say, click here or find it here or some generic term. We pay a lot of importance to building links with specific anchor text.

 I think Google pays a lot of importance to how you link to your own content within your own website. If you're trying to rank a specific set of content prominently for certain given keywords and not feeling at it at present, maybe try adding more internal links to them with relevant terms. Don't try to over-optimize, just stay natural, but avoid using generic terms like click here all the time when you're linking to a piece of content internally.

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They might not significantly improve your ranking, but they can provide you a boost. There was a lot of emphasis that SEOs usually pay to third-party data like domain authority and trust score and domain rating from Ahrefs and tools like SEMrush. They were kind of an internal system from these tools or these providers to provide an alternative to the Google page rank algorithm that we were aware of that used to be part of their toolbar once upon a time.

In the absence of that, Google people, mostly SEOs, started relying on these third-party authority signals or trust signals. A lot of people said they are no good. I still don't feel that you should 100% trust them, but they can provide a good indication as to the authority.

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They can be manipulated. I'm not saying the site authority scores cannot be manipulated. You can do that easily, but it kind of provides you an indication as to how the site is performing or can perform in search.

 So, site or authority apparent to Google documentation matters. They have their internal scoring system that we are not aware of, but there are three things that we do understand from our Google RANCH website. One is those trust signals.

 They are still relevant. They are still relevant for local search as well. So, get those locally relevant links, getting links from local newspapers, getting cited on major local sites.

 Those still can do a lot to drive trust and authority for that brand. What you're trying to do with the local business is not just rank keywords, but over a period of time, you're trying to rank it as a brand to be perceived as a brand by search engines and users alike. Second most important thing that came across for locals that is relevant to local search as well is site architecture, easy to use navigation, linking to the important pages that we have already covered and building city-specific pages.

If you have enough content or at least location specific pages, if you are doing SEO for multi-location businesses, then there's topical relevance. If the site is about a particular topic, make sure you cover it from all angles and try not to diversify too much and start talking about every goddamn thing under the sun. It's not going to help you.

 Topical relevance across the website matters a lot. So, if you still find while auditing that people or the previous company or the previous SEO has written content that are not actually relevant to the main topics that you're trying to rank for, I think you can either remove them or even de-index them from search results. We prune our content every six to eight months on our own website and I suggest you do the same for your client websites.

 There was a lot of talk about entities. Entities that can improve brand signals for a local business. A lot of people ask me, do citations still matter? So, just like any business owner, if I'm selling citations, I would definitely say yes, citations matter.

 Citations are the only thing that should matter. Short answer is yes, they matter. Long answer, citations do matter, but not as much as it used to say five years ago or 10 years ago.

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It's probably for the good because Google is continuously evolving on the Identify website, equated to brand entities in local algorithms. It's always changing. You still need the top 40 to 50 citations that are important because they could be good discovery channels as well.

 You need those few industry-specific listings so that you get in front of the customer at the right places and maybe those hyper-local directories who can help you validate a local search. Beyond that, the impact of building hundreds or even thousands of citations is negligible. It's not going to help you move the needle further.

 If you just say, every month I'm going to do 10 new citations for this client or 15 new and you've been doing this for the last 10 years and it's working. If something is working, I would not dissuade you from doing it, but if you think that it was working five years ago and it should still work, you can spend that time and money doing other activities, maybe trying to get those citations indexed. If Google is not able to find them, then they're not going to be much use to you.

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We have an indexation service as well, part of some of our packages, I believe. You can reach out to your CS if you want, but don't try to build those hundreds of citations because you found a competitor who has 1,000 citations. You can use that money to better do digital PR for them, get them cited on high-quality websites.

 That will establish their entity and their brand. You can try to write better content for them, be on topic, finish those clusters, etc. That's the way I see it.

 Citations are important, but you don't have to build hundreds and thousands. You don't need hundreds of citations to rank everyone. A few things that I came across from customers we work with.

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I was trying to help somebody with a duplicate listings issue on Google. They had duplicate errors. They had failed verification issues.

 Some of the locations needed to be re-verified. This was a multi-location brand and there were a lot of problems with listings being merged. One pattern I saw with them was they were using the same phone number across multiple locations.

 Is it something that you cannot do as a rule? No, it is not. If you have multi-location businesses, you can use the same phone number across all the locations, but what Google says and what the reality is, is very different. When you're trying to use the same phone number across multiple locations, you're basically opening the door to a whole lot of problems.

There could be duplicate errors, listings merge issues. Everything will run well till it runs. Everything is good, but something breaks.

 If you have a suspension or you have to redo a verification, then it becomes a nightmare. You lose access, etc. Users suggested edits from map results were basically getting stuck into processing mode.

 Edits were getting rejected. We tried verifying locations and those verifications were failing. We were trying to merge locations, duplicate listings, and they were failing.

 It's basically a nightmare right now. To give an example, check large businesses like Walmart. Every Walmart I see, this is a very large company.

 There is a huge potential to buy any tool that is available to optimize a listing, but look at this pattern. Every single location has a local phone number. None of that stupid 888, 800 numbers.

 They're basically doing something right. Anyone cites a problem that no large brands are doing this, they are large brands, you can do it, but it's as part of Google's guidelines, they clearly mentioned that you should have a local number present. Follow the guidelines.

 If you need to use a call tracking number for better attributions, even then, if you're using the same number, attribution will be a problem. I'd rather suggest going to something like CallRail. There are cheaper alternatives, I'm sure.

 Go buy a local number from them and use that number. There are questions like, oh, what if I want to use one call tracking number? I want to retain the local number on Google listings. Yes, you can do that.

Then I would suggest using the call tracking number as a primary number on the listing and still retain the local number, the old number and have it as a secondary number. You can add more than one phone number to Google. Apart from Google, I don't think anyone else matters in terms of tracking.

 90% of your traffic is going to depend on Google. Next thing that I came across while troubleshooting something, people see pages messing up, filtering out other organic pages from the website. So if you have built pages that are categorically built and optimized for AdWords campaign and you do not depend on them to drive any form of organic traffic, you should mark them as no-index.

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PPT pages for the same set of content could create issues with Google. It can create issues with ranking, especially in local organic search results. I've seen this happen multiple times.

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Okay, I can send you specific examples of this because of the nature of our business. But if you have pages that are created specifically to run Google Ads and drive conversion, you're not dependent on them for organic traffic, just mark them as no-index. Okay, remove them from Google's index.

 Just run your ads because they're optimized for it. So those are my tips for the week. Helpful tools.

 This is one tool that I came across. We use a lot of tools. We use a few for creating accounting clusters.

 But I did not see a tool in the market like RivalFlow that is actually going to track and tell me what to do on the website. If anyone knows SpyFu, it has been in the market for ages. As long as I've been in ASU, I've known SpyFu.

 They used to provide intelligence tools for AdWords and PPC, your tools and stuff. So they launched a tool called RivalFlow. Yeah, it's AI-powered, and basically has separate plans for affiliates, FEMA, agencies, and teams.

 What does it do? Basically, it's kind of, what should I say, surfer SEO on steroids. Surfer SEO, you have to plug in the content and it tells you what to do. This basically helps you optimize a page on a weekly basis.

 It will give you improvement ideas, what keywords to add, what keywords to avoid, how you can better optimize the page for such results. Fairly reasonably priced. Even if you do monthly, you can custom compare, get weekly updates, et cetera.

Give it a shot. If you find it useful, let me know. I'm sure there are some agencies who may find this useful.

Again, we are not just a payment scam going over here. We don't get paid for all the suggestions. These are tools that we come across on a regular work basis due to the nature of the work that we do.

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And we think of sharing them with you during these calls. That's the only tool I have today. We'll add some more in the next session.

Okay. I'm done for the day. If you have questions, I'm open to questions, please.

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Hi everyone. You can send the questions on the chat. After you take it, you can directly DM it to me as well.

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Oh, one more thing. Akshitha is helping us create a lot of resources, especially for agencies. So if you have resources by means of collaterals, resources in terms of templates for case studies, templates for presentations, templates for proposals, contract templates, SEO proposal templates, et cetera.

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If you have the need for any such things, we will be giving away these resources for free. They'll be hosted on our website as well. If you have suggestions for collaterals or any such resource, just reach out to us.

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We have a question from George, if you want to take it up. Voice search. It will get more important with iOS 18.

That is correct, George. A lot of people have been talking about how voice search is going to take off. I think the first article we wrote was in 2019-20, how voice search will become the predominant method of search.

It has not grown to that extent yet. So when people are searching on voice or AI or any such new age tool, they're basically depending on the same data that we use on search on a regular basis. So if you have your Google listing covered, if you have a mention on Yelp, that basically distributes data to a lot of ecosystems.

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If you have Bing listing covered, you're covered by Cortana. You're covered by Google. Google covers a whole lot of ecosystems, except for, I believe, your maps.

Your maps have their own ecosystem, but more and more people are switching to Baze and Google anyway. And honestly speaking, I've not seen Apple Maps taking over in that fashion. I would reserve my comments.

I may send over some information. I should be able to send over some information to you by tomorrow with my thoughts on them. But if you have your major listings covered for now, Apple Maps, Google, Bing, etc., you're kind of covered for the foreseeable future.

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I cannot talk about how data is going to get into every wearable device that is going to be around or that is around. I'm not sure how many people are actually searching for business information like we usually search for from the wearables. Apart from that, Bing, Google ecosystem, and I would say to a certain extent, Yelp.

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What do you think about Google Q&As? Thank you. I truly appreciate it. What do you think about Google Q&As on Google business profiles? What do I think? It's not a lot to think about.

I think of my Google profile as a means of providing the right information and surfacing the right information to the structure. If somebody is searching for relevant information on my profile and is able to find them on my profile, that's a win for me. But Google Q&A from a ranking perspective, it's not important.

I've not seen any study to state the fact that Google Q&A is going to help you rank better. But from a customer perspective, it's very important. I would not just wait for people to ask questions and then answer them.

 What I would do is if you have a helpless system and if you're coming across certain questions on a regular basis, Google Q&A allows you to post questions as a business owner.

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So to go one step ahead of the rest I would add those questions along with the answers to those frequently Asked treat them as a frequently Asked question section on your website faq there are certain things that people ask questions that people ask about your business all the time answer them proactively.

Okay great, anything else if anyone has any questions after the office hours or if you want us to cover something specific in the coming sessions you can always reach out to us at hello@synup.com.

We'll share the email in the deck as well so just reply back and we'll be happy to cover those topics for you in these sessions and I think there are no more questions and we can probably wrap up, great - thank you so much a will send over the notes along with all the information and please please reach out to me if you have any requirement for any certain resources that may help you sell better or explain things better to your clients. 

we will be more than happy to create them for you thank you have a nice day and the rest of the week everyone!

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