Owen RadfordSo as 2015 strides through the sixth month, what do marketers need to know about the changes to the SEO landscape? Here’s our brief guide to all things new in local SEO in 2015.
Google Pigeon
Did the Google pigeon update have an impact on your business? Initially launched nearly a year ago there have been a handful of changes since.
The Google Pigeon update and the local carousel removal are still having an impact on local business listings, with more competition competing for less space on the search engine results page. Over the year the carousel has been replaced in many areas and industries with a three-pack instead.
Stop Micro-analysing
We all know that SEO doesn’t just come down to one or two factors, so it’s surprising the number of times we hear ‘I’ve done ABC to my site but nothing has changed’ or ‘XYZ hasn’t had a substantial impact on my local rankings and I don’t understand why’.
Remember that local SEO isn’t just optimising headers with your location and working on your Google places citation. You need to take in the whole picture to be able to make a difference. Many marketers still haven’t gotten to grips with the changes.
What do you need to do instead?
Google Pigeon stopped taking full towns and cities into account when ranking businesses. Instead, neighbourhoods became more prevalent. You need to ensure that you are targeting the people around you, not the entire city.
- Optimise your content for your local neighbourhood.
- Create local blog content.
- Optimise your Google My Business listing.
- Find some good links to your site.
- Clean up your citations.
- Get positive reviews for Google My Business and third party sites.
- Use social media.
In short, you need to be thinking about all of your ranking factors and not just focusing on one or two.
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