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Day 1 of the 2021 Local Search Summit is complete. 🔥 Today’s sessions covered the whole gamut of local search marketing advice. We’re sharing takeaways, advice, or a tip for each talk. If you couldn’t make it to the event, you can still get all the recordings with our video bundle. Don’t miss our Day 2 & Day 3 recap posts as well.
Read the full 2021 Local Search Ranking Factors Study to learn more about what is working and not working for local SEO’s.
There were many noteworthy findings in this year’s data. We’ll highlight a couple of them here, and we’ll be publishing the complete 2021 Local Search Ranking Factors results and Analysis soon.
A significant insight from this year’s results is that it appears that the impact of proximity to searcher seems to have been dialed down by Google. Darren encouraged the audience to check their own search results to confirm that they’re seeing the same.
Spam fighting has also seen a decline in importance, even though it was a hot new tactic back in the 2020 survey results. What’s the quickest way to the #1 ranking spot when you’re currently ranking #3? Easy, just report and remove those two spammers above you.
But the experts have changed their tune in 2021. What used to be a quick win has become increasingly ineffective, leaving local SEOs frustrated and giving up on this strategy to focus on other tactics.
You cannot build a competitive advantage exclusively from Google & Facebook. The median (not average) across all industries for average Facebook engagement/post (by follower) is 0.09% in 2021 [source: Rival IQ].
As an early stage business or a small business you can build brand awareness through “Influence Marketing.” Discover your audience’s sources of influence blogs, websites, social accounts, podcasts, newsletters, forums, events, etc., and market through and with them in ways that resonate.
Your goal is to find a marketing flywheel that works for you, so that you:
If you’re just playing in Google & Facebook, they make it really hard to do this. A lot of opportunities come from when you invest where others don’t, so you can build a marketing competitive advantage.
When you build brand equity first – when people know you, like you, and trust you – before you start investing in more challenging marketing channels and tactics, all those marketing channels and tactics benefit from it.
Rand’s Simple Five Step Process
PRO TIP: Capture every email you can. Email open rates are 252X higher than Facebook page engagement! And emails convert. Put email capturing before Facebook followers, YouTube subscribers, Twitter followers, etc. Get the email.
Top ranking sites all have less text + more images
Help your audience find value faster by creating an ‘Aha’ Moment
Below is an example of a mini-infographic
Don’t let your competitors out shine you on Google My Business! Perform a competitive GMB Audit to see how your top competitors are utilizing both GMB elements that impact rankings and conversions, then take what they’re doing and do it better.
How to identify worthy competitors to conduct a full GMB Audit on:
YouTube is one of the MOST untapped marketing mediums. You don’t need to be a video professional to get results.
YouTube vs Other Mediums
Getting started on your video marketing journey requires you to Understand your audience’s needs (Step 1 of Sam’s 6 Step Process):
This boils down to problems and desires.
There is a misconception among people who haven’t adopted content marketing who think by sharing your knowledge you are giving away your trade secrets – this is not true!
At the end of the day even though most people won’t become your customers, you’re still leaving a positive footprint in their journey.
Learn what your audience wants by digging into your customer data:
A low hanging fruit opportunity just waiting for you is prioritizing actions that will improve your search engine results page (SERP) visibility for your highest impact queries by analyzing current website content.
If you have Poor SERP click-through rate:
Structured Data allows you to give clear instructions to Google – it helps search engines to quickly understand the important parts of your content and to be able to use the different parts of it in SERPs. 
Google reconfigures your structured data information to generate rich results that are great for users and enhances their experience – especially on Mobile.
Add person schema markup on your about us or team page to expand your rankings:
This is really good for expertise, authority and trustworthiness (E-A-T) and for searchers looking for people on your team. Think networking events, trade shows, or activities in the community, if you add person schema on your about us or team page, people can find you from name searches.
Don’t forget to include a contact form on these pages as well, which can have a really high conversion rate because people are looking for this person.
Even if you have a single team/about us page with multiple team members you can still add person schema for each individual to that page because you can nest the data.
PR is not just sending something to “the wire.” The job of PR goes beyond just earning link equity, it should:
Don’t get trapped into the thinking of “I’m in a boring industry I can’t 10X my story and results.” Nope, you’re wrong. This is something anyone can do but it requires 10X thinking.
You want to start by developing a list of prospective publications that would potentially write about your business.
“Local Service Ads (LSA’s) are one of the kindest things Google has put out for SMBs specifically in the local services sector. If there’s anything that you walk away with in my session, it’s the confidence to test this channel.”
PSA: You CANNOT MIX Local Service Ads in a regular/existing Google Ads account. Local Services Ads Pro Tips You Need to Know
Consumers are eager to support local businesses. Google Trends data showed a YOY increase of 20,000% for “support local businesses” searches!
Google’s presentation layer (how they return search results) has actually shifted consumer behavior – consumers are now overwhelmingly likely to make decisions directly from those local pack results or ads.
Google is still the dominant source of leads and purchases for small businesses. Because the intent is so much higher when you’re talking about search – a consumer going onto Google and saying “I want to buy this” as opposed to just sort of coming across something in their social feed.
Which is why you need to make a great first impression to customers on Google by optimizing your Google My Business listing before your website.
This year, attendees had the opportunity to enter a draw to have some Whitespark experts perform a GMB Listing Review and Website Audit for their business.
Geeks in Phoenix – Audited by Nick Pierno, Director of Product
Nick performed a competitive analysis for this computer repair business in Phoenix, AZ to see how their rankings stacked up, since the website and GMB listing were both well optimized. The two main findings from this analysis were:
Websmart Media – Audited by Tomas Acuna, SEO Services Account Manager
Tomas analyzed this Scottish marketing company’s website to evaluate how they could better sell their clients by telling their story and using case studies. His top priority recommendations were:
The most important advice for this business’s GMB listing (and probably yours too): Ask every client for a Google Review.
Roof Crafters LLC – Audited by Allie Margeson, Director of SEO Services
Allie reviewed the GMB listing and website of a Louisiana roofing contractor. The main areas of improvement on this site are the content, calls to action and design.
The key takeaway from reviewing the GMB listing? Add a link whenever it’s an option – including Posts, Products – and always implement UTM tracking so you can take credit for your hard work!Did you catch Day 1 of the Local Search Summit? Share your favourite insight, tip, or moment in the comments below.
