7 Local SEO Updates That Will Impact Your 2022 Planning
consumers’ informational needs have grown and local markets have become more competitive, search engines have adapted to meet these needs.
Businesses, local SEO professionals, and their agencies have new tools, more data – and easier access to both.
And consumers? They’re gaining access to more of the information they care about through an increasingly rich, engaging, and seamless local search experience.
Google And Changing Consumer Buying Habits Disrupted Local Search
This year, many of our top local search updates are from Google, but that shouldn’t be a surprise.
Google quickly responded to changing consumer buying habits as a result of the pandemic and remains the dominant force in the market.
1. Google Business Profile Made Local SEO More Convenient For Businesses
Perhaps most impactful was that business owners no longer have to dig through an app or platform to update or correct their listings. You can add or update contact information, opening hours, add images, and more right from Google Search and Google Maps.
You can complete the verification process and address issues such as suspensions from Search, too, making it easier than ever to gain a powerful presence in the local search results.
2. Google Made It Easier To Find And Catch Up On The Latest Local NewsGoogle launched two projects to help journalists enrich their stories with local data and information:
Gather, analyze, and visualize data collected and processed by The Associated Press about a local area.
Common Knowledge Project
Access geographic comparisons, charts, and visualizations for data analysis at the county, state, and national levels.
The search engine also made local news stories easier to find in the SERPs with these updates:
- Local News Carousel: Local news stories relevant to a user’s query now appear at the top of the SERPs, making them easier to find while giving local journalists and publications more visibility.
- Top Stories Carousel: Authoritative local news sources appear alongside the major publications, which once dominated this portion of the SERPs.
- More News In Search: Google improved its ability to connect the news to broad topic queries.
- Local Tweets: Local publications and journalists appear in local news with tweets rather than just published stories.
- Expandable carousels give users access to additional information when they hover over a result.
- Infographic-like results now entice searchers using broad queries to dig deeper into a topic.
- Intuitive highlights pull details like ingredients lists, calorie counts, and nutritional information from a page without requiring the user to click through to a website.
- Integrated visual search allows users to visually search for similar-looking items by clicking the integrated visual search button.
3. Bing Added More Visual Elements And Rich Results
Why do these things matter to local SEO professionals? Bing incorporated these same concepts into its local search results.
Instead of a simple image carousel or text-based facts, Microsoft Bing delivers a visually-rich SERP for local queries consisting of relevant resources gathered from Bing Maps, top images, visitor reviews, and other sources.These changes have made focusing some local SEO efforts on Bing a more attractive prospect. Creative businesses can own the local search space if they’re willing to get creative with the many local search opportunities.
4. Everyone Gets New Attributes
Attributes provide proactive answers to questions searchers often have about a specific business type and are featured prominently on Google Business Profiles.
Why? Google is always looking for ways to help businesses stand out and better satisfy a query.
Features like the Black-owned or Women-owned business attributes, for example, help searchers who are looking to support businesses with shared value make these connections.
In February 2021, Google added health, safety, and pandemic-related attributes to Google Business Profiles.
With the addition of these attributes, local businesses can share information about safety protocols and advertise changing or new services such as curbside pickup, no-contact delivery, and dine-in service.
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