Richard Beverly's Blog

There’s no doubt content is key to both ranking high in local search and generating more leads, but there’s a lot of mixed messages about the best ways to approach this. And often what ranks and what converts can be very different beasts. Luckily, we’ve enlisted Sterling Sky’s content creating champion Carrie Hill to get answers to questions such as should local businesses be blogging regularly? What kind of content coverts? And what do you do if great content isn’t ranking? On this episode, Carrie reveals her secrets to make the words (and leads!) flow. Listen to learn: How to do effective content research How to ensure content doesn’t just rank, but also converts The mistakes to avoid when creating content The methods Carrie uses to make writing much easier Listen to the episode Subscribe today If you want instant access to the latest episodes, be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts: Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts Listen and subscribe on Spotify

30-second summary: 60% of consumers have been shopping online more often since COVID-19. Making your local SEO strategy a top priority for small retailers and those with multiple locations. Shoppers are browsing more frequently and making more purchases, although they are smaller in value. Local retailers should focus on creating in-store experiences online and pick up. Understanding your local audience and optimizing at the hyper-local level is key. Jim Yu, Founder and CEO of BrightEdge highlights five great ways your business can use local SEO to dominate search and translate it into sales this holiday season. A shorter than usual shopping season, last-mile shipping uncertainty, and ongoing health and safety concerns are just a few of the factors driving wild shifts in consumer behavior in the lead-up to holiday season 2020. Given how wide-reaching and long-lasting the coronavirus pandemic is proving to be, we couldn’t possibly have predicted or envisioned the circumstances

Advance Your Agency� is a BrightLocal series designed to equip you with the skills, knowledge, and advice necessary to take your agency operations to the next level.  As in any industry where trust has to be placed in an expert or authority, there are sharks in SEO. While we in local search like to think of ourselves as the more approachable, more trustworthy kid brother of mainstream SEO, sadly there are always opportunities for professionals to behave less than professionally, taking advantage of businesses and eroding the good standing and expertise SEOs should have. You might not have dealt with SEOs playing fast and loose with the truth, but if you’ve been in SEO for some time, and worked with a variety of clients, you’ll no doubt have come across clients who have. The experience of dealing with SEOs who overpromise and overcharge can leave more than a bad taste in the mouths of local business owners and marketers, but that doesn’t mean you should leave them to turn tail

Getting local SEO news and information from the right sources can be what propels agencies and local businesses to the next level. And, unfortunately, the phenomenon of fake news has left no stone unturned — yes, even in the local SEO world misinformation can be rife. That’s why we make it our priority to collate the very best local SEO blogs in the industry, but we couldn’t possibly do it alone… We enrolled the help of the local search community to determine who deserved to pip the rest to the post! Voters turned out (virtually) in their masses to tell us who they thought deserved to be crowned the Top Local SEO Blog of 2020, and our nominees wasted no time fighting their cases on socials! Now, the results are in. Read on to find out who won the top spot, plus our top-20 reading list . Top Local SEO Blogs 2020 Local SEO Guide Sterling Sky GatherUp Traject BrightLocal Local SEO Guide� Although not the most frequent bloggers of the bunch, when Local SEO Guide does post, it

October was a bumper month for news – and with so much going on in the ‘real’ world, we wouldn’t blame you if you’d missed some of the stories affecting local marketers. Test out your knowledge of the biggest changes, tests, and bugs hitting headlines in October in the latest edition of Local Quizness – our monthly quickfire quiz created to help you stay on top of the news that matters most. If you wanted to do a bit of revision before attempting the quiz (hey, it’s not cheating, it’s learning!), we’ve included links to all of the stories covered below. Get quizzing now, and for those of you that’d like to share your scores, head over to Twitter using #LocalQuizness . Take a look at the full reading list to brush up and learn more: Search Engine Land – Bing rebrands and expands Give with Bing Google Search Liaison on Twitter – Indexing issues October 2020 Spread Privacy – Plan Your Route Privately: Search Engine Now Has Driving & Walking Directions Local Search Forum – Cal

We Asked the Experts is a series designed to provide you with the most relevant insights from local search experts. Each month we’ll cover a different question and share insights from key figures in the local SEO community in an effort to help you further your knowledge and strategy. Have any of the following ever happened to you? You’ve got a handful of clients, but you never or rarely have calls with them You do have calls with your clients but you have to send a bunch of emails before you can get them on the phone You share links to reports with clients, but have no idea if they’re reading them Your client is resistant to your input or ideas Your clients still won’t follow your advice and respond to customer reviews If you’re sitting there nodding your head, then I’m afraid to say it sounds like you’ve got an unengaged client on your hands. Don’t take it personally; unengaged clients can be a part of agency life. Perhaps they weren’t convinced enough in the first place, o

30-second summary: Although a business phone number isn’t as tough on your SEO as a complete rebrand, changing it can have an impact on your SEO. Preserving NAP consistency should be your primary goal when changing your phone number. Your marketing strategy can help make the transition easier for your customers, too, as you can notify them of the change ahead of time. The key goal in addition to retaining your ranking should be to not lose the trust of your customers by changing your information – hence the need to approach the process carefully. Much like all other aspects of digital marketing and brand positioning, SEO is a constantly changing game. With so many moving pieces and evolving trends, it’s no wonder that brands aren’t quite certain which decisions will negatively impact their SEO , and which ones are safe enough to make.� One day, it seems that one kind of behavior is perfectly fine, while the next Google will penalize it because they’ve implemented algorithm ch