Richard Beverly's Blog

Checking whether a business is listed on the top citation sites can be a time-intensive task. But with 80% of consumers losing trust in local businesses if they spot inconsistent business names, addresses, and phone numbers online, accurate business listings can be make or break for many customers. At BrightLocal, our mission is to make local marketing simple for our customers – including making citations even more manageable. Say Hello to Our Newest Free Local SEO Tool! The Local Listings Health Scanner allows you to perform a completely free scan across 15 of the most powerful business listing sites. Within just a few minutes, the tool will uncover your Listing Health Score, based on the proportion of correct listings you have across the top sites – meaning you can start taking action quickly, and without barriers. TRY IT NOW As well as your Score, you’ll be shown a Listing Accuracy Breakdown, so you can easily see the name, address, and phone number inconsistencies that cou

Advance Your Agency is a brand-new BrightLocal series, designed to equip you with the skills, knowledge and advice necessary to take your agency operations to the next level. This month we focus on review management – a key component of local SEO success. Local SEOs know just how important online reviews are when it comes to gaining prominence in local search.  According to Moz’s most recent Local Search Ranking Factors Study , review signals make up around 15% of local pack factors. Put simply, having a high quantity of recent, diverse, high-quality reviews means Google’s local search algorithm is more likely to favor your business and surface it for relevant search queries. As an agency, though, it can be difficult to explain to clients just how important review management is and what the benefits could be to their businesses. For example, how many times have you spoken with clients who believe that online reviews will just come flooding in on their own? If only things

Blake Denman is the President and Founder of local SEO agency, RicketyRoo Inc. In this article, Blake will explain just how you can help your business stand out from the rest by finding your own unique benchmark. You’ve spent a lot of time figuring out all the keywords you want to rank for. Now what? Your goal is to increase rankings on Google Maps and in local organic search, but where should you start? There’s no shortage of things you can do: Google My Business optimization Google My Business spam-fighting Reviews/reputation management Citation building and monitoring  On-site SEO Link building  Social media management Content creation Some of these tasks might take just a few hours to “dial-inâ€, while others will take longer, require more resources, or are considered a long-term play. So it’s important to consider what’s a priority and what’s not. In this article, I’m going to share a framework you can start using today to help figure out the what and why

Checking whether a business is listed on the top citation sites can be a time-intensive task. But with 80% of consumers losing trust in local businesses if they spot inconsistent business names, addresses, and phone numbers online, accurate business listings can be make or break for many customers. At BrightLocal, our mission is to make local marketing simple for our customers – including making citations even more manageable. Say Hello to Our Newest Free Local SEO Tool! The Local Listings Health Scanner allows you to perform a completely free scan across 15 of the most powerful business listing sites. Within just a few minutes, the tool will uncover your Listing Health Score, based on the proportion of correct listings you have across the top sites – meaning you can start taking action quickly, and without barriers. TRY IT NOW As well as your Score, you’ll be shown a Listing Accuracy Breakdown, so you can easily see the name, address, and phone number inconsistencies that cou

This week Local Search Clinic covers GMB spam fighting with Sterling Sky’s Joy Hawkins. Got problems only the pros can answer? Looking for tips to boost your online search presence? Or just want to chat with fellow local SEOs? Join us Wednesday, May 20th, at 8am PT/11am ET for an hour of expert insights. Read on to find out how to get your questions answered! For any questions or issues registering for the webinar, please email us at content@brightlocal.com . Can’t see the button to register above? Click here to save your spot. How to register and ask your question 1. Click the green ‘Save my spot!’ button at the top of this page. 2. Click ‘Email me a login link’ 3. Click ‘Confirm & sign in’ in the email from Crowdcast 4. Click ‘Ask a Question’ and submit your question using the popup (you can do this before or during the broadcast ) See a question in the popup that you’d also like the answer to? Just click the arrow next to the question to ‘upv

On May 4, Google announced the latest algorithm update to hit organic search, the ‘ May 2020 Core Update ‘. While SEOs worked to understand the impact of this on their clients, we began to notice a lot of movements among local results as well. Later today, we are releasing a broad core algorithm update, as we do several times per year. It is called the May 2020 Core Update. Our guidance about such updates remains as we’ve covered before. Please see this blog post for more about that: https://t.co/e5ZQUAlt0G — Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) May 4, 2020 On May 5, our local algorithm tracker Local RankFlux began reporting significant ranking fluctuation — peaking on Friday with a huge 5.58. To put this into context, a “normal” level of flux sits between 2.2 and 2.8 — so doubling this level represents very unusual activity. In fact, this is higher than the neural matching changes back in November 2019 (the previous peak for Local RankFlux activity). There has been discussio

We’ve all heard the saying that first impressions matter, and this is just as true online as it is in real life. In business terms, this means that there is a constant need to carefully manage your online reputation , to ensure each landing page is word-perfect and that your social channels are updated, engaging and relevant. What of your Google My Business page though? If you’re guilty of thinking of Google My Business in terms of reviews and local search position, you may have overlooked the need to keep a tight rein on your Google My Business photos. Internet users are inherently visual creatures, with visuals processed 60,000 times faster than plain text . That means images are tremendously influential and key to your business looking good online. 60% of consumers said local search results with good images pushed them towards a decision. Tweet this A 2011 BrightLocal study revealed that 60% of consumers said local search results with good images captured their attention and