Richard Beverly's Blog

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

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.� Before you get to work understanding your client’s problems to be solved, you’ll first need to educate them on local SEO. To appreciate the value that your agency is going to provide, the client must understand the ins and outs of local SEO, and how you deliver that will vary greatly based on their knowledge level, learning style, and resources. In this month’s Advance Your Agency guide, I’ll talk you through how best to educate clients on local SEO, so you can get to work on improving your client’s prospects and showing value. Contents Why is education important? Getting to know your client Understand their knowledge level Uncover their learning style Educating your client Know your stuff Don’t just rely on one format Keep clients in the loop Take off your marketing blinders Dos and Donâ€

Ben Fisher is a Platinum Product Expert for Google My Business. He’s a master of the spam redressal form, is always on top of the latest news, and loves to share his knowledge with others. Here, he explains the new ‘Direct Edit’ feature in Google My Business, or, as he’s calling it, the Transparent Merchant Experience. In 2017, Google My Business (GMB) launched the ability to update your business information, make posts, upload photos, see how many views you have received, and more, within SERPs. The blog post they released was then titled ‘ Manage your business listing without leaving Google Search .’ Now fast forward to 2020, and they have upgraded the experience in a blog post titled ‘ Update your Business Profile on Google Maps and Search ‘. See the difference there? The main change is how Google says what a knowledge panel is now. As of 2020, it is no longer a business “listing”, it is a business “profile”. What is the goal of GMB Direct Edit? The goal is to meet merchants’

Many small local businesseses have a hard time optimizing their site for speed. Why is that? Well, site speed optimizations tend to require web development skills which most small business owners don’t have, and developers can be quite expensive. What can you do if you don’t have the skills or budget, but still need to improve your site’s speed? In this article, I’ll explain how you can make improvements to your site speed even if you don’t have access to a developer. Why improve site speed? User experience and conversion rates can be negatively affected if your site is slow. It’s very common that your potential customers browse their phones for local services while they are watching TV or while they are running errands. So mobile speed is super important for local business websites. Mobile searches surpassed desktop searches in 2016. According to one study, 56% of mobile searches done on the go have local intent . And I’m sure that today, that number is much higher. Compared to de