Richard Beverly's Blog

The hospitality industry is one of the most competitive out there, with the average hotel receiving more than 10,000 searches per month .  With the rise of shared-space platforms such as Airbnb, this sector generates 10.4% of the world’s GDP (a figure that’s expected to rise in the next 10 years).  Individual hotels must compete with mammoth online price comparison sites that have a huge presence and can often afford to slash prices. As a result, many hotels are forced into the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” scenario and pay a premium in fees for any bookings made through one of these sites. Direct bookings are much more lucrative, thought to be around 9% more profitable (as of 2016) than bookings made through hotel partner sites.  With these growing numbers in mind, hotel owners in 2020 are under pressure to develop a winning local SEO strategy that will get them found in search and attract more visitors to their websites. Google is continually evolving the ...

As if we haven’t given ourselves enough to do this year already (did someone say monthly webinars ?!) on Tuesday, February 18, we took to Twitter to host our first #LocalSEOChat of the year. Using questions we didn’t quite get around to in last week’s Local Search Clinic with Greg Gifford , we invited the local search community, including some of the industry’s most knowledgeable figures, to solve your frequently asked questions surrounding local SEO. In just one hour, local SEOs united to solve each other’s queries, ranging from how to gain prominence as a service-area business to tackling shared locations on GMB, as well as first steps for agencies, mobile page speed, and motivating engagement through GMB. If you missed out on the excitement, you can catch some of the top questions and answers below, along with some useful resources : Recap Q1. Do service areas on GMB profiles have any effect on local SEO and visibility in those areas? – Adam A1: A businesses defined service ...

As if we haven’t given ourselves enough to do this year already (did someone say monthly webinars ?!) on Tuesday, February 18, we took to Twitter to host our first #LocalSEOChat of the year. Using questions we didn’t quite get around to in last week’s Local Search Clinic with Greg Gifford , we invited the local search community, including some of the industry’s most knowledgeable figures, to solve your frequently asked questions surrounding local SEO. In just one hour, local SEOs united to solve each other’s queries, ranging from how to gain prominence as a service-area business to tackling shared locations on GMB, as well as first steps for agencies, mobile page speed, and motivating engagement through GMB. If you missed out on the excitement, you can catch some of the top questions and answers below, along with some useful resources : Recap Q1. Do service areas on GMB profiles have any effect on local SEO and visibility in those areas? – Adam A1: A businesses defined servic...

Since Google introduced featured snippets in 2014, “position zero” has been considered one of the most coveted spots in SERPs.  Featured snippets allowed websites to vie for extra traffic by appearing both at the top of organic search results and again in the top 10 results.  Or that was the case, until Google rolled out a deduplication update on January 22, 2020, ending the era of featured snippets as so-called “position zero”.  In an attempt to declutter SERPs and improve user experience, Google now won’t surface the same URL twice on page one. The first page of search results will show a featured snippet plus nine search results (instead of 10), and the featured snippet’s URL won’t reappear on page one.  Given that featured snippets receive around 8.6% of all clicks, while 19.6% of clicks go to the first search results beneath it, many webmasters and SEOs aren’t happy with the update and have actively discussed the option of opting out altogether using Googl...