{"id":4085,"date":"2020-09-17T12:00:03","date_gmt":"2020-09-17T12:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpmudev.whitespark.ca\/wlss-day-2\/"},"modified":"2024-10-28T16:05:09","modified_gmt":"2024-10-28T22:05:09","slug":"wlss-day-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/blog\/wlss-day-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Local Search Summit &#8211; Day 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Day 2 of our Local Search Summit was filled with lessons in link building, GMB suspensions, technical SEO, local services ads, email marketing, and more. Today we are shining a spotlight on the technical side of location pages, local search for hotels, and how you can build relevance for your business. We did not scrimp on any of the details here! Enjoy all the gems from just a few of today&#8217;s spectacular presentations. <a href=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/blog\/wlss-day-1\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">You can also catch up on Day 1 here<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/blog\/wlss-day-3\/\">fast forward to Day 3<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>#WLSS Day 2 Talk Showcase:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"#technical\">Identifying Technical Issues on Location Pages at Scale Without Going Crazy <\/a>&#8211; Rachel Anderson <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"#hotels\">Can Hotels Still Win in Local Search? <\/a>&#8211; Tim Capper<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"#relevance\">Building Relevance in Local Search <\/a>&#8211; Joel Headley<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Get Video Access to Local Search Summit 2021\/2020<\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Want to deepen your knowledge and learn new tactics and strategies to improve your rankings and conversions from local search? Then our Whitespark Local Search Summit video bundle was made for you! For $199USD you will get access to all of the talks from 2021 and 2020.<\/p>\n<div class=\"avatar\" style=\"float: left; width: 100px; height: 100px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"thumbnail photo alignleft wp-image-67394 size-full\" style=\"float: left;\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Rachel-Anderson.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" \/><\/div>\n<h2>Rachel Anderson (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.deepcrawl.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">DeepCrawl<\/a>)<\/h2>\n<h3>Identifying Technical Issues on Location Pages at Scale Without Going Crazy<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This presentation is most definitely geared toward the more technical-savvy as well as enterprise and multi-location businesses, but there are a lot of gems for everyone and you definitely want to take some time to dive into this topic. <\/span>==<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We know location pages are important and many enterprise businesses have terrible location pages (sad, but true). Analyzing location pages at scale is hard! So how do we analyze these pages at scale without going crazy? Follow Rachel&#8217;s three step process to success:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Perform a Technical Audit to Diagnose Common Problems<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Identify Which Location Pages Need Extra Love\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Monitor Ongoing Performance\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Location pages are templated, so if you uncover a technical issue on one page, it\u2019s likely affecting other pages too.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Step 1 &#8211; Technical Audit<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Start by running a full site crawl, using (you guessed it!) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.deepcrawl.com\/\">DeepCrawl<\/a>. Other options include Screaming Frog or SiteBulb. You\u2019ll want to include:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Schema<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Core Web Vitals<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Backlinks<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">City, State extraction* (maybe)\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">*You may have your city or state name in your URL, title or header &#8211; if you do, you\u2019re fine. If you don\u2019t, you&#8217;ll need to use a Regex Extraction (or XPath) to pull in the city and state information.\u00a0<\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Regex-Extraction.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now that you have that, run your crawl and perform the technical audit.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Common Issues for Enterprise Locations<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>#1. Location Pages Don\u2019t Exist<\/strong> &#8211; There\u2019s no individual static URLs for each location, instead one main location page that has all the information for all the locations. This is a terrible user experience &#8211; they click to your GMB profile only to be sent to a landing page where ALL the information is stored. Plus it\u2019s terrible for bots too.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>#2. Location Pages Aren\u2019t Discoverable<\/strong> &#8211; They exist, but no one can find them. If they are not added to your sitemap, that means Google is relying on other sources like backlinks, internal links, and GMB to find your location pages.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">User input is needed on the site to populate with the location pages. For example, you\u2019re required to put in your postal\/zip code in order for the page to appear. This is a fine experience if there are other ways to access the pages, but more often than not, entering your location is the only way to get to the pages. And bots are not inputting that data!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>#3. No Internal Links to Location Pages\u00a0<\/strong><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Location-Pages-Dont-Exist.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the example above, there are over 4,506 location pages but only 27 of them have links. That\u2019s not great for the discoverability of those pages. Make sure you have internal linking to your location pages.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>#4. Duplicate Versions of Location Pages<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You\u2019ll see pages with a trailing slash and without a trailing slash; title case and lower case; index-able parameters&#8230; most of these things can be fixed by simply having proper canonical tags on the site. <\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/duplicate-location-pages.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><strong>#5 Internal Links to Non-Canonical URL<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sometimes, the canonical tags will be set up correctly but all the internal links will be to the non-canonical URL.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Internal links: www.example.com\/location\/TX\/Dallas\/<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Canonical URL: www.example.com\/location\/tx\/dallas\/<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Make sure you\u2019re always linking to the canonical version of the URL.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>#6. GMB Profiles Not Linking to the Correct Page<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While this seems really simplistic, your GMB profile needs to link to its specific location page, not the main location page or homepage, and please don\u2019t link to a 404 page.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>#7. Missing or Invalid Schema<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Every single page should have local business markup. If you have reviews or breadcrumbs or FAQs, you should put that schema on the page too. You can check the validity of your data in the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/search.google.com\/test\/rich-results\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rich Results tool<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> or in Google Search Console.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>#8. Missing\/Poor Titles, Meta Descriptions, and Headers<\/strong><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Titles-and-Headers.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We see missing titles or titles that only have the brand name all the time. The Home Depot is an example of a really good title. It has the brand name, location name, relevant keywords, and location with city, state and zip code. It\u2019s critical to have all these identifying information elements in your titles.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">H1s (main header) often will have the brand name, but it should be what is relevant to the page. For a location page, your H1 should include the location name.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>What\u2019s Next?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Check for additional technical issues that are specific to your website.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Check for common content related issues with the location pages:<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Missing address, phone number, description, reviews, linking out to other pages? Need more help? Join the Summit tomorrow for Amanda Jordan\u2019s location page tips.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Step 2 &#8211; Identify Which Location Pages Need Extra Love<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Since some pages will need extra love, they are extra sad pages. If you go into Google Search Console and sort your location pages by clicks highest to lowest, what you\u2019ll likely find is your highest population cities are the ones with the most clicks.\u00a0 This is indicative of population and not actually performance.\u00a0<\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Titles-and-Headers.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><b>Population!= Performance <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">but what you will likely find is that your highest population cities are the ones with the most clicks.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To identify which location pages actually need the extra love, we&#8217;re going to have to do some math.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Start By Collecting Data<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can use the United States Census Bureau, Statistics Canada, or Office for National Statistics.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google Search Console (GSC) Data &#8211; Collect clicks and impressions for each of your location pages for at least 6 months (or more depending on the seasonality of your business). To do this, Rachel uses Google\u2019s API (for clients with over 10,000 locations) but other people like Supermetrics as well. If you don\u2019t have a ton of locations, you could do a raw export from GSC.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Crawl Data Export for Locations Pages &#8211; Grab the data for your location pages from the full crawl you did in Step 1 and get the URL, city and state information.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><strong>Do The Math<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">#1. Create a new spreadsheet and pull in your GSC data:<em>\u00a0landing page URL, Clicks, and Impressions<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">#2. Create a second tab and pull in your crawl data &#8211; Crawl URLs and City + State Data<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">#3. Data Manipulation &#8211; You want to end up with your city and state name side by side (Column G in the image below).\u00a0 You want the full state\/province name in your spreadsheet, so if you have an abbreviated code you will want to change that to the full name (for example, MA to Maryland).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">#4. Go back to your GSC tab and use the Vlookup function to pull the City + State data from the crawl data tab into your GSC tab.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">#5. (Hardest math step here) Create a distribution model based on population size, then you will assign a multiplier value to each bucket. The goal of the multiplier is to multiply the clicks and impressions to equalize things across the board so that you can identify <strong>performance<\/strong> and not population.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">#3.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Math-3.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">#4.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Math-4.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">#5.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Math-5.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">#6. Now create a new tab and pull in all the census data with the city, state, and population. You may need to clean up some of this information, so make sure you review it. Sometimes census data will add &#8220;village&#8221; after a city name and that can make your data a little messy. Sort population by highest to lowest. Next, manually add your Bucket and the multiplier values from your distribution model.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">#7. Take the Bucket and Multiplier data and pull it into your GSC data tab.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">***Your location pages are not always going to align with Census Data, you are going to have to do some manual cleanup. We\u2019re looking for trends here, not perfection &#8211; this step can make you a bit crazy, so know when to stop.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">#8. Create a new row for Adjusted Clicks = Clicks X Multiplier. You can also do this for impressions if you want to have adjusted impressions data.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">#6.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Math-6.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">#7.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Math-7.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">#8.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/MAth-8.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><b>What Have You Discovered?<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Worst performing locations by adjusted clicks.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Possibly a few less common technical issues come up.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/rachelleighrva\"><strong>Rachel<\/strong><\/a> is open to providing you with her census data (USA) if you DM her on Twitter &#8211; holy bananas that\u2019s a lot of info. She invested 20 hours of time to collect, analyze, and prepare her technical audit. You are one lucky reader\/#WLSS attendee.<\/span><strong>What\u2019s Next?<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Why not ask some questions to drill down further into your analysis.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is there additional competition in the regions where performance is worse? If so, what are they doing to outperform you?<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What additional SEO efforts can you put toward regions\/locations? Content? Links?<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What non-SEO marketing resources can you apply to those under performing locations and regions?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Step 3 &#8211; Monitor Ongoing Performance<\/span><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Schedule Recurring Crawls<\/strong> &#8211; Weekly, fortnightly and monthly will allow you to monitor for new technical issues. If you aren\u2019t scheduling crawls, how will you know when new issues come up?\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Monitor for Technical Issues<\/strong> &#8211; If you just have the crawls running and aren\u2019t analyzing the data what\u2019s the point?! Set time aside for this.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Set Up Performance Monitoring<\/strong> &#8211; You can use Google Data Studio to pull your adjusted clicks and impressions data for population and see it over time.\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can connect your Monthly Google Search Console data into your Multiplier Google Sheet and have blended data in Google Data Studio (GDS). Doing this allows you to generate some really cool visualizations over time. You can also pull in technical monitoring into GDS as well.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"avatar\" style=\"float: left; width: 100px; height: 100px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"thumbnail photo alignleft wp-image-67395 size-full\" style=\"float: left;\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Tim-Capper.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" \/><\/div>\n<h2>Tim Capper (<a href=\"https:\/\/onlineownership.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Online Ownership<\/a>)<\/h2>\n<h3>Can Hotels Still Win in Local Search?<\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Local search for hotels is completely different from other industries! When it comes to the local landscape for Hotels, ranking for &#8220;Hotel + Location&#8221; has always been tough. By its very nature, &#8220;hotel&#8221; is a competitive search term. But Google made it more difficult in 2018:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There was a major change to the intent behind the query &#8220;Hotel + Location&#8221; so that other traveler sites\/directories (OTAs), like hotels.com or TripAdvisor, always match the query, and\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They hyper localized the query for local search.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For hotels to succeed they need to interpret the user at the travel research stage of their journey. The two areas that hotels should focus on to win in local are:<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Organic<\/strong>: Optimize for &#8220;Hotel + Location&#8221; for GMB , but focus on creating internal resources, accommodations, services and your location.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Google My Business<\/strong>: Unfortunately h<\/span><\/span>otels have drastically different features compared to other industries and suppressed features within the dashboard (no Google Posts). While there <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is little available to optimize on GMB, it is still possible. The idea is to have your GMB listing piggyback off your organic work.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><strong>Organic Results<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Optimize for &#8220;Hotels + Location&#8221; for local and the hotel finder. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Shift the internal focus to:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Accommodation,<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Leisure facilities, <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Weddings, <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Food\/Beverage facilities, <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Local content, and<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Brand queries.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All of these areas can be ranked and are not subject to the same hyper local electric fence as hotel queries! Where it&#8217;s very difficult to rank for &#8220;Hotel + Location&#8221;, you can still rank for other opportunities and<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> optimize for what sets you apart.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Accommodation<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Look at all your features and leverage them. Rooms: balcony, sea view, etc. Figure out these features and figure out what CAN they be used for.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Focus on long tail queries leading to shorter broader queries.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here&#8217;s an example of a hotel in Phuket that couldn\u2019t rank anymore in 2018 (after queries update) for &#8220;Hotel + Location&#8221;, but they were able to rank for their bedrooms and the types of accommodations available.\u00a0<\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Phuket-Hotel-Example.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><strong>Leisure Facilities<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What leisure facilities does the property offer and can they be leveraged for search + location? <\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you don&#8217;t have your own onsite leisure facility, you can leverage partnerships that you have locally whether that&#8217;s a deal with a spa, offsite options, wellness packages, etc. Use these to your advantage to rank.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Optimize leisure facilities and packages and work on supporting content for these top line internal pages.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you have a leisure facility that is open to the public, you can have a listing for your spa nested within your main GMB listing and those nested listings will unlock more available features for you to use. For leisure facilities, there&#8217;s a traditional local pack instead of the hotel finder, which means 3 results instead of 7.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Leisure-Facilities.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><strong>Weddings &amp; Events<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Events make up a very large chunk of revenue for properties<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Get creative with your supporting content<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Create pages, lists, and information if you have a destination location, such as:<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Can I get married in this country?<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">How do I do get married in this country?<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What information do I need?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You want to get right in between your customers&#8217; purchasing journey. The goal is for you to provide them with all of the information so they start trusting you even before they have looked at your property and the facilities you offer.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can really go to town with weddings, no matter the location! Yes there&#8217;s a lot of competition but it&#8217;s also a big market.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Speak with wedding planners and conference coordinators about types of weddings, size and style to create these pages and add FAQ.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Food and Beverage<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If your food and beverage business is open to the public, you can make a separate GMB listing! Optimize these listings.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Optimize for location and offerings:<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Types of cuisine<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The chef<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Unique location\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are a lot of opportunities for supporting content, especially if your property is in a major tourist destination.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Don\u2019t be afraid to include competitors if it means a feature snippet, for example: \u201c<em>10 best coffee shops in [location]\u201d lists<\/em>. While the tourist <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">may or may not visit you, you are putting yourself in their direction of travel and you have a good chance of gaining a new customer!<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Food-Beverage-Content-Example.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><strong>Local Supporting Content<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Get buy in<\/strong> &#8211; For in-house marketing teams, get buy in with the CEO\/marketing manager to build trust. This is a c<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">rucial part of getting traffic back from OTAs.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Location<\/strong> &#8211; Get into their purchasing funnel by being a traveller&#8217;s information source. However, OTAs are catching on! For example, TripAdvisor has &#8220;Where&#8217;s the best beach?&#8221; posts, and Hotels.com is using location subdomains with local content.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Things to do<\/strong> &#8211; People travel to an area for a variety of reasons &#8211; be their information source for things to do in your location. Also, travellers come for a variety of reasons &#8211; ask WHY they are coming to you and start providing this information.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Alternative travellers<\/strong> &#8211; COVID was a catalyst for this type of material. Medical tourism is big business and patients need long stay options. Medical tourism hasn\u2019t dropped off during COVID-19. It seems to be paying off and working well for these properties in large cities.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Think Big: <\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Be the source of information for the area your property is located in. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rank for destination (location) and build your brand (reinforcing in location).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Be the Convincer<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Be the brand that loves your area and will guide your guests through their stay<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If a traveller is not staying (price range is out of their budget), they may still visit your facilities since you crossed their purchasing journey.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Be Creative<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Understand potential and current customers, talk to customers, and invest in marketing (reach, etc). <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Become the brand that opens up the user to new experiences<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lists are valuable Featured Snippet opportunities as well as People Also Ask Snippets<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A lot of companies (B2B, etc) have tried this but hotels haven&#8217;t spent a lot of time going after these feature snippets.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They work well enough (branding) that it can expand from city, to state, province, to entire country (start capturing in that funnel from a whole range).\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Local packs for instagrammable hotels\u2026 You\u2019d be surprised how much traffic this drives!<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are a lot of interesting queries out there to take advantage of!\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>==<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Instagrammable-Local-Pack.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><strong>COVID Aftermath<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It&#8217;s not over yet and we are all going to be feeling the effects for years to come.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Focus on local packages and how to attract more local customers. Double down on local customers (in the city? Promote theater packages, etc.)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In customer feedback, guests share they want to be reassured of cleanliness and safety.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Create a COVID page on the website that states things such as: sanitizers in use, cleanliness routines, social distancing from other guests (how does it work), information about allergies in regards to specific chemicals, notices about use of industrial chemicals and their scents, etc. <strong>Bottom line:<\/strong> You need to reassure your guests and especially international travellers after COVID-19 lessens.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Advertise complimentary COVID related things, such as temperature checks at front desk, free mask, etc.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Build this out by thinking about:<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What is available to you? <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Where are you located? <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you are located in the countryside, many are looking for staycations (to social distance, be in nature, get away from the city); in the UK they have seen a huge increase in the desire to &#8220;get away&#8221; within your own area.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Re-purpose your packages. Make them work for residents nearby or in the same city.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/COVID.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><strong>Get Your Hotels Listing Working for You<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Google has 9 billion reasons not to allow hotels full access to Google My Business features that other businesses have access to!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>==<strong>What Can You Do?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Benefit Your GMB<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Make sure your hotel listing benefits from your website content and supporting local content.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Incorporate Schema Markup to:<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Main Property Pages\/Services &#8211; Using the c<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">omplete <a href=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/docs\/hotels.html\">Hotel structured data markup<\/a> (<strong>Book<\/strong> button)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Supporting Content<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Simple Hotels structured Data (NAP).<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Include embedded map, you don\u2019t want them to leave your site to go view another property.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Set Your Location<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Guests love moving pins with hotels and resorts<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Geo coordinates breaks structured data, so don&#8217;t use them. Instead use HasMaps and direct CID.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Set each location manually! You want Google to accurately track each person that enters your hotels\/facilities. By setting the location properly, 9 times out of 10 Google will detect a customer in the location and this can trigger a review prompt from Google.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Using the &#8220;Are you here?&#8221; Maps feature, get employees to train Google the hotel\/facilities boundaries to help them understand what the parameter and coordinates are for more accurate results. You need to do this if your facilities are a \u201cfunky shape\u201d; Google may not know this area is also apart of your facility (restaurant) and that person will never get a review prompt.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dropping a pin isn\u2019t enough!\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Attributes<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Keep your attributes updated and correct &#8211; guests are terrible at messing with attributes; Google also updates this very regularly.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Services<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Meh&#8230; While this feature doesn&#8217;t seem to have any influence, add and use it but don&#8217;t worry about investing too much time and effort into it. <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Photos\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Add great images that are not on your site. <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Provide your OTAs with their own separate images &#8211; never use one set across all entities, you want the user to explore your hotel from your perspective.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you don&#8217;t add images, you&#8217;ll end up getting bad API scrapped images.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Regularly check customer uploaded images &#8211; report when necessary.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Brand Your Images.<\/strong> While you don&#8217;t get access to Google Posts, you can get creative and brand your images. GMB <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">has begun removing images with special offers on them, so stick with just your branding.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Brtand-Your-Images.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><strong>Video<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Videos kind of work and kind of don&#8217;t work, so they aren&#8217;t amazing. But t<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">hink about this way: if you have 5-6 videos and the competition doesn\u2019t, it will set you apart and give you edge. If you have videos available, add them.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Nest Your Locations<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your hotel is the location and destination\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your location should be nested within the hotel, not another building.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Nest-Your-Locations.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>How Do You Nest a Business? <\/strong>Search for the business and in the profile, click &#8220;Suggest an edit&#8221;. If it doesn\u2019t appear, you&#8217;ll need to contact business support. If you have already trained the location, the options will pre-populate for you!<\/span><strong>Cross Promote\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your facilities (restaurants, spa, bar, etc.) can have the Posts, Events and Offers for their GMB listing. Put your hotel offers when and where <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">it\u2019s applicable.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Go It Alone<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/onlineownership.com\/the-hotel-industry-needs-to-purge-themselves-of-google-otas\/\">Premier Inn is the only brand that has taken a stance against Other Travel Agencies\/Sites (OTAs)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Books from new customer &#8211; up 40%<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Higher than paid search ads &#8211; No OTA<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bookings from Google<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">300% stronger return on ads spend than non-branded<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Feasible for large group (pain in the process)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"avatar\" style=\"float: left; width: 100px; height: 100px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"thumbnail photo alignleft wp-image-67396 size-full\" style=\"float: left;\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Joel-Headley.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" \/><\/div>\n<h2>Joel Headley (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.patientpop.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Patient Pop<\/a>)<\/h2>\n<h3>Building Relevance in Local Search<\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The 3 pillars of local search are:<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Proximity<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Prominence<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Relevance<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/3-Pillars-of-Local-Search.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Proximity is your location that is the searcher&#8217;s location or location-modified searches (e.g. restaurants in New York). This proximity has to exist for local search to happen. Without proximity there is no local search.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Prominence is how popular something is. When you think of ranking in web search, this is what we\u2019re talking about. Same thing in local search, is this the most popular place to get sushi? Is this the best doctor that I can go to? Is this the best SEO I can find? All those signals that we make best, that\u2019s what we are thinking about for prominence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Relevance is the content that drives the search terms inside the context of prominence and proximity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Relevance is the thing that we can control the most. Text content drives query matches &#8211; words matter. Without query matches the business won\u2019t rank. When we think about proximity, you can\u2019t control where the searcher is. You can change your location, but that\u2019s very difficult. Prominence, if you\u2019re a new business starting out, you really can\u2019t compete in terms of prominence with other existing businesses &#8211; for example you\u2019re a new doctor&#8217;s office, you put out a content piece, you won\u2019t be able to compete with Mayo Clinic in terms of prominence.\u00a0 But you can drive relevance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Content sources for relevance signals:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google listing basic info title, category<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Website text content &#8211; title tags, headings, anchor<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google listing enhanced info, reviews, posts<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can get by in the world of local search with relevance and proximity &#8211; without having prominence. These three relevance signals are all things you have control over.<\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Relevance-Signals.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><strong>Title tags: THE on-page signal<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When you\u2019re thinking about how much content you have on the page, how long the page should be, frequency of the keyword. Your title tags matter more than all of this stuff combined.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can make a one word change in your title tag and get that page to rank for that word without changing any content.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Title Tag Length<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Given that they are so important, there\u2019s lots of dogma out there in the industry, the so-called \u201coptimal\u201d title tag length based on viewable titles on desktop web search (50-60 characters), and you have tools out there telling you are doing it wrong if your title tags are too long.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Mobile Title Tags Break This Title Tag Rule<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When you look at mobile title tags they&#8217;re huge. Mobile results show longer titles, 3+ lines of text with 140+ characters. It just makes sense to think about how your customers and Google interact with your title tags.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Off-screen text viable &#8211; text in title tag can be found in search, even if it&#8217;s never displayed.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Interior local signals matter &#8211; localities within the border of your cities increase search visibility.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>==<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Title Tag Experiment<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Are we actually getting value out of every word in the title tag? How do we find out?\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Joel ran an experiment to find the relevance of full length title tags.<\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Experiment-Creating-Relevance.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Take a unique string that you cannot find in search results<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Take long title tags &#8211; 200+ length\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Append titles &#8211; add that unique string to the back of it.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Find string in search results.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Findings<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They did this with thousands of pages and their unique string\/term showed up. In the past, it didn\u2019t exist on Google, but now it does. It\u2019s now returning the most prominent page for that search, but it\u2019s really the relevance that brought it up. <strong>This means that you don\u2019t have to fear that ellipsis (\u2026) when it comes to your title tags<\/strong>. Even if you have the dot dot dot, even if you have some SEO tool from some big company that tells you that you shouldn&#8217;t have long title tags &#8211; that ellipsis is working for you! Everything behind that ellipsis is driving relevance in search.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That ellipsis (&#8230;) in your long title tag is working for you! Ignore the SEO dogma of 50-60 character length title tags. Everything behind that ellipsis is driving relevance in search!<\/span><strong>How can we use this information to improve our search on Google?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Use localities to easily add content<\/strong>. A locality is taking a zip\/postal code and pinging to the Google Places API and they return a structured result that includes a localities field. Localities are the areas that are included within the zip\/postal code. Take the localities for your business zip\/postal code location and shove them into your title tags.\u00a0<\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Localities-Example.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Joel and his team searched all localities within a zip\/postal code and then added them to the end of existing title tags. They took information that was already known (Google knows you are already in this area based on your zip\/postal code), so they&#8217;re not telling Google any additional or new information but rather doubling down on the information Google already has. Giving Google a clear signal that yes, we really are here!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The team found that: <em>the website appeared for 15% more keywords than previously<\/em>, meaning they increased their visibility. Additionally, website rank increased 2 positions for current location for current web pages and terms they are already trying to rank. <\/span><b>That\u2019s relevance driving prominence<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. They were able to display more relevance, using preexisting prominence signals and Google is saying, &#8220;Hey we should show these pages because they are more relevant to the current search terms.&#8221;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Filling title tags with locations from the Maps resulted in:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Expanded reach<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">More terms being seen for the website<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An uplift in ranking for existing terms\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Justifications On Google Search<\/strong><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> A Justification is content highlighted in search = a feature at Google. Justifications are when you have a search term and Google highlights the words, for example in a meta description, that match the search terms. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In search results, these display a &#8220;justification&#8221; to explain to the searcher why a particular result is chosen, highlighting the user&#8217;s search query.\u00a0<\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Google-Listing-Justifications.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><strong>Justifications on Google Listings<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Website mention<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Post content highlight<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Reviews snippet quote<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Justifications-through-Relevance.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Website Mention<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: You can see that Google has made a direct connection with the website content (in the above example, for &#8220;neck pain&#8221;) to show you the listing. There&#8217;s a direct connection and Google is using the relevance from the website to connect it with a listing to show it to a searcher.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Review Snippet<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: In the example above, they\u2019re showing a review snippet (a &#8220;franken-snippet&#8221; &#8211; internal Google lingo for showing multiple reviews in a search result) that talk about the search query. You have some influence over this, when you ask for reviews you can say, &#8220;I would love to hear about your experience with X (i.e. back pain, neck pain) and if you could share that on any review platform. Not only do you see it in the review, Google has to connect that information from the review back to your website. We are going to justify it with a review but it&#8217;s also backed by content on the website.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><b>Google Post<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Google is showing the content of the Post in search results\u00a0 &#8211; Recently we\u2019ve seen articles that say Posts don\u2019t help ranking &#8211; look the content is indexed and Google shows justification. You have complete control of that Google content and that Post content is driving relevance in search.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><strong>Relevance to search largely under your control:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Website<\/strong> &#8211; Google favours content from the homepage and contact pages. Really understand that Google will be using title tags and content from your homepage and contact page when they display justifications from your website in search results.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Posts<\/strong> &#8211; The content is not from the last 7 days. Those posts that you did 3 months ago, 6 months ago, 9 months ago will still drive relevance in search through justifications.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Reviews<\/strong> &#8211; They are usually positive, but they are not recent, so again we think stale reviews don\u2019t work for us, but that\u2019s not true. If you can get more people talking about the service you\u2019re trying to drive, you are going to have a greater chance of Google using this as a relevance signal to point out your listing to searchers.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Small Changes Drive Success &#8211; Remember:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Off-screen text is viable even if the text is never displayed it\u2019s still driving search results &#8211; that ellipsis is A-OK!\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Interior local signals matter, include localities within the border of your cities to increase search visibility.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On-site justifies the local content that you\u2019re seeing in Google search. Website signals also go into the review signals and Post signals. <\/span>Justifications in local search rely heavily on title tags in your homepage and your contact page.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Onsite Optimization Opportunities That Benefit Your GMB Listing<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Google thinks of your Business Listing as any other knowledge entity out there. You are a business that has a website that has contact information. Add your localities to your title tags on your homepage and contact page, without having to invest more time in creating new location pages. <strong>The major signals Google is looking for are: Anchor text, headings, and title tags and if you get these right you can get 80% of the benefits<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Day 2 of our Local Search Summit was filled with lessons in link building, GMB suspensions, technical SEO, local services ads, email marketing, and more. Today we are shining a spotlight on the technical side of location pages, local search for hotels, and how you can build relevance for your business. We did not scrimp [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4113,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_titles_title":"Location Page Technical Audits, Local SEO for Hotels &amp; Building Relevance | #WLSS Day 2 Recap","_seopress_titles_desc":"Learn how to perform a technical audit for your enterprise location landing pages, tackle hotel local SEO, and learn how you can build relevance for your business. 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