Hit Me With Your Best Blogs: The Top 25 Moz Blogs of 2021

2021 was a big year for Moz: we joined the Ziff Davis family, held our second all-virtual MozCon, added a technical SEO certification to Moz Academy, released new and improved guides for topics like local SEO, link building, and Google Analytics, and launched exciting betas for Moz Pro — Performance Metrics and True Competitor. 

We also published 186 posts on the Moz Blog this year, and as is tradition, it's time to look back at the most popular ones! You’ll find Whiteboard Friday episodes, technical SEO insights, search engine updates, and tips for analytics, among several other topics. 

Enjoy this look-back, and have a safe and happy new year, Moz friends! See you in 2022. 

*The top 25 Moz Blog posts published between January 1 - December 28, 2021, in order by pageviews generated during that timeframe.

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1. 21 Smart Google SEO Tips

Author: Cyrus Shepard | Published: January 8, 2021

Moz SEO expert Cyrus Shepard shares his top 21 tips for successful Google SEO, including what to prioritize and what to look out for in the year(s) ahead. He's also included a bunch of helpful resources for your reference in the transcription!

2. The Definitive Guide to JavaScript SEO (2021 Edition)

Author: Pierce Brelinsky | Published: February 9, 2021

The web is in a golden age of front-end development. JavaScript and technical search engine optimization are experiencing a renaissance. In this article, Pierce Brelinsky of Go Fish Digital shows you how to optimize your JS-powered website for search in 2021 and beyond.

3. SEO Forecasting in Google Sheets

Author: Tom Capper | Published: February 1, 2021

After the success of a 2015 article in which he shared a free forecasting tool, Tom has created a new, free spreadsheet template to forecast how your SEO efforts will affect your site traffic. In this post, he shows you how it works and how to use it, and then how to build your own (better?) version.

4. UTM Tagging for Google My Business

Author: Claire Carlile | Published: August 6, 2021

Guest host and small business SEO expert Claire Carlile walks you through the what, why, where, which, and who of UTM tagging for your GMB profiles.

5. 3 Vital Click-Based Signals for SEO: First, Long, & Last

Author: Cyrus Shepard | Published: April 7, 2021

This post shows you how to optimize for click signals to improve your SEO, regardless of how Google might use them as a ranking signal.

6. When & How to Disavow Backlinks in 2021

Author: Tom Capper | Published: April 28, 2021

It’s been nearly nine years since Google rolled out its Disavow Tool. This guide covers how and when to use it, and the potential risks and benefits.

7. Beginner's Guide to Google My Business: What It Is, How To Use It, and Why

Author: Miriam Ellis | Published: March 15, 2021

Reference this simple, comprehensive guide to get off on the right foot with one of Google’s most important digital assets for local businesses.

8. 7 Emerging Technologies in SEO and Their Applications

Author: AbdulGaniy Shehu | Published: February 22, 2021

As an SEO professional, you need to know the latest industry trends to keep up with its ever-changing demands. In this post, you’ll find seven emerging technologies in the SEO industry, and how they impact your work as an SEO expert.

9. How to Calculate Your SEO ROI Using Google Analytics

Author: Adriana Stein | Published: September 6, 2021 

Measuring ROI for your SEO efforts involves two factors: KPIs and the cost of your current SEO campaigns. With GA, you can pinpoint where your audience is coming from, set goals to stay on track, and incorporate the most attractive keywords to rank better in search engines.

10. How to Write an SEO-Focused Content Brief Your Writers Will Love

Author: Kameron Jenkins | Published: February 10, 2021

The right content brief can help you maximize organic search traffic. Learn what to include in your content briefs, what to avoid, and tips for getting your writers bought in.

11. How to Explain Domain Authority to a Non-SEO

Author: Andy Crestodina | Published: February 19, 2021

Do you ever have to explain the importance of Domain Authority to clients or co-workers who have little or no SEO experience? If so, Andy Crestodina walks through how to get your message across successfully.

12. How to Measure the Quality of Your SEO Traffic Using Google Analytics

Author: Adriana Stein | Published: November 23, 2021

To get a better understanding of what’s considered “quality traffic”, we’ll look into various Google Analytics metrics that will help you create a rock solid SEO strategy.

13. 100% Free Technical SEO Site Audit Checklist (& Beyond)

Author: Cyrus Shepard | Published: June 7, 2021

Learn the tools and tactics you'll need to pinpoint technical issues on your site and turn them into wins for your users and your rankings with this free technical SEO checklist from Moz.

14. 7 Actually Smart Tips to Reduce Bounce Rate

Author: Cyrus Shepard | Published: March 26, 2021

Is a high bounce rate bad? The answer is: it depends, but yes, sometimes it can be. Is a high bounce rate bad for SEO? That’s where it gets a little more complicated. In this week’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, Cyrus gives you seven easy SEO tips to address your bounce rate, and increase engagement and satisfaction to make your users happier.

15. 9.5 Ways Google Rewrites Your Title Tags

Author: Dr. Pete Meyers | Published: August 31, 2021

In August, Google released a title rewrite update that may have left you feeling confused and more than a little frustrated. But why is Google rewriting titles, and what can we learn from it? Dr. Pete explored over 50,000 <title> tags to find out.

16. Featured Snippets Drop to Historic Lows

Author: Dr. Pete Meyers | Published: March 1, 2021

On February 19, MozCast measured a dramatic drop (40% day-over-day) in SERPs with Featured Snippets. This is the lowest prevalence rate of Featured Snippets in our data set since summer of 2015. What's driving the losses, and who is most affected?

Also be sure to read the follow-up piece from March 22: Featured Snippets: Not Gone, Just on Holiday (Apparently)

17. According to the Experts: 5 Technical SEO Trends to Watch in 2021

Author: Morgan McMurray | Published: March 9, 2021

To find out more about the current state of technical SEO we asked seven industry experts for their thoughts and advice. Here's what they had to say. 

18. Long Tail SEO in 2021: How You Can Have It All or Die Trying

Author: Dr. Pete Meyers | Published: April 21, 2021

Due to Google’s advancements in Natural Language Processing, the long tail of search has exploded. However, I will argue that NLP has also imploded the long tail, and understanding how and why may save our collective sanity.

19. 8 Unconventional Ways to Generate Qualified B2B Sales Leads

Author: Nadya Khoja | Published: January 18, 2021

It’s time to take an unconventional approach to lead generation, especially for B2B companies, because B2B is a different ballgame than B2C — and your strategies need to reflect your audience.

20. 6 Steps to Executing an Efficient SEO Clean-Up Strategy

Author: John Allen | Published: April 27, 2021

In this article, learn how to successfully execute an SEO clean-up strategy to ensure your site aligns with your business goals, keeps you in Google’s good books, and yields an excellent user experience for visitors and customers.

21. The Three Bosses of SEO

Author: Ola King | Published: September 10, 2021

In SEO, there are three main “bosses” with different needs: your business, your searchers, and your search engines. How do you answer to all of them?

22. The ROI of SEO

Author: Kavi Kardos | Published: October 15, 2021

Search marketers can't get our important work implemented if we can't prove that it's worth the investment to our higher-ups. With that in mind, Kavi Kardos gives you the numbers and the talking points you need to justify the return on investment of your SEO work.

23. How We Increased Our Client’s Leads by 751% on Less Than £1K Per Month [Case Study]

Author: Lydia German | Published: January 27, 2021

The team at Tao Digital Marketing breaks down how they were able to go above and beyond for their client, Fleetcover, using four strategies that increased leads by 751%, keywords by 259%, and impressions by 535% — all with a small SEO budget.

24. Technical SEO Implementations to Increase the Impact of Your Link Building Campaigns

Author: Crystal Carter | Published: April 26, 2021

In this blog, examine some of the technical SEO strategies you can use for your site before, during, and after your link building campaigns in order to optimize the performance and long-term impact of each campaign.

25. Announcing the New Technical SEO Certification Series: What It Is & How to Get Certified

Author: Kavi Kardos | Published: February 2, 2021

The Moz Learning Team has put in many, many hours of work to develop a technically focused, in-depth training series that hones in on the nuts and bolts of technical SEO. We’re thrilled to announce the launch of the Technical SEO Certification Series through Moz Academy.

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Local SEO Statistics that Tell Our Industry’s Story

What a gift it is that local SEOs put hours of research into facets of our industry and then freely share their findings! Today, I’m going to bundle the most important recent local search marketing statistics and survey takeaways into a single gift basket, which you can draw from when you need to create a compelling narrative which clients can quickly understand, demonstrate the value of a particular campaign to bosses and co-workers in order to get buy-in on an initiative, or even just explain to mystified friends and family what you do for a living. 

With sincere thanks to all the people cited in this column for your brilliant and useful work, here are my top local SEO stat picks that tell the story of our local SEO present and future.

Local search and localism are going strong! 

The stats

• Small Business Saturday 2021 saw record-high $23.3 billion spending in the US, with 70% of survey respondents saying American Express’ campaign inspires them to encourage their connections to shop small and independent. 

• There were 32.5 million independently-owned businesses in the US in 2021 with fewer than 500 employees and employing 46.8% of the private workforce. 81% of these firms are so small that they have no employees. 

• There are more than 6 million single-unit physical business locations and 1.8 million multi-unit physical business locations in the US.

• 69% of people say at least half of their searches have a local intent and 37% say more than two-thirds of their searches are local. 

• “Available near me” searches increased by 100% globally in 2020.

• 33% of searches result in a Google local pack being returned, based on a MozCast study of 10,000 keywords. 

• 88% of people say it’s important to be able to trust companies with which they transact and 67% trust businesses with physical locations more than virtual businesses. 

• 80% of Americans feel large corporations have too much influence on the economy. 

• 72% of Nextdoor users say they will patronize local businesses more if the pandemic ever ends.

The story 

Small local business is huge, people want to support it (citing access to unique products and keeping money in their own communities as major motivators), and Google sees search through a local lens because they know the location of most searchers. It’s hard to overstate just how prominent the local-digital connection has become in people’s lives and it’s smart to define a narrative that aligns with local community goals, given stated mistrust of large corporations and preference for SMBs .

Data says these local search marketing tactics are winners

The stats

• Throw the kitchen sink at your Google Business Profile. Businesses that make it into local packs enjoy a 100%+ increase in clicks and businesses in position two experience the most engagement. 

• The majority of surveyed local SEO practitioners say the primary category of your GBP influences local pack rank more than any other factor, so choose wisely. 

• Don’t let Google make you lose sight of your other local business listings. Having a citation on 31-40 other good platforms is the sweet spot, delivering an average visibility increase of 55-58%. 

• Reviews are your sales force. 87% of consumers read reviews. 

• Review management is core to customer service. Nearly half of consumers expect companies to respond to reviews in two days or less. Invest in software that lets you monitor your reviews across multiple platforms to minimize your response times.

• The majority of surveyed local SEO practitioners say your Google Business Profile’s rating influences conversions more than any other factor. Unsurprisingly, this means that perfecting customer satisfaction should be the core goal of all local business types.

• Email marketing yields the highest ROI of any form of publicity, can deliver six times more conversions than tweets, and is 40 times more likely to get noticed than what your company posts on Facebook.

• Phone training is a high priority. Calls to businesses via GBP increased 61% in the first half of 2020.

• 78% of consumers want to text with your business, so get your SMS program underway.

• Live chat usage increased 85% during the pandemic, resulting in a 200% increase in live chat-driven sales.

• Only 19% of brands are using video yet for customer service and only 32% are using it for sales. Your opportunity is tremendous here if you become an early adopter.

• Write your environmental and social policy this year. 60% of shoppers say they would change their purchasing habits to protect the Earth and 83% of young people want to patronize brands which align with their values. 

The story

Local SEO has become so diversified, but you can manage it with the right tools!  If a local business is approachable via many digital doors and delivers excellent customer service, it will show up in ratings and reviews, which then create a virtuous cycle of driving more visibility, clicks, and conversions. There is no smarter mindset for local search marketers and their clients than a customer-centric one.

Tales from the Local SEO workplace

The stats

• 70% of us saw marketing budget cuts in 2020 as a result of COVID 19%. Nevertheless, multiple studies, like this one from Obility, showed that clients who were able to continue investing in SEO saw substantial growth. It has been one heck of a rollercoaster ride for our industry.

• In 2020, half of our customers already knew they would be permanently keeping the new tech and strategies they scrambled to implement during the pandemic. I would expect this number to be higher as we bid 2021 goodbye. New developments are here to stay.

• Our clients have invested seriously in implementing digital shopping on their local business websites, but we are in the dissatisfactory scenario of Google hiding website links in 59% of local packs. Nevertheless, keep advising clients to double down on their sites and to feed, fight and flip Google.

• Google dominates our lives and the fates of our agency clients, but it’s estimated that Apple Maps may now have as many as a 100 million US users now, and many of us are keeping a close eye on its development.

• Because Amazon has captured 50% of US online spending, local SEOs here are also closely watching  FTC antitrust developments which could positively impact our small local business clients who have been fighting such a hard battle against monopolies.

• 60% of us are earning the same or more than the US median income,which is $57,456 for men and, scandalously, only $47,299 for women working full time. Only 19% of us are making over $100,000 a year. Depending on where you live, working in SEO could mean a month-to-month existence or a life relatively free of grinding financial worry.

• Nearly 4.3 million American workers across all industries quit their jobs in August of 2021. Adam Audette offers some thoughtful commentary on the impact of this on SEO agencies, and my advice is to look for opportunity in this scenario to be bold in seeking meaningful work with a dignified wage. 

The story

There is no gainsaying that local SEO professionals have had a rough ride for the past two years. At the same time, our work has become utterly essential because so many of our clients ended up being integral to the emergent infrastructure which has kept communities resourced throughout the pandemic. It’s important to remember that though we may live and breathe local business listings, reviews, content, links, and optimization, the Internet remains a mysterious place to so many of our neighbors. COVID-19 is making it more important than ever before for us to share our knowledge to help connect the online and offline worlds for customers, businesses, and all folks in general. 

We do important work that merits decent pay, and my wish for you in 2022 is that you land in a good place, help tons of local clients, and experience a work/life balance that affords you peace, possibilities, and positive satisfaction! 

Image credits: Under The Sun, Lezumbalaberenjena, Jeremy Yoder, and Ken Lund

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3 Effective Ways to Quickly Identify Your SaaS Brand’s Top SEO Competitors

There are over 22,600 software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies in the world right now, according to Crunchbase.

On Capterra, there are more than 800 software categories.

Research by Statista indicates that the market size of the SaaS industry has grown from $5.56 billion in 2008 to over $156 billion in 2020.

What do these figures show? It’s simple. The SaaS industry landscape is becoming more competitive by the day.

To stay on top of your game as a SaaS business, you must identify the companies you're competing with from an SEO standpoint. That way, you’ll know the content strategies to focus on, the keywords to target, and the type of backlinks to acquire. In this post, you’ll learn three effective ways to do this quickly.

Why care about your SEO competitors as a SaaS brand?

If you don’t know your SEO competitors, you’re leaving so much on the table, while they occupy the top spots on the SERPs.

1. You can identify the top keywords they’re targeting and how they’re acquiring backlinks to help your own strategies.

By identifying the companies competing against your SaaS brand, you’ll know the top keywords they’re targeting. That way, you can focus on those keywords that can generate qualified traffic and drive user signups for your SaaS. This streamlines your keyword research process.

Knowing your top SEO competitors is also a great way to perform a link gap analysis. That way, you can know the type of backlinks they’re acquiring and where they’re getting them from. This helps you to identify relevant websites that are more likely to link to you.

2. You can figure out the competitive edge you have over them

If you don’t know who your top competitors are, you won't be able to find the SEO opportunities to focus on to drive growth for your business.

Take, for instance, if they focus more on high-volume, top-of-the-funnel keywords. If you then go after middle- and bottom-funnel keywords, it could give you a competitive edge.

3. You can understand their biggest drivers of growth and conversion.

Most SaaS companies optimize their blog posts, landing pages, and product pages for conversions. This is because they measure growth by the number of signups and paying customers that they have.

By identifying your SEO competitors, you can know the kind of CTAs and buttons that work well in your niche. That way, you’ll have a better understanding of the conversion strategies that can drive growth for your SaaS business.

Three ways to identify the SEO competitors of your SaaS brand

Here are three tactics you can try today to identify your SaaS brand's top SEO competitors.

1. Use SEO tools

SEO tools have access to large amounts of data for different websites and niches — and they’ve analyzed and categorized this information for your own use.

For example, SEMrush has the Market Explorer tool, which helps you to find potential competitors for your business. Ahrefs also has a competing domains report in the Site Explorer tool. This helps you to identify the websites competing with your SaaS, based on the kind of keywords you’re ranking for.

You can also use the Moz Pro True Competitor tool to identify the top SEO competitors for your SaaS brand. Here’s how it works: Let’s say you want to identify the top SEO competitors of Moz. With this tool, you can find that information within a few seconds.

The first thing you need to do is enter the following details in the tool:

• Preferred market: The specific location you’re targeting

• Domain type: The type of domain

• Domain name: Your website URL

Once you enter this information and hit the “Find Competitors” button, you’ll get a list of top 25 competitors:

As you can see, websites competing with Moz on the SERPs aren’t limited to software brands alone. They include others such as:

• Google

• Search Engine Journal

• Hubspot

• Search Engine Land

• Wordstream

• Backlinko.

This tool also has the Overlap and Rivalry metrics, to filter your top competitors.

The Overlap metric filters your top competitors based on the shared keywords you both rank for on the first page of Google. The Rivalry metric uses factors like CTR, DA score, the volume of shared keywords, etc. to identify the most relevant competitors for your SaaS.

After identifying your top SEO competitors, you can perform an in-depth analysis of at most 2 of them, to know the keywords they’re targeting.

2. Survey or interview your new and existing customers

If someone signs up for your SaaS product, chances are that they’ve demoed or tried out other options before deciding to go with yours. It's also possible that they've just churned from one of your competitors to become a customer.

This shows that they have an idea of who your direct and indirect competitors are. To get this information, all you need to do is reach out and interview them one after the other. This could be by talking to them via a quick call, sending a short survey for them to fill out, or asking them during the onboarding process.

Here are some questions you can ask customers to identify your top competitors:

• What tools were you using to [solve X problem] before trying out our product?

• If you’ve never used any tool before, how were you able to solve this problem before now?

• What made you interested in trying out our product?

• When did you realize that a tool​ like ours is what you need right now?

• How much research did you do to decide on our product? What are some other, similar tools you discovered during the research process?

3. Perform a Google search targeting your SaaS use cases and features

Performing a Google search for the use cases, features, and problems your software solves is a great way to identify your top SEO competitors. This is effective because most companies ranking high on Google are investing in SEO.

Use the “related:website” advanced search feature

This search operator shows you other websites related to the one you search for on Google.

Let’s say you want to find websites like salesforce.com. You can search for “related:salesforce.com” on Google. The results on page one are some of SalesForce’s top SERP competitors:

Search for the use cases of your software

If your software helps SaaS companies onboard and activate new users, one of your core use cases is “user onboarding”.

If you search “user onboarding software” on Google, you’ll unlock competitors who are either bidding for or ranking organically for the keyword.

Some of the websites targeting this use case on Google include:

• Appcues

• Userpilot

• Apty

• Userflow

Aside from that, there are SaaS brands paying to rank on the first page of Google for this keyword.

Search for your SaaS features

One of the core features of the Moz tool is the “rank tracking” feature. To identify the websites that have a similar feature, you can input that keyword on the Google search bar.

Here’s the result it returns:

As you can see, aside from Moz, other competing websites for this feature include:

• Link-Assistant

• Ahrefs

• Rank Tracker

• Spyfu

• SEMrush

Search for your SaaS jobs-to-be-done (JTBD)

Let's say you run an online video editing software, one of the problems that your audience most likely have is “how to add an image to video”.

By performing a Google search for this query, you’ll see a result that looks like this:

This shows that some of the top SEO competitors in the online video editing space include:

• Kapwing

• Veed

• Online Video Cutter

• Flixier

• Movavi

Conclusion

If you don’t know the SaaS companies you’re competing with, they'll leave you behind and dominate your niche.

In this post, you’ve learned three effective ways to identify your top SEO competitors as a SaaS brand:

1. You can use an SEO software such as the Moz True Competitor tool to find your competitors and know the keywords they’re targeting.

2. You can reach out to new and existing customers, to find out the solutions they’re comparing you with.

3. You can search Google for your SaaS product’s features and use cases. This shows you the companies likely competing with your brand on the SERPs.

Ever tried any of these tactics before? Kindly share which of them worked really well for your SaaS brand in the Q&A.

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Best of Whiteboard Friday 2021: 21 Smart Google SEO Tips

Our top Whiteboard Friday episode of the year was originally published all the way back at the beginning of January! So much has happened in the marketing industry since then, but Cyrus’s 21 SEO tips for the year are still definitely smart, and these go way beyond the SEO basics. He's also included a bunch of helpful resources for your reference in the transcription below!

How many of these were you able to implement throughout the past 12 months? Let us know on Twitter @Moz, and we’ll see you in 2022 with brand new episodes!

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. I'm Cyrus Shepard. Today, so glad that you can join us. We are talking about 21 smart Google SEO tips for 2021. We're getting ready for a new year, a new year of SEO strategies. These are 21 practical tips that you can implement that should, hopefully, move the needle on your organic traffic. 

These are some of the best tips that I've collected over the past year. Many of them that I'm going to use myself in my own SEO strategies. 

Now we have four categories: increasing clicks, content/on-page SEO tips, technical SEO, and a little bit of link building. There are 21 of these. These are going to go fast. We're trying to do 10 to 12 minutes, so we don't get to spend a lot of time on each one. But don't fret. We're going to link to appropriate resources in the transcript below so that we can keep along and explore a little bit more. All right. Ready to dive in? 

Increasing clicks

Let's start with clicks, specifically earning more clicks from Google without actually ranking higher, because that's one of the great things about SEO. You don't actually have to rank higher to get more traffic if you can get more clicks from the rankings that you already have. So let's talk about some specific strategies for getting more clicks without increasing rankings. 

1. Favicon optimization

First, favicon optimization.

Now I'm surprised more people haven't talked about this in 2020. Google displays favicons in mobile search results, and they can influence your click-through rate if they're high contrast, if they're visible or not visible. Having a good favicon can make a few percentage points difference, very minor, but it does make a difference if you can get it right. Aaron Wall, SEO Book, wrote one of the very few posts about that. 

2. Breadcrumb optimization

While we're optimizing our favicons, let's take a look at breadcrumb optimization. Google displays breadcrumbs in both desktop and mobile search results. They can be keyword-rich breadcrumbs, which can influence your click-through rate. Now Google gets their breadcrumbs from a lot of places. That can be your URL, your schema markup, your actual breadcrumbs on the page.

What you want to do is make sure Google is displaying the breadcrumbs that you want them to display, using those keywords that you choose. The best way to do that, make sure that you have breadcrumbs actually on your page with links, that you're using schema markup. Ideally, it would match your URL structure, but that isn't always necessary. So a great breadcrumb optimization audit. 

3. Meta descriptions

Let's optimize those meta descriptions. This is so old-school SEO. But a recent study shows that 30% of websites don't even use meta descriptions. Now that's understandable because another study shows that 70% of the time, Google will rewrite the meta description, usually because it's not using the keywords that the user is searching for. But if we write a well-crafted meta description, it can compel users to click, and that means using keyword-rich descriptions that people are actually searching for, so when Google does use your meta description, it's encouraging those clicks and acting as marketing copy for your website.

4. Numbers in titles

Along with meta descriptions, titles. Just shared a study recently showing that dates added to titles increased rankings for a particular brand. Numbers are generally one thing that I always test in title tags that usually produce pretty consistent results. Specifically, dates in title tags are often a winner, January 2021.

Don't be spammy about it. Don't include it if it doesn't make sense and don't fake it. But if you can include a number, it will often increase your click-through rate for any given query. 

5. <Title> boilerplate

How about doing a boilerplate audit for your title tag? Tip number five. What's boilerplate? Boilerplate are the parts of your title tag that repeat every single time.

For example, here at Moz, we put "Moz," our brand name at the end of every title tag. We used to put "Whiteboard Friday" at the end of every Whiteboard Friday until we tested it and found out that we actually got more clicks and higher rankings when we removed it. So boilerplate, you want your titles to be unique, provide unique value. So I would encourage you to experiment with your boilerplate and see if removing it actually increases your rankings.

Sometimes it's not going to. Sometimes you need that boilerplate. But do the test to find out. 

6. FAQ and how-to schema

Tip number six: schema, specifically FAQ and how-to schema. Google gave us a huge gift when they introduced these in search results. FAQ schema gives you a lot of SERP real estate. You can't always win it, and you can't always win the how-to schema, but when you do, that can definitely increase or influence people to click on your result, expand those FAQ schemas out.

It's not appropriate for every page. You want to make sure that you actually have those FAQs on your pages. But it is one way, in appropriate situations, that you can increase clicks without increasing your actual Google ranking. All right. 

Content/on-page SEO

Let's move on to some content and on-page tips. 

7. Relaunch top content

All right, number seven. This is the year I want you to look into relaunching your top content.

Content can go stale after a few years. So we launch content. You have a blog, you launch it, and you share it on social media. Most people forget about it after that. So go back, look at your top content over the last two to five years or even 10 years, if you want to go back that far, and see what you can relaunch by updating it, keeping it on the same URL. In some cases, you can see gains of 500% to 1,000% just by relaunching some of your old content with some updates.

So do a relaunch audit in 2021. 

8. Increase internal linking

Number eight: increasing internal linking. Now a lot of top SEO agencies, when they need to quickly increase rankings for clients, there are generally two things that they know are the easiest levers to pull. First, title tags and meta descriptions, what's getting more clicks, but second is increasing the internal linking.

You know that you can increase internal links on your site, and there are probably some opportunities there that you just haven't explored. So let's talk about a couple easy ways to do that without having too much work. 

9. Update old content with new links

Number nine is updating your old content with new links. This is a step that we see people skip time and time again. When you publish a new blog post, publish a new piece of content, make sure you're going back and updating your old content with those new links.

So you're looking at the top keyword that you want to rank for, and going in Google Search Console or checking tools like Keyword Explorer to see what other pages on your site rank for that keyword, and then adding links to the new content to those pages. I find when I do this, time and time again, it lowers the bounce rate. So you're not only updating your old page with fresh content and fresh links and adding relevance. You're adding links to your new content. So make sure, when you publish new content, you're updating your old content with those new links. 

10. Remove unnecessary links

Number 10, remove unnecessary links from your content. Now this is a form of PageRank sculpting. PageRank sculpting is a dirty word in SEO, but actually it works to a certain extent. It's not nofollow link page sculpting.

It is removing unnecessary links. Do you really need a link to your team page on every page of your website? Do you need a link to your contact form on every page of your website? In many cases, you don't. Sometimes you do. But if you remove the unnecessary links, you can pass more link equity through the links that actually count, and those links are a major Google ranking signal.

11. Mobile link parity audit

Number 11, need you to do a mobile link parity audit. What is that? What is a mobile link parity audit? That is ensuring that the links on your mobile site are the same as the links on your desktop site. Why is that important? Well, the last couple of years Google has moved to a mobile first index, meaning what they see on your mobile site, that's your website.

That's what counts. So a lot of sites, they have a desktop site, and then they reduce it to their mobile site and they're missing links. They get rid of header navigation, footer links, and things like that. A recent study showed that the average desktop page has 61 links and the average mobile page has 54 links. That means on the web as a whole there are seven fewer links on mobile pages than desktop pages, meaning a lot of link equity is being lost.

So do a study on your own website. Make sure you have mobile link parity between your desktop and your mobile site so you're not losing that equity. 

12. Invest in long-form content

Number 12: need you to invest in long-form content. Now I am not saying that content length is a ranking factor. It is not. Short-form content can rank perfectly well. The reason I want you to invest in long-form content is because consistently, time and time again, when we study this, long-form content earns more links and shares.

It also generally tends to rank higher in Google search results. Nothing against short-form content. Love short-form content. But long-form content generally gives you more bang for your buck in terms of SEO ranking potential. 

13. Use more headers

When you're doing that long-form content, make sure you do number 13: use more headers. I'm talking about H2 and H3 tags.

Break up your content with good, keyword-rich header tags. Why? Well, we have research from A.J. Ghergich that shows that the more header tags you have, generally you rank for more featured snippets. Sites with 12-13, which seems like a lot of header tags, rank for the most featured snippets of anything that they looked at in their most recent study.

So make sure you're breaking up your content with header tags. It adds a little contextual relevance. It's a great way to add some ranking potential to your content. 

14. Leverage topic clusters

Number 14, leverage topic clusters. Don't just launch one piece of content. Make sure you write about multiple pieces of content around the same subject and link those together. When you do that and you link them intelligently, you can increase engagement because people are reading the different articles.

You can add the right contextual inner links. I have a great case study that I want to show you in the transcript below, where someone did this and produced amazing results. So look into topic clusters for 2021. 

15. Bring content out of tabs

Finally, bring your content out of tabs. If you have content that is in accordions or drop-downs or you have to click to reveal the content, study after study after study shows that content that's brought out of tabs and brought into the main body, so people don't have to click to see, generally performs better than content that's hidden in tabs.

Now to be clear, I don't believe that Google discriminates content in tabs. They seem to be able to index and rank it just fine. But I think people generally engage with content when it's out of tabs, and maybe some of those signals help those pages to rank a little better. 

Technical SEO

All right. Just a very few technical SEO tips. We're going fast.

16. Core Web Vitals

Number 16: this is the year to invest in Core Web Vitals. These are some of the page experience signals that Google is bringing to the forefront in 2021. It's going to be an actual ranking factor very soon. We're talking about cumulative shift layout, hard word to say. Generally, we're talking about site speed and delivering great page experience. Now some of these things are very technical, and Google has some tools, like Lighthouse, to try to help you to figure them out.

One tip I like to share, if you are on WordPress, I highly recommend using Cloudflare, in particular their APO for WordPress. It's a great way to speed up your WordPress website and help you score better for some of these Core Web Vitals. It's very low cost, it's easy to implement, and it's a great way to speed up your WordPress website.

17. Limit sitemaps to 10,000

Number 17: sitemaps. Sitemaps, you're allowed to have 50,000 URLs per sitemap. This is always a question in every SEO quiz. How many URLs per sitemap are you allowed? Instead, if you have a large site and you have indexing issues, tip number 17, limit your sitemaps to 10,000 URLs. You don't have to use all 50,000.

We have some evidence that using smaller sitemaps, compressing those into a limited URL set can actually improve your crawlability of those. It's kind of like Google might prioritize those in some way. The data seems to support it. You also get a little bit better data out of Google Search Console. You can see what's being indexed and what's not.

18. Leverage dynamic sitemaps

Also, leverage dynamic sitemaps. Our friend Oliver Mason shows — that I'll link to in the transcript below — that a dynamic sitemap is a sitemap that changes based upon what you want Google to crawl. So if you have a large corpus of URLs that you want Google to crawl, put the high priority ones in their own special sitemap.

Maybe you limit it to one thousand URLs. As Google crawls and discovers those, remove them and put in additional high priority URLs that you want Google to discover. Keep the sitemap small and tight, and let Google know that those are the ones that you want them to pay attention to. 

Link building

Let's quickly talk about link building tips for 2021, because everybody loves link building.

No, kidding. Everybody hates link building. Link building is so hard. There are some professionals and there are some great people in the industry who do love it, who are great at it. Personally, I'm not that great at link building, but I still am able to build a lot of links. 

19. Passive link acquisition

One way that I'm able to do that is number 19: passive link acquisition. What passive link acquisition means is creating content that passively earns links as people discover it in the SERPs.

It means I don't have to outreach to people. It means that when they find it, when journalists find it, when bloggers find it, they naturally want to link to it. You do that by creating the types of content that journalists and bloggers and web creators are looking for. These are generally data, guides, definitions, how to, such as this video. When you create that kind of content, it generally earns a lot of links as people find it. Passive link building is one of the most sustainable ways to earn links over time. 

20. Page-level link intersect

Number 20, page-level link intersect. When you do have to do outreach, you want to do outreach to the pages most likely to link to you. Now we've known for a long time one of the top SEO tips for link building is find websites that link to your competitors but not to you.

I like to make that a little more specific and find web pages that link to at least two of my competitors but not to me. That means that they are generally a resource page, if they're linking to multiple competitors but not to me, and more likely to link to me if I ask them. We have a great tool here at Moz, Link Explorer, that does page-level link intersect. I think it's the best tool for this specific task in the SEO industry, not because I'm biased, because I actually use it.

21. Be the last click

Tip number 21 for 2021, be the last click. What do I mean by that? I mean satisfy your users. Once you earn the first click, you want to get that first click that people click, but you also want to be the last click. That means they found what they are looking for. User satisfaction is ranking signal number one. Your goal with all of this is to satisfy the user, to give them what they search for.

That's the magic of SEO. They're searching for something, and you're delivering it to them at the exact moment they search for it. When you can be the last click, you're almost guaranteed to rise in rankings and get the traffic that you deserve. 

All right, those are 21 tips. That's your roadmap for 2021. Hope you enjoyed it. Please share this video and share your tips for 2021 in the comments below.

Thanks, everybody.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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The Core Elements of Storytelling that B2B Can Learn from B2C

Meet the One Rand Man, an average 30-something-year-old living in Cape Town, South Africa. As an architect, he’s living his best life, eating out at swanky restaurants, buying rounds of tequila shots for the whole table, and splurging on clothing of the highest quality. He rarely tracks his finances.

But one day, he wakes up and realizes the more he makes, the more he spends on his extravagant lifestyle. He gets curious, so he orders his entire monthly salary to be paid in one rand coins. Yes, you heard that right. The One Rand Man is now on a quest to understand just how much he’s spending in hopes that he’ll spend less by using coins to purchase everything.

Sanlam Life Insurance took on his social experiment as a marketing tactic to teach people how to better manage their money and make smarter financial decisions. And this story blew up — we’re talking thousands of hits on Youtube and plenty of positive publicity. This B2C business used the One Rand Man’s story to educate consumers on the power of making educated financial decisions. And where do you think those consumers turned to when they needed financial assistance? Of course, Sanlam.

What about B2B businesses, though? Does the same concept still apply? The truth is that many of you might believe incorporating this marketing tactic is time consuming or irrelevant to your business audience, but the truth is it works — with flying colors.

For those in the B2B world, you’ve probably heard of B2B referred to as “Boring 2 Boring.” Well, it’s time to end that and spice things up a bit. So, let’s explore marketing storytelling techniques you can use to take your B2B marketing strategy to the next level.

Why is storytelling important in B2B marketing?

You’ve probably turned to the usual suspects in your marketing efforts — urgency, fear, and shock. By doing so, you’ve hit your ideal customers' pain points with discounts and shiny offers, however, the power of a story can take those one-time customers and make them brand evangelists.

Why does this matter? The most powerful form of marketing is word-of-mouth referrals.

Story-based marketing pulls at heartstrings and cultivates trust. Instead of thinking about your customer as a sale, and them thinking about you as just a product or service, you’re creating long-lasting relationships that break through the barriers of consumerism.

This is especially helpful for B2B businesses, where products and services can often be challenging for consumers to understand. Storytelling humanizes your brand and simplifies complex B2B topics by offering an alternative perspective.

Seven benefits of storytelling you should know

There are numerous benefits to utilizing storytelling as a marketing tactic, in particular, decreased customer acquisition costs and shorter sales cycles. When done right, story-infused messaging elevates and scales your business quicker than you believed possible.

1. Humanizes the brand and conveys personality

Dove portrays a sincere and authentic personality that’s inclusive for all no matter their skin tone, body shape, or complexion type. In a world where fashion brands and cosmetic powerhouses tell women how they should look, their story-infused messaging is a refreshing narrative changer.

How to bring this into B2B

Humans relate to other humans. So, think about how you can highlight the stories behind your team to create a connection with your target audience. As a B2B SaaS business, Dubsado does a really dashing job of highlighting their team’s backstory with super spunky copy. By simply incorporating the story behind your employees, you’re standing out from the sea of other businesses in your industry.

2. Creates emotional connections with the audience

To mention another example from Dove, this campaign showcases a little girl’s future being heavily influenced by all the beauty ads, and urges parents to start a conversation with their children about the industry before the ads do.

By explaining how these ads potentially influence the minds of young girls, Dove creates an emotional connection with parents. They don’t just buy Dove for the product benefits, they purchase from a brand that stands for an inclusive and positive message.

How to bring this into B2B

Let’s look at a video created by Zendesk called, “Sh*t Support Agents Say”. Zendesk is a B2B SaaS company that makes businesses better by appealing to both their teams and customers. In this video, they pull on the relatable emotions of a specific group of people within a business: customer support agents.

Think about a specific group of people within a business industry you’re targeting. How can you create a story-driven video that pulls on an emotion? How could you craft content around current events or values that matter to you and your target audience? By taking a stance, and weaving it into your brand messaging, you’ll create lasting impact and urge your audience to truly care.

3. Motivates customers

The image below is a snippet from the Dollar Shave Club website. This brand is well known for making it easy and fun for new customers to engage with their products and services.

Website visitors can quickly identify the right products and understand how they can become a member through the “Easiest Quiz Ever”, about their daily grooming routine and product needs.

This way, customers feel motivated as well as excited to see how Dollar Shave Club’s products could elevate their daily routine.

How to bring this into B2B

Let’s put this idea of motivating people to work for your B2B business. Motivating others doesn’t mean you need to stop what you’re doing and create a new quiz. Look at Zeb Evans, CEO and founder of ClickUp (a project management software). Each week he posts videos on Linkedin that motivate his target audience to join in on the conversation pertaining to work culture, localization, and even some of his biggest lessons scaling his team.

You can simply motivate your target audience to first engage with your brand by sharing behind the scenes moments and lessons you’re learning along the way. This inspires others and makes you more approachable, too.

4. Works as a basis for customer retention

Canva does an excellent job of creating content their B2B and B2C audiences love. They understand that in order to retain their customers, their offering should not be just about design principles and templates. Their carefully curated blog touches upon various topics, such as case studies (how a redesign boosted a non-profit organization’s impact), efficient organization skills (teaching school teachers how to organize their digital notes), and how-to design guides.

Canva is not just a leading brand for amateur designers, but is also a go-to destination for its users to learn more about several aspects of their daily life at work.

How to bring this into B2B

Map out the types of people that work at the businesses you’re targeting. You have graphic designers, content marketers, business founders, and various other titles. Think about them and create blog content to appeal to their specific areas.

Maybe you do a series geared towards how content marketers could create more productivity in their daily lives by using your product or service. When you pose a solution to their individual stresses, they’ll be more likely to stick around if they feel seen and heard.

5. Also a great way to get new customers

To piggyback off the last point, because Canva’s blogs are super helpful, they’ll very likely get shared and act as free promotion on various channels.

Let’s take a peek at how Eddie Shleyner, the founder of Very Good Copy, incorporates this into his business. Each week he provides fresh micro articles with story-infused, quick writing tips. At the end he encourages — and makes it easy for — his audience to share with others.

How to bring this into B2B

Creating rich, educational, and snappy content for specific individuals within your target audience, and then making it easy for them to share with a friend, is a sure fire way to get lots of referrals.

6. Makes your content unique and exciting

Most of us would gladly binge watch Netflix given a day off and some freshly popped popcorn. We crave stories, and are ready to invest our time in those ones that pique our curiosity and help us relate.

One great example of this is the B2B software company in the UK called Advanced. In their “right the first time” campaign to increase brand awareness, they literally wove in fairytale elements from stories like “Jack and the Beanstalk”.

This helped their complex industry become more digestible. In fact, the CEO of ILTA mentioned he wanted his software to be “like the Goldilocks story: not too hot, not too cold, but just right”.

How to bring this into B2B

When applying this to your own B2B business, think about stories you read as a child and weave that into a “story-telling” animated video (or blog) series, but instead of the original characters, use your company characters (you being the trusty friend, your customer being the hero).

Using storytelling gives a unique and exciting edge to your brand messaging, as it helps people relate and engage with your content. So consider how you can use everyday stories we tell our kids in a new product or service you’re launching.

7. Shows a less “salesy” side of your business

Instead shoving “buy now!” or “purchase here!” CTAs down your customers’ throats, focus on copy that makes them laugh, piques their curiosity, and makes them feel in control. Take Barkbox, for instance: they do a really great job of using humor. In this tweet, you can see how their CTA totally makes their audience feel in control.

How to bring this into B2B

How can you be a bit more witty in your B2B copy? Look into what’s trending on social media, so that you can play into the bigger story of what’s happening in people’s daily lives and be more relatable. For example, Dave Harland is a well-known B2B copywriter in the UK and is popular for his witty and sarcastic LinkedIn posts that reflect his copywriting style and skills.

Core marketing storytelling techniques B2B can learn from B2C

As I mentioned earlier, it can often be challenging for B2B businesses to incorporate storytelling into their messaging because they’re not always talking to the decision maker, unlike B2C consumers. However, it is possible, and I’m going to show you exactly how you can break it down to build it back up— with a story.

1. Build up a brand with personality

Just like you have a playful, serious, humorous, or charismatic personality, your brand has one, too. Think of it as a living, breathing being. To truly humanize your brand, it's important to give it a personality. Here are some common brand personalities that might resonate with your brand:

• Educational: like the Moz Blog you’re reading from right now. Does your brand consistently create content to inform others about a different perspective, how your products work, or how-to do something?

• Entertaining: like Netflix. Is your brand meant to distract others from the chaos of the world, and for a moment just forget their worries?

• Disruptive/Rebellious: like Harley Davidson. A wild-at-heart kind of brand that’s not afraid to take risks.

• Sensual and Luxurious: like Red Saint Botanical, a true spirit-based beverage brewed from rare teas. Does your brand ooze sophistication and scream refreshing?

• Efficient and Motivational: like Nike. Maybe your brand’s heart beats like a champion and is eager to motivate others.

• Happy: like Coca-Cola. If your brand’s sole mission is to cultivate joy, laughter, and radiance then happiness is its identity.

Even with B2B, your brand personality doesn’t have to fit in one of these boxes, as they’re simply suggestions. Play around with identities and characteristics that feel right to you by diving deeper into your brand values.

2. Create an authentic and original narrative

Every piece of content that you publish should tell a story. Whether it's an email, newsletter, Instagram post, or blog article, the messaging should be universal, memorable, consistent, and organized. Focusing on these elements will strengthen your content strategy and make it more powerful, and therefore unique. Let’s now take a look at content authenticity in action.

Since 1973, Patagonia has always put out authentic content, constantly showcasing its brand values, company culture, and ethics. It's evident through stories like trail runner Felipe Cancino’s of running through the Maipo River Valley, showcasing how Alto Maipo hydropower is greatly affecting the ecosystem, that Patagonia cares about our environment.

In another story, Daniel taps into the mind of a beginner by teaching his daughter to surf. It's clear that Patagonia not only cares for the environment, but also about how bonding over an outdoor activity cultivates healthy relationships.

As you can see, consistently pushing out content that aligns with your values and brand personality builds a strong bond between your business and customers that can’t be broken.

How to bring this into B2B

Microsoft is both a B2B and B2C brand that offers a wide range of products. In an effort to share business-related stories about how their products are used, they developed Microsoft Story Labs. This was a true win-win, because Microsoft now has user-generated content to share across other channels, and users become more connected to the brand by sharing their stories.

3. Wholeheartedly embrace emotion

Displaying strong emotions helps consumers understand they’re not alone and that they can help a cause greater than themselves, especially when they have a brand by their side.

Toms is a great example of this. On their impact page, they outline their aim to use the profits from their business to contribute to the issues of food scarcity and lack of resources in minority communities.

Overall, consumers are keen to see a strong emotional connection to greater issues that matter, and they’ll be more likely to support a brand that displays this.

How to bring this into B2B

Your audience is made up of individuals, so the emotional element (which is often overlooked in B2B) needs to be a large component to drive the message home. In the same way that B2C does, write out their fears, joys, and anxieties and tie that into how your business could elevate or diminish those feelings.

4. Get to know your audience

Freaker USA, a brand that created a funky universal jacket, wrote this on their about page: “Your little one’s sippy cup can be just as freaked as your 40oz Colt.”

This copy shows how well they know their audience. They understand sometimes parents need a one-size-fits-all product that will keep a child's milk warm (and stylish) and something for their own adult beverage.

How to bring this into B2B

Simply ask your current clients through interviews, or conduct market research on look alike audiences to get to know them better. Get to know their quirks and nuances by asking them open-ended questions so that you can get first-hand insight that you may not have gotten otherwise.

A business that has managed to understand even the tiniest details about its customers can really nail their paint points. Knowing their basic age, ethnicity, or location isn’t enough — get to know what they like at Starbucks, how they celebrate their birthday, or what Netflix shows they watch. When you understand these specific details, you can surprise them and communicate in their language to stay top of mind.

The bottom line? The better you know your audience, the deeper your relationship with them can be.

5. Make it personal

Snapchat’s Bitmoji app launched in 2016, allowing users to create their own emoji (bitmoji) based on their appearance. Snapchat managed to bring out customers’ inner child through the creation of cartoon-like figures, which they can exchange amongst their contact list.

How to bring this into B2B

People want to feel unique, and they’re drawn to messages that appeal to their personality and way of thinking. The more ways you personalize your content, user experience, or messaging to showcase this, the more they’ll be tempted to try your brand.

Plus, using personalization on your website is a surefire way to grab your audience’s attention. For example, you could offer a targeted lead magnet like a marketing template for those in that sector, or you could integrate a chatbot with pre-set answers so they’ll be directed exactly where they want to go.

6. Hone in on data

As the years go on and we become more integrated with technology, data will continue to play a huge role in how we personalize experiences for consumers.

For instance, Refinery29 used data to showcase how plus-sized women are not adequately represented within images online. They incorporated this data in their brand strategy, and started shooting images and redesigning illustrations to accurately reflect real women in the US.

How to bring this into B2B

By using data and tying it to topics your B2B brand cares about, you can quickly form new and interesting stories, which in turn create an emotional connection with your audience. Collect data on your own marketing campaigns — social media in particular — to find stories that are already working for your brand, and scale accordingly.

Start implementing storytelling into your B2B marketing strategy

Storytelling not only solves some of your biggest B2B business issues (you’re familiar with dreadfully long sales cycles or unengaged prospects), but it can also nourish life-long relationships with customers to create a bigger impact. At the end of the day… isn’t that what we as marketers want?

The marketing storytelling techniques that B2C businesses use are very similar for B2B businesses, too:

• Brand personality

• Emotions

• Narrative

• Knowing Your Audience

• Personalization

• Use of Data

You’ll come to find that the benefits always outweigh the effort a B2B business spends on this process.

By studying B2C brand storytelling (like the One Ran Man story from earlier), you can apply that same mentality and strategy into your B2B business to reap the same benefits.

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Ecom, Locom, or Informational: Google Tracks Locally and so Should You

 The majority of surveyed consumers say that about half of their searches have a local intent, while the other half of queries can be satisfied with remote solutions. On either side of the chess board are businesses hoping Google will surface them fairly for appropriate keywords. 

SEOs and marketers hear both sides of what can sometimes sound like a battle, with clients of multiple models rarely satisfied with the SERPs.  

Meanwhile, the last two years have so blurred the lines of intent and fulfillment that it can start to feel rather vague at the agency level where a client falls within all of these possible identity categories: 

• Local and independent/small

• Local and part of a chain

• Brick-and-mortar with in-store transactions only

• Brick-and-mortar with digital shopping/delivery

• SAB with or without online transactions

• Solely virtual and independent/small

• Solely virtual national brand

• National brand that was virtual but is now showrooming or opening physical stores

• B2B or B2C

• Informational with unique income streams not from traditional sales

Defining the client’s model properly should be the first step in any campaign. What and where the business is has long defined a major portion of its opportunities for visibility in Google results. But the SEO game is changing. Whether a particular client is best served by focusing more on the guidelines for representing your business on Google or the QRG, SEOs need to be able to effectively track local SERPs, because they are either the main goal or the main competitor, and without a doubt, because Google is so local-aware. 

Local SERP tracking has historically been seen as challenging for any business type, but today, we’ll take a look at the lay of the competitive landscape and offer some helpful solutions.

Rooks: businesses for which physical locations are the stronghold

Whether a brand is little-known or a household name, if physical locations are its castle, then it will have become accustomed to eyeing virtual competitors warily.  

Local businesses are understandably frustrated when page one organic SERPs are gobbled up by virtual competitors, regardless of what is shown above them in the local packs:

 And SMBs are not pleased by national brands being given the spotlight in features like this one documented by Mike Blumenthal, in which Google is weirdly populating the People Also Search segment with big brand chains that don’t even have locations in his town:

 Meanwhile, Google’s increasingly powerful shopping environment largely defaults to massive and frequently virtual sellers unless the searcher filters results down with the “available nearby” or “smaller stores” option:  

Knights: business without physical locations that ship everywhere 

Fully virtual brands that don’t have a public physical home base but can gallop deliveries to customers everywhere have two main sources of concern. The first is the mere existence of local packs, which eat up so much mobile and desktop screen space that formerly belonged to organic results only: 

The second is the sheer volume of searches for which Google shows local packs and localized organic results. We’re fortunate to have some original data today from Moz’s own Dr. Peter J. Meyers. Pete ran 10,000 keywords through MozCast, half of which were localized to specific cities and half of which weren’t, and found that about one-third returned local pack results:

 

When a search is explicitly local, because the searcher has included a city name or a similar refinement in their language, we call this a “geo-modified” query, and it’s hard to complain when Google responds with nearby results. But Google almost always knows where a device is located, and virtual business owners find it hard that these “geo-located” searches frequently yield localized results as well, even though the searcher hasn’t specified a town, zip code, or similar modification. Google is quite convinced of the implicit local intent of countless keyword phrases. 

Clients running remote-only companies can find it hard to compete when Google places such emphasis on searcher locality and the localization of results. In order to vye for visibility, these entities have to be equipped to track local SERPs. 

Bishops: businesses based on information with complex revenue streams

The owners of directories, affiliate sites, enterprises that make their money from Google Adsense and other intricately woven indirect revenue streams are used to having to look at one another across a board cluttered with pieces owned by competitive virtual and physical commercial brands. They may have so much wisdom and learning to share, but it can be very hard to be seen.

Often, these informational entities will have invested even more in the quality of their content than their more sales-y competitors. Look at a site like TripAdvisor, which has devoted itself to both UGC and original travel writing in an effort to be of use, but which is also running Adsense in quest of profits:

When an informational entity isn’t set up to track local SERPs, they will miss out on fully comprehending both user intent and neglected gaps they could potentially fill within the localized results.

Queens: emergent hybrids that can rule the board

“What we’re seeing is that the more brick-and-mortar businesses that we’re creating, the more the digital is happening in those particular ZIP codes,” says Macy’s CEO, Jeff Gennette.

By the dawn of 2020, we’d had nearly two decades of rooks, knights and bishops -- each rigidly limited by the maneuvers available to their business model -- battling one another for maximum control of the Google board. But:

• A few weeks later, with lockdowns in place around the globe, the Internet became a source of vital information in our homes in an unprecedented way, both for public health data and as a connector to sourcing basic daily needs and remote interaction with our teams, customers, friends, and family. 

• Six months later, 92% of American SMBs had reinvented themselves to adapt to the pandemic, implementing digital shopping, delivery and curbside fulfillment, and even making local products when national brands disappeared. 

• Nine months in, over a third of consumers were buying new brands, anxious to access goods from anywhere they could, whether on or offline.

• Two years in, it’s being predicted that retailers will open more stores than they close for the first time since 2017.

• Going forward, stores are finally being seen as essential to virtual and national brands which want to fulfill maximum orders from distribution hubs instead of remote warehouses while also ensuring shoppers can conveniently pick up and return digital purchases.

What is happening now is critical for every SEO and marketer to understand:

1. The pieces on the board can now move in every direction. Whether a brand used to be solely physical, virtual, or informational, being all three is likely going to be the strongest strategy going forward for most companies. This means serious entities will invest in real-world locations, digital conveniences, and excellent, optimized content that generates income.

2. Nevertheless, Google remains deeply tied to the physical location of the searcher. Because of this, whether you stick to your swim lane in the coming decade or reinvent the brands you market as powerful hybrids, you will always have to think locally, because Google does.

Ready to start strategizing for this new contest of possibilities? Download this free guide to tracking local SERPs so that you can read the board and beginning making data-based moves in new directions: 

This guide will coach you in:

• Local search essentials
• How mobile and local interact (and how to handle it)
• The difference between geo-location and geo-modification
• Searcher intent and all its nuances
• Seven local SERP tracking strategies that you can tailor to your specific industry

In this developing environment, it’s exciting to think that a family-owned country store can have digital sales and lucrative content, national brands can localize themselves and prove their commitment to localism by contributing to community tax bases, and informational enterprises can consider how developing a local footprint and developing product lines that fill gaps in the supply chain uncovered by their deep study of a market.

Creativity is more welcome and more essential than ever before, and your study of Google’s obvious local leanings could stand the brands you market in good stead for many years to come.

Image credits: Wayne S. Grazio, Tom Page, Joshua Alan Eckert. Will C. Fry, and Bob Whitehead

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