Miriam's 7 Local SEO Predictions for 2019
-
Greetings to our great Moz Community!
It's been a fascinating year in Local Search, and I thought it would be good to jot down a few of my personal predictions for the year ahead. I'd love you to add yours, as well, so that we can all think together about the local businesses we'll be marketing in the new year. Here we go:
1) Major player weaknesses could lead to a changing of the local guard
Whether it's Facebook's ethics scandals or Yelp's downward stock trends, loss of public confidence could mean a shift in a local search platform hierarchy that's been pretty well established for some years. These brands' ongoing challenges could spell out opportunity for newcomer brands, or could simply drive more people to Google. Google has had its own problems this year, but nevertheless...
2) Google will continue to dominate and monetize local search
For so many users, Google IS the Internet, and that's an advantage no competitor has been able to overcome. In 2019, I expect to see further monetization of local SERPs, including LSA, in-pack local ads, booking buttons, and other forms of lead gen. Local search marketing will become more spendy. For more on creating strategy in this environment, read: Why Local Businesses will Need Websites More Than Ever in 2019. And, for retailers...
3) Real-time Online Local Inventory will become a real "thing"
I'll have an article coming out on this in early 2019 on the Moz blog (Update: Now Published: https://moz.com/blog/taking-local-inventory-online), but in a nutshell, we're on course to cross a new threshold in search. You'll finally be able to search for local inventory and get accurate information about who near you stocks what in their stores. Google's See What's In Store feature will be part of this, but so will emerging third party technology. User behavior will change as a result of this, and just like we've all integrated online mapping/local search into our daily lives, we'll soon be familiar with using search to find local inventory. This is really great news for retailers of all sizes! Meanwhile...
4) The line between brands and people will blur further
2018 has been a fascinating study in what appears to be a rising consumer expectation that brands align with customers at a philosophical level. We saw Nike's stock go to a record high due to their deft read of the nation and company alignment with Colin Kaepernick, while other retailers lost millions over culturally-insensitive content. Big rewards and boycotts represent the two extreme ends of this spectrum in which your CEO isn't really a private person anymore, but rather, a member of the larger society with a voice that will be assessed for its empathy to causes, groups and events. This puts brand employees in unfamiliar territory, having some of their fate rise or fall based on the public stances of company leadership, and it puts a new premium on skillful awareness of societal trends. Because of this...
5) Smart local brands will speed up focus on sustainability
Political pundits are predicting that the 2020 US election may be referendum on Climate Change. This means that US customers will be inundated with messaging and news surrounding this over the next two years. We're already seeing big brands like Patagonia respond by saying that they're "in the business of saving the planet" and Salesforce co-CEO billionaire Mark Benioff promising that his company will be running on 100% renewable energy by 2022. I predict that a growing body of consumers will increasingly expect and reward sustainable brand practices. 2019 will be a very good year for the local businesses you market to do a green audit of their business model, implement change and then promote their Climate-friendly practices. Think big on this, because...
6) Reputation will be key
Everything a local business can do to please and retain customers should sit at the core of the business model. Whatever it is that gets your customers to leave positive reviews, return for repeat business, recommend you via WOM to their friends and family, and view you as a vital component of local commerce will have a serious impact on your reputation, rankings and revenue. Google recently stated that 27% of local searches have an intent of reading reviews about a specific business and our recent State of Local Industry Report here at Moz found that 91% of respondents agree that reviews impact rankings. Reputation, and the awareness of its role, will be very big in 2019.
7) Link building will become more deeply integrated into Local SEO
Local Search Ranking Factors 2018 cited links as the 6th most influential local pack factor. This means that smart local SEOs will double down on their organic skills and start pursuing relevant links for their clients with professional, organized strategies and good tools. Any Local SEM package that leaves out link building will be incomplete.
All in all, I predict we're in for an exciting, challenging year in which clear vision and a dedication to service will be the keys to local business success.
**Now it's your turn! Where do you see us going in 2019 in the local search industry? Please, share your own predictions! **
-
Nowadays, it's too easy to do Local SEO for your website. I'm working on a project of artificial grass Malaysia that is a local-based project and I have seen many good result in Google.
-
I'm also looking for the local SEO solution for my Two Way Radio website that working on the device repairing.
-
Definitely a good addition, Alex!
-
I think one thing missing from your list is the impact of voice search. I think voice search will continue to grow everywhere, including in the local search area.
-
Thanks so much, Taylor! Do you have any predictions of your own to add?
-
This is seriously a great list.
And very well-written to boot!
-
Andrew, thank you for sharing such thoughtful observations, especially in explaining what you've seen work best over the past year. Useful!
-
These are not much of a prediction as they're already happening but.....
I think clicks / pogo sticking is going to continue to influence rankings heavily. We may even one day see internal site navigation influencing this process (possibly through analytics etc - maybe not if GDPR does not allow)
I think we will see more of the idea of less content, in terms of less keyword cannibalisation and one highly targeted, high authority, highly ranking piece of content. _This could be good or bad. I like the idea of less poor content but I'm not sure about single "authorities" on a subject. _
As snippets evolve, schema will become ever more crucial. I like snippets as they are a very immediate form of content delivery however they also have the ability to block people out so again this is a double-edged sword.
The most successes I have had this year has been through combatting index bloat, implementing pagination were possible, getting the index lean, getting the right pages indexed, reconnecting backlinks and improving internal linking. _All these consistently deliver. Pretty basic stuff but it works and should be maintained. _
-
Glad you found this interesting, Andrew! Thanks for stopping by. Do you have any predictions of your own to share?
-
Thanks for reading, Joe! Agree with you that Internet users are demonstrating an exceedingly high level of tolerance for Big Tech misbehavior. What's in front of us is a whole new year to see whether we see fundamental change at these brands or more and worse disasters that could bring us to a tipping point. I'm hoping for the former, but worried we may see the latter.
-
Thanks Miriam this is an interesting read.
"Google will continue to dominate and monetize local search" - This is worrying as this directly affects my sector. More of the walled garden.
-
Great read Miriam, It'll be interesting to see how the social media landscape will actually change, people may leave Facebook, but _may _come back once the noise dies down; there is no real competition to them. Just like Bing & Google!
-
Thank you, John! Any predictions of your own to share?
-
This is great stuff! Thank you for sharing!!
-
Thank you for sharing your prediction, Donna! Agree with you that reputation management and link building (including linked unstructured citation building) will be recognized as competitive difference makers. I believe structured citations will remain table stakes in 2019 (something you have to have to get in the game).
As for major players, yes, I think there's a possibility we may see a change. I won't go so far as to name a particular brand, but there are several majors who appear to keep making the same mistakes to their own detriment as far as public sentiment is concerned. Unless we see learning and change from these mistakes, they could be in trouble. We'll see!
So glad you added your thoughts. Hope we'll see more community members join in. Wishing you a wonderful new year, Donna!
-
Related to your #7, I think citations will continue to diminish in value to the point where unrelated and unauthoritative sources will no longer "move the needle" or be worth acquiring. Local SEO companies are going to shift gears and put more emphasis on providing education and services around reputation management and link-earning. I realize some of that is happening already. I just think we're going to see more of it.
You think there might be a big change in local players this year? That's interesting. Are you thinking of any one company in particular?
-
Pahahahaha! Thank you, Michael. That made my morning.
-
I think most of the community is currently Christmas shopping online...and making decisions based on fake reviews :-p.
-
Ah! That's a good one, Michael, but I get why it's more of your wish than a firm prediction. David Mihm hopefully predicted Google would focus in on review spam in 2018 and was sorry to have to report it did not happen. Maybe 2019 will be the year - here's hoping!
Thanks for reading and for adding your smart take. I hope our community will keep this thread rolling with more good guesses!
-
Great predictions, Miriam!
I'll add one more...maybe it's more of a wish than a prediction...that Google will make some sort of serious strides towards cracking down on fake reviews (both positive and negative). Hopefully not as over-the-top as Yelp's approach (which throws a lot of babies out with the bathwater!) though.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How Do You Think My Local SEO Multi-location Geotargeting Strategy Will Work?
I have a question. I just got a full-time job at Zavza Seal, an upstanding insulation contractor targeting neighborhoods of Suffolk and Nassau counties in New York. I was hired as an SEO content specialist. (Thanks Rand! You're one of my mentors~!) So, they handed me a spreadsheet of pages for city-specific terms, and they had a system in place for local rankings. But I was taught to do service-specific city pages a certain way. If the search term is for people looking for a service in that town, that's what you give them. However, I was told to proofread them, and as an SEO specialist, I couldn't keep my hands off of them. The pages were skimpy. (Example: h2, paragraph, bullets, short paragraph summary, short paragraph about the city.) What threw me off is that the content, while it was service specific, it was blog topics localized. Those are great (when long enough and optimized to compete in SERPs) but I've never seen them done on service pages. (Example: Why is Mold Remediation Necessary in Baldwin?. Now, this went in two directions in my mind. (and I wanted to do the best for the company, because I'm a wicked brat for teams, AND I get commissions on leads, so that was motivation, too.) 🐷 Anyway, 1. This could be a new approach and worthy of an SEO study on my startup site, where I take on part time clients after work, because I've never seen it done before and it could, if optimized for the target service and city rank high in SERPs AND build thought leadership and authority as a local expert. (Whereas city service pages in standard format would just promote your service. ..) What do you guys think? I just put the topic up for discussion for my team, asked them about it in detail and asked if they wanted to A'/B test a few to see what get's better traction organically. Mr. Fishkin was one of my mentors. I really wish I just had his number for this one LOL.
Local SEO | | ThisTimeWereOn0 -
Trying to rank homepage nationally and internal pages locally?
We are a finance brokerage in Australia and we operate in a specialist niche and in regional areas with low competition but we have identified KW's that are very profitable to us but seem to need different approach re strategy. We specialise in Agribusiness lending. We have been pretty scrappy in the past with our SEO as it has always been done by me, and as a startup, as everyone knows, the jack of all trades can help and hinder! To date, we have done a lot of Adwords (and KW research) so I have a fair idea of what keywords I am after. Some KW are low competition and extremely profitable to us. But there is a difference between them on who our competitor is and how difficult it would be to rank and which strategy to use. For example Agribusiness, used by all major banks, now they provide agribusiness, but only via their own products, as we are brokers we tend to receive a lot of new leads as we are brokers and we can compare all products and as agribusiness can be quite complex this is a major point of difference for us. So my strategy to rank for this KW would include a national approach as we provide advice in this space on a national scale, which has worked well via AdWords leads. But would like to move away from my sole reliance on AdWords. Then we move onto KW that we have also had some success on a national scale via Adwords but the metrics suggest is better from a local perspective (local regional town), i.e hobby farm loan, rural finance, even home loans (when there is no other local competitor in small town). As we have brokers in other regional towns this also opens up an opportunity to have either internal pages with lots of local signals (i.e NAP, Authority outbound links, local KW, social signals from local FB groups etc). But can a internal page compete against a competitors HP, for example I was going to set up mysite/Toowoomba.com.au internal page with info re that broker and lots of local points, or am I best to create another site, i.e brandname-Toowoomba.com.au (still linking from my contact us page for Toowoomba) and focus solely on local for this site (including internal pages to rank locally, i.e Toowoomba Home loans)? the extra benefit is I then create another asset if I was to sell the region as a franchise (another discussion) So, my question is, can I mix my strategies without any issues, or should I create separate sites?
Local SEO | | AgLend0 -
Best approach for international multi country SEO
Hi all We're working with a client that is in the travel industry and they already have a relatively new site (setup in September 2014) which is on a .com domain We've completed a digital strategy for them and have identified 12 key markets within Europe, North America, South America and the Asia Pacific region. We have suggested an approach of setting up individual local websites for these countries and for countries in the same region sharing a common language (like USA & Canada) we're thinking to use a subdomain on the existing .com (eg. amaricas.clientdomain.com) Does this sound like a solid approach? thanks
Local SEO | | seobackbone0 -
Is using emoji's in meta descriptions a good or bad idea ? - I haven't seen it used much hence my query
Hello Mozzers, We need to redo some of our meta descriptions as our CTR's are not to good. I've noticed one of my competitors using emoji's which I personally think looks pretty good. They are using the Phone icon and ticks - as calls to action etc However, I can't see hardly anyone else using them on general serps ...so I am wondering , is it a bad idea ? thanks Pete
Local SEO | | PeteC120 -
National and Local rankings differences
Hi Guys,
Local SEO | | nikaus
I am in Australia and have a client I am working with that ranks quite well for their main keywords.
The business is based in Sydney but delivers Australia wide. The issue is - their main keyword ranks no.1 nationally.
If I set google to any of the main cities and type
Outdoor Mirrors Perth
Outdoor Mirrors Melbourne
Outdoor Mirrors Sydney
My client comes up no.1 But if I leave the city off the end of the keyword and I'm anywhere but Sydney I do not rank well for Outdoor Mirrors. The address of the business is in Sydney hence the no.1 there, but we said in Places that we deliver australia wide. Does anybody know why we don't rank well without the city added to the keyword and a way to remedy this? Thanks Nik0 -
SOS: NEED 70 Initial Users in 7 Days
Hi guys, I'm co-founding a company called Comp'd and we're currently in the final leg of an accelerator program right now. Our demo day is one week from today and we got our product out later than we would have liked. Long story short we need to get 70 new/initial users within the next 7 days or we're screwed. I'm asking anyone and everyone I possibly can for help. If you have any advice on specific things that I can be doing to make this goal happen, please share, I'll take any and every idea I can get. Some background on the product: -The product is a $25/mo subscription for unlimited concert tickets. We're also offering users their first month for $10 for easier onboarding. Also, we have the economics of this worked out, so those aren't a concern from a business perspective. -website at compdapp.com if you want to take a look. -Currently only available in Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska (though neither is a traditional "big" city like New York or Chicago, they're still cities with populations of 250,000-450,000 with thriving/busy downtown districts). -We've got about $7,000 in capital right now and are willing to spend what we need to. If you have any other questions just let me know, otherwise I'd really appreciate your ideas on how I should be spending my time to get users. This is an emergency situation and I'm willing to do whatever I have to to make this happen. Thanks guys! P.S. I know everyone's primary focus here is obviously online marketing, but we're all still marketers here, and if you have offline marketing ideas I'm more than open to hearing those as well, particularly if they can offer a quick or instant turnaround.
Local SEO | | Dillon_Whittier0 -
Blocking non-U.S. traffic to fight referral spam?
I've been thinking about ways to deal with referral spam in Google Analytics. From what I can tell, most if not all of this is coming from outside the U.S. I'd love any insight into the following questions related to this issue: For U.S. based local businesses, I'm wondering if we should just block all traffic from outside of the U.S. -would there be negative SEO factors if we use this approach? Would it be better to just create GA segments to filter out this traffic, rather than actually blocking it? Has anyone found success in using filters or segments in this way? Is anyone seeing referral spam from within the U.S.? Edit: I just came across this suggestion, that setting 2 filters (for invalid hostname and screen resolution) can solve most of the issue. Any insight on this alternative vs. my ideas above?? https://www.distilled.net/resources/quick-fix-for-referral-spam-in-google-analytics/
Local SEO | | irapasternack1 -
Local SEO?
Hello everyone, I've just been through the Moz Local learning area, which is pretty informative. However, a lot of it seems like good practice for general online marketing (mobile friendly websites, goals per page...). I'm new to all this - am I missing the point? William
Local SEO | | Seabrook0