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
-
National services provider and localized SEO (no physical stores)
Doing work for a telecom provider who operates in over 25 states. They are not trying to drive traffic to their brick-and-mortar stores. They want their marketing website to show products/services/pricing dynamically when a user enters their zip code. Previously, we could not show this until the shopper was already in the purchase flow that began with their serviceable address. They want to move these location-based details more forward in the shopping experience. They would likely have a "default" zip and set of services/pricing displaying until a user changes their location. My question is how does Google treat local SEO on a site where all location-targeted content is dynamic? Will the website suffer in localized search, when a shopper, say, in Colorado, wants to search for Internet providers? Is it better to have distinct landing pages for each territory with services/pricing?
Local SEO | | sprydigital0 -
Effective Real Estate SEO Strategies
I am looking to increase organic traffic to our Real Estate website, and am looking for any suggestions and or feedback as to strategies to implement in this area or even the must-have SEO pages every real-estate business should build. Interested in attracting sellers & buyers, but obviously would love more to attract sellers... The issue with that being you have to outrank the massive sites like Zillow and Realtor. Some ideas I have so far. Building out Neighbourhood pages to rank for people searching for 'Neighbourhood name' Any feedback on this one greatly appreciate. What's {city name} like? {Neighbourhood name} houses for sale What are good areas of {city name} Is {city name} a good place to live? What's {city name} like? What __ are in {city name} restaraunts hospitals beaches colleges How is {city names} weather Thanks guys!
Local SEO | | Dakota_G1 -
How to go about SEO when the content on all the pages is in a regional language (with its own script which is non-roman) but majority of searches are in the same language but roman script?
For example, the entire content is in an Indian language called Gujarati and the script is also Gujarati. However, when I did a keyword research, I found that majority of the searches are in Gujarati langugage by roman script e.g. "gujarati sahitya" meaning Gujarati literature. Any ideas would be appreciated.
Local SEO | | Tumul0 -
Local store (B2B) that produces high quality prints for photographers: are we adopting the right strategy?
Hi, I'd like to know your opinion on the following case and gather new ideas on how to optimise our strategy: Starting situation: local store (B2B) in a bigger city in Europe that produces high quality prints mainly for photographers on paper (or other materials like canvas, aluminium, etc. ). They really take care of your images (e.g. Color Management) and produce printouts that look how they really should look like. Target audience: photographers (pros), museum, exhibitions and hotel people that would like to produce high quality prints of their images. Almost never the ambitioned private photographers (until now). **Actual situation: **its really a local business (people around 30 km). competition: big online stores where you can upload your pictures and get your prints sent home (quality: not bad, but not exceptional, no special requests; more for private customers) Already done (with relatively little results): _AdWords: _very "tight" keyword combinations, not broad at all, targeting area around business location. results: small traffic, small costs: not a lot of conversions. _SEO: _for organic search we now achieve very good positions for tight" keyword combinations, not broad ones. results: little traffic: not a lot of conversions LinkedIn-Ads targeting the above target group: results: little traffic: not a lot of conversions Facebook Remarketing (targeting his newsletter mail-list: results: little traffic: not a lot of conversions Optimized the landingpage (in my opinion far more to the point than before) PROBLEM: Basically we now get to the right people but traffic is really (too) small. At least we don't waste money at all but we don't gain a lot either... If we broaden the "keywords" the private customers will come in and waste our advertising money. Do you ever had a similar situation? What did you do? Any suggestions? Other target groups? Alternative channels? Thanks for your input. Cheers, Cesare
Local SEO | | Cesare.Marchetti0 -
If I kill off the franchisee websites and create a corp SEO monster...will my Company's SEO suffer? Pros and Cons?
Our 25 franchisees sell one product of our 7 within the Corporate porfolio. We getting ready to release a brand new corp website employing all the best possible SEO practices. Since the franchisee's barely maintain their 3-page website...we are thinking of killing them off. We will create some market pages on the Corp side and continue to use HubSpot to pass along leads to the individual franchisees. Corporate has robust Content Marketing strategy in place. Any suggestions? Cases studies?
Local SEO | | Joseph.Lusso0 -
Discussion: Is Your Local Business Losing Customers To Digital Providers For Want Of Communication?
This week, I came across an article citing a fascinating statistic from The Harris Poll which surveyed consumers and found that the #1 reason they shop digitally for groceries is when they can’t purchase an item from their routine shopping sources. In other words, if the supermarket they shop at doesn’t carry Seventh Generation Laundry Soap (or some other product), then they’ll turn to a digital provider for fulfillment. This survey focused specifically on grocery items, but what it sparked in my brain was the fact that ANY local store that doesn’t have in place an active campaign to discover unmet consumer desires is likely going to see an increasing loss of sales as shoppers turn to online competitors. I’m going to jot down a few ideas for how better communication could lessen these types of losses, and I would really love it if our community could add to the list of suggestions: Have in-store signage that states, “Don’t see a favorite product of yours? Ask us to carry it!" Have SMS/text messaging that requests this same info from mobile users. Train staff to ask a clear, direct question like, “Is there anything you wish we carried here?” and have a process for aggregating that data to make new inventory buys. Be sure the company website is also asking for this feedback and making it clear that the store will gladly order items not already in-stock. Use social outreach to gather ideas from customers about favorite products that are missing from your inventory. Those are just some ideas off the top of my head. Now, I’m a Local SEO, not a retailer, so some of you will be better equipped to answer this question than I: How would you gauge whether a product is actually popular enough to keep permanently in-stock, rather than just being a one-time thing you’d special order for a customer with unusual tastes? I do wonder about how that plays into this scenario, and how a retailer should invest in new products not knowing whether just 1 customer will buy them or they will be a major hit with lots of customers. One final thought on this: a pain point I’ve noticed in the online/offline equation is time. I’ve had a store offer to special order an item for me, but if it’s something I need right away, I’ll look for a different source locally, or, if there isn’t one, may as well just order it online myself. So this makes me think: If you have access to extra fast shipping (faster than the average consumer could get a product shipped to his home) this would be a point to emphasize. If you can get a product overnight or maybe in 2 days without the consumer having to spring for a big shipping charge, this could influence his decision Google says that 30% of consumers state they would buy from a local store, rather than online, if they knew a product was available. So, this would indicate to me that making it very clear you’ve got the products a customer wants is vital. I recently took a 50 mile trip to purchase a high quality picnic basket from a retailer, because I needed it quickly. I couldn’t wait the 3-5 business days the manufacturer said it would take if I ordered online. Point being, if a local retailer has geographic convenience and fast service on their side, they’ve got an advantage. Please, add your thoughts and tips for strategies that could protect local retailers from losing customers to digital competitors. I’m really looking forward to reading any comments!
Local SEO | | MiriamEllis4 -
SEO: Directory Listing Help with Two business locations in different states
Hello! I am in the process of building my second location, and will be moving to Nashville TN. My first location is located in ohio, and I am changing my primary location to nashville, but still want to keep my clients in Ohio... At least for the first year. As for directory building, what is the best option? 1.) Should I create two separate directory listings for each location and then direct www.domain.com to Nashville directory, and then www.domain.com/ohio-wedding-photographer/ to the Ohio listing in the directory? Or do you create one directory and mention I have offices in both Ohio and nashville? Is it bad to have two listings for each location if they have different addresses and phone numbers? Thank you!
Local SEO | | jean78780 -
Local SEO for B&B - Attracting International Customer
Hi Guys, Hope the MOZ expert community will be able to help me 🙂 What would be the best way to manage the SEO for a Bed and Breakfast ? As the B&B is in a touristic place in France attracting lots of German, American and British tourists, the website will be in French, translated in English and German. It will be set up under a .fr extension and using wordpress multisite for each languages, so it will look like this: French: www.mydomain.fr English: en.mydomain.fr German: de.mydomain.fr They'll roughly have the same content for the business part, but they'll have different articles on their respective blogs. Now my questions are: If I sign up to Google my business (http://www.google.com/business/) Would I be able to translate all my business descriptions, separate the reviews per language, use google+ for different language? If not, then should I sign up for the French version of "google my business" and then open 2 separate G+ pages for the English and German version ? Can I open 3 different "google my business" account for each language but with the same google account, same telephone number and same business address ? Should I actually "translate" my business name and create 3 separate website so I can open a "Google my business" for each, but then they'll still have the same address and phone number ? Basically, I want to find the best solution for people around the world to see the content in their own language (reviews, blog post...) and also show up on map listings for google.com /.co.uk / .fr / .de etc... Other social media: Facebook: should I have one page and target the English language for each post in English, etc... Or should I have 3 facebook page in each language ? Should I have 3 pinterest accounts, or should I create 3 boards for each language so I can describe each pictures in proper language Miscellaneous Don't hesitate to give me any other important tips that I should think about before launching ! After being an employee for many years, I want to rock my own business 🙂 Cheers
Local SEO | | LELOnic0