You know your competitors, and you’re not going to let some damned SEO tool tell you different!
Hey, I’ll give you the first part, but there are a lot of reasons that the results from a tool like True Competitor might not match your expectations, and that could be a good thing.
I’m going to dig into five of those reasons:
You’re living in the past
You’ve hit a brick wall
You can’t see the trees
You’re stuck in one tree
We’re just plain wrong
First, the toughest one to hear — the world is changing, and you’re not changing with it.
1. You’re living in the past
Look, I know Big Wally at Big Wally’s Widget World said your Grandma’s meatloaf was “just okay, I guess” at the church potluck in ‘87, but you need to move on. Even if you’re not quite-so-literally stuck in the past, you may be operating on an outdated sense of who your competitors are. Especially online, the competitive landscape can change quickly, and it’s worth re-evaluating from time to time.
2. You’ve hit a brick wall
Quite literally — you’ve run headlong into your own brick-and-mortar wall. As a business with physical locations, your competitors with physical locations are absolutely important, but from a search perspective, they may not represent who you’re actually competing with online.
Take, for example, McDonald’s — you might expect the competition to include Wendy’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, and other fast food chains with physical restaurants. Meanwhile, here are the second through fourth results from True Competitor:
While DoorDash, Grubhub, and Uber Eats don’t have traditional, physical locations, these are the places where McDonald’s online customers go to order, and they represent a significant amount of organic SERP real estate. From an SEO standpoint, this is reality.
3. You can’t see the trees
You can see the whole forest from where you’re standing, and that’s great, but are you missing the diversity and distinctiveness of the trees?
This is easier to show than tell. Let’s take a look at big box retailer, Target. True Competitor returns the following top three:
No big surprises here, and no one should be shocked that this list includes not only brick-and-mortar competitors, but online retail juggernauts like Amazon. Let’s take a deeper look, though (the following are competitors #8, #7, and #22 in our current data):
Target isn’t just up against the whole-forest, big box retailers — they also have to contend with niche competition. Their competitors in the video game space include not only brick-and-mortar retailers like GameStop, but competitor-partners like Sony and Nintendo (which both sell hardware and software directly online).
Not every grove of trees is going to have the same needs and growing conditions. Your competitive landscape could have dozens of ecosystems, and each of them requires unique research and likely a unique strategy.
4. You’re stuck in one tree
On the other hand, you could be stuck in just one tree. Let’s take Ford Motor Company as an example. Savvy marketers at Ford know they’re not just up against legacy automakers like Chevrolet and Toyota, but up-and-coming competitors like Tesla and Rivian.
That niche is incredibly important, but let’s take a look at what the SERPs are telling us:
These are Ford’s #1, #2, and #5 competitors, and they aren’t automakers — they’re automotive content producers. Does this mean that Chevy and Tesla aren’t Ford’s competitors? Of course not. It means that those automakers are infrequently appearing in SERPs alongside Ford. Ford is competing with mentions of their own products (makes and models) in leading online publications.
5. We’re just plain wrong
Hey, it happens — I’m not here to claim that we’re perfect. SERP-based competitive analysis has a couple of limitations. First, as discussed, SERP analysis doesn’t always reflect the brick-and-mortar world. From an SEO perspective, that’s fine (if they’re not ranking, we’re not competing with them for search share), but there are other essential pieces to the puzzle.
Second, our SERP-based analysis is based on national results and does not reflect regional or hyperlocal competition. Some regional businesses do have national competitors, and that’s worth knowing, but localized perspectives are important as well.
Maybe it’s a good thing…
What if a tool like True Competitor only returned information that you already knew? I guess you could pat yourself on the back and move on with life, but what did you learn? To me, the entire point of SERP-based competitive analysis is to challenge your expectations and your point of view. If the results don’t match what you expect, that mismatch represents opportunity.
More likely than not, it doesn’t mean you’re wrong (unless you’ve let vanity and personal history get the best of you) — it means that you’re missing a perspective or a niche that could be important. If you can see that missing perspective as money left on the table, then you’ve got a good chance to pick it up and walk away with a bit more in your pocket.
The Competitive Analysis Suite is now available to all Moz Pro customers, and we’d love to hear your feedback via the ‘Make a Suggestion’ button in the app.
The most exciting thing about visual search is that it’s becoming a highly accessible way for users to interpret the real world, in real time, as they see it. Rather than being a passive observer, camera phones are now a primary resource for knowledge and understanding in daily life.
Users are searching with their own, unique photos to discover content. This includes interactions with products, brand experiences, stores, and employees, and means that SEO can and should be taken into consideration for a number of real world situations, including:
Sponsorship implementation
Brand merchandising
In-person brand experiences
Though SEOs have little control over which photos people take, we can optimize our brand presentation to ensure we are easily discoverable by visual search tools. By prioritizing the presence of high impact visual search elements and coordinating online SEO with offline branding, businesses of all sizes can see results.
What is visual search?
Sometimes referred to as search-what-you-see, in the context of SEO, visual search is the act of querying a search engine with a photo rather than with text. To surface results , search engines and digital platforms use AI and visual recognition technology to identify elements in the image and supply the user with relevant information.
Though Google’s visual search tools are getting a lot of attention at the moment, they aren’t the only tech team that’s working on visual search. Pinterest has been at the forefront of this space for many years, and today you can see visual search in action on:
In the last year, Google has spoken extensively about their visual search capabilities, hinging a number of their search improvements on Google Lens and adding more and more functionality all the time. As a result, year on year usage of Google Lens has increased by three fold, with an estimated8 billion Google Lens searches taking place each month.
Though there are many lessons to be learned from the wide range of visual search tools, which each have their own data sets, for the purpose of this article we will be looking at visual search on Google Lens and Search.
Are visual search and image search SEO the same?
No, visual search optimization is not exactly the same as image search optimization. Image search optimization forms part of the visual search optimization process, but they’re not interchangeable.
Image search SEO
With Image Search you should prioritize helping images to surface when users enter text based queries. To do this, your images should be using image SEO best practices like:
Modern file formats
Alt text
Alt tags
Relevant file names
Schema markup
All of this helps Google to return an image search result for a text based query, but one of the main challenges with this approach is that it requires the user to know which term to enter.
For instance, with the query dinosaur with horns, an image search will return a few different dinosaur topic filters and lots of different images. To find the best result, I would need to filter and refine the query significantly.
Visual search SEO
With visual search, the image is the query, meaning that I can take a photo of a toy dinosaur with horns, search with Google Lens, then Google refines the query based on what it can see from the image.
When you compare the two search results, the SERP for the visual search is a better match for the initial image query because there are visual cues within the image. So I am only seeing results for a dinosaur with horns, that is quadrupedal, and only has horns on the face, not the frill.
From a user perspective, this is great because I didn't have to type anything and I got a helpful result. And from Google's perspective, this is also more efficient because they can assess the photo and decide which element to filter for first in order to get to the best SERP.
The standard image optimizations form part of what Google considers in order to surface relevant results, but if you stop there, you don't get the full picture.
Which content elements are best interpreted in visual search
Visual search tools identify objects, text, and images, but certain elements are easier to identify than others. When users carry out a visual search, Google taps into multiple data sources to satisfy the query.
The knowledge graph,Vision AI, Google Maps, and other sources combine to surface search results, but in particular, Google's tools have a few priority elements. When these elements are present in a photo Google can sort, identify, and/or visually match similar content to return results:
Landmarks are identified visually but are also connected to their physical location on Google Maps, meaning that local businesses or business owners should use imagery to demonstrate their location.
Logos are interpreted in their entirety, rather than as single letters. So even without any text, Google can understand that that swoop means Nike. This data comes from the logos in knowledge panels, website structured data, Google Business Profile, Google Merchant, and other sources, so they should all align.
Knowledge Graph Entities are used to tag and categorize images and have a significant impact on what SERP is displayed for a visual search. Google recognizes around 5 billion KGE, so it is worth considering which ones are most relevant to your brand and ensuring that they are visually represented on your site.
Text is extracted from images via Optical Character Recognition, which has some limitations — not all languages are recognized, nor are backwards letters. So if your users regularly search photos of printed menus or other printed text, you should consider readability of the fonts (or handwriting on specials boards) you use.
Faces are interpreted for sentiment, but the quantity of faces also comes into account, meaning that businesses that serve large groups of people — like event venues or cultural institutions — would do well to include images that demonstrate this.
Visual Search Element
Corresponding Online Activity
Priority Verticals
Landmarks
Website Images
Google Maps
Google Business Profile
Tourism
Restaurants
Cultural Institutions
Local Businesses
Logo
Website Images
Website Structured Data
Google Merchant
Google Business Profile
Wikipedia
Knowledge Panel
All
Knowledge Graph Entities
Website Images
Image Structured Data
Google Business Profile
Ecommerce
Events
Cultural Institutions
Text
Website copy
Google Business Profile
All
Faces
Website images
Google Business Profile
Events
Tourism
Cultural Institutions
How to optimize real world spaces for visual search
Just as standard SEO should be focused on meeting and anticipating customer needs, visual search SEO requires awareness of how customers interact with products and services in real world spaces. This means SEOs should apply the same attention to UCG that one would use for keyword research. To that end, I would argue we should also think about consciously applying optimizations to the potential content of these images.
Optimize sponsorship with unobstructed placements
This might seem like a no brainer, but in busy sponsorship spaces it can sometimes be a challenge. As an example, let's take this photo from a visit to the Staples Center a few years ago.
Like any sports arena, this is filled to the brim with sponsorship endorsements on the court, the basket, and around the venue.
But when I run a visual search assessment for logos, the only one that can clearly be identified is the Kia logo in the jumbotron.
This isn’t because their logo is so distinct or unique, since there is another Kia logo under the basketball hoop, rather this is because the jumbotron placement is clean in terms of composition, with lots of negative space around the logo and fewer identifiable entities in the immediate vicinity.
Within the wider arena, many of the other sponsorship placements are being read as text, including Kia’s logo below the hoop. This has some value for these brands, but since text recognition doesn’t always complete the word, the results can be inconsistent.
So what does any of this have to do with SEO?
Well, Google Image Search now includes results that are using visual recognition, independent of text cues. Meaning that for a Google Image Search for the query kia staples center, two of the top five results do not have the word kia in the copy, alt text, or alt tags of the web pages they are sourced from. So, visual search is impacting rankings here, and with Google Imagesaccounting for roughly 20% of online searches, this can have a significant impact on search visibility.
What steps should you take to SEO your sponsorships?
Whether it’s major league or the local bowling league, in order to get the most benefit from visual search, if you are sponsoring something which is likely to be photographed extensively, you should:
Ensure that your real life sponsorship placement is in an unobscured location
Use the same logo in real life that is in your schema, GBP, and knowledge panel
Get a placement with good lighting and high contrast brand colors
Don’t rely on “light up” logos or flags that have inconsistent visibility on camera phones
You should also ensure that you're aligning your real life presence with your digital activity. Include images of the sponsorship display on your website so that you can surface for relevant queries. If you dedicate a blog to the sponsorship activity that includes relevant images, image search optimizations, and copy, you increase your chances of outranking other content and bringing those clicks to your site.
Optimizing merch & uniforms for search
When creating merchandising and uniforms, visual discoverability for search should be a priority because users can search photos of promotional merch and images with team members in a number of ways and for an indefinite period of time.
Add text and/or logos
For instance, from my own camera roll, I have a few photos that can be categorized via theGoogle Photo machine-learning-powered image search with the query nasa. Two of these photos include the word “NASA” and the others include the logo.
Oddly enough, though, the photo of my Women of NASA LEGO set does not surface for this query. It shows for lego but not for nasa. Looking closely at the item itself, I can see that neither the NASA logo nor the text have been included in the design of the set.
Adding relevant text and/or logos to this set would have optimized this merchandise for both brands.
Stick to relevant brand colors
And since Google’s visual search AI is also able to discern brand colors, you should also prioritize merchandise that is in keeping with your brand colors. T-shirts and merch that deviate from your core color scheme will be less likely to make Visual Matches when users search via Google Lens.
In the example above, event merchandise that was created outside of the core brand colors of red, black, and white were much less recognizable than stationary typical colors.
Focus on in-person brand experiences
Creating experiences with customers in store and at events can be a great way to build brand relationships. It’s possible to leverage these activities for search if you take an SEO-centric approach.
Reduce competition
Let’s consider this image from a promotional experience in Las Vegas for Lyft. As a user, I enjoyed this immensely, so much so that I took a photo.
Though the Viva Lyft Vegas event was created by the rideshare company, in terms of visual search, Pabst are genuinely taking the blue ribbon, as they are the main entity identified in this query. But why?
First, Pabst has claimed their knowledge panel while Lyft has not, meaning that Lyft is less recognizable as a visual entity because it is less defined as an entity.
Second, though it does not have a Google Maps entry, the Las Vegas PBR sign has had landmark-esque treatment since it was installed, with features in The Neon Museum and a UNLV Neon Survey. All of this to say that, in this context, Lyft is being upstaged.
So to create a more SEO-friendly promotional space, they could have laid the groundwork by claiming their knowledge panel and reduced visual search competitors from the viewable space to make sure all eyes were on them.
Encourage optimized use-generated content
Sticking to Las Vegas, here is a typical touristy photo of me with friends outside the Excalibur Hotel:
And when I say that it’s typical, that’s not conjecture. A quick visual search reveals many other social media posts and websites with similar images.
This is what I refer to as that picture. You know the kinds of high occurrence UGC photos: under the castle at the entrance to Disneyland or even thepink wall at Paul Smith’s on Melrose Ave. These are the photos that everyone takes.
Can you SEO these photos for visual search? Yes, I believe you can in two ways:
Encourage people to take photos in certain places that you know, or have designed to include relevant entities, text, logos, and/or landmarks in the viewline. You can do this by declaring an area a scenic viewpoint or creating a photo friendly, dare I say “Instagrammable”, area in your store or venue.
Ensure frequently photographed mobile brand representations (e.g. mascots and/or vehicles) are easily recognizable via visual search. Where applicable, you should also claim their knowledge panels.
Once you’ve taken these steps, create dedicated content on your website with images that can serve as a “visual match” to this high frequency UGC. Include relevant copy and image search optimizations to demonstrate authority and make the most of this visibility.
How does this change SEO?
The notion of bringing visual search considerations to real world spaces may seem initially daunting, but this is also an opportunity for businesses of all sizes to consolidate brand identities in an effective way. Those working in SEO should coordinate efforts with PR, branding, and sponsorship teams to capture visual search traffic for brand wins.
Relevance is talked about a lot in the context of link building. In truth, it’s something that no one can really provide a concrete (or even close to concrete) answer to, because none of us knows exactly how Google measures relevance. Even having access to things like the Google Natural Language Processing API and seeing categories such as this doesn’t mean that we know how Google measures relevance themselves, because there will be so much more under the hood that isn't visible to the public.
Even if we did know exactly how Google measures relevance, the extent to which they reward or penalize what they find as they crawl the web is also up for debate — like any ranking signal. We know that they use page speed, but they are also free to turn the dial on this up and down however they want.
This, in part, is why SEO is so fascinating. We’re optimizing for something that we can’t completely see and testing and refining based on the results we get. We can speculate on what Google may do or what we observe them doing, then a peer may see the exact opposite, and both may be right.
When it comes to link building and, specifically, the part that relevance plays, the potential answers are a lot more complex than we think. This is because relevance isn’t binary. We can’t just say that a link is relevant or not. We can’t say that content is relevant or not. The answers are far more nuanced than this, and we need to split things out a lot more to even begin to comprehend how Google may look at things.
With that in mind, let’s start by splitting out link relevance and content relevance.
Link relevance
When we talk about link relevance, we’re referring to the topic of the page and domain where the link is placed. When building links, we often look for target websites to outreach to and generally, it’s a good idea to find “relevant” links, but “relevant” is actually quite tricky to define. Here are some examples why.
Domain relevance
If you get a link from Moz.com, then we’d say that the topics are things like SEO, digital marketing, content marketing, etc. These are a few of the broad topics that we’d classify Moz into. Whilst digital marketing in itself is a big topic, it’s not that complex or tricky to define the Moz domain and therefore, understand what is and isn’t relevant to it.
Page relevance
Things can get more complicated than this if you think about websites such as The New York Times which has dozens of categories and hundreds of subcategories. Broadly, they would be classified as a news website, but they have categories for pretty much every topic that you can think of.
Anchor text
Additionally, we can add other elements to link relevance such as anchor text. What if you get super relevant anchor text but the page where the link is placed is about a completely different topic that isn’t relevant? Does this make the link more or less relevant?
In many cases, you may not even control the anchor text that is being used which means that it can be completely random. We know that Google use anchor text for understanding a link, but to what extent do they use it?
And this is just touching the surface of what link relevance can include.
Content relevance
We then have content relevance which is more about the page on your website that you get links to. It could be an existing page or it could be a brand new page that you’ve created to help with link building.
The attributes of content that sits on your website are far more under your control, so if you create something that is designed to get links and starts to go off topic a little, it’s perfectly reasonable to expect Google to take a harsher view on this in holding you accountable.
Things get hard when you remember that as SEOs, we often have link targets that we want to meet in order to catch up, overtake, or stay ahead of our competition. We want to get as many quality links as possible in order to increase the amount of traffic that we get from organic search.
To get more links, you can go broader with the topics and themes that you produce content about. This naturally opens up more potential link targets which in turn, increases the chances of you getting more links.
What all of this comes down to is striking the balance between producing a piece of content that is relevant to your brand, whilst getting as many links as possible. It can look something like this:
As you can see, many agencies (and in-house teams!) sit toward the right and are prepared to go wider with topics and themes because it can lead to more links. Irrelevance is driven by the pressure to build large volumes of links, and our industry does a great job of showcasing link building campaigns that have gotten hundreds of links, so we believe that this is what all of us should be aiming for.
However, Google wants us more focused on relevant themes because ultimately, they want us to deserve any links that we get.
My take: link relevance matters a lot less than content relevance
Having talked about each one, my take is that content relevance matters a lot less than link relevance to Google and therefore, to your ability to rank in organic search. Here are a few reasons why.
Anyone can link to you
Literally anyone on the web can link to your website, it’s not something that you can actually control. This is party why link spam is so hard to deal with and why the disavow tool was invented.
Even putting spam to one side, anyone can link to you for any reason they want.
For example, I can link from right here on the Moz blog to one of my favorite content pieces of all time. Neither website is related to each other in terms of the business they do and this is a blog post about link building that links to content about movies. But no one would see this as spammy.
What if your personal blog about SEO gets a link from NASA? I’m sure you wouldn’t be complaining about it!
The point being, it seems a stretch to think that Google would have a problem with links like these and therefore, shouldn’t be anything to worry about.
But, do they have value? Does the link above from Moz to a piece of content about movies hold as much value as a link from say, IMDB? This leads us onto my next point and why I think link relevance matters less than content relevance.
Authority and trust probably overrides link relevance
I do believe that Google cares a lot about how much they can trust a certain website and the links from that website. I’d venture a strong guess that Moz is a trusted domain and that it has the ability to pass value to the websites that it links to. We know that they have the ability to effectively “turn off” the ability for a website to pass PageRank to another and that they now have the ability to interpret the use of the nofollow tag so that they can decide whether it can be used for indexing and ranking purposes.
With that in mind, it would make sense for Google to make an assessment of the website giving the link and using this as a strong indicator to help decide how much value to pass across the link.
This would allow them to still pass value even when topical relevance isn’t there but they trust the website giving the link - which, as we can see, can easily happen.
The content we create is a stronger signal to Google
In contrast to the idea that anyone can link to you, you are far more in control of the content that you create. Even if you have a website that has a lot of user generated content, you still have overall editorial control over the processes for publishing that content. Essentially, you can be held accountable for the content that you create.
If you run an online pet store and you create a piece of content about personal finance, few would argue that this isn’t relevant. But the key difference when compare to getting a random link from a personal finance website is that you are accountable for the content because it sits on the website that you run. Google can hold you to a higher standard because of this.
So, even if that piece of content gets 100 links, Google could easily say that they’re not going to value those links very highly because they can’t see any topical relevance.
Does Google really want to reward irrelevant content campaigns
This one is key for me and let’s bring this all back around to link building.
Let’s imagine that you create a bunch of content-led link building campaigns for your online pet store but the topical relevance is very questionable. The quality of the content is great, it’s nicely designed and unique and even cites some expert input. This content has generated hundreds of links as a result of how good it is.
Does Google really want to reward you by valuing these links very highly and as a consequence, giving your organic search visibility a boost?
No, they don’t.
The truth is that in situations like this, it’s pretty obvious that the content has been created for the purposes of generating links. This in itself isn’t necessarily a problem, but if you do it over and over again, whilst the content clearly serves no other purpose, it’s not exactly a signal that your website is truly link worthy.
And remember, when it comes to links, Google will look for evidence that you truly deserve the links that you get and if the majority of links that you get come from off-topic campaigns, there is a strong argument to say that you don’t.
When does Google start to care about irrelevant content?
This is the big question for me and one that I can’t give you a complete answer to.
Launching some content pieces that are completely off topic and gets some links isn’t likely to get you into trouble. After all, everyone does random stuff from time to time and sometimes, a brand may decide to create some content or launch a campaign that is just a bit of fun.
If I were Google, I’d look for evidence that content is being created just for links. So I may look at a few signals such as the following.
Ratio of links to off-topic content vs. the rest of the website
If the majority of links pointing at a domain are to pages of content that is topically irrelevant when compared to the rest of the domain, I’d probably want to take a closer look at why. They may not impose a penalty or filter, but I may flag the domain for a Googler to take a look manually and see what’s going on.
The content being a little bit orphaned in terms of internal links
With many content-led link building campaigns, they are published somewhere on a website that is a little hidden away from the result of the pages. This can be for a bunch of reasons but essentially means that the architecture ends up looking like this with the orange page being your campaign:
The campaign isn’t integrated with the rest of the domain and kind of sits on its own.
Now, imagine that lots of incoming links start to appear that point to this page which is isolated, wouldn’t that look a little strange?
As an exception, this isn’t likely to mean much. But if it happens over and over again, it starts to look unnatural.
The content not linking to other pages to continue the user journey
If a piece of content isn’t relevant to the rest of the website, then it’s quite hard to add internal links or calls to action that make sense. So a clear signal for irrelevant content is a lack of links from the content to other pages.
Essentially, not only is a piece of content isolated in terms of site architecture, it’s also isolated in terms of linking back into that architecture.
This can also be common because if a piece of content is created just for the purpose of generating links, there is no incentive for the creator to link to product or category pages - that’s not what the content is meant to help with.
How to ensure more content relevance
We should accept that content relevance is important and something that Google can (rightly) hold us accountable for. So, how can we ensure that relevance plays a part in producing ideas for link building campaigns and that we don’t get sucked into just going after high volumes of links?
When we come up with content ideas, we can fall into the trap of thinking too much about who we’re trying to get links from — bloggers, journalists, writers, etc. We trick ourselves into thinking that if we are a travel brand, then working with a travel blogger will mean that we’re getting in front of our target audience.
Unfortunately, this may not necessarily be the case.
So, we should instead look at the customer journey. There are various ways to model this funnel but here is one that we use all the time at Aira and an example for a B2B company:
This also shows that the journey isn’t always linear. Customers may move backwards in their journey as well as forwards and it may take a lot of steps before they commit to a decision. Google calls this the messy middle and is basically the stage when customers ponder their choices and are deliberating what to do next.
If you want to produce relevant content ideas for your link building campaigns, you need to start by understanding and mapping out the customer journey.
Use keyword research to inform idea generation
When we produce content ideas for link building, we often don’t think about keywords because the goal of the content isn’t to rank, it’s to get links. So we’re not really incentivized or motivated to do extra research for something that we’re not being measured on.
However, doing this can be a great way to increase relevance because target keywords for your brand are going to be closely aligned with the pain points that customers have, alongside the solutions that the brand offers to those pain points. By integrating these keywords into your ideation process, you can’t help but produce ideas that are close to the target customers.
Reduce focus on link volumes
If you have a lofty link target to hit, you are much more likely to produce content ideas that aren’t relevant to your brand. This is because in order to hit link targets, you know that you need a good level of link prospects to outreach to. Even if you have a very good link conversion rate of say, 25%, that would mean that you still need 100 link prospects for every 25 links that you want to build.
How do you get more link prospects? By widening topics so that you can target different sectors of bloggers and journalists.
Instead, the focus needs to be on link prospects that are closely aligned with your own products, services and customers.
This will naturally limit the link volumes that you’re likely to achieve, but you can be more sure that you’ll produce a piece of content that is highly relevant to because you’re moving the pressure to get high link volumes.
In summary
To summarize, try to avoid thinking of relevance as something that is binary. There are far more layers to it than this and as we’ve seen, we’ve only really scratched the surface here on what Google is likely to be doing.
When you do think about relevance, focus more of your attention on content relevance and ensure that content that you produce is unquestionably relevant to your customers and your brand.
By taking this route, you need to acknowledge that it may lead to fewer links, but is also more likely to put you in a position where you’re not worried about Google updates that may target relevancy in link building, as well as manual reviews by Googlers!
The ultimate added bonus here is that you’ll be creating content that isn’t just for links — it will be far more useful to regular customers, too, adding to the value of your work.
Just as you were absorbing all the Q1 local search excitement, Q2 came marching along with a bundle of new happenings and surprises. Don’t worry if you missed out on any of the key announcements and observations — I’ve got a little list for you here:
1. Novel stats on persistent reviewers
Curtis Boyd included some statistics that I’ve never seen compiled before in his presentation at a LocalU conference. As captured in the above tweet from Joy Hawkins, 8% of unhappy customers or spammers whose first review is removed will come back and write another one. 60% of them will simply republish their initial review or one that’s quite similar, but 40% will make their second go even worse.
The takeaway here is that you’ve got to monitor reviews constantly, and the relief of removal can be short-lived unless you’re watchdogging your profiles and working to get anything removed that violates Google’s content guidelines.
2. Both Google and Yelp promote eco features
Yelp reports that searches for “plant-based” have seen a 56% average increase each year for three years running, and that searches for “EV charging” are seeing a 41% average annual increase. In response to growing global demand for more planet-friendly services, Yelp has debuted a set of new searchable attributes, including “EV charging station available,” “plastic-free packaging,” “provides reusable tableware,” “bring your own container allowed,” and “compostable containers available.” These are in addition to existing filters, like “vegan” and “bike parking”.
Meanwhile, Google is encouraging its local guides to focus in on local eco-friendly businesses and services. For example, Google suggests including sustainability details in reviews, mapping recycling centers, and adding recycling attributes to listings. Google reports that the top five most searched-for recycling needs are metal, electronic, cardboard, battery, and cans.
Take these signals from Yelp and Google as signs that the time has come for all local businesses to discover, develop, and promote the greenest possible practices they can implement. Sustainability is essential.
3. Major review takedowns follow on the heels of FTC warnings
We began 2022 with a new warning from the FTC that review platforms will be held accountable for the fake reviews they publish. Perhaps it’s a coincidence, but Google seems to have kicked into high gear with review takedowns. As reported by Near Media, the local SEO industry has seen a dramatic rise in complaints of review loss which began in Q1 and has continued through Q2.
Unfortunately, Google’s takedowns have been too broad and legitimate reviews are being tossed out with the spam. If local businesses you market have been caught up in Google’s new-found zeal for spam fighting, and are aware that legitimate reviews are missing, you can contact Google, but there are no guarantees that the reviews will be restored, and you may be better off simply keeping going with your strategy for continuous review acquisition.
4. Google declares products a local search visibility factor
Damian Rollison spotted a major update to Google’s document on how to improve local search rankings, in that they have newly-listed adding products to your GBP as a visibility factor. To regular readers of my column here at Moz, it will come as no surprise that Google is doing all it can to promote its shopping capabilities in its quest to compete with Amazon. As we’ve covered in the past, localness is Google’s one big advantage over Amazon, and given the massive carbon reduction in local vs. remote delivery, it will be better for all of us if more shopping is facilitated via Google’s localized product features than by any service based on long-distance shipping. Now is a great time to seize a visibility boost by filling out profiles with as many core products as are offered by the local businesses you market.
5. Google’s trusted store badge goes live
Speaking of shopping, and as reported by Search Engine Roundtable, Google is now rewarding certain merchants with the highly visible trusted store badge, as seen in the above screenshot of the Google Shopping interface. Remember that Google Shopping has filters so that customers can find local businesses. For a local business to earn this badge, Barry Schwartz suggests:
“...the badge is available to merchants who provide excellent shipping and returns services. Merchants receive a Trusted Store badge based on their performance across metrics relative to other merchants, including but not limited to shipping speeds, shipping and return costs, and return windows.”
Google has stated that such badges are appearing to deliver “stronger traffic to lesser known merchants”, and I would read this to mean that even a smaller local brand could find that the trust imbued by the badge could boost sales resulting from increased traffic.
6. Google testing “At This Place” feature
Saad AK spotted a test that will be of interest to local businesses located inside larger venues. Here, we see a listing for a roller coaster nested within a listing for a larger attraction. I have not been able to replicate this test, but it is a notable example of the increasing granularity with which Google continues to map local communities.
7. Business redressal complaint form finally gets much-needed new label
At long last, you can finally tell Google that “this business doesn’t exist” via the Business Redressal Complaint Form. As reported at Search Engine Land, this new option matters because it clarifies that what you’re trying to report to Google is, in fact, a non-existent business rather than simply complaining that a legitimate business has incorrect information.
When Google acts on reports of fake listings, it can clear away the debris that is standing between your client and higher visibility. When successful, spam fighting can produce some of the easiest local search rankings you’ll ever earn.
8. Adios Google My Business mobile app
I extend my condolences to all local SEOs who, like Claire Carlile, are bidding a teary adieu to the Google My Business mobile app and are being prompted to switch to updating listings via search and Maps, instead.
A lesson new local SEOs will quickly learn is one of self-protective detachment from any particular Google product or feature. They go away, they get rebranded, they dry up and blow away like autumn leaves. It’s always good to try new Google features when they roll out, but never tie your entire local search marketing strategy to them, because they are, by nature, experimental and can disappear at any time.
9. Place topic thumbs expand at-a-glance sentiment communications
Mike Blumenthal noticed this praiseworthy effort on Google’s part to further qualify the topics that people often mention in reviews. When you think about it, it’s not actually very helpful to know that people often mention something like “accessibility” relating to a hotel without any further context. Are reviewers saying that the accessibility is good or bad?
Thanks to that little thumb icon, this test lets us see at-a-glance that people are dissatisfied with the accessibility of this business. It’s amazing to think of how shortcuts like icons can convey so much within a few pixels of screen space. This is one experiment I hope we’ll see roll out more widely!
Onward to Q3
With the sunny days of summer stretching out before us, local businesses and their marketers should be keeping an eye on one major developing story: the outcomes of S.2992, the American Choice and Innovation Online Act. You may already have received frantic emails or other messaging from Google or Amazon urging you to believe that regulation of monopolies like theirs will hurt small businesses like yours.
Like many of my peers, I’ve been offended on behalf of local business owners. Their intelligence is insulted when told to be scared of powerful businesses not having the ability to preference their own products — to the detriment of diversity and innovation. In fact, I think most local business owners would be delighted if this bill became law and it resulted in more direct traffic to their own websites instead of to Google’s widgets, or a more diversified review landscape, perhaps even highlighting review platforms that might do a better job of handling review spam or communicating with SMBs.
Big tech is shelling out millions of the dollars society has helped them accrue in hopes of lobbying this bill into the trash can, but if their efforts fail, local businesses could be witnessing the start of a handoff that could actually place the ball back in our court — the court of local community, creativity, and choice. Sunny days, indeed.
Google Autocomplete (often referred to as Google Suggest) is one of the first Google search developments that appeared on SEOs’ radar.
Many years ago, Google Suggest was what powered Google Instant results, making a huge impact on users’ searching journeys. SEOs have been using it as a free keyword research tool.
Yet there’s much more to this search feature, especially after all the updates Google has introduced, turning Google Autocomplete into a smart and predictive platform of its own.
What is Google Autocomplete?
Google Autocomplete allows users to easily complete their query by suggesting possible extensions of what they are currently typing:
Google’s suggestions are dynamic — they instantly change as you’re typing your query. Google is trying to predict what a user means to type. These predictions are likely to impact the searching behaviors as people may instinctively choose a suggestion they never meant to type. In other words, Google’s Autocomplete should be an SEO priority.
But there’s another factor making the feature very important for any digital marketing strategy: By default, it delivers suggestions in the address bars of at least three of the most popular browsers: Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari.
Here’s Chrome’s address bar, which suggests search terms (and auto-completes them) as you type.
Now imagine that your domain is plumber.com and that’s your customer trying to type in your domain name.
This means that in many cases, users will be prompted to search even when they had no intention to, and they will search for the terms that were suggested by Google.
How do Google’s Autocomplete predictions work?
Google’s Autocomplete predictions rely on actual users’ popular searching patterns, i.e. what Google’s searchers tend to type next. In other words, Google’s suggestions reflect the most common search queries.
Additional factors that impact Google’s predictions are:
The searcher’s location
The user’s past searches
Currently trending search queries. For example, many of these suggestions seem to be driven by trending searches:
You can disable your past searching history from messing with your Google predictions by disabling personalization here. This way you’ll get a cleaner insight into your target users’ searching habits.
Use Google’s Autocomplete to research your keywords
Google Autocomplete is perfect for discovering more specific and relevant phrases that searchers are using to solve problems or answer questions, as it extends your search query as you type it. If your query is searched a lot, Google will continue extending it further and further — just keep hitting space at the end of each query:
All of these suggestions provide content ideas by narrowing your initial term down to more specific angles.
While you can do this by using the search box itself, you can also use tools like Suggestion Keyword Finder to make it easier and faster, , as it extends each of your chosen terms deeper to level three:
There are also a few plugins that bring those suggestions right inside your Wordpress post editor.
Use Google Autocomplete to research questions
Question research is useful on many levels, from content ideation to identifying the challenges your customers may be experiencing with your product or service.
Google Autocomplete is one of the most powerful sources of niche questions that your target users routinely type to solve related problems. To find those questions, simply type question words (why, how, where, etc.) in front of your search term in Google’s search box:
To avoid manually doing this, you can use Answer the Public, which uses this trick to create a mindmap of questions based on your keyword:
There are several ways to implement these questions in your content optimization strategy:
Use these questions in your content refresh strategy when optimizing old or outdated pages.
Launch a Youtube series/playlist or even a video course to address each of these questions, one by one. You will have lots of content that you can reuse on your site, on social media, and elsewhere.
Narrato is a handy content creation and collaboration platform allowing you to import these questions and integrate them in your content brief and content itself:
Narrato helps you consolidate a lot of data around each content project helping you create better optimized guides, lead magnets or commercial landing pages.
Use Google Autocomplete to research related concept entities
Extending core keywords is how we’ve utilized Google Autocomplete for years, but the tool has been evolving, and these days it gives even more insight into how people search and what Google considers relevant to your target topic (and buying journey).
Traditionally, Google would generate search predictions prior to you performing a search. Nowadays, Google will help you refine your search query by suggesting alternative terms after you perform the search.
To generate these suggestions, simply put your cursor back in Google’s search box once it loads search results. These are referred to as “search refinements”:
The key benefit of this exercise is that you get to uncover related concepts and entities you may want to include into your optimization strategy.
For example, if you search for [why is google maps slow] and put your cursor anywhere inside your query in the search box, Google Autocomplete will try to help you specify the problem by suggesting [delay time] instead of [slow] and making sure you really mean [maps] and not [google earth slow].
There’s no insight into how Google generates search refinements, but they most probably rely on their users’ searching journeys (i.e the same person typing these queries within one session).
SE Ranking uses search refinements to identify related keywords you’d want to include into your SEO strategy:
Autocomplete search refinements in local marketing
Search refinements have many implications. For example, if you’re a local business, you should use Autocomplete to discover related towns and cities people in your area may be using to find similar businesses. These are all your target keywords:
In this case, a plumber located in Halfmoon, NY will know that they need to have pages targeting Clifton Park, Ballston Spa, and Glenville. They will also find a distinct local competitor to keep an eye on.
Interestingly, Google knows how far away from your location related entities should be. In case of plumbers, Google would suggest locations 10-30 minutes away. But if you search for something like “playgrounds” in the same town, you will only be suggested places within a five-minute drive:
Use Google Autocomplete for organic reputation management strategy
Brand-driven search is when a search query contains your brand or product name.
Your potential customers are using your brand-driven search when trying to figure out if your company is worth dealing with or if your product is what they need.
Obviously, branded search is an essential part of your sales funnel, and the one you cannot fully control.
With Google Autocomplete, branded search becomes even more tricky and less controllable:
Google may prompt your customers to search for your name when they are trying to actually type your domain and get to your site. In this case, Google’s Autocomplete may distract and drive your actual customers away from your site, so you need to make sure that your branded search results will bring them back to your site.
Google Autocomplete may give your customers “ideas” on what they need to do prior to buying from you (and finally get them to change their minds).
For those two reasons, your branded Autocomplete results should be your company’s priority:
Track your rankings for all of these search queries (naturally, you want your pages to rank #1 to instantly take those searchers back to your site).
Ensure your brand visibility in more than organic listings. Google’s SERPs are visual and interactive, which means lots of people may never click those organic results. Those searchers need to keep seeing your brand all over those SERPs to finally be convinced to go to your site:
Branded SERPs often include image and video carousels, People Also Ask boxes, tweets from the brand’s official account, and more. A well-organized reputation management strategy should target all of these search sections and elements.
For your company’s key branded keywords, set up Visual Ping, a change-monitoring platform that will alert you once your branded SERPs add or remove anything. You will also be notified of any changes in your knowledge panel, new results, new images or videos pulled into your branded carousels, changes in local 3-pack, etc.:
Use Google Autocomplete to identify and research entities
Google Autocomplete is evolving together with Google search. As Google is integrating entities (e.g. organizations, books, places, celebrities, movies, shows, etc.) into its algorithm, so does Autocomplete.
When Google considers something an entity, the Autocomplete dropdown will include its logo and the category Google is associating this entity with. Local entities will also include their location:
It’s a good idea to check Autocomplete results for your chosen name prior to registering the domain. Namify makes it easy as you can add domains to the list to check them all before deciding:
It’s a good idea to stay away from brand names that are already identified as entities in the same or neighboring category.
For newly launched projects and products, Google Autocomplete can be used to identify whether Google considers you an entity yet:
Conclusion
Autocomplete is a great (and free) keyword research tool, but it is also a powerful factor that can impact your target customers’ journeys on most popular browsers. For this reason, it’s important to keep an eye on Google Autocomplete suggestions for your important search queries, including your brand-driven queries.
