Video: Last Week in Local from LocalU June 11
Mike Blumenthal

Every week we bring you a brief 15 minute video and the links of the best articles in Local Search. OK. It’s not always 15 minutes but we are never off by more than 10 minutes or so.

Last Week in Local is now available as a podcast. Sign up here for your regular Local Fix. What better way to spend your drive time?

Google Local After Antitrust – Careful What You Wish For

Source: blumenthals.com

In the EU and the US, Yelp has been actively seeking to get regulators to look at Google’s behaviors in local and to change the search results to stop favoring Google’s own local results.

But partial solutions might not give Yelp the exposure that they think.


Next Level ROI Reporting for Local SEO – Sterling Sky Inc

Source: www.sterlingsky.ca

Joy gives us awesome tips on reporting ROI.

Moving your agency from the tactics of SEO to the strategy of embedding yourself into the businesses that you serve.


Mary, 47 Ways to Thrill Your Customers

Source: xp210.infusionsoft.com

Ideas for attracting raving fans at your retail location.


Don’t Ever Trust Google With Your Life – Local SEO Guide

Source: www.localseoguide.com

Dan Leibson’s real life experience with on Google’s results for hospitals.


This one image keeps Walmart up at night. Here’s what the company is doing about it

Source: www.cnbc.com

There’s a stark contrast between the top retailers in 1970 compared with last year. No one from 1970 is still on the list. And Walmart does not want that to happen to them.

From where I sit, Walmart should be more concerned about the fact that they have trouble answering their phones.

H/T to William Schroeder.


139 taxi medallions will be offered at bankruptcy auction

Source: nypost.com

The creative destruction of capitalism is the consumer space continues apace.

Taxi medallions that were worth $1.5 million several years ago are now worth less the $250,000.


Why Unilever, General Mills And Procter & Gamble Aren’t Good At Marketing In The Modern Economy

Source: www.forbes.com

Entrepreneur Dave Morgan, CEO/Founder of Simulmedia, suggests that the Direct Brand Economy is the most important issue in marketing and that the blue chip marketing firms (e.g., P&G, Unilever) stand to lose big against smaller, direct to consumer brands.


Target makes a big leap in the delivery wars against Amazon, Walmart

Source: www.cnbc.com

The retailer has reached an important milestone in rolling out same-day delivery and other pickup services.


OpenTable Reorganizes Its Marketing, Product and People Teams

Source: table.skift.com

OpenTable and Kayak will integrate their teams functionally, according to an internal memo sent by Kayak CEO Steve Hafner to OpenTable employees, Skift Table has learned.


Pivot to traditional: Direct-to-consumer brands sour on Facebook ads – Digiday

Source: digiday.com

​​​​​​​Digiday spoke with 10 direct-to-consumer companies, and all of them report their marketing mix has de-emphasized Facebook for other digital alternatives — including Facebook-owned Instagram — but seven of them also say they are expanding into traditional vehicles. The reason: Prices are getting high for audience segments and the feed has become a very cluttered space.


How Facebook Marketing is Changing (And How to Be Prepared) – The Buffer Blog

Source: blog.bufferapp.com

As Facebook continues to deemphasize business content Buffer suggests switching from feed reach to a content strategy at Facebook.

While that might work, it suffers from the same problem that organic reach did, you don’t own the space but are just leasing it.


Yoast on Twitter: “Yoast SEO 7.6 is released! In response to #Google reducing the length for #metadescriptions again, this feature is implemented in our new release.  https://t.co/r5TKoYPz61”

Source: twitter.com

Read the whole thread between Yoast and Danny Sullivan of Google. An interesting back and forth about Google’s view of reality and those in the industry.


Video Deep Dive: “Reading the Industry” – Discussion Willys Devoll – Local University

Source: localu.org

Great convo with Willy Devoll about how to best learn from Google presenters at conferences. Asking for the “secret sauce” is NOT the way.


May 2018 Updates to The Expert’s Guide to Local SEO – Local University

Source: localu.org

Over 11 updates to the guide this month with useful tips on reporting reviews and Google Local performance tracking.


GMB “Agency Dashboard” Problems or Confusion – Page 2

Source: www.localsearchforum.com

The new GMB Agency Dashboard was released this morning. Is anyone else having trouble signing onto this?

Lot’s of aggro with the requirements of the new Google My Business Agency dashboard.

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