Video: Last Week in Local August 21st

Mike Blumenthal

August 21, 2017 | Local Search, SEO

Last week in local 8/21/2017

Join Local U for the latest public episode of Last Week in Local, a weekly conversation about the articles that attracted our attention during the past week ending August 21st, 2017. This week features Mary Bowling and Mike Blumenthal.

If you have a special topic you would like us to discuss for our other weekly feature, the Deep Dive in Local, or if you would like to be on one or the other of our segments, reach outand send us the topic and your availability. If you are interested in sponsoring this weekly show also please let us know.

Let us know what you think. Welcome to Last Week in Local!

Our weekly discussions are also now available as a podcast as well.

Mike’s Links

Walmart vs. Jet brand strategy

Walmart is using their Jet.com brand (plus their other upscale e-commerce plays) as a way to target the millennial and upscale consumers and to augment their walmart.com brand.

Exclusive: Amazon in talks to offer event ticketing in U.S. – sources | Reuters

Is there a marketplace that Amazon isn’t going after?

Target buys same-day delivery company to battle Amazon

It will be interesting to see how companies without the scale of either Amazon or Walmart figure out how to compete. I am not sure this is the way.

Facebook expands Marketplace categories and content in new push for growth

Until now, Facebook has limited postings inside Marketplace to individual users, not business Pages. But that’s changing as the company expands into more areas. Facebook hopes to learn what kinds of stuff people want to find inside Marketplace, then push deeper into those areas – using established retailers and testing auto sales, real estate and ticket sales.

For existing categories in Marketplace (e.g., Autos, Property), Facebook is going to add listings from businesses and content aggregators. These categories will feature side-by-side presentations of individual and “professional” listings. Facebook will also be introducing new categories that will be more business-centric:

Jobs (live now — US, Canada, Mexico)
Daily deals (eBay partnership test)
Tickets (Eventbrite and Ticketmaster), which are also presented on event pages
Shops (products from Shop section of business Pages)

5 Tips to Help Show ROI from Local SEO

Think from the pov of the businesss not from the pov of the marketing agency. Can the ranking reports and boring analytic reports and show real conversions and their value to the business (over their lifetime).

Google emails warnings to webmasters that Chrome will mark http pages with forms as ‘not secure’

This change will force many sites to upgrade to HTTPS

69 Amazing SEO Bookmarklets to SuperCharge Your Internet Marketing

Quick back link check, page speed tests, robots.txt for page you are on, list all do follow or no follow links on a page, word count, H1 etc on a page.

Video Deep Dive: New from Google – Questions & Answers – Local University

Initially just available to owners, it is now available to all users and local guides. It is still only available on Android Maps and needs the newest Android OS and Maps app to function.

Using Event Markup & Google Posts to Increase Visibility in Search

Google is expanding ways that the small business website and the small business owner can feed data to the Knowledge Panel at Google.

Home Service Ads Alert – Read this Post

In any market where Home Service Ads have rolled out, service area businesses are being removed from the local pack and only showing up (at the bottom) of the new Home Service Finder.

5 Video Marketing Ideas for Local Businesses – BrightLocal

Post by Ann Smarty explores video ideas for local marketing, including:

•Utilizing local guides
•Posting behind the scenes videos
•Covering local events
•Celebrating all holidays
•Business personalization

New Video Option in Google Maps

Some can now add a 30 second video to business’s listing.

Mary’s Links

Ranking your local business #3: Website optimization • Yoast

Focuses on the fundamentals of your website and its architecture and content.

Ranking your local business part IV: Inbound links • Yoast

6 tips for using location information to boost conversion

Averages are deceptive. It pays to really understand how far folks will travel for your particular business.