Last Week in Local 5/30
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 May 22nd, 2017. This week featuring Mary Bowling and Mike Blumenthal.
This year we will be publishing our Last Week in Local video directly to the Local U blog. It will be published every Monday and will include discussions about the events in the last week — strategic and tactical — that affect Local SEO & marketing.
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.
Joel’s Links
Google Attribution is a free and easy way to evaluate marketing efforts
New machine learning-powered methods enable marketers to model the relative contribution of disparate advertising efforts. This is a much more informative method of evaluation. In the real world, video ads, banner ads, emails and other materials all work in consonance to drive conversions — it doesn’t make sense for the final social media ad to get all the credit.
Google now knows when its users go to the store and buy stuff
Google has begun using billions of credit-card transaction records to prove that its online ads are prompting people to make purchases – even when they happen offline in brick-and-mortar stores, the company said Tuesday.
The advance allows Google to determine how many sales have been generated by digital ad campaigns, a goal that industry insiders have long described as “the holy grail” of online advertising. But the announcement also renewed long-standing privacy complaints about how the company uses personal information.
Bing launches bots for local businesses
The bot will answer questions directly from search based on data in the local dashboard and other questions the business has answered. The bot will be available across channels and platforms (create once, publish across sites) including FB and Messenger
Mary’s Links
“Our purpose is to expose businesses that are faking reviews in an attempt to hide real negative reviews. Oue mission is to find, idnentify and expose business that are lying to the general public and taking advantage of consumers.” You can email info@reviewfraud.org with your own examples.
5 reasons why websites still matter to local search in 2017
Rankings and trust are among them and he concludes that “the value of websites has not diminished”
How Does Google Look for Authoritative Search Results? – SEO by the Sea ⚓
Indicates that Google probably has a base of authoritative sites on particular topics and prefers to return results from authoritative sites. ” This means that Google will be more likely to return high quality sites at the top of search results, rather than results from sites that might not be seen as authoritative sites.”
I’m kind of obsessed with answer boxes lately and wanted to see if anyone had…
Mike’s Links
Borrell: Local Media Share of Local Digital Advertising is Down to 18%
The steady growth of local digital advertising has largely been driven by Facebook and Google, which account for 77 percent of all local digital revenue
Other digital services have proved to be especially promising, per Borrell. They can “comprise 14% to 34% of total revenues, depending on the year they started selling and the aggressiveness with which they’re selling.”
Hotels are reclaiming both the proft and the client relationships.
How Google and Facebook drive internet traffic by topic
Facebook overwhelmingly drives lifestyle and entertainment news traffic, while Google largely drives business, tech and sports news traffic. This doesn’t look at local which is 80/20 towards Google but you get the idea. There is not much room left for the other guys
MarketingBitz | Blogs | Word of Mouth Marketing: A Great Summer Challenge!
Create a focused business group that refers leads…
How Online Reviews Impact Trust and Landing Page Conversion – BrightLocal
In the results of this question, 83% of the people thought the business with the user-generated review on the landing page was trustworthy. Additionally, 15% of the people said they did not find the business without reviews to be trustworthy.
Guys, thanks so much for the link. I really appreciate it 🙂 I wanted to note, even with my volume tuned up all the way on this one, I was having a bit of trouble hearing the discussion. It seems a bit quiet. Don’t want to miss a word!