The State of Search Marketing in 2015 [INFOGRAPHIC]

There are over 100 billion global internet searches being conducted each month. Where is all the search traffic coming from, and where is it going? How does desktop traffic measure up to mobile? What’s working better, PPC or SEO?

To get answer of all these questions, check out following infographic created by JBH and Smartinsights.

So, I hope you agree that the infographic presents a compelling case for investing more in Search Marketing in 2015 given how competitive it has become.

Google Local Listing 3-pack: What Does This Means for Local Businesses?

Based on relevance, distance, and prominence Google may show one or more maps results for our search query. Traditionally the local maps results composed of 7 business information which we often call 7-pack. On Thursday, August 6th, we began to notice that the traditional 7-packs that frequently showed up in the google local search results were suddenly replaced with 3-packs in the search results.

The new local 3-pack results appearing right below the AdWords and the top of the organic results as usual, which users can click to view full business details with address, phone, photos, hours, reviews, and directions, or click ‘more + search term’ for a full list of business within the local area.

Why These Update?

Google’s focus has been shifting heavily towards mobile friendly search results over the past year and I guess 3-packs update is just Google local results display format changes to fit across various device. Google's 3-packs brings desktop the same user experience as mobile users have been getting in a while.

Here is how the new local pack appears on mobile.

What has actually changed in Google local SERPs?

• Only 3 businesses instead 7.
• No business addresses and phone numbers, click to call option in mobile device.
• Google+ Links Removed.
• Business Category Added.
• Business Hours Added.
• “Google Reviews” Renamed to "reviews"
• No flyout business cards. 

You can read about all the changes from my this post.

What Does It Means for Local Businesses?

This is going to be tough for Local businesses. It mean if your business are not listed in top 3 listing, the chance is very low to get leads from google local search results. Ultimately, I think it will result in more Local businesses looking to increase visibility via Adwords. I also heard a rumor that google want to push adwords ads (I read in WebmasterWorld and Warrior Forum) by this update as they heavily promoting adwords vouchers at the same time update took place.

Why?
Do you think google just made this changes overnight without their extensive internal research? No, I don't think so, Google's data team must found something interesting like local top 3 listing might get all the CTR. That's why google knocked out 4 out of 7 from the local results, What do you think?

How to Get Listed in Google 3-Pack

Want to Be Part of the Google Local 3-Pack and Stay safe? Read This Local 3-Pack SEO Guide.
These Local SEO Guide are for businesses who want to list their business in google local 3-Pack or stick to top 3 listing. You'll find this guide strenuous but ensure your local business placement in Google’s 3-Pack.

Depending on your business, Google Page, how your website is set-up and optimized, you might not be able to implement all of these tactics, but implementing even 70% of them is enough for most local businesses to rank in the Google 3-Pack.

1. Create, verify and Optimize your Google+ Local page
2. Optimize Your Website for Your Business
3. Get Local Business Listings (Citations)
4. Get Reviews on your Google+ Local page and on 3rd party websites
5. Create and Share Local Content
6. Find Local Link Opportunities
7. Constantly Test & Optimize

Tactic #1: Create, verify and Optimize your Google+ Local Page

Google+ Local Page is your direct connection to your customers, whether they’re searching for your business through Google Search, Maps or Google+.

Google+ Local Page dominate in local search results and your competitors are already there, so we want you there too. A verified and optimized Local Page integrates your online business presence to one easy place. Follow this steps to create and optimize your Google+ Local Page:

• Create, verify or consolidate your Business listings from Google My Business.
• Select your  business category carefully, The Business Category you choose for your listing is now showing in 3-pack right below your business title.
• Use a real physical address and a local phone number, not an 800 number.
• Put as much business information as you can including images and video as required to achieve 100% completion rating.

Tactic #2: Optimize Your Website for Your Business

An optimized website helps search engines identify and rank businesses by their geographical location in relation to a search query. This is not overly difficult, but many local business owners tend to overlook it as it require a great effort. Website On Page signals has 21.0% impact in local search as per Moz research.

My On Page optimization checklist for local business will help your business rank in google 3-pack as well as increase your website organic ranking. The following optimization techniques will ensure that your website is properly optimized for Google Local 3-pack.

• Include your business NAP in prominent place.
• Give your pages geo-specific, descriptive meta tags (meta title and description) including your zip/postal code.
• Make sure you have contact information, including your NAP, in text on every page of your site.
• Embed google map and driving direction on your website.
• Add your location to your image alt text.
• Add Schema markup in your website where possible.

Tactic #3: Get Local Business Listings (Citations)

Local Business Listings are defined as mentions of your business’s name, address and phone number (aka NAP) on other webpages—even if there is no link point to your website. An example of a citation might be an online local business directory where your business is listed, but not linked to your website.

When it come to Local Map Ranking, Local Business Listings (Aka Citations) are a key component of the ranking algorithms in Google and Bing Local Search. According to Moz 2014 Local Search Ranking Factors, Citation is the 3rd biggest ranking signal and make up 15.5% of the overall ranking factors.

Citation volume and the number of other business listings referencing your business location(s) are important in google local 3-pack; however, consistency and accuracy will always take precedence over volume. Here's a list compiled by Hubspot of the 50 local business directories to submit your business

Tactic #4: Get Reviews on your Google+ Local page and on 3rd party websites

Reviews are one of the major ranking perspective in your local rankings in Google and elsewhere, and they’re one of the very important factors (It hold 9.8% weight in local search) in getting customers to choose you over your competitor.

This is truly important that your business have some positive reviews on Google+ Local page and on other popular third-party sites. When your consumer want to read reviews, they usually visit Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Yelp, CitySearch, Insider Pages, MerchantCircle, TripAdvisor, Better Business Bureau (BBB),  Foursquare, Manta, and Angie’s List.

Tactic #5: Create and Share Local Content

Create local content relevant to your business and the city you live in and share with the world via your website and social media. For example, you can write about an past local event where you participated or an upcoming event you're going to participating.

There’s endless opportunities when you use creative thinking about the events and businesses in your area of town. Just don't forget to include images, videos and link to the event site (If there's any website dedicated to that event). Want more Local Content Creation Idea, read Mike Ramsey Strategy.

Tactic #6: Find Local Link Opportunities

Moz found Link is the second important factor and has 18.3% impact in local search results. Links from local websites that point to your website impacts your sites ability to rank in 3-pack and make your website "authority" locally.

There are many ways to acquire local links like Sponsor a meetup group, Host a community event, donate to a local club or organization, from local newspaper site, etc. You can find an Interesting Local Link Building Guide from Casey Meraz Post on Moz.

Tactic #7: Constantly Test & Optimize

The previous six tactic that we have just discussed need to be constantly addressed. To dominate in Google Local 3-Pack you need to always be one step ahead of your competitors. There is always room for improvement, so don't be afraid to test and make changes. You would be surprised at how the smallest change can often result in the biggest change. What do you think?

Google Redesigns its Logo

Google is introduced a new logo yesterday and this is the fifth such modification since the search engine giant started in 1998. Just a month after unveiling a major restructuring of the company, Google is updated its logo.

But why change it up? A post at the Google Blog explains:

Once upon a time, Google was one destination that you reached from one device: a desktop PC. These days, people interact with Google products across many different platforms, apps and devices—sometimes all in a single day. You expect Google to help you whenever and wherever you need it, whether it’s on your mobile phone, TV, watch, the dashboard in your car, and yes, even a desktop! 

Today we’re introducing a new logo and identity family that reflects this reality and shows you when the Google magic is working for you, even on the tiniest screens. As you’ll see, we’ve taken the Google logo and branding, which were originally built for a single desktop browser page, and updated them for a world of seamless computing across an endless number of devices and different kinds of inputs (such as tap, type and talk).

The new Google logo is still a wordmark, but it's now using a sans-serif typeface, making it look a lot more modern, playful and similar to the one being used by Google's newly created holding company, Alphabet.

The colors are softer than they used to be. The logo bears a bit more resemblance to the logo of Google's new parent company, Alphabet, as well. Alphabet's wordmark has a similarly unadorned look, and this update makes the two companies' design language fall more inline.

The revamped logo, used to identify most of its apps, bids farewell to the little blue "g" icon and replaces it with a uppercase "G" colored in blue, red, yellow and green to match the full logo.

Google Local Makeover: Local '7 Packs' Gone!

Old Google Local Search Result

7-Packs Now 3-Packs

Whether you call it Google Map Listing, Google Places Listing, Google Local Listing, Google Plus Listings, Google My Business Listings, or the Google '7 Pack', the set of seven listings that frequently appear at the top of Google local search results has changed notably in recent weeks.

It was predicted that sooner or later Google will switched to 3-pack from 7-pack layout when google first rolled out 3-pack listing for restaurants, nightlife, entertainment and hotels, back in November 2014 in the US search.

Google has been testing a new local listings format and officially launched the new format a couple of weeks ago. In the language of a Local Search Engine Optimization Expert, the 7-pack is now a 3-pack. The local pack is not just showing fewer business listings, It is also eliminates the address and phone number from individual results and redesigned to fit more with the mobile user interface.

Here is a picture of the new local pack, displaying only three results:

New Google Local Search Result

Exact Addresses Removed

Google has removed specific addresses from their local listings, instead only showing the street name. This requires a searcher to either click through to the website or the map listing in order to get the exact address.

Phone Numbers Removed

Google Searchers will no longer have easy access to the phone number of the business. They now need to click through the listing or get the number from the website. The mobile version (detailed below) doesn’t display the phone number but does have a “Call” option for each listing.

Google+ Links Removed

Google has also removed the Google+ links that we have all become familiar with. Because Google has pushed for local businesses to claim their page officially, this change is pretty interesting.

Business Category Added

The Business Category you choose for your listing is now showing in local search right below your business title. Category is critical to being considered relevant on any given search result and should be chosen carefully.

Store Hours Added

They have also added in store hours, including opening and closing times, depending on the time of day of the search.

Reviews No Longer Labelled “Google Reviews”

Gone are the labels on the reviews listing them as “Google Reviews.” Now they are simply called “reviews” with the number of reviews for each business still included.

No Flyouts

We are used to being able to scroll over local listings to see the local card for the business displayed on the right hand side. This no longer happens, to see the “Card”, you have to click through to the secondary local page.

Why The Change?

According to a Google spokesman: "We are constantly exploring the best way to bring a better search experience to our users. This update provides people with more relevant information, including photos, reviews and prices, for searches that have multiple results for a given location."

Where Clicks Go?

Unlike the previous layout, clicking the business name no longer takes you to the business' website. Instead you are redirected to an new expanded view of the local listings with the selected business' profile highlighted.

It should also be noted that while desktop results provide icon links for directions and the business' website, mobile searches provide a 'click to call' icon instead.

Mobile Google Local Search Result

How it Looks on Mobile?

Mobile also sees the complete address moved, with “Call” being the notable option here.

What Does This Mean for Local Businesses?

Well, that depends on how heavily your business relies on Google Local Listings and where you ranked before the change. If you relied heavily upon your local listings and were ranking fourth or lower, you may see fewer leads.

On the other hand, if your business ranks in the local top three listings, Google has effectively removed four of your nearest competitors and that could earn more clicks, calls, and visits for your business.

This also means that if you’re not in the top 3 listing, then you better start working on your local SEO Contest. I believe the update will now place an even higher emphasis on getting reviews and building out your citation profile.

Summary

If you are entirely relying on Google's local listings to drive traffic to your website, you're doing it wrong anyway. The businesses that are most successful with generating leads from search are those that are ranking well in local as well as organic listings. While Google's local listings used to be an option for those who ranked well, they now represent nothing more than a degraded user experience for your customers and Google's.

8 Ways to Protect Your Site From Google Panda Penalties

Back in February of 2011, Google released a major update to their search results ranking algorithm known as Google Panda Update. The significant algorithm update aimed to lower the rank of "low-quality sites" or "thin sites", and return higher-quality sites near the top of the search results.

As of today, Google released 28 panda algorithm update and last one (Panda 4.2) was July 17, 2015. you can read about all google algorithm update from Moz Google Algorithm Change History Timeline.

If you run a website or blog and want your site stick to the top of Google’s search result, Here’s My Tips to Protect Your Site From Google Panda Penalties. Alternatively, you can read Google's Quality Guidelines.

1. Write Fresh and Quality Content, and Don’t Worry About Length

If you read SEO guides (many of which are outdated SEO Guides), you may find ongoing debate about what will be content length for website pages and blog posts,.

What is The Ideal Content Length?

Actually there are no rules, except opinions. Some experts believe 300 to 500 words work best while others say content should be 1,000+ words.

In my opinion, Making content larger or shorter doesn’t guarantee success or failure; your content should be as long as it takes to deliver the message to your user, and no more.

I've seen many websites ranking higher with a very little amount of text. So don't worry too much about content length, make sure you write fresh and quality content regular basis.

2. Identify Redundant Content and Remove Them

Do a quick check on your website if there's duplicated and outdated information on it. This kinds of content can hurt your website ranking and lead to penalty, now might be a great time to clean it up.

Here are a few tips to Identify Redundant or Obsolete Content.

When review or write content, Ask yourself

• Is this page/post necessary?
• Does the information exist elsewhere?
• Is it still current and relevant?
• Does it do/say something?

3. Create Natural Link Profile

A natural link is a link obtained when a visitor shares your site on his or her own website, blog or other site. Let’s say the purpose of your site is to discuss cleaning services and you writing a article about "carpet cleaning service toronto".

You might link your article to some carpet cleaning mainstream media articles and internal link within your website. What you probably wouldn’t do, however, is link directly to competing sites trying to fill the cleaning niche. In a post-Panda online environment, this is a mistake.

Google Panda is all about Quality and Relevancy. Your site Quality and Relevancy ca be increase by linking to other related sites and content whether they’re your competitor or not. Your readers will surely appreciate it, and hence, The Google will too.

4. Target Natural Keywords

Outdated SEO advice may refer to something like this: select one or two keywords most closely related to page or post and insert them into the content as much as possible. This tactic was really good before panda update, But by panda algorithm Google see right through this, and treat it as a Unethical SEO Practice.

If you want to rank for a phrase like “clean my carpet,” you do not need to repeat the term exactly in your website, instead you may use "immaculate my carpet," which will google see similar to “clean my carpet,” If you use “immaculate” instead of “clean,” you'll have opportunity to rank for both phrases.

Why?

Because, Google’s algorithm uses Latent semantic indexing (LSI), which help Google identify patterns in the relationships between the terms and concepts contained in an unstructured collection of text. LSI is based on the principle that words that are used in the same contexts tend to have similar meanings.

5. Pay Attention to Website Navigation

It's under google's website design guideline. Improving your website navigation can have a positive impact on your site ranking. No amount of excellent content will be worth anything if your users can’t find their away around your site.

Navigation Best Practice:

• Keep menus consistent and logically arranged.
• Use internal linking whenever appropriate.
• Verify there is text navigation, not JavaScript or Flash navigation that spiders can’t see.
• Make sure you at least have text navigation on the bottom of the page if there aren’t any spiderable navigation links in the top navigation.

6. Avoid the Shortcut Methods

A lot of SEO experts claim that they have short cut method (Usually they keep it secret from their client) to rank higher on SERP.

Shortcut method may works on very short-term basis, But there’s a risk involved in tricky shortcut method.

What and Why?

The problem occurs when google's spider finish analyzing your website and find tricky method that you/your expert implemented to dodge google.

The only way to get rid of it and get your rank back is if you find your SEO expert did or doing any Shortcut Method on your website, abandon the expert and clean your content.

7. Stop Guest Posting

Don't get me wrong, I still believe that Guest posting is an effective and killer way to build authoritative links. But it shouldn’t be the one and only one strategy for your website marketing.

Remember what I already said about Natural Link Profile And a site with a too many links from one source (like guest posts) may penalize your website.

Also, There's a very real risk that Google will belittle links coming from guest posts. There’s too many people guest posting on an industrial-scale and it has footprint.

8. Anchor Text Diversity

The question of Anchor Text Diversity is heavily debated. In the past, experts believed that Anchor Text Optimized Backlinks is the key to dominate in the search rank. Again, Anchor Text Optimized Backlinks doesn’t look Natural Link Profile to user or Google.

Today Anchor Text Diversifying for link is a must. Since Google use Latent semantic indexing, you don't have to worry much about anchor text. Use mix of brand, domain, webmaster name, and keywords as anchor text more often.

Panda actually is less about backlinks, but more about quality and content. I deal with manual penalty removal for my client website, but this is another pair of shoes and has nothing to or with panda or penguin.

Did you receive a manual penalty message within the Google Webmaster Tools? Please leave a comment below.

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