Dana DiTomaso will be speaking on Local Search at Engage 2018, which will take place March 8th, 2018 in Portland, Oregon. For more information or to purchase tickets, please click here.
1) Please give us your background and let us know what you do for a living.
I’m the President & Partner at Kick Point, a digital marketing agency based in Edmonton. We work with our clients to determine which aspects of digital marketing will help them meet their goals and then train and assist their team in implementing strategies and tactics to get them there.
2) How good is Google at identifying Local Search Intent and how would you recommend that a business position themselves to take advantage of this?
They are getting better all the time. Google’s location tracking is the best signal they have right now. The perfect local intent is when someone Googles what you do (on their phone), taps your listing, gets driving directions, comes to your location, then leaves you a review. Ideally, they’ll visit again and again, giving more weight to the fact that you’re there regularly. For businesses, they need to start asking for reviews and keep in touch with their customers. Don’t be afraid to ask for a review, diversify your review sources (don’t just focus on Google), and have a regular newsletter (weekly/monthly) to keep your business top of mind.
3) Do reviews affect rankings and where is this trending in your opinion?
Absolutely they do. I think they are becoming more important as a factor but not in terms of raw volume — has the reviewer has actually been to your location? Review spam is a huge problem, and what will happen is Google will start to discount reviews from people who haven’t been to the location, or went once and didn’t return again. Mobile location can be faked for that initial review but it’s unlikely that spammers will keep visiting again and again (at least, for now!) to ensure that their reviews will stay relevant. A diversity of review sources is also important — have lots of reviews on lots of different sites.
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.