Scammers, black hat marketers, fraudulent tactics, pranksters etc., has unfortunately become part of the SEO industry, for some time. Local search is just as vulnerable, and it is a problem that is exacerbated by the growing complexity of the sector.
According to the Local Search Association (LSA), which is headquartered in the United States, “average, small Digital Marketing Company in Southampton businesses receive 24 sales calls per month from someone trying to sell them advertising or marketing services. In many cases these are sales agents make tall claims or misleading. As a result, business owners do not know which marketing provider they can trust. “
It becomes increasingly difficult for local businesses to understand the intricacies that make up the local SEO, and also for marketers to explain the scope of the work they need to do. Google SEO ranking local factors and algorithms, for example, has grown rapidly over the last few years. Key words, once the main road for marketers to get the client’s website to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs), now a declining practice, quickly replaced with semantics (or mean-based) search. Voice search is booming and is expected to account for 50% of all search queries in 2020. It is a landscape that is constantly shifting, and promise to get clients to the top of the charts is not as easy as it used to be. In many ways this creates more opportunities for small local businesses to be exploited by unethical marketers.
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For the future of the industry, and local search in particular, it is vital that marketers are careful to local ethical SEO practice. Here are some reasons why we believe it is an increasingly important issue, that local businesses need to be aware of …
Google is not the only player
For some time, talking about local SEO generally focused on Google optimization. However, now Bing is greater than ever and with Siri, Cortana, Alexa and Facebook are looking for all the victims of the strong competition, and high rankings in other search engines can be as important as Google.
However, promising to maintain a competitive edge and market presence for clients around the search engine is not realistic. The big players have different standards, algorithms and policy shifts, and what works for one, will not necessarily work for another. It is imperative that marketers make this clear to local businesses and honest about there being no easy fixes.
Voice search is booming and changing SEO
traditional search teaches us to communicate with the search engines in the raw, heavy keyword phrases; far cry from natural speech. But the voice search changing and increasingly moving towards the language and intent-based conversation, involving the right questions and answers.
It is important that local businesses move away from keyword-laden copy, and instead make sure their website combines natural language. So the focus is to write for humans first and search engines second. Since digital assistants often read a hard copy web in response to user requests, it is important that the copy read well, clear and reasonable. This marks a big departure from how local businesses have traditionally been understood SEO, and it is the responsibility of marketers to bring them up to speed.
Critically, local businesses need to be wary of marketers offer an average content. Interestingly, the content is written by using natural language is extremely important at this time, supported by video, audio and images, etc.
Desktop optimization holds little relevance
It is easy for local businesses are still thinking in terms of optimization of desktop when it comes to SEO, and this Digital Marketing Companies Southampton education gap can be tempting for marketers to exploit the less ethical. But the reality is that we have long-ago moved into mobile-first world, where mobile search has far outstripped demand desktop.
