There was a recent update to Google algorithm which totally changes the way local SEOs do business, if you are yet to find out what the changes are, search for any article writing by Columnist Neil Patel where he explained everything you need to know about Google’s Pigeon Update.
This article will explain further the impact of this Pigeon update on the way local SEO do business because lot of marketers are yet to get it right. This may be because of the fact that not only that many marketers are finding the Pigeon update confusing but also it involves changing that long-ingrained local optimization habits that marketers have become accustomed to.
In this article, you are going to learn some of the things that are going to change in the post-Pigeon era of Local SEO. If you have been unaware of how Pigeon updates has changed local SEO in the past couple of months, now is your chance to catch up on what you’ve missed.
Target Neighborhood Searches Instead of Focusing All Your Efforts on City Search Queries
With the Pigeon update, Google has subtly redesigned the way geolocation works. Now instead of cities being identify by the algorithm as single geographical entity, Penguin now reduced and categorized cities into neighborhoods.
With search radius reduction, two things happened, first because of the fact that geographical radii became smaller, there are more neighborhoods. There became a shift in the placement of business in specific neighborhoods. For instance, a local business that was in Neighborhood A before may now find itself in Neighborhood B.
Secondly, some local business rank decreased for their target neighborhood because business ended up in different places following the redrawing of geographical boundaries. Most business find it difficult dealing with this because they believe they’ve been edged out however the fact remains that these businesses needed to retarget their neighborhood and marketing efforts accordingly.
Here is what you should do to be able to compete with the new algorithm changes
Focus your online marketing efforts and search terms on your neighborhood if you are in a larger city.
Avoid changing your business Name, Address, and Phone number. This will do your business more harm than good
Get comfortable on your new neighborhood and capitalize on your presence there once you found out the neighborhood you’re in.
Find out neighborhood synonyms and use it in your online marketing. One neighborhood may have many names, this was part of algorithm updates and you need to incorporate it in your marketing efforts.
Stop Pursuing Indiscriminate Directory Listings. Instead, Optimize Your Directory Placement For The Top-Ranked Directories
The role of business directories have changed with the latest update, no longer will you throw your NAP (name, address and phone number) in every available directory and get an instant rank lift.
Directories are still important for local SEO. But the catch here is that you need to find the valuable ones and avoid those that are not.
How do your find the valuable directories? The trick to finding the valuable directories is simply by finding the directories that are ranking the highest in SERP and try your best to get listed on them.
Here is an example for you. If you have a French restaurant serving French foods in Upper Manhattan area, you search traffic and SERP are more likely to be coming from queries like this one
“French Restaurants Upper Manhattan”
Some of the best directories you need to get listed on include:
Yelp
Open Table
Trip Advisor
Urban Spoon
Avoid Limiting Your Focus Solely on Reviews, NAPs And Directories. Do Content Marketing And Link-Earning
Domain authority, good content and quality backlinks still works. Don’t limit your marketing efforts to just citations, NAP consistency and reviews.
According to Moz’s local search experts, it was estimated that on-page signals constitutes about twenty-one percent of local ranking factors. These on-page signals are made up traditional SEO features like good keywords in the title, your domain authority and quality and highly optimized contents.
By adopting the tried-and-true methods of improving the contents of your page, improving your potentials for earning links and carrying out search optimization practices you can increase the organic results to your website.
Conclusion
The Pigeon updates is meant for local algorithm improvement, however one thing is for sure, it has brought us back to the basic SEO stuff: links. Google also have made a mobile shakeup which is expected to have impact on your business. You cannot ignore the fact that most of the queries nowadays for local businesses are coming from mobile devices. Finally for local website to rank organically, not only do they need to do their local SEO properly they must also make their website responsive and enhanced.
