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Remember last week? We shared local holiday marketing strategies to help your local business clients reach consumers this year. Well, seems we’re not the only ones suggesting that traditional “holiday shopping seasons” might be a thing of the past.
As Kelly Tyko at Axios points out, the big brands like Amazon, Walmart and Best Buy are starting their sales earlier and earlier. Amazon’s Prime Day might have kickstarted the trend, but Target’s seven weeks of Black Friday deals (and similar approaches) signals the intent to change the way consumers view holiday sales.
Before getting to this week’s news, get this… At Advice Local we know how powerful Judy’s Book and our data amplifier network are for a local business, and it sure feels great when someone else writes about it too. Check out what this author had to say when they researched our business listings management solution.
Major Google Announcements Went Down Last Week
As Google has been making some major moves and suggestions, we’re switching-up from our traditional article this week.
Starting off, we have the news that Google is introducing site names for mobile Google Search results. You’ll need to add structured data on your clients’ homepages to identify the site name for a search result.
Moving forward, Webmaster Guidelines will be known as Google Search Essentials. Google is making moves to be more inclusive and make it easier for everyone to understand how to succeed online. They’ve thinned the guidelines down to make it easier for all to understand.
They also announced a new name for Google Data Studio. Back in 2020 Google acquired Looker, the business intelligence platform – and now they have integrated several products under the Looker brand. Henceforth, Google Data Studio will be known as Looker Studio.
If you’re not familiar with using this tool, it can be quite helpful. One of our Advice Local partners uses it to create real-time reports for their clients, bringing in Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Google AdWords data. This is a powerful reporting tool in so many ways.
More on the Google front is a tweet from John Mu. John, a Search Advocate at Google, points out that pinging Google that a sitemap has been updated is a good practice to follow when you want content indexed quickly.
Another individual developed a quick tool that you all can use to ping Google easily. Either way, this is something you may want to consider using for your clients when they publish something relatively important on their website. As a reminder, once it is submitted through Google Search Console, Google does regularly read a website’s sitemap.
Switching gears… Is Google rolling out yet another algorithm update? Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable has seen signs of ranking changes in recent days – and he’s not the only one. Google has really been pushing out a lot of algorithm updates over the last few months, so the release of one more isn’t surprising.
And finally, from Google, YouTube launched handles – unique channel names to make it easier to build a presence on their platform with tagging, mentions and more.
Bing Is Making Moves Too
It seems Bing is trying to get consumers directly engaged in Search with the addition of polls in the knowledge panel. Will it work? Maybe.
But that’s not all Bing is up to. Parent company Microsoft has released an AI image creator. To get early access, you’ll need to sign up.
TikTok is adding a new photo mode feature now. And when video isn’t the best format option, users can add a carousel of images.
But Wait, Here’s More Search News!
Over at Search Engine Land, Dan Toplitt discussed the broadening search landscape that extends beyond Google and the traditional search engines. Now more than ever, you must be active where your target consumers can be found.
Meanwhile, Damian Rollison at Street Fight discussed the growing problem of fake reviews and what can be done about it.
And how much attention do you give to anchor text in your clients’ SEO campaigns? Over at Search Engine Journal, you’ll find a helpful anchor text best practices guide that could make a difference to search visibility.
And if you’re thinking about trying some new digital marketing tools, BrightLocal published a comprehensive list covering just about every category an agency could need.
What about the recent BrightonSEO conference? If you missed attending, you can get the next best thing with this Google spreadsheet that includes links to the presenters’ slides. You can also sign up and watch the presentations for free online if you’d like.
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Advice Local has a range of local presence management tools for agencies and local marketers. Want a simple way to improve your clients’ online visibility? Request a demo online or by calling (214) 310-1356 today.