Does Google PageRank Still Matter in 2018? A Retrospective View in the PageRank History

It was a time when everybody was looking and following various strategies to increase the PageRank score for their websites. PageRank was developed as a way to measure the importance of a website in order to rank it. Google uses the algorithm by counting the number of links and checking their quality. Everybody check PageRank (PR) for their website by using the toolbar and compare their website to others if wanted.

 

While this worked for lots of years, Google removed the PageRank toolbar in 2013, when things started to change, mainly because of the high amount of link spamming.Today we’ll talk about all these changes that surround the Page Rank topic and the link building community, by finding out if it’s still alive or not.

 

 

The question that stands on everybody’s mind is: is PageRank really gone? Matt Cutts gave an accurate answer in 2013, which can be as valuable today as it was back then regarding the need of PageRank.

 

 

He said that they will continue to support it until people will continue using it. My guess is that they took it off from the public sight view because it continued to do more harm than good, but they didn’t really stop using it. They wanted to stop spammers that used PageRank as a way to make illegal money and use artificially inflated links to get high PR. 

 

Let’s dive in and find out what is the official statement and what do experts think about this algorithm update.

 

1. The Renewed Google PageRank Patent Used as a Ranking Algorithm

 

After PageRank was so fashionable, then left alone to disappear into the ‘nothingness’ of the Internet, it was brought back into the sight of the public eye. So, what’s changed? What does this mean for you?

 

As a Google representative says, this update does not change anything for webmasters or SEOs in how their sites show up in Google search.

 

In multiple ways and times, representatives from Google explained that they will continue to use PageRank internally within its ranking algorithm. More than that, Google updated the PageRank algorithm patent. 

 

Confirmed! “Having spoken with @methode it’s clear, #Google is still using the #pagerank algorithm” –@Dixon_Jones laying down the #Backlinks law in our webinar here: https://t.co/Hm8beOyQdC pic.twitter.com/y4WbHNZvEF

— DeepCrawl (@DeepCrawl) November 22, 2017

 

More than that, Google updated the new patent regarding the PageRank. Yes, PageRank is still used in our algorithms, among a number of other signals,” a Google Spokesperson confirmed.

 

Bill Slawski, Google Patent guru, debated the topic in lots of his posts and started a Twitter thread on this after he wrote on his blog about the new Google PageRank Patent update

 

Do You Believe that Google is still using PageRank now that the original patent (and Google’s exclusive license to use it has expired?

— Bill Slawski ⚓ (@bill_slawski) May 8, 2018

 

A few weeks ago Google updated the PageRank patent after they’ve shut down the toolbar, to stop people from focusing on the numbers. Before starting to freak out, which should not be the case, let’s see what was updated in Google’s algorithm.

 

One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that ranks pages on the web based on distances between the pages, wherein the pages are interconnected with links to form a link-graph. More specifically, a set of high-quality seed pages are chosen as references for ranking the pages in the link-graph, and shortest distances from the set of seed pages to each given page in the link-graph are computed.
	Google patent
	Producing a ranking for pages using distances in a web-link graph

 

Moreover, Google explains how the distances of pages attached to the links determine the ranking scores associated with those specific pages.

Each of the shortest distances is obtained by summing lengths of a set of links which follows the shortest path from a seed page to a given page, wherein the length of a given link is assigned to the link based on properties of the link and properties of the page attached to the link. The computed shortest distances are then used to determine the ranking scores of the associated pages.
	Google patent
	Producing a ranking for pages using distances in a web-link graph

 

The link-graph explained in the patent update can be viewed in the image below:

 

 

I know … it looks like the one from the Labyrinth of Crete, the myth of the Minotaur. You’d better hear Bill Slawski talk on the patents.

 

 

Google’s decision to stop people from accessing the PageRank score was very inspired. They continue saying that quality content and natural links are the best choices and that decision must have been taken sooner. People shouldn’t focus on the numbers. It is not something you should follow and can be a hard thing to achieve only by looking and trying absurdly to get links from pages with a high PR. The PageRank Patent update helps them qualify pages based lots of other rank factors.

 

2. The Role Played by Pagerank in Search Engines Results

 

Google PageRank was one of the first algorithms used for “sorting” the search results. Google confirmed it:

The heart of our software is PageRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by our founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. And while we have dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of Google on a daily basis, PageRank continues to play a central role in many of our web search tools.
	Google

PR wasn’t the sole factor in the way web pages were ranked, but it has a high importance in the search engine optimization process. Google used lots of other sophisticated text-matching techniques to show relevant web pages for each search query. The nice part was that everyone could see the PageRank for their web site and for their competitors, as well, by using the Google toolbar PageRank.

 

 

PR enjoyed some years of glory when it was something that everyone was using and following to get high scores. Which eventually will lead to page boost to get featured in the first results of Google search.

 

Inevitable, every good thing at some point is used for bad purposes. The same thing happened with Google PR. Spammers artificially inflated the backlink profile just for the sake of having lots of links on domains with high PR. The problems appeared when some people focused on getting a large number of high PR pages with few effort without realizing it is not enough. They avoided content and lots of other ranking factors which had a great importance as well.

 

Spammers started selling and promising PageRank boost. The blame fell on the PageRank (and on the so-called experts) for lots of things: spammy emails asking for links, trashy comments with links, forums filled with shady links.

 

The PR has begun to decline when Google launched Chrome with the possibility to search from the address bar built-in (see the picture below). You could search directly in the address bar and even if you wanted to get the Google toolbar, which was irrelevant at this point, you couldn’t because Google never released a version for Chrome.

 

 

Besides the selling and buying business for links with high PR, it seems that multiples websites experienced PageRank loss because of the switch from HTTP to HTTPS. Some site owners refer to it, and since there was nothing to restore it, they basically gave up on PR.

 

3. Google Shut down the Pagerank Toolbar. Why & How This Impacted SEO

 

After the launch of Chrome, when Google began to lose the attention on PageRank, other browser dropped the support for it. Firefox in 2011, Google removed it in 2016, and they have been officially closed it down from Internet Explorer, too.

 

@szymonslowik @methode @rustybrick Yes, it’s true. https://t.co/5iohiJ6wjQ has some comments from us. Do you use the toolbar?

— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) March 9, 2016

 

Some wanted to keep using it, while others were expecting Google to do this sooner especially after John Mueller’s announcement that they stopped updating the PageRank scores. He was asked in one Google Hangout why there are so many PR6 sites that are spammy and are getting away with it, even if he reported the problem various times in over one year.

 

 

At 19:00 you can check the whole conversation and John Mueller’s response:

 

There are a few things where we do take action that you might not see directly. Toolbar PageRank is something that we have not updated for about a year now, and we’re probably not going to be updating it going forward.
	John Mueller
	Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google

 

That being said, he gave another reason why Google PR toolbar died, slowly but inevitably. Even if Google removed the toolbar scores from the public view, the marks of those who changed the web will remain. Unfortunately, black hat SEO hurt you, the internet and everyone else.

 

Retiring the PageRank display from Toolbar helps avoid confusing users and webmasters about the significance of the metric.

 

The SEM Post had a talk with a Google spokesperson regarding their decision to remove PageRank from Google Toolbar and they confirmed it is was related to the final user:

 

As the Internet and our understanding of the Internet have grown in complexity, the Toolbar PageRank score has become less useful to users as a single isolated metric. Retiring the PageRank display from Toolbar helps to avoid confusing users and webmasters about the significance of the metric.
	Google

 

You shouldn’t believe everything you are told in a blink of an eye. It wouldn’t hurt you to take things with a grain of salt.

 

Conclusion

 

Long story short, the long debate regarding Google PageRank patent should be taken into consideration, but people shouldn’t freak out about it. Search engine optimization will work as it did until now and rankings won’t be shaken up by this update.

 

Google PageRank update isn’t something scary. It was an algorithm update; something that needed to be done. The PageRank wasn’t updated for a long time. If you did your job right, then nothing is going to change for you. What everybody should remember is to focus on quality links, since they always worked and always will be in style. 

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Original Research Content: How To Convince Your Boss To Create Marketing Gold

Create original research content marketing to support brand and drive sales. Shows data to make business case. Includes content marketing tips.

 

The post Original Research Content: How To Convince Your Boss To Create Marketing Gold appeared first on Heidi Cohen.

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Google’s “Mentioned on Wikipedia” Rich Snippets. Can You Promote Yourself on Wikipedia?

Wikipedia is one of the most (if not THE most) authoritative sources on the internet. With an average of 8 billion pageviews every single month and over 6 million articles posted only in the English version of the colossus, Wikipedia claims its well deserved spot as the 5th most visited website of the planet.

 

Yet, it does not serve any ads to its users. How is this possible? Every other site you visit on a daily basis probably runs ads to survive. How come the 5th most visited site in the world doesn’t? Can it survive solely on donations?

 

And… is there any way you can promote yourself on Wikipedia, even if it’s forbidden? Let’s find out.

 

 

1. 5 Workarounds for Promoting Yourself on Wikipedia
   1. Marketing Play
   2. Conflict of Interests
   3. Getting Links from Wikipedia for SEO
   4. Paying Editors to Write or Edit
   5. Google’s ‘Mentioned on Wikipedia’ Rich Snippets
2. Why Doesn’t Wikipedia Serve Ads?
3. How Does Wikipedia Survive?
4. Donation Controversy
5. Contributors Number Going Down

 

5 Workarounds for Promoting Yourself on Wikipedia

 

Even though there might be no way to directly advertise on Wikipedia, there are clearly ways you can get your brand or message on it. However, self promotion in a very… promotional manner is prohibited. For example, autobiography is not recommended as it cannot be truly objective. In fact, nobody close to you should actually write about you, your company or your products. You can still do it, though. But the risk of it being rejected is high.

 

But as long as you stick with the community’s standards, you’re definitely good to go. Before we get to the actual things you can do, I’ll share a couple of old stories with you regarding online advertising and Wikipedia.

 

1. Marketing Play

 

The famous tire manufacturer Pirelli used it to boast about its advertising prowess, some time ago. Their technique, according to the ad, was to “doctor” Wikipedia articles in a somewhat novel way: by replacing the pictures previously used to illustrate certain Pirelli and tire-related articles with higher-quality images but with a twist. In their own words, what was characteristic of the new images was that “the Pirelli brand appeared on every single image in a super contextual way, turning the image into a powerful ad placement.”

 

What Pirelli did was to “improve” Wikipedia articles about the brand with high-quality images from their own bank which had the brand name visible in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. While some images only had the brand name visible on tires (not very in-your-face), others were much more obvious, having Pirelli banners at the center and race cars barely in the background. The idea apparently came from advertising agency Havas Digital. Regardless where it came from, it caused quite a stir.

 

However, hold on your hats, ‘couse it was all fake!

 

Wikipedia’s reaction  was swift and decided that it was all a fake. All changes are carefully and closely tracked by a fierce team of Wikipedia editors. If you’re a brand, that goes double for you. So what were the chances for Pirelli to deploy those changes long enough so that they’d get to capture them for the tire company’s ad? Planting images would ring as big an alarm bell as planting words or links. Administrators of the online crowdsourced encyclopedia were quick to set the record straight and emphasize that their photographs policies are very clear and favor Wikimedia Commons content over proprietary content, even when image quality might be higher for the latter.

 

There were even people who checked and confirmed at the time that no attempts had been made to change photos on the advertised articles . Perhaps somewhow ironically (depending on your definition of the word), Pirelli didn’t catch that boat even after the incident: there is no mention about this incident on the Wikipedia page for Pirelli, or anywhere else in the encyclopedia, for that matter. But despite that and the fact that Pirelli itself later admitted to it all being a fake and carried out as a guerilla marketing stunt, the idea of “cracking” Wikipedia was planted in the minds of marketers everywhere.

 

 

The video was removed from Pirelli Brazil’s Youtube channel , yet copies of the video continued to create uproar. Ralph Traviati, the company’s spoke person stated that the video produced by Harvas was only a demonstration of an initiative that was never implemented. Yet, knowing Wikipedia’s policy towards advertising, why would anyone try to have such an initiative? However, the PR did their part well and some reactions were spawned on Twitter as well, as you can see in the screenshot above.

 

If you care about your time, don’t waste it on trying to do anything like that. It will get flagged and removed quickly. There are over 100.000 active users and over 1000 admins ready to ban your account and IP. Pirelli was successful in this because it got some coverage in the media. Fake news isn’t very appreciated, however the marketing play above isn’t something people will necessarily dislike.

 

2. Conflict of Interests

 

A perhaps even bigger scandal developed in the fall of 2012 and involved accusations of product placement on Wikipedia. What happened was that the Did You Know (DYK) section on Wikipedia was seemingly assaulted by articles about Gibraltar. Sure, it’s an interesting territory, but to appear 17 times in the DYK section in a single month is a feat that borders the unbelievable. Mostly because it is hard to believe that it would pop up “randomly” so many times in a single month (all 17 times happened in August 2012).

 

So how did a territory of only 2.6 square miles make rounds on Wikipedia’s front page more times than any other subject (bar the Olympics)?

 

It turns out that these articles were all promoted by Wiki gatekeeper Roger Bamkin, who, incidentally, also happened to have a contract with the government of Gibraltar to publicize the territory on the online encyclopedia. Of course, most Wikipedia editors and board members have other daily jobs, but they’re not supposed to act on them while working for and on Wikipedia. But even though Bamkin’s actions were intuitively wrong, they were in a somewhat gray area: after all, he didn’t go and edit the articles in Gibraltar’s favor (a much more serious offense), he just gave them a gentle push to the front section.

 

 

This gray area caused quite a stir among Wikipedia’s editors, with reactions ranging from disinterested to heated and everything in between. Some users even proposed the banning of the involved users. Wikipedia owner Jimmy Wales even came out and declared himself “disgusted” about the situation and requested a five-year ban on the perpetrators. Despite Wales’ attempts at dealing with the situation, things did not get better.

 

Just months after the original scandal, once the media agitation died out, Gibraltar came back strong in the DYK section.

 

So why nothing happened at the time? To put it simply, it’s because Jimmy Wales may be the owner, but he’s not the boss. In fact, there is no boss.

That is the beauty but also the problem with crowd-sourced initiatives: they work at a price. And the price is that sometimes there is no conclusion following a dispute.

To us, Jimmy Wales’ idea about the five-year ban might sound reasonable, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to sound the same to the people who are actually doing the work. The talks involving “Gibraltarpedia” on the Wiki talk pages seem never-ending, and opinions about the five-year ban range from “a bit excessive” to “a flat-out terrible idea”. And these are not users who are happy about the Gibraltar scandal (or at least they don’t seem to be), but rather users who seem to genuinely think about the impact of such a measure in the long run.

 

We invite you to take a look at the screenshot below and judge for yourself weather the Gibraltarpedia follows the rules imposed by Wikipedia itself. Not exactly, huh?

 

This trick can actually be used if you create a new page on Wikipedia. If you nominate your article it can appear on the HomePage of Wikipedia which could generate a significant amount of traffic. However, certain criteria must be met, like the article not being older than 5 days.

 

3. Getting Links from Wikipedia for SEO

 

SEO is also a form of marketing, so getting editors to link to you will help you, one way or another. The links might result in direct traffic or ranking boosts.

 

I’m sure you’re going to say something about all the links being nofollow, but I can counter that. Nofollow links can actually help you rank better. So if you can get relevant nofollow links, don’t hesitate to do it. Especially from such a highly authoritative source like Wikipedia.

 

However, creating an entire article requires a significant amount of knowledge. It’s not as easy as editing one. You also have to respect all Wikimedia’s fair use guidelines, otherwise you risk working hours for nothing.

 

You can start creating by using Wikipedia’s Article Wizard. It’s a good idea to first start with some edits, then work your way up to modifying sections or creating articles from scratch. Wikipedia likes interlinking between its own pages, so make sure you do some of those. Then, you can even start using your own articles/content as sources. A popular method is the broken link building method.

 

If you’re looking for topics to write about, you can check out the requested articles list. You can in fact list your own article there to request another editor to write it. However, it might take years if not forever for someone to pick it up, as the list is huge and, as I said, the number of contributors is dropping.

 

4. Paying Editors to Write or Edit

 

A quick hack into getting listed on Wikipedia or even getting a link might be paying a contributor to write your article or edit an existing one. However, this is easier said than done, as contributors that are paid must disclose this on their profile.

 

This is pretty much the same story as with SEO paid links. You must disclose the payment through the ‘nofollow’ tag.

 

You’ll probably find many ‘contributors’ there willing to do this for you. However, they’re basically doing what you would do. Create a fake account, post or modify something, write it poorly, not disclose it and then get banned.

 

Instead, stick to either the Reward Board, where you can ask existing editors to make some changes or work for you (considering it respects the guidelines, of course) in exchange for a financial reward.

 

Another way is to rely on professional teams from PR and advertising agencies like Ahn & Co. or EthicalWiki. They both provide guideline compliant Wikipedia writing services and even offer money-back guarantees against deletion. But one thing’s clear: they will be unbiased, so if you did something significantly wrong, it will probably be there. Even if they don’t add it, other editors will.

 

5. Google’s ‘Mentioned on Wikipedia’ Rich Snippets

 

One cool side effect of being listed on Wikipedia is the increased chance of being listed into Google’s Rich Results Snippets.

 

source: thesempost.com

 

Although suspected to be from WikiPedia, we wouldn’t truly know where the info was coming from unless Google revealed it after multiple complaints from users. The message “Mentioned on Wikipedia” solves the mystery. Thanks to Wikipedia’s well implemented structured data, Google is able to display the magic carousel.

 

But how can you get there? Well… the first step is to obviously get your brand listed. If it isn’t there, make sure you get there. You should also be listed in the appropriate category page. You can either do it yourself or hire someone to do it for you. Just be careful who you pick.

 

After that, there’s not much you can do to influence the order of these brands. I don’t know for sure, but it seems like the very popular ones are also the first to show. These snippets don’t even trigger everywhere. I couldn’t get a single one to trigger on my side, for example. Maybe Google’s just testing out.

 

One smart thing to do would be to follow the framework of a company that’s already listed. If they’ve done it, then it means that they’re doing something right. For example, the first brand from the example above has a very small and incomplete page. They even get some yellow flags, regarding promotional content, which Wikipedia clearly states:

 

 

Purina’s page is definitely more detailed and lacking any warnings, but Google doesn’t really seem to care about that. As long as it’s listed in the appropriate category, it can get displayed first.

 

It seems like Google has a preference for snatching content off Wikipedia to display it in its snippets. If you can get it right and list your content in the right place, you might benefit from being listed number 0 on Google.

 

Why Doesn’t Wikipedia Serve Ads?

 

There are many reasons why Wikipedia does not serve ads to its users. All of them combined, make a pretty strong case. Wikipedia’s purpose is to be a source of education for everyone.

 

We all hate ads. As marketers, we accept them, but deep down inside our hearts, we don’t like them. Running ads on Wikipedia would affect user experience and, more importantly, would create conflicts of interest. Wikipedia is also open source. This means everyone can contribute. Contributors heavily oppose advertising, so running them might cause contributors to leave.

 

A full list of reasons against advertising on Wikipedia can be viewed here. You can, of course, find pro-advertising reasons as well. However, Wikipedia has been doing just fine without them, so far. We’ll talk about this in a bit.

 

If you do, however, see advertising on Wikipedia that references something else except Wikipedia itself, then you’re most probably infected with adware or malware.

 

source: Wikimedia blog

 

In order to protect yourself, use an anti-virus or anti-malware software to clean your computer. Malwarebytes is a good option, both free and paid. You can also check your browser for unwanted extensions that might cause the issue.

 

If you see an ad on Wikipedia, it’s probably a virus.

 

A virus that only shows ads is called an adware. In general, it’s harmless and acts pretty much as an affiliate link, generating some revenue for someone. However, you should clean it as soon as possible, because it can also be a malware, sending you into a rabbit hole and infect your entire network.

 

All things considered…

 

Wikipedia doesn’t allow and probably never will allow advertising. In other words, a brand can’t advertise there in a traditional way.

 

How Does Wikipedia Survive?

 

Before we get to those workarounds, though, let’s see how Wikipedia has survived so far with no ads at all. Wikipedia survives on donations from its users. This is easier said than done, as donation-based foundations at this scale are very hard to run.

 

The key term here is value. Since Wikipedia offers a lot of value to all of its users, they’re eager to help. This trust has been built in years of hard work, as Wikipedia wasn’t always all this big and didn’t have such a high amount of readers or donors.

 

If you’re not familiar with it, Wikipedia periodically displays fundraising banners to ask readers for donations. They take different forms. Here’s just one example:

 

 

Even I donate to Wikipedia from time to time. At first, I didn’t like it. It looked just like a beggar asking me for money on the street. However, I gave it some second thoughts when I searched it for an answer on my smartphone, during an exam at school (don’t tell anyone).

 

Since Wikipedia has so many users, it only needs 1% of them to donate an average of $5 to achieve it’s goal of about $50 million. After all… it’s just the price of a cup of coffee.

 

 

Wikimedia’s fundraising campaigns results are made public and you can actually learn some things from them, because they’re very smart. For example, A/B testing and adding a few lines in the sales copy of the fundraising campaign added a gain of 29% to the number of donations in the U.S.

 

source: wikimediafoundation.org

 

But free stuff isn’t enough. Even with no ads, 99.9% of the time people are still unhappy, pointing the irony of Wikipedia’s fundraising banner by saying “”Wikipedia Runs Ads Highlighting Their No-Ad Policy”.

 

Source: techcrunch.com

 

However, that’s Wikipedia’s least problem, as media can get pretty harsh when it comes to money coming from donations.

 

Donation Controversy

 

In the past few years, Wikipedia has expanded dramatically in terms of servers, staff and fundraising efforts. So much so that in the last couple of years they have well exceeded the needed amount to sustain the website for the year to come.

 

People have been asking where all this money goes and it’s a fair question. But Wikipedia has been attacked by numerous sources, claiming that they don’t actually need that much money and that they’ve been still asking for more. People have complained about staff travelling to pop concerts to take photos and for allocating $80,000 for a study on editing.

 

The truth is that The Wikimedia Foundation, responsible for Wikipedia and many other websites actually does a great job at handling the money, with a very high score from Charity Navigator. While the expenses are lower than the donations, it’s not uncommon for non-profit organizations to keep up money in a reserve, for unpleasant situations.

 

source: businessinsider.com

 

Now… if you’re so bothered that some employees will go to a couple of concerts off your $5 so you can happily cheat on your exams, then don’t donate. But, in my opinion, a donation based, non-profit organization doesn’t mean that the work there shouldn’t be fun. Do you expect anyone to sacrifice his days so you can know when XYZ was born?

 

And to question the necessity of an editing study really proves people have no idea what’s going on…

 

Contributors Number Going Down

 

Wikipedia is on a shortage of editors. It’s not easy to find volunteers to do this work. However, it has been working fine like this for a long time. People are still helping.

 

However, they’ve always been complaining about one thing. It’s confusing to edit. Editing can be complicated for newbies. Most readers don’t even have an idea that they can edit. So how can you make it easier for users to edit? How do you know what they like and what they don’t? What’s confusing and what’s not?

 

Well… you know, you might as well start off by conducting a study… Funded by donations… for a good reason.

 

Another thing people suggest is that Wikipedia makes a lot of money, while the hard working editors don’t. However, paying editors directly would mean that the project isn’t open source anymore. How would you differentiate between them? Which ones would have more power? Would they write objectively anymore? The only true way of Wikipedia working right is if it uses volunteer editors.

 

 

Paying contributors would result in conflicts of interest and would go against the foundation’s core values. Also, keep in mind that contributors are against running ads, which probably means they’re only doing this because they want to. The reasons why the number of contributors is going down are completely different and can go from difficult user interface to shortage of interesting topics or even conflicts with other contributors (such as deletionists).

 

Conclusion

 

Even though there isn’t a direct way to advertise on Wikipedia, there are other subtle ways you can get your name or brand out there. The best way to do it would be to actually contribute to Wikipedia. As long as your source is accurate, nobody will actually mind you placing a link. In fact, nobody will ever know it’s you. This, of course, unless you keep doing it a million times.

 

If you only edit one topic and always link to the same website it will be very obvious and someone will eventually put you down. Best thing to do is to actually stick to the rules. While it might not bring direct sales, having your name listed on Wikipedia is good for long term brand management.

 

What do you think of Wikipedia? Have you donated? Would you accept ads on it rather than donations? Have you ever built Wikipedia links to your website? How did that go? Let us know in the comments section, we’re very curious!

The post Google’s “Mentioned on Wikipedia” Rich Snippets. Can You Promote Yourself on Wikipedia? appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

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Activate Your Agile Career – Book Interview

Whether you work in a corporation or are an entrepreneur with your own business, your job is subject to change. In Activate Your Agile Career, Marti Konstant presents an agile approach to career development and gives you the tools to navigate the work terrain in a flexible manner will enhance the lives of individuals and employers.

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Four ways to spice up your social media strategy

Following the latest Facebook algorithm update on 11th January, when Mark Zuckerberg refreshed the News Feed algorithm to de-prioritise content shared by media and businesses in favour of that of friends and family, it is more crucial than ever for a successful social strategy to include genuinely engaging, relevant and high-quality content. This update means […]

The post Four ways to spice up your social media strategy appeared first on Builtvisible.

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11 Local SEO Myths Debunked Once and For All

Local SEO myths – what a tangled topic to discuss. You might get caught on the subject and start feeling intimidated thinking of the high amount of work you must do to rank in local SEO. Which, obviously, is unreal. Don’t get us wrong: it’s difficult indeed, but far from impossible. 

 

In the local SEO area there are always new things to discover that can help your business get new customers, improve your visibility and get more local searches. Let’s bury all the local SEO myths and misleading strategies. Today, we’ll get this topic straight once and for all.

 

 

We’ll catch upon the top local SEO myths that must disappear forever because they can get your website flushed down. 11 is my lucky number and what better way to save your website than using the right amount of information, following instructions and taking advantage of a bit of luck?

 

1. Claiming Your Website in Google Is a Surefire Way to Boost Your SEO
2. Google Displays All the Information from GMB Dashboard
3. Deleting Your Listing in Google My Business Will Remove It from Google
4. You Don’t Need Backlinks If You Have Citations
5. Citation Won’t Help Your Business in Any Way
6. Nobody Reads Reviews Anymore
7. Lots of Google+ Posts and Followers Will Improve My Rankings
8. Content Is Good Only for Organic Search and Not Local Search
9. Optimizing for Location Keywords Will Skyrocket Your Ranks in Local Search
10. Meta Descriptions Are Important for Ranking
11. Social Media is Useless for Local SEO

 

I really wish these myths died, not just for local SEO but also for SEO in general. We’ll make the first steps now, by taking them into consideration and learn the right way to do local SEO.

 

Researchers showed that people search for local businesses online. 97% of consumers looked online for local businesses in 2017, with 12% looking for a local business online every day says a report from BrightLocal.

 

1. Claiming Your Website in Google Is a Surefire Way to Boost Your SEO

 

Claiming your website in GoogleMyBusiness can bring lots of benefits. But, on the other hand, it is misleading to say that claiming your website in GMB can skyrocket your local rankings. This action has lots of other benefits. It can not assure you high rankings.

 

What it can do instead, is generate traffic to your site and social accounts, target local clients to your offline location, get higher visibility on Google search and maps.

 

Listing your business in Google can help you increase your local rankings, but there are lots of other steps you need to take to say it will definitely bring a higher position. Google’s guidelines explicitly tell you what you need to do in order to help your website rank in local search, but that is not a guaranty if you don’t do it right.

 

One of the most important aspects to keep in mind is to keep improved information about your business and have:

 

• Accurate business information regarding NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number);
• Updated working hours (make sure you select the dates when your office is closed, such as national days or celebrations);
• Correct coordinates to your location;
• True pictures of your product and services;
• Responses to your reviews to show to your clients you value their opinions and want to build a relationship.

 

In the era when everybody stays with the mobile phone in their hand, it is stupid not to take advantage of that behavior and get your store into users’ attention by claiming your website in GMB.

 

Imagine you go to Madrid, you visited Santiago Bernabeu and what to eat something. It’s your first time in the city, don’t know much, you speak a different language. How do you find a place? By foot, it could be tricky and difficult because you don’t know which way to go.

 

At that moment you can search on maps “restaurants near you”. The easiest and most effective way to find a place where you could eat. You can get lots of recommendations:

 

 

Look on that list and find the restaurants pinned on the map to get an idea of their location. Then choose the one you like, see distance, see opening hours and then get directions:

 

 

The bottom line is that claiming your website in Google is not a surefire way to boost your SEO. Besides claiming it, you have a lot of information that you need to add and there are a lot of factors that can influence the local rankings.

 

Listing your business in Google can bring you lots of other benefits, such as targeting local clients offline and generating organic traffic to your online website and social media accounts, increasing visibility on Google search and maps, building trustful relationships, creating awareness, and so much more.

 

Google’s documentation explains that there is a possibility to improve your local rankings but IF and ONLY IF you follow the recommendations expressed there. Relevance, distance, and prominence are the factors Google uses in this case. There isn’t a 100% guarantee that even if you follow them you could skyrocket your rankings. Nothing can give you that assurance.

 

2. Google Displays All the Information from GMB Dashboard

 

Business owners have the option to add a lot of information and whatever they want in GMB, starting with contact information, pictures, posts, and so on. Below you can see how the dashboard looks like for an account and what sort of data you can put there.

 

 

You might think that Google displays all the information you add to Google My Business, but that’s not entirely true. Let’s demystify this myth: Google displays whatever information from GMB dashboard. Moreover, there were multiple situations when business owners complained online that their business hours were changed.

 

That happened because Google collects information about a listing from multiple sources. Google verifies the listings from GMB and gathers data from the business website, the edits made on Google maps and lots of other third-party sources. In the situation below, the verification team from Google wasn’t able to properly read the business hours listed on the business website.

 

And on top of all, there is the option that somebody else edited your listing. Now, anyone can edit a listing and it doesn’t even have to be registered. Even the competitors can edit your listing, but that doesn’t mean it will necessarily be approved if Google sees it is not relevant.

 

 

3. Deleting Your Listing in Google My Business Will Remove It from Google

 

Another myth that started to grow is believing that if you delete your listing in GMB it will remove it from Google, too. This started by the time duplicates began to appear. Since there are duplicate listings, it is only natural for business owners to get rid of them.

 

Below you can see an example of a duplicate listing.

 

 

They both have the same address, one of them has contact information and photos, while the other has nothing. The explanation, in this case, is simple. At this specific address was Artis Boutique, then they moved and another florist took its place: Fleur Boutique. 

 

 

As you can see, the first listing is not verified, it doesn’t have an owner because you can see the message: Claim this business. The common practice when finding a duplicate listing is for the owner to claim it and then delete it. The fact is that if you want to delete a listing, you get a misleading message:

 

 

The message says that it will delete all the photos and videos and every piece of content there is about that listing on Google Maps. What will actually happen is making that listing unverified. The problem started with this spooky message, and people thought that if you delete your listing in GMB it will automatically and irreversibly delete it from Google as well. *myth alert*  

 

If you chose to delete your listing from GMB, it will continue to exist in Google maps and can rank, but only if you no longer want to manage it.

 

4. You Don’t Need Backlinks If You Have Citations

 

Citations are mentions of your company’s NAP (name, address, and phone). There are people who say and think you don’t need backlinks if you have citations or that if you have too many citations is enough. Thousands of opinions exist upon the fact that citations are the most valuable factor for ranking locally.

 

A lot of people focus mostly on citations instead of links. That’s why you see lots directories cluttered with a bunch of lists of businesses. Lots of people preach NAP consistency in a wrong way and then end up asking why aren’t they ranking locally.

 

 

Spoiler alert: Yellow pages are no longer a hit!

 

If your strategy focuses more on citations instead of links, you can’t build authority for your website. Citations are important for your business, but so are the backlinks.

 

Arguably, an even more relevant aspect is the top 3 rankings factors in Google. Let’s all remember them: content, links, and RankBrain so links must be important in the local ranking too, besides relevance and other local search ranking factors mentioned before, such as relevance, distance, and prominence.

 

Garry Grant, founder at SEOinc explains the importance of links in organic ranking:

 

Linking has always been one of, if not the biggest ranking factor when it comes to organic search results. Having authoritative and high domain authority links increase a sites backlink profile/authority and provide huge ranking benefit, especially if the referring domains are directly relevant to the product or service.
	Garry Grant
	Founder of SEOinc

So, let’s all agree that citation has so little to do with local rankings now, that you shouldn’t focus your strategy entirely on it. By building hundreds of citations without bringing any value through your content and building high domain authority you won’t rank high in SERP.

 

5. Citation Won’t Help Your Business in Any Way

 

On the other side, there are those people who think citations won’t help their business in local SEO and can’t boost the rankings in search engines. If you want to get lots of calls, if that is an important goals for your business, then and only then you can use citations more often.

 

Steve Napier, a freelance SEO consultant, explains the value brought by citations and how Google uses them in future verification processes:

 

Google uses citations to verify the accuracy of the contact details in their local business listings too, as listing addresses or phone numbers which are out of date, incorrect or falsified, looks bad on them and causes people to question the reliability of their search results.
	Steve Napier
	Freelance SEO consultant at SEOmark

 

Citations might not bring so much traffic to your website, but it can drive visibility to your business. For example, if you have a new business, people will find value in the fact you are listed on multiple sites and you exist online and can track you easily.

 

Darren Shaw, Founder of Whitespark, points out very well the process of using citations in your local SEO strategy:

 

Citations are considered part of the foundational basics when it comes to local search. Once you have completed your citations you can move on to other areas like link building, engagement, content creation, and reputation management.
	Darren Shaw
	Founder of Whitespark

 

6. Nobody Reads Reviews Anymore

 

If you managed to stay with us until now, I must reward your patience and your curiosity with another myth that started to be trusted by lots of people. It goes something like this: nobody reads reviews anymore, they can’t be trusted and there are lots of subjective opinions. That’s not entirely true and I’ll start with a few studies to help you understand the role of business and product reviews.

 

Previously, researchers have shown that people read reviews and on top of that, they trust them. 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations according to a study by BrightLocal.

 

Source: brightlocal.com

 

Reputation is a strong indicator for helping clients to chose a local business. 93% of consumers read local reviews to decide if a business is good or not, which means only 7% doesn’t. That is a percentage you can’t avoid. All these researchers make it easier for us to debunk the myth.

 

In 2017, LocalSEO Guide performed a research with the University of California, Irvine, and PlacesScout and analyzed lots of rankings factors in local search. It turns out that reviews are an explicit ranking factor and Google confirmed it.

 

Reviews are obviously a driving factor of ranking in Google My Business pack results – Local SEO Guide.

 

Also, reviews can make it easier for clients to find you, but that only half of the battle, as Marcus Miller, the founder of Bowlerhat, points out.

 

When we consider a page of search engine results there will be 20 or so other businesses listed on that page. So the consumer has plenty of options. The key to winning the online marketing battle is to consider not only visibility through SEO, PPC or other digital marketing but to also consider reputation typically through online reviews, case studies and testimonials.
	Marcus Miller
	Founder of Bowlerhat

People are still reading reviews and he explains the benefits of having business reviews:

You should always make your business the obvious choice. Have more reviews. And have the best reviews. Then, when a prospect is comparing you to several other potential suppliers you are already the favorite before you begin your engagement. And there are other benefits to having great reviews including being able to charge a good price for your services rather than simply having to compete on price.
	Marcus Miller
	Founder of Bowlerhat

 

As the results showed and experts pointed numerous times, reviews have a high correlation with local rankings. And besides that, a positive impact towards conversions, buying decisions, online reputation.

 

7. Lots of Google+ Posts and Followers Will Improve My Rankings

 

We all heard this rumor once and started following it, foolishly: if you publish lots of Google posts and you have a large number of followers, it will definitely improve your local rankings. Don’t get yourself fooled. We only trust the results. So, that being said, let me tell what I’ve discovered over the years.

 

In our day to day business we’ve searched for lots of things. For the sake of our experiment, we searched on Google for a bunch of famous brands with and without the location next to it and we didn’t even find the Google plus account in the results.

 

Let’a take National Geographic, for example. The Google+ page has 15.840 followers. That’s a lot, right? Well, if we search for the exact brand name on Google, we won’t find the page amongst the results. Which is weird, because all the other social accounts are there (Youtube, Facebook, Twitter).

 

 

The interesting part though is the fact that the Google plus icon is on the Google search right side business information box.

 

We’ve replicated the same procedure on google.com for lots of other brands, such as Coca-Cola, Mcdonals (New York), Mercedes Benz (Kansas City) and also cognitiveSEO, of course. For some of them, we didn’t even see the icon on the right snippet box, as represented in the picture above.

 

Some time ago, if you performed a search for a brand name, the Google + account appeared in organic results and even on local results. That has changed in the meantime and, on top of that, Google doesn’t include a link to your G+ in the local pack. For the moment, you have the option to merge GoogleMyBusiness with your account to avoid duplicating G+ accounts.

 

So what’s the point of having lots of posts if not even your brand name appears in the results?!

 

Bottom line, if you have lots of Google+ posts and followers, most probably you won’t improve your search engine rankings. But that doesn’t mean it is irrelevant to have a Google + page. On the contrary, by having a popular and active G+ account, you can improve your social visibility. You can optimize your presence online.

 

Having a Google + business page will complement your brand, by offering a complete profile and making it trustful to leads, local customers, and loyal clients.

 

8. Content Is Good Only for Organic Search and Not Local Search

 

I’ve heard this a couple of times and I forced myself to think that people who said that were joking and didn’t believe it. But they were serious. I don’t know who started this myth, but I got to tell they did a pretty good job (not) making people think content is good only for organic search and not local search. My questions on the matter: Why would things be different? And why content is not good for local search?!

 

I mentioned before, and I will do it again: content is a ranking factor in Google, therefore content is good, not to mention highly valuable for organic search AND for local search as well. Myth debunked! 

 

Quality content will always be appreciated, especially if you describe your store and where can people find it, the products or services they can find at your location and lots of other local information. Content marketers should know better what I’m talking about. 

 

Due to the increasingly localized nature of search results, it’s important that your content sends the right signals to search engines and human users to let them know that your website is relevant to them within their specific geographic area.
	Chris Reid
	Business Development Manager at Constant Content

 

9. Optimizing for Location Keywords Will Skyrocket Your Ranks in Local Search

 

Location keywords can be helpful if you know how to use them, but nothing will skyrocket your local rankings if your location doesn’t have engagement or prominence, which are two major local ranking factors.

 

Now that you understood the idea, let me tell you how you could use local keywords optimization to your advantage to send the right signals. It starts the moment you perform keyword research. You can either select a keyword that has the name of the location in it or doesn’t. There are tools, such as Keyword tool and Content Assistant that can be extremely helpful in your content optimization process. 

 

Let me give you an example. You want to optimize your content for real estate school and your business is located in Chicago. In this particular situation, you have two options:

• If you want to target only the people in Chicago and not other cities in Illinois, my recommendation would be to choose the “real estate school” and set the local tracking.
• In case you want to target other cities besides Chicago, you should choose the option to track “real estate school in Chicago”.

 

 

But a better choice would be to optimize your content for multiple keywords. In this case, it is quite simple because your case chose the first keyword:  “real estate school” and the second one “real estate school in Chicago”, to have a better chance to rank on a higher geographical area. 

 

10. Meta Descriptions Are Important for Ranking

 

There was a time when SEO meant focus keywords in the title, URL, content, meta descriptions, and alt descriptions, but SEO has evolved since then. Now there are lots of other factors that are important. Not to mention that local SEO has gained more value and influenced a lot more rankings. If somebody from New Jersey could see a top 10 pages for dog food, somebody else from Dubai could see an entirely different top 10 pages for the same query.

 

You can write whatever you want in your meta description, it doesn’t influence your local ranking, that’s because Google will choose from your content what is relevant for a query and not specifically what you wrote.

 

Let’s take the next example. We have an article that is called: How to Identify Influencers Within a Niche, which is optimized for multiple keyword formations.

 

First, we searched for “how to identify influencers” and you can see below the meta description for this query:

 

 

Secondly, we searched for “niche influencers” and we got different results:

 

 

The interesting part of this experiment is that neither of these two meta descriptions was the one we had written. This is the original snippet:

Finding who is influential is crucial for promotion in any content publishing strategy.

 

Long story short, meta descriptions don’t matter so much for ranking locally or more, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use them. Well-written meta descriptions can have a high influence on a page and can increase conversions.

 

11. Social Media is Useless for Local SEO

 

This myth started to gain more weight over the time, to my despair. I am guessing it was started by people who don’t use Social Media personally, don’t know or understand the value of it. If you’re not using Social Media, then you are missing out lots of opportunities for your business. Being active and having a social account shows to your audience the “human” part of your business.

 

We’ve talked multiples times regarding the social signals influence on SEO and we say every time that a strong presence on social networks is correlated with better rankings. This basically debunks the myth and tells everyone that an active profile on social media can positively influence your business on a local side for sure.

 

 

You must be careful what you post, the frequency; create engagement by responding to comments; follow other pages and create a relationship with other brands; make sponsored ads to boost visibility.  

 

For new ideas, you can look at your top competitors and see what type of posts they have on each social account and which get the higher traction. cognitiveSEO has a module named Social Visibility, where you can compare your website with other competitors and see their best-performing social networks and which content is more engaging. 

 

 

Conclusion

 

There are so many misconceptions over the internet with lots of opinions floating around the local SEO topic, that my head started spinning. I saw there’s a problem regarding this topic and thought of making a list of all the myths that exist, but writing about the ones that are believed by more people. I hope I made things clearer for people who are struggling to gain traction in their local search results.

There are 3 things you should always consider when tackling the local SEO: NAP citations, local reviews and claiming your business on Google My Business plus lots of other practices you should stay away from.

 

Search engines can be your friend, but if don’t know how to talk to them and feed them with the right information to explain what your intentions are, they won’t be friends with you/your website.

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