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Sunday, August 23, 2015

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Saturday, August 22, 2015

Movies on the Go

The process of downloading movies and searching for them can get somewhat time-consuming for a lot of people. Being able to cut out one of the steps or several of the steps can make all the difference for a lot of tech-savvy individuals. The Show Box app can help people do just that, allowing them to go straight to watching the movies and television show episodes that are available online.

logo People will be able to download this app from many different locations and it should be compatible with most devices, making it a convenient and efficient application. For a lot of apps that are as useful as this one, the developers will try to get away with charging outrageous subscription fees that people will have to pay on a regular basis. In other cases, the initial downloading fees will still be high enough that a lot of people still aren’t going to be able to see the point of an application like the Show Box app in the first place.

The Show Box app manages to stand out by being as cost-effective as it is convenient. It is a completely free app in every way, from the initial download and onward. Using this app, people will be able to download all sorts of material to their smartphones directly. With a little bit of additional technical skill, people will also be able to watch the material on their flat-screen televisions after downloading the material through the Show Box app. As people start to use the app, it should become a regular part of their viewing schedules. They will find the old process of acquiring and displaying televised media to be cumbersome and time-consuming by comparison. Apps like this one should become fairly standard soon enough as more and more people see the benefits.

The post Movies on the Go appeared first on DQ2.

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Friday, August 21, 2015

How Much Keyword Repetition is Optimal - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

With all the advancements search engines have made, a lot of folks in the SEO world are circling back to a fundamental question: If I'm targeting a particular keyword, where and how often should I use that in the front and back ends of my page? In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand puts his recommendations into the context of today's SERPs.

For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard. Click on it to open a high resolution image in a new tab!

Video transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about keyword use, keyword repetition and overuse.

I know this might seem like a basic topic, but actually it's advanced a little bit in the last few years, and I still get a surprising amount of email and see a surprising number of questions around things like, "How many times should I use my keyword that I'm targeting to rank for in my URL string or my H1 tag or my title? Or how many different pages should I have that target this keyword?" So let's try and clear a little bit of this up.

Let's say I've done a search here, "Are skeleton keys real?" I see results ranking. This is actually kind of a nice result, because what you see are not a lot of pages that say, "Are skeleton keys real?" I just did this search, and the top 20 results, there's actually not even one where the title of the piece or the headline of the document is, "Are skeleton keys real?"

You see lots of documents ranking in Google that don't perfectly match this keyword set. I think that's a good example of how far Google has come in trying to understand the intent behind queries, how far they've come in terms of connecting topics and keywords, how far they've come on topic modeling algorithms.

Keyword repetition considerations

So really there are three primary considerations that we do still need to worry about as SEOs.

1) Search result snippet

The first one is the search result snippet itself. I've taken Etsy's snippet here, which is not fantastic. Then when you get to the page, that product is actually gone, and Etsy is suggesting some other ones, which aren't skeleton keys. Kind of frustrating because they do have skeleton keys if you search on the site. In any case, I'm sure Stephanie and the SEO team over at Etsy will take care of that ASAP.

The primary considerations in your search result snippet are: Is the result informative and useful? I want to be able to look at this and think to myself, "Aha! That tells me something that I didn't already know, or it starts to tell me something about whether or not skeleton keys are real or not and where they come from and history and what they are." Is it useful? Can I apply that information? Is that going to help me accomplish whatever I'm trying to accomplish? In this case, a very information-based query, so the only accomplishment is the knowledge itself.

Is it going to draw the eye and the click? This is a great reason why rich snippets are so valuable and why anything you can do to bulk up or add to your snippet, get more vertical space, make your listing stand out can be helpful.

Then is it perceived as relevant and trustworthy by searchers? So a lot of times, that's going to be a brand consideration set. They're going to be looking at the domain name. They might be looking in the title for a brand there, if it is there, if it's not there, those kinds of things.

2) Keyword analysis algorithms

This is kind of the classic thing where I think a lot of early SEOs get lost and maybe even some folks who have been around for a long time remember back in the day when Google and Yahoo and old MSN search, before Bing, would actually look at the count and the repetition numbers, probably never actually used density, but they probably did use simplistic algorithms like TFIDF, term frequency times inverse document frequency, looking for those less frequently used terms across the Web and seeing if you have a higher concentration of those in your document than other people do.

Keyword Matching

Well, now there are probably still some elements of keyword matching. Google is likely to give you a little bit of a boost if you say, "Are skeleton keys real?" and everybody else says, "Real vintage antique skeleton keys," or something like that.

I'm not suggesting against using this actual keyword phrase precisely. If you know that's what your article is about, that's the piece of content that you have and those are the searchers you want to target, yeah, go ahead. Make the title of the piece, "Are Skeleton Keys Real? We Dig Into History to Find Out." That's a compelling title. I would click on that if that were my search query. So there are some keyword matching elements.

Topic Modeling

There's probably some topic modeling, well, almost certainly some topic modeling stuff where they're looking at, "What are other terms and phrases that are frequently used when we see skeleton keys used?" If we do see those terms and phrases on other people's pages, but we don't see them on yours, we might not consider your document to be relevant to the keyword. Maybe you're talking about skeleton keys as a new programming language. Maybe you're talking about the skeleton key mobile app. I don't know if that's a real thing, but it could be. Maybe Skeleton Keys is the name of your dog.

They don't know. So they look at these topic modeling sorts of algorithms to try and figure out, "Oh, okay, look, they're talking about locks. They're talking about antiques. They're talking about history. I think we can be relatively assured that, yes, this document is on the topic of skeleton keys." If you don't use those words and phrases, the topic modeling algorithm is going to miss you.

Intent analysis

Google is looking very hard for user intent. What do people want from this query? They have a huge store of knowledge around past queries that people have performed, trillions and trillions of queries over the decade and a half that Google has been around that they can look at and say, "Aha, when was the intent of a keyword informational, transactional, navigational, and can we try and figure out what the intent of this particular keyword search is and then serve up results that hit that intent right on the nose?"

Look, sometimes when you get analyzed for this, if you are not serving the same intent, so if you're selling skeleton keys, it could be that you actually won't rank as well for "Are skeleton keys real?" as someone who's providing purely an informational document. If someone searches for antique skeleton keys, your document about "Are Antique Skeleton Keys Real?" might not rank as well as someone who actually sells them, because Google is trying to serve that intent, and they do a pretty good job with that.

QDD/QDF

Then there might be some other algorithm elements in there like QDD, query deserves diversity. So maybe Google sees different intents for a search, and so they try and provide different results and you might rank because of that, or you might not rank because of that, or things like QDF where they say, "We need a fresh result here." People are looking for recent documents around skeleton keys because there was a big item in the news about a break-in using skeleton keys. So we know we should put the news box in there and maybe we should have a document that's much fresher, those kinds of things.

3) Searcher opinions and Engagement

This matters a ton because if searchers don't engage with your piece, if they stand around and they go, "I don't think I should click on that." It doesn't even take as long as I just took to say those words. You just make that split-second judgment as you're scanning down a page of search results about whether something is relevant to your needs or not.

Searchers are constantly asking themselves when they look at a set of results, "Should I click back? Should I reengage? Should I share and amplify the content once I reach it? Should I remember this brand or this page or bookmark it?" All of those kinds of things go into the search engine's consideration set as well. They make their way in there through user and usage data. We know that Google can monitor and measure, certainly when you click back to the search results. We know that through Chrome and through Android and all these other things, Toolbar, that they can look at activity that's happening on a website or through a search journey.

We know they can see sharing and amplification data absolutely if it's links. They can probably look at other kinds of amplification too. They definitely can look at people who remember a brand and search for a brand. So if someone searches for "Etsy skeleton keys," that might be a strong signal to Google that they should rank Etsy's page when people search for just skeleton keys. All of those kinds of things are making it in here.

So we have to ask ourselves, "Does this match the need that I have? Are we creating pages that searchers feel matches their need?" They're asking, "Do I recognize or trust this brand?" Or at least, "If I don't know this brand at all, when I look at the URL and the domain name" -- Bing did a big study on this a couple of years ago -- they ask themselves, "Does that sound like a sketchy domain name?" For example, I did see antique-skeleton-keys.com ranking for this query. They're still on page one. It's not actually that terrible a page, although it has some kind of spammy AdSense all mixed in there. But it has some information.

That kind of stuff, when searchers see that, they are less likely to click it because they've had bad experiences with multiple-hyphenated, keyword matchy domains. Antique-skeleton-keys.com, no offense, but you all aren't doing that world an entirely big favor right now.

Then they're going to ask, "Does the snippet stand out and grab my attention?" If it does, more likely to get a higher click-through rate, more likely to get that engagement.

So... how many times should I repeat my keywords?

So these three big considerations lead us to some quick rules of thumb. I'm going to say that for 95% of pages out there -- not every single one, there are always going to be a few exceptions --but for 95% of the pages out there, you should do at least these things. I'll put nice little boxes here to help out.

Yes, I should have my keyword that I'm targeting, if I know that I'm going after this keyword, this search intent, that's what the page is about, that's the primary keyword target, I should target it at least once in the title element of the page.

Likewise, you should do the same thing in the headline. This is not because the H1 tag is all that important. It doesn't even matter all that much whether it's H1 or H2 or H3, or if your CSS is a little messy, that's okay. As long as the big letters at the top of the page that make up the headline, so that when a searcher lands after clicking, "Are skeleton keys real?" and seeing your, "Are Skeleton Keys Real?" article, they again see right at the top of the page, "Are Skeleton Keys Real?"

So they know they clicked on the right result and they have that consistency. People really like that. That's very important from a psychological perspective, and you need that so that people don't click back and choose a different result because they're like, "Wait a minute, this article is not the one that I thought I clicked on. This is something else."

I'm going to say two to three times in content. That is a very rough rule. Generally speaking, if you don't have the keyword at least a couple of times in the content of the page, unless you have an extremely visual page or an interactive page with almost no content, which maybe that would fall in the 5%, you should definitely be hitting that.

Then one time in the meta description. Meta description is important because of the snippet aspect of it. Not that critical from like, "Oh, that will boost my ranking." No, but it might boost your click-through rate. It might make you appear more relevant to the searcher as they're searching through, and it will help target that.

Again, sometimes in that 5% there, there might be times when a snippet is actually better without the keyword. Again, especially if it's a long keyword phrase and you only have a little bit of room to explain things, okay.

So 95% of pages should do at least this.

Secondary considerations

Then many pages should also consider doing a little bit of image optimization with things like a keyword in the image alt attribute, assuming you have an image on the page. For a keyword like this, you would definitely want to have some pictures of what skeleton keys have looked like, do look like today, that kind of thing.

The image file name itself too, which is important for image SEO. Images still get a good amount of search traffic. Even if you don't get a ton of click-through rate, you might get people using your image and then citing it, and that could lead to link behavior. So we're talking about a long tail here, but a valuable long tail.

Once in the URL, generally this is important, but not critical, certainly not critical. There could be plenty of reasons why you have a perfectly reasonable URL that does not include the keywords many, many times. A homepage is a great example. Homepage, you don't need to change your default homepage to include your keyword string so that when you request whatever, Etsy.com, it redirects to vintage antique skeleton keys. No, don't do that.

One or more times in the subheaders of the page. If you have multiple blocks of subheaders that are describing different attributes of a particular piece of content, well, go ahead, use your keywords in there as they might apply.

Don't go overboard. Another big rule of thumb. You can see my friend here. He's being weighed down by his keywords. His ship has almost turned over. Search engines are going to use stemming. So stemming is basically saying, "I'm going to look at skeleton and I'm going to cut that down to 'skelet' so that if the word 'skeletal' or the words 'skeletons' or 'skeletals' or 'Skeletor' . . ." well, maybe Skeletor means a little something different. You guys remember He-Man, right? I know some of my viewers do.

But that stemming is going to mean that lots and lots of repetitions of minor variance of a keyword are totally unnecessary. In fact, they can annoy searchers and people who are consuming that content, and they might even trigger the engine systems that say, "This is keyword stuffing. This is bad. Don't do it." Keyword stuffing, by the way, super easy to pattern match for engines. It's going to make searchers click the Back button. So use a lot of caution if you're thinking about that.

What about on-page keyword use?

Remember that on-page keyword use is only a small piece of the algorithm. We're talking about a relatively small piece. You could get all of this absolutely perfect, or you could get only, say, 80%, just this stuff right, and the difference is pretty minute in terms of your ranking ability. So I would urge you not to spend too much time trying to go from, "Well, I hit these basic things that Rand talked about, but now I'm going to try and take my keyword targeting and on-page optimization to the absolute max." You can get a very, very tiny extra amount of value.

Do consider searchers' intent and target topics and questions that they have. Engines are smart about this too. So engines have these topic analysis and intent analysis models. So a page that talks about skeleton keys, that fails to mention words like locks or wards or master keys, the engines might go, "That doesn't seem particularly relevant or not as relevant as the pages that do. So even though it has more links pointing at it, we're going to rank it lower."

Likewise, plenty of searchers are searching for those topics as well. So if you don't answer those queries and someone else does, well, they might click on you, but then they'll click back. Or they might click on you, but they won't share you or amplify you or link to you or bookmark you or remember your brand. You need all those signals in the modern on-page world.

All right, everyone. Look forward to some great keyword targeting, some good questions in the Q&A and the comments below. I'll see you next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Thursday, August 20, 2015

Is Online Marketing Gender-Diverse?

Posted by JackieRae

What is your gender?

It's a standard demographic question that many of us answered on the Online Marketing Industry Survey. It's a compelling indicator of how our industry is evolving in an area that truly helps us become better marketers: gender equality. Why does gender equality matter to marketing, and why do we need to understand this trend? There are hundred of reasons why gender diversity is good, and we can name at least a few. Diversity in the workplace fosters better working performance by forcing us to think more deeply about decisions and with new perspectives. Studies have also shown that creating a more gender-diverse organization will boost a company's profits. As we discuss the following data, I encourage you to consider how you and your organization can foster more gender diversity in your workplace.

When collecting the data, our goal was to reach the general online marketing population through a diverse range of channels. However, our results skew towards the Moz Community, as most participants discovered the survey through Moz's blog and Twitter feed.

Of the 3,618 respondents, 1,089 respondents marked "female," 2,516 marked "male," and 13 marked "I'd rather not say." Compared to December 2013, females have only gained about 2% representation in the Online Marketing Industry Survey, with a 7.3% increase in women since 2012. Every year, more women are joining the online marketing workforce. However, there's still a long way to go before women represent anywhere close to 50% of that population.

Here are the percentages of each gender in overall participation for the last 4 years:

Of the 1,089 women who took the survey, 63.32% are from the United States. Overall, there are more U.S. women represented, but when we filter down to individual countries, we see a more erratic breakdown of men versus women:

Many countries are missing from the diagram, as we only included countries that were represented by greater than 100 participants in the study. According to the survey, the smallest gender difference goes to Canada. (Go Canada!) The highest gender difference is India.

Breaking down job titles

Like many fields, online marketers have job title inequalities in the most poignant ways. Job titles are a good indicator of which levels and functions are geared towards men or women throughout different types of organizations.

Based on these responses, the most equal fields are web analytics and public relations. Women were more likely to have words like "social media" and "content" in their job titles, while men dominate the fields of engineering, web development, paid advertising, SEO, and e-commerce (all fields that are considered more technical).

The next chart looks at job level, where we see that males dominate higher-level jobs. The largest gaps between men and women are in the titles of president, business owner, chief, consultant, director, analyst, vice president, and strategist. The lowest disparities in job level: intern, project manager, and specialist. Women are more likely to have "editor," "assistant," "writer," and "coordinator" within their titles.

How do these inequalities compare to other industries? According to HBR, on average, women make up 40% of managers, 35% of directors, 27% of vice presidents, 24% of senior vice presidents, and 19% of executive and chiefs. If we compare that data to our own, it would appear the online marketers are making strides in higher-level jobs—we're above average for vice presidents and chiefs—but falling short for managers, directors, and presidents.

Why are those titles stacked the way they are? I don't have a specific answer, but I do know what it's not based on, according to a few other questions in the survey:

Education? Nope. 80.80% of female respondents have 4-year and/or Master's-level degrees, while only 64.50% of men reported having 4-year or Master's-level degrees. Women who took this survey have a higher level of education than their male counterparts.
Years of experience? Maybe. There are higher percentages of males with more than 3 years' experience in online marketing. Yet that's only correlation; it could be that women aren't sticking to online marketing as long as men.

The money question: How do salaries stack up?

Based on the survey responses, there is a suggested pattern that men make more than women, and are paid differently depending on their job level.

A few notes about our methodology: We're reporting salary in U.S. dollars, because we asked survey participants to report their salaries in that form. In order to analyze the salaries, which were collected by ranges, we took the midpoint of the range. This isn't the best model, but allows us to test the significance of the differences between genders and job titles. For you data junkies out there, we used the 2-sample Z-test. If the group had less than 30 respondents, then that group was excluded from testing. Thanks to our resident statistician, Mitch, for helping with the analysis.

We show that men earn more than women in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Australian responses showed a slight difference between salaries, but it wasn't significant enough to say with confidence that salaries were unequal.

*No inequality proven: P-Values are too great to suggest inequality between men and women in Australia. However, the averages show, directionally, that men may make more than women.

Personally, I was shocked at the disparity in salary. However, as we saw in the previous section, males are more likely to have higher-power jobs; could this be a reflection of that? Let's look at the average salaries of men and women by job title in all responses (globally):

*No inequality proven: P-Values are too great to lend statistical significance to inequality between men and women. However, the averages show, directionally, where salaries swing.

Comparing salaries for job titles, we can see that the differences in salary permeate through nearly all levels and functions. We show that men make more than women as business owners, consultants, and specialists. While we can't prove disparity in all job functions, it's worth noting that women may make more than men in some functions. Interestingly, when we filtered our results for only U.S. responses, the most unequal job levels are business owner, manager, and strategist.

Improving gender diversity

We know, based on the data presented, that there is a gender gap in online marketing. The question that remains is: What is your company or organization doing to support a gender-diverse workplace? As I circulated this data around the office, it spurred a really cool discussion: What is being done within online marketing organizations to tackle gender inequalities? I thought I'd share some examples here:

Tech companies are discussing salaries more openly, like SumAll and Buffer. This will shed light on any disparities occurring within these tech organizations and support equal pay.
Companies partner with nonprofits, such as Ada Developers Academy, that aim at getting women into the technical space.
Seer Interactive made a point to focus on helping women find mentorship from other women leaders.
Marketing conferences are making strides to include more female speakers and track attendee participation. (SMX just blogged about this recently, and MozCon had 12 women representing out of 26 total speakers in 2015.)

If you're feeling stuck or wondering how you can help, here are some great resources and tools for implementing and enacting change in your organization:

Ways to Proactively Welcome Women into Online Marketing, by Erica McGillivray. A recently published blog post, giving some great tips and tricks on how to engage women in online marketing.
6 Ways to Fix Inequality at Work, by the World Economic Forum. The WEF also has some great research and resources for improving education, accessibility, and more across the world.

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Wednesday, August 19, 2015

The New Snack Pack: Where Users are Clicking & How You Can Win

Posted by Casey_Meraz

Last week I wrote a post about the new Snack Pack, where three local results have become the new standard, and explored where users were clicking based on some preliminary data from UsabilityHub tests we ran. In our test, we measured 200 clicks on a heat map to see where users were clicking most.

In that example, organic results won, getting almost 40% of clicks. However, this test was based on a search result where there was one organic listing above the local results, as seen in the screenshot below:

Since the release of this study, we've been conducting many more tests that take into consideration other variables, such as the different types of results that display and the impact of reviews.

In this article, we're going to analyze some new click-through studies, conduct live interviews with potential searchers, and talk about the new best practices you should focus on to win the local search game. If you're not familiar with the major impact of this update, you can read this great post by Jennifer Slegg.

The biggest change to occur was the removal of the 7-pack and the addition of the new 3-pack. In the image below you can compare the changes:

Disclaimer:

Although this study will showcase some interesting results, take it as anecdotal evidence. Since there are so many search variables—ranging from the keywords used to personalized results, from the device used to display results to the text on the listings—we couldn't be as scientific as we would have preferred. I am also not a data scientist. :) However, keep in mind that these are real users performing real tests, which makes for some interesting takeaways.

In essence, this research is meant to be insightful, but not definitive. Our sample sizes may be small but the users are real, so I hope this inspires you to see which areas you can improve upon for your clients.

Which Variants Did We Want to Analyze?

The new update, which included some sweeping changes to local SEO, really shook up how results were displayed. We wanted to analyze how the 3-pack affected user behavior. Since this was our main concern, we looked at a small variety of results to help us unpack the potential behavioral change:

One Organic Result, Then the Local Pack
In this example, you'll see one organic listing underneath the pay-per-click ads, followed by the Local Snack Pack of three listings.
The Snack Pack with Organic Results Underneath
This seems to be the most common variant: seeing the Snack Pack appear right under the paid ads. In our searches, very few results returned the listing with the single organic result on top. An example of the Snack Pack on top is below:

Let's Look at Some Heat Maps

These heat maps were generated from a few custom tests we set up, using screen recording and heat map tracking via HotJar. We fed the traffic through Mechanical Turk and asked users where they would click if they had just conducted a certain search.

Test #1: The Snack Pack with Organic Results Underneath

In this test, we displayed the results for a lawyer search phrase: "Personal Injury Lawyer." They were then shown the (pre-heat map) screenshot below. We asked potential searchers the question: "Where would you click on this page if you were looking to find a personal injury attorney?" This is a screenshot of their heat-mapped results. The darker the color, the more clicks an area received:

Results

With our first test, we wanted to show a listing that included reviews as a part of the search results. This was purposeful, because we aimed to see if user behavior was impacted by reviews. While we cannot separate all of the variables, it's clear that the majority of the clicks landed on the #1 local listing, on the business name itself (as opposed to the website or directions). The breakdown of clicks is below:

Key Takeaways:

Local results seem to be getting more clicks than expected on this round. Notice that there was a very clear distribution of clicks between the two listings that had review stars when compared with the listing that didn't have any review stars.

In a close second follows the organic listing. This means that many users skipped over the local listings entirely and opted for the traditional organic result. We can't say exactly why this is, but it could be that users are not yet used to this format. We may see a shift in this behavior over time, as users become more accustomed to the change.

Test #2: One Organic Result, Then the Local Pack

This is the same test we conducted in our post last week, now using a different data collection method, as mentioned above. Although we haven't seen these listings as much in the SERPs, it's interesting to see the impact the single organic listing has on clicks. In this test, we asked the user where they would click if they were researching an employment lawyer. The heat map is shown below. The line in the heat map represents the average fold.

Key Takeaways:

Since we were able to run this same test with a different user base last week, we can compare and contrast some of the data. In the previous test, about 40% of clicks went to the organic listing, compared with 62% for the current test. It seems pretty clear that the organic listing above the local results is the place to aim for, if available.

Notice how the local pack got very few clicks overall, resulting in just 8% of clicks (or 22%, if you include the "more local results" option). Does this seem weird? It does to me, but there is a key difference between the screenshot we used for this test and that which we used for the last one. There are no review stars present in the screenshot for our current test. It appears that the results with reviews were clicked more often than those without.

Test #3: The Snack Pack with Organic Results Underneath

For a third test, I wanted to see where users might click if some listings had reviews and another did not. I also wanted to include an additional organic result to see how that impacted user behavior. As with the previous tests, we asked our participants where they would click if they were looking to hire a personal injury attorney. The results are below:

Key Takeaways:

Once again, there was a wide variance of where users clicked in this study. This time, the organic listings represented 40% of the clicks, taking home the gold. Local was in second place, with 33% of clicks.

However, another item of interest is that the listings with reviews got the clicks. The third listing, with no review stars, received zero clicks in the local 3-pack. Additionally, it's worth nothing that most of the local-centric clicks land on the business name itself. These clicks no longer lead straight to your website or even your old Google+ page, where you still controlled the information to some extent. These now take you to a map page, where other businesses are displayed and where users can read your reviews.

Essentially, just because you got a click to your listing in the local 3-pack doesn't mean you've earned a visit to your site or a phone call.

In-Person Click-Through Tests

Heat map data is super cool and fun to look at visually, but I wanted to dive a bit deeper and see if I could collect more accurate search data. Since we don't have access to Google's actual data, we have to simulate click-through studies based on a certain amount of variables and find the means to test our hypothesis. In the past, we've used Mechanical Turk and UsabilityHub for the majority of these tests. The potential problem therein is that we don't get as much information on the users, and it doesn't involve the emotions present with someone who is more invested in the search.

To simulate this and explore whether the data correlated with real user behavior, my friends at Fox Airsoft allowed me to stop in for the day and interview their actual customers. To do this, I created a very specific scenario for each of the candidates and screen-captured their behavior with a short interview. Keep in mind that for this test we specifically explored desktop user behavior, as that format was affected by the new Snack Pack update.

The Scenario

The scenario I used to try to invoke an emotional response read like this:

"You are sitting in front of your computer and you get a frantic call from a loved one. They tell you that your father has been locked up in [city changed per user] and that he needs to be bailed out immediately."

From here, I informed them that they needed to find someone ASAP. I then turned the computer over to them and had them conduct their searches and make their clicks, interviewing them after the fact. Overall, we interviewed ten people, which is a small sample size but offers intriguing results. A few of the most insightful interviews are below:

Interview One: Leah

Meet Leah, a 27-year-old female who lives in New York. Leah is employed and has a four-year college degree. Watch how she responds to the scenario below:

In this scenario, she used a laptop computer and performed the search from Google's home page.

She opted to use a geo modifier for the result, since we clarified that her loved one was locked up in Denver. The keyword she typed in was "Denver bail bonds."

What's interesting about her behavior is that she scrolled past both the paid ads and the local Snack Pack to view the top three organic results before clicking on the business in the first local results position. At first glance, I would have done the same thing. However, the reason she provides for her selection is loud and clear. "I skimmed past the ads at the top, and then I noticed that there were a few listed, and one of them said 'five-star rating'..."

Key Takeaways:

1) Local results ultimately earned the click.

2) Reviews were the reason the first local click won the battle.

Some Things To Consider

Would Leah's behavior change if the organic results featured rich snippets with reviews and a five-star rating?

Interview Two: Todd

This is Todd. Todd is a 53-year-old man who lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Todd has a high school education and is employed full-time. Watch how he responds to the scenario below:

In this test, Todd took his time and was thoughtful about his search. Like Leah, Todd used a geo modifier for his keyword, but added it following the keyword and including the state abbreviation. The keyword he chose was "Bails Bondsman Colorado Springs CO."

When the search results page loaded, he recognized some offline branding from the show "Dog the Bounty Hunter" and mentioned he knew of Bobby Brown Bail Bonds because of this. However, even though he knew the brand, he put more weight into the reviews before deciding to click through to the first local result's website.

As you can hear in the interview, the reviews also played a big part in his decision here.

Key Takeaways:

1) Todd was most interested in the top two local results, both of which include review stars.

2) The first-position listing won the click in the end, though.

Interview Three: Kaitlin

Kaitlin is a 25-year-old female who works in the airline industry full-time. Kaitlin was given the same scenario as the others.

Kaitlin started at Google and used a geo modifier in front of the keyword she chose: "Denver Bail Bondsman," selected by autocomplete. She looked at the results and scrolled past the top two local listings—likely because they did not have any review stars associated with them, unlike the third result in the Snack Pack.

Kaitlin clicked on the listing's business name, which brought up the new map-type view. Here she could read the reviews. Her behavior was different than our other samples because she said she would do multiple searches before making her final decision.

Kaitlin seemed to have more interest in looking at the best and worst reviews before making a decision. She also used Yelp to explore reviews.

Key Takeaways:

1) Local results earned the first click on the business listing that brought her to the map view. Keep in mind that other local businesses are also listed here.

2) Reviews were the reason the first local click won the battle. Positive and negative reviews made the difference.

3) A result with zero reviews in a pack where others include them seems to be a negative factor for click-throughs.

Interview Four: Clayton

Clayton is a 29-year-old male who lives in New York City. He has a full-time job and previously dabbled in blogging. He was given the same bail bonds scenario:

Clayton started his search in Google with a geo modifier of "Denver CO" at the end of his search. The overall keyword phrase he chose was "best bail bondsman denver co." He scrolled down long enough to look at the local results and the top two organic results.

Ultimately, he clicked on the business name for the first result in the Snack Pack, which took him to the map-like results page. He made his final decision because of the five-star results. As he stated, "If you're number one, but your reviews suck, I don't want to go there."

Key Takeaways:

1) Local results earned the first click on the business listing that brought him to the map view.

2) Not to beat a dead horse, but the decision was made because there were review stars present.

Overall Takeaways & What You Can Do

With all of these tests, there was a ton of information to soak in. While it's clear that each user's behavior is unique, whether on a click-test study or an in-person interview, there are some very clear patterns that you can focus on. Even though we don't have data from thousands or millions of users, these real-life examples shed light on what you should focus on with the new local 3-Pack.

Reviews are Magical
In every test we ran, reviews seemed to attract the most clicks. Not only did they attract a lot of clicks, it also seems clear that being listed in a pack where your competitors have review stars and you don't is detrimental to your click-through rate.
The importance of reviews seems to be as high as ever, and I would go so far as to say that if you don't have review stars—and don't plan on putting in processes to get legitimate reviews—you're making a bad business decision.
Organic Search is Alive & Well
With organic and local tied together ever since the Pigeon update over a year ago, I'm hoping your SEOs have adopted an organic and local search strategy. If you still don't have an organic search strategy, make sure to create one. Ranking higher in organic results will only help your local results, and you even have the potential to take up two listings in the search results for your business.
DO NOT IGNORE ORGANIC. Bring your website up to snuff using SEO best practices and continue to earn high-quality links from reputable sources.
Consider adding rich snippets of reviews to your organic pages if they meet Google's guidelines.
If You're Not in the Top Three, You Still Have a Chance
Even if you're not listed in the top three results, some clicks are going to the maps results and the "more results" options. Being listed in the top 6 or 7 positions will still have you listed above the fold on the left side of the map view. Don't ignore it. Take advantage of it. What if your competition doesn't have any reviews? Maybe being #6 on that list can make a huge impact on your business simply by being the only one with active review stars.
People Use Geo Modifiers
Do your keyword research for your niche and don't ignore geo modifiers. I've written about this in the past, but individual search behavior varies greatly. In a few of the videos above, we saw variants on these modifiers, such as "Denver Bailbondsman" to "Bail Bondsman in Colorado Springs, CO." Make sure you're looking at proper keyword volumes for your variants and optimize if necessary.
Do Your Own Testing
One process that I have come to adopt and love is doing our own testing. Your results may produce different information, based on your niche or search behavior. Conduct your own tests, see what works, and report it to the world. We all benefit from this, and can make some great Internet marketing decisions as a result.

With so many different variables out there to test and ways to launch bigger studies, we're interested to hear what you think. What type of tests would you like to see?

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Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Moz Local Updates You May Have Missed on Your Summer Vacation

Posted by David-Mihm

Those of you who have logged into your Moz Local dashboard recently may have noticed a few updates this week! I thought I’d post a quick announcement to highlight them.

New distribution partners: Bing, Citysearch, and Insider Pages

Long-time users of Moz Local know that we’ve been helping you examine listing accuracy on two of these sites (Bing Local and Citysearch) since the earliest days of the former GetListed product.

Today we’re excited to announce that, in addition to monitoring, we’re now also distributing data on your behalf to these important partners as part of your US Moz Local subscription. (Bing is also included in the distribution network for our recently-announced UK product.)

With the second-largest market share among the search engines—including some estimates north of 20%—Bing is obviously a key place to make sure that your data is accurate, consistent, and complete. The company has been innovating its local display in near-lockstep with Google, and with local results becoming ever more prevalent as part of universal search, your Moz Local listings will be seen by more potential customers than ever (the number in the graphic above comes from applying a rough 25% multiplier to the volume numbers reported by Comscore).

Citysearch is obviously one of the premier brands in local search. In joint research that Darren Shaw and I conducted, Citysearch appeared as one of the top 10 citation sources in 86 out of 93 US local search markets we studied. It’s also ranked in the top 10 in this study from BrightLocal and this one by Nyagoslav Zhekov, also of Whitespark. Needless to say, it’s a pretty important citation source that we’re proud to have onboard.

And, as part of the CityGrid platform, Insider Pages is another key consumer destination and citation source on which Moz Local now helps you manage your listings as well. (We’ll be adding it to the listing details page shortly.)

New mobile-friendly interface

So far, only about 7% of you have been using mobile devices or tablets to analyze your listings on Moz Local—a number that hasn’t changed much in the last 18 months. I’ve been a bit surprised at this relative usage, but I’m guessing it’s partly a self-fulfilling prophecy given the (previous) suboptimal experience of trying to interact with the product on these devices.

Well, suboptimal mobile experience no longer! We’re finally walking the walk of responsive design thanks to some terrific work over the last several weeks from Jeff Crump, Noam Chitayat, Zach Sitler, Wes Carr, and the entire Moz Local engineering team. We’ve prioritized visuals we think are most compelling on mobile, and the experience will soon have full parity with desktop.

We hope this helps those of you who demonstrate Moz Local to clients and prospects out in the field on your tablets and smartphones — in addition to the small business owners who happen to find their way to our product directly.

Yahoo Local removed from listing monitoring

Other than the relatively silent announcement last spring that Yelp listings with reviews would override native Yahoo Local listings, Yahoo Local hasn’t gotten much love from Marissa Mayer or her predecessors. It has not had a significant user experience overhaul since at least March 2010.

Since the Yelp announcement last spring, I’ve advised consulting clients, Local U forum members, and conference attendees not to focus energy on Yahoo Local, but instead put an additional effort into getting Yelp reviews. Aside from what appears to be a recent temporary glitch, that strategy has served them quite well.

And now that there’s a white-hat way to prompt customers (TLDR: post check-in offers and let Yelp ask the customer for a review), it’s a much better use of time and mental energy to focus on Yelp reviews, which are also syndicated to Apple Maps, Bing, and many other sources.

If, as I suspect is the case for most of you, your primary interest in Yahoo Local is to remove bad listings, there’s some evidence that tweeting @YahooCare may resolve your headache.

Given the time and expense involved with native Yahoo Local listings, for the vast majority of you, I encourage you to focus instead on getting at least one review on your Yelp listing. We’ve adjusted our listing score algorithm to prioritize Yelp accordingly, and we’ve removed Yahoo to align with this recommendation.

What's next?

We’ve got a number of major updates still in the pipeline, including additional network destinations that we’re already working on integrating, and our biggest feature release since launch in March 2014. We’re excited to roll all of these out as soon as we can.

What features would you like to see us add to Moz Local? Let us know in the comments!

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Monday, August 17, 2015

Google's Local Snack Pack Shake-Up: What You Need to Know

Posted by jenstar

Local SEO has seen the biggest shake-up since Google launched their first local algorithm, Pigeon, just over a year ago. On Thursday, August 6th, people began to notice that the usual 7-packs that frequently showed up in the search results for local businesses were suddenly replaced with 3-packs in the desktop search results. It initially wasn't too alarming, but as the hours passed it was obvious Google had changed the face of local search in their search results.

By the end of that day, 3-packs had completely replaced all the 7-packs across all verticals and across all countries. This was an unusual move for Google, since they commonly tested out local changes that only rolled out to specific countries. But this change was for everyone everywhere.

By the next morning, less than 24 hours after the first changes were noticed, Mozcast confirmed what everyone suspected: 7-packs were history and 3-packs were all the rage.

Mobile-centric

As mobile usage continues to grow higher and higher, Google has changed their desktop search results to appear more similar to the mobile-specific search results; the 3-packs fit perfectly on the screen for mobile users.

Regardless of what you search is for, it is those top three spaces that make up the screen real estate for a mobile user, along with the Google map that appears for some local queries. Google's removal of all 7-packs brings desktop the same user experience as mobile users have been getting for some time.

Here is how the local pack appears on mobile.

And the same search on desktop now.

The look and feel is pretty close now for both desktop and mobile searches.

Google has always been very focused on user experience regardless of the product or platform, so it isn't at all surprising to see local as yet another area where Google is changing desktop to match the mobile user experience.

How much traffic was in the bottom of the 7-Pack?

Google doesn't make changes to the way they present search results without a lot of testing—tests that are often noticed by SEOs. Ever since we first saw the 3-packs make their first appearance, many SEO experts were concerned that Google could make a change to show more 3-packs than 7-packs. This is now a reality, and it has huge implications for any local business with more than two other competitors.

Just how much traffic were those sites listed in positions 4-7 getting? For Google to make this change, it is very likely those results weren't clicked on nearly as much the top three. But again, this likely comes down to positioning and screen real estate. In mobile, even if they were showing 7-packs, it is the top three that fill the mobile screen, making those 4-7 spots invisible until someone scrolls down.

This is something that Andrew Shotland from Local SEO Guide agrees with. "I would imagine that Google was seeing far fewer clicks and calls from the listings after the first three," says Shotland. "So they probably figured , 'what's the point of presenting them?' "

But even if businesses weren't getting much traffic from the 4th to 7th spots, it was still a branding opportunity. These websites were getting exposure, particularly on desktop, and they are now missing out on that important branding.

Other changes

Along with the new 3-packs everywhere, Google also made some changes to the 3-packs, and not everyone is happy about these changes.

Addresses

Google removing specific addresses and only showing the street names in a 3-pack does promote people actually clicking through, which can be a good thing for those who aren't in the top three.

Here is how it appears in the pack for both desktop and mobile. Note the street address but no street number.

Even initially clicking through to the additional results or on a listing still shows no address on the left side. It is only once you bring up the panel result on the right that you finally see a full address.

However for those who are looking on mobile, even when they do click through to the "more" option, you still don't see full addresses, and it is still those top three results from the 3-pack that will be displayed at the top of the screen. If a mobile user clicks on an individual listing in a pack, they go to the store's card listing page which looks almost identical to the card on the right of the desktop search.

So yes, there's the potential to get traffic even if you aren't in the top three from those clicking through to get an address, but it will likely be more for desktop searches as opposed to mobile.

Ratings

If you are in a restaurant-related business, your ratings are going to become even more crucial. Google has added an option for searchers to select only businesses that are above a certain rating, currently choosing from two stars and higher, three stars and higher, or four stars and higher.

With searchers faced with the option, it doesn't take much to realize that of course users are going to be selecting the ones with four stars or higher. So while having good ratings has always played an important part in local SEO, for restaurants this should be at the top of the marketing priority list.

Some smaller towns may not see the ratings selector if there are not enough restaurants with ratings available. In an area with plenty of restaurants, though, the ratings drop down (and likely the additional drop downs for cuisine, price, hours and Zagat) will appear.

We also know that Google likes to test small before unleashing it everywhere. So businesses should anticipate that this star rating selection drop-down is going to appear for other local related searches in the 3-pack, even if just on a testing basis.

If your business is in a highly populated area or there are many competing businesses in the market, you should start thinking about those stars now so you're prepared if and when Google expands this rating selection. It would be very unlikely Google would give any advance warning about this kind of change, in order to prevent the possibility of businesses spamming reviews, so working on getting reviews will become a necessity unless you are already fortunate enough to have plenty of 4-star or higher reviews.

Diminishing role of Google+

For now, it will still be important for local businesses to claim their profile pages. We are still seeing links to the Google+ profile page when those businesses come up in the regular organic search results, even if they have been removed from the local 3-pack.

Even in the local 3-pack we are now seeing photos for local businesses shown through the Google Maps display, and not through Google+ as they were in the past. This is a very significant change for Google; while we knew they were moving the photos product from Google+, some thought business photos would migrate to the new Google Photos product rather than Maps.

Here is an example of a local business's photos on Google Maps:

Of course, we also know the Google is changing how baked-in Google+ is with the rest of their services. But for now, businesses should consider it business as usual in terms of claiming their Google+ page and directing reviews to it, as for now, this is where Google is still getting their reviews. "Continue focusing on Google+ reviews as well since those are the only reviews Google is showing in the Local Pack," says Brian Barwig with Integrated Digital Marketing.

New businesses & reviews

Unfortunately, with this new change it has become very difficult for someone to leave a review for a business that currently does not have any reviews listed. In fact, it is next to impossible.

Right now, if someone wants to leave a review, they can just find the local listing, click the reviews link and then choose to leave their own. But for a business that has no reviews, you can't actually get to the page that has the option to leave a review:

There is a workaround if you can manage to find the Google+ page for the business, but in a world where businesses need to make it as easy as possible to leave a review, many won't jump through the hoops required to leave a Google review and will head to leave one on Yelp instead, if they leave one at all.

In fact, for this location of the Walking Company, we couldn't find a Google+ page to leave a review but we did discover the Yelp page for this location on the first page of the search results.

With ratings and reviews playing a role in local SEO, Google's oversight in this area is surprising and it is hopefully being corrected. Any new businesses and those businesses who do not have any current Google reviews will be at a severe disadvantage if this isn't fixed in the very near future.

Coupled this with the fact we see ratings being given a greater emphasis in the local results with the ratings selector, it definitely puts new businesses or those without any reviews at a disadvantage.

New sponsored marketing model

Implications of home service ads

Google is testing the new home service ads, which look very similar to the local packs, but are sponsored results. It is currently testing only in San Francisco and only in two professions: for those looking for plumbers or locksmiths.

Here is the sponsored 3-pack as it appears in the search results:

And you click through to see this page:

However, many local SEOs are worried this program will expand to other cities and professions, making the local pack turn into a "pay for play" situation.

"This is my fear as well," says Barwig. "This new Local Pack looks similar to those ads and it could be Google's intention to simply replace the Local Pack with ads or integrate ads directly into the Pack."

It would be very easy change for Google to make, and for many searchers, a very seamless experience where they likely wouldn't even realize it was a sponsored result, since they do look so familiar to the 3-packs many expect to see for local searches.

"If there are only 3 precious spots," says Linda Buquet, from the Local Search Forum. "It's easier to command a premium."

Google's lead generation

With these home service ads currently handled as per lead basis, it also opens up a new revenue model for Google. But on the opposite side of that, it is yet another way businesses would have to spend in order to get the traffic and business from Google.

I can see a scenario where these ads are the 3-pack," says Shotland. "If that's the case, then Google will have successfully transitioned to the old yellow pages pay-to-play business model, and we Local SEO types will need to spend a bit more time of lead optimization."

What about those penalized by Panda and Penguin?

The sites that will be hit particularly hard with this new change are those that were previously penalized by Google, either with Panda or Penguin. Right now, penalized local sites still show up in the local pack, even if they are impossible to find in the regular organic search. This is because Google will still show local listings for any website in the local pack, even those that are penalized with Panda or Penguin.

But now these sites are looking at a situation where only the top three sites are going to be on the first page of results. Sites that are looking to replace that pack listing with a regular organic listing will not be able to do so if they are penalized. Previously, even if they didn't make the top three, but were somewhere in that top seven, they were assured that their business was still visible on that all-important first page of Google search results. But this new 3-pack change can really hurt a penalized local business if they aren't appearing in that pack.

Google began a Panda refresh in July, and it is expected to last several months. This is good news for local businesses caught up in that filter, if they have made the changes necessary to be clear of Panda. If they start making changes now, they need to wait until the next Panda update to begin ranking again.

But for those who have been impacted by Penguin, it is been almost a year since we've seen the last update to that algorithm, and we still don't have timeline for when the next one will be. Penguin-impacted local sites should make it a priority to get those bad back links removed from their sites before we do see the next update or refresh to Penguin.

What about the new user experience?

Everyone has an opinion now that all the 7-packs have been removed. While some think it is great for user experience, many marketers have huge concerns about how users will interact with them, especially since most things would require a click through to the secondary listing page.

"It's possible users think this new design is such a poor user experience they click on the Map in order to get the full 20 Pack of listings," says Barwig. "Factors such as Click Through Rate, Bounce Rate, Time on Site and Content may be even more important now. If a website is poorly designed and doesn't have much information, a user has 19 other businesses they can compare against. Again, time and analysis will show if those 3 spots are as coveted as we think."

And since these 3-packs were driven by user experience, we will see if this change does indeed become permanent, although many agree it is here to stay unless Google changes up something dramatically for local on mobile first.

Top 3: When you're in & when you're not

Sitting pretty in the top 3?

There are those who have retained a spot in the new 3-pack. But even those who have a coveted spot in the 3-pack still have reason to be concerned. Local SEO is just to get more aggressive now that people are fighting for the top three links instead of just the top seven. Over half of those appearing in the 7-packs are suddenly gone, and everyone will want a shot in the new 3-pack.

There is real danger in being too complacent when it comes to rankings in Google. Just because you have a spot there now does not mean you can stop optimization efforts for local SEO, especially since your competitors will be ramping it up.

Many businesses that were previously happy just to appear somewhere in the top seven and have never done any local SEO up to this point will certainly begin marketing themselves better online. Sometimes those are the ones who suddenly sneak up out of nowhere, once they actually start their local SEO efforts, since they usually have nowhere to go but up.

Linda Buquet also made a great point for those local SEOs who are able to consistently get their clients into those top three spots: "If you are really good and usually get your clients in the top 3, then this update just knocked out 42% of your competition!"

Consolation for those outside the 3

Not all local SEOs are convinced that being outside of the top 3 is as bad as it initially sounds. First of all, we are still gauging the changes in traffic with the new 3-packs, especially for those who were accustomed used to seeing their businesses in the 7-packs.

"Google pushed out a major update and we are evaluating the new landscape to determine next steps," says Barwig. "It's too early to begin losing our minds. Analyze the pack, test ideas and track the results."

We have also seen Google roll back changes before, so while this change seems very permanent, it might not be. But SEOs have also learned never to underestimate how Google might change things suddenly – Google could decide next month that 2-packs or 4-packs are the new normal.

"Google has a history of pushing out updates and either slowly rolling them back or continuing to tweak the update until results finally settle," says Barwig. "There is a good possibility Google will make some additional changes/updates to this Stack Pack and things will shake out again."

Optimizing in a 3-Pack world

Getting into the top 3: Focus on organic

While local SEO has plenty of nuances that are very specific to local, there are also a lot of aspects of regular organic SEO that play a role in local rankings in Google. And it is going to be even more important for local businesses to work on regular SEO too.

With the old blended 7-pack algo, organic ranking pretty much controlled the ranking order," says Buquet. "But now using all the right ‘Local Hooks' is even more important than ever."

"Focus more on good solid organic SEO, both onsite and offsite. That will help boost your rank plus even if you can't make the top three, it will help your organic ranking. Many consultants I work with say top organic beats top local ranking anyway."

Of course, SEO should all be "white hat" Google-approved SEO techniques. While you may see some businesses dominating in your space using "black hat" or spam techniques, for the most part they tend to see short-lived success, and you can always file a spam report for websites spamming Google. But do make sure your own SEO is squeaky clean, since Google could take a look at other competitive sites in the same market or even specific keyword results.

Getting into the top 3: Focus on links

While links have been a significant part of local SEO, some businesses didn't even have to bother much with getting them, simply because their market wasn't competitive enough.But this is certainly changing.

"Good solid backlinks are probably more important as well," says Buquet. "In the past I didn't even need backlinks to rank clients and could do it just based on Places optimization and onsite. But now I'd say certainly in competitive markets backlinks are pretty key."

Don't forget that even nofollowed links serve a purpose, so don't automatically skip a link opportunity simply because it is a nofollow link.They can still send referral traffic, they can serve as a brand reminder and you never know if the linking site will decide to switch to dofollow links in the future.

Getting into the top 3: Focus on citations

Some market areas were just not competitive enough that citations and directories made a significant difference, while for others it was crucial. Be sure all your citations and directories are accurate and complete.

"My initial analysis started to paint a picture that citations were still important," says Barwig. "Make sure your clients are listed on the big directories, are feeding into the data aggregators and that the listings are 100% filled out and correct."

Buquet agrees. "I would also be sure citations are in order."

For those not familiar with the citations they should be considering for their city or state, Moz lists the best local citations for cities in the US as well as by industry.

Citations are particularly important for those local businesses that do not have their own website.When Google can't pull data from an official site, they tend to pull information from other third party sources, which might not always be accurate.

Getting into the top 3: Marketing priorities

Local SEO is more than just link building, reviews, and directories. But many businesses were able to skate by with minimal SEO if they weren't in super-competitive local business areas such as law offices or restaurants. But with those 4-7 spots now gone in desktop, skating by isn't good enough anymore.

Shotland feels that marketing and PR will play a much bigger role for many businesses wanting to complete.

"One piece of advice: I just spoke to an attorney who is spending six figures on PR and they rank #1 in their market for some pretty high-value legal terms," says Shotland. "They have an SEO company to get the basic SEO pieces right and advise the PR program, but they are really invested in marketing. So my one piece of advice is get used to the idea of investing in marketing, not just hiring link builders."

We aren't just talking about the standard press releases, of course. Think beyond that, whether it is outreach to industry experts, local promotions or teaming up with complimentary – but not competitive – businesses in the same neighborhood as your local business. There are always great opportunities to get your name out there, and some will come with a bonus link.

Competitive analysis

For those who are currently residing in the top three positions for the new 3-packs, that doesn't mean it is time for you to sit back and reap the rewards. Those top three spots have become much more competitive than it ever was when there was a 7-pack.

If you are in the top three, you are going to want to be even more aware of every move your competitor makes, especially those you know will make a push for the top three. Monitoring back links will be crucial. Yes, even for those businesses you think are not doing any optimization at all, because sometimes their marketing and links are unsolicited. You can't foresee such things as a new link from the local Chamber of Commerce, a link because they sponsored a chrity or even a popular blogger who does a review, complete with a nice juicy back link.

Set up alerts for each of your competitor's business names so that you get notification if they have a news story written up about them, you are aware of it. The same with any press releases, reviews, or anything specific to your particular industry that could be seen as a new promotion opportunity.

But rest assured, if you sit back and do nothing to improve your local SEO someone will be able to knock you out of that top three.

Local SEO in Google is an evolving process and we have seen two major shifts in how Google handles local searches over the past year.Local businesses have to learn how to adapt with the changing times or risk being left behind, and this means catering to local SEO in a 3-pack search result world.

Whether hoping for more Google+ reviews or deciding how to handle traffic when Google has brought their new lead ads to your vertical, local SEO has become much more complicated than it was just over a year ago. But it is those local businesses who are not only capable of evolving on the fly, but are also able to see the larger picture in the entire search results that will dominate the new SERPs. At least until Google decides to turn the industry upside down once again with brand new local SEO changes.

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