Conversion-Sabotaging Words, RLSA Strategies, and Other Top Stories from November

I think we can all agree that 2016 has been a hell of a year – and not in a good way.

Although the end may be in sight, so too are the holidays, which is either the most joyous or detestable time of year, depending on your perspective.

While Thanksgiving and the presidential election have given those of us in the States plenty to chew on (literally and figuratively), the rest of November was pretty full-on here at the WordStream blog, too. We won’t be offended if you didn’t catch everything. In fact, just in case you missed something, here are the 10 most popular posts from the WordStream blog in November. We’re nice like that.

1. 7 Conversion-Sabotaging Words to Avoid at All Costs

Sometimes, it’s easy to become your own worst enemy without even realizing it. This may be the case if you’re using one of the seven conversion-sabotaging words that Brad Smith lays out in our most popular post of the month. We’re sure you’re not using all of them (or, at least, we hope not), but can you say you’re not using any of them? Read on to find out.

2. 6 SEO Experiments That Will Blow Your Mind

Yes, SEO is still a thing, even though Google’s artificial intelligence network RankBrain could well render it obsolete in a few years. Until our robot overlords assume their position at the top of the food chain, check out Larry’s post for six SEO experiments that, as the title promises, will blow your mind. Much like the idea of intelligent learning machines helping you navigate the Web, probably.

3. 3 Crazy-Effective Ideas to Unlock the Full Power of RLSA

Remarketing lists for search ads, better known as RLSA, is one of the most powerful yet misunderstood and misused features of AdWords. Even if you’re already using RLSA in your campaigns, Larry outlines three ideas you can use right now to unlock this amazing feature’s true potential. Essential reading.

4. Getting Started with Google Advertising [Video Series]

Paid search is a remarkably effective way to grow your business, but it can be a little intimidating to newcomers. That’s why we produced this new video series to help small-business owners get the most out of Google AdWords from the get-go. Check out these short instructional videos for a look at how AdWords can help you drive more leads and sales, and how to get started.

5. 5 Questions AdWords Advertisers Should Ask Themselves Every Quarter

Introspection can be a good thing, but it’s surprising how infrequently AdWords advertisers bother to take stock of where their campaigns are headed. In our fifth-most popular post from November, Allen explains why regularly evaluating the health of your PPC campaigns at least once per quarter is a habit you should consider trying to get into – and you don’t have to wait until January 1 to start.

6. 11 Ways to Hack the LinkedIn Pulse Algorithm

LinkedIn has deservedly taken a lot of heat for the lack of features available to advertisers who choose to promote their services on the platform, but LinkedIn’s Pulse content discovery system can be an extraordinary way to get your content in front of new audiences – if you know how to play the game. In this post, Larry offers 11(!) ways to “hack” the LinkedIn Pulse algorithm and earn yourself some additional exposure.

7. 4 Ways to Make Your Landing Page Experience More Relevant

Love them or hate them, landing pages are among the most important stages of the typical conversion funnel. Unfortunately, they’re also one of the leakiest, and if you’re going to lose a potential conversion, an imperfect landing page could well be the kiss of death. Don’t despair, however, as in this guest post, Instapaper’s Stephanie Mialki offers four actionable ways to make your landing pages more relevant. Lucky, eh?

8. 8 Industries That Must Have a Video Marketing Strategy

Admittedly, video marketing isn’t for everyone – but in some industries and verticals, it’s virtually essential. In this post, Margot examines eight industries that absolutely positively must have a video marketing strategy in place – and suggestions for what to do if you don’t.

9. The 9 Best 404 Error Pages We’ve Ever Seen

Sometimes, finding a great 404 Error page can be more satisfying than the content you were hoping to find in the first place. For a little light reading in a month otherwise crammed with inconceivable horrors, take a minute to browse Mary’s round-up of the best 404 Error pages we’ve ever seen (though I’m a little disappointed that MailChimp’s homage to John Carpenter’s 1982 horror classic The Thing didn’t make the list).

10. New AdWords Affiliate Location Extensions Drive Clicks & Sales for Retailers

Yes, that’s right, it’s time to learn about yet another AdWords extension! Don’t worry though, Affiliate Location extensions are actually really useful. In our final post of this month’s round-up, Mark explains everything you need to know about the latest AdWords extension, and how to get the most out of the new feature in your campaigns.

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19 Genius Dental Marketing Ideas to Grow Your Practice

I hate the dentist. More than I hate going to the hospital or eating my vegetables, the dentist is my least favorite appointment. And, due to the fact I move around a lot, I’m constantly looking for a new dentist to trust my teeth with.

Talking to friends who also struggled with finding a dentist, I heard all kinds of horror stories—anything from getting fake cavities filled to being overcharged for a service they didn’t receive. What we could all agree on: finding a good dentist is hard.

You might find that bringing in good clients, and lots of them, is hard too! Here are some smart marketing ideas to make it easier for your potential customers to find your practice.

1. Local Awareness Facebook Ads

While you want to get the word out about your dental practice, being specific about who you market to is important. Most likely, you don’t want to be showing ads for your practice outside of a 50-mile radius—if you are in Pennsylvania and someone in California is seeing your ad, that doesn’t do anyone any good.

Local Awareness ads are a great way to reach a local audience, and you can now use the new map card to share locally relevant details about your dental business, like the address, distance to the business, hours of operation, and a “Get directions” link. Your CTA can even be a call button, an easy prompt to make an appointment.

2. Click to Call Ads

The main goal for dental marketing or advertising is that patients and prospects book an appointment—which is usually done by picking up the phone and calling the office. Click-to-call ads are available through Facebook and AdWords on mobile, desktop, and tablet. This extension can be added to existing ads, or you can create call-only campaigns.

 

3. Mobile Call-Only Ads

According to Google, most healthcare-related searches are performed on a smartphone. And one in twenty Google searches is for health-related information. Don’t miss out. You can create ads exclusively for mobile with call-only campaigns through AdWords.

4. Facebook Demographic Targeting

Facebook has an insane amount of demographic targeting available, and you can be using this to your advantage. Other than the obvious, you can also target potential customers by language, relationship status, employment, income, and interests. Research has shown that women make 90% of all dental buying decisions. Make sure you’re getting in front of the crowd by targeting ads to women who recently bought children’s clothes and live in your area.

5. Appointment Reminders

Whether it comes in the form of a postcard or a phone call, appointment reminders are important to make sure your patients show up. Streamline this process by using Google calendar alerts, and sending appointment confirmations and reminder by email.

You can also easily use these methods to remind your patients to make an appointment, i.e. for an annual cleaning.

 

6. AdWords Income Targeting

Yes, everyone should floss regularly and go to the dentist for annual cleanings. In truth, most people don’t. In AdWords, you can target different demographics based on income level.

Navigate over to the settings tab and select “Advanced Location.” It will bring up this menu:

 

Select the “Location groups” tab and you’ll notice a list of three options. The one you want is called “Demographics.”

 

Now, choose the household income tier (or tiers) you’re interested in and click the big red “add” button!

 

This can be used to target higher income levels with ads for teeth whitening or veneers; lower income levels may be more interested in maintaining basic health.

7. Remarketing Ads

Remarketing is frequently described as “easy money.” It helps you reach people who have visited your website, or practice, by serving specific ads focused on re-capturing those potential customers.  At your dental practice, if you collect email addresses, you can leverage these through Customer Match on Google AdWords and Facebook! Just upload the email addresses to create a remarketing audience and create an ad that would entice patients to visit your practice again—maybe a reminder for a cleaning, or whitening.

8. New! Facebook Messaging Ad Type

Facebook recently announced a new ad feature which utilizes Messenger to communicate with businesses. Advertisers will be able to use “Send Message” as a CTA on their ads, which would then take the prospect to messenger. This is only in beta now, but should be rolling out fully soon!

9. Google Maps Ads

An advertisement on Google maps could literally lead a potential patient right to your dental practice. When “dentist” is entered into the search bar, results are shown on the map and on the search results list. On mobile, these ads also include directions and call CTAs.

10. Waze Ads

Like Google Maps, you can also directly advertise on Waze. Because Waze is a community-based application, advertisements are a little different—customers near your business will see a “digital billboard” appear on the map, as well as in the search results. They can either navigate to your dental practice or save the location for later.

11. Emergency Keywords

Two months ago, I found myself googling “emergency wisdom tooth extraction boston” at 2AM. The first two results didn’t provide a “call” CTA, so I chose the third and two more from the Google maps results with the highest ratings. None of them picked up (which was expected), but I made an appointment with the first practice that called me back.

Bidding on keywords like “emergency” or “urgent” is an easy way to get clients with immediate needs and high intent; imagine the return on investment for those keywords! But make sure that your practice can take emergency cases and provides an easy way to contact the practice, or else you may get a bad review on Google…

12. ZocDoc

If there is something millennials hate as much as having to pay for wifi, it’s talking to medical professionals on the phone. ZocDoc is a mobile app that helps patients find doctors based on specialty, insurance, location, and availability; it’s almost like booking a doctor’s appointment on Open Table. It is now in most major cities—and some smaller ones too!

13. Yelp

According to a study done in 2014, 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. I cannot stress the importance of Yelp enough—claim your business! Likely, people are already writing reviews of your practice, which should be fielded and checked for accuracy. Yelp is the first place millennials go looking for a good dentist, make sure you’re getting in front of potential patients. 

14. Instagram

Ever heard of Dr. Pimple Popper? Though not for the faint of heart, this dermatologist popularized popping zits on Instagram. Celebrities advertise teeth whitening products on their Instagram’s, and orthodontists show off nice before-and-after pictures.

Instagram has become a place to shop as well—create an Instagram for your practice to show-off your unique techniques, and advertise to potential patients through social media. If you regularly update, it is sure to keep your practice top-of-mind for your followers.

15. Email Marketing

Imagine a world in which your patients could email the practice when they wanted to make an appointment. Your receptionist could respond with a few timing options, and ta-da, an appointment is made and on the calendar. Even better, you can send bills this way, reminder emails, and cute “we haven’t seen you in a while!” emails.

16. Referral Bonuses

The Pride Institute reports that 93% of people trust recommendations from their friends. Encourage those recommendations! Referral bonuses can be used to retain current customers and expand your practice. Express your gratitude and give $10 off a dental visit for every referral that makes an appointment! To make it easy, give out business referral cards when patients check-out and tuck them into any mail you send.

17. Video Advertising

As Margot recently reported, the healthcare industry is increasingly using video marketing. Don’t miss the boat! Video with real people from your practice can help develop a personal connection with your prospects, which can lead to trust, recommendations, and more appointments.

18. Direct Mail

The days of stuffing mailboxes with postcard advertisements are not over. Direct mail still works, especially for baby boomers, and it is a good opportunity to show off your specialty or competitive price points. One practice found that out of every 5,000 postcards sent, they received an average of 35 phone calls and 7 new patients. That’s a great return on investment!

19. Local Events

As a kid, I played in recreational sports leagues where each team was sponsored by a local business, which paid for our team shirts emblazoned with the business’s logo. Not only does this get your business out in front of parents with little kids, you could also throw in free toothbrushes and a small postcard with information on kid’s dental health. A practice that did this with kindergarteners reported that 70% of parents switched to the practice after receiving this info. 

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5 Takeaways from Earning Links in 130 Countries

Posted by kerryjones

I was in Peru earlier this year for a digital marketing conference, and I overwhelmingly heard the same frustration: “It’s really hard to use outreach to earn links or PR coverage in our country.”

This wasn’t for lack of trying. As I continued to hear this sentiment during my visit, I learned there simply weren’t a lot of opportunities. For one thing, in Peru, there aren’t nearly as many publishers as in more populous countries. Most publishers expected payment for mentioning a brand. Furthermore, journalists did a lot of job-hopping, so maintaining relationships was difficult.

This is a conundrum not limited to Peru. I know many people outside of the US can relate. When you see the Fractl team and others sharing stories about how we earn hundreds of links for a single content piece, you might think it must be nice to do outreach somewhere like the US where online publishers are plentiful and they’ll feature great content with no strings attached. While the work my team does isn’t easy by any means, I do recognize that there are ample opportunities for earning links and press coverage from American publishers.

What can you do if opportunities are scarce in your country?

One solution is focusing your outreach efforts on publishers in neighboring countries or countries with the same language and a similar culture. During conversations with the Attachmedia team (the company hosting the conference I was at), I learned they had much greater success earning media stories and building links outside of Peru because publishers in surrounding South American countries were more receptive to their email pitches and publishing third-party content.

But you may not need to do any international outreach if you know how to create the type of content that will organically attract attention beyond your borders.

At Fractl, many of our top-performing client campaigns have secured a lot of international links even without us doing much, or any, international outreach. To dig deeper, we recently conducted an analysis of 290 top-performing client content campaigns to determine which content naturally attracted coverage from international publishers (and thus, international links). Altogether, these campaigns were featured by publishers in 130 countries, earning more than 4,000 international media stories.

In this post, I’ll share what we found about what causes content to spread around the world.

1. Domestic success was a key factor in driving international placements for Fractl’s campaigns.

For years, we’ve noticed that if content gets enough attention in the US, it will organically begin to receive international press and links. Watch how this happens in the GIF below, which visualizes how one of our campaigns spread globally after reaching critical mass in the US:

Our study confirmed that there’s a correlation between earning a high number of links domestically and earning international links.

When we looked at our 50 most successful client campaigns that have earned the highest number of media stories, we discovered that these campaigns also received the most international coverage. Out of the 4,000 international placements we analyzed, 70 percent of them came from these 50 top-performing campaigns.

We also found that content which earned at least 25 international media pickups also earned at least 25 domestic pickups, so there’s a minimum one-to-one ratio of international to domestic pickups.

2. Overcome language barriers with visual formats that don’t rely on text.

Maps showing a contrast between countries were the visualizations of choice for international publishers.

World maps can be easily understood by global audiences, and make it easy for publishers to find an angle to cover. A client campaign, which looked at how much people eat and drink around the world, included maps highlighting differences between the countries. This was our fourth-highest-performing campaign in terms of international coverage.

It’s easy for a writer whose primary language isn’t English to look at a shaded map like the one above and pick out the story about his or her country. For example, a Belgian publisher who covered the consumption campaign used a headline that roughly translated to “Belgians eat more calories than Americans”:

Images were the second most popular visual format, which tells us that a picture may be worth a thousand words in any language. One great example of this is our “Evolution of Miss Universe” campaign, where we created a series of animated and interactive visualizations using photos of Miss Universe winners since 1952:

http://ift.tt/2fKsxW4

The simplicity of the visuals made this content accessible to all viewers regardless of the language they spoke. Paired with the international angle, this helped the campaign gain more than 40 pickups from global sites.

As we move down the rankings, formats that relied on more text, such as infographics, were less popular internationally. No doubt this is because international audiences can’t connect with content they can’t understand.

When creating text-heavy visualizations, consider if someone who speaks a different language can understand it — would it still make sense if you removed all the text?

Pro tip: If your outreach strategy is targeting multiple countries or a country where more than one language is widely spoken, it may be worth the effort to produce text-heavy visuals in multiple languages.

3. Topics that speak to universal human interests performed best internationally.

Our top-performing international campaigns show a clear preference for topics that resonate globally. The six topics that performed best internationally were:

1. Drugs and alcohol
2. Health and fitness
3. Entertainment
4. Sex and relationships
5. Travel
6. Technology

Bear in the mind that these topics are reflective of our client campaigns, so every topic imaginable was not included in this study.

We drilled this down a little more and looked at the specific topics covered in our top 50 campaigns. You’ll notice many of the most popular topics would make your grandma blush.

We know that controversial topics are highly effective in grabbing attention, and the list above confirms that pushing boundaries works on a global scale. (We weren’t exactly surprised that a campaign called “Does Size Matter?” resonated internationally.)

But don’t look at the chart above and assume that you need to make your content about sex, drugs, and rock and roll if you want to gain international attention. As you can see, even pedestrian fare performed well globally. Consider how you can create content that speaks to basic human interests, like technology, food, and … Instagram.

4. A global angle isn’t necessary.

While our top five international campaigns did have a global focus, more than half of our 50 top-performing international campaigns did not have a global angle. This tells us that a geographic angle doesn’t determine international success.

Some examples of non-geographic ideas that performed well are:

• A tool that calculates indirect sexual exposure based on how many partners you’ve had
• The types of white lies people commonly tell and hear
• A face-off between Siri, Cortana, and Google Now performance
• A sampling of how many bacteria and germs are found in hotel rooms

We also found that US-centric campaigns were, unsurprisingly, less likely to succeed. Only three of our campaigns with America-focused titles received more than 25 international placements. If your content topic does have a geographic angle, make sure to broaden it to have a multi-national or worldwide focus.

Pro tip: Consider how you can add an international twist to content ideas that already performed well domestically. The Miss Universe campaign example I shared above? That came to fruition after we successfully did a similar campaign about Miss America. Similarly, we could likely reboot our “Tolerance in America” campaign to look at racism around the world and expect it to be successful, as this topic already proved popular at home and is certainly relevant worldwide.

5. The elements of share-worthy content hold true internationally.

Over the years, we’ve seen time and time again that including certain elements in content greatly increases the chance of success. All of our content that achieved international success included some combination of the following:

• Surprising information
• An emotionally resonant topic
• A universally appealing topic
• Comparison or ranking of multiple places, things, or ideas
• A geographic angle
• A pop culture angle

Look back at the content examples I shared in this post, and make note of how many of the characteristics above are present in each one. To increase the likelihood that your content appeals to global audiences, be sure to read this post about the vital role these elements play in creating content that earns a lot of links and social shares.

What has your experience been like using content to attract international press and links? I’d love to hear what’s worked for you — leave a comment below!

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6 Tips to Supercharge Your Holiday Google Shopping Campaigns

There’s no question that well-executed Google Shopping campaigns can deliver impressive returns. However as more and more advertisers adopt Google Shopping, combined with Google’s initiative to show more shopping ads over the festive season, it can be difficult to stand out from the competition.

Here are six tips to help supercharge your Google Shopping campaigns this holiday season that’ll help drive visibility and returns on your product advertising.

Optimize Poorer Performing Products

A well optimized product feed is the foundation of successful Google Shopping campaigns and for the festive season, it’s a good opportunity to drive more value out of poorer performing products to shift inventory.

Make sure product titles include as much information as possible within the 150-character limit. This includes the name of the product, brand, gender, size and color. This is good practice that will sit well with merchants serving a variety of industries, from clothing to DIY and furniture.

{Brand} {Product Name} {Gender} {Size} {Colour}

A similar principle applies to product descriptions. Make sure that they contain all the relevant keywords and specific information within the 500-character limit. If you’re selling branded products, there will be a lot of competition. So, write descriptions that highlight the key features of the product. For example, if you’re selling winter coat, is it waterproof? Lightweight? Can sustain up to certain temperatures? It’s all in the detail.

It’s very important that you invest the time into undertaking keyword research when optimizing product titles and descriptions. You’ll soon discover that your customers further into the sales funnel are conducting more granular searches that incorporate colors and sizes into queries. By using more descriptive and keyword focused titles and descriptions, you’re also increasing the chances of your ads showing to searchers at the top and further down the sales funnel.

For inspiration, look beyond AdWords Keyword Planner and use keyword research tools such as Ahrefs, SEMrush and even search terms data in your Google Search Console account.

Keep on Top of Feed Errors & Disapprovals

While it’s clear that any disapproved items in your feed will have an impact on revenue, products with missing fields (flagged as blue and yellow flags in Google Merchant Center) will have not only have an impact on their visibility, but also their competitive edge.

Fortunately to help you identify and resolve feed issues, GMC will not only summarise what products are affected but will also give you the option to download them as an itemised CSV file.

A summary of all product errors and disapprovals can be found in GMC under Products and Diagnostics.

If there are many products with missing fields such as ‘brand’ or ‘google product category’, you can set up Feed Rules in GMC. This will allow you to automatically populate missing fields with either a fixed value, or with variable values based on rules. Perfect for a quick fix.

To set Feed Rules, navigate to Products in GMC, select Feed and then Feed Rules.

Blow the Competition Away with Epic Product Images

High-quality and relevant product images will not only help reduce the number of disapprovals in your feed, but will also have a positive impact on your products’ visibility and click-through rates.

For clothing items, be sure to use quality 250 x 250px images and 100 x 100px for non-clothing items. Also, remove any layered promotional text or marks that may be obscuring the view of products.

Finally, consider using alternatives to manufacturer stock images. For example, use contextual product imagery that shows the item in situ, or show the product from different angles. This helps your product stand out in competitive branded item results.

Leverage Custom Labels for Efficient Spending & Reporting

I’ve come across many AdWords shopping campaigns structured as a single campaign with a single ad group containing a crazy number of product groups. This campaign structure puts a huge limitation on your bidding strategy and reporting.

Custom labels allow you to divide out products by a value of your choosing that’s beyond the feed fields such as brand and product type. Once applied, you can structure your Google Shopping campaigns that will provide more control over spend.

A typical example of a custom label would be to identify your best-selling products. If best sellers are mixed with poorer performing products in a single campaign, you’ll find yourself limited by budget and unable to bid more aggressively on best sellers independently. This will restrict the visibility of best sellers, will drive up the CPA of lower priority items and skew your reporting metrics.

By creating a separate campaign for best-sellers, you’re able to set an individual budget with a specific bidding strategy to help secure maximum visibility of products that are going to make you a sweet return. It will also allow you to set a campaign priority should you have a product in multiple campaigns such as brands and best-sellers.

It’s not just popularity either. You can use custom labels to set up individual campaigns for products by:

• Price range
• Profit margin
• Festive sale items
• Stock levels
• Seasonality

Stand Out with Product Ratings

In competitive product search markets, it’s important that you take advantage of techniques that will help make your ads standout. To grab the attention of searchers, take the opportunity to enable product ratings in combination with descriptive titles and striking product images.

Why push for product ratings?

• They provide positive reinforcement on the buyer’s decision making
• Help your ads stand out against the competitor products without seller ratings
• Contributes to driving Quality Score which means higher visibility and lower CPC

Not to be confused with seller ratings that appear alongside text ads, product rating stars will trigger once you have a minimum of 3 reviews for a product, and 50 reviews in total across all your product offering.

To get started with product ratings, submit Google’s Product Ratings Interest Form and they will be touch with you once they’ve reviewed the information that you’ve provided on the form. If you already use a third-party review service provider such as Feefo and Trust Pilot, it will make the process of securing product ratings much easier.

Capture Familiar Audiences with Remarketing Lists

Much like search ads, you can adopt remarketing lists (RLSAs) for your shopping campaigns too. This is great technique that’ll allow you to customise bids to previous visitor audiences. This would include shopping cart abandoners, returning visitors and previous buyers.

With the flexibility to bid more aggressively on specific audiences that are familiar with your brand and products, remarketing lists for shopping ads have the potential to do wonders for your shopping campaigns. This includes higher click throughs and conversion rates, as well as contributing to lowering your CPA too with generally lower CPC.

Do you have any Google Shopping tips for the holiday season?

About the Author

Tom Whiley is a Digital Marketing Consultant at Hallam Internet Ltd. Working in a consulting capacity at Hallam, Tom specialises in search engine marketing and is passionate about lead generation for brands and businesses.

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The 7 Citation Building Myths Plaguing Local SEO

Posted by JoyHawkins

Previously, I wrote an article unveiling some of the most common myths I see in the Local SEO space. I thought I’d do a follow-up that specifically talked about the myths pertaining to citations that I commonly hear from both small business owners and SEOs alike.

Myth #1: If your citations don’t include your suite number, you should stop everything you’re doing and fix this ASAP.

Truth: Google doesn’t even recognize suite numbers for a whopping majority of Google business listings. Even though you enter a suite number in Google My Business, it doesn’t translate into the “Suite #” field in Google MapMaker — it simply gets eliminated. Google also pays more attention to the location (pin) marker of the business when it comes to determining the actual location and less to the actual words people enter in as the address, as there can be multiple ways to name a street address. Google’s Possum update recently introduced a filter for search queries that is based on location. We’ve seen this has to do with the address itself and how close other businesses in the same industry are to your location. Whether or not you have a suite number in Google My Business has nothing to do with it.

Darren Shaw from Whitespark, an expert on everything related to citations, says:

“You often can’t control the suite number on your citations. Some sites force the suite number to appear before the address, some after the address, some with a # symbol, some with “Ste,” and others with “Suite.” If minor discrepancies like these in your citations affected your citation consistency or negatively impacted your rankings, then everyone would have a problem.”

In summary, if your citations look great but are missing the suite number, move along. There are most likely more important things you could be spending time on that would actually impact your ranking.

Myth #2: Minor differences in your business name in citations are a big deal.

Truth: Say your business name is “State Farm: Bob Smith,” yet one citation lists you as “Bob Smith Insurance” and another as “Bob Smith State Farm.” As Mike Blumenthal states: “Put a little trust in the algorithm.” If Google was incapable of realizing that those 3 names are really the same business (especially when their address & phone number are identical), we’d have a big problem on our hands. There would be so many duplicate listings on Google we wouldn’t even begin to be able to keep track. Currently, I only generally see a lot of duplicates if there are major discrepancies in the address and phone number.

Darren Shaw also agrees on this:

“I see this all the time with law firms. Every time a new partner joins the firm or leaves the firm, they change their name. A firm can change from “Fletcher, McDonald, & Jones” to “Fletcher, Jones, & Smith” to “Fletcher Family Law” over the course of 3 years, and as long as the phone number and address stay the same, it will have no negative impact on their rankings. Google triangulates the data it finds on the web by three data points: name, address, and phone number. If two of these are a match, and then the name is a partial match, Google will have no problem associating those citations with the correct listing in GMB.”

Myth #3: NAP cleanup should involve fixing your listings on hundreds of sites.

Truth: SEO companies use this as a scare tactic, and it works very well. They have a small business pay them for citation cleanup. They’ll do a scan of your incorrect data and send you a list of hundreds of directories that have your information wrong. This causes you to gasp and panic and instantly realize you must hire them to spend hours cleaning all this up, as it must be causing the ranking of your listing on Google to tank.

Let’s dive into an example that I’ve seen. Local.com is a site that feeds to hundreds of smaller directories on newspaper sites. If you have a listing wrong on Local.com, it might appear that your listing is incorrect on hundreds of directories. For example, these three listings are on different domains, but if you look at the pages they’re identical and they all say “Local.com” at the top:

http://ift.tt/2gEl2SH

http://ift.tt/2gEixjk

http://ift.tt/2gEfBDy

Should this cause you to panic? No. Fixing it on Local.com itself should fix all the hundreds of other places. Even if it didn’t, Google hasn’t even indexed any of these URLs. (Note: they might index my examples since I just linked to them in this Moz article, so I’m including some screenshots from while I was writing this):

If Google hasn’t even indexed the content, it’s a good sign that the content doesn’t mean much and it’s nothing you should stress about. Google would have no incentive or reason to index all these different URLs due to the fact that the content on them is literally the same. Additionally, no one links to them (aside from me in this article, of course).

As Darren Shaw puts it,

“This one really irks me. There are WAY more important things for you to spend your time/money on than trying to fix a listing on a site like scranton.myyellowpageclassifieds.biz. Chances are, any attempt to update this listing would be futile anyway, because small sites like these are basically unmanaged. They’re collecting their $200/m in Adsense revenue and don’t have any interest in dealing with or responding to any listing update requests. In our Citation Audit and Cleanup service we offer two packages. One covers the top 30 sites + 5 industry/city-specific sites, and the other covers the top 50 sites + 5 industry/city-specific sites. These are sites that are actually important and valuable to local search. Audit and cleanup on sites beyond these is generally a waste of time and money.”

Myth #4: There’s no risk in cancelling an automated citation service.

People often wonder what might happen to their NAP issues if they cancel their subscription with a company like Yext or Moz Local. Although these companies don’t do anything to intentionally cause old data to come back, there have been some recent interesting findings around what actually happens when you cancel.

Truth: In one case, Phil Rozek did a little case study for a business that had to cancel Moz Local recently. The good news is that although staying with them is generally a good decision, this business didn’t seem to have any major issues after cancelling.

Yext claims on their site that they don’t do anything to push the old data back that was previously wrong. They explain that when you cancel, “the lock that was put in place to protect the business listing is no longer present. Once this occurs, the business listing is subject to the normal compilation process at the search engine, online directory, mobile app, or social network. In fact, because Yext no longer has this lock in place, Yext has no control over the listing directly at all, and the business listing data will now act as it normally would occur without Yext.”

Nyagoslav Zhekov just recently published a study on cancelling Yext and concluded that most of the listings either disappear or revert back to their previous incorrect state after cancelling. It seems that Yext acts as a sort of cover on top of the listing, and once Yext is cancelled, that cover is removed. So, there does seem to be some risk with cancelling Yext.

In summary, there is definitely a risk when you decide to cancel an ongoing automated service that was previously in place to correct your citations. It’s important for people to realize that if they decide to do this, they might want to budget for some manual citation building/cleanup in case any issues arise.

Myth #5: Citation building is the only type of link building strategy you need to succeed at Local SEO.

Many Local SEO companies have the impression that citation building is the only type of backlinking strategy needed for small businesses to rank well in the 3-pack. According to this survey that Bright Local did, 72% of Local SEOs use citation building as a way of building links.

Truth: Local SEO Guide found in their Local Search Ranking Factors study that although citations are important, if that’s the only backlinking strategy you’re using, you’re most likely not going to rank well in competitive markets. They found also found that links are the key competitive differentiator even when it comes to Google My Business Rankings. So if you’re in a competitive industry or market and want to dominate the 3-pack, you need to look into additional backlinking strategies over and above citations.

Darren adds more clarity to the survey’s results by stating,

“They’re saying that citations are still very important, but they are a foundational tactic. You absolutely need a core base of citations to gain trust at Google, and if you don’t have them you don’t have a chance in hell at ranking, but they are no longer a competitive difference maker. Once you have the core 50 or so citations squared away, building more and more citations probably isn’t what your local SEO campaign needs to move the needle further.”

Myth #6: Citations for unrelated industries should be ignored if they share the same phone number.

This was a question that has come up a number of times with our team. If you have a restaurant that once had a phone number but then closes its doors, and a new law firm opens up down the street and gets assigned that phone number, should the lawyer worry about all the listings that exist for the restaurant (since they’re in different industries)?

Truth: I reached out to Nyagoslav Zhekov, the Director of Local Search at Whitespark, to get the truth on this one. His response was:

“As Google tries to mimic real-life experiences, sooner or later this negative experience will result in some sort of algorithmic downgrading of the information by Google. If Google manages to figure out that a lot of customers look for and call a phone number that they think belongs to another business, it is logical that it will result in negative user experience. Thus, Google will assign a lower trust score to a Google Maps business record that offers information that does not clearly and unquestionably belong to the business for which the record is. Keeping in mind that the phone number is, by design and by default, the most unique and the most standardized information for a business (everything else is less standardize-able than the phone number), this is, as far as I am concerned, the most important information bit and the most significant identifier Google uses when determining how trustworthy particular information for a business is.”

He also pointed out that users finding the phone number for the restaurant and calling it continually would be a negative experience for both the customer and the law firm (who would have to continually confirm they’re not a restaurant) so there would be added benefit in getting these listings for the restaurant marked closed or removed.

Since Darren Shaw gave me so much input for this article, he also wanted to add a seventh myth that he comes across regularly:

Myth #7: Google My Business is a citation.

“This one is maybe more of a mis-labelling problem than a myth, but your listing at Google isn’t really a citation. At Whitespark we refer to Google, Bing, and Apple Maps as ‘Core Search Engines’ (yes, Yahoo has been demoted to just a citation). The word ‘citation’ comes from the concept of ‘citing’ your sources in an academic paper. Using this conceptual framework, you can think of your Google listing as the academic paper, and all of your listings out on the web as the sources that cite the business. Your Google listing is like the queen bee and all the citations out there are the workers contributing to keep the queen bee alive and healthy.”

Hopefully that lays some of the fears and myths around citations to rest. If you have questions or ideas of other myths on this topic, we’d love to hear about it in the comments!

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