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This example is from one of my clients, who’s got a seasonal business and had a great winter.

Two screenshots up the difference between Google visibility and Bing visibility.  The screenshots are of those two search engines’ “dashboard” stats.  I doubt either source of intel is Swiss-watch accurate, but each can give you a rough sense of how many people see you on that search engine’s local map.

Bing Places dashboard stats:

Nice spike.  Reflects how good business was.

Notice the high-water mark of 957 impressions.  Add up all the times the Bing Places page showed up in the local search results in February and you’ve got a few thousand impressions in a month, which is pretty good.  Who said Bing doesn’t matter?

Now, Google My Business stats, from a somewhat different range (more on that in a minute):

One thing you’ll notice is a high-water mark of almost 9000 impressions in a day on Google My Business, compared to high-water mark of a tenth of that in a whole week on Bing.

My little comparison is far from scientific.  You may notice the date ranges aren’t the same.  Bing’s doesn’t capture most March, which had a good amount of action.  That’s because Bing’s data is about two weeks old and doesn’t reflect more-recent data, and neither Google nor Bing lets you pick a custom date range.  The result is an apples-to-oranges comparison.

Still, based on the parts that overlap, impressions on Google outnumber those on Bing by at least 10 to 1.  (Probably more like 20 to 1.)

“Hey Phil, party foul.  That’s still an unfair comparison.  Google has so much more market share than Bing has, so of course Bing’s local traffic is a gnat.”

Exactly.  It’s a good thing that Bing Places is pretty hassle-free to set up and manage, because my advice is not to lose sleep over your Bing rankings.

Why not make your local competitors work to outrank you?  They won’t have to work too hard if you assume Google keeps the Google Maps results clean, because that doesn’t happen much.

“Spam patrol” is my name for the process of identifying Google My Business pages that violate any of Google’s guidelines and that, as a result, stick out on the map more than they should.  Though anyone can send in an edit on any Google My Business page, the most likely reason you’d do that is to counteract a competitor who’s breaking the rules at your expense. You should do spam patrol whether you do your own local SEO or work with a third party on it.

If you do it right and have the patience of an oyster, spam patrol can keep some, most, or maybe even all of your local competitors from outranking you unfairly.  Like earning links and reviews, spam patrol has tons of long-term payoff if you stick with it.  But as with those other ongoing activities, few business owners approach spam patrol the right way.  Even fewer stick with it for long enough to see much benefit.

By the way, if you’re not sure how to sniff out local competitors’ spam, how to send in a Google Maps edit, or what to expect, I suggest you read this great post by Joy Hawkins, and maybe this post I did.

If you want to minimize competitors’ Google Maps spam, but you don’t want it to become another big commitment that frustrates you until you throw in the towel, follow these 10 tips to make spam patrol doable:

1. Use a spreadsheet to keep track of your edits. Like this one I use. (You can download and tweak that template as you wish.) Getting all your “Wanted” posters together is a hassle at first, but will save you a lot of time in the long run. Also, spam patrol will seem less daunting, and you’ll get a better sense of what works (and what doesn’t).

2. Focus on the two types of spam Google is most likely to act on: keyword-stuffing in names, and pages that are so spammy you can’t even tell what the “real” business is. Edits to the “name” field have the best chance of a thumbs-up from Google. The type of edit with the second-best chances of approval are “Spam, fake, or offensive.”  Marking listings as “duplicates” or trying to edit things like the address is less fruitful.  (All of that’s been my experience, at least.)

 

3. Try partial or piecemeal edits. If a competitor is breaking multiple rules, try to get Google to correct one first, before you deal with the others. If you Google won’t remove all the keywords or city names in a competitor’s keyword-stuffed name, try editing out some of it.

 

4. Don’t patrol only your main search terms. Also look at who’s ranking for “niche” terms you want to rank for (or that you already do rank for). Some of the worst spammers own a niche, or many niches, often because the competitive bar is low and their competitors are less likely to pay attention.

5. If you want or need to boost your credibility with Google by becoming a higher-level “Local Guide” – as I strongly suggest you do – don’t only rack up points by reviewing businesses. Do some of the other activities on Google’s “points” breakdown.

6. Don’t build up your Local Guide track record only by making edits in your local market. Wade into other spam swamps (near and far) unrelated to your business and submit edits on spammy businesses you run across. You need at least to look like a do-gooder to get enough credibility that Google might approve your edits.  Just being right often isn’t enough, it pains me to say.

7. Use Google’s new spam-reporting form to corroborate any “suggest an edit” edits where you’ve wanted to explain to Google how you know a competitor is spamming. (See this forum thread.)

8. Don’t forget to check out competitors’ hours, and to submit edits on them if necessary. The process for that is a little different; you don’t click the usual “Suggest an edit” button, but rather need to click on the business’s hours in the right-hand sidebar (the “knowledge panel”), and then click on a different link that reads “Suggest an edit.” Why bother?  Because you don’t want competitors to get undeserved clicks and leads because they posted erroneous hours while you faithfully posted your real-world business hours.

9. Get other people involved in spam patrol. Business partners, employees, friends, family, etc. Preferably some of those people live near the hive of spam you’re trying to fumigate. Don’t have them make exactly the same edits you make.  Just get them spraying in the same direction. (By the way, if you’re working with a local SEO person or are considering it, ask him or her where spam patrol fits into the strategy.)

10. Every week or two you should go through your spreadsheet, review your edits, add any new offenders you find, and make new edits. You don’t need to do spam patrol every day, but you can’t do it just once and call it a day.

 

Spam patrol is a never-ending task, and you probably won’t gun down every bogie.  But you do it in a way that’s efficient and not overwhelming, and that doesn’t sidetrack you from your other work, you’re more likely to stick with it.  Then your other local SEO work is more likely to pay off.

Did you learn any of the above the hard way?  Any tips on spam patrol?  Any war stories?  Leave a comment!

What’s the difference between the Google Maps business results and middle school?  Well, at one you get lunch and the possibility that the heckling and hounding ends for the day once the bell rings.

It’s easy to get worn down in local SEO.  The work it takes for you to get visible and stay visible and get customers out of the deal is significant.  The long-term effort it takes for you to keep a lid on competitors’ cheating also adds up.  Once you add all the monitoring you need to do to make sure nobody’s sabotaged you on the Google Map or in your Google reviews, it all seems like too much.

But it’s more doable if you know exactly what your vulnerabilities are.  The Google Maps results are the Wild West partly because of all the ways competitors can spam their way to the top with their Google My Business pages, and partly because of all the ways they can try to hurt your visibility or reputation.

Below are all the ways (I know of) that disgruntled customers, bitter employees, and unethical competitors can mess up your program.  All are areas you should check on routinely, and contact Google about if necessary.

Google Maps / My Business vulnerabilities

Uploading inappropriate or unflattering photos.  Anyone can upload a photo to your Google My Business page, either unaccompanied or in a review.

Answering customers’ Google My Business “questions” falsely or deceptively.  You may get a notification when someone posts a question or an answer, but a Google bug, or an email filter, or inattention may allow a bad answer to slither past you undetected.  You can’t remove bad questions (or answers).  All you can do is flag them.

Asking unflattering Google My Business “questions.”  Same deal as above.

Messing with your “opening date.”  Apparently Google fixed the nasty bug (great find by Tim Colling) that caused Google My Business pages with future dates of opening to fall off the Google Map altogether.  Still, an incorrect opening date that sticks may confuse would-be customers.

Taking a spray-n’-pray approach to submitting erroneous Google Maps “suggest an edit” edits.  If competitors or other antagonists fire enough rounds (possibly from multiple Google accounts), some may graze you.

 

 

Providing incorrect “Know this place?” answers.  Google may ask whether you have dedicated parking and a wheelchair-accessible entrance.  You do.  Your nemesis says you don’t.  Google shows him an ugly photo and a nice one, and asks which is “more helpful” in characterizing your business.  He picks the ugly one.  Google asks your competitor (or fuming customer or ex-employee) 37 other questions.  None of the answers clearly hurts your visibility or reputation, so maybe the potshots aren’t a big deal.  On the other hand, given that Google hasn’t boarded up off the “Know this place?” mineshaft of crowdsourced data, you can be pretty confident Google finds it useful somehow.

Moving your map pin to an incorrect spot.  I haven’t run into that problem much (that I can remember), but I have it on good authority that an incorrectly placed marker can mess up your rankings.

Google review vulnerabilities

Re-posting bad reviews or ratings.  Even if you get an illegitimate review removed – a big “if” – little to nothing stops the perp from posting the same review again, under the same name or a different name.

Updating or adding to bad reviews.  Even if you get that illegitimate review removed, the foul brigand can always write a differently-nasty review or a review that’s dialed down just enough.

Posting 4-star reviews.  If your average rating is closer to 5 stars – let’s say 4.8 stars – a 4-star average rating is a big step down for you.  Because a 4-star review by nature isn’t extreme, it’s less likely to get filtered by Google, and you’re less likely to suspect that it’s the work of a crooked competitor.

Posting reviews under the name of another competitor.  That probably breaks a law or two, but if you blame the wrong competitor for the smear, who will ever know the real culprit?  Pretty devilish trick.

 

Putting “thumbs up” on negative reviews repeatedly.  There seems to be no limit to how many times you can do a thumbs-up.  Thumbs-upped negative reviews may make some people think twice before calling you, and for no good reason.  Worse, those reviews may rise to the top when your Google reviews are shown by “Most Helpful” at the top, which is how they show by default.

Flagging positive, valid reviews.  I’m speculating here, because I have no way to know whether a perfectly good review gets removed because someone flagged it and not because Google filtered it automatically.  What I do know is you usually get Google’s attention if enough people flag a review.

Writing bad reviews on unpoliced non-Google review sites, so a bad “average” rating shows up in your knowledge panel.  I’m talking about the “Reviews from the web” section.  As badly policed as Google Maps reviews are, other sites are even worse.  Often Google scrapes those reviews and shows your average rating in the right-hand sidebar, which people see whenever they click on you in the 3-pack or Maps results, or whenever they search for you by name.

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What are other ways people can mess up your Google My Business page?

Any you’ve experienced first-hand?

Leave a comment!

You know the good reasons and bad reasons to hire a local SEO person or company.  The pros and cons of doing it yourself are clear, too.  What you’re less sure of is: when has the do-it-yourself option piled up enough pros that it’s clearly the better choice for you?

It’s a sliding scale.  You don’t need to be a whiz at anything to handle your business’s local SEO to great effect, but you need to have or develop certain qualities.  The more of those boxes you can check, the better.

Below are the factors that – in my opinion – determine whether doing your own local SEO is a good idea.  The more of these questions you say “yes” to, the more likely it’ll go the way you want it to.

1. Do you assume local SEO will take long-term effort? Local SEO is not a one-time process. If you do it right, you’ll get to the point where you don’t spend much time on it day-to-day, but you constantly inch it forward.  It’s great if you can do some basic fix-ups and get results, but often it takes more grinding.

2. Do you assume you’ll take some wrong turns? That’s inevitable. Google is a slippery surface, your competitors change over time, and you’ll know more next year than you will this year.  Keep learning and keep working and you’ll do fine.

 

3. Will you get your hands dirty on your website? You don’t need to be a developer, you don’t need to know much about sites other than your site, and it’s OK if your site is far from “perfect.” If you’re able and willing to make some changes to your site in-house, you create some options.  Those options include paying an SEO person only for his/her advice on your site (and not also for implementation), hiring a developer only for the toughest tasks, and maybe not hiring anyone at all.

4. Will you do more than work on your site? Though crucial, the site is one moving part of several that sway your visibility in the local results. The other big moving parts are your local listings, reviews, and links.  You will have to work on all those things sooner or later, particularly on links and reviews long-term.  (Your visibility also may depend on how clean the local map is.)

Even if you did not or do not need many or any good links to outrank your competitors, you’ll probably want to knock in some insurance runs.  If your competitors rank well but only have so-so reviews, you’ll want to get ahead by having better reviews.  If they rank well AND have great reviews, then you’ll have no choice but to try to match or surpass them.

5. Will you put in work your competitors won’t? Only if you do what they won’t do can you achieve what they can’t achieve. The main areas where sustained hard work pay off are (1) in earning links, (2) in earning reviews, and (3) in the amount and quality of info on your site about exactly what you do and exactly what makes it the best choice for customers / clients / patients.

6. Have you been frustrated by the third parties you’ve hired? Maybe they were the problem. Maybe you were the problem.  I can’t say.  What I do know is you’re not good at picking out SEO companies if you’ve had 9 of them.

7. Are you willing to get help piecemeal? Trying to find a company to “handle it all” often isn’t realistic, so you should be willing to delegate part of the implementation, if necessary. Maybe you want a stunt pen, or help on your site, or help on your local listings.  That doesn’t mean you no longer “do your own SEO,” or that you’ve entrusting someone else to plan or execute your whole strategy.  You’re still the captain of the ship even if you enlist an extra swabbie or two.

 

8. Will you study? Both up-front and long-term? Get your sea legs if possible, but don’t try to get “comfortable” with all the concepts of local SEO, because that won’t happen (for a variety of reasons).  Don’t try to understand everything before you do anything.  Nobody has all the answers anyway.  Learn a little, work a lot, and repeat.

 

9. Do you know you can’t measure everything? Many things you can track.  Many more you can’t.

You won’t be able to find out how many people discovered you in the Google Maps results, rather than heard about you some other way and pulled up your Google My Business page. If you get a great link, you won’t be able to attribute a bump in rankings (let alone ROI) to it.  If you get a review on a site that shows up when someone Googles your business by name, the referrer traffic you see in Google Analytics won’t tell you how many would-be customers saw that review in the search results.  If your site is full of keyword-stuffed gibberish, and you clean it up, and your rankings go down a little, but you get more or better leads, was the clean-up a good choice?  Don’t hire a third party just because you assume it can answer questions like those, because it can’t.

10. Can you weigh lots of conflicting suggestions? It’s great to learn about local SEO from people who do it.  But you’ll still get conflicting advice on all kinds of questions.  What constitutes spam?  Which page should be your Google My Business landing page?  Is that link opportunity worth the trouble?  When should you create a microsite?  How much citation work is enough?

I assume you’re the kind who likes to balance out what you hear with a little skepticism, with common sense, with what you know about your customers, and with non-rankings concerns (like branding and conversion-rate optimization).  If so, you probably don’t need a local SEO person or company to make most or all of the calls for you.

11. Is your business on the newer side? You might argue that because you have so many other things to do, you don’t have time to do your own local SEO. That may be.  But does that also mean you have time to pay someone else to do it wrong and set you back (in terms of money, time, and missed-opportunity costs)?  I say better to strike while the iron’s hot – to see what you can do while you’re still gung-ho.  Later on, if and when you’re even busier, you may see even more reasons not to try DIY.  Don’t expect to make easy progress at any stage, but at least in the earlier stages of your local SEO effort the next steps probably are clearer.

12. Will you be as cautious online as you are offline? Most SEO companies aren’t. Most have cocooned themselves away from the consequences of what they do and say.  One result is they suggest some crazy stuff for your business, in the name of rankings.

Would you tell employees to answer customers’ questions with a 10% keyword-density?  Then don’t put keyword-stuffed gibberish on your site.

Would you commission a Banksy-type mural of your business on the side of a building, in the hopes that people pass by it and call you before the mural is scrubbed off?  Then don’t create fake Google My Business pages.

Would you pay for a shoebox of leads – and you can’t peek in the box?  Then don’t buy links.

Also, what you do online will follow you around.  Do something unethical and you can get sued, scare away your customer base, or worse.

If you think hard about your local SEO, but not to the point of analysis paralysis, sooner or later you’ll make the right choices and get good results.

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What was the factor that tipped you toward (or away from) doing your own local SEO?

Any points I missed?

Leave a comment!

People who do local SEO are pretty resourceful at rubbing keywords all over pages they want to rank. They’re less creative with the types of pages they try to get to rank.

Often those pages are limited to the homepage, a few “service” pages, and maybe some doughy “city” pages.  Those types of pages matter – as do other good standard types of pages – but other kinds can surprise you.  “Ultimate guides” and infographics and other kinds of theoretical link-bait are fine, but even if they rank well, the people who click on them tend not to be local to you.

Here are 10 kinds of pages that can rank better (and maybe more easily) than you might think, and that you might want to create on your site:

1. “Service Areas” or “Location Finder.” Don’t just plop down a list of cities and ZIPs. Also describe your service area in at least a couple of paragraphs, describe your experience in some of the communities on the list, link to your pages on specific services, link to any “city” pages you might have made, maybe include reviews from a few customers, and see if you can work a “near me” angle.

2. “About” or “Bio.” Usually you can optimize them for “Attorney” or “Doctor” or “Agent” or “Master Carpenter” or “Expert” or similar local search terms. Describe in detail the person’s experience, and exactly what makes him or her at whatever line of work, and link to relevant other pages on the site.  Don’t just describe hobbies and preferred breakfast foods.

3. “Certified” or “Licensed.” In some fields certification or licensure isn’t applicable, or nobody cares about it. But if you’re a home inspector, a hypnotist, an arborist, an electrician, or pretty much any kind of contractor (to name a few examples), the chances are good that at some point some of your customers will search for who’s qualified – not just for who’s nearby.

 

4. “[Service] for [person].” Think “massage for pregnant women,” “divorce attorney for men,” “cosmetic dentist for kids,” etc.

5. “Reviews.” Some people add “reviews” or “reviews of” to whatever local search term they type in. You’ll want to create a page that shows off your reviews anyway, so you might as well try to get it to rank for something.  (Note: this page should be different from your “Review Us” page.)

6. “Voted Best.” The catch is you probably need to win some distinction first. But if you do, you can probably snag some “best ____ in [place]” rankings.

7. Photo gallery. Depending on your niche, you may be able to get some rankings for “photos of ____” or “examples of ____” terms, but I mention photo galleries here because if you play your cards right you might make one that ranks for broader search terms, too. Especially if you don’t only slap up photos, but also describe what’s in the photos.

8. “Bilingual ____” or “[Language]-Speaking _____.” If you or someone who works for you speaks more than one language, and whips out that language when helping customers / clients / patients, create a page all about that.

9. “Discount” or “Coupons.” You could have one for each service, if you wanted to. It could be paltry.  Or if it’s not paltry, maybe you don’t offer it to everyone.  (Maybe you only offer it to veterans, or students, or seniors, for example.)

10. “Commercial” versions of “residential” pages, or vice versa. Let’s say you’re an electrician who offers 20 different services. You’ll want a page on each specific service, of course, but if you also serve business owners and if a residential customer has different needs from those of a business-owner customer, you’ll probably want 20 pages on your residential services, and another 20 on your commercial services.  Each can be your secret weapon.

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Can you think of other “ninja” pages that can quietly climb up the local search results?

Any good examples of ninja pages that seem to work well for your competitor(s)?

What’s an overlooked kind of page that’s worked well for you?

Leave a comment!