Category: Listings Management

Google My Business Limits Features During COVID-19 Pandemic

Posted on by Mindstream Media Group

In March, Google announced they would be limiting Google My Business (GMB) features and functionality due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The limitations come as part of an effort by Google to focus on the quality and reliability of the location information on Google Maps, and to keep Google employees safe and healthy.

Google My Business resources are being shifted to focus on edits to essential features to ensure brands and business owners can keep their customers updated on their business in this unprecedented time. Essential features include hours of operation, marking a business as temporarily closed or closed, business descriptions and business attributes. In addition to focusing on essential edits, Google is temporarily prioritizing business edits to health-related businesses. Brands and business owners should expect delays in non-essential business edits and possibly delays if your business is not health-related.

In addition to delays in business edits, Google has temporarily disabled several features. With a limited GMB team and many business edits coming in, Google disabled these features to ensure resources are focused on the essentials.

Temporarily disabled features

  • The ability to leave a new review
  • The ability to respond to a review
  • The ability to add to/edit Q&A (customer FAQ on GMB listing)
  • The ability to upload new videos

The Google Posts feature was temporarily disabled, but is now back up and running. Google is working through previously rejected Posts that were submitted during the time the feature was disabled. Additionally, Google has added a new Post type: COVID-19 update. The new Post type allows a business to add information about updated hours, change in business operations, change in business management regarding hygiene/safety and requests for support.

Although Google said to expect delays for some business edits, it is still important for local businesses to submit any business updates to Google My Business. Mindstream Media Group clients needing edits to local business information should contact their representative. We will process the edits immediately and monitor them until they are live.

As you are waiting for edits on Google to be reviewed, we recommend updating customers through other outlets, such as: Google Posts, social media, email, a blog post or adding a banner to your website.

With shelter-in-place orders in more than 40 states and non-essential businesses being told to close their doors, it’s more important than ever to ensure local business information is accurate.

A Marketer’s Mindset in Guiding Clients Through the Current Pandemic

Posted on by Mindstream Media Group

As marketers, we are tasked with guiding clients, brands, franchisees and even other marketers on media strategy, tactics and most recently, how to best navigate through an unprecedented crisis that changes by the minute.

It’s easy and somewhat comforting to follow the same news sources’ guidance and recommendations, but especially now with so many affected by this pandemic all over the globe, there are SO MANY sources of information – whether about the virus itself, how it’s affecting sales, tips for working from home, how to practice better self-care in stressful times…the list goes on.

Being a marketer is grounded knowledge gained from education and work experience, but another component is curiosity. It’s about gathering from multiple sources, researching messaging from different brands on the same topic, how to find that coveted solution to reach your target audience, standing out in a sea of sameness.

With this article, we’ve channeled our curiosity into finding the most helpful, practical content to better help you stay informed and provide guidance for your brand.

Should the News Disrupt Your Content Calendar? We (as an agency) have adapted our own content plan, as well as those of our clients, in the last few weeks. Business-as-usual content efforts can be seen as tone-deaf and possibly insensitive. But how does one decide to what extent to change an already-perfected content calendar? Learn more.

Is your business closed, on a limited schedule, offering different services due to the virus (restaurant takeout/delivery) or been affected somehow by the pandemic? Make sure your Google My Business listing has the most up-to-date information to help consumers. Learn more. Google is adding a feature to GMB listings that allows business owners to easily mark whether they are ‘temporarily closed’ – and will show this information in Search and Maps. Learn more.

Source:  Google

It’s better for businesses to be proactive rather than reactive in the age of social distancing. Learn more.

Agility and thoughtfulness in marketing strategy, at its best: How brands are acting quickly and taking extra precautions to avoid coronavirus insensitivities. Learn more.

To help ease the burden on small businesses, Facebook has created a $100 million grant program to assist 30,000 SMBs in 30 nations. In addition to grants, Facebook is developing a range of other options to provide further assistance. Learn more.

Source:  Facebook

We hope you’ve found our compilation insightful. Stay safe and if you haven’t already, subscribe to our blog to get next week’s roundup delivered straight to your inbox.

[AUGUST 2019] New Features From Google My Business

Posted on by Mindstream Media Group

Continuing their quest to make Google the one-stop shop for local business information, Google My Business has added several new features to their listings over the past couple months. We’ve seen Google do this multiple times over the past few years as they’ve heightened their focus on the local space by continually enhancing the local search experience with new features and ways to contact the business for more information.

Most recently, Google has added:

  • Get A Quote button. If a business has the messaging feature turned on in Google My Business, they now see a large blue “Get A Quote” button at the top of their listing. This allows users to request a quote from service-related businesses.
  • Hotel services and amenities. Hotels now have the ability to add services and amenities to their business listings through Google My Business. It will be important for hotels to enter in this information and keep it up-to-date, as Google is becoming the go-to place for hotel details, reviews and pricing. (Check out our last blog for more on Google Travel.)
  • Place topics. Google has added a new feature to the reviews tab on Google My Business listings named place topics. Place topics pulls from review data to showcase the frequent words or phrases used in reviews. This feature will help users see, at a glance, what other people think of a business. In order for place topics to appear, you must have reviews on your listing. Google cannot create place topics for businesses.

Google Place topics

  • Carousel local pack with ads. Google has been testing a new design for the local pack, one that includes local ads and a carousel format. Previously, the local pack showed several local listings with the ad at the top. This new design still showcases the ad by placing it at the top. The local listings, however, lose visibility in this format as only one-and-a-half listings appear in the carousel local pack. If this is rolled out, it could affect local visibility and might force businesses to purchase more local ads.

As more and more users turn to Google for local business information, and as Google continues to add new features to Google My Business, local businesses are expected to keep up with the changes. If businesses do not keep their Google My Business profiles up to date, they might risk losing local visibility and fall behind their competitors.

Want to learn more about improving your brand’s local listing content? Contact Mindstream Media Group, a Google Premier Partner, to find out how our listings management solution can help amplify your brand’s presence. 

Yelp Upgrades Bring New Ways to Highlight, Display Business Locations

Posted on by Mindstream Media Group

In March of 2019, Yelp introduced the Verified License upgrade to help consumers find companies that are licensed in specific categories and limited states on the platform. In June, Yelp introduced two new paid profile upgrades to help owners customize promotional tools. Here is a look at the latest upgrades provided by Yelp for business owners.

Business Highlights

The first new product is Business Highlights, which allows business owners to self-select icons that appear in Yelp search results. Yelp lets owners choose from a wide range of icons to help promote their businesses, such as “free,” “workmanship” and “years in business.” The attributes are used to help businesses stand out and become more attractive to consumers searching on Yelp. The cost of this upgrade is $2 a day for business owners.

yelp business highlights

Portfolio

The second new product is Portfolio, which allows subscribers to display project progress photos in an unlimited capacity. This upgrade is often beneficial for companies involved in remodeling, landscaping and construction. Business owners are allowed to display custom descriptions for images, and Yelp provides quote and chat functions through these pages. The Portfolio product also costs $2 per day.

Yelp Portfolio

The ability for owners to customize business pages is adding competition to the paid profile landscape. In June, Google announced new promotional and branding tools for the Google My Business (GMB) platform. Business owners looking to find new ways to create engagement with users searching on Yelp and Google will have several options in the future to help promote their company and stand out from the crowd.

 

Need help building a Yelp strategy for your business locations? Contact Mindstream Media Group to find out how our Local Listings Management solutions can amplify your brand’s presence.

[APRIL 2019] What Multi-Location Brands Need to Know About Google’s March 2019 Core Update

Posted on by Mindstream Media Group

It’s been just over a month since Google released a core algorithm update that sent shockwaves through the search engine optimization (SEO) industry. Originally dubbed “Florida 2.0” by speculators, Google promptly renamed it the March 2019 Core Update (ostensibly to make it easier for everyone to grasp).

Um… Thanks, Google?

Let’s be honest, Google’s clarification on the update’s nomenclature didn’t really provide much in the way of actionable insights for brand marketers. So, to help clear things up, let’s look at how the March 2019 Core Update has impacted a specific type of business – multi-location brands.

Three takeaways for multi-location brands from the March 2019 Core Update

No. 1: Site engagement is a lot more important now

Every Google algorithm update has its share of winners and losers. To the victors go the spoils of increased search visibility, which inevitably leads to more site traffic. With the March 2019 Core Update, the winners appear to be websites with better engagement metrics like time on site, pages per visit and bounce rate.

March 2019 Core Update Winners and Losers - Site Engagment

What you can do

Multi-location brands should work to optimize webpages across their sites – especially location pages. Provide all the information potential customers could need about your brand’s products, services and locations. Make sure your location pages include up-to-date hours of operation, contact information and links to get directions.

No. 2: Understanding user intent just became a lot more crucial

Optimizing your site with all the information a consumer could need is important. But it’s also important to take it up a notch by optimizing your site for user intent, especially post-March 2019 Core Update. This means making sure that the content on your site addresses specific queries searchers use to find answers related to your brand.

What you can do

Start by analyzing the searches you want your site to rank well for and determining the intent and expectation behind each one. Then, make sure the content on your webpages matches those expectations.

Navigational searches: Queries where the searcher is trying to contact or visit nearby businesses. Increasing visibility in these searches is crucial for multi-location brands. To make sure your content matches searcher intent:

  • Optimize your location and other pages with all the information a potential consumer could need.
  • Add links so searchers can easily get directions to your locations.
  • Add click-to-call buttons and other calls-to-action to make it easy for searchers to contact you.

Informational searches: Queries where the searcher is looking for additional information about the products and services they’re interested in buying. Here are a couple of things you can do to make sure your site adequately answers these types of searches:

  • Create and optimize in-depth product and service pages.
  • Add images and video to provide searchers a visual representation of your products and services.

Transactional searches: These types of queries signal that a consumer is ready to make a purchase. To optimize for transactional searches, make sure your site provides a seamless path to purchase. (If your website doesn’t have a way for consumers to buy online, go back to the navigational optimization tips to make sure they can easily contact one of your locations.)

If you need help optimizing your website to improve your search visibility and attract more visitors, contact us to learn more about our SEO services.

The trustworthiness of your brand is still essential for search visibility

Another winner of the March 2019 Core Update appears to be sites with strong brand profiles that focus on broad topics. Which means the losers here are smaller, niche sites focused on sub-topics. Based on this trend, Google seems to be favoring sites that adhere to the Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) guidelines that were central to a previous core update. 

What you can do

Building consumer trust in your brand involves a lot of different efforts, some of which we already touched on – like creating website content that matches searchers’ expectations. The goal of these efforts should be to position your brand as the go-to resource on topics related to your products and services.

One way to do this is to create a wealth of high-quality content around all the topics related to your brand. Don’t settle with just creating product and service pages for your website. Instead, own related topics by creating a library of content like blog posts, e-books, videos, podcasts, infographics, etc. for each of your products and services.

If you need help creating this content, contact us to learn more about our Content Marketing solution.

A closing thought on Google’s March 2019 Core Update

While the tips above will help your website’s visibility post-March 2019 Core Update, there’s so much more you can and should do. Given that Google relies on hundreds of ranking factors and has a variety of types of search results, improving your brand’s overall visibility requires a comprehensive search marketing strategy that encompasses a variety of paid and organic efforts. If you want to learn more about what it takes to crush the search game, contact Mindstream Media Group to talk to one of our local search, SEO or paid search experts.