SearchLab’s Local SEO Blog

Knowledge bombs to help you learn more about Local Search

Suds and Search 51 | Carrie Hill, Local Search Analyst and Community Manager at Sterling Sky

February 25, 2021 Greg Gifford Local SEO, Suds and Search

Also available as a Podcast:

My guest on this episode of Suds & Search is Carrie Hill. For over 13 years, Carrie has been one of the most important voices in digital marketing for small and medium businesses. Carrie has contributed her talents at industry conferences, on podcasts, webinars, and blogs.

She has presented at virtually every Local SEO conference including LocalU, Whitespark Local Search Summit, and all of the different Pubcon events. She’s a prolific writer as well. She has contributed to Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch, and on the Sterling Sky company blog.

Why it’s important to have a blog

February 23, 2021 Greg Gifford Local Search Tuesdays, Local SEO, Search Engine Optimization

In this week’s video, I share why it’s important to have a blog and how it affects potential visibility in searches. With the right strategy, a blog can drastically increase local visibility, which leads to more customers and more business. Watch the video for all the details.

The new automotive study from Google

February 16, 2021 Greg Gifford Google Updates, Local Search Tuesdays, Local SEO

In this week’s video, I share the details about Google’s newest automotive study titled “The auto dealer’s guide to navigating today’s digital landscape”. It shares several interesting stats about how buyer behavior has changed due to COVID and the resulting lockdowns and provides 4 tips to position your dealership for future success.

Google Rolls Out New Way to Convert on the SERP with Lead Form Ad Extensions

February 12, 2021 Mark Irvine PPC Advertising

Everyday, searchers turn to Google for a variety of reasons. Sometimes people are looking to learn something brand new, sometimes they’re looking to compare their options, and other times they’re ready to act. While Google search is a great tool for all these kinds of searchers, most advertisers want to reach people most ready to convert.

While a quality landing page can help increase your conversion rate, sometimes they’re just an extra step between the user and connecting with your business. For that reason, Google’s introduced several ways to convert a user directly on the SERP. Call extensions and Call ads allow a user to call your business directly from their mobile phone, for instance.

Yesterday, Google introduced a revolutionary new way to convert directly on the SERP. Advertisers can now create Lead Form Extensions and choose to send their traffic from their ad’s headline directly to a lead form on the Google SER, rather than a landing page. Best of all, if the searcher is signed into their Google account, the form will already be pre-populated with their contact details and they can convert with one click!

What are Google Lead Form Ad Extensions?

Google Ads first introduced Lead Form extensions in early 2019. Like other ad extensions, Lead Form Extensions could potentially show beneath your search ad and allowed users a new way to engage with your ad, by opening a lead form with a user’s contact information already filled out. Advertisers were quick to start using Lead Form Extensions ecstatic to see some incremental leads from their search ads.

Yesterday’s announcement allows advertisers a new way to leverage their lead form extensions. Instead of showing their lead form extension beneath their ads, this update allows users to have their ad’s headline serve their lead form instead. Now advertisers don’t need to send traffic to their website at all until a user completes their lead form!

There’s no additional cost for using lead form extensions, advertisers are only charged according to their CPC bid on Google.

2 Ways to Use Google Lead Form Ad Extensions

Suds and Search 49 | Jim Ziegler, founder of Ziegler SuperSystems

February 11, 2021 Greg Gifford Best Practices, Resource Library, Suds and Search

Also available as a Podcast:

My guest on this episode of Suds & Search is Jim Ziegler, owner of the Ziegler SuperSystems and a legend in the automotive industry. For over 44 years, Jim has contributed his talents as a writer, magazine columnist, professional speaker, and turnaround artist at some of the biggest auto dealerships in the United States.

How to Come Up with Blog Ideas: Four Easy Tips for Business Owners

February 9, 2021 Andrew Marr Best Practices, Digital Marketing, Local SEO, Search Engine Optimization ,blog content writing, what to blog about

In order to keep your site relevant for your money-making search terms, you need a blog, and you need to publish high-quality content on your blog regularly.

What to blog about, though? Where to start?

In this post, I offer a few no-nonsense ways business owners can come up with great blog ideas by leveraging their experience and expertise in their field—no intimidating “keyword research,” “discovery,” or “competitor analysis” process required.

(For my purposes here, by “business owners,” I mean those without SEO training.)

If successful, the tips from this post won’t feed you blog ideas or topics themselves. Rather, they’ll equip you with a reproducible process to ideate stellar content ideas or topics for months (and years) to come. If you take advantage of the tips I provide, you’ll become your business’ very own brainy content strategist—and very likely a richer entrepreneur.

The 12 best SEO-themed Valentine’s Day cards

Greg Gifford Local Search Tuesdays, Local SEO, Search Engine Optimization

In this week’s episode, I take a break from digital marketing tips for another holiday-themed episode… This time, I share the top 12 SEO-themed Valentine’s Day cards. I scoured the ‘net to find the funniest cards with SEO references – hopefully you’ll get a few laughs like we did!

Google Ads Announces the End of Broad Modified Match & Changes to Phrase Match Keywords

February 5, 2021 Mark Irvine Google Updates, PPC Advertising

For all of us, 2020 was a year of change, disorder, and frustration. Even in Google Ads, the pandemic changed what we search for, where we search, and how we search online – and every PPC expert had to adjust to the new normal on and off the SERP. Entering 2021, we were all hoping to get back some control in our lives and our Paid Search campaigns. Unfortunately, Google didn’t share our plans.

Broad Modified Keyword Changes

Yesterday, Google announced that it’ll be reducing the number of keyword match types from 4 to 3, by eliminating Broad Match Modified keywords. Instead, phrase match keywords will now serve ads to more traffic. Confused? Same. Let’s break that down –

What Are Keyword Match Types?

Suds and Search 48 | George Nenni, Founder of Generations Digital

February 4, 2021 Greg Gifford Digital Marketing, Google My Business, Local SEO, Marketing Analytics, Suds and Search

Also available as a Podcast:

My guest on this episode of Suds & Search is George Nenni. George is the Founder of Generations Digital, a digital marketing consultancy for auto dealerships.

George has over 3 decades of experience helping automotive dealerships overcome an array of digital marketing challenges. He is the author of two essential books. His first is titled, A Car Dealer’s Guide to Google My Business which explores all the unique opportunities for car dealerships within Google My Business. Just before this episode launched, George released his second book, A Car Dealer’s Guide to Digital Marketing.