seo

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:

1. 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.
   
2. 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.

1. 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.
   


2. 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.
   
   
3. 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.
   
   
4. 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.
   
   
5. 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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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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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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Recently, Moz announced the results of our biennial Ranking Factors study. Today, we’d like to explore one of the most vital elements of the study: the Ranking Factors survey.

2015 Ranking Factors Expert Survey

Every two years, Moz surveys the brightest minds in SEO and search marketing with a comprehensive set of questions meant to gauge the current workings of Google’s search algorithm. This year’s panel of experts possesses a truly unique set of knowledge and perspectives. We’re thankful on behalf of the entire community for their contribution.

In addition to asking the participants about what does and doesn’t work in Google’s ranking algorithm today, one of the most illuminating group of questions asks the panel to predict the future of search – how the features of Google’s algorithm are expected to change over the next 12 months. Here are the results.

Amazingly, almost all of the factors that are expected to increase in influence revolved around user experience, including:

• Mobile-friendliness
• Perceived value
• Readability
• …and more

The experts predicted that more traditional ranking signals, such as those around links and URL structures, would largely remain the same, while the more manipulative aspects of SEO, like paid links and anchor text (which is subject to manipulation), would largely decrease in influence.

The survey also asks respondents to weight the importance of various factors within Google’s current ranking algorithm (on a scale of 1-10). Understanding these areas of importance helps to inform webmasters and marketers where to invest time and energy in working to improve the search presence of their websites.

On-page keyword features

These features describe use of the keyword term/phrase in particular parts of the HTML code on the page (title element, H1s, alt attributes, etc).

Highest influence: Keyword present in title element, 8.34
Lowest influence: Keyword present in specific HTML elements (bold/italic/li/a/etc), 4.16

Titles are still very powerful. Overall, it’s about focus and matching query syntax. If your post is about airplane propellers but you go on a three paragraph rant about gorillas, you’re going to have a problem ranking for airplane propellers. AJ Kohn

Keyword usage is vital to making the cut, but we don’t always see it correlate with ranking, because we’re only looking at what already made the cut. The page has to be relevant to appear for a query, IMO, but when it comes to how high the page ranks once it’s relevant, I think keywords have less impact than they once did. So, it’s a necessary but not sufficient condition to ranking. Peter Meyers

In my experience, most of problems with organic visibility are related to on-page factors. When I look for an opportunity, I try to check for 2 strong things: presence of keyword in the title and in the main content. Having both can speed up your visibility, especially on long-tail queries. Fabio Ricotta

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Domain-level keyword features

These features cover how keywords are used in the root or subdomain name, and how much impact this might have on search engine rankings.

Highest influence: Keyword is the exact match root domain name, 5.83
Lowest influence: Keyword is the domain extension, 2.55

The only domain/keyword factor I’ve seen really influence rankings is an exact match. Subdomains, partial match, and others appear to have little or no effect. Ian Lurie

There’s no direct influence, but an exact match root domain name can definitely lead to a higher CTR within the SERPs and therefore a better ranking in the long term. Marcus Tandler

It’s very easy to link keyword-rich domains with their success in Google’s results for the given keyword. I’m always mindful about other signals that align with domain name which may have contributed to its success. These includes inbound links, mentions, and local citations. Dan Petrovic

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Page-level link-based features

These features describe link metrics for the individual ranking page (such as number of links, PageRank, etc).

Highest influence: Raw quantity of links from high-authority sites, 7.78
Lowest influence: Sentiment of the external links pointing to the page, 3.85

High-quality links still rule rankings. The way a brand can earn links has become more important over the years, whereas link schemes can hurt a site more than ever before. There is a lot of FUD slinging in this respect! Dennis Goedegebuure

Similar to my thoughts on content, I suspect link-based metrics are going to be used increasingly with a focus on verisimilitude (whether content is actually true or not) and relationships between nodes in Knowledge Graph. Google’s recent issues with things, such as the snippet results for “evolution,” highlight the importance of them only pulling things that are factually correct for featured parts of a SERP. Thus, just counting traditional link metrics won’t cut it anymore. Pete Wailes

While anchor text is still a powerful ranking factor, using targeted anchor text carries a significant amount of risk and can easily wipe out your previous success. Geoff Kenyon

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Domain-level brand features

These features describe elements that indicate qualities of branding and brand metrics.

Highest influence: Search volume for the brand/domain, 6.54
Lowest influence: Popularity of business’s official social media profiles, 3.99

This is clearly on deck to change very soon with the reintegration of Twitter into Google’s Real-Time Results. It will be interesting to see how this affects the “Breaking News” box and trending topics. Social influencers, quality and quantity of followers, RTs, and favorites will all be a factor. And what’s this?! Hashtags will be important again?! Have mercy! Marshall Simmonds

Google has to give the people what they want, and if most of the time they are searching for a brand, Google is going to give them that brand. Google doesn’t have a brand bias, we do. Russ Jones

It’s already noticeable; brands are more prominently displayed in search results for both informational and commercial queries. I’m expecting Google will be paying more attention to brand-related metrics from now on (and certainly more initiatives to encourage site owners to optimize for better entity detection). Jason Acidre

Page-level social features

These features relate to third-party metrics from social media sources (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc) for the ranking page.

Highest influence: Engagement with content/URL on social networks, 3.87
Lowest influence: Upvotes for the page on social sites, 2.7

Social ranking factors are important in a revamped Query Deserves Freshness algorithm. Essentially, if your content gets a lot of natural tweets, shares, and likes, it will rank prominently for a short period of time, until larger and more authoritative sites catch up. Dev Basu

Social popularity has several factors to consider: (1) Years ago, Google and Bing said they take into account the authority of a social profile sharing a link and the popularity of the link being shared (retweets/reshares), and there was more complexity to social signals that was never revealed even back then. (2) My experience has been that social links and shares have more power for newsy/fresh-type content. For example, a lot of social shares for a dentist’s office website wouldn’t be nearly as powerful (or relevant to consider) as a lot of social shares for an article on a site with a constant flow of fresh content. Laura Lippay

Honestly, I do not think that the so-called “social signals” have any direct influence on the Google Algorithm (that does not mean that a correlation doesn’t exist, though). My only doubt is related to Twitter, because of the renewed contract between Google and Twitter itself. That said, as of now I do not consider Twitter to offer any ranking signals, except for very specific niches related to news and “news-able” content, where QDF plays a fundamental role. Gianluca Fiorelli

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Page-level keyword-agnostic features

These elements describe non-keyword-usage, non-link-metrics features of individual pages (such as length of the page, load speed, etc).

Highest influence: Uniqueness of the content on the page, 7.85
Lowest influence: Page contains Open Graph data and/or Twitter cards, 3.64

By branching mobile search off of Google’s core ranking algorithm, having a “mobile-friendly” website is probably now less important for desktop search rankings. Our clients are seeing an ever-increasing percentage of organic search traffic coming from mobile devices, though (particularly in retail), so this is certainly not an excuse to ignore responsive design – the opposite, in fact. Click-through rate from the SERPs has been an important ranking signal for a long time and continues to be, flagging irrelevant or poor-quality search listings. Rob Kerry

I believe many of these will be measured within the ecosystem, rather than absolutely. For example, the effect of bounce rate (or rather, bounce speed) on a site will be relative to the bounce speeds on other pages in similar positions for similar terms. Dan Barker

I want to answer these a certain way because, while I have been told by Google what matters to them, what I see in the SERPs does not back up what Google claims they want. There are a lot of sites out there with horrible UX that rank in the top three. While I believe it’s really important for conversion and to bring customers back, I don’t feel as though Google is all that concerned, based on the sites that rank highly. Additionally, Google practically screams “unique content,” yet sites that more or less steal and republish content from other sites are still ranking highly. What I think should matter to Google doesn’t seem to matter to them, based on the results they give me. Melissa Fach

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Domain-level link authority features

These features describe link metrics about the domain hosting the page.

Highest influence: Quantity of unique linking domains to the domain, 7.45
Lowest influence: Sentiment of the external links pointing to the site, 3.91

Quantity and quality of unique linking domains at the domain level is still among the most significant factors in determining how a domain will perform as a whole in the organic search results, and is among the best SEO “spot checks” for determining if a site will be successful relative to other competitor sites with similar content and selling points. Todd Malicoat

Throughout this survey, when I say “no direct influence,” this is interchangeable with “no direct positive influence.” For example, I’ve marked exact match domain as low numbers, while their actual influence may be higher – though negatively. Kirsty Hulse

Topical relevancy has, in my opinion, gained much ground as a relevant ranking factor. Although I find it most at play when at page level, I am seeing significant shifts at overall domain relevancy, by long-tail growth or by topically-relevant domains linking to sites. One way I judge such movements is the growth of the long-tail relevant to the subject or ranking, when neither anchor text (exact match or synonyms) nor exact phrase is used in a site’s content, yet it still ranks very highly for long-tail and mid-tail synonyms. Rishi Lakhani

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Domain-level keyword-agnostic features

These features relate to the entire root domain, but don’t directly describe link- or keyword-based elements. Instead, they relate to things like the length of the domain name in characters.

Highest influence: Uniqueness of content across the whole site, 7.52
Lowest influence: Length of time until domain name expires, 2.45

Character length of domain name is another correlative yet not causative factor, in my opinion. They don’t need to rule these out – it just so happens that longer domain names get clicked on, so they get ruled out quickly. Ross Hudgens

A few points: Google’s document inception date patents describe how Google might handle freshness and maturity of content for a query. The “trust signal” pages sound like a site quality metric that Google might use to score a page on the basis of site quality. Some white papers from Microsoft on web spam signals identified multiple hyphens in subdomains as evidence of web spam. The length of time until the domain expires was cited as a potential signal in Google’s patent on information retrieval through historic data, and was refuted by Matt Cutts after domain sellers started trying to use that information to sell domain extensions to “help the SEO” of a site. Bill Slawski

I think that page speed only becomes a factor when it is significantly slow. I think that having error pages on the site doesn’t matter, unless there are so many that it greatly impacts Google’s ability to crawl. Marie Haynes

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The future of search

To bring it back to the beginning, we asked the experts if they had any comments or alternative signals they think will become more or less important over the next 12 months.

While I expect that static factors, such as incoming links and anchor text, will remain influential, I think the power of these will be mediated by the presence or absence of engagement factors. Sha Menz

The app world and webpage world are getting lumped together. If you have the more popular app relative to your competitors, expect Google to notice. Simon Abramovitch

Mobile will continue to increase, with directly-related factors increasing as well. Structured data will increase, along with more data partners and user segmentation/personalization of SERPs to match query intent, localization, and device-specific need states. Rhea Drysdale

User location may have more influence in mobile SERPs as (a) more connected devices like cars and watches allow voice search, and (b) sites evolve accordingly to make such signals more accurate. Aidan Beanland

I really think that over the next 12-18 months we are going to see a larger impact of structured data in the SERPs. In fact, we are already seeing this. Google has teams that focus on artificial intelligence and machine learning. They are studying “relationships of interest” and, at the heart of what they are doing, are still looking to provide the most relevant result in the quickest fashion. Things like schema that help “educate” the search engines as to a given topic or entity are only going to become more important as a result. Jody Nimetz

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For more data, check out the complete Ranking Factors Survey results.

2015 Ranking Factors Expert Survey

Finally, we leave you with this infographic created by Kevin Engle which shows the relative weighting of broad areas of Google’s algorithm, according to the experts.

What’s your opinion on the future of search and SEO? Let us know in the comments below.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

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