Weekly News: Moz’s ‘State of Local SEO’ Report, Mobile Shopping, Google Search Counts

Here is this week’s roundup of the top news items related to local marketing and advertising, local media, technology, local commerce, consumer behavior and more.

Insight & Commentary

The Most Interesting Parts of Moz’s ‘State of Local SEO’ Report (December 6, 2018) LSA Insider: “Recently Moz (and Darren Shaw) released the 2018 Local Ranking Factors survey. Moz also published the “State of Local SEO” report. The findings are based on a survey of roughly 1,400 local marketers, representing agency and in-house marketers from both small and large organizations.” Local Search Ranking Factors Then and Now (2008 vs. 2018) (December 4, 2018) LSA Insider: “The latest edition of the Local Search Ranking Factors is out. This is the 10-year anniversary of the study with the first edition of the Local Search Ranking Factors released by David Mihm back in 2008. After 10 years, it’s interesting to see how the results have changed and how they haven’t.” Do brand politics impact consumer purchases? It’s complicated (December 4, 2018) Marketing Land: “A majority of consumers (63 percent), according to a new survey from SAP, say they prefer to purchase holiday gifts from brands that support specific social causes. This echoes earlier surveys that argue consumers increasingly want brands to take public social and political positions.”

Strategy & Tactics

5 Ways Businesses Can Leverage Location Intelligence Beyond Marketing (December 4, 2018) Street Fight: “Businesses incorporate data from disparate sources to make the best, most well-informed decisions. Data streams like location data offer real-time information and predictive analytics to better understand customer behavior.” How Marketers Are Using Video In 2018 (December 5, 2018) Marketing Charts: “Video marketers continues to be viewed enthusiastically by marketers, with 83% reporting that video content is becoming more important to them, according to the latest “State of Video Marketing” report from Demand Metric and Vidyard.” The best way to understand omnichannel is to work backward (December 5, 2018) Marketing Land: “Why has the idea of omnichannel marketing fallen from favor? Columnist Lewis Gersh says it’s because of inflated expectations, rooted in some fundamental misunderstandings of the underlying technology.”

Stats & Studies

Mobile Shopping: The Shift Is Accelerating (December 5, 2018) LSA Insider: “Mobile devices have completely altered consumer purchasing journeys. Consumers are now utilizing mobile for assistance with a variety of activities along these journeys, as shown in a recent survey from GfK.” Brandify Data Shows Lift in Google Search Counts (December 3, 2018) LSA Insider: “Google My Business (GMB) users may have noticed an odd increase in the count of Direct Searches reported during the months of July and September. Direct Searches is the count of instances where a consumer searched for your business using your business name or address, like “Jenny’s Flowers San Francisco, CA,” as opposed to Discovery Searches, where the consumer typed in more general keywords like “florist near me.”” Many People Feel They Lack Control Over Their Personal Data (November 30, 2018) eMarketer: “With data breaches a constant worry, many consumers don’t feel too confident in being able to control how their personal data gets used. According to a July 2018 survey by Mobile Ecosystem Forum of 6,500 smartphone users worldwide ages 16 and older, just 27% of respondents felt they had some control over how their personal data is used by mobile apps and services.”

Industry News

New Tech Adoption Index Podcast: “No One Wants to Make the Wrong Decision” (December 4, 2018) LSA Insider: “Our latest episode of the Above the Cloud podcast series features an interview with Mark Canon, a longtime local search/SMB software exec who is currently chairman of Boomtime.” Move over, Prime Day. Amazon’s Cyber Monday takes the crown (November 29, 2018) Marketing Land: “Amazon’s inventory of superlatives may be running low. The online retail giant had its single biggest day of sales ever on Cyber Monday, according to Adobe Analytics, based on the number of products sold globally. This beats its Prime Day in July — which had previously been Amazon’s biggest sales day.” Global ad revenue delivers strongest growth in 8 years with 7.2% increase, per Magna (December 4, 2018) Marketing Dive: “Magna attributes the 2018 ad growth to a strong economic environment, retail sales and business confidence, which led most industries and brands to increase their marketing and advertising spend.”

Member News

MomentFeed Announces ‘Events Manager’ for Multi-Location Brands to Create, Publish and Manage Events at Scale (December 3, 2018) Business Wire: “MomentFeed today announced the availability of Events Manager – a new solution that enables brands to create, publish, and manage event information, including responses, at scale on Facebook Pages and Google My Business (GMB) Pages.” Google launches Q&A structured data for Question & Answer pages (December 3, 2018) Search Engine Land: “Google announced it is expanding support for rich results within Question & Answer pages on the web. This is something Google tested a year ago and is now more widely expanding according to Google.” Facebook Explains How its Search Results Work (November 30, 2018) Search Engine Journal: “Facebook has put together a short explainer video with details about how its search results work. The company says it wants to be more transparent about what’s happening when users search for content on Facebook.”

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