Much has been written and spoken about the interplay of SEO and CRO, and there are a lot of reasons why, in theory, both ought to be working towards a shared goal. Whether it's simple pragmatism of the business benefit of increasing total number of conversions, or higher-minded pursuits such as the ideal of Google seeking to reward the best user experiences, we have many things that should bring us together.
In practice, though, it’s rarely that simple or that unified. How much effort do the practitioners of each put in to ensure that they are working towards the true shared common goal of the greatest number of conversions?
In asking around, I've found that many SEOs do worry about their changes hurting conversion rates, but few actively mitigate that risk. Interestingly, my conversations with CRO experts show that they also often worry about SEOs’ work impacting negatively on conversion rates.
Neither side weights as highly the risks that conversion-oriented changes could hurt organic search performance, but our experiences show that both are real risks.
So how should we mitigate these risks? How should we work together?
But first, some evidence
There are certainly some SEO-centric changes that have a very low risk of having a negative impact on conversion rates for visitors from other channels. If you think about changing meta information, for example, much of that is invisible to users on the page—- maybe that is pure SEO:
And then on the flip side, there are clearly CRO changes that don’t have any impact on your organic search performance. Anything you do on non-indexed pages, for example, can’t change your rankings. Think about work done within a checkout process or within a login area. Google simply isn’t seeing those changes:
But everything else has a potential impact on both, and our experience has been showing us that the theoretical risk is absolutely real. We have definitely seen SEO changes that have changed conversion rates, and have experience of major CRO-centered changes that have had dramatic impacts on search performance (but more on that later). The point is, there’s a ton of stuff in the intersection of both SEO and CRO:
So throughout this post, I’ve talked about our experiences, and work we have done that has shown various impacts in different directions, from conversion rate-centric changes that change search performance and vice versa. How are we seeing all this?
Well, testing has been a central part of conversion rate work essentially since the field began, and we've been doing a lot of work in recent years on SEO A/B testing as well. At our recent London conference, we announced that we have been building out new features in our testing platform to enable what we are calling full funnel testing which looks simultaneously at the impact of a single change on conversion rates, and on search performance:
But what I really want to talk about today is the mixed objectives of CRO and SEO, and what happens if you fail to look closely at the impact of both together. First: some pure CRO.
An example CRO scenario: The business impact of conversion rate testing
In the example that follows, we look at the impact on an example business of a series of conversion rate tests conducted throughout a year, and see the revenue uplift we might expect as a result of rolling out winning tests, and turning off null and negative ones. We compare the revenue we might achieve with the revenue we would have expected without testing. The example is a little simplified but it serves to prove our point.
We start on a high with a winning test in our first month:
After starting on a high, our example continues through a bad strong — a null test (no confident result in either direction) followed by three losers. We turn off each of these four so none of them have an actual impact on future months’ revenue:
Let’s continue something similar out through the end of the year. Over the course of this example year, we see 3 months with winning tests, and of course we only roll out those ones that come with uplifts:
By the end of this year, even though more tests have failed than have succeeded, you have proved some serious value to this small business, and have moved monthly revenue up significantly, taking annual revenue for the year up to over £1.1m (from a £900k starting point):
Is this the full picture, though?
What happens when we add in the impact on organic search performance of these changes we are rolling out, though? Well, let’s look at the same example financials with a couple more lines showing the SEO impact. That first positive CRO test? Negative for search performance:
If you weren’t testing the SEO impact, and only focused on the conversion uplift, you’d have rolled this one out. Carrying on, we see that the next (null) conversion rate test should have been rolled out because it was a win for search performance:
Continuing on through the rest of the year, we see that the actual picture (if we make decisions of whether or not to roll out changes based on the CRO testing) looks like this when we add in all the impacts:
So you remember how we thought we had turned an expected £900k of revenue into over £1.1m? Well, it turns out we've added less than £18k in reality and the revenue chart looks like the red line:
Let’s make some more sensible decisions, considering the SEO impact
Back to the beginning of the year once more, but this time, imagine that we actually tested both the conversion rate and search performance impact and rolled out our tests when they were net winners. This time we see that while a conversion-focused team would have rolled out the first test:
We would not:
Conversely, we would have rolled out the second test because it was a net positive even though the pure CRO view had it neutral / inconclusive:
When we zoom out on that approach to the full year, we see a very different picture to either of the previous views. By rolling out only the changes that are net positive considering their impact on search and conversion rate, we avoid some significant drops in performance, and get the chance to roll out a couple of additional uplifts that would have been missed by conversion rate changes alone:
The upshot being a +45% uplift for the year, ending the year with monthly revenue up 73%, avoiding the false hope of the pure conversion-centric view, and real business impact:
Now of course these are simplified examples, and in the real world we would need to look at impacts per channel and might consider rolling out tests that appeared not to be negative rather than waiting for statistical significance as positive. I asked CRO expert Stephen Pavlovich from conversion.com for his view on this and he said:
Most of the time, we want to see if making a change willimproveperformance. If we change our product page layout, will the order conversion rate increase? If we show more relevant product recommendations, will the Average Order Value go up?
But it's also possible that we will run an AB test not to improve performance, but instead to minimize risk. Before we launch our website redesign, will it lower the order conversion rate? Before we put our prices up, what will the impact be on sales?
In either case, there may be a desire to deploy the new variation — even if the AB test wasn't significant.
If the business supports the website redesign, it can still be launched even without a significant impact on orders — it may have had significant financial and emotional investment from the business, be a better fit for the brand, or get better traction with partners (even if it doesn't move the needle in on-site conversion rate). Likewise, if the price increase didn't have a positive/negative effect on sales, it can still be launched.
Most importantly, we wouldn’t just throw away a winning SEO test that reduced conversion rate or a winning conversion rate test that negatively impacted search performance. Both of these tests would have come from underlying hypotheses, and by reaching significance, would have taught us something. We would take that knowledge and take it back as input into the next test in order to try to capture the good part without the associated downside.
All of those details, though, don’t change the underlying calculus that this is an important process, and one that I believe we are going to need to do more and more.
The future for effective, accountable SEO
There are two big reasons that I believe that the kind of approach I have outlined above is going to be increasingly important for the future of effective, accountable SEO:
1. We’re going to need to do more testing generally
I don’t see this trend reversing any time soon. The more ML there is in the algorithm, and the more non-linear it all becomes, the less effective best practices will be, and the more common it will be to see surprising effects. My colleague Dom Woodman talked about this at our recent SearchLove London conference in his talk A Year of SEO Split Testing Changed How I Thought SEO Worked:
2. User signals are going to grow in importance
The trend towards Google using more and more real and implied user satisfaction and task completion metrics means that conversion-centric tests and hypotheses are going to have an increasing impact on search performance (if you haven’t yet read this fascinating CNBC article that goes behind the scenes on the search quality process at Google, I highly recommend it). Hopefully there will be an additional opportunity in the fact that theoretically the winning tests will sync up more and more — what’s good for users will actually be what’s good for search — but the methodology I’ve outlined above is the only way I can come up with to tell for sure.
I love talking about all of this, so if you have any questions, feel free to drop into the comments.
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Adam: We are live! Welcome everybody the Hump Day Hangouts Episode 217, also known as the first Hump Day Hangouts of 2019. I gotta get used to saying that. I always screw it up for the first two or three weeks. Anyways, thanks for joining us. We got almost full crew here today, so I’m gonna go down the line here and say hello, do some quick introductions, and then we will get into it. Chris, you’re first on my list today here. How are you doing?
Chris: Doing good. Woo-hoo to the New Year!
Adam: Are you back home or are you still up in the mountains, or where you at?
Chris: Back home at the moment. I gotta crank up and start the year productive like most people. How about you?
Adam: Yeah. I had these grand plans, you know. I took last week completely off, went almost off the grid, not completely but tried to stay away from the computer and all that jazz. Then, Sunday, I got sick. I had awesome week planned, all the stuff to do, I was gonna get right back into it, I was excited, and then it’s just been like, motivation has been down here. So, it’s turning into an inconvenient two-week vacation, so we’ll see how it goes.
Anyways, Marco how about you? How are you doing?
Marco: I’m talking to a muted mic. What’s up, man? Doing good. Starting off the new year really good, ton of projects. As you know, we got a whole bunch of awesome things coming to MGYB and coming to first and foremost our Mastermind members, and then it goes to everyone else, our followers and all other members then get access before it goes public. Membership has its privileges, as we always say.
Another thing that I’m really looking forward to is on the 14th. Guys, mark it on your calendar, Monday, January 14th, 3 p.m. Eastern, I’m doing an Entity webinar. There’s a caveat: the only way that you can have access to that webinar is by donating to my charity. I’m calling it “The Endgame.” What this is all about, what other people just refuse to tell you because they want to give you information piecemeal and they want to lead you down the road but they don’t want you to have all of the information. What I’m doing is, I’m giving everyone all of the information. I’m giving everybody the why these all take place. That’s The Endgame. What we’re after so that Google can give you all the love possible.
That’s on, again, Monday, January 14th at 3:00 p.m. Eastern. It’s The Endgame. The Entity Webinar. Donate. It’s for a good cause.
Adam: Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. We’ll have some more information about how you can do that shortly. Starting next week, we’ll give out information to everybody so you can get on that. You definitely do not want to miss out on that.
Real quick, Bradley, how are you doing?
Bradley: I’m great, man. You said that you screw up for a couple weeks 2019.
Adam: Yeah.
Bradley: I always screw up when I’m writing a check. You know what I mean?
Adam: Right.
Bradley: That’s where I always screw up and then I have to either scribble it out and initial it or void the check and write a new one. It always pisses me off. I’d do that for the first whole month really. But other than that, yeah, I’m really excited too. We’re gonna hit 2019 running. We’ve got major big goals that were working on currently, GMB asset building and all that kind of stuff, and we’re looking to really provide more and more Done-For-You services in MGYB. A lot of those are in development now, training virtual assistants in order to be able to fulfill those services for you, guys.
We just got a lot of stuff coming up. It’s gonna be a really good year. As Marco said, the Mastermind members, we’ve kind of restructured that as well. We have clear direction this time. Finally, after all these years, I think we’ve got a really clear direction for new members, whether you’re starting out or already got a business and you’re just trying to scale it and grow it. It’s just really a lot of good things that we are implementing this year. So, looking forward to it. This is the start of a big sprint for the next 12 months.
Adam: Definitely, We’ll do our own break it down, do it 90 days, and then down to the week, and then day-by-day. Right? Good deal. I want to say thank you to everybody who took us up on some great offers over the holidays, whether it’s MGYB sales and then those of you who decided to join the Mastermind, that’s awesome. We’re really glad to have you guys in there and getting through that. Really awesome that we had everyone do that. That’s a great investment for 2019.
With that said, if you’re new to Semantic Mastery and you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, I want to first say thanks for watching, whether you’re watching us live or you’re catching the replay, come check these out, whether you’re in our Mastermind or you’re not, you’re in different groups or not, just come ask these questions, be part of the community, get your questions answered every week. You can always go to semanticmastery.com/hdquestions, like I said, if you’re watching the replay, even though you post them on the page, you can come back and check out the replay, if you’re traveling or whatever the deal is you can’t watch us live.
If you’re also wondering where to start with us, Battle Plan is the place to start. Just go to battleplan.semanticmastery.com. That’ll fill you in on the rest of the details. It’s repeatable processes to get you results. All right. That’s the bottom line.
If you’re already in digital marketing, you’re in the local game, you want to really take things up, you want to be part of like-minded community, then the Mastermind is the place to be. You can find out more about that at mastermind.semanticmastery.com. Alrighty.
Let me check my notes here. I’ve got a little bit of a head cold that’s messing with me and slowing me down here. I did wanna mention something coming up next week. For those of you who remember in … Bradley, was that October or November when the Side Hustle Toolbox came out, the Stack?
Bradley: Yes.
Adam: Yes. It was in the fall time frame.
Bradley: Yeah.
Adam: Those guys have put together another one and they asked me to contribute, so I was happy to do that. Carey put together one info stack and it’s more around productivity mindset, self-development kind of area, the idea of being start 2019 off to a good start. I’ve gotten a sneak peek at some of the stuff that’s in there. It looks like some really good stuff. I’m happy with the one I made, the short course I put together for it, basically about freeing a lot of your time and how you can literally create about 115 hours out of 30 minutes over the next year. So, stuff like that.
If you’re looking to really make some improvements, whether it’s your business, your life, relationships, whatever it is in 2019, this is gonna be something cool that we’re gonna share with everybody. Just like the last one, there’s several thousands of dollars worth of products that they’re putting together and then you get access to it all for just a ridiculously low price. I don’t know exactly what that’s gonna be it, but I believe the one we took part in was like 47 bucks.
Bradley: Yeah. It was there was over $4,000 worth of training, products and courses and stuff, and Side Hustle Toolbox is what it was called. I think with the coupon that they had during the launch week and all that, you get it for basically at 50 bucks, so it’s ridiculous.
Adam: Yeah, just a big value bomb. We’ll be sharing that information with everybody. It’s something I talk about too, with all of these, it’s like take the best, leave the rest. Any one of these things is worth $47. So, if you look through it and you think that one of them is worth it, grab it. Don’t get lost in it. Pick the top ones, the ones you think are gonna help you go through it, put it to use. Don’t worry about drowning in too much. Just grab it, pick the ones that are gonna work for you, put it to use it, and move forward.
Cool. All right, guys. Anything else?
Marco: Subscribe to our YouTube channel, please.
Bradley: There you go.
Marco: It’s free.
Bradley: Yeah. We recently just passed 6,000 subscribers and those are organic subscribers. We appreciate you guys subscribing in the channel. Yes, definitely subscribe if you haven’t already where you get notified, we chop these up Hump Day Hangouts up into individual Q&A videos and post them out too. It’s funny, we looked in the dashboard-, excuse me, I was looking … I think I’m gonna pull it up right now. Stand by for a minute because I think this is crazy. I was in the Analytics the other day for our channel. Yeah, we’ve got 2,590 videos in our channel. That’s crazy.
By the way, in case you guys didn’t know, you can go to our channel youtube.com/semanticmastery and then use the channel search feature and type in your question. A lot of times you’ll find an answer because we previously answered it on Hump Day Hangouts. Since we put timestamps in the video descriptions of the Hump Day Hangouts and then we also chop up the individual Q&As, a lot of the times you’ll just go to you find, the channel search function will lead you directly to an answer. In case you weren’t aware of that, you may wanna check that out too.
All right. If that’s cool, guys, I’m gonna go ahead and jump into questions. Is everyone good?
Adam: Let’s do it.
Does The MYGB Service Able To Verify GMB Listings In Germany?
Marco: As far as I know we can verify just about anywhere in the world. The European Union is a little problematic. Your best bet is to write to support@mgyb.co and they will give you the right answers.
What Is Your Recommended Off-Page Strategy For A Small Affiliate Site Dedicated To Reviewing One Product?
Well, I don’t really do much affiliate stuff anymore and when I did, I mean, I … It’s kind of hard, in my opinion. Again, I’m not gonna be the best one to give you advice on affiliate stuff because I just don’t do much of it. But I can tell you affiliate site for just one product, I don’t think is the best idea, Sam. Only because you gain more traction over time with a site that you’re gonna continually post to and update.
Unless you’re gonna be continually updating this one small affiliate site, as you mentioned, about one product, if you’re gonna continue to add content to it, then it would make sense to have like a syndication network because you’d be constantly adding, publishing content, reviewing products, or whatever. That’s why I said … Let me back up for a minute.
Typically, some of the best affiliates that I’ve met, like for example, Jeff Lenny, Jeff Lenny is a really good affiliate marketer, okay, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Jeff Lenny, but he’s somebody that you could model. He’s got basically an authority type review site that he’s built for reviewing products and such. That’s typically how I’ve seen most people get long-term traction with affiliate sites, especially if you’re just reviewing products, is to create some sort of product review site that you’re gonna continually update. That’s gonna keep it fresh. That’s gonna help you to develop authority over time.
The problem with a single product-type site is that it’s hard to build authority with that and it’s also hard to continue content marketing about that one particular product, so they don’t ever really gain a lot of authority. Now, depending on how competitive it is, you may be able to just throw up a one page site or whatever and rank it and do very, very well, especially with launch-jacking because it’s a new product. It typically means there’s not a lot of competition because the product name is a new name, or there’s not a lot of competition for it yet.
But that’s why I’m saying, again when I was doing launch-jacking stuff, we were able to get some really good traction with just YouTube videos and Press Releases. Press Releases were one of the big parts of it. But we did a lot of YouTube spam and Press Releases and RYS Stacks. Yeah, drive stacks work great for launch-jacking because again they’re new terms usually, new search queries that you can optimize for.
But again, like I said, long-term, if you want it to rank long-term, I would recommend that you go with a branded affiliate site, something you create a brand, it could even be Sam Bailey, you know what I mean? and then just review products consistently. That’s how you wind up gaining traction over time.
Again, I’m not gonna be the best person to give you advice on affiliate stuff because I just don’t do it. Marco, or anybody, you guys wanna comment on that at all?
Marco: I totally agree with you. Its brand plus keyword association when it comes to a launch-jacking right, and then he wants it long-term, well, it’s gonna keep it long-term if Google gives it that association long-term, if it starts to associate the brand with whatever keyword it is that he’s pursuing. In this case, it’s whatever product or whatever small affiliate that he’s trying to do, that’s what he’s going to have to do.
Now, yeah, of course, RYS is going to work, but you’re going to have to keep adding power to that drive stack. You can’t just do a simple drive stack and expect that, although it has happened, Virginia SEO.
Bradley: Yeah.
Marco: You can’t expect to stay at the top when you have all of these people trying to rank for that and doing things every day to try to take you on. It means that you have to continue adding information and images and video and whatever it takes to stay on top. So, yes, drive stacks, press releases, we’ve had great success, link building, everything in conjunction.
Bradley: Yeah. Also, one thing you might wanna consider, I had a lot of success with driving traffic, especially for launch-jack using Google Ads, formerly Adwords, because it’s a new product. There’s a ton of SEOs that … Again, when I did some launch-jacking training for, what we used to have was, we used to have something called the Master Class and I did several launch-jacking projects sites-, campaigns, excuse me, during that training.
We did really well each time we did launch jacking, but one of the things I started to do was set up you-, excuse me, well, YouTube Ads as well, but Google Ads from search and that tends to work really well too because, again I was trying to launch jack affiliate-, excuse me, internet marketing products. So, other training, internet marketing training products, or WordPress plugins, or whatever, just other IM-type products.
You’d end up competing with a bunch of other people trying to launch-jack too and it’s a time-consuming process to set up launch-jacking. I even had developed some processes for some VAs and we were targeting various IM products when they would launch. We would publish a press release and all that kind of stuff and it would work fairly well.
But like I said, it was so much easier just to set up a good, what you call the bridge page, don’t ever say that to Google Ads though, but it’s really a bridge page where you basically set up a landing page that you could do a review of whatever product it is you’re trying to promote. Make sure it’s a well-done landing page though, that is content-rich, in other words, it could have a video but also have good text on it to where it’s not a blatant just affiliate-type page if you’re adding value.
Google Ads, they’ll suspend an ad if they think that it’s a low-quality page or a thin content page that is only used to promote an affiliate link. But I’ve had many landing pages that were, again they’re bridge pages, don’t ever say that to Google, but they’re bridge pages where all I was doing was promoting an affiliate offer, but I fleshed it out well. Because of that, it would stick and Google Ads would accept it and then I could drive traffic using Google Ads for really inexpensive because it’s a new product name, it’s a new keyword so there’s not a lot of people competing.
Again, for launch-jacking, you’ll get a ton of SEO, a lot of IMer’s that will try to launch-jack doing various spam and SEO stuff. But very few target using Google Ads, at least in my experience a couple years ago. It’s been a couple years since I’ve done any of this. I found it to be a lot easier and more efficient to skip all the SEO stuff and just set up Google Ads for launch-jacking.
That tended to work really, really well because it I could cut, what used to take me if I was going to develop out the launch-jacking campaign and do all the work myself, which I used to do, it would take me sometimes two days to really develop all the stuff out. I’m talking about the video spam, ordering press releases, setting up a WordPress site, or at least a page or a landing page or whatever. All that kind of stuff was a real pain in the ass to set up.
Then once I trained Vas, even then it was still a lot of work, even if I had a VA that would set up an entire campaign, a launch-jack campaign in a day, I’d still be paying that VA for a day’s worth of work. Whereas I could just go into AdWords, or Google Ads now, I could go into Google Ads and set up a campaign in a matter of 20 minutes after I built the landing page and then the traffic could start within hours. Once the ad gets approved, traffic can then start immediately. Then it was just like, as soon as the launch was over or the shopping cart closed or whatever, then I could just turn the ad off and I’m done. You know what I mean? I made my money and I’m good to go.
So, that I found to be more efficient, Sam. What I’m saying is you could do a combination of both. If you’re trying to have something that’s gonna rank long-term, then I would recommend, like what Marco said, that you’re gonna have to have something that you’re gonna update with content regularly. That’s why I recommend having a syndication network if you’re gonna do like a review site where you’re gonna review more than one product. But you can jump-start your traffic with Google Ads, at least initially, and get placed right at the top of the page. You might wanna check into that as well. Okay.
Something else I like about that, Sam. Remember, if you’re driving people to a landing page, whether you do it with SEO or Google Ads, always try to build a list too. Instead of just point people from that page direct to the affiliate offer, try to put them through an opt-in gateway somehow so that you can build a list, because you got to think about it.
Also, make sure you’re using remarketing, Sam. Even if you decide not to do Google Ads for this affiliate campaign, I would still make sure that you have Google Tag Manager added to your landing page or your site, depending on how you’re gonna build it out and make sure that you create a remarketing list because, depending on, if it’s an offer that’s gonna be an evergreen product or whatever that’s available for purchase beyond just the launch window, then you can build a remarketing list even if somebody doesn’t opt-in.
If you put an opt-in on the bridge page to try to collect email addresses that you can market to them via email at a later date, that’s great, you should still try to do that. But even if you don’t get somebody to opt-in, if they land on your page, now you’ve cookie them and they’re on a remarketing list, so you can still market to them. If you know what particular product or service it is that … They landed on that page, there’s an interest in that product or service, then you could potentially even serve ads to them via remarketing for other similar type products.
My point is, you absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, you should try to collect emails via opt-in if possible. But at the very least, if you’re driving traffic, you should be building a remarketing list because that way you can continue to market to that visitor that would have otherwise been a lost visitor if they didn’t purchase or opt-in. Does that make sense?
Anyways, definitely, that’s a good idea. I’m using remarketing for everything, guys. I love it. It’s great. I mean, even for local stuff that I’m doing, remarketing is so powerful, guys, and it’s so inexpensive compared to cold PPC.
What Are Your Thoughts On Using Firebase Dynamic Links As Replacement To Soon-To-Be Defunct Goo.gl Shortener?
Marco looked into that several months ago or a year ago now when they first announced that Google URL shortener was going to be shutting down eventually. One of the problems with the Firebase links is they are all 302s. Is that correct, Marco?
Marco: Not necessarily.
Bradley: Okay. Can you expand on that a bit?
Marco: Yeah. You can make them 301.
Bradley: Oh, you can?
Marco: You can.
Bradley: Okay. You’re short answers today, aren’t you?
Marco: Yeah. Go read all of the shit that I read through to find that. I’m not giving it away.
Bradley: Okay. Well, there you go, Steve. I tried. Yeah, okay. It was my understanding because I remember Marco talking about this. I was unaware that you could make them 301. I’m not sure how you do it, Steve. I have not researched this at all because, as far as I was aware, they were 302 links and I said, “Well, that kills that.” But, yeah, just go do some more research, I suppose. I tried to give you a better answer, Steve. I’m sorry I couldn’t.
Marco: Just to add a little bit to that, we’re going to have our own shortener in MGYB. It should be ready by Friday. If not, sometime next week. Then, we’ll do tests and make it public before Google phases out their shortener and then we’ll just power up our own. That’s what you should do. I mean, we’re not going through Firebase, but Firebase allows you to do that, to set up your own link shortener.
Bradley: There you go. There’s some benefits to doing that too because you can power up your domain that way too.
Should You Use One Schema Markup For All Pages Of A Multi-Location Business Or Should Use Specific Schema For Each City Page?
Most multi-location businesses are going to have a root domain, right, guys? They’re either gonna have location pages for each individual location, which are inner pages of the root domain, or maybe perhaps subdomains with a WordPress installer, an HTML page for each location on subdomains, it’s usually gonna be one or the other.
With the organizational/corporation markup, you can put that in the site header, if you’re using JSON-LD markup, you can put it in the site header and that can be across, like a global site header. In other words, it goes across all pages, which in organization markup you’re talking about the corporation itself, the entity, the main corporate entity, then you can list the individual locations.
But on the individual location pages, whether they’re inner pages or on subdomains, however you have that worked out, those should only have local business markup for that particular location. Organization markup can go either globally across the site in the header, except for on individual location pages, or you can just put organization markup on a locations page which lists all of the locations, but then there would be a link that clicks through to the individual location landing page. Or you could have it on a Contact page or an About Us page. That’s per Google’s recommendations, by the way, guys. So, I would definitely look into that.
Also, there was something else, let me pull this up. I just had this up earlier today. Organization schema, Google, there we go. There’s an SEMrush article right here. This is a really good one. This is where I learned, this is actually where I stumbled across the @id page stuff that I basically developed from this article. Way back in February of last year is when I had talked about the local iFrame loop in Syndication Academy. I got that idea, that idea was sparked from this article right here on SEMrush. Okay.
Essentially, if you scroll down here, you’ll see there’s organization. This is corporation markup here. But then there’s the organization markup, which you can select which type, okay, that’s how you get a bit more specific. And local business schema, okay, that’s where you would go all the way down to the individual location. If you scroll down here, it talks about @id page and all that kind of stuff. This is a really good article. I’m gonna drop this on the page. I would recommend that you spend some time kind of going through here and reading this. Okay.
By the way, Scott, if you’re in the Mastermind, which I think you are, Muhammad actually just had posted a very similar question in the Facebook group. I answered it and I gave some live examples there of how I have it on some of my sites. Go check that Facebook group for the Mastermind and you should find that thread and read through it. You’ll see some examples of some of my own properties where I have organization markup with individual locations and all that kind of stuff. All right. Keep moving.
Is It Best To Use City+Brand Name When Building Multiple GMB Sites In The Same Geographical Area?
Okay. I’m not sure why that advice was given to you because, if I’ve got several assets that are in the same city, with the same city name but they may be different zip codes, I’d still use the same name for all locations because the other data points within the NAP are gonna be unique. If you’re trying to build a brand, a pseudo brand anyways, then I recommend you keep all the name the same. It makes it easier.
The problem with creating, trying to create a different brand for each location is that it sucks. It’s a lot of additional work, right? One of the things I’ve done, as you probably know, Michael, or anybody that’s been through Local Lease Pro or in the Mastermind, they know I’ll use a pseudo brand, like Local Tree Pros, for example, or something like that, and then I’ll just name it City Tree Pros as the actual location name.
But if I’ve got, let’s say, three assets in the same city but they’re in different zip codes, then I would name it that, let’s just say, Cal Pepper Tree Pros, let’s use that as an example. There’s only one zip code in Cal Pepper, but let’s just say that I had three different locations for Cal Pepper Tree Pros. Then what I would do is I would have all three of them named Cal Pepper Tree Pros, but the physical address when the verification occurred to get the GMB verified, the physical address would be unique, the phone numbers are all gonna be unique, the web addresses are all gonna be unique. Even if the name is the same, that’s perfectly okay because the other data points are unique.
I’m not sure why MGYB customer support would have said not to do that. That’s something, Marco, maybe you and I should chat about with whoever gave that advice because I want to make sure that we are giving a code the standard answer to everybody. Michael, in my opinion, I would still go with the city name-, or excuse me, with just the brand name, or if you’re doing city plus brand name, if that’s how you’re naming your GMB assets, then if you have multiple locations within the same city name, do like I mentioned, you’re gonna have unique data points for the NAP other than the name, so it should be okay.
I’ve never had any issues with that, guys. I’ve got many, many, many clients as well as lead gen assets out there guys that are multi-location. They share the same name and I’ve never had any issues with them. The only time that there’s issues if you share the same phone number or if you share the same web address. Which, again, I’ve seen problems where people have multiple locations and they share the home page URL of their website as the landing page URL for their GMB assets. That’s wrong. That creates NAP inconsistencies. That ambiguates data and that causes problems.
If you’re going to have the same name and you’re going to use inner pages, or for example, again, if it was one company and they have just one domain they don’t have separate domains for each location, then you should use the location page, which is a separate landing page on the domain for each location, as the website URL in the GMB listing because that makes it a unique URL per listing. Does that make sense?
That’s my advice to you, Michael. Marco, do you have any suggestions on that or anything different to say?
Marco: No. It’s just the way that Rob recommends it. It’s something that we found that works really, really well at just getting tons of calls.
Bradley: What’s that, putting the city name?
Marco: No. By putting different names within the geolocation, within the geographical area.
Bradley: Okay. Yeah. I haven’t tested because I … Again, the reason why I haven’t tested that is because I don’t want to have to create new brands. You know what I’m saying? I wanna go with one type of pseudo brand that I can scale and that way I don’t have to come up with a different brand name each time. If I’ve got three assets in one city, I don’t wanna have three brands. Does that make sense, guys? That’s why I do it that way. It’s more of an efficiency thing for me because we’re scaling so much. It would be very difficult to continually come up with new brand names and new logos and all that shit. It would be an enormous amount of work.
Andreas says, “How will we be invited to your webinar on the 14th?” If you donate, you’ll get an email with the notification.
Marco: No. If he’s on our list, he’ll be notified what it is that he needs to do. If he isn’t, then how you do it is you donate, then you contact support@semanticmastery.com and get all the information that you need.
When Is The Release Date Of The New Version Of Jeffrey Smith’s Ultimate SEO Plugin?
Bradley: Okay, there you go. Jordan’s up. What’s up, Jordan? He says, “Any insider news, I know you all are tight, from Jeffrey Smith on when the new version of Ultimate SEO is coming out? No. I can follow up with them now, Jordan, and find out. Let me make a note of that. Because I actually asked him about it just last month, or in December, so just last month, I asked him specifically about it because we were talking about it in a webinar somewhere and I wanted to promote it. I was asking if he had the new one out yet and he didn’t, he said he was working on it though. I think it’s gonna be out this month at some point, but it might be February. I’ll just make a note of it. All right. I’ll find out.
Greg Drebert, if you’re on then you know because you’re real tight with Jeffery. You can always post and let us know if when the launch date is. You look like you are live, Greg. If you can shed an insight, that would be great. If not, I’ll reach out to Jeffery and find out, Jordan, and I’ll ping you back either in the Syndication Academy Facebook group or next week on Hump Day Hangouts. Okay.
Jim says, “Ass.” Okay. That’s quite a way to start a question. “I was in the process of typing out a bit of a long specific question and the browser refreshed or losing it all let’s try again but shorter.” Yeah. By the way, if you’re at the 59 mark on the clock right before the webinar starts, when it turns to the zero, the top of the hour, yeah, the page refreshes automatically for Google Event pages. So, yeah, next time type your question out in a text file or notepad file first, that way if that happens you don’t lose it. Don’t you hate that? Okay.
Would SM Techniques Work On Brand-Based Adult Websites?
I’ve never done anything in the adult industry. I know Chris has. Chris, if you’re still on, do you have any insight? Is Chris still on?
Marco: No. I don’t I think he and Adam dropped.
Bradley: Okay. All right. Well, Marco, can you … I’ve never done anything in the adult industry at all.
Marco: No. I mean, I haven’t. I did but that was just way back in the day I had a client. Dude, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. I mean, seriously, how we developed RYS Academy and RYS Academy Reloaded is that we found the document ranking in Google and it was full of just porn links and just porn stuff and it was ranking like crazy, the G doc. It’s one of the things that sent Dr. Garry down the rabbit hole and sent me into thinking how to put it all together into one cohesive unit to push all of that power over to whatever it was that we were trying to rank.
So, if a G doc ranks for porn, there’s no reason why anything else shouldn’t. I’m just reasoning it out. It’s not something that I’m going to try because I don’t have a client to do it with. But, Jim, I mean, this is a test in the making. As far as GMB, why wouldn’t you try to …? This is what my webinar is gonna be all about on Monday the 14th, why wouldn’t you want or try to create the Entity for this so that it’s just clear with Google what it is, what all the assets are, where they are, and they all belong to one brand and you try to that the brand plus key word association? I don’t see why it would be any different. Of course, it would be filtered for adults, but I mean, that’s your market anyway.
Bradley: Yeah. But actually, because I was just thinking business category for the GMB. Guys, they do have media company as a business category, so you could set up a GMB listing for that brand and label it for the GMB business category as a media company. I don’t know that that would be filtered out unless it had something offensive in the title of the business name, the GMB profile name, if that makes sense.
Yeah. Sorry I can’t shed more light on that. Jim, if that’s a question that you would like answered more, I can always post, or with a better answer I could always ask Chris P to shed some insight, because I know he did a lot of work in the adult industry for a while. I don’t know if he still does or not, but he did for quite some time, so he might be able to give you some pointers too.
Jim, you might even want to post this question in whatever group you’re a member of Facebook group for Semantic Mastery. That way we could get some comments going on over there. I’m sure there’s probably some others that have done adult content stuff that could probably help out too. I’m sorry I can’t give you, I’ve got zero experience doing any marketing for adult content sites, guys.
Marco: Yeah. Too bad Jason Quinlan has gone underground or he’d be perfect to answer this. But I’m looking at the categories right now in Google and they have one for adult DVD store, adult entertainment club, adult entertainment store. So if they allow you to verify that, I mean, just looks for the category, I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to verify something along those lines and then build your entity that way, see which one fits. If none of them fits, go general.
Bradley: Yeah, media company. I was just thinking, Jim, if you were dealing with online website stuff, a media company might be a good category too. Anyways check it out, post to one of the other groups, one of the groups that you’re a member of and see if you can get some other people that may have that some experience, Jim, to comment.
Does Any Of The Semantic Mastery Team Member Buy The Annual OMG Machines Package?
I do not. I was a member of OMG, that’s how I got introduced to Network Empire, it was back in 2012, 2013. For one year, I was in OMG. Then, I got introduced to Network Empire at the OMG live event. I think it was their first one. It might have been their second one. But Network Empire was there and that was where I kind of took the Syndication Academy, at that time we call them IFTTT SEO Academy, and then kind of learned how to really power that up.
Part of the reason I got away from OMG stuff, and I’m not talking about anybody else out there, guys, that’s not what this is about, but I got away from the OMG stuff because it was mostly, at least back then, I haven’t been a member for several years, but it was mostly about PBN stuff. Like how to go out and buy really powerful domains and build PBNs and not create footprints and all that kind of stuff.
That works. That did work a lot better. But we found methods that … I didn’t like the whole PBN thing. I got tired of building private blog networks or building sites and trying to hide footprints. It became more and more difficult and less and less effective without going through all of the … In other words, unless you went through all of the trouble on how to find really powerful domains that were relevant and then how to set them up properly without footprints and all that kind of stuff, then they weren’t as effective. If you did all those things right, then they could be really effective.
But I found become increasingly difficult. I stopped doing PBN stuff and worked more on content syndication and the kind of stuff that we that I felt like was more long-term and more sustainable, which is why I went with going more than Network Empire out. Then, we developed out our own products and our own stuff. RYS Academy being one of them and Local PR Pro and Local GMB Pro and all of these own methods that we’ve developed on our own that have absolutely nothing to do with PBNs. Nothing.
Guys, we rarely even talk about external link building because we don’t need to do it very often. When I do now, I primarily just use Press Releases as my external link building method. My point is, personally, Jim, I wouldn’t spend 5k on it. But that’s just because we use our own methods, our own proprietary methods that tend to get us results without needing PBNs. Again, I don’t know that that’s what they’re about anymore guys. I’m just telling you that that’s why I got away from it.
If anybody else wants to comment on that on the page, I’m certainly open to having people comment on what their thoughts are on there, guys, but please keep it civil. We’re not here to pick fights with anybody. Don’t start none, won’t be none. You know what I mean?
Marco: Yeah. I don’t have enough information to tell them one way or the other, and I wouldn’t anyway. I wouldn’t say, “Yeah. Go spend 5k,” or “No, don’t spend 5k.” What I will tell you is, as Bradley said, back in the day that’s what was done, that’s what worked, and you did it and you moved on to the next and the next. Then came Network Empire, of course, Becker we met inside one of his Masterminds.
There’s a bunch of information out there. What I can tell you is that we did our own flavor. We did our own thing. If I need a PBN, I build the G site and a drive stack.
Bradley: That’s it.
Marco: And I add power to the G site and the drive stack. I push all of that power the way that we teach it, Local PR Pro, Local GMB Pro, Local Lease Pro, RYS Academy Reloaded. I mean, if you’re not in RYS Academy Reloaded, I don’t know why you’re not in there.
Bradley: Yeah. Yep, there you go. All right. Ken, yeah, there you go. He got the donation link. Greg says to Jordan, “I just talked to Jeff.” See, Greg, you’re the man. Thanks, man. I knew you’d come through. You always do, Greg. Thank you. “I just talked to Jeffrey. He’ll throw in five extra licenses to the 89 five-pack for Mastermind members only. That’s 10 total. Okay. So, you get 10 licenses for $89 for the Ultimate SEO Plus Plugin. That’s the Buy link. Then, send him an email with the special I mentioned they get the extra five licenses. We’ll be testing the new beta plugin this month.”
I thought that’s what Jeffrey said. I remember, like I said, just last month when I was chatting with him in Skype, he said something about January. I didn’t know if that was the launch or just the beta testing, Greg. But I appreciate you chiming in, Greg, as always. Thank you. So, it’s coming out soon, guys. If he’s starting beta testing this month, it’s coming out soon.
Entertainment Agency, there you go, there’s another one. That must be another business category. “Clients are clients and money is money. It’s all the same work.” Yeah, I agree, Jim. I mean, I don’t know. I’ve never been approached to do adult stuff. I’m not sure whether I would do it or not, to be honest with you. You’re right, money’s money. I don’t look down on it or anything like that. So, you’re right, it’s all the same kind of work.
Marco: Yeah. That’s just another niche. You go into whatever it is. You’re going to get paid, that’s how I see it.
Bradley: Oh, we’re almost … Look at this, guys. Post some more questions because we got 15 minutes left and we’re almost out of questions. That’s rare. It’s okay, it’s only January 2.
Jordan says, “Also, if someone is a Schema wizard and wants to make a little cash, hit me up. I have a large international travel site migrating to epicenter CMS and the dev team is installing Schema but not using JSON-LD. I need a set of eyes that gets the non JSON-LD type of schema to make recommendations.”
Yeah. Jordan, I would reach out Ryan Rodden Skeema Pro, I think skeema.pro. I think this is it. Right here. Reach out. I’m gonna post this link on event page here, Jordan. Ryan Rodden, he was a Mastermind member for quite some time. I don’t know if he’s still in the Mastermind or not, but he’s a Schema pro. The site he set up specifically because he got tired of people asking him all the time questions of like, “Hey, would you look at my structured data?” so he set this up and just like he said, “Yeah, I’ll take a look at it. Go buy it here.” He’ll either generate the code for you, or he’ll do a structured data overhaul, or he’ll review existing structured data, and all that kind of stuff, you just have to purchase it.
But anyways, Jordan, if you’ve got a big site or whatever, just reach out to him, see what he can do for you. Ryan Rodden for schema work. Or I refer you, by the way, or the Semantic Mastery referred you.
Hey, where’s my comment? There it is. All right.
Scott Walker, “I belong to OMG. Very nice people. But I agree with Bradley, Semantic Mastery is far, far ahead on Local GMB, Google Maps techniques.” Well, thank you, Scott. Appreciate that. Yeah. I mean, like I said, guys, I don’t know whether they do much with local stuff or not, I know at least back in many years ago now, I mean, you got to think that was 2012 to ‘13, I think, when I was a member with them. That was shit that long damn time ago. I don’t know what they’re doing now, to be honest with you. So, you’d have to, Jim, decide on your own really. It’s not really much I can help you with on that.
Marco: I have a question for Jordan. All right. There’s three types of Schema-, or excuse me, structured data that you can go with: RDFa, micro data, or JSON-LD. Google recommends JSON-LD. Why wouldn’t you go with what Google recommends? So now it’s me asking a question during Hump Day.
Bradley: Wow! Now I gotta wait for the answer because there’s latency, some delay.
Marco: I’d like to know why. Is it the CMS that doesn’t allow for a certain type of structured data? Or is it the client? Is it you? If it’s you, why? I mean, this raises a lot of questions, right? Since Google says, “We recommend JSON-LD. This is the way you should do it. This is the way you should go. This is what the bot wants. This is what the bot is coded for.” It’ll understand all the other, but you I’m just wondering.
Bradley: Yeah. Well, while we’re waiting to see if Jordan replies here, he goes. “That’s what I want to argue. Use the freaking JSON.” I agree, Jordan.
Marco: I can give him a page where Google recommends it.
Bradley: Yeah. Do that because then you could go show the web developers and the owners of the company, say, “Here, this is Google saying that you should use JSON-LD. So, why are we doing it the other way?”
Marco: We have Quentin just dropped something in there from South Carolina.
Any Suggestions On How To Use SEO And Google Ads To Rank As One Of The First Musicians In Charleston, South Carolina?
But to use SEO and Google Ads? Well, it depends. I mean, again, that one I’d have to think through quite a bit, Quentin, because it’s not something that I’ve done in the past. But I would probably think that you would want to just optimize for your name or your band’s name, either your name or your band’s name, or both, or band or group or whatever. You see, you play drums, so I’m assuming you’re in a band.
My point is, I would probably optimize for that because as people get to know who you are, they’ll start searching for you or your band’s name. So, I would optimize for that. I mean, you could go generally to start getting some exposure. For example, I don’t really do searches for music in my town so I don’t really know what type of search queries people would look for, but you could start, for example, let’s just walk through this. We got a couple minutes.
Go to Google Trends. That’s where I would start because that’s where I always start. For any type of new industry, guys, whenever I’m trying to figure out the best way to start marketing via SEO or even Google Ads at that point, I always start with Google Trends. Always, okay? Come to Google Trends. I don’t know what kind of music you play because you didn’t specify, but I don’t know, let’s just see what live music brings up.
I just put live music in. By default, it’s gonna be set for United States and it’s gonna show data for the past 12 months. But what I would do is I would narrow this down from maybe down to a city level. So you said Charleston, I’d start at a city level, but you might have to broaden it out a little bit. Charleston, South Carolina, right? That is what he said, right? Yeah, South, Carolina. Okay.
Then, this isn’t only for the past 12 months, sometimes that won’t be enough data, especially on just a city level. You might wanna pull it back to either the regional level or even to a state level, which I’ll demonstrate that here in just a second. Right there. We’ve been talking about this for months now, guys. Ever since July 2018, the near me keywords are by far the most rapidly growing keyword type of query, a near me query.
That’s where I’m starting for all my GMB assets now is I’m starting looking to do location research with near me keywords. That’s where I start with my research. This just goes to show you, live music near me in just the past 12 months has had 120% increase in search interest in Charleston South Carolina. So, specifically in that city.
My point is, you could literally start optimizing for live music near me. That’s a search query that could be optimized for. How do you do that? Because people ask me that, “Well, how do you optimize for near me keywords? It doesn’t read naturally.” Well, for example, with GMB posts, Google My Business post, we do a lot of, and again, I just mentioned that’s where I start now is always targeting near me keywords because they’re driving a ton of traffic right now.
Well, put in like the first line of the GMB post was did you just search, and then we put in quotes, live music near me, question mark. Well, look no further, you just found it. Then, you can spit out some details about the venue and your business-, or, excuse me, the band. Obviously you’d want to associate live music near me with your band name. You’d wanna make sure that your band name was present and that post, as well as maybe the venue that you’re performing at, that kind of stuff.
That way you’re working that keyword directly into within a non spammy way. Did you just search live music near me or just search live music near me or there’s multiple ways you could reword that to where it still reads? Okay. That’s one way you can do. Live music Charleston, obviously, that’s with the local modifier. These are just rising terms. If you take a look at the top terms, apparently, that’s it.
But my point is, you can start targeting with those as more of them as a general way to get people to introduce to who you and your band are. But then what I was saying was, as your notoriety begins to increase, as you become more known in your local area and beyond, then probably I would recommend optimizing for your band’s name, or your name if you’re the lead or whatever. That’s because people will begin to search for your name through brand and that’s so you optimize for your brand name and that way you come up and you can control really the conversation via Google about your brand, if that makes sense. That’s reputation marketing 101, right?
I don’t know, I would start there something else. You could do like I said is back out a little bit. If you take a look at like South Carolina or 12 months we could actually bring it back, let’s say, five years and that’s kind of should bring you some more live music Charleston, South Carolina tonight. These are just rising terms. You look for top terms. Again, same thing, it didn’t really add much. Something else you could do is, let’s bring it back to 12 months, but back it out from Charleston to the whole state level. Okay.
This should bring back some different data. It looks like it didn’t really. There we go. If we look at top Charleston live music, live near me live music Myrtle Beach, Greenville, South Carolina. There’s just a handful of them there. Again, guys, that was just one keyword live music. I would try to figure out like, if you’re in a rock band, rock music maybe, whatever type it is you could start just use Google to start trying to identify the types of queries that people might be searching for and indigent or drill into those keywords more, those search queries more.
For example, let’s do this, I mean, I know it’s about time, but you could go to Google and search for, like if I said, live music actually, shoot, live music and it might not, yeah, it will. If I did live music near me, something else searches related to live music near me. So you could find other types of related search queries that people in Charleston, South Carolina search for that could give you additional ideas for stuff to optimize for.
That’s what I’m saying you can use trends and Google search to find all these types of related search queries and things that you can start to use in your content marketing to start getting exposure for those, for your band. Does that make sense? So, that’s what I would do hopefully. Hopefully, that helped you out a little bit. Okay.
Is There Any iFrame Stacking That Can Be Done In A GMB Via The Local Lease Pro?
Go take a look at that. That’s in the updates module of Local Lease Pro training. Okay. Everything you need is right there for you, Vince. Scott says, “Marco, I just donated. Great of you to do this for school kids.” Yes, it is. Thanks, Scott.
Jordan says, “Idea for band. If you have a fanbase that likes a similar band, example, Radiohead worked that angle as well. Yeah, that’s true. It’s true.
Jim Wells. “Marco, will I still be on the list from donating before I wasn’t sure if that carried over?” It does, doesn’t it, Marco?
Marco: No, it doesn’t. This is a brand new webinar, brand new information, brand new donation.
Bradley: Okay. There you go, Jim.
Marco: Come on, guys, it’s for a good cause. I’m not asking you to donate a million dollars five, 10 bucks, 25 bucks, whatever your heart tells you to donate. Then, yeah, listen to the information and let me know if it was worth it.
Bradley: There you go.
Marco: As for Jordan, he says that it’s a huge international travel site and that it’s the devs doing it. You shouldn’t let the devs do the SEO Jordan, ever. They think they know until you show them, no shit, stick to coding and let me do my job, make it easier for me, and then just show that. Google recommends JSON-LD and see where you can go. I know that you’re gonna get a lot of push back because that’s the way they want to do it. But it’s not what you want to do, what you should do according to what Google is recommending.
Bradley: There you go. Looks like we finished up right on time today, guys. Wow. That’s a great way to start the year. That’s rare. We appreciate everybody being here. No Mastermind webinar this week, but we will see you all next week for Hump Day Hangouts. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Marco, for hanging out.
In episode 209 of our weekly Hump Day Hangouts, one participant asked if there is a way to add all service areas in bulk now that Google has removed the radius option in GMB listings.
The exact question was:
Hey there, i saw that google made some changes in all of the GMB listings. Now you have to add all of the areas your business is serving. You can not just say 30miles anymore. Is there a way to bulk add all of the areas the business is serving? Because one by one is a pain in the a…..
Let’s go back in time 20 years so I can ask you the question, “How often do you look at a paper map every month?”
Unless you were a cartographer or a frequent traveler, chances are good that your answer would be, “Hmm, maybe less than once a month. Maybe once or twice a year.”
But in 2019, I’d wager there’s scarcely a day that goes by without you using Google Maps when planning to eat out, find a service provider, or find something fun to do. That web-based map in your hand has become a given.
And yet, there’s one thing you’re still not using the Internet for. And it’s something you likely wonder about almost daily. It starts with the question,
“I wonder who around here carries X?”
A real-world anecdote
After the tragic fires we’ve had this year in California, I wanted to wet mop all the floors in my house instead of vacuuming them, due to my concerns about particulate pollution in the air. My mother recommended I buy a Swiffer. I needed to know where I could find one locally, but I didn’t turn to the Internet for this, because the Internet doesn’t tell me this. Or at least, it hasn’t done so until now. Few, if any, of the local hardware stores, pharmacies, or big box retailers have reliable, live online inventory. At the same time, calling these places is often a huge hassle because staff isn’t always sure what’s in stock.
And so I ended up going to 3 different shops in search of this particular product. It wasn’t a convenient experience, and it was an all-too-common one.
The next big thing in local already exists
My real-world anecdote about a wet mop is exactly why I’m so pleased to be interviewing Mark Cummins, CEO of Pointy. 90% of purchases still take place in physical stores and it’s Mark who has seen this gap in available online knowledge about offline inventory and has now set out to bridge it.
I predict that within a few years, you’ll be using the Internet to find local inventory as frequently and easily as you’ve come to use its mapping capabilities. This chat with Mark explains why.
The real-world roots of an existing local need
Miriam: Mark, I understand that you were formerly a Google Search Team member, with a background in machine learning, but that your journey with Pointy began by walking into retail shops and talking face-to-face with owners. What did these owners tell you about their challenges in relation to offline/online inventory? A memorable real-world anecdote would be great here.
Mark: I started thinking about this problem because of an experience just like your story about trying to find a Swiffer. I’d recently moved to a new country and I had to buy lots of things to set up a new apartment, so I had that kind of experience all the time. It felt like there was a huge gap there that search engines could help with, but they weren’t.
I had been working at Google developing what became Google Lens (Google’s image recognition search feature). It felt strange that Google could do something so advanced, yet couldn’t answer very basic questions about where to buy things locally.
So I started thinking about ways to fix that. Initially I would just walk into retailers and talk to them about how they managed their inventory. I was trying to figure out if there was some uniform way to bring the inventory information online. I quickly learned that it was going to be hard. Almost every retailer I spoke to had a different method of tracking it. Some kept records on paper. Some didn’t count their inventory at all.
My first idea was a little crazy — I wanted to build a robot for retailers that would drive around the store every night and photograph all the shelves, and use image recognition to figure out the inventory and the prices. I spent some time seriously thinking about that, but then landed on the idea of the Pointy box, which is a much simpler solution.
Miriam: Can you briefly describe what a typical Point of Sale system is like for retailers these days, in light of this being technology most retailers already have in place?
Mark: Well, I would almost say that there isn’t a typical Point of Sale system. The market is really fragmented, it sometimes feels like no two retailers have the same system. There’s a huge range, from the old-style systems that are essentially a glorified calculator with a cash drawer, up to modern cloud-connected systems like Clover, Square, or Lightspeed. It’s very disruptive for retailers to change their POS system, so older systems tend to stay in use for a long time. The systems also differ by vertical — there are specialized systems for pharmacies, liquor stores, etc. Dealing with all of that variation is what makes it so hard to get uniform local inventory data.
A simple inventory solution is born
Miriam: So, you spoke with retailers, listened to their challenges and saw that they already have Point of Sale systems in place. And Pointy was born! Please, describe exactly what a Pointy device is, how it solves the problems you learned about, and fits right in with existing Point of Sales technology.
Mark: Right! It was pretty clear that we needed to find a solution that worked with retailers’ existing systems. So we developed the Pointy box. The Pointy box is a small device that attaches to a retailer’s barcode scanner. Basically it links the barcode scanner to a website we create for the retailer. Whenever the retailer scans a product with their barcode scanner, we recognize the barcode, and list the product on the website. The end result is live website listing everything in the store — here’s an example for Talbot’s Toyland, a toy store in San Mateo. They have over ten thousand products listed on their site, without any manual work.
The experience is pretty much seamless — just plug in Pointy, and watch your store website build itself. The Pointy box connects directly via the cell phone network, so there’s really nothing to set up. Just plug it in and it starts working. New products automatically get added to your store page, old products get removed when you no longer sell them, item stock status syncs automatically. We did quite a bit of machine learning to make that all automatic. Once the site is live, we also have some SEO and SEM tools to help retailers drive search traffic for the products they sell.
Miriam: My understanding is that the Pointy Team had to do a ton of legwork to put together various product catalogues from which data is pulled each time a product is scanned so that its information can be displayed on the web. I’m not familiar with this concept of product catalogues. What are they, what types of information do they contain, and what did you have to do to pull all of this together? Also, is it true that your team hand-reviews all the product data?
Mark: If you’re working in shopping search, then product catalogs are really important. Every mass-market product has a unique barcode number, but unfortunately there’s no master database where you can enter a barcode number and get back the product’s name, image, etc. So basically every retailer has to solve this problem for themselves, laboriously entering the product details into their systems. Pointy helps eliminate that work for retailers.
There are some product catalogs you can license, but each one only covers a fraction of products, and errors are common. We built a big data pipeline to pull together all of this product data into a single catalog and clean it up. We automate a lot of the work, but if you want the highest quality then machine learning alone isn’t enough. So every single product we display also gets approved by a human reviewer, to make sure it’s accurate. We’ve processed millions of products like this. The end result for the retailer is that they just plug in a Pointy box, scan a product, and their website starts populating itself, no data entry required. It’s a pretty magical feeling the first time you see it. Especially if you’ve spent countless hours of your life doing it the old way!
Where real-time local inventory appears on the web
Miriam: So, then, the products the retailer scans create the brand’s own inventory catalogue, which appears on their Pointy page. What tips would you offer to business owners to best integrate their Pointy page with their brand website? Linking to it from the main menu of the website? Something else? And do these Pointy pages feature SEO basics? Please describe.
Mark: Some retailers use Pointy as their main website. Others have it as an additional profile, in the same way that they might have a Facebook page or a Yelp page. The main thing Pointy brings is the full live inventory of the store, which generally isn’t listed anywhere else. To integrate with their other web presences, most just link across from their main sites or social media profiles. A few also embed Pointy into their sites via an iframe.
We work a lot on making these pages as SEO-friendly as possible. The queries we focus on ranking for are things like “product name near me” or “product name, location.” For example, a query like “rubber piggy bank san mateo” currently has the Pointy page for Talbot's Toyland in #1 position. We have an engineering team working on this all the time, and we’ve actually discovered a few interesting things.
Miriam: And how does this work when, for example, a product goes out of stock or goes on sale for a different price?
Mark: We keep that information updated live. The stock status is updated based on the information from the Pointy box. We also handle price data, though it depends on what features the retailers is using. Some retailers prefer not to display their prices online.
See What's In Store: Google totally sees the opportunity
Miriam: I was fascinated to learn that Pointy is the launch partner for Google’s See What’s In Store feature, and readers can see an example of this with Talbot’s Toyland. Can you explain what’s involved for retailers who want their inventory to appear in the SWIS area of the Google Business Profile (aka “Knowledge Panel”) and why this represents such an important opportunity? Also, does the business have to pay a commission to Google for inclusion/impressions/clicks?
Mark: This is a pretty exciting feature. It lets retailers display their full product catalogue and live inventory information in the Business Profile on the Google search page. It’s also visible from Google Maps. I’m guessing Google will probably start to surface the information in more ways over time.
It’s completely free for retailers, which is pretty interesting. Google Shopping has always been a paid service, so it’s notable that Google is now offering some organic exposure with this new feature.
I think that this is going to become table stakes for retailers in the next year or two, in the same way that having your opening hours online is now. Consumers are simply going to expect the convenience of finding local product information online. I think that’s a good thing, because it will help local businesses win back customers that might otherwise have gone to Amazon.
We’ve worked a lot with Google to make the setup experience for local retailers very simple. You just link your Pointy account to Google, and your live inventory appears in the Google Business Profile. Behind the scenes we do a lot of technical work to make that happen (including creating Merchant Center accounts, setting up feeds, etc). But the user experience is just a few clicks. We’ve seen a lot of uptake from Pointy users, it’s been a very popular feature. We have a bit more detail on it here.
What about special retail scenarios?
Miriam: So, basically, Pointy makes getting real-world inventory online for small and independent retailers who just don’t have the time to deal with a complicated e-commerce system. I understand that you have some different approaches to offer larger enterprises, involving their existing IT systems. Can you talk a bit about that, please?
Mark: Yes, some larger retailers may be able to send us a direct feed from their inventory systems, rather than installing Pointy boxes at every POS location. We aim to support whatever is easiest for the retailer. We are also directly integrated into modern cloud POS systems like Clover, Square, Lightspeed, Vend, and others. Users of those systems can download a free Pointy app from their system’s app store and integrate with us that way. And for retailers not using those systems, they can use a Pointy box.
Miriam: And what about retailers whose products lack labels/barcodes? Let’s say, a farm stand with constantly-changing seasonal produce, or a clothing boutique with hand-knit sweaters? Is there a Pointy solution for them?
Mark: Unfortunately we’re not a great fit for those kind of retailers. We designed the experience for retailers who sell barcoded products.
Miriam: You’re a former Google staffer, Mark. In local search, Google has become aggressive in taking a cut of an increasing number of local consumer actions and this is particularly hard on small businesses. We’ve got Local Service Ads, paid ads in local packs, booking buttons, etc, all of which struggling independent businesses are having to pay Google for. Right now, these retailers are eager for a competitive edge. How can they differentiate themselves? Please, share tips.
Mark: It’s true, lots of channels that used to be purely organic now have a mix of organic and paid. I think ultimately the paid ads still have to be ROI-positive or nobody will use them, but it’s definitely no fun to pay for traffic you used to get for free.
On the positive side, there are still plenty of openings to reach customers organically. If small businesses invest in staying ahead of the game, they can do very well. Lots of local product searches essentially have no answer, because most retailers haven’t been able to get their inventory online yet. It’s easy to rank well for a query when you’re the only one with the answer. There’s definitely still an opening there for early adopters.
“Pointing” the way to the future
Miriam: Finally, Pointy has only been available in the US since 2016, and in that short amount of time, you’re already serving 1% of the country’s retailers. Congratulations! What does the near future look like to you for retailers and for Pointy? What do you see as Pointy’s mission?
Mark: We want to bring the world’s brick-and-mortar retailers online and give them the tools they need to thrive. More than 90% of retail goes through brick and mortar stores, so there’s no reason they shouldn’t have an amazing technology platform to help them. The fragmentation and difficulty of accessing data has held everyone back, but I think Pointy has a shot at fixing that.
Miriam: Thank you, Mark. I believe Pointy has what it takes to be successful, but I’m going to wish you good luck, anyway!
Summing up
In doing this interview, I learned a ton from Mark and I hope you did, too. If a local retailer you market is seeking a competitive advantage in 2019, I’d seriously be considering early adoption of Google’s See What's In Store feature. It’s prime Google Business Profile (formerly Knowledge Panel) real estate, and so long as SWIS is free and Pointy is so affordable, there’s a pretty incredible opportunity to set yourself apart in these early days with a very modest investment.
I’m feeling confident about my prediction that we’re on the verge of a new threshold in user behavior, in terms of people using local search to find local inventory. We’ll all have the enjoyment of seeing how this plays out over the next couple of years. And if you heard it first at Moz, that will be extra fun!
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In Semantic Mastery’s weekly Hump Day Hangouts episode 208, one viewer asked how one can achieve a work-life balance as an entrepreneur.
The exact question was:
This may not be a typical hump day hangout question but I would like to ask how do you guys balance having a relationship/wife with a significant other and still be able to crank out 12-16 hour days without your significant other being upset that you don’t spend enough time with them? I have the drive and passion to work on this stuff all night and wake up early jumping out of bed to get back into it but then I get complaints that I am not there enough. My fear is that I don’t want my drive and passion to dry up with time, I’m 25 and I feel like this is my time to go all in. Any help guys? Thanks as always for humpday hangouts!
