This article is from our Agency Playbook—a collection of guides created to help local SEO agencies grow and succeed. It is chapter one of ‘Part One: Pitching and Onboarding’.

The guide takes inspiration from Claire Carlile’s Academy course ‘How to Win Your First Local SEO Client’.

Setting up a new local SEO agency is exciting. Being your own boss, working on your terms, and doing things your way is a hard gig to beat. It’s professionally and personally rewarding. One thing it isn’t, though, is easy.

Whether you already run an agency but feel it’s time for a reset, want to add local SEO to your other digital offerings, or are a consultant ready to scale up to agency owner, getting started requires considerable upfront planning.

The sheer volume of tasks you’ll need to complete before launch day can feel daunting. Many of the decisions you need to make come with a huge side order of pressure. That’s because each decision directly impacts the direction of your new business and its chances of success (or failure).

That’s where we come in. Our Agency Playbook is your blueprint to get your new local SEO agency off the ground.

Defining Your Services

Before you can successfully launch your business, you need a clear idea of what you’re going to sell. You might think that’s the easy bit. After all, it’s a local SEO agency, so the clue will be in the name, right? Not exactly.

In today’s search landscape, local SEO is a broad umbrella term for a rapidly growing range of tactics and specialisms. That means you could opt to focus on just one or two niche areas of expertise, such as:

• Google Business Profile Optimization
• Reputation Management
• Local Link Building
• Copywriting
• Citation Building
• Data and Analytics
• Social Marketing 
• Technical Optimization 

If you read that list and answer, “Check. Check. Check,” you may feel you’re sufficiently experienced and knowledgeable to offer a full-service local SEO solution. When you’re building a new business, it can be tempting to try and do it all. However, it’s essential to consider your strengths and weaknesses and whether you have the budget to fill any skills gaps with freelancers, subcontractors, or full-term hires.

That means your options are:

Whether you’re more inclined to be a niche expert or launch a full-service local search marketing agency, there’s another critical question that you’ll need to consider. Do you want to fly solo, or are you interested in building a bigger business with a team of experts working for your agency? 

Determining what scale you want to achieve is a very personal decision. There’s no right or wrong answer; it comes down to what you want from life.  

Some people are drawn to the solopreneur lifestyle because they can stay in complete control. Being a solopreneur means you’re only responsible for yourself. You don’t have the pressure of making payroll each month, nor do you have to take on a manager role. It can be the more flexible path, at least initially, and affords a greater amount of personal freedom. 

That said, if you’re serious about building an agency, bringing in other local SEO experts can help you develop your service portfolio and offer a more comprehensive solution to clients. It also gives you more man-hours and resources, which means you can take on more clients, generate more turnover, deliver better results, and not have to do everything yourself.  

What kind of local businesses will you target? 

With your business’s organizational structure decided, you can now start to think about who you will sell your services to. This is your client niche, and it can be a whole lot trickier to settle on than it may first appear. Your client niche could be determined by a specific industry, a certain size of business, or a local area. 

There are a couple of clear advantages to saying that you’re only going to work with this kind of client.

Advantage 1: You have the chance to become a big fish in a small pond

If 100% of your efforts and results come from a single sector, you can expect to become an established authority within that vertical. That depth of expertise means your services should become highly prized within that target niche.

Let’s say you decide to work only with dentists. With a few happy clients and excellent results, word should soon spread through the dental community. Any dentist looking to grow their local search visibility will know that you can get the job done. There could even be an increased desire to work with you to gain the upper hand over local rivals.

Local SEO for Dentists

by Ian de Jongh from Pain-Free Dental Marketing

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Advantage 2: You’ll have a unique insight into search trends

Choosing to work with just one type of client allows you to immerse yourself fully in that sector’s search landscape. You’ll instinctively learn what works and what doesn’t because you’ll work with the same kinds of businesses and keywords daily.

Essentially, you’re developing your own substantial back catalog of search algorithm intelligence. 

This unique insight cuts down on the guesswork associated with running new local SEO campaigns. It allows you to deploy tactics you’ve tried and tested and feel confident they will move the needle in the right direction from day one. And it means you’ll deliver consistently strong results for your clients.

Advantage 3: As a specialist, you can focus on what you do well

Having a particular niche—whether that’s an industry you have a particular affinity for or a certain size of client business you prefer to work with—can help you avoid a common trap associated with running a business: spreading yourself too thin. You can focus on what you enjoy and know you do well because you aren’t trying to be all things to all clients.  

Advantage 4: Day-to-day operations can be streamlined

There are plenty of practical advantages to having a well-defined niche. Many service providers define their client niche by geographical area. Service businesses like plumbers, electricians, and HVAC technicians define their niche by radius.

Staying within your geographical area can also make day-to-day operations smoother. It makes it much easier to host client meetings, travel to networking events, and pitch to new businesses.

Advantage 5: Your marketing and messaging can be tightly focused

Knowing your audience is one of the golden rules of successful marketing. For your sales and marketing efforts to resonate, you need to understand who you’re talking to and what their challenges are. You should be able to clearly articulate how you can help them specifically.

If you don’t have a niche:

• Your sales messaging could be too generic to generate a connection.
• Your pitch decks could leave your prospects cold.
• Your advertising could fall flat.

A real estate agent, for example, will have different priorities than a mom-and-pop convenience store. A veterinarian won’t be looking to solve the same search problems as a locksmith. A restaurant will expect different results from a lawyer. Only by having a clear idea of your audience will your marketing and sales messaging hit their mark. 

Despite these clear advantages, there are some pitfalls to deciding on a client niche. 

Pitfall 1: Your niche is too narrow 

While there are genuine benefits to having an area of expertise, your niche must be able to sustain your new agency. There must be enough of those kinds of businesses to keep your business in business. You could quickly run out of clients if your focus is too specific. 

Opting to only work with surf shops in Nevada, for instance.

Pitfall 2: Industry downturns will impact your business too

If your agency focuses on a particular industry or a specific type of business, any downturn in that vertical will also hit your business hard. A change in that market could render your services no longer required, jeopardizing your entire agency business. While that may seem like an extreme scenario, you only have to cast your mind back to the industries entirely shut down by the pandemic or made obsolete by the surge in online services to understand how quickly things can change. 

Pitfall 3: Too many clients request non-competition clauses 

Being super successful in your niche is a beautiful thing—your clients know they can trust you to deliver results. But what happens when they don’t want you delivering those same results for their main rival across town? Having a client with a non-competition clause could put dozens of other businesses out of bounds in one fell swoop.

You can’t afford for your niche to be too narrow that you run out of new clients you’re permitted to work with.

Taking on the Pricing Conundrum 

If there’s one thing guaranteed to keep any business owner awake at night, it’s cash. Setting your agency pricing model is no small feat, and it’s also far from straightforward. 

As a new business, you may be tempted to price your services lower to attract clients. That could mean you need to charge more to cover your overheads and make a profit. You could be toying with charging more to value your skillset. But set the bar too high, and you could price yourself out of the game before you begin.

The key to creating a sustainable pricing model that reflects the value you bring to your clients, keeps the lights on, and doesn’t send prospects running for the hills is to work systematically and impartially through the process. 

Step 1: Decide on Your Pricing Model 

There are many different pricing models for SEO and digital marketing agencies. You need to decide what yours will be. Will you charge per hour or go for a fixed monthly or quarterly retainer? An hourly rate can initially seem more affordable for clients, but it’s also less transparent and makes budgeting much harder. You may also find it harder to make financial forecasts and plan as the hours you bill (and therefore how much you make) will likely fluctuate monthly. 

A fixed fee can initially be off-putting for some businesses, especially smaller enterprises. It may feel like a big commitment, but it should be a much more precise cost to manage each month. A monthly or quarterly retainer also gives you some security and certainty, so you can accurately forecast turnover or confidently take on a new staff member. 

Some service providers operate a pay-on-results model. This is perhaps the most difficult model to understand as a client and local SEO agency. It requires a lot of forward planning because you’ll need to have an ironclad agreement in place that clearly defines the result being targeted, what that success looks like in practice, and how long it will take. You’ll also need to clearly understand how long the desired outcome will likely take and ensure that the input costs don’t outweigh the reward. 

Step 2: Work Backwards From There 

Once you know how you will charge, you can start to think about what you will charge. 

• Do your research: You don’t want to under or overprice your services. As a first port of call, try to understand what other local SEO providers are charging in your area. Some agencies may have pricing guidelines on their site to give you a ballpark figure. Friends, family members, and acquaintances may have their own experiences working with other agencies. Ask them how much they paid. If you’re a member of a local Chamber of Commerce or attend networking events, feel free to ask local business representatives what they have or would expect to pay for local SEO support. 
• Be creative: If those avenues leave you drawing a blank, go online. Many smaller agencies and solo service providers use freelance and on-demand platforms to find work. Many of those platforms allow providers to post fixed-price jobs. Review standard costs to build up an idea of average pricing. Some sites will also show you past reviews and the number of clients worked with, helping you understand if that service provider has got it right and is winning new business. 
• Calculate your outgoings: One of the most important defining factors in your pricing model is the amount of cash you need to cover your outgoings. Create a list and tally it up. Include any business expenses such as rent, Wi-Fi, staff costs, equipment costs, and software subscriptions. Remember things like taxes and healthcare insurance. Next, think about your personal circumstances and how much money you need to make each month to live comfortably. 

What Should My Agency Be Charging for Local SEO?

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Carving out Your Place in the Market 

Local SEO is a competitive space. You must be clear on your market position to ensure you stand out. This goes beyond your niche. It isn’t just about what you do and who you serve. It’s more nuanced. It’s about storytelling and weaving a compelling narrative that helps your target market understand your value and what makes you different.  

Your Positioning Statement 

Writing a positioning statement is an excellent way to focus your thinking and clarify your mission. It is a very short piece of text (around three sentences or so), but don’t be fooled. Less can be surprisingly more difficult. 

To create yours: 

• State who you’re targeting and what their problems or opportunities are.
• Outline what your service is and the main benefit you bring to the table. 
• Identify your competitive differentiator. 

Once you have formulated this statement, you’ll be able to clearly convey what you bring to the table, how you can help your clients succeed, and how your solution differs from competitors. 

You can refer to this document anytime you need to center yourself and check whether you’re continuing on the right path. 

Generating Leads 

Lead generation is one of those jobs that you can never tick off your to-do list as an agency owner. But, as a local SEO practitioner, the good news is that you’ll already be well-qualified to market your agency’s offerings. 

It should go without saying that many of the tactics and methods you use to boost your client’s search visibility should be applied to your own business: 

• Create, optimize, and manage your Google Business Profile.
• Build a website and regularly add helpful, original, optimized content.
• Start local link building.
• Build citations.
• Be proactive about asking clients for reviews.
• Be active on social media. 
• Participate in local and industry events.
• Share valuable tips with your network.
• Seek media coverage and other forms of local exposure, such as volunteering to speak at a Chamber of Commerce event or participating in a podcast. 

Generating leads is often about sharing your expertise and offering your insight. There’s an educational aspect that not only provides useful information to your prospects but also allows you to showcase your expertise. This doesn’t just build trust in your agency; it can also build goodwill. 

Aside from the local SEO tactics you already know and are proficient in, there are many other ways to generate leads. Raising your local visibility can make a huge impact. Why not host a free seminar for local businesses within your client niche? You could also donate your time to a local non-profit in return for a testimonial or reference on their website. If you’re confident in front of the camera or happy to appear online, another great tactic is to approach local media about guest author spots.  

You could also consider creating a presence on one of the many on-demand platforms. These platforms already have a volume of traffic you can benefit from, and you can instantly connect with local businesses actively looking for local SEO solutions. This is also a great way to quickly build up a store of reviews, which you can then use as social proof to generate additional leads for your new local SEO agency business.

You might be thinking: “Why respond? They’re happy customers!”

Think again…

Recent research from BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey shows that:

• 88% of consumers are “likely” to use a business that responds to all reviews, positive and negative.
• 59% of consumers expect to see a response to their review within two days of the review being left.

So… how can you respond to all reviews, leaving happy customers satisfied and addressing the concerns of less-than-happy ones, all within the time period they prefer, and still have time to crack on with the work that gets you these customers in the first place?

Simple. Become a superhero.

Our new Review Reply Templates feature in Monitor Reviews (with added AI!) will revolutionize how you respond to Google reviews and Facebook recommendations with BrightLocal and turn you into a Review Response Superhero. By setting your own response templates to common responses, you’ll leave every satisfied customer even more satisfied when you respond.

How does it work?

Create a Template

Review Reply Templates couldn’t be easier to get started with. Just create a template that fits your tone of voice and select which review ratings you want to apply it to. Agency customers can even link templates to clients, allowing them to manage all review responses in one place.

Select Your Template

Then, when you’re sipping your morning coffee and reviewing the plaudits and praise (and the rest), just select the template that works best for the review, adjust if needed, and hit ‘Use’.

What’s this about AI?

Want to make your responses even more tailored and less “templatey”? With the magic of our ‘Generate AI Response’ button, a response is created that speaks specifically to what the customer review mentions, and you barely have to lift a finger.

Didn’t love the first iteration? Easy, just click ‘Generate AI Response’ again. You can generate up to three responses per review.

Where do I start?

Reputation Manager users and ‘Grow’ plan customers can get started right away! Just head into BrightLocal and get ready to work some review response magic. Need a helping hand? Head over to our dedicated Help Center guide on this awesome new feature. 

It’s not just a one-time tactic; it’s a long-term investment in the online future of a dental practice, and that’s how we, as marketers, need to explain it to dentists.

Dental SEO  is about laying down roots that will support growth for years to come, ensuring that when people search for dental services in their local area, they find your client’s practice first.

For me, SEO has one primary goal. It’s about ensuring your client’s practice is visible and appealing to those looking for dental services. Most importantly, it is not only about getting as much traffic as possible but also getting the right kind of traffic to bring in the right kinds of patients. 

What is dental SEO?

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, involves enhancing a website’s content and the business’s overall online footprint to ensure it gets top billing from search engines like Google when someone searches for a specific query or service.

For dental practices, this means optimizing your online presence to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) whenever someone looks up dental-related services.

For dentists, it’s not even just traditional SEO you need to focus on. Local SEO and its slightly different tactics must be a significant consideration for dental marketers.

Imagine someone in your city searching for “Dentists near me” or “dental implants near me.” The sites in the map pack or top search results have the most effective SEO and will likely attract the most patients online.

Search engines aim to deliver users the most accurate and relevant answers that match the intent of what is being searched. They shy away from showing incorrect, outdated, or unclear information. Your goal as a dental marketer is to prove to these search engines that your client is the premier source of information and deserves to be on the first page of results.

This does not happen overnight; it is earned by consistently providing value to users. Don’t try to game the system; be careful of SEO scams. Do your research, put in the effort, and create authority for your clients that Google and other search engines simply can’t ignore. This means focusing not only on traditional SEO efforts but also on how your client looks and how they will be perceived by potential patients online.

Why is local SEO important for dental practices?

Remember the last time you clicked on page 3 or 4 of Google to find an answer? Me neither… and that’s all you need to know. If you need more help convincing a dentist, here’s some data proving why local SEO for dentists is essential:

• Google Accounts for 91.54% of the global search engine market – Source
• There are 5.9 million Google searches per minute.
• 21% of the USA uses the internet to find a local business daily. – Source
• On mobile, the average click-through rate is 22.4% for position 1, 13% for position 2, and 10% for position 3. Position 10 gets you just 2.3% of clicks.
• A study in 2023 showed that just 0.63% of people click on the second page.

This data, along with how we know the internet is used daily, makes it very clear that making sure your client ranks in the top 5 results of Google will be the difference between getting organic traffic and not.

And, with local searches, the local pack defaults to showing just three sites in the local pack at the top of the search results.

Six Local SEO Tasks for Dental Marketers

Over the past four years, I have been fortunate enough to implement SEO for over 100 dental practices throughout the United States. At Pain-Free Dental Marketing, we have developed a state-of-the-art process that has been proven to show results through trial and error.

An important lesson I have learned is that you need to look at the different areas of dental SEO as building blocks. You can’t start with this, if you have not laid the foundation for that. Make sense? Why would you focus on getting more traffic if the page looks terrible? Why would you ask for reviews if your Google Business Profile looks empty or start building citations if you don’t have a website yet? First, lay the foundation, then build your home.

Here’s how to approach dental SEO strategically:

Do Your Research, Understand Your Competition, and Create a Plan

You can’t implement local SEO for dentists without a roadmap or understanding of what you want to achieve. This is crucial because it will help you as a marketer to measure success and allow you to communicate it to your clients.

If strategy and success are not defined, you not only lack the ability to express what you will be doing for the dental practice, but it will also be challenging to determine if you were successful. Here are some initial steps to help you understand what you need to do:

Do Your Keyword Research

The foundation of a successful SEO strategy is built on understanding what potential patients are searching for. This step is all about identifying the right terms and phrases that resonate with the needs and queries of your target audience. Think of it as choosing the right tools before performing a dental procedure.

How to Do Local Keyword Research

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Keyword research is also not just about finding the keywords with the most volume but finding collections of keywords that can work together. This includes using long-tail keywords that can aid in your efforts to reach more traffic and link back to your core pages to increase their authority.

You can find long-tail keywords in the FAQ and People Also Asked sections; you can also use the auto-complete feature to see what Google suggests.

Understand Your Competition

Knowing who you’re up against can provide invaluable insights. By analyzing your competitors’ online strategies, you can identify opportunities to differentiate your client’s practice and find your unique space in the dental market.

How to Do Local Competitor Analysis

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When you see a competitor ranking first for a keyword, it means they did something right. Google is literally telling you; “This is what I like!”. It’s your job as a dental marketer to figure out what Google likes about the page, how to recreate it, and make it better!

Create a Plan

With solid keyword research and a clear understanding of your competition and how you would like to out-compete them, it’s time to craft a plan.

This strategy should aim to improve your client’s online visibility and resonate with your practice’s unique voice, values, and how they are seen online. SEO is as much about what you look like online as it is about ranking high and getting traffic. After all, in the vast world of online marketing, a personalized touch can make all the difference.

Even if you are ranked third, if you look better, you could still get the click before those displayed above you.

Google Business Profile Optimization

Now that you have a plan, it’s time to start with local SEO efforts that will have the biggest impact as quickly as possible. That’s where a Google Business Profile (GBP) can make all the difference.

A Google Business Profile should be at the core of your dental SEO strategy because it’s one of the first things potential patients will see, often even before the website. It also has its own ranking potential and can help give some visibility to a dental practice if, at first, you struggle to rank the website.

If you have not yet claimed or created a Google Business Profile for the dental practice, immediately stop what you are doing and do that right now! Avoid doing verification via the post as it can take a long time. Do verification via the office number or the business video.

How to Verify Your Google Business Profile

Get Verified

Now you’re verified, it’s time to start optimizing.

Step 1: Optimize Your Business Information

Fill out every section of your profile with detailed and accurate information. This includes your practice’s name, address, phone number, and website.

Consistency is key, as it helps Google understand and trust your business, improving your visibility. In the business description, use the keywords you found that have enough volume and will draw in patients, but make sure your description still makes sense for a human to read.

Add services, when the business was founded, any special features, products, social media links, literally add as much helpful information as possible.

Step 2: Select the Right Categories

GBP categories help potential patients find your services when they’re searching for specific dental needs, like “cosmetic dentistry” or “pediatric dentist.” Be as specific as possible to stand out in the right searches.

Step 3: Use High-Quality Photos

Visuals make a big difference. Upload high-quality photos of the practice, the team, and before-and-after shots of patients (with their consent).

Photos can help your listing stand out and give potential patients a glimpse of the welcoming environment you offer. They can help put a worried customer at ease.

Updated, high-quality photos are so important. It does not help if your client ranks number one, but the pictures look outdated or unprofessional. Nobody will click on it, which means all your efforts will be wasted.

This ties back to what I said about making the brand visually appealing to potential patients.

Step 4: Post Regular Updates

Use the posts feature to share updates, offers, and news about your practice. Regular posts keep your profile active and engaging, showing potential patients your practice is bustling and up-to-date.

You also need to make sure that you’re posting new images regularly.

Step 5: Reviews, Reviews, Reviews!

Reviews are the rocket of dental marketing and a cornerstone of your GBP’s effectiveness. Encourage satisfied patients to leave positive feedback with keywords and respond professionally to all reviews.

This not only shows potential patients that you value feedback but also can improve your search rankings.

Build a 5-star Reputation

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Google Search Console and Understanding Your Dental Website

Many marketers think you need a plethora of different software to track the success of your SEO for dentists. The truth is that Google Search Console (GSC) is an excellent starting point and one of the best tools in your digital toolbox.

GSC is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results.

An Introduction to Google Search Console

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For a dental marketer, understanding and utilizing Google Search Console is akin to having a high-powered dental X-ray machine that sees not just the surface but deep into the health of your website’s visibility online. Here’s what you need to do:

• Verify and Monitor Your Site’s Performance: Track your site’s performance in Google Search results. Analyze queries that bring users to your site, view your site’s click-through rates (CTRs), and check your rankings for specific keywords.
• Inspect URLs for Indexing Issues: Use the URL Inspection tool to check if Google can crawl your site’s pages, understand any indexing issues, and request re-indexing of new or updated content. If pages are not indexing, you can figure out why.
• Identify and Fix Mobile Usability Issues: Ensure your website is mobile-friendly by identifying pages with usability problems on mobile devices. This is crucial for maintaining and improving your site’s ranking in search results.
• Improve Website Content Based on Data: Utilize search analytics to refine your website content. Focus on creating content around keywords and queries that are proven to drive traffic to your site.

An Advanced Guide to Google Search Console for Local Businesses

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On-Page and Technical SEO for Dental Websites

Now that you have the essentials in place, it’s time to start looking at your website. You might be thinking I’m crazy for only getting to the website now, but remember, we needed a plan first. Then, as a dentist is a local business, we had to make sure the Google Business Profile was optimized for the local pack, and then we used Google search console to understand how Google interacts with your website.

Now, we get to work on the website itself.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO refers to optimizing individual web pages to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. It involves both the content and the HTML source code of a page.

For dental marketing, on-page SEO is crucial because it helps search engines understand the content of your website and its relevance to search queries, especially those related to the dental services your client values.

How to Improve On-page SEO for Local

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While many SEO specialists bucket all kinds of categories into on-page SEO, I have only seen a few factors that truly impact how your website performs:

1. High-Quality Content

You have probably heard this a thousand times before, but it’s true. If we ask ourselves what the most basic function of Google and other search engines is, it’s to provide users with the information they seek.

You must ensure that your dental website provides valuable information on all your client’s services. I often see dental websites with no service pages or location pages, which makes me go crazy. To target a dental service, it needs its own page!

An essential element of Google’s E-E-A-T is showcasing your authority and expertise. Dental practices will have in-house experts; their dentists! You should be using them to help you create genuinely authoritative content, whether it’s Q&As or guides.

2. Keyword Optimization

If you followed my steps correctly, you should understand what keywords people are searching for, how people find your client’s website, and what services the dentist would like to rank better for.

Now you know the keywords you would like to rank for; you can start weaving them into your website’s content. Use variations of keywords, write multiple pages that speak about the service in different ways, and create internal links to help the user find the info they need. It’s as simple as that.

How to Craft Unique and Helpful Location Pages

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Too often, dental marketers get so focused on how many times you use a keyword and where instead of just writing a really good piece of content.

Of course, apply basic SEO best practices to ensure keywords are represented in your headings as needed, but it is more important to have good content with keywords sprinkled in vs. lots of keywords with some basic content. Concentrate on Topics, not individual keywords.

Instead, create what I like to call a “pillar page” and see that page as the one you would like to rank highest for.

You can then build supporting pages with variations of the same keyword or long-tail keywords that you link out to, making the pillar page more valuable. That’s basically why Wikipedia is so successful. Write a great page on a dental service, then link to other more in-depth pages on your website for those who want to learn more about specific aspects of the topic.

For example, I have a veneers page; I briefly mention the benefits in a paragraph. I will then add: “If you want to understand all of the benefits of veneers, you can do so here.”, with a link to a page that sits in the veneers subfolder, going into more details on that specific subject. Google will understand this and recognize that your pillar page provides value because it provides users the opportunity to explore the topic more.

3. Optimizing Meta Tags and Descriptions

Ensure that each page has a unique title tag and meta description that accurately describes the content of the page. These elements not only help search engines understand the topic of each page but also serve as a first impression for users in search result pages.

Use your title to stand out. Don’t just go for the same title as the page. This is your chance to grab your potential customer’s attention in the SERPs. Use a featured image that will grab a patient’s attention.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO means ensuring that your dental practice’s website is not only visible but also easily accessible to both search engines and potential patients.

Without the necessary technical SEO, you could add new pages to your website, and nobody will ever see them. Or you could write the perfect piece of content, but the page takes too long to load, so nobody sticks around to see it. These are just two examples, but you catch my drift.

Here are the top technical SEO tactics I recommend to dental marketers:

1. Website Health & Performance

We all hate a slow website, as does Google because it impacts the user experience. You must ensure a website has fast load times, mobile-friendliness, and secure connections via HTTPS. As marketers, we know these factors influence user experience and search engine rankings.

Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights can be invaluable for diagnosing and improving website performance. I did some research on what has the biggest impact on website speed, and it actually has nothing to do with the website itself.

Hosting is one of the most important factors that influence the speed of your website. If the website you are working on is hosted on unreliable or unresponsive servers, it will directly impact how Google interacts with your website and, therefore, your SEO efforts. Search Engine Journal has gone into more detail on that here.

Other things can affect your page load time, like the size of your images or even plugins. Consider doing an audit of all of this and actioning anything you can, like old plugins or lazy loading.

2. Structured Data for Enhanced Visibility

Structured data is a powerful tool for improving a dental practice’s appearance in search results.

By implementing schema markup for local businesses, we can help search engines understand and display important information about dental practices, such as services offered, hours of operation, and patient reviews. This can enhance visibility in local search results, making your clients more findable and appealing to potential patients. We make use of SchemaPro, but there are all sorts of different ways for you to implement your local schema.

Local SEO Schema: Types and Templates for Easy Structured Data Markup

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3. Submit Sitemap to Google

An XML sitemap is like a map for your website. It tells Google about your important pages and where they are. This is helpful, especially if your website has many pages or is not connected very well.

A sitemap and strategic internal linking are sure ways for Google to crawl your website effectively. Google has guidelines on how to create and submit a sitemap.

4. Optimize Your Site Architecture

A website has many pages. It’s important to arrange these pages so search engines can easily discover and go through them. This is where the organization of your site, also known as your website’s information architecture, plays a role.

This will also help with how potential patients navigate the dental website. You need to pave the way to ensure the site structure makes sense and flows in a productive way.

The three things I know most patients care about are who’s the dentist, what this will cost me, the insurance questions, and finally, how I can contact this office. This is just an example, but you should apply this framework to your service pages and how you implement internal links.

Content Silos for Local SEO

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5. Target Keywords in Your URL 

This might seem insignificant, but I believe every bit counts when it comes to dental SEO. Anything I can do to beat my competitors is a step closer to a new patient. Ensure you use keywords in your URL, and don’t make them too long. Google does not like generic URLs. You should also not include numbers unless it is absolutely necessary.

Build Citations to Increase Online Authority

When it comes to citations, I always like to use the following example:

If today I told you my name is Ian, here is my address and number, call me anytime. Then, the next time I see you, l tell you my name is Michael, with a different number.

The third time I see you, I tell you my name is John. And so on.

Eventually, you will think I am either crazy or simply untrustworthy. Why should Google trust your client if their business information is incorrect across multiple platforms and directories?

By consistently listing a dental practice’s name, address, phone number (NAP), and website across various online directories and platforms, these citations help increase the practice’s visibility on search engines like Google.

This is crucial for attracting local patients searching for dental services in their area. Furthermore, citations contribute to the credibility and legitimacy of a dental practice in the digital realm, reassuring both Google and potential patients of the practice’s established presence.

Google uses citations as a vote of confidence that you are who you say you are and that the business you are marketing exists. Building citations has always been a crucial part of my dental marketing strategy and something I recommend to all marketers focussing on local SEO for dentists.

Brightlocal has been my favorite tool for doing this, making it easy for me to manage over 100 dental practices simultaneously. 

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Multilocation Practices Vs. Single Location Dentists

Whether your client has one or multiple dental practices will make a difference in how you implement dental SEO. It is not so much a change in what you need to do but how you will implement it to be effective locally.

Multiple Locations, One Website

Before we start, I want to share this: One of the most challenging questions I have gotten over the years was, “I would like to draw in patients from a town 30 minutes away. How can we do that with SEO?”.

My response always starts the same. We can begin to target another town with new pages, but Google search results will always show the user a business located in that town/city over a different practice that is 30 minutes away.

If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Why would Google make me drive 30 minutes to a business when I have multiple other businesses that can provide me with the same services within 10 minutes of my location?

How to Rank Outside Your Area

The Truth

I say this because you need to understand this principle to implement SEO for a practice with multiple locations. Local SEO is all about, you guessed it, local. You need to prove to Google that your business is an option for that community and the best option available.

To do this, each location will need its own website or, at the very least, a dedicated page on your site to target the branch and the town/city it is in. You can’t have a website that simply mentions the different locations in these areas. This will not be enough to compete with another practice with an entire website targeting that local area. 

So, if you have a single website for multiple locations, make sure you have separate pages that provide a detailed look at each practice with additional service pages that link to the services you provide in that town.

You also need to target local dental service keywords on those pages and share reviews from that location, etc. I know Google ranks location-specific pages better because the only URL that I would get to rank successfully was the page dedicated to that town. No other page on the website would appear in that town because Google did not associate the rest of the website with the town/city we were targeting.

Here’s an example of how to do this.

You’ll also want to make sure that each individual location has its own Google Business Profile and that you’re managing them all as their own entity. Putting all your time into one branch’s GBP won’t help all your other GBPs, for instance. Similarly, you’ll need to build citations for each location, not just your first one, and actively manage your listings.

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Best Case Scenario

In a perfect world, you will need to build a website for each location the dentist has and implement the strategies I have discussed in this article. In my opinion, this gives you the best chance of competing locally and ranking better in Google search results for multiple locations. 

Differences in SEO for Dentists vs. Other Industries

Now, you will notice that backlinking was not part of my core strategy for dental SEO. In local SEO for dentists, getting links from other websites (backlinks) isn’t as crucial as we used to think, especially in areas where there aren’t many dental practices competing with each other.

In these scenarios, focusing on backlinks might not be the best use of your time. Even Google said back in 2022 that backlinks are less important than they were before.

How to Do Effective Local Link Building

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I have found this especially true in areas where there is less competition or other dental practices are not implementing a dental SEO strategy. If the practice you’re doing marketing for is in a smaller city or town where there’s not much competition, you can rank well in search results without worrying too much about getting backlinks.

Instead, ensure the Google Business Profile is spot-on and regularly updated, use the right local keywords, update your website regularly with relevant content, build out citations, and encourage happy patients to leave as many reviews as possible.

Final Thoughts & Advice

It’s important to know that this article is not the ultimate solution to dental SEO but rather a look into the most important factors that have made a real difference for the dentists I have worked with over the past few years. When it comes to local SEO for dentists, there is no set formula. It’s about trying different strategies and seeing what works best for you. Different dental offices have different needs and will measure the success of your SEO efforts in different ways.

Make sure you over-communicate, under-promise, and over-deliver. Dentists are dentists, not marketers, so do not expect them to understand the value you bring as a dental marketer. You need to show them!

The online reviews business is hugely competitive. Reputation, as they say, is everything. Even on the research front, we increasingly see more consumer review reports enter the market. 

The Local Consumer Review Survey delves into all of the crucial questions. How are today’s consumers searching for and interacting with business reviews? Which review elements are most important to consumers, and how do online reviews measure up against personal recommendations?

If you’ve been an avid follower of our consumer review research, you’ll recognize there are some questions we ask most years. This allows us to collect that juicy year-on-year trend data that shows how things may—or may not—be changing.

But we also want to keep things fresh. The review landscape continues evolving, so we always aim to dig into the latest developments and bring brand-new insights to support your reputation management endeavors, be you a big brand, small brand, marketing consultant, or business owner.

Here are just some of the key findings you can expect from the Local Consumer Review Survey 2024.

Key Themes and Findings

The chart above shows that the percentage of consumers ‘always’ or ‘regularly’ reading online reviews has held fast over the last three years (75% in 2024 against 76% in 2023). 

Meanwhile, just 3% of consumers say they ‘never’ read online reviews, reflecting how ingrained reviews are in most consumers’ business research.

Where are consumers reading online reviews?

The review landscape has expanded in recent years, with many brands and apps incorporating review functionalities to support purchase decisions.

In terms of ‘official’ review platforms, several long-standing sites are prominent in the USA (and beyond).

• Google remains the most-used website for reading online reviews, although the percentage of consumers using it for this has dropped from 87% in 2023 to 81% in 2024.
• Consumer use of Apple Maps and Trustpilot has increased by 3% since 2022, from 13% to 16% and 7% to 10%, respectively.

It won’t surprise many that Google remains at the top of the list for consumer review sites. The search giant is still, by far, the biggest review platform today.

What’s more interesting is where we see a downward trend for almost all listed websites and directories, except for Google, Apple Maps, and Trustpilot. 

Despite remaining in the top three most-used platforms, Facebook and Yelp have seen decreases in percentage points over the years—3% for Facebook since 2022 and 9% for Yelp. The gap between the two has also become much closer in 2024, with consumer use of Facebook for online reviews overtaking Yelp for the first since time 2020.

Back then, we noted that the dip in consumers using Yelp may have been caused by the impact covid-19 had on physical businesses like restaurants, hotels, and entertainment. It’s not entirely clear why the percentage of consumers using Yelp in 2024 is lower, however. 

The use of Tripadvisor and Better Business Bureau (BBB) has dropped significantly since 2022. Both platforms are typically known and used for industry-specific reviews: Tripadvisor for hospitality and entertainment business reviews and Better Business Bureau for professional trades and service-area businesses (SABs).

As the most widely-used review platform, it could be that Google continues to eat the market share of other review platforms as it becomes more helpful to users. For example, Google and its business profile management product, Google Business Profile (GBP), introduced notable features over the last year that enable businesses in particular niches to optimize their listings. Price comparisons, booking availability, and business amenities are now prominent features of hotel business profiles, and SABs can set service areas and make specific services prominent on their profiles. 

Finally, Apple Maps and Trustpilot are the two platforms that beat the downward trend and show increasing consumer use instead. In early 2023, Apple announced Apple Business Connect, a late-coming rival to GBP. As we reported at the time, businesses have been slow to claim their business profiles, and a quick poll found that only 12% of consumers used Apple Maps over Google Maps.

New features and an improved Apple Maps interface, including more appealing iconography to distinguish business types, could explain why we are seeing an increasing trend in consumers using this app.

Meanwhile, while Trustpilot is an open review platform, businesses often invite verified customers to review their customer service experiences. These reviews are clearly labeled as ‘Invited’ or ‘Verified’. The increase in consumers using Trustpilot to read reviews could be related to a desire to read verified—or perhaps, to them, more trustworthy—reviews.

How many sites do consumers check reviews on?

Despite noting a downward trend in the use of some review platforms, we wanted to see how many sources consumers used to read reviews on average.

• 77% of consumers use at least two review platforms in their business research.
• 41% of consumers use three or more review platforms.

Less than a quarter of consumers only use one review site before choosing a local business. This finding is particularly significant as it reinforces the need to ensure your brand is represented consistently across multiple review platforms.

When asking consumers for business reviews, providing them with several options is a good idea. As we know from the responses to the previous question, consumers have preferences and may have accounts with particular platforms. Giving them options and making the process as simple as possible can encourage them to leave reviews. 

Where else do consumers source business reviews?

When it comes to reviews and recommendations, we have to acknowledge the importance of alternative sources, including the growth of social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok for “unstructured” consumer reviews (i.e. reviews that don’t follow a dedicated review structure or scoring system). 

2023 was a particularly interesting year for developments in these areas, with the introduction of Threads, the rebranding of Twitter to X, and the boom of generative AI. This is the first year we included ‘Threads’ and ‘ChatGPT/generative AI’ as responses.

• Local news as an alternative review source has increased by 8% since 2023.
• In 2024, consumers are using Instagram and TikTok for business reviews more, with an increase of 2% and 3%, respectively.

Apart from YouTube, all of the sources we listed in 2023 have seen increases. Most notable is local news—an interesting source, as it could cover both digital and more traditional forms of media, including print, radio, and TV. 

Local news and community initiatives are classic local marketing tactics that can support your brand’s visibility in local areas but can also be effective for link-building.

The increase in consumers using various social channels highlights the importance of maintaining your brand’s social presence. Being active and aware of these review alternatives will ensure you can find and respond to reviews and comments, engage with users, and maybe even win new audiences.

Finally, almost 10% of consumers said they’re using ChatGPT or similar generative AI tools as an alternative source of review information. Considering the technology only burst into the mainstream in early 2023, and research in March 2023 found that 73% of consumers had not used generative AI, this is significant.

How Consumers Interact with Review Platform Functionalities

We’ve noted some of the improvements that Google has made to business review platforms to support visibility and show more useful information to prospective customers. Now, we will look at some of the features that make finding the right review content easier.

For several years now, users have been able to use a search functionality within Google reviews to look for specific keywords and terms. More recently, it has improved filtering with ‘mentioned’ keywords, and now initially prioritizes the order of reviews shown on the default filter based on what it deems ‘most relevant.’

We provided consumers with an image of reference (below) and labeled eight prominent review features, asking consumers how useful they found each one when searching for business reviews on Google.

• 96% of consumers said that the ’search reviews’ function is useful to them in some way.
• ‘Sort by newest’ is deemed the most useful review function, with 47% of consumers finding it ‘highly useful.’
  

Clearly, all of the functions shown to consumers are useful in some way. The largest percentage of consumers who do not find a feature useful at all is 15% for a ‘highlighted’ review. From this, we can assume that consumers prefer to judge the relevance of the business’ reviews for themselves, rather than being guided by Google.

47% of consumers rated the ‘sort by newest’ function as ‘highly useful,’ which tells us that almost half of consumers consider review recency as important when deciding which business to use.

Although this question is specific to Google review functions, it’s important to note that most prominent review platforms use similar features to support the user experience. The ‘sort by’ functionality is a standard tool across most digital experiences, while keyword filters and search functionalities are present on platforms such as Yelp and Tripadvisor.

So, while we can only discuss the findings above concerning Google business reviews, it’s useful to consider how you can make review functionalities work for you on different platforms.

Functionalities like ‘sort by newest’ and ‘sort by highest rating’ incentivize businesses to actively put more effort into their review profiles, achieving a regular stream of reviews if they know that’s how people filter.

It also reinforces the importance of delivering excellent, memorable customer experiences. If there are things you want your brand to be known for, consider ways you could encourage customers to mention them in their reviews. Dog-friendly places or restaurant menus with particularly renowned items are just two examples users might be looking for.

The Most Important Review Factors

What are consumers looking for when they’re browsing business reviews? Are they looking for a high number of ‘good’ star ratings, or are there other factors that would reassure them before using a business?

• 69% of consumers would feel positive about using a business if its written reviews describe positive experiences (static against 2023, which was down from 75% in 2022).
• In 2024, 8% more consumers feel positive about a business if its reviews are written by named users than in 2023 (48% in 2024 vs. 40% in 2023).

Overall, there is a downward trend in review factors helping consumers feel positive about using a business. This could suggest that people are less willing to take things at face value.

There has been an increase in the percentage of consumers who said that reviews written by named users—as opposed to anonymous accounts—would make them feel positive about using a business. This points to a general sense of wariness around user-generated content and perhaps shows more digital ‘savviness.’

What star ratings do consumers expect to see?

• 71% of consumers would not consider using a business with an average rating below three stars, 16% lower than in 2023.
• 6% fewer consumers would use a business with a 3.5 star rating in 2024 than in 2023.

At a glance, there is an upward trend in consumers willing to use businesses with ‘low’ (lower than 3.0 stars) star ratings, and a downward trend where consumers expect ‘high’ (higher than 3.0 stars) star ratings as the minimum. 

However, if we examine this further, the majority of consumers still expect a business to have a star rating between 4.0 and 5.0. This figure has remained static since 2022.

The anomaly here is businesses with star ratings of 3.5, where we can see a percentage downshift of 6% since 2022. Could this suggest that consumers are now mistrustful of ratings that sit in the middle? 

If a business location has fewer reviews, its average star rating is likely to be skewed by an extremely low or high rating. An increasing willingness to give businesses with low ratings a chance suggests that consumers look beyond face value or are paying attention to review details to reach their conclusions.

There is no denying, however, that businesses should aim for a minimum average star rating of 4.0.

Does the number of reviews matter?

So, how many reviews does a business need to have for consumers to trust the average star rating?

• Most consumers expect a business to have between 20-99 reviews (59%), which has not changed since 2023.
• 12% of consumers said that the number of reviews does not impact the trust in their star rating, down 2% since 2023.

Interestingly, since 2023 there has been a very slight increase in consumers choosing the lower threshold of 0-19 reviews and a similarly slight decrease in consumers saying the number of reviews does not impact their perception.

This hints, once again, that consumers will look beyond ‘at-a-glance’ numbers and ratings to make their own minds up. They don’t necessarily believe in the implied worth of star ratings or how many reviews a business has without reading into the details to verify their impressions.

Almost two-thirds of consumers (59%) said that a business should have between 20-99 reviews in order for them to be able to trust the average star rating. So, while our findings suggest that consumers might be more willing to give businesses a chance, the majority expect between 20-99.

Review Recency

• 27% of consumers expect to see business reviews as fresh as two weeks, up from 25% in 2023, which was up from 22% in 2022.

Expectations of recent reviews is on the up, with 27% of consumers saying that reviews left within the past two weeks impact their decisions, compared to 22% in 2022. Reviews left within the past six months to a year are less likely to impact their choices.

In most cases, it makes sense that this is the expectation. If consumers read business reviews, they want an accurate representation of the most recent experiences with that brand. This will be especially important for businesses within the hospitality industry, including food and drink brands or hotels.

This finding highlights the importance of maintaining a regular stream of incoming customer reviews. A sporadic approach to review requests and followups won’t do, but a more robust reputation strategy or process can help.

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Responding to Consumer Reviews 

We’ve been discussing review responses for several years, and our findings consistently showed that consumers expect businesses to respond to their reviews. 2024 is no different.

• Consumers are 41% more likely to use a business that responds to all of its reviews than a business that doesn’t respond to any.

The chart above clearly indicates that review responses matter to customers. 88% of consumers would use a business that responds to both positive and negative reviews, compared to just 47% that said they would consider using a business that doesn’t respond to any reviews.

Some consumers may see a business only responding to bad reviews as an attempt to save brand reputation without acknowledging the opinions of others. Similarly, consumers may see a business only responding to good reviews as just amplifying good feedback in order to gloss over the negative.

Either approach can appear inauthentic, and consumers today are clearly pretty savvy when detecting this.

As we know that review responses are an expectation in consumers’ minds, we wanted to find out if it was important when business owners respond to reviews. 

• 93% of consumers would expect a business to respond to their reviews.
• 34% of consumers expect a response to their reviews within two to three days of posting.

A mighty 93% of consumers expect businesses to respond to their reviews! So, if this has not been a part of your reputation management strategy so far, take this as a call to action.

Meanwhile, 87% of consumers said they expect review responses within two weeks, and only 4% feel it doesn’t matter when they receive one. This clearly shows how important timeliness is.

The Power of Generative AI in Reputation Management

Back to the subject of AI… in this year’s survey, we wanted to test something a little different.

We presented consumers with a business review sourced via Google. Then, we showed them two review responses and asked them to choose which response they would prefer to receive.

What the consumers didn’t know about these options is that one (Response 1) was the human response sourced from a genuine business owner on Google, and the other (Response 2) was a review response that we generated using ChatGPT.

58% of consumers unknowingly chose the AI-generated review response as their preferred response! Of course, there are many reasons why someone might prefer the content and sentiment of one written response over another.

When we considered the reasons behind their preferred response, it was interesting to note the sense of over-familiarity conveyed in response 1, compared to the more measured sentiment in response 2. Would you agree?

We can’t say what prompted this finding, but it highlights an interesting use case for marketers who may struggle with crafting unique review responses at scale.

Trust in Business Reviews

One of the most prominent themes that reports such as this surface is the importance of consumer trust in brands. While brands cannot actively control the content of the reviews published by other consumers online, we know there are many ways to manage the reputation process.

So, where do reviews sit in consumers’ minds compared to other types of recommendations?

Reviews vs. Recommendations from Other Sources

• 50% of consumers trust reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends and family.
• This is the first year that ‘I trust consumer reviews as much as recommendations from influencers with my local community’ was included as a response to this question.

The percentage of consumers who said they trust reviews as much as recommendations from family and friends has increased by 4% since 2023. It’s a significant finding, showing that half of consumers feel online reviews carry as much sway as personal recommendations.

For this year’s report, we wanted to distinguish between social media influencers and local influencers—essentially, macro vs. micro-influencers. We wanted to learn: is there a significant difference between well-known social media influencers endorsing a brand and influencers within the local community?

We found that the percentage of consumers who said they trust reviews as much as social media influencers has remained at 35% since 2023. 24% of consumers said they trust consumer reviews as much as local influencer recommendations. This could be lower than social media influencers as we tend to follow local personalities for specific recommendations, like restaurants and bars. If we were to examine the trust in macro and micro-influencers more closely, to look at businesses in different industries, the reasons might be much clearer.

We can see a 4% increase in consumers who said they trust consumer reviews as much as professionally written articles since 2023. This suggests that they verify online reviews against the opinions from other sources they deem trustworthy. This could also show a sense of wariness in terms of trusting influencer-endorsed content.

The Impact of Local Reviews on Big-brand Reputation

Another new question we had was how local branch reviews of big brands or franchises impact consumers’ choices, and whether this affects overall brand perception.

For example, if your nearest McDonald’s branch has a Google star rating of 2.0, would you still use that store? And how would that affect your overall perception of the McDonald’s brand?

• 89% of consumers said that the reviews of local branches would impact their decision to use the store in some way.
• 91% of consumers feel that local reviews of chains and franchises impact their overall perception of the brand in some way.

These findings are important because they show that marketers in big brands can’t afford to rest on their laurels in the hope that brand equity will win out. For more than a quarter of consumers, both of these things are true:

• The local consumer reviews of chains or franchises would impact their decision to use it ‘a great deal’.
• The local consumer reviews of chains or franchises would impact their overall perception of the brand ‘a great deal’.

The power of local reputation to impact brand perception should not be underestimated, particularly if we consider the previous findings on how consumers trust personal recommendations from friends and family or those of online influencers.

Fake Reviews and Suspicious Activity

Those in the reputation and local marketing game will know the perils of fake reviews. Even those who aren’t will likely have seen the reams of suspiciously gushing product reviews on e-commerce sites such as Amazon—generally known as the biggest culprit for fake reviews. 

As we’ve touched on in previous reports, and in our many resources on fake reviews, it’s a real industry problem. Most review and e-commerce sites take the issue seriously as a matter of policy, and Google in particular regularly takes strict action to prevent the practice.

What kind of trends are we seeing fake reviews this year?

Consumers are confident they’ve seen fake reviews across most platforms we asked about. Just 19% said they hadn’t seen any on the sites we provided, which remains static compared to 2023.

Unsurprisingly, Amazon remains the top culprit for fake reviews. However, it’s interesting to note that, aside from Tripadvisor, Apple Maps, and BBB, the percentage of consumers who are confident they’ve spotted reviews on the other review giants has decreased.

This could result from the efforts that platforms have put in to combat the issue in recent years, suggesting that there are genuinely fewer obviously fake reviews on these websites. According to Google, it removed over 170 million policy-violating reviews in 2023, 45% more than in 2022.

Despite a lower percentage of consumers saying they’ve used BBB to read reviews in 2024, there has been an increase in the percentage of consumers who are confident they have seen fake reviews there (9% in 2024 vs. 5% in 2022). The platform itself has recently spoken out on the issue of fake and incentivized reviews, suggesting the practice is becoming notably widespread on different platforms.

Can consumers tell if a review is fake?

A fake review could be left for various reasons. Some businesses pay fake review sellers for positive reviews of their businesses and negative reviews of their competitors, for example.

But fake reviews may also be written by disgruntled customers, employees, or even competitors! In some cases, people might write fake reviews to try to support friends or family, particularly if their business is struggling against negative feedback.

With all these reasons in mind, the content and sentiment of such reviews can vary wildly. There may be a barrage of star ratings with no written context or review content that feels too unbelievably positive or negative, for example. So, which of these would make consumers suspicious that a review is fake? 

This year, we introduced the response ‘the review feels like it was written by AI’. Surprisingly, this answer came out top! 40% of consumers said they’d suspect a review was fake if they felt like AI had written it.

It’s an interesting point because, as we know, there are plenty of legitimate use cases for generative AI in content writing. A consumer may feel unable to articulate what they want to say well enough and use generative AI tools for this. It’s also worth considering how, while standalone AI tools such as ChatGPT are available for anyone to use, generative AI is now being incorporated into other software and plugins. The Google Suite and Grammarly are just two everyday examples where generative AI can help predict and improve your writing, making suggestions based on tone and sentiment.

The fact that consumers are collating AI with ‘fakeness’ suggests that there is a misunderstanding in terms of what the technology really is and does. Coupled with AI headlines entering the mainstream press, it’s easy to see how people might reach these conclusions.

However, we also know from our review response test earlier in this survey that maybe consumers prefer the content generative AI can produce. Sure, they didn’t know that’s what they preferred, but it presents an interesting contrast in how consumers act vs. how consumers think.

The remaining results highlight some big contrasts between 2023 and 2024. In 2023, consumers seemed confident that reviews with just ratings and no words would make them suspicious that reviews were fake (47%). This has decreased by 19% in 2024. 

They also seem less certain that seeing business owners suggesting a review is fake would make them suspicious of fakeness (19% vs 30% in 2023). Further, they’re now less suspicious of reviews from users without profile photos (17% vs 27% in 2023).

As with the previous question on specific platforms, these responses could result from websites tackling fake review issues or consumers simply noticing fewer fake reviews while browsing. Alternatively, it could point to a greater sense of trust in online reviews.

How Consumers Write Reviews

So, we know how often consumers read reviews to support their business research and the elements they feel are most important to build trust. But how many consumers are leaving reviews themselves? Are they more likely to leave reviews for all experiences, positive or negative, or do they favor a particular type of review?

What types of reviews are consumers leaving?

While the numbers are roughly the same as last year, slightly more consumers have written reviews in the past year (73% vs 72% in 2023). The sentiment of these reviews has changed, though. 

The chart above highlights a positive shift in the percentage of consumers leaving positive reviews (38% in 2024 vs. 34% in 2022) and negative reviews (10% in 2024 vs. 7% in 2022). The percentage of consumers leaving both types of reviews has decreased from 33% in 2022 to 25% in 2024.

This trend suggests a further waning of the ‘gray area’ between extreme personalities and opinions, as we’ve seen in political discourse over the years (though it would be too far a leap to suggest they’re directly related).

Fewer people are being what you might call ‘balanced’ and leaving reviews for various experiences, and more are getting increasingly set in their ways. The good news is that, right now, there are more consumers only writing positive reviews than negative.

• The percentage of consumers that ‘always’ left a review when prompted has increased from 12% in 2023 to 19% in 2024.

69% of consumers can recall leaving a business review after being prompted by the brand within the last year, vs. 60% in 2023. Coupled with this, only 12% of consumers said they were prompted but did not write a review, compared to 19% in 2023. So, we can infer that more consumers positively respond to review requests in 2024, even if they don’t always write them.

What does this mean for your brand? Well, you may not always be successful, but it is absolutely worthwhile to ask customers for reviews. Nearly seven in every ten consumers will likely write a business review based on the above findings. So, if you aren’t currently asking, you are very likely missing out!

As for how to ask them, and even when, that’s up next.

Asking Consumers For Business Reviews

Knowing how and when to ask a customer to leave a brand review is tricky. Ask too soon, and they may not have had time to reflect on their experience; ask too late, and they may have forgotten about it entirely.

Plus, let’s face it, we all get a lot of review requests these days, don’t we? Multiple prompts in a short window can be irritating, and email inboxes are overflowing with review prompts, promotions, and spam.

So, how do consumers want to be asked for reviews?

Methods of Requesting Reviews from Customers

• The top three methods for asking for reviews are: email (32%), in-person (28%), and via social media (27%).
• There has been a 3% increase in consumers choosing ‘none of the above’ when asked about review prompt methods.

Despite email being a busy place, 32% of consumers still say they are more likely to respond to review requests this way. The top three answers from 2023 are the same in 2024 (email, in-person, and social media), although you’ll notice there is a downward trend across all three.

This finding, along with the 3% increase in consumers choosing ‘none of the above’ for review prompts, could point to a sense of review request fatigue. We’re all so used to being prompted to review transactions and experiences that it can run the risk of feeling meaningless.

Brands need to make their requests count by using the right formats, making it simple (as we discussed earlier with the choice of review platforms), making their request stand out from the others, and timing it right.

But when is “right”?

The Window of Opportunity for Review Prompts

We asked consumers when they think brands should contact them with a review prompt, and provided seven different industries where this could differ.

We’ve grouped hospitality, entertainment, and wellbeing together in one chart, as the industries share similarities in how their services focus on providing customers with experiences. Healthcare, professional trades/SABs, and real estate have been grouped in another.

• 24% of consumers expect to be asked to leave a review for food and drink brands on the same day as their experience.
• 48% of consumers said food and drink brands should ask for a review within two to three days of the experience.

‘Food and drink’ stands out as the industry where consumers expect the fastest turnaround for review prompts. Almost a quarter of consumers want these businesses to reach out on the very same day, although the majority would prefer between one and three days.

For accommodation, entertainment, and beauty and wellbeing, we see larger proportions of consumers who think businesses should ask any time within a week.

Our earlier discussion on review recency comes into play here. If you’re planning on visiting somewhere to eat, you’d expect to read about the most recent customer experiences with food and drink brands. It makes sense that consumers would expect these types of businesses to follow up quickly.

The same might be true for recent experiences in the accommodation, entertainment, or beauty industries. However, consumers might require a slightly longer window to reflect on their experiences with these business types—for example, how well a particular beauty or cosmetic treatment lasts.

• Healthcare review prompts should be sent within three days to a week (40%).
• 11% of consumers would not want to be prompted to leave a review for a real estate experience at all.

For healthcare, professional trades, and real estate, consumers would expect slightly longer windows before brands reach out to ask for a review, although within three days to a week is the sweet spot. 

40% of consumers said they would prefer healthcare brands to ask within three days to a week. Given the nature of some healthcare services and procedures, it feels accurate that consumers wouldn’t want to receive prompts too soon after an experience.

The key takeaway from these request findings is that brands need to be smart with their prompts, get the timing right, and avoid bombarding their customers at all costs. Remember, this is still a part of the transaction or experience, so annoying customers with endless review request emails could achieve an undesirable result.

Incentivizing Customers to Write Reviews

Now, while we’ve included incentives within the following section of the report, it is crucial to note that BrightLocal does not endorse the incentivization of reviews in any way.

We can appreciate that there is a lot of conflicting information out there and it’s easy to go down this route to attract more customers to write business reviews. What’s the harm of rewarding loyalty with a simple discount, right? Wrong, unfortunately.

For brands and businesses that aren’t in the know—of which there are many, so if this is you, don’t panic!—it’s important to note that most review platforms prohibit review incentivization. The penalties for incentivizing or buying reviews can vary, including the disabling or removal of your review profiles, or having your profile labeled as one that has unlawfully incentivized reviews.

Last year, we found that review incentivization is still sadly alive and well. Given the ongoing issues around the prevalence of fake reviews, we wanted to see if businesses were still going down the incentivization route in 2024. The results are… quite something.

Not only is the practice of review incentivization up across the board but the percentage increases in consumers recalling being offered these incentives is significant.

Increases in Review Incentivization: 2023 vs. 2024

It could be that such drastic increases in discounts or free gifts come from a lack of understanding of incentivization rules. As discussed, many businesses don’t know that these methods are prohibited on many platforms, and may have viewed discounts or free gifts as ‘harmless’ ways to reward loyalty.

The fact is that incentivization encourages consumers to leave reviews that they might not have organically, and influences the content of the review—typically in the brands’ favor. Even if they are from verified customers, the reviews cannot be deemed authentic and trustworthy, therefore discrediting the entire system.

Summary

While much of what was important to consumers in 2022 and 2023 holds today, some themes stand out in 2024.

Firstly, it’s more apparent than ever that consumers are checking multiple sources for business reviews and recommendations, including those outside of traditional review platforms. It’s a pressing reminder that reputation management should be viewed as a strategy instead of a task; not something that can be picked up when there’s time. Reputation encompasses both digital and offline channels. Realistically, it should be a shared responsibility and actively factored into areas like social media and community management, email marketing, content strategy, and more.

Next, brand marketers have to be more strategic with their review requests. Automation is a wonderful thing that can speed up tasks for us marketers. But without the human considerations of timeliness and providing customers with the choice of where and how they review, it remains ineffective—or worse, frustrating for consumers. 

Several findings hint at a sense of consumer apathy towards the expectation for them to provide reviews after almost every experience with a business. Brands must remain conscious and respectful of this when asking for customer favors. It’s a tricky balance, knowing that review recency is a particularly important review factor.

Ultimately, with all things customer experience, the utmost focus should always come down to exactly that: delivering exceptional, memorable experiences. Give consumers a reason to want to write your brand a review actively; make sure they have things to talk about that others will find useful; be present across your reputation platforms (that includes the alternative channels, like social media), and always keep in mind how local brand experiences contribute to overall brand perception.

Methodology

The Local Consumer Review Survey 2024 was conducted using a representative panel of 1,141 US consumers via SurveyMonkey. 

Publications and individuals are welcome to use the research findings, charts, and data, provided that BrightLocal is cited as the author and the page URL (https://brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey) is linked to.

I ended up recording a presentation used at two BrightonSEO events, and I haven’t stopped talking about it since. Three years later, there’s still work to be done. That’s why BrightLocal has supported me in writing this article all about how we can make the SEO industry more neurodivergent-friendly.

What actually is neurodivergence?

You may already know about neurodivergence or heard the phrase “neurodiversity”. Very Well Mind explains that “neurodiversity is the concept that there are a variety of ways that people’s brains process information, function, and present behaviorally.”

Within that, you have “neurotypical,” which refers to “someone who has the brain functions, behaviors, and processing considered standard or typical.” And then you have “neurodivergent,” which is the term for “people whose brains function differently in one or more ways than is considered standard or typical.”

There’s a growing group of types of neurodivergence, but some that you may be familiar with include:

• Autism
• ADHD
• Dyslexia
• Dyspraxia
• Dyscalculia
• Tourette’s
• Synesthesia
• Down syndrome
• Epilepsy
• Plus, chronic mental health illnesses such as bipolar disorder, OCD, BPD, anxiety, and depression.

This isn’t an exclusive list; the umbrella of neurodivergence is wide. However, I recommend reading about any of the forms of neurodivergence in this list that you aren’t familiar with so you can start understanding more of your peers. I’m still learning something new every day.

Neurodivergence in the SEO Industry

Back to SEO, more specifically. There are probably more neurodivergent SEOs in your network than you’re aware of! There’s now a whole community growing thanks to the founders of Neurodivergents in SEO, who have a Slack group and are starting to have a presence at industry conferences.

Let’s move on and look at different areas which could become more neurodivergent-friendly.

Working Arrangements for Neurodivergent People

In the past, I’ve found office spaces to bring on sensory overload or just have too many distractions. As a freelancer, I can now work from home, in a coworking space, or in a coffee shop, depending on how I’m feeling on any given day. This isn’t possible for everyone with a permanent role, so a bit of flexibility can make a world of difference for some neurodivergent folks.

Flexibility may come in the form of hybrid working (some days in the office and some at home) or in working hours. I’m an early bird and like to get going in the morning, but over half of people with ADHD experience sleeping problems, so others would benefit from a later start to aid productivity.

In the office itself, providing adjustable lighting, soundproofing, ergonomic furniture, and designated quiet areas where employees can retreat for focused work or sensory breaks could be welcome additions. Some individuals also need noise-canceling headphones or earplugs, so take a look at current office policies and make sure there isn’t a blanket ban on using these in communal spaces.

Freelancing as a Neurodivergent Individual

Of course, not every professional in the industry works in a permanent role within an agency or in-house; we have a great number of freelancers and consultants, too. Having only gone freelance myself in early 2024 after 13 years agency-side, I asked one of my neurodivergent peers to give me their more informed insights as a longer-term freelancer in the industry. Meet Lois Neville, a freelance SEO copywriter:

Lois Neville

Freelance SEO Copywriter at Lois Neville SEO Copywriter

“Having gone from in-house SEO to freelance, I’ve experienced different working perspectives in our industry. I’m keenly aware not to generalise my personal experience as to what it’s like to be neurodivergent working in SEO. But I’m hoping that, by participating in this conversation, action can be taken to make SEO a far friendlier place for neurodivergent people. And, importantly, give them a safe space to be their authentic selves.

Disclosure is one of the biggest hurdles I’ve encountered. Weighing up whether to share my autism with a client is something I am still navigating. It takes an emotional toll to continuously say, “Hey, I’m autistic, and this means x, y, and z.” With the start of every new client prospect or relationship, it feels like a 50/50 gamble. You’re never quite sure what their reaction will be or whether you’ll even hear from them again. 

Having processes in place that make working with SEO freelancers generally more accessible—regardless if they’re neurodivergent—would relieve a significant amount of this pressure. If accessibility initiatives are in place from the get-go, people like me wouldn’t have to feel like they have to disclose to get the working conditions they need. 

Clients can be more proactive in ensuring that all SEO freelancers have everything they need to do their work. Such steps can include asking how a freelancer likes to work and their specific processes, agreeing on clear expectations from both sides, discussing suitable communication methods, factoring in scope for flexibility, and generally taking a more collaborative approach.”

Neurodivergence and Job Interview Needs

In the section above, Lois mentioned disclosure. I’m not here to tell anyone whether they should disclose their neurodivergence to an existing or prospective employer, as that’s a personal choice. But what I can help with is if someone has chosen to disclose this information before a job interview.

Regardless of neurodivergence, there’s one thing you can do for all candidates: offer clear instructions about the interview process, including what to expect, how to prepare, and any accommodations available upon request.

If you’re able to offer flexibility, let candidates choose from a range of interview formats, such as in-person, virtual, or asynchronous options, to accommodate individual preferences and needs. You should also provide candidates with detailed information about the interview format, structure, and questions in advance.

During the interview, think about offering extended time, breaks, or alternative communication methods. If you’re setting an interview task, send this in the candidate’s preferred format and let them send it back in the same way. For example, a dyslexic candidate may feel more comfortable sending a Loom recording than a written answer.

Networking Events and Conferences Need Considerations for Neurodivergent Folk

On LinkedIn, I’ve shared a whole post just about being autistic at conferences, award ceremonies, and events. Many of the same things apply to office spaces, particularly regarding the environment and sensory overload.

Some events already have quiet rooms, which is a great first step. But more could be done to offer more accessible routes that don’t have toilet queues, coffee/beer hurdles, or exhibition stands in the way.

Networking can be hard for many people, so innovation in this area would benefit a large number of attendees, whether neurodivergent or introverted. Having alternative forms of networking could cater to more people, whether it’s building LEGO, playing video games, or maybe even a round of chess. Some people need to burn off energy, and others need to preserve it.

This is Just the Beginning

It’s important that we understand the benefits that neurodivergent people bring to the industry without avoiding the necessary conversations about accommodations we should be making for them too.

In the past, I’ve spoken about neurodivergent superpowers (the areas where neurodivergent individuals can have certain strengths), but I do that much less now in the fear that it over-glamorizes any form of neurodivergence and diminishes the struggles that individuals may face.

But theoretically, neurodivergence should work well in SEO; we have roles that span analytical to creative, roles that are client-facing, and others that are not. Some people are managers, and others are consultants. Some are great at sharing stories on stage, others by podcast, text, or just through their day-to-day work.

To turn that theory into reality means staying curious and informed and then making changes to nurture this and the next generation of neurodivergent talent in the industry. This article can be your springboard, but the next move is up to you.

While much of the physical economy has recovered since the pandemic, there is evidence that it caused a sharp disruption in brand loyalty. Purchase decisions fueled by convenience, value, and proximity have led to new shopping behaviors.

Of course, businesses in every sector will face unique challenges. But only multi-location marketers will know the ongoing chess game of managing a brand at local, regional, and national levels.

We wanted to understand the challenges multi-location businesses face in 2024, how they might differ based on their size, and what drives marketing performance.

To achieve this, we asked 200 marketing decision-makers working in multi-location brands in the USA, Canada, and the UK about their marketing performance, investments, and strategies to build a picture of the current multi-location landscape and understand the key to high performance in 2024.  

Throughout the report, we’ll discuss critical themes of marketing technology, the importance of customer satisfaction and retention, and areas of opportunity in marketing tactics.

Understanding Definitions Within the Report

In the second part of this report, we’ll talk about the ‘High Performers’ of multi-location marketing, creating a benchmark that we’ll refer to throughout. Readers will find this helpful in measuring their performance and that of competitors.

The third section of this research will highlight three key groups: Local Players (11-50 locations), Regional Challengers (51-100 locations), and Big Brands (101+ locations) and compare what they’re doing to the High Performers, so businesses of all sizes have a benchmark to look to.

The Multi-location Marketing Landscape: Key Trends

Let’s kick off with an overview of the market in general. We’ll look at how brand marketers feel they’ve been performing, what channels they’re investing in, and what local marketing looks like for them.

Looking Back: Marketing Performance in 2023

The great news is just 4% of multi-location marketers feel their marketing performance fell below expectations in 2023. With almost two-thirds reporting that performance exceeded expectations, it’s a highly positive perception of their teams’ capabilities. 

The Marketing Mix

The Top Five Channels That Multi-location Brands Are Investing In

A whopping 99% of multi-location brands are investing in social media, with 88% investing a medium-high amount in this channel. This result is significantly higher than the other marketing channels listed, so it’s clear that social media forms a vital part of multi-location marketing strategies.

Paid social, SEO, TV advertising, and local SEO follow as the next most invested in marketing channels. So, brands are investing in brand awareness channels (Paid social and TV) while also focusing on the importance of visibility (SEO and local SEO).

It’s interesting, then, that PPC is at the bottom of the list for channel investment. Sitting lower than traditional forms of marketing (direct marketing, radio, out-of-home advertising), this could suggest that brands do not see the best returns from PPC for brand awareness. Alternatively, it could just be that multi-location brands use PPC for smaller or more targeted strategies and are getting more from their campaigns for lower spend.

Marketing Team Capabilities

As mentioned earlier, multi-location brands will face different challenges than other business types. Consistency is a big theme here, as brands must replicate the same standards, service, and experience they are known for from location to location.

Another challenge is maintaining brand standards when adapting to new areas where local requirements and customs may differ.

We wanted to gauge how marketers felt their businesses were doing in keeping on top of these common obstacles.

The Top Five Business Challenges That Multi-location Marketing Teams are ‘Very Good’ or ‘Good’ at Tackling

As with performance, marketing leaders generally reflect a positive sentiment towards their teams’ capabilities, and there don’t appear to be any glaring problem areas. 

However, while 80% of brands said their businesses were either ‘Very Good’ or ‘Good’ at understanding ownership of marketing within organizations, we can see that 23% felt that the ability to manage the adoption of marketing initiatives and streamline external communications was just ‘Fair’ to ‘Poor’. This suggests a potential breakdown between the communication and execution of some marketing as responsibilities fall to location levels. 

It could also show that, although 82% of our marketing decision-makers feel their organizations are ‘Very Good’ or ‘Good’ at managing internal communications, the messages might not be being received or understood as well as they think further down the chain.

Let’s take a look at where local marketing strategy comes into play.

Local Marketing as a Strategy (Not Just a Tactic)

It’s positive to see that the vast majority (86%) of multi-location brands have dedicated local marketing strategies in place. That leaves 14% where either no dedicated strategy exists or the strategy is unclear

A lack of dedicated local strategy means that crucial business challenges, such as the ones mentioned above, can be much harder to overcome. With no local marketing strategy, how can you expect teams in different regions or locations to fully understand, be on board with, and adopt marketing initiatives?

So, if you’re reading this, you don’t have a robust local strategy, and you’re familiar with some of these marketing challenges, local strategy might be an excellent place to start.

Managing Local Marketing Activities

Now, the way multi-location businesses execute marketing activity at regional or local levels may vary for many reasons, based on industry, differences in area requirements, or franchising requirements. It’s interesting to look broadly at how multi-location brands manage this, though.

Again, if there are gaps in how well your business manages multi-location challenges, considering the different approaches may help you understand why.

Almost half (45%) of multi-location brands use a hybrid approach of centralized marketing teams (at the level of HQ) and branch or location-level local marketing.

What works for one business won’t necessarily work for another, and we’re not saying there is a correct answer. But it is worth considering that plenty of research around change management, business transformation, and product adoption shows that teams often react more positively to change, or are more willing to adopt new processes and initiatives if they feel they have some ownership of them.

Supporting Local Marketing with Technology

Next, we wanted to understand how widely technology was used in multi-location local marketing. 98% of brand respondents say they are using the technology to support local strategies.

Of course, when we refer to marketing technology that supports local marketing, this could include any number of tools, from monitoring local rankings and fluctuations to business location performance data, review management, and more. But what this does tell us is just how crucial marketing technology is in delivering on these tactics.

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The ‘High Performers’ of Multi-location Marketing

In this section, we will take the brands who reported that their marketing performance ‘exceeded’ expectations and use this group to create the benchmark for marketing performance.

Throughout the report, we’ll refer to this group as ‘High Performers.’ The remaining brands we compare against—those meeting expectations or falling short—we’ll refer to as ‘Average Performers.’

It’s important to note that both groups contain respondents representing multi-location businesses of all sizes.

High Performers: Key Findings

Marketing Channel Investments

• High Performers are 17% more likely to invest ‘highly’ in social media than Average Performers (57% vs 40%).
• High Performers are 15% more likely to invest ‘highly’ in paid social than Average Performers (42% vs 27%).
  High Performers are 10% more likely to invest ‘highly’ in local SEO than Average Performers (38% vs 28%).

Using Marketing Technology and AI

• 56% of High Performers are using marketing technology to ‘a great extent’, compared to 22% of Average Performers.
• 36% of High Performers are using generative AI to ‘a great extent’, compared to just 13% of Average Performers.
  

Local Marketing Strategy

• 94% of High Performers have a dedicated local marketing strategy, compared to 60% of Average Performers.
• 52% of Average Performers rate their marketing teams’ understanding of local SEO as ‘Fair’ to ‘Poor’, while 93% of High Performers rate their teams’ understanding as ‘Good’ or ‘Very Good’.

High Performers: Top Trends

Marketing Channel Investment

• 95% of High Performers are investing a medium-high amount in social media.
• Just 1% of High Performers do not invest in social media at all.
• After social media (organic and paid), High Performers are investing the most in Local SEO.
• Of the responses offered, the channel High Performers invest in the least is PPC (pay-per-click).

This chart highlights the investments High Performers make across their marketing mix. You’ll notice a lot of green bars, which shows that High Performers are no slouches when it comes to putting their hands in their pockets and investing in a variety of channels. 

Organic social media stands out, with the most significant level of investment: 57% of High Performers rated their investments in the channel as ‘High.’ Just 1% said they do not invest in social media at all.

Behind organic social media, paid social sits as the second most invested in. Paid social is a popular choice for awareness and discovery campaigns to capture new audiences and entice customers away from competitors. These two channels being positioned at the top of the chart suggest that High Performers prioritize customer acquisition and retention equally.

Local SEO sees the third-highest level of investment from High Performers, with 76% making medium-high investments in this area.

As we’ll get into shortly, High Performers are much more likely than other businesses to have a dedicated local marketing or local SEO strategy in place, so it’s clear that a confident understanding and investment in this area is paying off for them, and that local marketing is fundamental to overall marketing success.

Pay-per-click advertising (PPC), meanwhile, is the least invested in. 10% of High Performers aren’t investing in the channel at all, while 32% have stated only a low level of investment.

Local Marketing Focus: Strategy, Knowledge, and Tools

While we asked multi-location marketers about their level of investment in local SEO, we also wanted to understand whether this is an area that marketers fully understand. Namely, whether businesses have dedicated local SEO strategies in place and whether their marketing teams clearly understand the differences between traditional SEO and local SEO.

• 94% of High Performers have a dedicated local strategy in place—34% more than Average Performers

There is a clear contrast here, with just 2% of High Performers stating they don’t have a dedicated local strategy, compared to a third of Average Performers.

• 93% of marketing teams in the High Performers group have a ‘Good’ or ‘Very Good’ understanding of the differences between traditional SEO and local SEO.
• No one in the High Performers group rated their team’s understanding of local SEO as ‘Poor.’
• Less than half of Average Performers have a ‘Good’ or ‘Very Good’ understanding of the differences between traditional SEO and local SEO.

Examining Local Marketing Teams

With over half of Average Performers stating their marketing teams’ understanding of local SEO as ‘Fair’ or ‘Poor,’ we broke out their marketing team sizes to see how many people are working on local marketing.

• 59% of High Performers have dedicated more than 40% of their marketing team to local marketing.
• 40% of Average Performers have dedicated more than 40% of their marketing team to local marketing.
• Over a quarter of Average Performers dedicate up to 20% of their marketing function to local marketing.

From this, we can determine that the highest-performing multi-location businesses take local SEO seriously, as they dedicate more resources to teams and strategy in this area. 

Marketing Technology and Multi-location Businesses

From the above data, we’ve seen that High Performers and Average Performers treat local SEO differently. Would things change when we asked about the use of technology in local SEO? Would this uncover some opportunities for Average Performers to take note of?

• 98% of High Performers use marketing technology “to some extent” or “to a great extent” to support local marketing, compared to 77% of Average Performers.
• 29% of Average Performers use marketing technology to little or no extent.

The chart above highlights that 100% of High Performers use marketing technology to support their local strategies, with only 2% saying they use it ‘a little’ extent. This is compared to 29% of Average Performers using marketing technology to ‘little’ or no extent.

Only 22% of Average Performers use marketing technology to ‘a great’ extent, compared to 56% of High Performers, suggesting that High Performers see a more significant benefit from their tools. This could be down to team capabilities and whether they have the knowledge or training to use certain tools or have more team resources dedicated to local marketing. 

There is clearly an opportunity for underperforming businesses to identify how and where marketing tools can better support their local marketing functions—or where additional training is needed within teams.

High Performers: Further Analysis

Comparing High Performers’ and Average Performers’ business priorities highlights striking differences that could help us understand where that better performance is coming from.

Business Objectives and Future Priorities 

We asked marketers what business outcomes their marketing activities are designed around. These core performance areas influence goal-setting (KPIs, OKRs, and similar frameworks) and determine what marketing teams focus on throughout the year.

• 67% of High Performers focus on customer satisfaction—15% more than Average Performers.
• 68% of Average Performers focus marketing activities on customer acquisition —12% more than High Performers.
• High Performers are 15% more likely to focus on customer retention than Average Performers.

The results in the chart above reflect a more measured approach for the High Performers, with reasonably equal weighting across the business outcomes. This level only drops off as we come to location footfall, where fewer than one-third of High Performers have said they’re focusing marketing efforts here.

For the Average Performers, however, there are two stand-outs: revenue growth (80%) and customer acquisition (68%). 

It would be surprising for businesses not to rely on marketing to support revenue growth. Still, it’s interesting to see customer satisfaction (52%) and customer retention (49%) take more of a back seat for Average Performers.

A lot of research shows that your existing customers are better for your bottom line. Focusing on nurturing a loyal customer base can yield more impressive profits. According to Bain and Co., increasing customer retention by 5% can lead to a 25% profit increase. Meanwhile, evidence also suggests that acquiring a new customer can be up to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing customer.

So, while focusing on attracting new customers is good for revenue growth, it’s important to consider how marketing teams can contribute to the shared responsibility of customer satisfaction.

• 39% of High Performers are prioritizing customer satisfaction in 2024, compared to 27% of Average Performers.
• 38% of High Performers highlighted increasing locations as a top 2024 priority, compared to 25% of Average Performers.
• 35% of High Performers highlighted increasing AI and automation as a top 2024 priority, compared to just 17% of Average Performers.

Comparing the two charts above, we can see that High Performers are prioritizing things with a measured approach that aligns with their core marketing outcomes.

We see a continued commitment to strengthening existing customer relationships and building brand loyalty—and plans to increase locations (38%) and acquire new customers (35%).

The data from Average Performers, on the other hand, tells a markedly different story. Customer acquisition sits at the top of their 2024 priorities (63%), followed by increasing brand awareness (50%) and increasing overall efficiency (47%). 

Considering the Average Performers have reported only just meeting performance expectations—or even falling short—and are also looking to increase efficiency in 2024, you’d hope to see a more balanced approach in their priorities. Customer acquisition sitting squarely ahead of other key priorities, like improving customer satisfaction, suggests a misunderstanding of what it takes to achieve business (and revenue) growth.

As we’ve touched on, customer satisfaction and retention can be significantly more cost-efficient for brands. But from a reputation perspective, we mustn’t underestimate the sheer power of brand loyalty here, too. While your existing customers are often happier to try your new products and services, you should also consider how a base of loyal customers can lead to brand awareness via their advocacy.

Implementing Local Marketing Tactics

Let’s look at the marketing tactics businesses are working with. In doing so, we might be able to highlight just what the High Performers are getting right—and understand some areas where our Average Performers are missing opportunities.

• High Performers are 25% more likely to use video as a local marketing tactic than Average Performers (63% vs. 38%).
• High Performers are 16% more likely to focus on reputation management as a local marketing tactic than Average Performers (46% vs. 30%).
• Average Performers are 13% more likely to be using outreach for local marketing than High Performers (59% vs 46%).

Similar proportions of High Performers and Average Performers use social media, paid advertising, and local content as local marketing tactics.  

The key areas where the High Performers are focusing more are video, local rankings optimization, reputation management, and local citations. However, the local marketing tactic that Average Performers rely on significantly more than High Performers is outreach (59% vs. 46%). This finding, and their focus on customer acquisition above all else, suggests that Average Performers have been over-reliant on outreach marketing to fulfill this goal. 

Video marketing can be tricky to implement if the budget and talent are hard to find, but it’s clearly an area that High Performers are taking advantage of more than Average Performers. If you’re reading this and your brand isn’t currently working on video, it’s worth considering where you can start. Could you take a handful of your locations as a test and see what results it yields?

While video sits much more in brand awareness and engagement, the remaining three tactics that High Performers use more than Average Performers (local rankings optimization, reputation management, and citations) are fundamental to ensuring visibility in the right places, so that the right people can find you with the search terms you want to be found for.

Analyzing Multi-location Strategies by Business Size

Challenges, tactics, and strategies all change with scale. The more locations you work with, the more complex the marketing will be.

Now that we’ve looked at what marked High Performers out against the rest of the pack, let’s take a look at how multi-location businesses of different sizes compare.

First, let’s recap how we defined these business sizes:

• Big Brands: businesses with 101+ locations
• Regional Challengers: businesses with 51-100 locations
• Local Players: businesses with 11-50 locations

We’ll start by looking at business objectives for the coming year.

Business Objectives, Priorities, and Challenges

• Regional Challengers are prioritizing customer satisfaction (51%) and customer retention (54%) the least out of all groups, but prioritizing profit margin (57%) and location footfall (41%) significantly more than the other sizes.
• Big Brands are prioritizing profit margin the least out of all the groups (46%).

The Top Three Marketing Objectives Multi-location Businesses Have Been Working Towards

Much like the High Performers, Big Brands appear to show the most consistency in evenly weighting their business priorities. The two lowest priorities, where the percentages drop more, are profit margin and location footfall.

However, the biggest gaps between the groups appear to concern the Regional Challengers. 51% of Regional Challengers said their marketing activities focus on customer satisfaction, compared to the High Performers benchmark level of 67%. The next biggest gaps appear in gaining market share (41% against the High Performers benchmark of 54%) and customer retention (54% compared to the High Performer benchmark of 64%). 

If your brand falls within the Regional Challengers group, you might see this as a chance to review your current marketing output. Are there some missed opportunities around these areas?

As we’ve already found, a relationship exists between underperforming brands and their prioritization in attaining new business over satisfying existing customers. It looks like Regional Challengers are following a similar pattern.

Another interesting difference is how Regional Challengers appear to focus on specific location footfall over the other groups. Again, it does suggest a ‘quantity over quality’ imbalance. Are Regional Challengers focusing too much on increasing feet through the door when they could be increasing the average basket spend, for example?

• The High Performers benchmark for customer retention (45%) is significantly higher than individual business sizes.

The Top Three Marketing Priorities for Multi-location Brands in 2024

When looking at the different sizes of multi-location businesses and their priorities, we can see some interesting differences between the groups.

Firstly, the Local Players, Regional Challengers, and Big Brands are generally far behind the High Performers benchmark with customer retention. It’s a theme that keeps cropping up and provides all the more reason for multi-location businesses of all sizes to pay attention to this area.

You’ll notice that nearly half of our Big Brand respondents (49%) have highlighted AI and automation as a focus area for 2024.

Artificial Intelligence in itself is not a new concept. However, the constant—and very newsworthy—developments in generative AI throughout 2023 have put the words into every marketer’s mouth.

Since the boom of generative AI, larger brands and market leaders will likely face higher pressure to adopt new AI-driven technologies than smaller-sized organizations. There is somewhat of an expectation to “keep up” with the others in the big leagues. 

Retail, hospitality, and entertainment feel like obvious examples of where you might expect to see this in the mainstream. Plenty of brands are rolling out implementations of generative AI in digital environments to aid customer experiences. Will we start to see this in physical environments, too?

• 42% of Big Brands cite increasing labor costs as a key challenge for 2024, against 24% of Regional Challengers.
• 39% of Local Players feel increasing material costs will be a big challenge in 2024.
• 35% of Regional Challengers cite increasing competition as one of the biggest challenges in 2024.

We asked marketers about their top three challenges for the year ahead, and the groups have some notable differences.

As we’ve seen with Big Brands prioritizing AI in 2024, it’s a no-brainer that they’ve also placed emerging technology as one of the biggest challenges for this year. Their top challenge, however, is increasing labor costs, with 42% of this group agreeing that this is one of the biggest current issues. Without getting too conspiratorial, is one of these challenges seen as an opportunity to resolve the other?

It’s worth looking further at the responses around technology here: compared to the 42% of Big Brands, only 19% of Regional Challengers are worried about emerging technology in 2024. Yet when it comes to updating their existing tech stacks, 32% of Regional Challengers see this as a big challenge for 2024. This is higher than Big Brands (19%), Local Players (25%), and the High Performers benchmark of 29%.

What could this suggest? Perhaps Big Brands don’t view their tech stack as a problem, or maybe their focus is slightly clouded by the genAI race. If the latter is the case, it would be interesting to see what challenges they may encounter later, in terms of integrations and streamlining.

We can see that Regional Challengers aren’t currently getting the most out of their tech stacks, and may well seek to update these in 2024. 

Regional Challengers see increasing competition as the biggest challenge (35%). This goes hand-in-hand with their top priority for 2024:  brand awareness (51%). There’s clearly an awareness of, and a need to, raise brand profiles to remain competitive.

Local Players see increasing material costs as their biggest challenge in 2024. It makes sense, as smaller brands may have less bargaining power in the buying market and will likely feel the squeeze of increasing costs more than larger competitors.

If this is their biggest business concern, it also makes sense that they would be less concerned with technological advances, either in their tech stacks or in adopting emerging technologies.

Local Marketing Deep-Dive

The Importance of Strategy and Knowledge

When putting together our questions for respondents, we hypothesized that the bigger the brand size, the more mature its local marketing strategy would be—that is, having a dedicated local strategy in place and a team with a strong understanding of the nuances between local and traditional or typical SEO.

• 92% of Big Brands have a dedicated local marketing strategy, the closest to the High Performers benchmark of 94%.
• Businesses with 51-100 locations (Regional Challengers) are the least likely to have a local SEO strategy in place (16%), followed by Local Players (11-50 locations).

Proportionately, the Big Brands show more local SEO maturity, with 92% stating that a dedicated strategy is in place. This is just two percentage points behind the High Performers benchmark, which generally reinforces an assumption that Big Brands would have more mature local SEO practices.

As we found earlier, 10% of all businesses do not have a local marketing strategy (and 4% were unsure if they did). So, we can see from the chart above that this segment is mostly made up of representatives from Regional Challenger and Local Player-sized businesses.

However, you’ll notice that Local Players are more likely to have a local marketing strategy in place than Regional Marketers. Why might this be?

It could be that Local Players, having a smaller (and possibly more concentrated) portfolio of branches, have a better understanding of their markets and local area requirements. Brands in the Regional Challengers group are more likely to have experienced a rapid period of expansion in recent times, meaning that a more comprehensive strategy is needed—or that their previous one no longer fits.

• Regional Challengers appear to have the biggest gaps in local SEO knowledge, with 27% claiming their teams have a ‘Fair’ or ‘Poor’ understanding.
• Local Players are the closest group to the High Performers benchmark (94%), with 90% stating a ‘Very good’ or ‘Good’ understanding of the differences between traditional SEO and local SEO.

90% of Local Players rate their marketing teams’ understanding of local SEO as ‘Good’ to ‘Very Good’, compared to 83% of Big Brands, 73% of Regional Challengers, and against the High Performers benchmark of 94%. Why might Local Players be the most knowledgeable?

It could well be that that greater local marketing maturity is not achieved simply by being a larger business that has existed in the space for longer. Instead, it could suggest that local marketing maturity is ‘elastic’: it develops and changes as the requirements of a brand also change. 

Understanding of local area requirements will vastly differ when a business goes from 11-50 locations to hitting a milestone of 100 and scaling up further to the nationwide level. 

Local Marketing Tactics in Action

• Big Brands appear to be the biggest users of local-specific content (58%), while just 40% of Local Players implement this tactic.
• 69% of Big Brands and Local Players use paid ads as a local marketing tactic, compared to 59% of Regional Challengers and 61% of High Performers.

Analyzing local marketing tactics by business size, we can see that Big Brands broadly follow the High Performers benchmark by investing in a wide range of tactics rather than a select few. 

Citations and business listings are important for brands of all sizes to ensure that business information is consistent and uniform online. This challenge only gets greater for Big Brands, as having hundreds or even thousands of locations to update and maintain becomes more difficult and time-consuming.

We’ve covered just a few of the detrimental effects of incorrect business information on brand reputation in the Local Business Discovery and Trust Report 2023.

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There are some tactics that Big Brands appear to be investing in more than High Performers, which could suggest that they are spending too much time (or money) in some areas. The most notable example of this is local-specific content (58% vs. 46% for High Performers).

Too much content can be a problem, particularly if it confuses or cannibalizes your SEO efforts or jeopardizes your user experience. This could even be a legacy issue as SEO best practices have evolved. 

While content is still vital for boosting visibility and building trust by reflecting your expertise and authority (see: Google’s E-E-AT), there was a time when brands and agencies thought that churning out reams of ‘fresh’ content was the answer. Some brand marketers may not be up to date on the latest SEO best practices or no longer work with agency partners, so could be over-reliant on some tactics they feel they understand well.

In the data above, Regional Challengers appear to be using social media, email marketing, and paid advertising the most as local marketing tactics. Against the High Performers benchmark, the gaps that highlight some potential opportunities for them are video, local rankings, citations, and reputation management.

While we previously highlighted the difficulties of video marketing, this tactic may actually present an opportunity for some business sizes and types. Where Big Brands are pretty much using the tactic in line with High Performers, we notice a gap between them and Regional Challengers and Local Players, suggesting there may be a chance for the latter two groups to learn from what the most successful brands are doing.

Email marketing tells a similar story to video, highlighting how Big Brands use it more than Regional Challengers and Local Players. It’s always a good idea to look at what competitors are doing, or even brands in other industries, to highlight areas of opportunity and improvement in your own marketing. Could Big Brands be using email as a customer loyalty tool, nurturing customer segments with tailored content that isn’t just sales-led?

Gap Analysis: Search Marketing Tactics 

Local rankings and reputation management are two areas in which Local Players seem to be fairly behind, compared to both the High Performers benchmark and their peer groups. They’re also the least likely to use local content (40%) out of all the groups.

If we group all of the marketing tactics by the outcomes they’re designed to impact, we can see a theme as far as content, reputation, local rankings optimization, and citations are concerned: the importance of search visibility.

It’s worth remembering that your competitors aren’t necessarily just the biggest names or the market leaders in your industry. In the multi-location world, you must also consider who else is in your potential customer’s proximity.

Without focusing on key visibility tactics and hoping to get by on brand name alone, you run the risk of failing on other fundamental areas that can turn people away—being outranked in the local map pack, incorrect or inconsistent business information causing confusion, and avoidable negative reviews.

Other Findings: AI, Economic Outlook, and Channel Investment and Impact

Despite only hitting the mainstream at the start of 2023, generative artificial intelligence has already caused a dramatic influx of new ‘AI-assisted’ tools aimed at both business and consumer audiences.

In August 2023, our own Local Search Industry Survey found that 93% of local marketers had already experimented with AI tools. So, in the question below, we wanted to know to what extent generative AI is now used at the multi-location scale.

• 88% of multi-location businesses are already using generative AI.
• 28% of multi-location businesses say they are using generative AI “to a great extent”.
• Only 11% of multi-location businesses aren’t using generative AI “at all”.

70% of marketers state that generative AI is used “to some extent” or “to a great extent,” suggesting that the technology has made waves within these organizations.

Furthermore, when asking those who are investing about the returns seen so far, it appears that generative AI mostly exceeds expectations.

• 64% of multi-location businesses said the ROI of generative AI has exceeded expectations.
• 98% of multi-location businesses said the ROI of generative AI has “met or exceeded expectations”.
• Just 2% of multi-location businesses felt the return of their generative AI investments fell short of expectations.

We’ve seen many examples of brands using generative AI in fun and clever ways for digital and out-of-home advertising and social content. It can leverage strong brand USPs and positioning surprisingly cost-effectively: take this advertising battle between McDonald’s and Burger King, for example. 

So, where do multi-location see the biggest opportunities with the continually evolving tech? We asked marketers to select up to three areas.

It looks like marketers are looking for assistance with more technical endeavors than creative ones. 36% of marketers highlighted data analysis as an area that generative AI can impact the most, while 24% highlighted SEO, and 23% cited forecasting and prediction. 

While it’s easy to first think of generative AI’s capabilities to create new, original media, there are a whole host of genAI tools in the market specifically designed to assist with—and speed up—data analytics. Creating engaging data visuals and summarizing vast amounts of data to provide impactful insights are just two use cases for such tools. 

However, that’s not to say that ‘data analytics’ can’t lend itself to other areas, like personalization, in order to create unique experiences. Think about personalized menu recommendations for restaurants, virtual ‘try-on’ experiences in retail outlets, or custom fitness profiles in gyms and health centers. This term also encompasses ‘forecasting and prediction’, of which data analysis is the very heart.

As the technology continues to evolve, though, there’s no doubt we’ll see opportunities and use cases for all industries unfolding.

Economic Optimism in 2024

How are multi-location marketers feeling about the year ahead? The good news is that businesses say they are looking pretty resilient and, as we’ve seen above, are already making strides in how they’re adopting and adapting to new technologies.

Despite economic challenges, the sentiment among multi-location marketers for the year ahead is high, with 77% feeling optimistic about 2024’s economic conditions. 

Only 10% of multi-location businesses feel pessimistic about the economic conditions ahead of them in 2024.

On top of this, brands also have a good appetite for business expansion.

81% of multi-location businesses told us that they are likely to open new locations in 2024. So, despite the challenges discussed earlier in the report, the multi-location business landscape is staying positive and ready to tackle what comes its way.

Channel Investment and Impact 

We’ve previously discussed marketing channel investment at a high-performance level. In this next section, we’ll go further to take a look at the impact that marketers are seeing on their revenues as a result of channel investment.

We’ve summarized each group with some key findings below.

High Performers vs. Average Performers

• High Performers invest more than Average Performers in 9 our of 10 marketing channels.
• Average Performers invest more in PPC than High Performers.

• High Performers see a good impact on revenue from SEO, considering their investment level (7.0 Investment Score vs. 7.3 Impact Score).
• Despite lower investment than Average Performers in PPC, High Performers see a better impact on their revenue in this area (5.9 Investment Score vs. 6.6 Impact Score, against 6.3 respectively for Average Performers).

Local Players

• Local Players see the most impact on revenues from social media (7.6/10).
• The channels seeing the highest impact on revenues are PPC and Direct Mail.
• Local Players are investing the least in PPC among their marketing mix.

Regional Challengers

• Regional Challengers see the most impact on revenues from social media (8/10).
• The channels seeing the highest impact on revenues are Radio, Direct Mail, and SEO.
• Regional Challengers are investing the least in radio advertising out of all channels—but the impact for those investing is fairly strong (5.6 investment score vs. 6.5 impact score).

Big Brands

• Big Brands are seeing the highest impact on revenues from paid social (7.5/10) compared to the other channels.
• The channels seeing a higher impact on revenues are PPC and Paid social.
• Out of all the channels listed, Big Brands invest the least in radio advertising.
• Big Brands appear to see the least impact on revenues from SEO (7.7 investment vs 7.5 impact).

Summary

If your marketing performance fell short of expectations in 2023, we’re not here to tell you to increase your local marketing function by a certain percentage or that adopting new marketing tech will immediately boost your results.

But the beauty of benchmarking is that it allows you to lift your head out of the sand (or various other reports) and consider opportunities for improvement: to compare what competitors in the multi-location marketing space are doing and pinpoint why they may have been outperforming you. 

Perhaps your team has even had a hunch about implementing a particular tactic or tool and has not quite had a case to prove to unlock some budget. We hope that this report’s findings will help strengthen that case for you and highlight new areas to think about.

One thing stands out for sure, though, and that is the overarching importance of local marketing in contributing to brand performance. It’s clear from our benchmarking that brands with dedicated, knowledgeable local marketing teams and local-specific strategies in place are outperforming others. 

When looking at individual local marketing tactics, too, we can see that High Performers are implementing many that others aren’t yet. Local rank tracking and optimization, reputation management, and citations reflect the continued importance of ensuring and maintaining brand visibility in increasingly competitive local environments. 

So, how is your brand measuring up? If you have any thoughts about the Brand Beacon Report 2024 research and findings, we’d love to hear from you. You can share your thoughts with us on X, LinkedIn, or our own Facebook community, The Local Pack. Alternatively, you can contact research@brightlocal.com with any questions.

Publishers and individuals are welcome to share findings and charts from this report, crediting BrightLocal and the URL https://www.brightlocal.com/research/brand-beacon-report/. 

Methodology

This research was conducted in partnership with Sapio Research, a B2B market research company, to survey a panel of 200 marketing decision-makers for multi-location and franchise businesses in the USA, the UK, and Canada. A comprehensive screening system was implemented to ensure only respondents fitting the criteria could participate.

Breakdowns of survey respondents by geographical location, industry, and business type can be found below.

Our latest course, “ Google Analytics 4: Essentials for Local SEO ,” led by the expert Dana DiTomaso, is tailored for in-house marketers and SEOs at agencies, helping them unravel the intricacies of GA4 through a local SEO lens.

Across the span of 22 informative lesson videos, you will:

• Adopt the analytics mindset, learn to understand GA4 data capture, and familiarize yourself with terminology and the user interface for a strong starting point.
• Explore GA4’s event-based data model, covering property and data stream creation, built-in (enhanced) events, adding custom events, and viewing event parameters.
• Evaluate marketing success in GA4 by adding conversions (goals), exploring default channel groups, and tracking Google Business Profile (GBP) and offline advertising traffic using Urchin Tracking Modules (UTMs) for effective tracking.
• Master GA4’s reports, customize your tool by modifying or creating reports and enhance the Reports Menu for detailed Google Business Profile and offline advertising traffic insights.

Here’s Dana with an overview of the course: 

Like all BrightLocal Academy courses, you can strengthen your understanding through interactive activities and quizzes, guaranteeing a thorough grasp of the concepts. When completed, put your knowledge to the test with a final exam and show off your new-found skills with a shareable certificate.

Who is this course for?

This course is tailored for in-house marketers who need to use GA4 regularly, even if GA4 was set up for them. Additionally, SEOs at agencies without in-house analytics support will find valuable insights to enhance their GA4 proficiency.

How can I join?

Anyone can access this course, whether or not you’re a BrightLocal customer. You can also be among the first to find out when new courses drop by enrolling for free. Here’s how:

If you’re a BrightLocal customer, you can access the academy via your BrightLocal account. Log in, click ‘Learning Resources’ at the top of the screen, and select ‘BrightLocal Academy’ from the dropdown menu.

You must create a free BrightLocal Academy account before enrolling in the ‘ Google Analytics 4: Essentials for Local SEO ’ course.

If you’re not a BrightLocal customer, you can join BrightLocal Academy for free and follow the steps above to enroll in the course.

Want to know more about BrightLocal Academy? 

Check out the official BrightLocal Academy FAQs here: 

What is BrightLocal Academy, how does it work, and how can I enroll?    

What courses does BrightLocal Academy offer, and how long do they take?    

If you have any questions of your own, feel free to get in touch with us or leave a comment below. We hope you find this fresh new course useful, and we can’t wait to hear how it’s helped you improve your local SEO skills.

Spotted first by Saad Alikhan and then Khushal Bherwani on Twitter, the feature presents ‘offers’ and ‘events’ Google Business Profile (GBP) Posts sourced from four local businesses. This feature is only visible for local searches on mobile devices. It has not yet been spotted on Google Maps. 

Google > Mobile

I saw "Nearby events and deals" section in SERPs (featuring local listings), this might be new.

Sending to: @rustybrick SIR. pic.twitter.com/WcdMrkttZs

— Saad AK (@SaadAlikhan1994) January 1, 2024

What does ‘Nearby events and deals’ look like? 

Clicking on one of the tiles directs you to a full-screen view of the GBP offer post, alongside a tile for the business’s GBP, which, when clicked, takes you to the business’s GBP. The four-pack does not seem to have a ‘show more’ option. 

This result tends to show up further down the SERP, below the local pack, organic results, ‘People also ask’, and ‘People also search for’. However, its location isn’t always consistent from SERP to SERP.

Each of the four tiles shows the Google Posts’ original image and title alongside the business’s name and Google review score.

How does ‘Nearby events and deals’ work?

To test what does and doesn’t show with this feature, our team took to Google to discover what appeared when searching for local businesses across a variety of both large and small cities. We also wanted to test which industries were likely to show this, and what this could mean for local businesses. 

We only managed to trigger this new feature when searching for businesses in the food and restaurant vertical. All of our results were based around North American (US and Canada) cities; UK cities did not trigger this feature.

Queries in larger cities such as Chicago and New York City were far more likely to return this feature, as was the Canadian province of Ontario. In smaller cities, such as Durham, NC (population 332,680) and Pomona, CA (population 146,017), the presence of the feature varied, indicating that business volume may have an impact on Google’s decision to show this panel. Only one search conducted for Pomona returned the panel. 

This is further supported by the fact that the feature consistently shows in a pack of four, indicating that a greater volume of businesses with active Posts is needed. 

That being said, multiple searches returned Posts of seemingly unrelated businesses. For instance, a search for ‘boba ontario’ returned a ‘nearby events and deals’ section fully populated by two coffee shops, a chain bakery, and a brewery.

This seems to be more common with some searches, with ‘boba new york city’ also returning a group of seemingly unrelated results.

There were also many repeats across SERPS, such as two of the four results being the same for both the queries ‘bottomless brunch new york city’ and ‘buffet new york city’.

It’s worth noting that non-food and restaurant queries conducted across a variety of verticals yielded no results of this type at all. The non-food and restaurant queries we tried were the following: ‘nail salon’, ‘divorce lawyer’, ‘gyms’ ‘yoga’, ‘bouldering’, ‘bike shop’ ‘dentures’ ‘toy shop’, ‘fish market’, ‘bachelorette parties’, ‘bed and breakfast’, ‘jewelry store’, ‘bridal gowns’, ‘healthcare’, and ‘organic market’, all tested using both Durham, NC and Chicago, IL.

Let’s look at the queries that did yield this type of result:

Why should I care?

For anyone managing business profiles for food businesses and restaurants, you’ll already know the importance of using Google Business Profile Posts to boost conversion. Now, it would also seem that to get the chance to be displayed in the new SERPs feature, you need to be actively posting and optimizing your GBP Posts. 

The images used on Posts are important to get right, especially as they’re now more visible with this new feature. Make sure your images are high quality, eye-catching, and with text that is easy to read. The ‘Nearby events and deals’ feature crops images into a square, so keep the text within a safe space in the center of your image so important information won’t be cut off in the margins. 

What does this mean going forward?

It’s possible that this selection could grow more and more accurate as the feature ages—especially if businesses take this opportunity to dive into the world of Google Posts. With this knowledge, this is a good time to make the most out of your GBP Posts—especially ‘events’ and ‘deals’ posts—to ensure that you’re maximizing the possibility of eyes on your profile. 

The Power of Google Business Profile

First, it’s important to emphasize why GBP matters. It’s often the first point of contact for potential customers, providing essential information about a local business, including location, hours, reviews, and photos. A well-optimized GBP can significantly impact local search visibility and customer trust.

The Importance of Google Business Profile

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A study found it’s the top factor for ranking in the local pack on Google. Our research in 2020 also showed that 82% of local marketing experts agree that tweaking a GBP is a super effective way to improve your local search rankings. 

So, how can BrightLocal help you supercharge your or your client’s GBP? Let’s dive into the strategies and tools available:

1. Auditing for Optimization

As well as being aware of what a critical tool Google Business Profile is, you’re probably also aware that Google doesn’t give away any competitor insights. 

For example, let’s imagine that you’ve just started work on local SEO for a dental practice in New York. You want to know why a specific competitor ranks above them in local search and what they need to do to outrank them. You head over to Google and search, but this is all you see:

Without an intelligent tool, figuring out how to beat the competition and get into the top local results is challenging. That’s why we made our Google Business Profile Audit tool and Local Search Grid. They do all the checking and analysis you need.

Once you’ve set up a Google Business Profile Audit report, you can ensure the accuracy of your listing and understand your performance. 

Ensuring Accuracy and Health of Your Listing

Once set up, the ‘Summary’ page of a Google Business Profile Audit serves as your primary dashboard for evaluating the overall health and accuracy of your GBP listing.

Here, you can identify and eliminate any duplicate GBP listings associated with your business, scrutinize the consistency of Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) information, and identify and address essential local ranking factors. 

Embarking on these steps within the GBP Audit report not only ensures the accuracy of your listing but also lays the foundation for a robust and trustworthy online representation of your business.

Understand Your GBP Performance

You can thoroughly understand your GBP performance by incorporating Insights into the GBP Audit’s report. 

Unlike Google Business Profile Insights, which only offers six months of data, GBP Audit extends its horizon to 18 months, providing a comprehensive and extended view of your listing’s performance.

You can:

• Analyze the discovery points on Google through search or Google Maps to strategically optimize your online presence.

• Extract valuable data on customer actions, unraveling users’ common behaviors on your GBP, from visiting your website to requesting directions or making calls.

• Delve into phone call trends, pinpointing peak days and times and aiding in meticulous staff availability planning.

By utilizing the Google Business Profile Audit tool, you ensure the accuracy of your listing and gain in-depth insights into your GBP’s performance, enabling informed decisions for optimization and growth.

4 Ways GBP Audit Can Help You Optimize Your Listing and Outrank the Competition

Learn More

Competitor Insights 

Local Search Grid provides essential data from Google Local Finder, offering insights into your competitors’ performance. 

For example, once you’ve set up a Local Search Grid report , you can see what primary and secondary categories your competitors are using. This allows you to ensure that you select categories that align with high-performing keywords and match those used by successful competitors.

2. Taking Action

Customer reviews and GBP posts are crucial elements that significantly contribute to the credibility and utility of your GBP. Two BrightLocal tools can help you with these. 

Manage Your Reviews

Reputation Manager enables you to monitor reviews, gather feedback, and address negative comments promptly. Helping you to cultivate a positive online reputation and attract more customers.

Once you’ve created a Reputation Manager report, you’ll be able to keep tabs on all reviews from essential review sites, allowing you to observe the growth of reviews over time.

If you also link your business’s Google Business Profile and Facebook accounts to the report, BrightLocal will automatically check for new reviews daily and notify you of any arrivals. With your report connected to your GBP and Facebook, you can conveniently respond to reviews directly from this report, streamlining the process and helping you stay on top of your reputation more efficiently.

Managing your reviews is just the start. If you need help getting them in the first place, a tool like BrightLocal’s Get Reviews is key. It will help you grow your reviews and increase your star ratings.

Schedule Google Posts

GBP Post Scheduler makes managing your GBP much easier and simpler. It offers effortless scheduling, multi-location distribution, and AI content generation. 

Effortless Scheduling

You can set the perfect time for each post and decide when it should expire, ensuring a steady flow of content for potential customers. You can also monitor everything from one dashboard to keep an eye on what’s live, what’s scheduled, and what’s expired.

Multi-location Distribution

When dealing with a multi-location brand, there might be times when you want to share the latest national promotions with all locations at once. Instead of doing it individually, you can publish a post to multiple locations simultaneously, saving you hours of effort. It’s a quick and easy way to ensure consistent content across your entire network of locations.

Craft Posts with AI-Powered Content Generation

Input a brief description of the message you want to convey, and within seconds, our AI writing assistant will provide you with creative content ideas to work with and enhance.

Our Help Center has more information on how our GBP AI works.

3. Active Sync

Active Sync helps you care for your GBP and other vital listings like Facebook, Apple Maps, and Bing, ensuring they’re accurate and up-to-date. 

Once you’ve connected your GBP to your BrightLocal account, you can set up additional categories, opening hours, the business description, and additional data, such as Google Business Profile Attributes, from your BrightLocal account and push them out to those listings. 

Once you’ve set Active Sync up, it will send you alerts when external changes are published to a listing. For example, if Google publishes a suggested edit, you’ll be notified rather than having to log in.

You can accept or reject the changes suggested within the BrightLocal platform, which allows you to shield the listings from external edits and ensure their accuracy.

Your Google Business Profile is a powerful tool for local business success, and when combined with the comprehensive suite of BrightLocal tools, it becomes an unstoppable force. By conducting regular audits, managing your reputation, and optimizing your online presence, you can stand out in local searches, attract more customers, and drive business growth.