A thousand thanks to the 1,411 respondents who gave of their time and knowledge[1] in contributing to this major survey! You’ve created a vivid image of what real-life, everyday local search marketers and local business owners are observing on a day-to-day basis, what strategies are working for them right now, and where some frankly stunning opportunities for improvement reside. Now, we’re ready to share your insights into:
- Google Updates
- Citations
- Reviews
- Company infrastructure
- Tool usage
- And a great deal more...
This survey pooled the observations of everyone from people working to market a single small business, to agency marketers with large local business clients:
Respondents who self-selected as not marketing a local business were filtered from further survey results.
Thanks to you, this free report is a window into the industry. Bring these statistics to teammates and clients to earn the buy-in you need to effectively reach local consumers in 2019.
There are so many stories here worthy of your time
Let’s pick just one, to give a sense of the industry intelligence you’ll access in this report. Likely you’ve now seen the Local Search Ranking Factors 2018 Survey, undertaken by Whitespark in conjunction with Moz[3]. In that poll of experts, we saw Google My Business signals being cited as the most influential local ranking component. But what was #2? Link building.
You might come away from that excellent survey believing that, since link building is so important, all local businesses must be doing it. But not so. The State of the Local SEO Industry Report reveals that: