#I understand that the sf Bay Area is extreme

[codewitch]

The fact of the matter is that at least in my, admittedly, highly expensive area the “middle class income” that would attain a modest home that you own, childcare, vacations, retirement savings is 400k.

People see 400k and immediately start gnashing their teeth about eating the rich but you cannot buy a home here for under 1.5 million. They just don’t exist. Childcare is 2k a month. Vacations and cars cost nothing compared to the expense of housing and childcare in a highly competitive market where many people in the major industry start out making 120k and get confused about where they stand in the world because they live with a roommate in their 4,000 dollar 2 bedroom apartment that’s the average price in their town.

And I’m not saying these people have a right to complain because truly they are doing just fine compared to most people in the country but just. Think for a moment. You have to be in the top 5% of income earners these days to afford what the top 50% had access to a few decades ago. And the stratification is less extreme in more normal markets but homes still only end up with the highest income earners in your town. It used to be anyone with a half decent job could get this but now both you and your spouse have to be senior software engineers at google.

My neighbor isn’t a doctor but she’s a neurosurgeon PA at a prestigious hospital and she owns a 750 sqft condo. I had a neighbor who was a lawyer who was renting their 2bd/1bth apartment. The classic middle class lifestyle starts at the 10% now.

Ive noticed recently that my generation has... no concept of what the various economic classes actually are anymore. I talk to my friends and they genuinely say things like "at least i can afford a middle class lifestyle with this job because i dont need a roommate for my one bedroom apartment" and its like... oughh

You guys, middle class doesnt mean "a stable enough rented roof over your head," it means "a house you bought, a nice car or two, the ability to support a family, and take days off and vacations every year with income to spare for retirement savings and rainy days." If all you have is a rented apartment without a roommate and a used car, you're lower class. That's lower class.

And i cant help but wonder if this is why you get kids on tumblr lumping in doctors and actors into their "eat the rich" rhetoric: economic amnesia has blinded you to what the class divides actually are. The real middle class lifestyle has become so unattainable within a system that relies upon its existence that theyve convinced you that those who can still reach it are the elites while your extreme couponing to afford your groceries is the new normal.

[daja-the-hypnokitten]

Jukebox reviews part 53! For context, see my post “A Project” under  this same tag. If you want to see a full list of his EMCSA stories,  they can be found here, sorted alphabetically.And if you want to see some of his drabbles, check out his blog at @jukeboxemcsa​ 

This will be a longer review post than the rest, as there were 535 stories and I’ve been posting in sets of 10. This one has the last 15, and is the final one unless and until I decide to start going by year (so do the rest of 2021,say). This has been a fun project, and best of all I’ve taken ideas whole cloth or in patchwork to use with my partners, and gotten a better sense of what I want in my mind control fiction. Seriously, though, I can’t recommend Jukebox’s work enough - whatever you’re into, I’m sure you’ll find *something* to like in his stories.

(The next story after this one, “Never Have I Ever”, was the first story Jukebox cross-posted to Readonlymind.com, hence the cut-off)

 Language Barrier (Jukebox)

 date uploaded   date updated     Tags

10/10/2020                                   mc mf md

Well, I've been hypnotized in a language I didn't understand before - also French, as it happens - and it can be really fun. That said, I wish I knew enough French to figure out what he's saying, but alas, I took Spanish instead. And it doesn't really matter; if anything, the lack of understanding adds to the story a little. It's a good story, too! Though the ending is a little bit meh to me, being mostly purely about sex. 8/10 spirals 

 Rabbit Hole (Jukebox)

 date uploaded   date updated     Tags

10/17/2020                                   mc mf md ma

Oh hi there tumblr, that sounds so very like you. (in the best of ways). Tumblr's good for rabbit holes like that, and gosh, Jukebox has a way of making a (somewhat condensed) process feel entirely too real. I'm fairly sure I've seen a few of the names/users/files/etc he's referencing or was inspired by. (Brain Blaster? Yeah, I know a file with a similar alliterative name that gets reblogged around now and again). This is just a fun story, really, especially for those of us who remember the days of Hypnotumblr pre-tumblr porn ban. 9/10 spirals 

 Kiss on the Neck

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10/31/2020                                   mc ff ft

*shudders* nope, sorry, I don't like things against my neck, I have to be extremely particular about what sorts of turtlenecks I wear, and usually I go for mock turtlenecks, so the tactile imagery early in this one literally made me shudder. Especially for Silicon Valley, where it doesn't even get that cold!! Turtlenecks are for below-freezing weather, not Bay Area weather, c'mon! That all said, it's a good image, the contrast inherent to the style, and used quite well. 9/10 spirals 

 Under My Skin

 date uploaded   date updated     Tags

10/31/2020                                   mc ff sf

Another horror-style story, not so much erotic, and so not to my taste. Kinda zombie-like only not quite, and in a way that's unsettling. Not my style. 

 You Don’t Have to Worry

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11/7/2020                                     mc mf md

Oh, well, that sums up one of the many draws of hypnokink, clearly. Being blank, no thoughts meaning no worries, just ... all of it. Yeah, unsurprisingly, Jukebox gets it. And makes puts it on the page so well. The unethical nature of it is naturally a little bleh, but easy to look past in the context of the story. He just gets it. 10/10 spirals 

 Familiar Taste of Poison

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11/14/2020                                   mc mf md

Why would you ruin a perfectly good cup of cocoa with something bitter? Seriously, put it in coffee, that's bitter enough she'd never notice anyway. Or I guess you could do Mexican hot cooca, that has more bitterness to it, but not that much ... ok, ok, I'll stop being passionate about my hot cocoa now. That aside, the making her trust him only to betray her ... it rubs me wrong. But then, if you've been reading my reviews, you know betrayal is a turn off, so there's that. And it's a little villain monologue-y for me. 6/10 spirals 

 Me Time

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11/21/2020                                   mc ma

Hee, I enjoy this. Especially because I'm tentatively planning to use rose scent to bespell one of my girlfriends at some point here. So the use of rose in this story? yes, it jumps out at me. And seeing her just relax into it, like she knew and was inviting what's to come, even as she's so clearly forgotten? Oh yes, consensual amnesia for shenanigans is a personal favourite. I could do without the water, but otherwise? This is right up my alley. 9/10 spirals 

 Worth the Wait (Jukebox)

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11/28/2020                                   mc mf md

Eee, Rosita and Mateo are back! This is a sequel to Plain Gold Ring, and it's just as sweet and cute as the last. Also the use of "noptepus" makes me grin, it's such a cute bit. I'm glad they're talking it out and being smart about it, and also that they're clearly happy together. Even if Rosita feels like she's been waiting rather too long for it. Patience is rewarded, though. 10/10 spirals 

 Catch Your Shadow

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12/5/2020                                     mc mf md

This is really good, right up until the horror influences peak out towards the end. Which makes sense for a JB story, seeing as how he's a horror fan, but for me it kinda pulls the rug out from under me? Still, it's a good story, even if the actual mind control part is a little abrupt, and of course it's all magic, that's the basic premise from the beginning. 8/10 spirals 

 Absent Minded Me

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12/12/2020                                   mc

Another induction, and using pleasure to train amnesia. It's a solid approach, though one I'm not really qualified to evaluate the efficacy of? I'm one of those folk who did spontaneous amnesia from the jump until I was actively trained out of it, and amnesia suggestions come naturally for me. But hey, if you're trying to practice, maybe give this a read and let yourself go with it? 9/10 spirals 

 Boy Inside the Man

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12/19/2020                                   mc mm rb

There's probably something to discuss between the Girls(tm) coming off as gentle and caretakers (right up until they take control) and the Boys being so aggressive. The Girls(Tm) playing on underlying cultural associations to be disarming, maybe, and Revolution Technology betraying their own assumptions and biases? IDK, but every story with the Boys just makes me like them less and want more stories with the Girls(tm) more. Personal preference, I suppose. either way, I don't like the aggression here, even if Tommy seems to have enjoyed himself. 7/10 spirals 

 Jailbreak

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12/26/2020                                   mc mf ff md fd ma cb

Ok, but *why* was it? How was it? Jukebox, that ending is NOT FAIR. At ALL. Who is only one of the important questions. That all said, this is another Liberty Legion story, so I naturally really enjoy it, especially seeing even one of the strongest of the team pushed to her limits. But it does leave me with more questions than answers. 9/10 spirals 

 Zoinks!

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1/2/2021                                       mc mf ff md

Of course a story with this title is a Scooby Doo parody. There was never any choice in the matter, was there? And as someone who's entirely too fond of rendering my redheaded girlfriend helpless with a gold (ok, brass, but STILL) coin, I'm fond of this story. The end isn't my cup of tea, exactly, (betrayal never is) but the rest is wonderful. 8/10 spirals 

 Desire Brings Me Back

 date uploaded   date updated     Tags

1/9/2021                                       mc ff

Oh, I enjoy Staysa's delivery rather a lot here. The rest of it isn't .... it's a bit "magic drug does whatever the author needs it to" for my personal tastes, and the "bisexuality to be used in spywork but never acknoweldeged" hits a little too close to home, with how society fetishizes but also demonizes queer identities. I prefer escapism to seeing these things reflected in my stories, as a personal preference, so that's a bit of a turnoff for me. Seeing Clarice's attempts at rationalizations, even as she knows that they are rationalizations, are fun though. 7/10 spirals 

 Queen Lullabye

 date uploaded   date updated     Tags

1/16/2021                                     mc ff

And the last review of the current stage of this project! After this, Jukebox started posting to ROM as well as the EMCSA, and that's my arbitary cutoff (because I needed A cutoff). And what a story it is, a story of a Fae Queen of sleep and slumber and dreaming. Such a story to read right before going to a hypnocon with my Fae-like girlfriend. Not that either of us would do the sex thing in this story, but the "you may pay in service"  line might just happen? Thanks for the inspiration, Jukebox! And while there's a fair bit of sex in this one, it's all in service of the control so it doesn't bother me as it does sometimes. 10/10 spirals

[damaramegido]

pinned worm time :)

basic info

what up i’m acey jane aka anna cassidy [last name redacted] and i’m your friendly tmbg mutual from hell

gender-nonconforming cis woman (she/her), i identify strongly as Girl but societal expectations of what that should mean are fuckin bullshit that i refuse to follow!

allo lesbian and monogamous (she’s single and horny ladies!)

i’m 28 years old (2/18/1993), minors can interact but please don't get weird or age-inappropriate!

(YES I KNOW I LOOK SUPER YOUNG I HAVE GENETIC BABYFACE, BLAME MY DAD, I AM A GROWN-ASS LADY)

white (german and irish so pearl only half hates me i guess)

autistic and mentally ill, also a side helping of chronic physical illness bc fuck my life i guess

left-wing democratic socialist (albeit definitely who tries really hard to avoid political discourse online because a lot of it is Really Bad)

norcal girl, ask me for weird info about the greater sf bay area because believe me i have Stories (and an accent apparently)

lowkey definitely a they might be giants groupie (14 shows and counting!), please talk to me about tmbg because i love them more than life itself

winner of the Best Homestuck To Mainstream Fandom award (source: self)

captain of the pearlrose garbage barge, which is on fire

not the original owner of the damaramegido url but i've had it since 2015 so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(yes i'm using my canon homestuck url for a tmbg/steven universe stan blog, what of it)

fandoms and interests

steven universe

they might be giants

homestuck

gravity falls

the owl house

pokemon

animation in general

language

shitposting

fanfiction

horror and general morbid shit

true crime

internet/fandom culture and history

other cool things

other notes

i'm in a horrible friend group chat called the shitpost crew and our shenanigans are fucking legendary. (yes that link is required reading, just so you know what kind of horrid goblin bitch i truly am)

i try extremely hard to avoid discourse because it's annoying and i have better things to do. don't drag me into that shit pls...let me wallow in Trash Hell in peace

i'm generally willing to tag things for mutuals and friends, and i try to tag fairly comprehensively in general! my tags page can be found here.

i really love being sent/tagged in things, if you see something and think “hmm this seems up acey’s alley” please feel free to send it my way!

i’m also always down to make new friends in general--if you ever wanna hmu feel free to shoot me an ask or a message, i promise i don’t bite! i’m also generally willing to give my discord out, but please ask off anon if you want it so i can give it privately. c:

i'm a filthy shipper from hell and always have been, though of course i tag appropriately. here’s my shipping wall!

my blog title is a very obscure tmbg reference

yes i have a homestuck tattoo. no i do not regret it

i have a tmbg tattoo too why does no one talk about THAT?? smh

i fucked up some shrinky dinks once

i purble

john hlans. burg bi sexu

icon by @disinvited-guest, check her out for that good tmbg content!

(no my icon is not ebony dark’ness dementia raven way but i do understand why you might assume it is)

links

writing blog

art blog

ao3

twitter

deviantart

instagram

spotify

listography 

dedicated tumblr links page

[robespeeair]

i know i’ve been posting a lot of political shit lately, but you have to understand that all of it is extremely relevant to my community. the sf bay area, as liberal it we may seem, has a history of systemic police violence just like the rest of the usa.

and just so everyone’s clear, racially motivated police violence isn’t a political issue; it’s an issue of human rights.

[cyberphuck]

Rant under cut

I use labels because it's faster, but there's something inside of me that is terrified of someone assuming something about me based on someone else's pre-manufactured labels. It's why I don't really like being called "she" or "him," and "they" used to be okay until a bunch of other people started using it. It's why I don't like telling people my age. It's why I post pictures of my face but not my clothes. It's why I'm moving slowly away from the Asexual and Aromantic labels and using Nonbinary more. I'm not part of that group, I'm not "like you."

I want to have some control over what people think of me. "Scary at first but nice when you get to know them" is an easier description than "used to be nice to everyone and now I react violently to being threatened." People hear the second one and all sorts of assumptions pile up in their head: the poor thing, like a beaten dog. Let's tiptoe around them, constantly ask if this or that is triggering them. They've been forced to be mean but they're really a beautiful delicate flower inside and we just have to pry open the shell.

No! No. Because if you let someone believe that, not only are they constantly analyzing everything they say in case it harms poor little delicate me, they think they're "done" when I laugh and make jokes, and if I retreat and they have to "work" to get me to relax again, I feel like I'm disappointing them. Why am I sad again, didn't they just hug me? Am I just doing this for attention? Also, it's not fucking true! I've always been kind of a dick!!

Other Asexuals hear I'm ace and go "oh me too, isn't it weird how EVERYONE is obsessed with sex but us?" No, I think about sex constantly, I *do* understand a lot of kinks, I'm just not attracted to anyone. Am I sex repulsed? Maybe. Am I sex positive? I guess?? Suddenly the Ace (and Aro) labels don't fit as snugly.

I'm not from Los Angeles, I'm from Redondo Beach, which is a resort town about 20ish miles away from LA. But the person you imagine when you think of LA is *very* different from the one who's from an upper middle class beach resort. And I probably spent more of my youth in the SF bay area and Gold Country than in southern California, but that too carries mental images that don't fit who I am.

I'm not even going to fucking go into my age but suffice to say that it's extremely unfair that my physical age keeps going up and my mental age has been stuck where it is for eons.

"Is there anything about you that's not complicated?" Sorry! No. You either know me for a long time and realize that I'm all OVER the fucking place, or you get "Ace Asshole, Nonbinary Nobody, Old as Balls. Born and raised in LA, kind of a bully, passionate about the creative arts but more in a Jackson Pollack way than a Georgia O'Keefe way. Once in a while one of the panels falls off and they hurriedly shove it back into place before you can get a good look inside."

Even saying "I'm not like anyone else" makes you think something about me. But there's not much I can do about that.

Not straight, not cis, not allo people, I'm curious:

[mariposalass]

Pinoy Pride (Familial F/O Week 2019 Prompt #1)

This is my take on Prompt #1 for @selfshippingsylveon’s Familial F/O Week 2019 event, theme is Holidays/Weekends. Because I’ll be stuck in Singapore this week, I’ll be posting just a bunch of headcanons and drabbles in lieu of full-on stories because of the bad timing of the trip announcement my Dad dropped on me and my mom. I went with Holidays and an emphasis on Philippine Independence Day (June 12) and also about the fam bunch & their dabbling of the Filipino culture, because we need a ton of Philippine self shipper representation. While the others are not forgotten, the main focus will be on the fam bunch this week as the event says it.

Also, tagging @plucky-belmondo because we Filipinos gotta stick together! Anyway, let’s jump right in!

It’s no secret that Filipinos are the ethnic group with the largest demographic in Daly City and there is also an even bigger one in San Francisco called Kalayaan SF. In fact, many cities in the Bay Area and San Mateo County are slowly beginning to celebrate it more as the years has passed. So celebrating the founding of the Philippines as a modern republic is quite common here and Mari & co. do partake in it.

While it took him so long to get onboard with PH Independence Day fun, Harry enjoys it a lot despite being an Englishman: he is just slow in celebrating it until now, while Kairi full on adapts to it and loves celebrating it so much: she would help out in cooking stuff like adobo, lumpiang shanghai, garlic rice, etc. with the family for lunch. Meanwhile, Issa and Mari will get extremely patriotic to the core on that day, to say that they get really excited when the day comes is a big understatement.

Mari, Kairi and Issa also enjoy wearing clothes in color palettes from the flag for the big day as well, and the three of them would coordinate the colors to match up the color palette. Something that Harry, Philip, and Sora might need to take notes from.

Uncle Gru has a big problem with the Minions causing chaos during the festivals and parades held for the day that he had to use the Freeze Ray on them from ruining it for everyone involved and the people wanting to partake in the fun during the time Mari just finished her third year in college.

Edith and Agnes would sometimes dress up in some of the local costumes, especially the Maria Clara dress, on the day itself, all day long. Auntie Lucy stores them in pristine condition at the storage room and will give them a good cleaning a few days before the holiday begins.

Belle volunteers to do reading sessions with kids in the Daly City Public Library every June 12, using books written by Filipino writers in both English and Filipino (or just Filipino in some cases) that she often borrows from Mari and Issa, although she does have a section of her ever-growing library that has Filipino written books just to be safe. Just recently, Margo has joined along with her at the library and is slowing getting the hang of Filipino from Issa’s tutoring as well.

Despite the awkward past Japan and the Philippines had before (*cough, cough* World War 2 and the government’s non-apology about the comfort women issues *cough, cough*), Michiru doesn’t mind joining the Independence Day events in support of the Filipino American community & Filipinos worldwide and has been improving in cooking Filipino food with Issa’s help in the last couple of years. Hotaru and Setsuna would sometimes join them in the cooking session with them, Mari, Harry, and Kairi. Haruka can’t sadly cook to save her life though.

In spite of having a messed up mastery of the Filipino language, Mari has been trying to teach Harry and Kairi how to speak and write it for years and, just like her, their mastery in it is mixed and barok to say the least, although Issa has been helping the three out (along with the rest of the fam bunch) in recent years, so it’s not a lost cause for all. She is also helpful in helping Auntie Diana to reach full fluency in Filipino, so whenever the latter meets up a Filipino and speaks to them in Filipino without having a ‘nosebleed’, they will get floored in amazement that a millennia-old Amazon can speak and understand it really well.

Believe it or not, the (12th) Doctor did claimed that he did witnessed the Proclamation of the Philippine Independence in Kawit, Cavite in 1898, but whether that is true or not is yet to be confirmed. He could be trolling you if you ask me personally.

While most of the fam bunch will avoid the offal food from the 7,107 islands for various reasons, Uncle Maui and Auntie Diana will at least try them out just once. Last time that happened, Mari was horrified to learn that he (Maui) managed to eat up the diniguan (which is pork offal, meat, and blood stew) without cringing in fear. Talk about having nerves of steel for a demigod!

The siblings and Issa will spoil Margo, Edith, and Agnes (and Scooby, Kirby, and Marina & her adopted siblings) with Filipino treats such as dried mangoes, barquillos (wafer rolls), polvorons, etc. whenever they buy them on their trips to the Philippines or when relatives from the Philippines send all of that stuff to Daly City in a balikbayan box. It will be always be a treat for them whenever that happens.

Since mango ice cream is a thing in the Philippines, Auntie Diana will always get excited to taste it when visiting the country on business trips for the Louvre. Mangoes can make for great ice cream too.

Expect to hear OPM music all day long on this specific day. It was a suggestion that Margo brought up as she was trying to learn to understand Filipino through music at the time and still does to this day.

[buttersonbothsides]

Buy Black & Brown this Holiday Season! The Pleasure Principle’s 12 days of Christmas Shopping Guide.

The holiday season often represents an opportunity for small businesses to experience exponential growth in a  short span of time. More often still, the holidays are what keeps small businesses afloat- particularly Black & Brown owned businesses and even more particularly; women Black & Brown owned businesses. That’s why we’ve put together this shopping guide for the 2019 Holiday Season. We’ve highlighted some our favorite places to shop, eat or hang out; making sure to try to keep the focus local, women-identified, POC owned. Let’s get shopping!

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: 

1. Red Bay Coffee - 

Red Bay Coffee Roasters was founded in 2014 by Keba Konte, a renowned artist and successful food entrepreneur with deep roots in the San Francisco Bay Area specialty coffee and hospitality industry. Red Bay Coffee and it’s various properties around the Bay Area have become fixtures of the community; offering a safe space for all but particularly POC, queer and other marginalized communities. They have awesome gifts like the gift set picture above ($50) available on their website, redbaycoffee.com.

On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

2. Esscents of Flowers -

As an Oakland native, Ariana Marbley thought it extremely important to lay claim to a rapidly changing area by bringing her passion into the world. In 2015, she decided to put her fears aside and Esscents Of Flowers was born. Esscents functions as a “flower shop on wheels”; often popping up at farmer’s markets or special events. Marbley’s services are available somewhat on demand- you can call directly to schedule floral delivery, in-home arrangements or have her vend at your next event. Her arrangements make awesome gifts for hosts this holiday season. Visit esscentsofflowers.com or call (510) 394-2381.

On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

3. Two Chicks in The Mix -

Mmmmmm! Pie- delicious pie! 

The summer of 2013, Malaka approached her bestie since high school, Erica, with a crazy idea: let's start a business! Their love for pastries and food led them into the kitchen and from then on they were Two Chicks in the Mix. Their homestyle pies and confections are truly mouth-watering and make fantastic gifts for the dessert-loving-foodie in your life! Order by 11/14 for Thanksgiving dinner! www.twochicksinthemix.com

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

4. Super Juiced -

Super Juiced owners, Emanne Desouky and Rana Halpern want to empower their people and their families to make better food choices for themselves to inspire them to live the life they dream about everyday. They believe that eating organic vegetables and fruits everyday is not a luxury or a privilege, it is a human right. Check out their super cute juice bar in downtown Oakland (adjacent to Swan’s Market) and you might stumble into a tarot card reading or a delicious smoothie tasting. They have gift certificates available for that friend of yours who’s just now trying the juice cleanse. www.oaklandisjuiced.com

On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

5. Matatu -

Named after rural share taxis in Kenya, MATATU is a performative think tank engaging in a public inquiry around the role of the African Diaspora in a contemporary American context that asks, “How does an Afro-Future actually materialize without some intentional framing by creative citizens from around the Diaspora,” and “Where are the occasions to envision strategies for health in post-colonial Black culture?” The manifestation of these questions is often realized through Matatu’s engaging series of art-driven events. They offer year-round programming and tickets to their events make awesome, intelligent gifts. www.matatu.co

On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

6. Panshade -

A new concept in clothing, created by Bay Area native, Diana Byrd; Panshade offers a curated selection of monochromatic looks from an assortment of women’s clothing brands and styles. They’ve created a simple way to shop the hue that’s right for you! Shop their styles for your most fashionable friends this holiday! www.panshade,com

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

7. Cupcakin -

(photo courtesy of Christina Yan, SF Eater)

Cupcakin’ Bake Shop is the realized vision of owner Lila Owens. She started a home-based cupcake catering business in 2007. But the ultimate goal was to open a cute little bake shop where she could showcase her passion for baking to a larger audience. Lila wanted a fun culture, adorable décor and artisan baked goods made from high quality, sustainable ingredients. With the awesome support of some key people in her life Cupcakin’ Bake Shop became a reality with the opening of the Berkeley, CA location in 2014. Now, with a newly opened second location in Swan’s Market in downtown Oakland, you have another opportunity to get your hands on Lila’s delicious desserts. Cupcakin’ is hella sweet! Gift cards and boxes available at: cupcakinbakeshop.com

On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

8. Owl N Wood -

OwlNWood started as a small local retail brick & mortar shop founded in 2012 by Rachel Konte. They believe in simple and functional styles. This is not fashion, this is easy timeless products made in Oakland California. Their collection of beautiful basics are designed under the label O.N.W. by OwlNWood. The O.N.W. Collections of small batch locally designed and sewn products are all made with comfort in mind. Buy beautiful things for the beautiful people in your life at owlnwood.com.

On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

9. Cosecha -

Tamales by Cosecha are a yearly tradition. Typically offered at Christmas, they sell out- fast and early! Get your orders in ASAP and in the mean time, Cosecha has catered food services available for all your holiday party needs. www.cosechacafe.com

On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

10. Proof Mobile Bar Services -

(Proof drawing by Lynne Tanzer)

Proof was founded in 2017 by Jessica Moncada-Konte. Born and raised in Oakland, Jessica fell in love with food, wine, hospitality, and most importantly food education after she working at Chez Panisse Restaurant and Café, in Berkeley. As a classically trained bartender, she went on to develop her dedication to the food revolution while working at slow food and farm-to-table restaurants, including Bourbon & Branch, Cask, and Flora to name a few. Book Proof Mobile Bar services for your next holiday and truly WOW your guests! www.proofbottle.com

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

11. Skin by Maisha -

At Skin by Maisha, they understand life’s cycles and shifts. Most importantly, they understand life comes full circle for the betterment of each individual good. During your journey, Skin by Maisha is here to help you gain and maintain healthy beautiful skin. They’ve got great skincare packages and organic products available for thoughtful gift giving this holiday season. Shop now at: skinbymaisha.com.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:

12. The Pleasure Principle Supperclub & Dining Events 

Rounding out our holiday shopping guide, YOURS TRULY! The Pleasure Principle celebrates the dynamic and exciting cuisines of the Caribbean, North & West Africa and the American South- with an emphasis on local and seasonal Californian ingredients. We are a Black woman owned and driven enterprise with a keen focus on the support of our community(ies).

This season, we’re offering HOLDAY EMPANADAS in addition to our holiday catering services and drop-off packages! Empanada variations we have available from now through January 2020 include:

• Traditional Argentinian with ground beef, raisins, olives served with chimichurri salsa

• Braised Oxtail with allspice, roasted tomatoes, mole, sheep’s milk cheese served with chile & garlic vinegar sauce

• Shredded jerk chicken with bell peppers, onions and pine nuts served with savory yogurt sauce

• Potato & Onion with madras curry, epazote & cilantro served with a sweet & sour mango chutney

Order for Thanksgiving by 11/19! www.pleasureprinciplediningevents.com

Happy Shopping lovelies! 

[epackingvietnam]

Local SEO Tips for Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

Posted by MiriamEllis

Some business models exist in the ditches of Google’s information highways, belonging in local search results, but not well addressed by the official guidelines. Electric vehicle (EV) charging stations exemplify this: They’re all over local packs, finders, and maps, but their models is a bit unusual, and Google has yet to update the guidelines to show exactly how to represent them in the Google My Business setting.

Today, we’ll pull together our own set of EV charging station best practices — based on Google’s rules for similar enterprises — and throw a few free local search marketing tips into the trunk as well.

How to handle your EV charging station Google My Business listings

Whether you’re an owner, in-house marketer, or agency staffer who’s been tasked with promoting a fleet of EV charging stations online, having a presence in Google’s local search results — including local packs, local finders, Google Business Profiles, and Google Maps — should be core to your digital strategy.

While Google’s helpful guidelines don’t specifically address EV charging stations, proof that they’re eligible for inclusion can be seen in the extra special features and categories Google has released for these models. For example, the above screenshot shows the charger icons, charger type designations, and wattage displays in the local results. In the US and UK, Google displays live charger availability data for some networks for consumer convenience. Even the map pins have special icons in them for EV charging stations.

Google definitely knows about them, and wants this industry to get listed.

If you’ve never set up a GMB listing before, Google’s own resources will walk you through the process of filling out and validating a profile for an individual location, but EV charging station marketers are most likely dealing with many locations at once. If you need to get 10 or more locations listed, you’ll be using Google’s bulk upload functionality, instead. You’ll also want to go for bulk verification of these large batches of listings.

But before you get started, here’s special guidance for handling some of the major fields you’ll be filling out for any EV charging station you’re marketing.

Business title

Google wants you to fill out this field with the exact name of the business as it appears in the real world. The majority of the listings I looked at in this sector were adding the words “charging station” to their brand name, which technically violates Google’s guidelines. Just as gas stations are supposed to list themselves as “Shell” or “Valero”, EV charging stations wanting to stick scrupulously to the guidelines should just be “EVgo” or “ChargePoint”.

According to the guidelines, Google wouldn’t want listings entitled “Shell Gas Station” or “EVgo Charging Station”, any more than they’d want “McDonald’s Fast Food Restaurant” or “Macy’s Department Store.”

But now for a home truth: Google says you’re only supposed to put your real-world brand in these titles, but they don’t take much action on enforcing this guideline, and having keywords in the business title that match search language is strongly believed to improve local rankings. So, if you adhere to the guidelines and remove “charging station” from your business titles, your rankings may decrease. This weighting of keywords in the business title is a longstanding issue Google needs to resolve.

Frankly, I think having the words “charging station” in the listing title might actually help users who are just now becoming accustomed to emergent EV technology and trying to understand where to get charged up, but my common sense and Google’s policies are often at odds.

Keep your business title free of other extraneous information like location information, or adjectives like “cheapest” or “best”.

Address

It’s a dominant trend for EV charging stations to be located in the parking lots of busy public spaces, like shopping centers, railroad stations, and business parks. Typically, to be eligible for a GMB listing, a business has to have its own address, but a look at Google’s local search engine results (including Google Maps) shows charging stations being permitted to use the address of the public space. For example, an EV charging station in a strip mall near me is using the same address as the Target that anchors the shopping center.

Additionally, businesses that host a charging station are allowed to have a link on their listings publicizing this feature.

Also related to address, many EV Charging stations will find details on their listings that describe them as “located in” a public space. If the “located in” descriptor is wrong, look up the business on google.com/maps, click the “suggest an edit” button, and try to edit the information in this field:

If you see no correction within a couple of weeks of taking this action, contact Google My Business support and explain what’s going on.

Phone number

We’ll take our cue here from Google’s requirements of ATMs and kiosks. As I previously covered in my column on local product kiosks, the EV charging stations you’re marketing need a customer support phone number.

Again, this is one of those unusual grey areas. Normally, it’s standard advice for each location of a business to have a unique phone number. But, for EV charging stations, this obviously isn’t practical. Rather, be sure your listings have your help hotline number for customer service needs.

A word to the wise: Google has sometimes been prone to conflating listings with too-similar information. Having dozens, hundreds, or thousands of listings with the same brand AND phone number on them could potentially result in the accidental creation of duplicate listings. Large, multi-listing enterprises like EV charging brands might want to check out the automated duplicate detection and resolution services offered by Moz Local so that pesky duplicates aren’t interfering with listings management, visibility goals, and consumer direction.

Category

“Electric vehicle charging station” is the proper primary category for you, and my search through listings and GMB category databases is only finding one other related category, “electric vehicle charging station contractor” which may or may not be relevant to the business you’re marketing.

Hours of operation

Google’s guidelines state that gas stations should list the hours of operation that their pumps are available, and for most EV charging stations, this would presumably be 24 hours a day. As stated above, you’ll probably be uploading your data to Google via a bulk upload spreadsheet and the proper configuration for indicating 24-hours-a-day in the spreadsheet is 12:00AM-12:00AM.

URL

You’ll be allowed to include a website link on each listing you create. The best user experience I’m encountering on EV charger station listings is when the listing links to a landing page for the location I’m researching. On the flip side, you may get a ranking boost if you link to the brand’s homepage, instead, due to homepages typically having greater Page Authority than landing pages.

Photos/Videos

Make each listing stand out for customers by adding a few photos of the charger’s location. Given the fact that so many chargers are in vast parking lots, try to take some shots that illustrate the relationship of the station to the largest anchor business near it. This will help orient customers. And, given the newness of EV technology, uploading a video of how to use each type of charger would be extremely helpful to new electric vehicle owners.

Reviews

Looking around the SF Bay area, I couldn’t help noticing how few reviews these entities are receiving, meaning there are easy wins out there for any EV charger brand that makes a concerted review acquisition effort. If you’re building out landing pages on the brand’s website for each charging station locale, include a strong call to action and link to leave a review on Google on these pages. You can also use a free review link generator and then shorten the URL using a service like bitly for text or email-based review requests.

Just don’t ask for reviews in bulk; if you get too many at once, Google may filter them out as suspicious. And never incentivize reviews in any way — it can result in review loss, penalties, and legal actions.

Questions & Answers

Unsurprisingly, EV charging station listings show customers using Google’s Q&A feature to ask about costs and how to use the kiosks. These are leads for the brand and should be answered by the brand, rather than being left up to the public for responses of varying quality. If you’re using Moz Local to manage your listings, the dashboard will alert you each time a new question comes in on any of your listings.

Google Posts

Google Posts are a great way to make a brand stand out from less active competitors by microblogging persuasive content that appears on your listings, but for the typical EV charging brand, this feature is problematic. Google doesn’t allow large chains to post in bulk to their listings. There are some third-party services that facilitate hacks for this scenario.

Listings beyond Google

Google may be your dominant source of local business listings, but don’t hit the brakes there. Moz has mapped out the partners in our location data distribution network that currently support listings for EV charging stations. Talk to us about building your presence in key mapping applications like Apple Maps, search engines like Bing, aggregators like Infogroup, and mobile navigation providers like Navmii. Moz Local can help you get listed on multiple platforms so that potential customers can find your charging station locations via their preferred search methods.

Local search marketing tips for EV charging stations

JP Morgan predicts that EVs and HVs will make up 30% of total vehicle sales in the next five years and Statista estimates there are about 25,000 charging stations in the US. It’s big business, and while the convenience of charging at home can’t be beat, the presence of chargers and superchargers all over cities will do much to increase awareness of the rise of the EV, and to ease the transition away from fossil fuel transportation.

As a resident of California — the state with the most electric vehicles and also the state experiencing some of the worst devastation from Climate Change — every new charging station that pops up on Google Maps is a sign of hope to me. But I’ll be frank; I’m not a “car” person, and despite making a concerted effort over the past couple of years to understand how I could personally transition from a worried, gas-powered driver to a proud EV traveler has taught me that it’s a road paved with countless questions.

And that’s actually good news for EV charging station brands!

Whether you’re marketing EVgo, Blink, Tesla, ChargePoint, or the dozens of other charging solutions, your online marketing strategy is going to hinge on publishing content that solves consumers’ problems by answering their questions. Luckily for your industry, customers’ questions are so abundant that they are paving the way for you to develop absolutely fantastic website content that will support your organic and local rankings over time as you develop authority.

Here’s a simple six-step workflow for getting it right:

1. Survey customers

Making a minor investment in survey tech will let you directly ask the public what they want most from charging stations. Is it speed, location, more ports, better instructions, different payment options? Find out and document your learnings.

2. Analyze industry reviews and questions

Look at the common themes in your online reviews. For example, one thread I see running through the EV charging vertical is complaints about sitting in hot cars for 30+ minutes while charging up. When you think about it, gas stations provide shade at the pumps, though patrons are only there for ten minutes. If your customers are being inconvenienced in the summer heat, would properties permit you to build a canopy, or perhaps even better, plant some native trees to double down on your green goals?

Moz Local will surface the 100 most common words in your reviews for sentiment analysis purposes. Dig deeply into these for content inspiration and structural improvements.

And check out the positive and negative sentiment your competitors’ reviews contain. What is the competition getting wrong that you could get right? If you find opportunities like these, be sure you’re writing about them.

3. Fire up keyword research tools

How do electric car charging stations work?

Where can I charge my electric car?

What is the best EV charging station?

How to find free charging stations

How many miles does a Tesla get per charge?

Are EVgo stations free?

Can I use ChargePoint at EVgo?

What is a level 3 charging station?

Questions truly abound in the EV charging space. Moz Pro Keyword Explorer lets you type in keywords and phrases you feel could be important to the business you’re marketing, and then filter the results to see questions like the ones in my list, above. If you sign up for a free Moz community account, you can make 10 free queries a month or upgrade to a paid account for more robust keyword research.

Other free options include Google’s Ads Keyword Planner and the unpaid version of Answer the Public.

Document your findings so that you have created a list of questions around which you can base content publication.

4. Take a peek at Google Trends

Google Trends will show you interest in topics across time related to EV charging stations, and you can even see this broken out by regions of a country to help you localize your marketing. My glance at this data shows that interest in this subject took a hit when the COVID-19 pandemic emerged but is now steadily rising again. Glean further insights from this tool for topics you should be covering.

5. Analyze the competition

If you have a Moz Pro account, you can use Moz’s On-Page Grader feature not just to look at pages on your own website to see how to improve their optimization, but also to analyze what your competition is getting right and wrong. If you can find weaknesses in the strategy of a tough competitor, you can go one better with the actionable optimization tips On-Page Grader provides.

Look carefully at what your competitors are writing about on their websites and social accounts. If they’re covering a topic your keyword research hasn’t surfaced, note it down.

6. Get writing!

Now, take the list of questions and keyword phrases you’ve discovered, group them by topics, and begin creating pages for them on your website, or posts on the brand’s blog, providing answers. Some pages may be short, and others may be long — the rule of thumb is simply to cover each question thoroughly. You may find that some topics are best answered via other media, like short videos. That’s great, if you can produce them, but don’t forget to provide written transcripts.

Your findings can also fuel your social media posting, your Google posts, and provide the top FAQs you can ask and answer via Google Questions & Answers on your Google Business Profiles.

Finally, remember that marketing requires active promotion. Don’t just let your content sit on your website hoping someone will arrive to read it. Actively promote your best pieces via social media, to local print and online media journalists, and in local community hubs, like neighborhood websites and hyperlocal blogs. Work to build real relationships in the cities where you’re marketing your charging station locations so that you are always increasing awareness of your brand’s commitment to making towns and cities better places to live.

Have questions? Ask me in the comments. I’m personally rooting for the rapid spread of EV charging stations across the US and around the world, and if you’re marketing this model, I’d love to hear from you!

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

#túi_giấy_epacking_việt_nam #túi_giấy_epacking #in_túi_giấy_giá_rẻ #in_túi_giấy #epackingvietnam #tuigiayepacking

[oswinstark]

It’s also why there’s a lot of pushback from American Jews, especially older generation American Jews.

They were raised on this thinking. I’m a millennial and while growing up in the SF Bay Area in California, the synagogues in our area were CONSTANTLY targeted and at one point my school of majority Christian attendees was vandalized with Nazi imagery, likely from kids just being fucking stupid and not actual Nazi’s (they also burned down one of the classroom portables so just all around a bag of dicks of humans).

I think the biggest difference between Gen X/Boomer American Jews and millennial/Gen Z American Jews is literally that the older gen grew up where your grandparents/parents were LIKELY directly affected by the WWII, whereas the two newer gen’s grew up knowing their stories, possibly even from their own family members (my grandmother is old enough to have been alive in WWII but she was still very young). We know the stories, we know what happened, and we are aware that, somewhere in our recent past, there were members of our family affected (a good reminder that there was some kind of paper written proving that there is not a single ethnic Jewish person alive who did not have a family member murdered during the Holocaust, even distantly).

There’s more I can say to this but I’m afraid if i try I’ll stop making sense. But it’s way WAY more complicated than gentiles realise. And I’m speaking this as someone who is Ashkenazi and speaking from personal experience with my own family. My dad, who is not okay with the current war, still is unwilling to speak against Israel as a state because of what he grew up experiencing. Shit is complicated.

Fuck this war. Fuck Netanyahu. Fuck the IDF. But also understand that these conversations happening within Jewish communities is extremely complicated and maybe understand that if it’s not your community you don’t have all the information.

jesus fucking christ

[bfxenon]

Local SEO Tips for Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

Posted by MiriamEllis

Some business models exist in the ditches of Google’s information highways, belonging in local search results, but not well addressed by the official guidelines. Electric vehicle (EV) charging stations exemplify this: They’re all over local packs, finders, and maps, but their models is a bit unusual, and Google has yet to update the guidelines to show exactly how to represent them in the Google My Business setting.

Today, we’ll pull together our own set of EV charging station best practices — based on Google’s rules for similar enterprises — and throw a few free local search marketing tips into the trunk as well.

How to handle your EV charging station Google My Business listings

Whether you’re an owner, in-house marketer, or agency staffer who’s been tasked with promoting a fleet of EV charging stations online, having a presence in Google’s local search results — including local packs, local finders, Google Business Profiles, and Google Maps — should be core to your digital strategy.

While Google’s helpful guidelines don’t specifically address EV charging stations, proof that they’re eligible for inclusion can be seen in the extra special features and categories Google has released for these models. For example, the above screenshot shows the charger icons, charger type designations, and wattage displays in the local results. In the US and UK, Google displays live charger availability data for some networks for consumer convenience. Even the map pins have special icons in them for EV charging stations.

Google definitely knows about them, and wants this industry to get listed.

If you’ve never set up a GMB listing before, Google’s own resources will walk you through the process of filling out and validating a profile for an individual location, but EV charging station marketers are most likely dealing with many locations at once. If you need to get 10 or more locations listed, you’ll be using Google’s bulk upload functionality, instead. You’ll also want to go for bulk verification of these large batches of listings.

But before you get started, here’s special guidance for handling some of the major fields you’ll be filling out for any EV charging station you’re marketing.

Business title

Google wants you to fill out this field with the exact name of the business as it appears in the real world. The majority of the listings I looked at in this sector were adding the words “charging station” to their brand name, which technically violates Google’s guidelines. Just as gas stations are supposed to list themselves as “Shell” or “Valero”, EV charging stations wanting to stick scrupulously to the guidelines should just be “EVgo” or “ChargePoint”.

According to the guidelines, Google wouldn’t want listings entitled “Shell Gas Station” or “EVgo Charging Station”, any more than they’d want “McDonald’s Fast Food Restaurant” or “Macy’s Department Store.”

But now for a home truth: Google says you’re only supposed to put your real-world brand in these titles, but they don’t take much action on enforcing this guideline, and having keywords in the business title that match search language is strongly believed to improve local rankings. So, if you adhere to the guidelines and remove “charging station” from your business titles, your rankings may decrease. This weighting of keywords in the business title is a longstanding issue Google needs to resolve.

Frankly, I think having the words “charging station” in the listing title might actually help users who are just now becoming accustomed to emergent EV technology and trying to understand where to get charged up, but my common sense and Google’s policies are often at odds.

Keep your business title free of other extraneous information like location information, or adjectives like “cheapest” or “best”.

Address

It’s a dominant trend for EV charging stations to be located in the parking lots of busy public spaces, like shopping centers, railroad stations, and business parks. Typically, to be eligible for a GMB listing, a business has to have its own address, but a look at Google’s local search engine results (including Google Maps) shows charging stations being permitted to use the address of the public space. For example, an EV charging station in a strip mall near me is using the same address as the Target that anchors the shopping center.

Additionally, businesses that host a charging station are allowed to have a link on their listings publicizing this feature.

Also related to address, many EV Charging stations will find details on their listings that describe them as “located in” a public space. If the “located in” descriptor is wrong, look up the business on google.com/maps, click the “suggest an edit” button, and try to edit the information in this field:

If you see no correction within a couple of weeks of taking this action, contact Google My Business support and explain what’s going on.

Phone number

We’ll take our cue here from Google’s requirements of ATMs and kiosks. As I previously covered in my column on local product kiosks, the EV charging stations you’re marketing need a customer support phone number.

Again, this is one of those unusual grey areas. Normally, it’s standard advice for each location of a business to have a unique phone number. But, for EV charging stations, this obviously isn’t practical. Rather, be sure your listings have your help hotline number for customer service needs.

A word to the wise: Google has sometimes been prone to conflating listings with too-similar information. Having dozens, hundreds, or thousands of listings with the same brand AND phone number on them could potentially result in the accidental creation of duplicate listings. Large, multi-listing enterprises like EV charging brands might want to check out the automated duplicate detection and resolution services offered by Moz Local so that pesky duplicates aren’t interfering with listings management, visibility goals, and consumer direction.

Category

“Electric vehicle charging station” is the proper primary category for you, and my search through listings and GMB category databases is only finding one other related category, “electric vehicle charging station contractor” which may or may not be relevant to the business you’re marketing.

Hours of operation

Google’s guidelines state that gas stations should list the hours of operation that their pumps are available, and for most EV charging stations, this would presumably be 24 hours a day. As stated above, you’ll probably be uploading your data to Google via a bulk upload spreadsheet and the proper configuration for indicating 24-hours-a-day in the spreadsheet is 12:00AM-12:00AM.

URL

You’ll be allowed to include a website link on each listing you create. The best user experience I’m encountering on EV charger station listings is when the listing links to a landing page for the location I’m researching. On the flip side, you may get a ranking boost if you link to the brand’s homepage, instead, due to homepages typically having greater Page Authority than landing pages.

Photos/Videos

Make each listing stand out for customers by adding a few photos of the charger’s location. Given the fact that so many chargers are in vast parking lots, try to take some shots that illustrate the relationship of the station to the largest anchor business near it. This will help orient customers. And, given the newness of EV technology, uploading a video of how to use each type of charger would be extremely helpful to new electric vehicle owners.

Reviews

Looking around the SF Bay area, I couldn’t help noticing how few reviews these entities are receiving, meaning there are easy wins out there for any EV charger brand that makes a concerted review acquisition effort. If you’re building out landing pages on the brand’s website for each charging station locale, include a strong call to action and link to leave a review on Google on these pages. You can also use a free review link generator and then shorten the URL using a service like bitly for text or email-based review requests.

Just don’t ask for reviews in bulk; if you get too many at once, Google may filter them out as suspicious. And never incentivize reviews in any way — it can result in review loss, penalties, and legal actions.

Questions & Answers

Unsurprisingly, EV charging station listings show customers using Google’s Q&A feature to ask about costs and how to use the kiosks. These are leads for the brand and should be answered by the brand, rather than being left up to the public for responses of varying quality. If you’re using Moz Local to manage your listings, the dashboard will alert you each time a new question comes in on any of your listings.

Google Posts

Google Posts are a great way to make a brand stand out from less active competitors by microblogging persuasive content that appears on your listings, but for the typical EV charging brand, this feature is problematic. Google doesn’t allow large chains to post in bulk to their listings. There are some third-party services that facilitate hacks for this scenario.

Listings beyond Google

Google may be your dominant source of local business listings, but don’t hit the brakes there. Moz has mapped out the partners in our location data distribution network that currently support listings for EV charging stations. Talk to us about building your presence in key mapping applications like Apple Maps, search engines like Bing, aggregators like Infogroup, and mobile navigation providers like Navmii. Moz Local can help you get listed on multiple platforms so that potential customers can find your charging station locations via their preferred search methods.

Local search marketing tips for EV charging stations

JP Morgan predicts that EVs and HVs will make up 30% of total vehicle sales in the next five years and Statista estimates there are about 25,000 charging stations in the US. It’s big business, and while the convenience of charging at home can’t be beat, the presence of chargers and superchargers all over cities will do much to increase awareness of the rise of the EV, and to ease the transition away from fossil fuel transportation.

As a resident of California — the state with the most electric vehicles and also the state experiencing some of the worst devastation from Climate Change — every new charging station that pops up on Google Maps is a sign of hope to me. But I’ll be frank; I’m not a “car” person, and despite making a concerted effort over the past couple of years to understand how I could personally transition from a worried, gas-powered driver to a proud EV traveler has taught me that it’s a road paved with countless questions.

And that’s actually good news for EV charging station brands!

Whether you’re marketing EVgo, Blink, Tesla, ChargePoint, or the dozens of other charging solutions, your online marketing strategy is going to hinge on publishing content that solves consumers’ problems by answering their questions. Luckily for your industry, customers’ questions are so abundant that they are paving the way for you to develop absolutely fantastic website content that will support your organic and local rankings over time as you develop authority.

Here’s a simple six-step workflow for getting it right:

1. Survey customers

Making a minor investment in survey tech will let you directly ask the public what they want most from charging stations. Is it speed, location, more ports, better instructions, different payment options? Find out and document your learnings.

2. Analyze industry reviews and questions

Look at the common themes in your online reviews. For example, one thread I see running through the EV charging vertical is complaints about sitting in hot cars for 30+ minutes while charging up. When you think about it, gas stations provide shade at the pumps, though patrons are only there for ten minutes. If your customers are being inconvenienced in the summer heat, would properties permit you to build a canopy, or perhaps even better, plant some native trees to double down on your green goals?

Moz Local will surface the 100 most common words in your reviews for sentiment analysis purposes. Dig deeply into these for content inspiration and structural improvements.

And check out the positive and negative sentiment your competitors’ reviews contain. What is the competition getting wrong that you could get right? If you find opportunities like these, be sure you’re writing about them.

3. Fire up keyword research tools

How do electric car charging stations work?

Where can I charge my electric car?

What is the best EV charging station?

How to find free charging stations

How many miles does a Tesla get per charge?

Are EVgo stations free?

Can I use ChargePoint at EVgo?

What is a level 3 charging station?

Questions truly abound in the EV charging space. Moz Pro Keyword Explorer lets you type in keywords and phrases you feel could be important to the business you’re marketing, and then filter the results to see questions like the ones in my list, above. If you sign up for a free Moz community account, you can make 10 free queries a month or upgrade to a paid account for more robust keyword research.

Other free options include Google’s Ads Keyword Planner and the unpaid version of Answer the Public.

Document your findings so that you have created a list of questions around which you can base content publication.

4. Take a peek at Google Trends

Google Trends will show you interest in topics across time related to EV charging stations, and you can even see this broken out by regions of a country to help you localize your marketing. My glance at this data shows that interest in this subject took a hit when the COVID-19 pandemic emerged but is now steadily rising again. Glean further insights from this tool for topics you should be covering.

5. Analyze the competition

If you have a Moz Pro account, you can use Moz’s On-Page Grader feature not just to look at pages on your own website to see how to improve their optimization, but also to analyze what your competition is getting right and wrong. If you can find weaknesses in the strategy of a tough competitor, you can go one better with the actionable optimization tips On-Page Grader provides.

Look carefully at what your competitors are writing about on their websites and social accounts. If they’re covering a topic your keyword research hasn’t surfaced, note it down.

6. Get writing!

Now, take the list of questions and keyword phrases you’ve discovered, group them by topics, and begin creating pages for them on your website, or posts on the brand’s blog, providing answers. Some pages may be short, and others may be long — the rule of thumb is simply to cover each question thoroughly. You may find that some topics are best answered via other media, like short videos. That’s great, if you can produce them, but don’t forget to provide written transcripts.

Your findings can also fuel your social media posting, your Google posts, and provide the top FAQs you can ask and answer via Google Questions & Answers on your Google Business Profiles.

Finally, remember that marketing requires active promotion. Don’t just let your content sit on your website hoping someone will arrive to read it. Actively promote your best pieces via social media, to local print and online media journalists, and in local community hubs, like neighborhood websites and hyperlocal blogs. Work to build real relationships in the cities where you’re marketing your charging station locations so that you are always increasing awareness of your brand’s commitment to making towns and cities better places to live.

Have questions? Ask me in the comments. I’m personally rooting for the rapid spread of EV charging stations across the US and around the world, and if you’re marketing this model, I’d love to hear from you!

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

[nutrifami]

Local SEO Tips for Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

Posted by MiriamEllis

Some business models exist in the ditches of Google’s information highways, belonging in local search results, but not well addressed by the official guidelines. Electric vehicle (EV) charging stations exemplify this: They’re all over local packs, finders, and maps, but their models is a bit unusual, and Google has yet to update the guidelines to show exactly how to represent them in the Google My Business setting.

Today, we’ll pull together our own set of EV charging station best practices — based on Google’s rules for similar enterprises — and throw a few free local search marketing tips into the trunk as well.

How to handle your EV charging station Google My Business listings

Whether you’re an owner, in-house marketer, or agency staffer who’s been tasked with promoting a fleet of EV charging stations online, having a presence in Google’s local search results — including local packs, local finders, Google Business Profiles, and Google Maps — should be core to your digital strategy.

While Google’s helpful guidelines don’t specifically address EV charging stations, proof that they’re eligible for inclusion can be seen in the extra special features and categories Google has released for these models. For example, the above screenshot shows the charger icons, charger type designations, and wattage displays in the local results. In the US and UK, Google displays live charger availability data for some networks for consumer convenience. Even the map pins have special icons in them for EV charging stations.

Google definitely knows about them, and wants this industry to get listed.

If you’ve never set up a GMB listing before, Google’s own resources will walk you through the process of filling out and validating a profile for an individual location, but EV charging station marketers are most likely dealing with many locations at once. If you need to get 10 or more locations listed, you’ll be using Google’s bulk upload functionality, instead. You’ll also want to go for bulk verification of these large batches of listings.

But before you get started, here’s special guidance for handling some of the major fields you’ll be filling out for any EV charging station you’re marketing.

Business title

Google wants you to fill out this field with the exact name of the business as it appears in the real world. The majority of the listings I looked at in this sector were adding the words “charging station” to their brand name, which technically violates Google’s guidelines. Just as gas stations are supposed to list themselves as “Shell” or “Valero”, EV charging stations wanting to stick scrupulously to the guidelines should just be “EVgo” or “ChargePoint”.

According to the guidelines, Google wouldn’t want listings entitled “Shell Gas Station” or “EVgo Charging Station”, any more than they’d want “McDonald’s Fast Food Restaurant” or “Macy’s Department Store.”

But now for a home truth: Google says you’re only supposed to put your real-world brand in these titles, but they don’t take much action on enforcing this guideline, and having keywords in the business title that match search language is strongly believed to improve local rankings. So, if you adhere to the guidelines and remove “charging station” from your business titles, your rankings may decrease. This weighting of keywords in the business title is a longstanding issue Google needs to resolve.

Frankly, I think having the words “charging station” in the listing title might actually help users who are just now becoming accustomed to emergent EV technology and trying to understand where to get charged up, but my common sense and Google’s policies are often at odds.

Keep your business title free of other extraneous information like location information, or adjectives like “cheapest” or “best”.

Address

It’s a dominant trend for EV charging stations to be located in the parking lots of busy public spaces, like shopping centers, railroad stations, and business parks. Typically, to be eligible for a GMB listing, a business has to have its own address, but a look at Google’s local search engine results (including Google Maps) shows charging stations being permitted to use the address of the public space. For example, an EV charging station in a strip mall near me is using the same address as the Target that anchors the shopping center.

Additionally, businesses that host a charging station are allowed to have a link on their listings publicizing this feature.

Also related to address, many EV Charging stations will find details on their listings that describe them as “located in” a public space. If the “located in” descriptor is wrong, look up the business on google.com/maps, click the “suggest an edit” button, and try to edit the information in this field:

If you see no correction within a couple of weeks of taking this action, contact Google My Business support and explain what’s going on.

Phone number

We’ll take our cue here from Google’s requirements of ATMs and kiosks. As I previously covered in my column on local product kiosks, the EV charging stations you’re marketing need a customer support phone number.

Again, this is one of those unusual grey areas. Normally, it’s standard advice for each location of a business to have a unique phone number. But, for EV charging stations, this obviously isn’t practical. Rather, be sure your listings have your help hotline number for customer service needs.

A word to the wise: Google has sometimes been prone to conflating listings with too-similar information. Having dozens, hundreds, or thousands of listings with the same brand AND phone number on them could potentially result in the accidental creation of duplicate listings. Large, multi-listing enterprises like EV charging brands might want to check out the automated duplicate detection and resolution services offered by Moz Local so that pesky duplicates aren’t interfering with listings management, visibility goals, and consumer direction.

Category

“Electric vehicle charging station” is the proper primary category for you, and my search through listings and GMB category databases is only finding one other related category, “electric vehicle charging station contractor” which may or may not be relevant to the business you’re marketing.

Hours of operation

Google’s guidelines state that gas stations should list the hours of operation that their pumps are available, and for most EV charging stations, this would presumably be 24 hours a day. As stated above, you’ll probably be uploading your data to Google via a bulk upload spreadsheet and the proper configuration for indicating 24-hours-a-day in the spreadsheet is 12:00AM-12:00AM.

URL

You’ll be allowed to include a website link on each listing you create. The best user experience I’m encountering on EV charger station listings is when the listing links to a landing page for the location I’m researching. On the flip side, you may get a ranking boost if you link to the brand’s homepage, instead, due to homepages typically having greater Page Authority than landing pages.

Photos/Videos

Make each listing stand out for customers by adding a few photos of the charger’s location. Given the fact that so many chargers are in vast parking lots, try to take some shots that illustrate the relationship of the station to the largest anchor business near it. This will help orient customers. And, given the newness of EV technology, uploading a video of how to use each type of charger would be extremely helpful to new electric vehicle owners.

Reviews

Looking around the SF Bay area, I couldn’t help noticing how few reviews these entities are receiving, meaning there are easy wins out there for any EV charger brand that makes a concerted review acquisition effort. If you’re building out landing pages on the brand’s website for each charging station locale, include a strong call to action and link to leave a review on Google on these pages. You can also use a free review link generator and then shorten the URL using a service like bitly for text or email-based review requests.

Just don’t ask for reviews in bulk; if you get too many at once, Google may filter them out as suspicious. And never incentivize reviews in any way — it can result in review loss, penalties, and legal actions.

Questions & Answers

Unsurprisingly, EV charging station listings show customers using Google’s Q&A feature to ask about costs and how to use the kiosks. These are leads for the brand and should be answered by the brand, rather than being left up to the public for responses of varying quality. If you’re using Moz Local to manage your listings, the dashboard will alert you each time a new question comes in on any of your listings.

Google Posts

Google Posts are a great way to make a brand stand out from less active competitors by microblogging persuasive content that appears on your listings, but for the typical EV charging brand, this feature is problematic. Google doesn’t allow large chains to post in bulk to their listings. There are some third-party services that facilitate hacks for this scenario.

Listings beyond Google

Google may be your dominant source of local business listings, but don’t hit the brakes there. Moz has mapped out the partners in our location data distribution network that currently support listings for EV charging stations. Talk to us about building your presence in key mapping applications like Apple Maps, search engines like Bing, aggregators like Infogroup, and mobile navigation providers like Navmii. Moz Local can help you get listed on multiple platforms so that potential customers can find your charging station locations via their preferred search methods.

Local search marketing tips for EV charging stations

JP Morgan predicts that EVs and HVs will make up 30% of total vehicle sales in the next five years and Statista estimates there are about 25,000 charging stations in the US. It’s big business, and while the convenience of charging at home can’t be beat, the presence of chargers and superchargers all over cities will do much to increase awareness of the rise of the EV, and to ease the transition away from fossil fuel transportation.

As a resident of California — the state with the most electric vehicles and also the state experiencing some of the worst devastation from Climate Change — every new charging station that pops up on Google Maps is a sign of hope to me. But I’ll be frank; I’m not a “car” person, and despite making a concerted effort over the past couple of years to understand how I could personally transition from a worried, gas-powered driver to a proud EV traveler has taught me that it’s a road paved with countless questions.

And that’s actually good news for EV charging station brands!

Whether you’re marketing EVgo, Blink, Tesla, ChargePoint, or the dozens of other charging solutions, your online marketing strategy is going to hinge on publishing content that solves consumers’ problems by answering their questions. Luckily for your industry, customers’ questions are so abundant that they are paving the way for you to develop absolutely fantastic website content that will support your organic and local rankings over time as you develop authority.

Here’s a simple six-step workflow for getting it right:

1. Survey customers

Making a minor investment in survey tech will let you directly ask the public what they want most from charging stations. Is it speed, location, more ports, better instructions, different payment options? Find out and document your learnings.

2. Analyze industry reviews and questions

Look at the common themes in your online reviews. For example, one thread I see running through the EV charging vertical is complaints about sitting in hot cars for 30+ minutes while charging up. When you think about it, gas stations provide shade at the pumps, though patrons are only there for ten minutes. If your customers are being inconvenienced in the summer heat, would properties permit you to build a canopy, or perhaps even better, plant some native trees to double down on your green goals?

Moz Local will surface the 100 most common words in your reviews for sentiment analysis purposes. Dig deeply into these for content inspiration and structural improvements.

And check out the positive and negative sentiment your competitors’ reviews contain. What is the competition getting wrong that you could get right? If you find opportunities like these, be sure you’re writing about them.

3. Fire up keyword research tools

How do electric car charging stations work?

Where can I charge my electric car?

What is the best EV charging station?

How to find free charging stations

How many miles does a Tesla get per charge?

Are EVgo stations free?

Can I use ChargePoint at EVgo?

What is a level 3 charging station?

Questions truly abound in the EV charging space. Moz Pro Keyword Explorer lets you type in keywords and phrases you feel could be important to the business you’re marketing, and then filter the results to see questions like the ones in my list, above. If you sign up for a free Moz community account, you can make 10 free queries a month or upgrade to a paid account for more robust keyword research.

Other free options include Google’s Ads Keyword Planner and the unpaid version of Answer the Public.

Document your findings so that you have created a list of questions around which you can base content publication.

4. Take a peek at Google Trends

Google Trends will show you interest in topics across time related to EV charging stations, and you can even see this broken out by regions of a country to help you localize your marketing. My glance at this data shows that interest in this subject took a hit when the COVID-19 pandemic emerged but is now steadily rising again. Glean further insights from this tool for topics you should be covering.

5. Analyze the competition

If you have a Moz Pro account, you can use Moz’s On-Page Grader feature not just to look at pages on your own website to see how to improve their optimization, but also to analyze what your competition is getting right and wrong. If you can find weaknesses in the strategy of a tough competitor, you can go one better with the actionable optimization tips On-Page Grader provides.

Look carefully at what your competitors are writing about on their websites and social accounts. If they’re covering a topic your keyword research hasn’t surfaced, note it down.

6. Get writing!

Now, take the list of questions and keyword phrases you’ve discovered, group them by topics, and begin creating pages for them on your website, or posts on the brand’s blog, providing answers. Some pages may be short, and others may be long — the rule of thumb is simply to cover each question thoroughly. You may find that some topics are best answered via other media, like short videos. That’s great, if you can produce them, but don’t forget to provide written transcripts.

Your findings can also fuel your social media posting, your Google posts, and provide the top FAQs you can ask and answer via Google Questions & Answers on your Google Business Profiles.

Finally, remember that marketing requires active promotion. Don’t just let your content sit on your website hoping someone will arrive to read it. Actively promote your best pieces via social media, to local print and online media journalists, and in local community hubs, like neighborhood websites and hyperlocal blogs. Work to build real relationships in the cities where you’re marketing your charging station locations so that you are always increasing awareness of your brand’s commitment to making towns and cities better places to live.

Have questions? Ask me in the comments. I’m personally rooting for the rapid spread of EV charging stations across the US and around the world, and if you’re marketing this model, I’d love to hear from you!

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

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Local SEO Tips for Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

Posted by MiriamEllis

Some business models exist in the ditches of Google’s information highways, belonging in local search results, but not well addressed by the official guidelines. Electric vehicle (EV) charging stations exemplify this: They’re all over local packs, finders, and maps, but their models is a bit unusual, and Google has yet to update the guidelines to show exactly how to represent them in the Google My Business setting.

Today, we’ll pull together our own set of EV charging station best practices — based on Google’s rules for similar enterprises — and throw a few free local search marketing tips into the trunk as well.

How to handle your EV charging station Google My Business listings

Whether you’re an owner, in-house marketer, or agency staffer who’s been tasked with promoting a fleet of EV charging stations online, having a presence in Google’s local search results — including local packs, local finders, Google Business Profiles, and Google Maps — should be core to your digital strategy.

While Google’s helpful guidelines don’t specifically address EV charging stations, proof that they’re eligible for inclusion can be seen in the extra special features and categories Google has released for these models. For example, the above screenshot shows the charger icons, charger type designations, and wattage displays in the local results. In the US and UK, Google displays live charger availability data for some networks for consumer convenience. Even the map pins have special icons in them for EV charging stations.

Google definitely knows about them, and wants this industry to get listed.

If you’ve never set up a GMB listing before, Google’s own resources will walk you through the process of filling out and validating a profile for an individual location, but EV charging station marketers are most likely dealing with many locations at once. If you need to get 10 or more locations listed, you’ll be using Google’s bulk upload functionality, instead. You’ll also want to go for bulk verification of these large batches of listings.

But before you get started, here’s special guidance for handling some of the major fields you’ll be filling out for any EV charging station you’re marketing.

Business title

Google wants you to fill out this field with the exact name of the business as it appears in the real world. The majority of the listings I looked at in this sector were adding the words “charging station” to their brand name, which technically violates Google’s guidelines. Just as gas stations are supposed to list themselves as “Shell” or “Valero”, EV charging stations wanting to stick scrupulously to the guidelines should just be “EVgo” or “ChargePoint”.

According to the guidelines, Google wouldn’t want listings entitled “Shell Gas Station” or “EVgo Charging Station”, any more than they’d want “McDonald’s Fast Food Restaurant” or “Macy’s Department Store.”

But now for a home truth: Google says you’re only supposed to put your real-world brand in these titles, but they don’t take much action on enforcing this guideline, and having keywords in the business title that match search language is strongly believed to improve local rankings. So, if you adhere to the guidelines and remove “charging station” from your business titles, your rankings may decrease. This weighting of keywords in the business title is a longstanding issue Google needs to resolve.

Frankly, I think having the words “charging station” in the listing title might actually help users who are just now becoming accustomed to emergent EV technology and trying to understand where to get charged up, but my common sense and Google’s policies are often at odds.

Keep your business title free of other extraneous information like location information, or adjectives like “cheapest” or “best”.

Address

It’s a dominant trend for EV charging stations to be located in the parking lots of busy public spaces, like shopping centers, railroad stations, and business parks. Typically, to be eligible for a GMB listing, a business has to have its own address, but a look at Google’s local search engine results (including Google Maps) shows charging stations being permitted to use the address of the public space. For example, an EV charging station in a strip mall near me is using the same address as the Target that anchors the shopping center.

Additionally, businesses that host a charging station are allowed to have a link on their listings publicizing this feature.

Also related to address, many EV Charging stations will find details on their listings that describe them as “located in” a public space. If the “located in” descriptor is wrong, look up the business on google.com/maps, click the “suggest an edit” button, and try to edit the information in this field:

If you see no correction within a couple of weeks of taking this action, contact Google My Business support and explain what’s going on.

Phone number

We’ll take our cue here from Google’s requirements of ATMs and kiosks. As I previously covered in my column on local product kiosks, the EV charging stations you’re marketing need a customer support phone number.

Again, this is one of those unusual grey areas. Normally, it’s standard advice for each location of a business to have a unique phone number. But, for EV charging stations, this obviously isn’t practical. Rather, be sure your listings have your help hotline number for customer service needs.

A word to the wise: Google has sometimes been prone to conflating listings with too-similar information. Having dozens, hundreds, or thousands of listings with the same brand AND phone number on them could potentially result in the accidental creation of duplicate listings. Large, multi-listing enterprises like EV charging brands might want to check out the automated duplicate detection and resolution services offered by Moz Local so that pesky duplicates aren’t interfering with listings management, visibility goals, and consumer direction.

Category

“Electric vehicle charging station” is the proper primary category for you, and my search through listings and GMB category databases is only finding one other related category, “electric vehicle charging station contractor” which may or may not be relevant to the business you’re marketing.

Hours of operation

Google’s guidelines state that gas stations should list the hours of operation that their pumps are available, and for most EV charging stations, this would presumably be 24 hours a day. As stated above, you’ll probably be uploading your data to Google via a bulk upload spreadsheet and the proper configuration for indicating 24-hours-a-day in the spreadsheet is 12:00AM-12:00AM.

URL

You’ll be allowed to include a website link on each listing you create. The best user experience I’m encountering on EV charger station listings is when the listing links to a landing page for the location I’m researching. On the flip side, you may get a ranking boost if you link to the brand’s homepage, instead, due to homepages typically having greater Page Authority than landing pages.

Photos/Videos

Make each listing stand out for customers by adding a few photos of the charger’s location. Given the fact that so many chargers are in vast parking lots, try to take some shots that illustrate the relationship of the station to the largest anchor business near it. This will help orient customers. And, given the newness of EV technology, uploading a video of how to use each type of charger would be extremely helpful to new electric vehicle owners.

Reviews

Looking around the SF Bay area, I couldn’t help noticing how few reviews these entities are receiving, meaning there are easy wins out there for any EV charger brand that makes a concerted review acquisition effort. If you’re building out landing pages on the brand’s website for each charging station locale, include a strong call to action and link to leave a review on Google on these pages. You can also use a free review link generator and then shorten the URL using a service like bitly for text or email-based review requests.

Just don’t ask for reviews in bulk; if you get too many at once, Google may filter them out as suspicious. And never incentivize reviews in any way — it can result in review loss, penalties, and legal actions.

Questions & Answers

Unsurprisingly, EV charging station listings show customers using Google’s Q&A feature to ask about costs and how to use the kiosks. These are leads for the brand and should be answered by the brand, rather than being left up to the public for responses of varying quality. If you’re using Moz Local to manage your listings, the dashboard will alert you each time a new question comes in on any of your listings.

Google Posts

Google Posts are a great way to make a brand stand out from less active competitors by microblogging persuasive content that appears on your listings, but for the typical EV charging brand, this feature is problematic. Google doesn’t allow large chains to post in bulk to their listings. There are some third-party services that facilitate hacks for this scenario.

Listings beyond Google

Google may be your dominant source of local business listings, but don’t hit the brakes there. Moz has mapped out the partners in our location data distribution network that currently support listings for EV charging stations. Talk to us about building your presence in key mapping applications like Apple Maps, search engines like Bing, aggregators like Infogroup, and mobile navigation providers like Navmii. Moz Local can help you get listed on multiple platforms so that potential customers can find your charging station locations via their preferred search methods.

Local search marketing tips for EV charging stations

JP Morgan predicts that EVs and HVs will make up 30% of total vehicle sales in the next five years and Statista estimates there are about 25,000 charging stations in the US. It’s big business, and while the convenience of charging at home can’t be beat, the presence of chargers and superchargers all over cities will do much to increase awareness of the rise of the EV, and to ease the transition away from fossil fuel transportation.

As a resident of California — the state with the most electric vehicles and also the state experiencing some of the worst devastation from Climate Change — every new charging station that pops up on Google Maps is a sign of hope to me. But I’ll be frank; I’m not a “car” person, and despite making a concerted effort over the past couple of years to understand how I could personally transition from a worried, gas-powered driver to a proud EV traveler has taught me that it’s a road paved with countless questions.

And that’s actually good news for EV charging station brands!

Whether you’re marketing EVgo, Blink, Tesla, ChargePoint, or the dozens of other charging solutions, your online marketing strategy is going to hinge on publishing content that solves consumers’ problems by answering their questions. Luckily for your industry, customers’ questions are so abundant that they are paving the way for you to develop absolutely fantastic website content that will support your organic and local rankings over time as you develop authority.

Here’s a simple six-step workflow for getting it right:

1. Survey customers

Making a minor investment in survey tech will let you directly ask the public what they want most from charging stations. Is it speed, location, more ports, better instructions, different payment options? Find out and document your learnings.

2. Analyze industry reviews and questions

Look at the common themes in your online reviews. For example, one thread I see running through the EV charging vertical is complaints about sitting in hot cars for 30+ minutes while charging up. When you think about it, gas stations provide shade at the pumps, though patrons are only there for ten minutes. If your customers are being inconvenienced in the summer heat, would properties permit you to build a canopy, or perhaps even better, plant some native trees to double down on your green goals?

Moz Local will surface the 100 most common words in your reviews for sentiment analysis purposes. Dig deeply into these for content inspiration and structural improvements.

And check out the positive and negative sentiment your competitors’ reviews contain. What is the competition getting wrong that you could get right? If you find opportunities like these, be sure you’re writing about them.

3. Fire up keyword research tools

How do electric car charging stations work?

Where can I charge my electric car?

What is the best EV charging station?

How to find free charging stations

How many miles does a Tesla get per charge?

Are EVgo stations free?

Can I use ChargePoint at EVgo?

What is a level 3 charging station?

Questions truly abound in the EV charging space. Moz Pro Keyword Explorer lets you type in keywords and phrases you feel could be important to the business you’re marketing, and then filter the results to see questions like the ones in my list, above. If you sign up for a free Moz community account, you can make 10 free queries a month or upgrade to a paid account for more robust keyword research.

Other free options include Google’s Ads Keyword Planner and the unpaid version of Answer the Public.

Document your findings so that you have created a list of questions around which you can base content publication.

4. Take a peek at Google Trends

Google Trends will show you interest in topics across time related to EV charging stations, and you can even see this broken out by regions of a country to help you localize your marketing. My glance at this data shows that interest in this subject took a hit when the COVID-19 pandemic emerged but is now steadily rising again. Glean further insights from this tool for topics you should be covering.

5. Analyze the competition

If you have a Moz Pro account, you can use Moz’s On-Page Grader feature not just to look at pages on your own website to see how to improve their optimization, but also to analyze what your competition is getting right and wrong. If you can find weaknesses in the strategy of a tough competitor, you can go one better with the actionable optimization tips On-Page Grader provides.

Look carefully at what your competitors are writing about on their websites and social accounts. If they’re covering a topic your keyword research hasn’t surfaced, note it down.

6. Get writing!

Now, take the list of questions and keyword phrases you’ve discovered, group them by topics, and begin creating pages for them on your website, or posts on the brand’s blog, providing answers. Some pages may be short, and others may be long — the rule of thumb is simply to cover each question thoroughly. You may find that some topics are best answered via other media, like short videos. That’s great, if you can produce them, but don’t forget to provide written transcripts.

Your findings can also fuel your social media posting, your Google posts, and provide the top FAQs you can ask and answer via Google Questions & Answers on your Google Business Profiles.

Finally, remember that marketing requires active promotion. Don’t just let your content sit on your website hoping someone will arrive to read it. Actively promote your best pieces via social media, to local print and online media journalists, and in local community hubs, like neighborhood websites and hyperlocal blogs. Work to build real relationships in the cities where you’re marketing your charging station locations so that you are always increasing awareness of your brand’s commitment to making towns and cities better places to live.

Have questions? Ask me in the comments. I’m personally rooting for the rapid spread of EV charging stations across the US and around the world, and if you’re marketing this model, I’d love to hear from you!

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

[ductrungnguyen87]

Local SEO Tips for Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

Posted by MiriamEllis

Some business models exist in the ditches of Google’s information highways, belonging in local search results, but not well addressed by the official guidelines. Electric vehicle (EV) charging stations exemplify this: They’re all over local packs, finders, and maps, but their models is a bit unusual, and Google has yet to update the guidelines to show exactly how to represent them in the Google My Business setting.

Today, we’ll pull together our own set of EV charging station best practices — based on Google’s rules for similar enterprises — and throw a few free local search marketing tips into the trunk as well.

How to handle your EV charging station Google My Business listings

Whether you’re an owner, in-house marketer, or agency staffer who’s been tasked with promoting a fleet of EV charging stations online, having a presence in Google’s local search results — including local packs, local finders, Google Business Profiles, and Google Maps — should be core to your digital strategy.

While Google’s helpful guidelines don’t specifically address EV charging stations, proof that they’re eligible for inclusion can be seen in the extra special features and categories Google has released for these models. For example, the above screenshot shows the charger icons, charger type designations, and wattage displays in the local results. In the US and UK, Google displays live charger availability data for some networks for consumer convenience. Even the map pins have special icons in them for EV charging stations.

Google definitely knows about them, and wants this industry to get listed.

If you’ve never set up a GMB listing before, Google’s own resources will walk you through the process of filling out and validating a profile for an individual location, but EV charging station marketers are most likely dealing with many locations at once. If you need to get 10 or more locations listed, you’ll be using Google’s bulk upload functionality, instead. You’ll also want to go for bulk verification of these large batches of listings.

But before you get started, here’s special guidance for handling some of the major fields you’ll be filling out for any EV charging station you’re marketing.

Business title

Google wants you to fill out this field with the exact name of the business as it appears in the real world. The majority of the listings I looked at in this sector were adding the words “charging station” to their brand name, which technically violates Google’s guidelines. Just as gas stations are supposed to list themselves as “Shell” or “Valero”, EV charging stations wanting to stick scrupulously to the guidelines should just be “EVgo” or “ChargePoint”.

According to the guidelines, Google wouldn’t want listings entitled “Shell Gas Station” or “EVgo Charging Station”, any more than they’d want “McDonald’s Fast Food Restaurant” or “Macy’s Department Store.”

But now for a home truth: Google says you’re only supposed to put your real-world brand in these titles, but they don’t take much action on enforcing this guideline, and having keywords in the business title that match search language is strongly believed to improve local rankings. So, if you adhere to the guidelines and remove “charging station” from your business titles, your rankings may decrease. This weighting of keywords in the business title is a longstanding issue Google needs to resolve.

Frankly, I think having the words “charging station” in the listing title might actually help users who are just now becoming accustomed to emergent EV technology and trying to understand where to get charged up, but my common sense and Google’s policies are often at odds.

Keep your business title free of other extraneous information like location information, or adjectives like “cheapest” or “best”.

Address

It’s a dominant trend for EV charging stations to be located in the parking lots of busy public spaces, like shopping centers, railroad stations, and business parks. Typically, to be eligible for a GMB listing, a business has to have its own address, but a look at Google’s local search engine results (including Google Maps) shows charging stations being permitted to use the address of the public space. For example, an EV charging station in a strip mall near me is using the same address as the Target that anchors the shopping center.

Additionally, businesses that host a charging station are allowed to have a link on their listings publicizing this feature.

Also related to address, many EV Charging stations will find details on their listings that describe them as “located in” a public space. If the “located in” descriptor is wrong, look up the business on google.com/maps, click the “suggest an edit” button, and try to edit the information in this field:

If you see no correction within a couple of weeks of taking this action, contact Google My Business support and explain what’s going on.

Phone number

We’ll take our cue here from Google’s requirements of ATMs and kiosks. As I previously covered in my column on local product kiosks, the EV charging stations you’re marketing need a customer support phone number.

Again, this is one of those unusual grey areas. Normally, it’s standard advice for each location of a business to have a unique phone number. But, for EV charging stations, this obviously isn’t practical. Rather, be sure your listings have your help hotline number for customer service needs.

A word to the wise: Google has sometimes been prone to conflating listings with too-similar information. Having dozens, hundreds, or thousands of listings with the same brand AND phone number on them could potentially result in the accidental creation of duplicate listings. Large, multi-listing enterprises like EV charging brands might want to check out the automated duplicate detection and resolution services offered by Moz Local so that pesky duplicates aren’t interfering with listings management, visibility goals, and consumer direction.

Category

“Electric vehicle charging station” is the proper primary category for you, and my search through listings and GMB category databases is only finding one other related category, “electric vehicle charging station contractor” which may or may not be relevant to the business you’re marketing.

Hours of operation

Google’s guidelines state that gas stations should list the hours of operation that their pumps are available, and for most EV charging stations, this would presumably be 24 hours a day. As stated above, you’ll probably be uploading your data to Google via a bulk upload spreadsheet and the proper configuration for indicating 24-hours-a-day in the spreadsheet is 12:00AM-12:00AM.

URL

You’ll be allowed to include a website link on each listing you create. The best user experience I’m encountering on EV charger station listings is when the listing links to a landing page for the location I’m researching. On the flip side, you may get a ranking boost if you link to the brand’s homepage, instead, due to homepages typically having greater Page Authority than landing pages.

Photos/Videos

Make each listing stand out for customers by adding a few photos of the charger’s location. Given the fact that so many chargers are in vast parking lots, try to take some shots that illustrate the relationship of the station to the largest anchor business near it. This will help orient customers. And, given the newness of EV technology, uploading a video of how to use each type of charger would be extremely helpful to new electric vehicle owners.

Reviews

Looking around the SF Bay area, I couldn’t help noticing how few reviews these entities are receiving, meaning there are easy wins out there for any EV charger brand that makes a concerted review acquisition effort. If you’re building out landing pages on the brand’s website for each charging station locale, include a strong call to action and link to leave a review on Google on these pages. You can also use a free review link generator and then shorten the URL using a service like bitly for text or email-based review requests.

Just don’t ask for reviews in bulk; if you get too many at once, Google may filter them out as suspicious. And never incentivize reviews in any way — it can result in review loss, penalties, and legal actions.

Questions & Answers

Unsurprisingly, EV charging station listings show customers using Google’s Q&A feature to ask about costs and how to use the kiosks. These are leads for the brand and should be answered by the brand, rather than being left up to the public for responses of varying quality. If you’re using Moz Local to manage your listings, the dashboard will alert you each time a new question comes in on any of your listings.

Google Posts

Google Posts are a great way to make a brand stand out from less active competitors by microblogging persuasive content that appears on your listings, but for the typical EV charging brand, this feature is problematic. Google doesn’t allow large chains to post in bulk to their listings. There are some third-party services that facilitate hacks for this scenario.

Listings beyond Google

Google may be your dominant source of local business listings, but don’t hit the brakes there. Moz has mapped out the partners in our location data distribution network that currently support listings for EV charging stations. Talk to us about building your presence in key mapping applications like Apple Maps, search engines like Bing, aggregators like Infogroup, and mobile navigation providers like Navmii. Moz Local can help you get listed on multiple platforms so that potential customers can find your charging station locations via their preferred search methods.

Local search marketing tips for EV charging stations

JP Morgan predicts that EVs and HVs will make up 30% of total vehicle sales in the next five years and Statista estimates there are about 25,000 charging stations in the US. It’s big business, and while the convenience of charging at home can’t be beat, the presence of chargers and superchargers all over cities will do much to increase awareness of the rise of the EV, and to ease the transition away from fossil fuel transportation.

As a resident of California — the state with the most electric vehicles and also the state experiencing some of the worst devastation from Climate Change — every new charging station that pops up on Google Maps is a sign of hope to me. But I’ll be frank; I’m not a “car” person, and despite making a concerted effort over the past couple of years to understand how I could personally transition from a worried, gas-powered driver to a proud EV traveler has taught me that it’s a road paved with countless questions.

And that’s actually good news for EV charging station brands!

Whether you’re marketing EVgo, Blink, Tesla, ChargePoint, or the dozens of other charging solutions, your online marketing strategy is going to hinge on publishing content that solves consumers’ problems by answering their questions. Luckily for your industry, customers’ questions are so abundant that they are paving the way for you to develop absolutely fantastic website content that will support your organic and local rankings over time as you develop authority.

Here’s a simple six-step workflow for getting it right:

1. Survey customers

Making a minor investment in survey tech will let you directly ask the public what they want most from charging stations. Is it speed, location, more ports, better instructions, different payment options? Find out and document your learnings.

2. Analyze industry reviews and questions

Look at the common themes in your online reviews. For example, one thread I see running through the EV charging vertical is complaints about sitting in hot cars for 30+ minutes while charging up. When you think about it, gas stations provide shade at the pumps, though patrons are only there for ten minutes. If your customers are being inconvenienced in the summer heat, would properties permit you to build a canopy, or perhaps even better, plant some native trees to double down on your green goals?

Moz Local will surface the 100 most common words in your reviews for sentiment analysis purposes. Dig deeply into these for content inspiration and structural improvements.

And check out the positive and negative sentiment your competitors’ reviews contain. What is the competition getting wrong that you could get right? If you find opportunities like these, be sure you’re writing about them.

3. Fire up keyword research tools

How do electric car charging stations work?

Where can I charge my electric car?

What is the best EV charging station?

How to find free charging stations

How many miles does a Tesla get per charge?

Are EVgo stations free?

Can I use ChargePoint at EVgo?

What is a level 3 charging station?

Questions truly abound in the EV charging space. Moz Pro Keyword Explorer lets you type in keywords and phrases you feel could be important to the business you’re marketing, and then filter the results to see questions like the ones in my list, above. If you sign up for a free Moz community account, you can make 10 free queries a month or upgrade to a paid account for more robust keyword research.

Other free options include Google’s Ads Keyword Planner and the unpaid version of Answer the Public.

Document your findings so that you have created a list of questions around which you can base content publication.

4. Take a peek at Google Trends

Google Trends will show you interest in topics across time related to EV charging stations, and you can even see this broken out by regions of a country to help you localize your marketing. My glance at this data shows that interest in this subject took a hit when the COVID-19 pandemic emerged but is now steadily rising again. Glean further insights from this tool for topics you should be covering.

5. Analyze the competition

If you have a Moz Pro account, you can use Moz’s On-Page Grader feature not just to look at pages on your own website to see how to improve their optimization, but also to analyze what your competition is getting right and wrong. If you can find weaknesses in the strategy of a tough competitor, you can go one better with the actionable optimization tips On-Page Grader provides.

Look carefully at what your competitors are writing about on their websites and social accounts. If they’re covering a topic your keyword research hasn’t surfaced, note it down.

6. Get writing!

Now, take the list of questions and keyword phrases you’ve discovered, group them by topics, and begin creating pages for them on your website, or posts on the brand’s blog, providing answers. Some pages may be short, and others may be long — the rule of thumb is simply to cover each question thoroughly. You may find that some topics are best answered via other media, like short videos. That’s great, if you can produce them, but don’t forget to provide written transcripts.

Your findings can also fuel your social media posting, your Google posts, and provide the top FAQs you can ask and answer via Google Questions & Answers on your Google Business Profiles.

Finally, remember that marketing requires active promotion. Don’t just let your content sit on your website hoping someone will arrive to read it. Actively promote your best pieces via social media, to local print and online media journalists, and in local community hubs, like neighborhood websites and hyperlocal blogs. Work to build real relationships in the cities where you’re marketing your charging station locations so that you are always increasing awareness of your brand’s commitment to making towns and cities better places to live.

Have questions? Ask me in the comments. I’m personally rooting for the rapid spread of EV charging stations across the US and around the world, and if you’re marketing this model, I’d love to hear from you!

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

[camerasieunhovn]

Local SEO Tips for Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

Posted by MiriamEllis

Some business models exist in the ditches of Google’s information highways, belonging in local search results, but not well addressed by the official guidelines. Electric vehicle (EV) charging stations exemplify this: They’re all over local packs, finders, and maps, but their models is a bit unusual, and Google has yet to update the guidelines to show exactly how to represent them in the Google My Business setting.

Today, we’ll pull together our own set of EV charging station best practices — based on Google’s rules for similar enterprises — and throw a few free local search marketing tips into the trunk as well.

How to handle your EV charging station Google My Business listings

Whether you’re an owner, in-house marketer, or agency staffer who’s been tasked with promoting a fleet of EV charging stations online, having a presence in Google’s local search results — including local packs, local finders, Google Business Profiles, and Google Maps — should be core to your digital strategy.

While Google’s helpful guidelines don’t specifically address EV charging stations, proof that they’re eligible for inclusion can be seen in the extra special features and categories Google has released for these models. For example, the above screenshot shows the charger icons, charger type designations, and wattage displays in the local results. In the US and UK, Google displays live charger availability data for some networks for consumer convenience. Even the map pins have special icons in them for EV charging stations.

Google definitely knows about them, and wants this industry to get listed.

If you’ve never set up a GMB listing before, Google’s own resources will walk you through the process of filling out and validating a profile for an individual location, but EV charging station marketers are most likely dealing with many locations at once. If you need to get 10 or more locations listed, you’ll be using Google’s bulk upload functionality, instead. You’ll also want to go for bulk verification of these large batches of listings.

But before you get started, here’s special guidance for handling some of the major fields you’ll be filling out for any EV charging station you’re marketing.

Business title

Google wants you to fill out this field with the exact name of the business as it appears in the real world. The majority of the listings I looked at in this sector were adding the words “charging station” to their brand name, which technically violates Google’s guidelines. Just as gas stations are supposed to list themselves as “Shell” or “Valero”, EV charging stations wanting to stick scrupulously to the guidelines should just be “EVgo” or “ChargePoint”.

According to the guidelines, Google wouldn’t want listings entitled “Shell Gas Station” or “EVgo Charging Station”, any more than they’d want “McDonald’s Fast Food Restaurant” or “Macy’s Department Store.”

But now for a home truth: Google says you’re only supposed to put your real-world brand in these titles, but they don’t take much action on enforcing this guideline, and having keywords in the business title that match search language is strongly believed to improve local rankings. So, if you adhere to the guidelines and remove “charging station” from your business titles, your rankings may decrease. This weighting of keywords in the business title is a longstanding issue Google needs to resolve.

Frankly, I think having the words “charging station” in the listing title might actually help users who are just now becoming accustomed to emergent EV technology and trying to understand where to get charged up, but my common sense and Google’s policies are often at odds.

Keep your business title free of other extraneous information like location information, or adjectives like “cheapest” or “best”.

Address

It’s a dominant trend for EV charging stations to be located in the parking lots of busy public spaces, like shopping centers, railroad stations, and business parks. Typically, to be eligible for a GMB listing, a business has to have its own address, but a look at Google’s local search engine results (including Google Maps) shows charging stations being permitted to use the address of the public space. For example, an EV charging station in a strip mall near me is using the same address as the Target that anchors the shopping center.

Additionally, businesses that host a charging station are allowed to have a link on their listings publicizing this feature.

Also related to address, many EV Charging stations will find details on their listings that describe them as “located in” a public space. If the “located in” descriptor is wrong, look up the business on google.com/maps, click the “suggest an edit” button, and try to edit the information in this field:

If you see no correction within a couple of weeks of taking this action, contact Google My Business support and explain what’s going on.

Phone number

We’ll take our cue here from Google’s requirements of ATMs and kiosks. As I previously covered in my column on local product kiosks, the EV charging stations you’re marketing need a customer support phone number.

Again, this is one of those unusual grey areas. Normally, it’s standard advice for each location of a business to have a unique phone number. But, for EV charging stations, this obviously isn’t practical. Rather, be sure your listings have your help hotline number for customer service needs.

A word to the wise: Google has sometimes been prone to conflating listings with too-similar information. Having dozens, hundreds, or thousands of listings with the same brand AND phone number on them could potentially result in the accidental creation of duplicate listings. Large, multi-listing enterprises like EV charging brands might want to check out the automated duplicate detection and resolution services offered by Moz Local so that pesky duplicates aren’t interfering with listings management, visibility goals, and consumer direction.

Category

“Electric vehicle charging station” is the proper primary category for you, and my search through listings and GMB category databases is only finding one other related category, “electric vehicle charging station contractor” which may or may not be relevant to the business you’re marketing.

Hours of operation

Google’s guidelines state that gas stations should list the hours of operation that their pumps are available, and for most EV charging stations, this would presumably be 24 hours a day. As stated above, you’ll probably be uploading your data to Google via a bulk upload spreadsheet and the proper configuration for indicating 24-hours-a-day in the spreadsheet is 12:00AM-12:00AM.

URL

You’ll be allowed to include a website link on each listing you create. The best user experience I’m encountering on EV charger station listings is when the listing links to a landing page for the location I’m researching. On the flip side, you may get a ranking boost if you link to the brand’s homepage, instead, due to homepages typically having greater Page Authority than landing pages.

Photos/Videos

Make each listing stand out for customers by adding a few photos of the charger’s location. Given the fact that so many chargers are in vast parking lots, try to take some shots that illustrate the relationship of the station to the largest anchor business near it. This will help orient customers. And, given the newness of EV technology, uploading a video of how to use each type of charger would be extremely helpful to new electric vehicle owners.

Reviews

Looking around the SF Bay area, I couldn’t help noticing how few reviews these entities are receiving, meaning there are easy wins out there for any EV charger brand that makes a concerted review acquisition effort. If you’re building out landing pages on the brand’s website for each charging station locale, include a strong call to action and link to leave a review on Google on these pages. You can also use a free review link generator and then shorten the URL using a service like bitly for text or email-based review requests.

Just don’t ask for reviews in bulk; if you get too many at once, Google may filter them out as suspicious. And never incentivize reviews in any way — it can result in review loss, penalties, and legal actions.

Questions & Answers

Unsurprisingly, EV charging station listings show customers using Google’s Q&A feature to ask about costs and how to use the kiosks. These are leads for the brand and should be answered by the brand, rather than being left up to the public for responses of varying quality. If you’re using Moz Local to manage your listings, the dashboard will alert you each time a new question comes in on any of your listings.

Google Posts

Google Posts are a great way to make a brand stand out from less active competitors by microblogging persuasive content that appears on your listings, but for the typical EV charging brand, this feature is problematic. Google doesn’t allow large chains to post in bulk to their listings. There are some third-party services that facilitate hacks for this scenario.

Listings beyond Google

Google may be your dominant source of local business listings, but don’t hit the brakes there. Moz has mapped out the partners in our location data distribution network that currently support listings for EV charging stations. Talk to us about building your presence in key mapping applications like Apple Maps, search engines like Bing, aggregators like Infogroup, and mobile navigation providers like Navmii. Moz Local can help you get listed on multiple platforms so that potential customers can find your charging station locations via their preferred search methods.

Local search marketing tips for EV charging stations

JP Morgan predicts that EVs and HVs will make up 30% of total vehicle sales in the next five years and Statista estimates there are about 25,000 charging stations in the US. It’s big business, and while the convenience of charging at home can’t be beat, the presence of chargers and superchargers all over cities will do much to increase awareness of the rise of the EV, and to ease the transition away from fossil fuel transportation.

As a resident of California — the state with the most electric vehicles and also the state experiencing some of the worst devastation from Climate Change — every new charging station that pops up on Google Maps is a sign of hope to me. But I’ll be frank; I’m not a “car” person, and despite making a concerted effort over the past couple of years to understand how I could personally transition from a worried, gas-powered driver to a proud EV traveler has taught me that it’s a road paved with countless questions.

And that’s actually good news for EV charging station brands!

Whether you’re marketing EVgo, Blink, Tesla, ChargePoint, or the dozens of other charging solutions, your online marketing strategy is going to hinge on publishing content that solves consumers’ problems by answering their questions. Luckily for your industry, customers’ questions are so abundant that they are paving the way for you to develop absolutely fantastic website content that will support your organic and local rankings over time as you develop authority.

Here’s a simple six-step workflow for getting it right:

1. Survey customers

Making a minor investment in survey tech will let you directly ask the public what they want most from charging stations. Is it speed, location, more ports, better instructions, different payment options? Find out and document your learnings.

2. Analyze industry reviews and questions

Look at the common themes in your online reviews. For example, one thread I see running through the EV charging vertical is complaints about sitting in hot cars for 30+ minutes while charging up. When you think about it, gas stations provide shade at the pumps, though patrons are only there for ten minutes. If your customers are being inconvenienced in the summer heat, would properties permit you to build a canopy, or perhaps even better, plant some native trees to double down on your green goals?

Moz Local will surface the 100 most common words in your reviews for sentiment analysis purposes. Dig deeply into these for content inspiration and structural improvements.

And check out the positive and negative sentiment your competitors’ reviews contain. What is the competition getting wrong that you could get right? If you find opportunities like these, be sure you’re writing about them.

3. Fire up keyword research tools

How do electric car charging stations work?

Where can I charge my electric car?

What is the best EV charging station?

How to find free charging stations

How many miles does a Tesla get per charge?

Are EVgo stations free?

Can I use ChargePoint at EVgo?

What is a level 3 charging station?

Questions truly abound in the EV charging space. Moz Pro Keyword Explorer lets you type in keywords and phrases you feel could be important to the business you’re marketing, and then filter the results to see questions like the ones in my list, above. If you sign up for a free Moz community account, you can make 10 free queries a month or upgrade to a paid account for more robust keyword research.

Other free options include Google’s Ads Keyword Planner and the unpaid version of Answer the Public.

Document your findings so that you have created a list of questions around which you can base content publication.

4. Take a peek at Google Trends

Google Trends will show you interest in topics across time related to EV charging stations, and you can even see this broken out by regions of a country to help you localize your marketing. My glance at this data shows that interest in this subject took a hit when the COVID-19 pandemic emerged but is now steadily rising again. Glean further insights from this tool for topics you should be covering.

5. Analyze the competition

If you have a Moz Pro account, you can use Moz’s On-Page Grader feature not just to look at pages on your own website to see how to improve their optimization, but also to analyze what your competition is getting right and wrong. If you can find weaknesses in the strategy of a tough competitor, you can go one better with the actionable optimization tips On-Page Grader provides.

Look carefully at what your competitors are writing about on their websites and social accounts. If they’re covering a topic your keyword research hasn’t surfaced, note it down.

6. Get writing!

Now, take the list of questions and keyword phrases you’ve discovered, group them by topics, and begin creating pages for them on your website, or posts on the brand’s blog, providing answers. Some pages may be short, and others may be long — the rule of thumb is simply to cover each question thoroughly. You may find that some topics are best answered via other media, like short videos. That’s great, if you can produce them, but don’t forget to provide written transcripts.

Your findings can also fuel your social media posting, your Google posts, and provide the top FAQs you can ask and answer via Google Questions & Answers on your Google Business Profiles.

Finally, remember that marketing requires active promotion. Don’t just let your content sit on your website hoping someone will arrive to read it. Actively promote your best pieces via social media, to local print and online media journalists, and in local community hubs, like neighborhood websites and hyperlocal blogs. Work to build real relationships in the cities where you’re marketing your charging station locations so that you are always increasing awareness of your brand’s commitment to making towns and cities better places to live.

Have questions? Ask me in the comments. I’m personally rooting for the rapid spread of EV charging stations across the US and around the world, and if you’re marketing this model, I’d love to hear from you!

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

[gamebazu]

Local SEO Tips for Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

Posted by MiriamEllis

Some business models exist in the ditches of Google’s information highways, belonging in local search results, but not well addressed by the official guidelines. Electric vehicle (EV) charging stations exemplify this: They’re all over local packs, finders, and maps, but their models is a bit unusual, and Google has yet to update the guidelines to show exactly how to represent them in the Google My Business setting.

Today, we’ll pull together our own set of EV charging station best practices — based on Google’s rules for similar enterprises — and throw a few free local search marketing tips into the trunk as well.

How to handle your EV charging station Google My Business listings

Whether you’re an owner, in-house marketer, or agency staffer who’s been tasked with promoting a fleet of EV charging stations online, having a presence in Google’s local search results — including local packs, local finders, Google Business Profiles, and Google Maps — should be core to your digital strategy.

While Google’s helpful guidelines don’t specifically address EV charging stations, proof that they’re eligible for inclusion can be seen in the extra special features and categories Google has released for these models. For example, the above screenshot shows the charger icons, charger type designations, and wattage displays in the local results. In the US and UK, Google displays live charger availability data for some networks for consumer convenience. Even the map pins have special icons in them for EV charging stations.

Google definitely knows about them, and wants this industry to get listed.

If you’ve never set up a GMB listing before, Google’s own resources will walk you through the process of filling out and validating a profile for an individual location, but EV charging station marketers are most likely dealing with many locations at once. If you need to get 10 or more locations listed, you’ll be using Google’s bulk upload functionality, instead. You’ll also want to go for bulk verification of these large batches of listings.

But before you get started, here’s special guidance for handling some of the major fields you’ll be filling out for any EV charging station you’re marketing.

Business title

Google wants you to fill out this field with the exact name of the business as it appears in the real world. The majority of the listings I looked at in this sector were adding the words “charging station” to their brand name, which technically violates Google’s guidelines. Just as gas stations are supposed to list themselves as “Shell” or “Valero”, EV charging stations wanting to stick scrupulously to the guidelines should just be “EVgo” or “ChargePoint”.

According to the guidelines, Google wouldn’t want listings entitled “Shell Gas Station” or “EVgo Charging Station”, any more than they’d want “McDonald’s Fast Food Restaurant” or “Macy’s Department Store.”

But now for a home truth: Google says you’re only supposed to put your real-world brand in these titles, but they don’t take much action on enforcing this guideline, and having keywords in the business title that match search language is strongly believed to improve local rankings. So, if you adhere to the guidelines and remove “charging station” from your business titles, your rankings may decrease. This weighting of keywords in the business title is a longstanding issue Google needs to resolve.

Frankly, I think having the words “charging station” in the listing title might actually help users who are just now becoming accustomed to emergent EV technology and trying to understand where to get charged up, but my common sense and Google’s policies are often at odds.

Keep your business title free of other extraneous information like location information, or adjectives like “cheapest” or “best”.

Address

It’s a dominant trend for EV charging stations to be located in the parking lots of busy public spaces, like shopping centers, railroad stations, and business parks. Typically, to be eligible for a GMB listing, a business has to have its own address, but a look at Google’s local search engine results (including Google Maps) shows charging stations being permitted to use the address of the public space. For example, an EV charging station in a strip mall near me is using the same address as the Target that anchors the shopping center.

Additionally, businesses that host a charging station are allowed to have a link on their listings publicizing this feature.

Also related to address, many EV Charging stations will find details on their listings that describe them as “located in” a public space. If the “located in” descriptor is wrong, look up the business on google.com/maps, click the “suggest an edit” button, and try to edit the information in this field:

If you see no correction within a couple of weeks of taking this action, contact Google My Business support and explain what’s going on.

Phone number

We’ll take our cue here from Google’s requirements of ATMs and kiosks. As I previously covered in my column on local product kiosks, the EV charging stations you’re marketing need a customer support phone number.

Again, this is one of those unusual grey areas. Normally, it’s standard advice for each location of a business to have a unique phone number. But, for EV charging stations, this obviously isn’t practical. Rather, be sure your listings have your help hotline number for customer service needs.

A word to the wise: Google has sometimes been prone to conflating listings with too-similar information. Having dozens, hundreds, or thousands of listings with the same brand AND phone number on them could potentially result in the accidental creation of duplicate listings. Large, multi-listing enterprises like EV charging brands might want to check out the automated duplicate detection and resolution services offered by Moz Local so that pesky duplicates aren’t interfering with listings management, visibility goals, and consumer direction.

Category

“Electric vehicle charging station” is the proper primary category for you, and my search through listings and GMB category databases is only finding one other related category, “electric vehicle charging station contractor” which may or may not be relevant to the business you’re marketing.

Hours of operation

Google’s guidelines state that gas stations should list the hours of operation that their pumps are available, and for most EV charging stations, this would presumably be 24 hours a day. As stated above, you’ll probably be uploading your data to Google via a bulk upload spreadsheet and the proper configuration for indicating 24-hours-a-day in the spreadsheet is 12:00AM-12:00AM.

URL

You’ll be allowed to include a website link on each listing you create. The best user experience I’m encountering on EV charger station listings is when the listing links to a landing page for the location I’m researching. On the flip side, you may get a ranking boost if you link to the brand’s homepage, instead, due to homepages typically having greater Page Authority than landing pages.

Photos/Videos

Make each listing stand out for customers by adding a few photos of the charger’s location. Given the fact that so many chargers are in vast parking lots, try to take some shots that illustrate the relationship of the station to the largest anchor business near it. This will help orient customers. And, given the newness of EV technology, uploading a video of how to use each type of charger would be extremely helpful to new electric vehicle owners.

Reviews

Looking around the SF Bay area, I couldn’t help noticing how few reviews these entities are receiving, meaning there are easy wins out there for any EV charger brand that makes a concerted review acquisition effort. If you’re building out landing pages on the brand’s website for each charging station locale, include a strong call to action and link to leave a review on Google on these pages. You can also use a free review link generator and then shorten the URL using a service like bitly for text or email-based review requests.

Just don’t ask for reviews in bulk; if you get too many at once, Google may filter them out as suspicious. And never incentivize reviews in any way — it can result in review loss, penalties, and legal actions.

Questions & Answers

Unsurprisingly, EV charging station listings show customers using Google’s Q&A feature to ask about costs and how to use the kiosks. These are leads for the brand and should be answered by the brand, rather than being left up to the public for responses of varying quality. If you’re using Moz Local to manage your listings, the dashboard will alert you each time a new question comes in on any of your listings.

Google Posts

Google Posts are a great way to make a brand stand out from less active competitors by microblogging persuasive content that appears on your listings, but for the typical EV charging brand, this feature is problematic. Google doesn’t allow large chains to post in bulk to their listings. There are some third-party services that facilitate hacks for this scenario.

Listings beyond Google

Google may be your dominant source of local business listings, but don’t hit the brakes there. Moz has mapped out the partners in our location data distribution network that currently support listings for EV charging stations. Talk to us about building your presence in key mapping applications like Apple Maps, search engines like Bing, aggregators like Infogroup, and mobile navigation providers like Navmii. Moz Local can help you get listed on multiple platforms so that potential customers can find your charging station locations via their preferred search methods.

Local search marketing tips for EV charging stations

JP Morgan predicts that EVs and HVs will make up 30% of total vehicle sales in the next five years and Statista estimates there are about 25,000 charging stations in the US. It’s big business, and while the convenience of charging at home can’t be beat, the presence of chargers and superchargers all over cities will do much to increase awareness of the rise of the EV, and to ease the transition away from fossil fuel transportation.

As a resident of California — the state with the most electric vehicles and also the state experiencing some of the worst devastation from Climate Change — every new charging station that pops up on Google Maps is a sign of hope to me. But I’ll be frank; I’m not a “car” person, and despite making a concerted effort over the past couple of years to understand how I could personally transition from a worried, gas-powered driver to a proud EV traveler has taught me that it’s a road paved with countless questions.

And that’s actually good news for EV charging station brands!

Whether you’re marketing EVgo, Blink, Tesla, ChargePoint, or the dozens of other charging solutions, your online marketing strategy is going to hinge on publishing content that solves consumers’ problems by answering their questions. Luckily for your industry, customers’ questions are so abundant that they are paving the way for you to develop absolutely fantastic website content that will support your organic and local rankings over time as you develop authority.

Here’s a simple six-step workflow for getting it right:

1. Survey customers

Making a minor investment in survey tech will let you directly ask the public what they want most from charging stations. Is it speed, location, more ports, better instructions, different payment options? Find out and document your learnings.

2. Analyze industry reviews and questions

Look at the common themes in your online reviews. For example, one thread I see running through the EV charging vertical is complaints about sitting in hot cars for 30+ minutes while charging up. When you think about it, gas stations provide shade at the pumps, though patrons are only there for ten minutes. If your customers are being inconvenienced in the summer heat, would properties permit you to build a canopy, or perhaps even better, plant some native trees to double down on your green goals?

Moz Local will surface the 100 most common words in your reviews for sentiment analysis purposes. Dig deeply into these for content inspiration and structural improvements.

And check out the positive and negative sentiment your competitors’ reviews contain. What is the competition getting wrong that you could get right? If you find opportunities like these, be sure you’re writing about them.

3. Fire up keyword research tools

How do electric car charging stations work?

Where can I charge my electric car?

What is the best EV charging station?

How to find free charging stations

How many miles does a Tesla get per charge?

Are EVgo stations free?

Can I use ChargePoint at EVgo?

What is a level 3 charging station?

Questions truly abound in the EV charging space. Moz Pro Keyword Explorer lets you type in keywords and phrases you feel could be important to the business you’re marketing, and then filter the results to see questions like the ones in my list, above. If you sign up for a free Moz community account, you can make 10 free queries a month or upgrade to a paid account for more robust keyword research.

Other free options include Google’s Ads Keyword Planner and the unpaid version of Answer the Public.

Document your findings so that you have created a list of questions around which you can base content publication.

4. Take a peek at Google Trends

Google Trends will show you interest in topics across time related to EV charging stations, and you can even see this broken out by regions of a country to help you localize your marketing. My glance at this data shows that interest in this subject took a hit when the COVID-19 pandemic emerged but is now steadily rising again. Glean further insights from this tool for topics you should be covering.

5. Analyze the competition

If you have a Moz Pro account, you can use Moz’s On-Page Grader feature not just to look at pages on your own website to see how to improve their optimization, but also to analyze what your competition is getting right and wrong. If you can find weaknesses in the strategy of a tough competitor, you can go one better with the actionable optimization tips On-Page Grader provides.

Look carefully at what your competitors are writing about on their websites and social accounts. If they’re covering a topic your keyword research hasn’t surfaced, note it down.

6. Get writing!

Now, take the list of questions and keyword phrases you’ve discovered, group them by topics, and begin creating pages for them on your website, or posts on the brand’s blog, providing answers. Some pages may be short, and others may be long — the rule of thumb is simply to cover each question thoroughly. You may find that some topics are best answered via other media, like short videos. That’s great, if you can produce them, but don’t forget to provide written transcripts.

Your findings can also fuel your social media posting, your Google posts, and provide the top FAQs you can ask and answer via Google Questions & Answers on your Google Business Profiles.

Finally, remember that marketing requires active promotion. Don’t just let your content sit on your website hoping someone will arrive to read it. Actively promote your best pieces via social media, to local print and online media journalists, and in local community hubs, like neighborhood websites and hyperlocal blogs. Work to build real relationships in the cities where you’re marketing your charging station locations so that you are always increasing awareness of your brand’s commitment to making towns and cities better places to live.

Have questions? Ask me in the comments. I’m personally rooting for the rapid spread of EV charging stations across the US and around the world, and if you’re marketing this model, I’d love to hear from you!

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

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Local SEO Tips for Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

Posted by MiriamEllis

Some business models exist in the ditches of Google’s information highways, belonging in local search results, but not well addressed by the official guidelines. Electric vehicle (EV) charging stations exemplify this: They’re all over local packs, finders, and maps, but their models is a bit unusual, and Google has yet to update the guidelines to show exactly how to represent them in the Google My Business setting.

Today, we’ll pull together our own set of EV charging station best practices — based on Google’s rules for similar enterprises — and throw a few free local search marketing tips into the trunk as well.

How to handle your EV charging station Google My Business listings

Whether you’re an owner, in-house marketer, or agency staffer who’s been tasked with promoting a fleet of EV charging stations online, having a presence in Google’s local search results — including local packs, local finders, Google Business Profiles, and Google Maps — should be core to your digital strategy.

While Google’s helpful guidelines don’t specifically address EV charging stations, proof that they’re eligible for inclusion can be seen in the extra special features and categories Google has released for these models. For example, the above screenshot shows the charger icons, charger type designations, and wattage displays in the local results. In the US and UK, Google displays live charger availability data for some networks for consumer convenience. Even the map pins have special icons in them for EV charging stations.

Google definitely knows about them, and wants this industry to get listed.

If you’ve never set up a GMB listing before, Google’s own resources will walk you through the process of filling out and validating a profile for an individual location, but EV charging station marketers are most likely dealing with many locations at once. If you need to get 10 or more locations listed, you’ll be using Google’s bulk upload functionality, instead. You’ll also want to go for bulk verification of these large batches of listings.

But before you get started, here’s special guidance for handling some of the major fields you’ll be filling out for any EV charging station you’re marketing.

Business title

Google wants you to fill out this field with the exact name of the business as it appears in the real world. The majority of the listings I looked at in this sector were adding the words “charging station” to their brand name, which technically violates Google’s guidelines. Just as gas stations are supposed to list themselves as “Shell” or “Valero”, EV charging stations wanting to stick scrupulously to the guidelines should just be “EVgo” or “ChargePoint”.

According to the guidelines, Google wouldn’t want listings entitled “Shell Gas Station” or “EVgo Charging Station”, any more than they’d want “McDonald’s Fast Food Restaurant” or “Macy’s Department Store.”

But now for a home truth: Google says you’re only supposed to put your real-world brand in these titles, but they don’t take much action on enforcing this guideline, and having keywords in the business title that match search language is strongly believed to improve local rankings. So, if you adhere to the guidelines and remove “charging station” from your business titles, your rankings may decrease. This weighting of keywords in the business title is a longstanding issue Google needs to resolve.

Frankly, I think having the words “charging station” in the listing title might actually help users who are just now becoming accustomed to emergent EV technology and trying to understand where to get charged up, but my common sense and Google’s policies are often at odds.

Keep your business title free of other extraneous information like location information, or adjectives like “cheapest” or “best”.

Address

It’s a dominant trend for EV charging stations to be located in the parking lots of busy public spaces, like shopping centers, railroad stations, and business parks. Typically, to be eligible for a GMB listing, a business has to have its own address, but a look at Google’s local search engine results (including Google Maps) shows charging stations being permitted to use the address of the public space. For example, an EV charging station in a strip mall near me is using the same address as the Target that anchors the shopping center.

Additionally, businesses that host a charging station are allowed to have a link on their listings publicizing this feature.

Also related to address, many EV Charging stations will find details on their listings that describe them as “located in” a public space. If the “located in” descriptor is wrong, look up the business on google.com/maps, click the “suggest an edit” button, and try to edit the information in this field:

If you see no correction within a couple of weeks of taking this action, contact Google My Business support and explain what’s going on.

Phone number

We’ll take our cue here from Google’s requirements of ATMs and kiosks. As I previously covered in my column on local product kiosks, the EV charging stations you’re marketing need a customer support phone number.

Again, this is one of those unusual grey areas. Normally, it’s standard advice for each location of a business to have a unique phone number. But, for EV charging stations, this obviously isn’t practical. Rather, be sure your listings have your help hotline number for customer service needs.

A word to the wise: Google has sometimes been prone to conflating listings with too-similar information. Having dozens, hundreds, or thousands of listings with the same brand AND phone number on them could potentially result in the accidental creation of duplicate listings. Large, multi-listing enterprises like EV charging brands might want to check out the automated duplicate detection and resolution services offered by Moz Local so that pesky duplicates aren’t interfering with listings management, visibility goals, and consumer direction.

Category

“Electric vehicle charging station” is the proper primary category for you, and my search through listings and GMB category databases is only finding one other related category, “electric vehicle charging station contractor” which may or may not be relevant to the business you’re marketing.

Hours of operation

Google’s guidelines state that gas stations should list the hours of operation that their pumps are available, and for most EV charging stations, this would presumably be 24 hours a day. As stated above, you’ll probably be uploading your data to Google via a bulk upload spreadsheet and the proper configuration for indicating 24-hours-a-day in the spreadsheet is 12:00AM-12:00AM.

URL

You’ll be allowed to include a website link on each listing you create. The best user experience I’m encountering on EV charger station listings is when the listing links to a landing page for the location I’m researching. On the flip side, you may get a ranking boost if you link to the brand’s homepage, instead, due to homepages typically having greater Page Authority than landing pages.

Photos/Videos

Make each listing stand out for customers by adding a few photos of the charger’s location. Given the fact that so many chargers are in vast parking lots, try to take some shots that illustrate the relationship of the station to the largest anchor business near it. This will help orient customers. And, given the newness of EV technology, uploading a video of how to use each type of charger would be extremely helpful to new electric vehicle owners.

Reviews

Looking around the SF Bay area, I couldn’t help noticing how few reviews these entities are receiving, meaning there are easy wins out there for any EV charger brand that makes a concerted review acquisition effort. If you’re building out landing pages on the brand’s website for each charging station locale, include a strong call to action and link to leave a review on Google on these pages. You can also use a free review link generator and then shorten the URL using a service like bitly for text or email-based review requests.

Just don’t ask for reviews in bulk; if you get too many at once, Google may filter them out as suspicious. And never incentivize reviews in any way — it can result in review loss, penalties, and legal actions.

Questions & Answers

Unsurprisingly, EV charging station listings show customers using Google’s Q&A feature to ask about costs and how to use the kiosks. These are leads for the brand and should be answered by the brand, rather than being left up to the public for responses of varying quality. If you’re using Moz Local to manage your listings, the dashboard will alert you each time a new question comes in on any of your listings.

Google Posts

Google Posts are a great way to make a brand stand out from less active competitors by microblogging persuasive content that appears on your listings, but for the typical EV charging brand, this feature is problematic. Google doesn’t allow large chains to post in bulk to their listings. There are some third-party services that facilitate hacks for this scenario.

Listings beyond Google

Google may be your dominant source of local business listings, but don’t hit the brakes there. Moz has mapped out the partners in our location data distribution network that currently support listings for EV charging stations. Talk to us about building your presence in key mapping applications like Apple Maps, search engines like Bing, aggregators like Infogroup, and mobile navigation providers like Navmii. Moz Local can help you get listed on multiple platforms so that potential customers can find your charging station locations via their preferred search methods.

Local search marketing tips for EV charging stations

JP Morgan predicts that EVs and HVs will make up 30% of total vehicle sales in the next five years and Statista estimates there are about 25,000 charging stations in the US. It’s big business, and while the convenience of charging at home can’t be beat, the presence of chargers and superchargers all over cities will do much to increase awareness of the rise of the EV, and to ease the transition away from fossil fuel transportation.

As a resident of California — the state with the most electric vehicles and also the state experiencing some of the worst devastation from Climate Change — every new charging station that pops up on Google Maps is a sign of hope to me. But I’ll be frank; I’m not a “car” person, and despite making a concerted effort over the past couple of years to understand how I could personally transition from a worried, gas-powered driver to a proud EV traveler has taught me that it’s a road paved with countless questions.

And that’s actually good news for EV charging station brands!

Whether you’re marketing EVgo, Blink, Tesla, ChargePoint, or the dozens of other charging solutions, your online marketing strategy is going to hinge on publishing content that solves consumers’ problems by answering their questions. Luckily for your industry, customers’ questions are so abundant that they are paving the way for you to develop absolutely fantastic website content that will support your organic and local rankings over time as you develop authority.

Here’s a simple six-step workflow for getting it right:

1. Survey customers

Making a minor investment in survey tech will let you directly ask the public what they want most from charging stations. Is it speed, location, more ports, better instructions, different payment options? Find out and document your learnings.

2. Analyze industry reviews and questions

Look at the common themes in your online reviews. For example, one thread I see running through the EV charging vertical is complaints about sitting in hot cars for 30+ minutes while charging up. When you think about it, gas stations provide shade at the pumps, though patrons are only there for ten minutes. If your customers are being inconvenienced in the summer heat, would properties permit you to build a canopy, or perhaps even better, plant some native trees to double down on your green goals?

Moz Local will surface the 100 most common words in your reviews for sentiment analysis purposes. Dig deeply into these for content inspiration and structural improvements.

And check out the positive and negative sentiment your competitors’ reviews contain. What is the competition getting wrong that you could get right? If you find opportunities like these, be sure you’re writing about them.

3. Fire up keyword research tools

How do electric car charging stations work?

Where can I charge my electric car?

What is the best EV charging station?

How to find free charging stations

How many miles does a Tesla get per charge?

Are EVgo stations free?

Can I use ChargePoint at EVgo?

What is a level 3 charging station?

Questions truly abound in the EV charging space. Moz Pro Keyword Explorer lets you type in keywords and phrases you feel could be important to the business you’re marketing, and then filter the results to see questions like the ones in my list, above. If you sign up for a free Moz community account, you can make 10 free queries a month or upgrade to a paid account for more robust keyword research.

Other free options include Google’s Ads Keyword Planner and the unpaid version of Answer the Public.

Document your findings so that you have created a list of questions around which you can base content publication.

4. Take a peek at Google Trends

Google Trends will show you interest in topics across time related to EV charging stations, and you can even see this broken out by regions of a country to help you localize your marketing. My glance at this data shows that interest in this subject took a hit when the COVID-19 pandemic emerged but is now steadily rising again. Glean further insights from this tool for topics you should be covering.

5. Analyze the competition

If you have a Moz Pro account, you can use Moz’s On-Page Grader feature not just to look at pages on your own website to see how to improve their optimization, but also to analyze what your competition is getting right and wrong. If you can find weaknesses in the strategy of a tough competitor, you can go one better with the actionable optimization tips On-Page Grader provides.

Look carefully at what your competitors are writing about on their websites and social accounts. If they’re covering a topic your keyword research hasn’t surfaced, note it down.

6. Get writing!

Now, take the list of questions and keyword phrases you’ve discovered, group them by topics, and begin creating pages for them on your website, or posts on the brand’s blog, providing answers. Some pages may be short, and others may be long — the rule of thumb is simply to cover each question thoroughly. You may find that some topics are best answered via other media, like short videos. That’s great, if you can produce them, but don’t forget to provide written transcripts.

Your findings can also fuel your social media posting, your Google posts, and provide the top FAQs you can ask and answer via Google Questions & Answers on your Google Business Profiles.

Finally, remember that marketing requires active promotion. Don’t just let your content sit on your website hoping someone will arrive to read it. Actively promote your best pieces via social media, to local print and online media journalists, and in local community hubs, like neighborhood websites and hyperlocal blogs. Work to build real relationships in the cities where you’re marketing your charging station locations so that you are always increasing awareness of your brand’s commitment to making towns and cities better places to live.

Have questions? Ask me in the comments. I’m personally rooting for the rapid spread of EV charging stations across the US and around the world, and if you’re marketing this model, I’d love to hear from you!

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