#but i’m only basically chinese adjacent and don’t have the text in chinese so :/

[hsrlorefreak]

ok this is. completely basically crack but like.

is giovanni (in the new-ish event) sampo?????

because.

Elation. it was like, really heavily implied last time we saw sampo at the end of belobog stellaron crisis, that he was a part of the Masked Fools, aka followers of Aha, The Elation.

and in sampo’s story, it’s implied that he. dressed up as a woman. convincingly. and he wasn’t called out on his voice, so he can definitely change his voice, too.

and he even has a mask— to play at the eccentric billionaire who funds a game on a whim. that seems like something he would do just for amusement.

and it starts on belobog, too. and sampo does have ways to get to other world— the joke bomb he sent with a signature proved that.

i forgot to take a screenshot, but pela + serval also say that he told them to not tell march and trailblazer who the really good player was (might be him) because : “adding an element of mystery to the story” and what story? our story, our game. what is that doing? breaking the fourth wall. who, aside from trailblazer, breaks the fourth wall?

sampo.

but why???? but have followers of the elation ever had reasons for what they do??? zhongshan (unshackled on luofu mission) did what she did just because. didn’t plan it out or anything, saw a chance, decided it was funny, and pulled trailblazer along to play her tune

anyway if he isn’t that’s fine but if he is that’ll be so funny.

[rigelmejo]

I’ve talked about listening reading method before. And i’m bringing it up again lol! for 2 reasons - first, i found a very nice practical article on it today (skip to the LAST section to just click this ToT), and second because i’m finally in the Mood to l-r Guardian again so i’m gonna see how many chapters i can do today.

A quick summary - what is the listening reading method?

It’s primary goal: acquire vocabulary and grammar over time, also improve listening comprehension. 

You may also improve reading comprehension to an extent, but not necessarily - reading comprehension is highly dependent on how much you read the text in your target language (like if you have a parallel text and look at the target language often), if you do step 2 AGAIN after step 3, etc. Since using the text IN the target language is optional, your reading comprehension improvement is also optional.

*I personally think the activities that help reading comprehension most (that are adjacent to the activities in l-r method) are: doing step 2 AFTER step 3, or simply reading the target language text after either step 1 or step 3 (so reading the target language text after you’ve just seen the english text and have context). I often read a translation, then go and read the chinese version a few hours after, and my ability to pick up new words/follow along is MUCH easier than if i’d just read the chinese with no context. It should be noted either of these activities can be done on their own, so again its more ‘listening reading method’ adjacent rather than actually part of the method. The method is primarily listening comprehension.

What you do:

3 steps, and all of them are optional except for step 3. I do however recommend steps 1 and 2 if you have never read the novel you use before. Or if you’re new to studying the language and aren’t used to the sound of it/word boundaries yet. You will need: a novel translated into a language you understand, that same novel in your target language, audiobook in the target language. The novel can be a parallel text if you’re lucky enough to find a combined text.  

Notes: you will have a much easier time if the audiobook MATCHES the text! Especially matches the paragraphs (no paragraphs omitted in the audiobook) and ends chapters in the same places the text ends chapters. LOTS of cnovels have audiobooks which will omit paragraphs, or end audio ‘chapters’ in random places... this requires you to focus a lot harder on keeping the audio and text aligned. Its still useable, but you will feel way less exhausted if you can just find audio that reasonably matches the text (at LEAST that matches each paragraph without cutting anything... you can mark when it ends yourself if the chapter ends aren’t the same, but suddenly missing paragraphs sucks).

Step 1: (optional) read the novel in a language you understand (for me that’s english). This step is so you have context/familiarity. If you use a novel you already know/love, skip this. This can be skipped period, but if its a new novel to you then you may find step 3 more difficult.

Step 2: (optional) listen to the target language audio while following along with the target language text. Your goal is primarily to get familiar with the sounds of the language, and word boundaries. Once you are comfortable with following along to this speed of speaking, and recognizing word and phrase boundaries, you can stop doing this step. At this step learning new words is not necessary - although if you’re an intermediate learner you MAY pick up some new words and if that happens feel free to KEEP doing this step as long as its helpful. (Alternatively - you can continue doing this step, put it after step 3 at that point, and use it to match words you recently learned the SOUND of in step 3 and then match them to the spelling/hanzi/kana etc with the help of the target language text).

 Step 3: (mandatory) listen to the target language audio while following along with the translation in a language you fully understand. So basically, listening to the novel target language audiobook with a translated transcript. It is important at this step to focus ON the audio. You are attempting to comprehend the audio. You look at the english (or whatever language you comprehend) text to KEEP your place in the audio. You look at the text to lookup any unknown words/phrases etc that you hear. You are not reading the english text with the audio in the background. You need to pay attention TO the audio. You are using the english text to fill in the gaps of your understanding - to look up meanings in real time, and hopefully hear new words+see their meanings constantly enough that you start picking up new words. Your english text is to ensure you can look up any part of a sentence you don’t understand, that you can follow along with the meaning of the audiobook as you listen. Over time, you will pick up more and more. 

---

You can continue to do this for hundreds of hours. Get through a novel completely - you may wish to do the same novel again 2-3 times, until there’s no more that you are picking up from it. Or you might chose to move onto another novel. There’s no major drawback i can see to jumping between novels either - if you’d like to just do segments of multiple. However, since authors usually use their own preferred vocabulary, you will most likely have MORE vocabulary/phrase repetition if you stick with one author for a few dozen hours - and the repetition will help you really learn it. With basic vocabulary, any text will likely give you enough repetition to learn them. But if you want to learn genre specific words, or author specific words, or just words used less often... sticking to one novel for a WHILE will likely give you more repetition to pick them up. (Just like intensively or extensively reading ONE novel all the way through will help you pick up a lot more author specific words, versus reading only a few chapters before moving onto a new author).

Once you can listen to the audiobook without the text, and understand it and follow along well, you may want to move onto another novel. If you want to test yourself - pick another novel of the same difficulty or slightly easier, listen to that audiobook on its own, and if you can understand it fine without any text to look up the unknown parts, then you’ve reached a ‘natural listening’ stage. The creator of this method says this usually took them a few novels before they’d get to this point. I haven’t lol so i’ll let you know if i do. I’m still at the ‘can do step 3 basically as long as it keeps benefiting me.’ 

So at the minimum, the process is - be familiar with the text already (step 1 if you need it), be familiar with the sounds of the language/listening to it spoken (step 2 if you need it), then listen to the target language audiobook while following along with a translation in a language you fully understand. Focusing on the audio and attempting to understand as much as possible, using the text as reference to help you. As you follow along, you can use that translation to learn new words/phrases, get an understanding of the grammar you hear, and continue picking things up until eventually you can understand the audiobook on its own. 

*It should be noted, the original creator of this method would do L-R for 6-10 hours a day, and would do a novel for 50-100 hours. They would intensively study. They aimed to use longer novels as that gave them more study material/study hours (if you’re learning chinese we have ample long novels to pick). So expect noticeable progress in 20 hours, 50 hours, etc. Not in 2. Study in general is like this anyway - we don’t see noticeable language learning progress doing anything in like 2 hours pretty much. But its just something to keep in mind - even if you do L-R a novel intensively and finish one within a couple weeks or a month, you should still expect that it will take a lot of hours. Look at how long the audiobook is, and then know if you do step 1 and 2 it will take 2 or 3 times as long as that audiobook is. 

Guardian is 106 chapters (before the extras), with roughly 20 minute audio files per chapter of audiobook - so it will take 2120 minutes, or 35.33 hours to do step 3 (assuming I don’t lose my spot in the text). Step 2 will also take 35.33 hours in a best case scenario. Step 1 will probably take me 17 hours on a BEST case scenario if I read at my fastest, which I might not. So to finish L-R Guardian it will take me 87.66 hours... or 52.33 hours if i just completely skip step 2 (since i already can hear word boundaries/have some basic listening comprehension). So... Listening Reading method is time consuming. A benefit might be - you get to do study hours spent reading/experiencing a cool audiobook, and getting to engage with the original novel and translation. If you were going to do that in your free time in some way anyway, then using it to study can be fun. And unlike trying to get 50 hours of another study method in, if you are a serious reader/you can keep your attention focused? You could probably get these 50 hours done within couple weeks or a month - just like how when you get interested in a novel you can read it in a few days/weeks. Which is definitely a sweet thing if you can get focused on L-R that much... definitely more hours spent studying per month compared to when i intensively read (i spend maybe 12 hours intensively reading a month when i’m reading a lot).

The person who initially did Listening Reading Method would do 100-200 hours, would go through novels 2-3 times then move onto another, and would do it intensively in the span of weeks and a few months. They made very fast improvements - but hours spent wise, it makes a lot of sense. Its a ‘fast’ way to learn a lot, in the sense you can do it intensively in a short period of days/weeks. But the hours spent is still gonna be a LOT. 

And you can also... just be lazy. I’m lazy. ToT You can also just do L-R as desired. I maybe do it once or twice a week. Or maybe 4 chapters every couple weeks lol. I certainly don’t do it intensively over a consistent period. (That said, i think you will probably pick up more things, more Quickly, if you study daily with this method using the same novel - since repetition helps you remember things and pick them up). I’ve done maybe 12 hours of listening reading overall, using a few different novels (so no significant chunk of any of them). I already noticed immediate benefit from doing it. If you’re a mid-beginner+, and already know words through reading? Simply doing the L-R activity helps with listening comprehension skills immediately. While I pick up new words/phrases, its definitely the slower thing I notice. The quickest thing I notice improvement in, is how much BETTER I know all the words I ‘kind of’ knew before from reading alone. Now I have much better instant listening recognition of words, have much better instinctive idea of how ‘phrases’ should sound in listening when people actually speak - the way they flow, how to immediately recognize them. That’s improved my overall listening comprehension to audiobooks, shows, people speaking. Also its improved my reading comprehension - I can now zoom through reading phrases because I recognize them as full chunks, I can now zoom ‘internally sound out what i’m reading’ faster and that causes me to stumble less when I’m reading to myself. All these benefits i noticed as early as like 6 hours into L-R. I also do notice myself picking up a few new words, but I imagine that will happen more once I am done ‘fully’ picking up words I already half knew. I also, again, think if I L-R more regularly, I would notice myself picking up completely new things at a faster rate (because they’d quickly also become ‘partly learned from that initial exposure’ then reinforced over and over). Anyway my point is - if you already have SOME comprehension of the language you’re studying, L-R can within a short amount of time help you improve your listening comprehension of things you already ‘know’ or ‘partly know.’ While picking up new stuff will also happen, I do think that will take longer (and I think beginners are most likely to notice rapid ‘completely new stuff’ pick up since they don’t have material ‘half learned’ bouncing around like I do lol).

This is the original Listening Reading Method article which is long and so, I understand if you just skim it lol: http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_mountain/!%20L-R%20the%20most%20important%20passages.htm

---

Like I said, you can do a lot of variations on it lol. Doing step 2 alone and TRYING to learn word meanings could be very useful if you’re already an intermediate learner and just need to learn Spellings of words you know by sound, or you can understand the meaning of words in context (so you don’t need another language translation to know the meaning of a word). Doing step 2 After step 3 i think is pretty beneficial if you WANT to also work on reading comprehension for the new words/things you learn. (Or just reading the text in the target language, after doing step 3 since you will have the context/meaning fresh in your mind).

---

Finally, this is the article I read on using the Listening Reading Method for languages very unfamiliar to you. I find a lot of its explanations very to the point and clear: http://users.bestweb.net/~siom/martian_mountain/!L-R/lr_for_grasshoppers.html

[hollowcrovvn]

The Ostensive Fumblings of Being Human (part 6)

Pairing: Connor x female!reader 

Rating: T 

Summary: January 2039. The aftermath of the revolution continues to shake the city of Detroit. Androids are living in government provided communities while efforts are being made to integrate them into society. You are a grad-student volunteering with the Detroit Crisis Response Unit (DCRU), working to help with relief efforts. Set within the backdrop of the slowing growing Android Rights Movement, Connor, newly deviant, is trying to understand what it means to be alive while many others like him seek equality and justice.

Chapter Summary: Valentine's day is approaching, which also means that date and "Temple Bar" scribbled on the Alpha Site file is also near approaching. What better way to spend a holiday than a late night steak out?

(part 1) (part 2) (part 3) (part 4) (part 5) (part 6) (part 7) (ao3)

Tagged: @shaydeevee33 @easy-and-steady @goldie516 @house-arya

You headed home from the DCRU offices after doing a quick round around the housing site. There was more surprise than anything at seeing you about, with most having fled to the safety of the Cadillac Place offices. Seeing the damage now in the fading sunlight it… it felt somehow even more surreal. Guards waited at a good distance as you stepped carefully over ashen wood and stained bits of metal, kicking one aside with the toe of your shoe. They had hydro washed the grounds, removing the blood and thirium. You’d been informed many of the androids in the adjacent modular had opted to move into ones further towards the center of the complex. You couldn’t blame them.

You hardly heard North’s approach, the young woman lingering a bit off to the side, but gesturing to you with a wave.

You walked quickly, saying before you even got close, “What’s wrong? Is it Simon?”

North shook her head, she looked tired, “He’s fine.”

That was a relief, but it still struck you suddenly how strange it was for her to be out here.

“I’m checking in. People are scared. I heard you opted out of the barbed fence line?”

“Yeah it— felt a bit much."

“I… appreciate that. It’s hard to keep our people from feeling this isn’t just another camp. A lot of them have the scars from those days, even if you can’t see them.”

It dawned on you by the way North crossed her arms and just her general demeanor that she wasn’t just talking about the others.

“I actually am also here to talk to you.” North began, “Look. I’m not good at this. I asked Josh just to give me your contact information, but he wouldn’t and when I asked Markus he threw my own line back at me.”

North bit her lip, pushing back a strand of hair the wind had blown into her face.

“Of course you can have it.” You said, recognizing that it was taken a lot for North to humble herself in this. You knew a lot of that had nothing to do with you, but you couldn’t say that you had appreciated her hostility either.

“Could you be just a little mad? Angry I understand. This— whatever it is, it makes me feel like the biggest asshole.”

You laughed, “Can’t help you. I’m not mad, just glad I was able to do what I said I was. I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do if I couldn’t get Cyberlife on board. Or how you all would react.”

“Probably not good.” North said with a sigh, swinging her arms out. She didn’t like to sit still and that reminded you of another android, “Markus told me, “She’s trying.”. End of conversation. I was so pissed off because why aren’t more trying? The human public will argue in their forums and wear their little “I support Droid Rights” badges but do any of them actually help?”

“Public opinion counts.” You said, “And it got me here. Right?”

“Small blessings.” North said, smiling faintly.

“Sometimes its hard to forget how it was. Did you see the marches?”

You nodded.

“We knew what we were getting into. We knew we might die, but still… standing there while the people around you fall. Staring down the barrels of so much… not even hate just— indifference.” North rubbed a hand over her lips, scowling as she dropped her hands to her waist.

“If it sounds like I’m making excuses, I probably am.” North said, “What I should say is that I’m sorry for our introduction. I’d like to work with you.”

You couldn’t help but smile, big and beaming. North caught sight of it and scoffed, but there was genuine humor in her eyes.

“Is that an okay?!” She said and turned to find you had offered her your hand. After a moment, she took it, giving a soft shake. When she took her hand back she rubbed her temple slightly.

“Okay… give me just a minute.” It took her longer to connect to your phone. You wondered why, but didn’t pry. You accepted the WR400 message.

“I’ll keep you updated on Simon. When he wakes up, I wanted to know if you would like to be there.” North said and you couldn’t help but be shocked.

“I wouldn’t want to intrude on him and Markus. I… can tell they must be close.”

“We all are.” North said, nodding.

“Yeah, I got that impression from Josh. All four of you went through so much together… it must be nice to have such close friends.”

North smiled softly to herself, as if to say you have no idea.

“Security is still high. I’ll walk you out. Until someone takes responsibility for this attack, we don’t know whether you people are targets too.”

That was a good point and you were more than happy to have the company of someone not in SWAT gear.

---

By the time you got home, ill-advised latte in your hand, it was already dark and bitterly cold. The sun went down so early in the winter, sapping the energy from your limbs though it was hardly yet nine o clock. The lobby of the apartment was mostly empty, with some people still around in the lower rec room areas. You noticed the security guard gave you a knowing smile and a faint nod. It was odd, but you gave a pleasant enough smile and “good evening” before disappearing up the elevator to your floor.

When you got to your door, you fumbled with your key card and then all but stumbled through the threshold, dropping your things and tossing the keycard into the bowl on a nearby stand reserved for that very purpose and setting your drink down too. You shut the door behind you, shucking off your shoes and quickly making work of the front of your blouse and itching to get to the clasp of your bra.

You made it about half way into the room before you turned and had to muffle a scream into your hands as Connor stood in your kitchen. How you managed to put that into the back of your mind you didn’t know, but it hit you without a beat that of course he was here, you’d invited him.

He looked genuinely concerned and genuinely amazing as usual, having traded off his suit and tie for jeans and a dark navy sweater. He had the sleeves pushed up to his elbows and was in the process of dispensing what smelled like some heavenly lo mein into one of your bowls.

“Sorry! Uh. Startled me.” You said, following the trail of his eyes and looking down and seeing the top of your very own, very lace frilled pink bra. You wrapped your shirt closed around yourself.

You stared at one another, a prolonged deer in headlights moment on your part until he said cheerfully,

“I ordered Chinese for you.”

Your stomach growled its approval.

“Awesome. Lemme just uh— go change. In the bedroom.”

“If you’d like.” He said, innocent as can be. You laughed, high and way too nervous, slipping off into your room to scream into a pillow for a hot second.

When you came back, comfortable in fleece bottoms and a faded Tigers t-shirt, Connor had clearly taken pains to adjust your sitting area while you were gone. There were pillows, clearly taken from your linen closet and more blankets for extra comfort. The delicious smelling lo mein was waiting on the glass coffee table, with other boxes of rice and chicken also present. And of course there was Connor, looking up at you as you came into the room with an expectant smile. God, if he had a tail you were pretty certain it would be wagging.

“You didn’t have to do this, Connor.” You said, shifting a pillow aside to take a place beside him, feeling a bit awkward to eat in front of him when he didn’t.

“There is popcorn too, if you’d like. But I thought something of substance would be better first.” Connor said, which seemed rather reasonable and all, but it still made you feel rather bashful. You picked up the bowl, happy to see a fork instead of the wooden chopsticks and stirred the noodles around the utensil.

“Okay— you didn’t have to, but I’m not gonna lie. Super glad you did.” You said. Connor looked pleased, bring his leg to rest up on the sofa as he turned towards you, arm over the back.

“Hank recommended I do something “casual”. I had planned to download a program on recipes, but he said that might come across as “too much”.

“Hank’s right. You don’t need to cook for me or do anything at all really.” You said, shaking your head with a sort of affectionate exasperation, “I like just having you around.”

“To talk about Machiavelli.” Connor added, “And films?”

“Yeah, about that. Given your text I imagine you probably have finished The Prince?”

Connor nodded.

“So! Tell me. What are your thoughts? Hit me with it, hippy.”

“His insights into human nature are primarily negative. He sees people as existing to serve the interests of the powerful through a constant balance of violence and benevolence. The masses are sheep, to be controlled.”

That was a very basic understanding, one that any search engine could produce, but something in Connor’s expression told you there was more.

“That’s what a lotta people say, but what did you think? You did quote it, so I wondered if you agreed with him on his conclusions.”

Connor made a face, a very clear indicator he did not.

“I think… that focusing only on the ends, on removing empathy and ideas in favor of blind efficiency, to be without feeling— it’s easy, but it’s inhumane. There are things he discusses which I find interesting but ultimately my feelings are very….” He drew off, fingers curling a bit into the fabric at the back of our sofa.

“Polarizing?” You finished, knowing full well the roller coaster it probably took him on.

“Yes. If I had read it “before" I probably would have agreed with him.” Connor said, “I don’t anymore. Realizing that was— emotional? I think that is the correct description.”

“Maybe that’s why Hank recommended it to you. To show you how far you’ve come.” You said, not knowing for sure, but finding that perhaps the old man had a plan all along.

“It made me look for the more insights on social order and governing bodies. Like Leviathan.”

You lit up, nodding while chewing through a bite of lo mein.

“That’s a good one!” You said, swallowing, “Social contracts.”

“Yes. The natural and artificial man…” Connor seemed to be relaxing as much as you, but still carefully selecting his words.

“I also read Nietzsche.”

“Of course you did.” You said, unable to keep yourself from laughing. If you had a quarter for every philosophy major who came out of 101 with a hard-on for Nietzsche you could pay for your next two years of grad school.

“You do not like him?”

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” You quoted, then clarified, “I like him just fine. People use existentialism and nihilism to justify being garbage people. I believe we should persevere through the chaotic mess of our lives rather than give into it.”

You speared a piece of chicken with your fork.

“Try being an optimist in a den of college age philosophy majors. It’s exhausting. Like yeah. People suck. We are floating on a blue dot through space and are inconsequential in the whole of existence. Awesome. Pass me the rice.”

Connor did so with a laugh. You took the container, brushing his hand faintly as you did and finding yourself very aware of that tiny detail.

“I envy your dedication to simplicity.” Connor said and you were not sure if he was teasing you or not.

“Like I said. Leave the rich man to his game. Give me my next meal.”

You chewed up some noodles for emphasis.

“And I don’t eat.” Connor added, “So I’ll aspire to higher thinking for both of us.”

“100 percent okay with that arrangement. You be smart and I’ll be full.”

“And frustratingly gorgeous.”

Ugh. God damn security really saved it like that in the log? That explained a lot.

“D-don’t act like that’s brand new information Mister “Do-You-Find-Me-Aesthetically-Pleasing?”. You said it yourself you were built to be pretty.”

Connor conceded it seemed, nodding with a frown.

“You want to watch the rest of the movie?” You said, the display flashing up on queue at your words. Connor perked.

“Yes please.”

The monitor began the film right where it left off, capturing his rapt attention. He was sitting in a way that you could so easily just slip a bit closer and rest into that soft sweater, put your head on his shoulder and just die of complete bliss. You flicked glances over at him as you had before, expecting his attention to be too focused to noticed— until you both looked at the same time, catching the other in the act of staring.

You immediately looked forward, but by the way your cheeks were burning you were pretty sure those beautiful brown eyes were still on you.

“Are you cold?” Connor asked.

“A little.” You said, playing into the charade. Connor knew full well the answer and if he hadn’t a quick scan would have told him.

“I am capable of increasing the warmth of my exterior to 110 degrees with little effort.”

The offer hung, unanswered in the air as you flipped noodles over and over around your fork. Finally, you shuffled over until his side was flush with yours. You didn’t lean on him, that seemed a bit too much, but you suddenly felt the faint aura of warmth and could not deny it was pleasant for multiple reasons.

Connor seemed nonchalant, eyes again fixed on the monitor as his LED ran yellow. You told yourself it was probably just the heating.

“—-...” he said, your name sounding somehow even better on his lips. You hummed, glancing at him.

“I like you.” He said. There was an air of expectation, pause. He was waiting for a response.

“I know, Connor. I like you too!” You said, reassuring but trying to mask the earnestness in which you felt those words. You did like him, you liked him a lot, but you didn’t even know where to begin unpacking those feelings in the swarm of everything that had been happening. You silently wished things were easier, that you could just go back to being a girl waiting in line behind a boy at a coffee shop.

Despite your attempt, somehow, it felt like it was the wrong answer still as Connor’s LED settled back to solid ice blue.

“I uh, I got something in my eLibrary during one of my many cab rides of the day.” You said, “It’s for you. I thought you might like it.”

Connor rose an eyebrow, looking uncertain, but his LED did flash twice as he downloaded the book.

“Modern Coin Magic by J.B. Bobo. 116 coin sleights and 236 coin tricks.” He said, slowly seeming to grow understanding as his smile turned into a grin.

“Much more fun to read than Hobbes. Call it a repayment for the Chinese.” You said, feeling yourself flush from the heat of him and your feeling suddenly a bit silly for getting it.

“Yes, but I thought you were going to have me unsync from your devices?”

“As long as you don’t go snooping through my phone logs, I don’t mind it. It’s kinda nice, like you’re always—“

You stopped, realizing how the words would have sounded.

“With you?” He finished, quiet.

“Um yeah. With everything going on, it’s nice to know I got a DPD detective who could find my body.” You said, meaning it to be a joke.

Connor tensed a bit at that, arm curling slightly closer towards you, but still not touching. You didn’t even notice, sitting up to set down your empty bowl and then gently falling back.

The night fell away, bits and pieces fading in and out. You remembered your cheek against something rough, denim— you turned your face in and found plush softness and a gentle touch soothing through your hair, across your cheek and even tracing over the shell of your ear. You fidgeted, swatting the tickling away.

When you woke up the next morning, you were tucked in on the couch, the smell of coffee strong and welcome as you slowly woke more and more. The front door clicked and Connor was gone.

---

Friday was quickly approaching. 2/14. While most were waiting in anticipation of Valentine's Day, you had actually pretty much forgotten about the entire thing and waited with a different kind of anticipation.

You wished you had more time to focus on Connor and the feeling that something was hiding, unsaid and accumulating beneath... but there was so much else to do. You waited in the lobby of Wayne State’s medical center, flipping through maps on how to reach Temple Bar and the feed of upcoming events. Per their calendar, there was nothing, they were even closed on Valentine's day, which was an oddity in itself... but you didn’t think that note in the DPD file Hank had was jotted down for nothing.

After the stunt you had pulled with Cyberlife, you were informed that the main director was taking over via off-sight coms as they didn’t want to work with an intern. You were back to square one, but with your major supervisor in the hospital room down the hall, no one really was in a position to scold you for missing time in the office. A nurse came to get you,

“She’s awake and said she’d like to see you. She’s a bit groggy still, so try to keep conversations light-hearted… if possible.” The nurse advised, leading you to the door.

You stepped in, noting this was the first time you’d seen Miranda with her hair down. She had burns, dressed and tended to, but were more severe than your own. She was healing, the miracle of modern medicine ten fold in the last twenty years courteously of Cyberlife.

“Hey…” you said, slipping into the chair, “I brought you something.”

You made sure no nurses were around as you slipped out the closed thermos from your coat.

Miranda laughed, quiet and slightly pained.

“I knew… when you came in… you were a good fit.”

You set the thermos of London Fog on the table by her bed.

“I heard… my… promotion for you was… over ridden.” She said, words coming slowly, exhausted.

“It was good for the short time. I think I did what you would have wanted.”

“Security?”

“Higher.”

“Androids?”

“Taken care of.”

Miranda closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

“Idealism… works in small bursts.” She breathed out, “You seemed… adequately idealistic.”

“The CyberLife representative said something similar. Said you uh— knew when to pretend to believe.”

“I’m a government… employee. Of course… I do.”

It was disappointing to hear that from someone whom you idealized, but right now everything about Miranda was human, from the dark circles under her eyes, her unkempt hair and the magnitude of wires and cables plugged into the machines around her running from her arms.

“I was… going… to wait. But… I have an opening. I want.. to give you the job.”

“What kind of job?” You asked.

“Assistant… Division Planner. Alpha site.”

“Miranda…” you said, “Can you even do that?”

“I may be… here… but I am still the Division Planner for the alpha, beta and gamma sites. I’m responsible for hiring… and I’m hiring.”

She curled her fingers, trying to pick up a tablet on her bed. You picked it up, seeing the names of the two other intern volunteers who had started with you from the beginning signed as the assistants to beta and gamma sites. Another blank line was there, for Alpha.

“Director approved. Sign and you got it. But I can understand… if after everything… you say no.”

You took out your stylus and wrote your name.

“Bombs away.” You said and Miranda groaned, despite the smile on her face.

“Keep that sense of humor. You’ll need it.”

You left the hospital and got a cab back to the Cyberlife facility where they were treating the androids, sending out a quick message to Josh to let him know to expect you.

You also sent a quick one to Connor.

[from: --

You got time today to come by and meet the group? Markus said you were more than welcome. ]

You were surprised by the long delay. Normally Connor responded so quickly when you messaged, but right now it looked like it hadn’t even been opened immediately as per usual.

The cab was halfway out to the old GM factory when the message came through.

[from: Connor

Unfortunately, I do not. There are some cases we are working on. I will not be able to "hang out" until Saturday evening. I am not avoiding the situation, in case you were thinking so. ]

Well you weren't but now that he said it you were a bit curious. You were surprised by how disappointed you were at the news. He'd become such an invaluable addition to your post-work relaxation time the past few days you were not looking forward to going home to an empty apartment-- which was new to you. Throughout college and high school you'd never seemed to have the time to spend on romantic relationships. Not that this was romantic, you reminded yourself silently, just uh- close. Close was a better word.

[from: ---

I won't say I'm not bummed, but I understand work life. Plus, it gives me time to do some grad-student stuff. ]

[from: Connor

Please do check in from time to time. I will back-read. ]

Oh you would, permission not even needed.

Thursday seemed to drag on and on. Between setting up your new office at the Cadillac Place and then arguing for over an hour with security because you wanted to move back to the on-site facility you barely limped your way through the afternoon. It was weird to be your own "boss", but you turned out to be more hands on than the other planners had expected, going over blueprints with them and listening in to drafting meetings. You knew the material, which was also new to them and had no problems expressing your opinions on where best to branch the housing units out.

For a temporary installation, you were thinking considerably far ahead, but it was nearly impossible to be an urban planner without being also a futurist. What if it took longer to refurbish abandoned and discarded homes along the city outskirts? What if the government backed out or required down payments and now you all were left waiting for androids to achieve the right to work? There were thousands of tiny outcomes, branching off infinitely and you had to be ready to make sure there was a place for these people to live.

After work, your attention shifted to the paper you were hoping to submit to the Wayne State academic journal which was right now just a detailed hypothesis on how to prepare for a "white flight" type scenario from encroaching in areas where androids would begin to live. History made it a likely outcome, but learning from that same history was also a possibility.

When it was finally time to sleep, a mixture of anticipation and some missing factor kept you tossing and turning. Finally, giving in, you turned on the lights in the living room and set a film playing on low volume. Curled back up into bed, you could almost trick yourself into thinking Connor was just in the other room.

The next morning you called off, prepared to claim soreness or other illness, despite your rapidly healing burns and bruises from the explosion, but it turned out as the assistant director, all you had to do was ping a server of your absence and the people were notified. No questions asked. For now at least.

Connor had been quiet, but not even ten minutes after your call in you got a message.

[from: Connor

Are you feeling alright? ]

[from: ---

What did I say about my phone logs? ]

[from: Connor

Stay out of them. ]

[from: ---

Uh huh. Get back to work, mister. I'm fine. Just wanted a day to myself. ]

[from: Connor

It is a good idea. You've hardly had much time to recuperate. Hank asked if you "passed along his message"? ]

[from: ---

Tell him I did, but I don't expect it to be followed. ]

[from: Connor

He said it was "worth a shot". I can not tell you of what has been happening with the case, but there have been some... irregularities. ]

[from: ---

Like? ]

[from: Connor

Let's just we are dealing with cross-contamination. ]

That was code enough for "Jericho's investigation is crossing our investigation".

[from: Connor

I will be in some long briefings the remainder of the day and evening. I will respond to any messages tomorrow. Have a good day off, ---. ]

Clearly you weren't the only one who didn't pay attention to holidays.

You booted up your tablet, checking for the tenth time the route to the Temple Bar. You breathed in, held and then let it out. Was this really even a good idea? But another thought butted in, whispering faintly, Never was anything great achieved without danger.

Yeah? Well, nothing was more dangerous than conscientious stupidity, so it looked like you were about to do Machiavelli proud and make Dr. King shake his damn head.

----

Temple Bar had once upon a time been a diner, the outside tiled with olive green panels and dotted with cubed glass windows. It was a dive, like if you pulled up a definition of "dive-bar" in Webster's dictionary you were pretty sure scrolling through the associated images that this place, with it's peeling paint and it's condemned-and-abandoned-chic would show right up. The words Temple Bar weren't even on a sign, but stenciled above its double doors in bright red paint.

The sun had begun to fade off, leaving the sky a pale canvas of dark purples and light pinks just barely visible behind the buildings. Inside the bar looked like the lights were on, but the doors did not move when you pushed on them. Thinking maybe you'd catch a glimpse around back, you turned the corner around the grey building next door and noted a door being ushered by two guys in street clothes. Typically there would be nothing really strange about them hanging out smoking cigarettes around the corner from a bar, if you didn't know that the bar's doors were closed. They were distracted, talking to another guy who'd come up to them so you hurried back behind the corner, listening.

One man at the door spoke, "Anything interesting happenin'?"

And the approaching man replied, "Oh, right uh-- yeah. Saw a pink elephant."

"Relax bud, you did fine." the questioning man said and you heard the sound of the door open, the dull roar of conversation and music and then all went silent again as the door shut.

You took a deep breath, waited a good ten minutes in torturous limbo-- and turned the corner. You smiled, having decided to use the best camouflage a girl could use, red lipstick and a low cut shirt.

They looked at you with grins, taking drags off their cigarettes.

"You all dolled up for your Valentine, sweetheart?" the taller one asked, "Or you out looking for one?"

"Maybe I already found one" you said, cautious behind that smile. The man laughed and then used it for his lead.

"You see anything else interesting lately? Besides my gorgeous mug."

"Oh yeah. A pink elephant." you said, flashing a smile you hoped was sultry and not just ridiculous.

"Awesome. Love it when we get us some female support." the man said, opening the latch and ushering you into the building.

"You have fun, little mama. I'll come buy you a drink later."

And the door closed.

The building was perhaps once a dry goods store, or other storage facility. There were permanent oil stains in the concrete floor that suggested maybe once it was a garage. Now though, it had been redone into a recreation space, with pool, standing tables and a slightly raised stage towards the front. There were maybe thirty to forty people present, leaving a lot of room to move around. When you came in directly to your left were two guys manning a table with pamphlets and other literature that all followed a very singular theme. Anti-Android. To your right was a guy with a scanner, which he promptly shined over you without explanation. There was a faint chime and he nodded.

"Human, clear."

Now you knew why this gathering had been noted in Hank's file and suddenly, with a rush of adrenaline, you became aware that this could very well be a meeting for the people who set a bomb off fifteen feet from your ass.

The words of Martin Luther King weren't going to save you now, so you flipped through the hand outs and smiled prettily and for the most part everyone seemed pleased a young lady was there. There were few of you, but those that you did see were mostly spoken for, hanging off the arms of other men and one, a rather tough looking woman.

"Mike will be addressing the congregation in about twenty, so get yourself a drink girl!" one guy said, happily handing you a free pin that showed a cartoon of an android without it's skin, X eyed and bleeding blue. Very charming. You made sure to drop it into an unaccompanied glass of beer on your way through. There was no mistake, you were out of your damn depth and now you were stuck here. Your nervousness must have read as feeling "out of place" because a blonde girl at the bar leaned over at your approach and smiled,

"First timer?"

"Yeah..." you said, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear.

"Everyone is super cool. Plus you don't have to worry about anyone crying over a robo joke." she laughed and you forced yourself to laugh with her.

"I'm Dani. You?"

Shit. Well. Go with the tried and true.

"Jane." you said, taking the hand offered to you.

"Hey! Get a special drink over here for my girl Plain Jane!" Dani said, and the man next to her laughed.

"Tom." he said, nodding and you nodded back.

"How long uh-- so how long have you guys been coming?"

Tom flashed up four fingers like he was in some gang flick.

"Four months! Even before the start. Got my girl here coming after all that mess back in November. Finally realized I had a point, didn't ya?"

Dani sighed, rolling her eyes playfully.

"You wanna meet some of the big guns?" Tom said, "I know a few of them. C'mon. Great bragging rights for a newbie!"

You barely had time to protest when Dani grabbed your arm and along with Tom, drug you over to a spot that was off to the side. There were sofas circled around each other and here there seemed to be only guys and none of them were drinking. They looked up at the interruption with an irritation you recognized, but that Tom in his buzzed state was oblivious to.

"Got some fresh meat! Everyone, this is Jane. Course you probably already know at least one of these ugly fuckers."

Of course? You looked at all the faces now staring at you and didn't recognize a single one. There was a good looking man sitting with his arms splayed out over the sofa's back, eyeing you with the same kind of calculated scan you'd' except from an android. It didn't take a grad student to know you were busted.

"I don't know her." came the first voice, followed by another and then the last. With that verdict, Tom suddenly had pulled back and was looking at you with a renewed confusion.

"Oh-- I thought... but wait..."

The guy you assumed was in charge stood up and made his way over to you. Everything in your limbs screamed run but you were paralyzed to the spot. Trapped between Dani and Tom.

"Thanks you two, go on back to the bar now."

The two left, still looking confused and Dani even shooting you a look of profound pity. The man in front of you however, had no such look, eyeing you with wicked coldness.

“How'd you get in? We recruit. That's how we keep out the riff raff and everyone here knows at least one of my boys right here. And if they don't know you, then you weren't invited.”

He reached up, drawing a hand through your hair.

"And we don't like party crashers around here."

Panic pulsed through your face, deafening your ears. When an arm suddenly slung heavily over your shoulders you gasped and jumped, only to be held tight but gently closer.

“Babe it’s just me. Got your beer.” This man you immediately recognized, even out of uniform, as the “Gavin” who taunted Connor in the DPD break room about his "ring". He passed you a beer, another in his hand that was around you, teasingly pressing it to your cheek. It was cold. You accepted the bottle, the eyes of the man questioning you now on Gavin.

“Neil, is she with you?” the man asked, no longer sounding as hostile, but more than a little annoyed.

“Yeah yeah. Sorry. I know the whole “no plus ones” but this is my girl. She was gonna kill me if I didn't do something for V-day tonight. Hey-- she's cool and she’s smart as fuck. Great addition to our group. Don’t know how I scored.” He said, turning fond eyes on you and clearly by the incline of his chin, was leaning in for a kiss. You played along, half closing your eyes as his lips pressed to yours warmly. You tasted no alcohol on his breath to speak of. It was quick, Gavin turning his face back up to the guys with a grin.

“It’s because you’re so cute.” You said, voice dry. It even got a laugh from one of there guys who had a minute ago been looking to bounce you.

“And my other extensive qualities.”

“Alright, alright. Jesus Christ, Neil we got rules for a reason. We just don’t want the wrong sorts getting in, but if this guy is tapping’ ya there is no way you’re made of plastic.”

You wrinkled your face in disgust, masking your actual disgust for his behavior with disgust at the notion.

“Silicone parts are made for toys.” You said, recalling some old 90's song lyric. They all seemed far too impressed with it.

“Should put that on one of our headers!” said one of the guys behind the leader.

“Yeah, speakin’ of talkin’ shop there was something I wanted to run by you Mike. Hey babe, why don’t you go mingle.” He let you go, directing you off with a swat to your ass. You tried to resist your bodies innate instinct to stiffen.

“Good, cause you and me are gonna re-discuss why we have the rules too." "Mike" said, but was still watching you with those cold eyes, "Don’t let that one have too long a leash now, Neil. Someone might snap her up.”

Even his smile was chilling.

You shook your head, rolling your eyes and smiling the way you’d seen girls in bars do to be “cool girls". As if Mike was just sooooo funny.

You slipped away trying to find a secluded place to keep watch of the people coming and going around, all getting drinks and chatting like it was a regular old Valentine's day bar night. After a couple of minutes, arms wrapped around your middle again and you could tell by the sleeves it was Gavin.

“Neil, huh?” You said quietly.

“What are you doing here?” Gavin said through gritted teeth, acting like he was grinning into your hair.

“I was in the area.” You said, feeling his jaw work against your temple in frustration.

“You are about to blow a sting is what you are doing. How’d you find out about this?”

Why lie?

“Saw the name and date in Hank’s file.”

Gavin swore quietly, but then whispered into your ear again like a good “sweet” boyfriend.

“Alright, gumshoe, you had your fun. Now get. This ain’t no place for a good robo-loving girl like you.”

You elbowed him, hitting your funny bone on his rib along the way. It wasn’t especially hard, but enough to make him hiss and the arm around your waist to become uncomfortably tight.

“Assaulting an officer? Tsk tsk.” Gavin said, flirty yet somehow still pissed off.

“Shut up. He’s about to talk next.”

Sure enough, “Mike” took up on the makeshift stage, a chorus of cheers ringing out.

"First things first. We all are extremely grateful to you boys who gave up your night of guaranteed sex to come out here tonight and rally for your rights."

Another roar.

"And we are extremely sorry for all you boys who gave up your night of beating your meat to porn to come out here tonight and rally for your rights!"

Ah. What a classy public speaker.

"For too long we've all been struggling under the heel of Cyberlife and their workforce. We've lost jobs, we've lost homes and now we've lost something more fundamental to human kind than can be expressed." he paused for effect, "We've lost justice."

There was another chorus of agreements.

"243 victims of violent deviant crimes. Two hundred and forty three. How many androids caught? Maybe half a dozen. And now? Zip. Nothing. All investigations suspended because the damn liberals are too busy giving them government aid!"

Mike gave time for the group to settle on that, outraged comments and cries of various disgusting prejudices, not all limited to androids.

"Raise your hand if you or a family member has been a victim of a deviant? Huh? C'mon, I'll make it easy." Mike said, and rose his hand, "Many know our good founder lost his brother, god rest his soul, who was murdered in cold blood by one of these skin job sluts and what did the DPD do? Let them get away."

He shook his head, putting on a show of seething.

"He wants justice. I want justice. Do you want justice?"

Another loud chorus.

"I said DO YOU WANT JUSTICE?"

The place exploded with noise and you were suddenly grateful for the steady pressure of Gavin's chest against your back. He whispered lowly,

"Now would be a good time to slip out..."

Gavin didn't give you a chance to respond, setting his hand on the back of your neck and using it to direct you out through the crowd. You reached back to slap his arm, but he refused to let go.

"Oh now wait wait-- hold on, is that Neil and his girl? Hold on."

You both froze, noting suddenly as the crowd dispersed around you.

"You see. Neil brought a lady friend tonight and either he is as dumb as he seems, or she done played him like a fiddle. Ladies and gents, I'd like to introduce you to the new assistant division planner of the traitors putting those androids up in homes like kings."

The next few seconds blurred, guys coming to grab Gavin and him putting up a fight to get off. Two of the guys from the front door roughly grabbed your upper arms and you felt the solid press of a gun against your side. Gavin took a few good hits before he too was pushed on the ground, a gun to his head.

"You see, little miss didn't think we backwater mongrels would have-- I don't know-- details on all DCRU's robo-loving libtards. But hey. Whaddya know. We do."

"Stop! He didn't know!" you yelled, desperation in your voice with knowing that you could at least maybe keep Gavin from getting mixed up in your mistake.

"If everyone would do us a huge favor and please, file on into the bar next door. We're gonna postpone our rally for a bit of house keeping."

There was genuinely some individuals, like Dani and Tom who didn't seem entirely okay with what was happening, but regardless, the crowd moved out, leaving you and Gavin alone in the empty warehouse with Mike and six of his men.

"I think this is the best contribution you've made to the cause so far, "Neil"." Mike said, jumping down from the stage and coming to lean over Gavin. "Head honcho and I were all a wonder how we'd deal with the new security... but shit, now we can just walk in. Blow those skin-jobs apart."

Gavin jerked, trying to get his arm free of one of the guys. Mike nodded and they let go, throwing Gavin down unto his hands and knees. In a second the three guys were on him, punching and kicking whatever they could reach. Gavin curled, defending his ribs and head, but otherwise took each blow.

"Brought me the perfect Valentine." he said and reached out towards you. You jerked your head away, trying to keep him from taking your neck in his hand and unable to pull back enough with how the two held you fast, digging the gun into your hip.

"Get rid of him. We take the girl to Twelve Oaks."

The door burst open, the body of one of the doormen flying through and falling, un-moving unto the floor.

"What the fu--" Mike's certain-to-be-eloquent statement was cut off.

The men turned their guns towards the door, firing on the first person that came through. It took a minute to register that that person was in fact the slumped form of the other guard in a headlock, which was dropped unceremoniously to the ground as the individual holding him reloaded and fired. The shots were clinical, perfect in their execution. One drop, two drops. Connor moved like a machine, quickly dodging behind the pool table to avoid a hail of bullets from those still standing. But these guys were not trained soldiers or cops, Connor just needed a few timed breaks in the fire and two more went down. Losing men fast, Mike booked it toward the back, the remaining guys following close behind. Connor seemed intent to chase after them, but halted his pursuit to trail his gun on the guy who still held you. The man wrapped his arm up around your throat, cutting off your breath as he staggered back, using you as a shield. He pointed his gun at Connor, but thinking better of it, instead pointed it at you.

There was nothing in his Connor's eyes, no recognition, no pity. The warm brown of his iris was engulfed in near black, his LED red.

"Back off, freak! I swear to god! I swear to god I will kill her!"

From the ground, Gavin moved, pulling out his own gun and drawing it on the man. Human eyes were drawn to movement, and this man was no different as he turned his attention towards Gavin, arm laxing.

"Down!" Connor yelled, and you ducked under the man's arm, slipping away and exposing a perfect line of fire to the man's chest which Connor immediately exploited.

One shot. The man's arm released you and you fell to the ground, clamoring away.

Two shots.

Three.

Four.

The shots kept coming as Connor unloaded into the man until at last your captor finally staggered back and fell to the ground. There were sounds of yelling coming from the bar, the issuing of commands and the door burst open to a few armored officers and Hank, wearing a vest.

"Area needs securing." Connor stated, cool and calm, "Please inform medical personnel. We have an officer down, five wounded POIs and two dead."

Your breathing was fast, too fast, it came in short gasps. Hank swore under his breath, holstering his own weapon as he dropped down to your side, his hands surprisingly gentle.

"Up ya go. C'mon." Hank said, helping in the endeavor as suddenly your legs seemed disconnected from your will for them to move. As soon as you were vertical, another officer came forward, opening his handcuffs. Hank rebuked him swiftly,

"Hey, hey. You wanna get slapped with a lawsuit? Put that shit away, I'll take her."

"Take me?" you managed, looking for Connor and finding he was following some other officers out the back way, on the trail of "Mike" and his two men. You wondered if they managed to stop them.

"Yeah, that's what happens when you get caught up in a damn cop raid." Hank said, helping you steady. You noted, to your horror, your shirt was covered in blood and your hands now too where you'd touched it. You made a sound in the back of your throat and Hank steadied you again.

"C'mon... c'mon, kid, let's get you out of here."

----

The interrogation room of the DPD was no strange place for you, but the handcuffs securing your wrists together at the front were. Your hair was pulled back as best you could manage and you were actively trying to ignore the fact there was blood drying and clumping the strands together in spots. You'd been given a DPD hoodie and some sweats, which you were more than happy to trade your blood covered clothes for.

The cold metal table felt nice on your temples as you lay with your head down on your arms, the faint clink of the handcuffs hitting together a repetitive sound you continued to produce, if only to distract you from the silence.

When the door opened, you heard the noise outside-- they did have a lot of people to process tonight. You lulled your head up a bit, noting Hank. You slunk up into a sitting position, movements slow and groggy.

"You warmin' up?" Hank asked and you nodded. You'd been in shock the medics said and now all you felt was tired.

"Good. Maybe you can tell me what the hell you were doing at that bar tonight then?" he said, voice curt, "If it isn't too much trouble."

"Where's Connor?" you said, looking towards the two way glass.

"The Detective had other duties to see to. Which leads me to my first and most important question." Hank sighed, "The guy he shot-- did he have a gun?"

"Yes." you said, remembering all too well the cold touch of it to your side. "He had it on me. He said he was going to kill me."

"So the detective was right to act in your defense?"

"I... appreciated it." you didn't know what else to say. When you thought of it, all you saw was the empty look in Connor's eyes, void except for the task at hand. He hadn't even spoken to you at all except to tell you when to put your head down.

"Good. Now let's start from the top. How'd you hear about the rally?"

"I didn't know it was a rally." you said, "I saw the bar name and the date on one of your notes when I was last here."

Hank frowned. You knew it would most likely get him reprimanded, but it was the truth.

"So you-- what? Just thought you'd impede a police investigation? Did you think we weren't going to have eyes on it?"

"I-- maybe. I just..."

"What? Cause Ms. ---, I gotta tell ya, it looks awfully damn suspicious that you, a DCRU volunteer, were found at a rally of the group that may have bombed your facility."

God, he was right. Why on earth had you ever thought this was a good idea? It was just this-- drive you'd felt since you saw Miranda laying in that bed. Saw Simon. The other androids... Markus looking so shattered and defeated that day as North tried to comfort him. You were helping but it wasn't enough.

"I wanted to see them." you said, "I needed to see them. So I would know if they were the ones who did this."

Hank sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose and tipping his chair back.

"So you're telling me you were just out looking for some-- what? Closure?"

"Yeah. I guess." you said, pausing for a moment, "...I barely sleep. I live off coffee because I don't want to eat, if I even remember to do it. When I close my eyes all I see is that flash and I just-- I needed to know why."

"What you need, ---, is to talk to the damn therapist we referred you to when this happened."

You knew he was right. Connor had been keeping you together with his visits which were half obvious home checks. Your co-workers hadn't bat an eye at you taking the day off because you were the only one of those in the blast who hadn't yet. The others had not been back since.

"I just want to do what's right for them. I want to protect them."

Hank nodded and slowly reached over and unlocked the cuffs from your wrists.

"It's been made obvious by Detective Reed's impression and my own, that you were not there as a participant. I'm letting the obstruction go and your breaking our most convincing "extremist's" cover for two reasons." he held up his index and middle finger, ticking them off,  "One. You are a victim of a violent crime, Ms. ---, whether you like it or not. Twice. And two... well. You know two."

Connor.

"I advice you take some time off work and get your head straight. You are doing good for these people, Ms. ---, just please leave the detecting to us because next time you play at Nancy Drew, the department will press charges." Hank stood up, gesturing that you should too.

"There was something." you said, "Something that didn't make sense that that guy Mike said."

Hank narrowed his eyes.

"He knew about my promotion. I'm assistant division planner now to the housing site that was bombed. He shouldn't know that. There's no way. It's not even been released, I only signed the paperwork a few days ago."

The gravity of that statement dawned on Hank, making his face twist with shock and then disgust.

"Jesus Christ...."

He had drawn the conclusion you had. Someone from within DRCU was providing these people with information.

[angeltriestoblog]

Sophomore year recap, vol. 1

Funny how I only ever go on this blog to give sporadic life updates, which are honestly just lengthier versions of what goes on my Instagram dump. But, I'd hate to let this practice die—plus, I love to write, so it continues for another year. I recently wrapped up my first semester of sophomore year—yet another testament to how fast time flies by—and it's safe to presume that it was the most rewarding chapter of my stay in Ateneo, thus far. I admit I did spend most of my freshman year in my comfort zone (while still managing to make my fair share of rookie mistakes, go me!). Although I don't completely blame myself for not being able to adjust from the get-go, I do admit that my life would have been much easier if I didn't take so long to warm up to the idea of embracing change and taking risks. Upon realizing this, there was a certain pressure that came with it to make up for lost time and try to do as much I could before my body eventually gives out.

For starters, I became more active in the three organizations I am a member of, all of which demanded so much of my energy, and pushed my brain power and time management skills to the test, but were very fulfilling to be in nonetheless. (A little note from Editing Angel: This is where this post starts to look a little bit like a LinkedIn profile.)

I signed up to be a part of the Sanggunian, the student government of the University, under the Commission on Mental Health, since I am an advocate for challenging the stigma that surrounds this issue, as well as providing the proper support to those who need it. I was eventually put under Secretariat, where I was in charge of the databases and documents, taking minutes of the meeting, and updating attendance and post trackers. Although it wasn't the department I had originally planned on getting into, I did enjoy learning about the more technical side of the team and took pride in the fact that I was able to put some of the lessons I learned in ITM over intersession to good use. And by that I mean conditional formatting, but whatever ok!

But, at some point the forces of the universe decided to pull some strings and bring me to my first choice: Humans of Ateneo (HOA), a page that aims to share stories of those within the Ateneo community with the hopes of inspiring others. To this day, I work there as a literary editor, who is basically in charge of transcribing recordings of interviews and turning them into the text posts our audience sees on their Facebook timelines. I love what I do right now, because not only do I feel endlessly inspired by each story of resilience I encounter, but also fulfilled since I am partly responsible for getting that story out there for the rest of the world to see. But, I guess it wouldn't be entirely wrong to say that my favorite story so far has to be Mayor Vico Sotto's, especially because HOA Core (minus Marice, and plus Yanna) and I travelled all the way to Pasig City Hall to hear it from him in the flesh. I can confirm that he is definitely more good-looking in person, that he establishes eye contact when he speaks, and that he is one of the most insightful and substantial human beings I've ever met.

Since being a part of the team, I have also had access to opportunities both within the sub-commission and Sanggu, as a whole. I've been given leadership positions that allowed me to step up to the plate, one of which was directing a video we launched in celebration of World Mental Health Day. My co-project head Bel and I had to conceptualize it from scratch based solely on a spoken word poem given to us, and plan and plot its shooting over the course of one week—definitely a feat given our conflicts in schedule, and the unpredictable weather. Next year, I'll be pretty hands-on when it comes to manning the Peer Support Group of our commission, as I have been assigned as a member of the core team, so that's definitely something to watch out for.

I've attended active listening workshops to help me be better in tending to the needs of others: by either providing them with a newfound support system, or sharing sound advice. I was a part of the sub-core team behind Humans of Ateneo: IRL, where prestigious alumni were invited to speak on their journeys, much like three HOA posts come to life. I also ended up emceeing a freshman drug talk all by myself, because I was only informed at the very last minute that my co-host had other commitments to attend to. I remember practically shaking from the nerves and squealing right in front of the speakers that day, but I managed to pull through with more confidence and less awkward finger guns than I thought possible.

I think this is the org where I took the most initiative and was therefore the busiest, but I didn't mind at all because I was surrounded by such wonderful people. I met most of my team over intersession during a workshop that I wasn't even wholeheartedly willing to attend (because it coincided with what was my last chance to catch Ben&Ben live on their Limasawa Street tour), and thus wasn't expecting much out of. But, we meshed so well together almost instantly as we opened up to one another about experiences and secrets we only would have shared to our closest friends. The acceptance and belongingness was palpable from that point on, and it continues to manifest in how strong our bond is right now.

Aside from that, I got in The GUIDON, the University's student publication, as a Features writer. This is going to sound like such a humble brag, but I honestly didn't expect to be accepted. I'm well aware of how rigorous the week-long application process is, I got the news from friends who failed to make the cut and even saw it for myself during the general assembly they held specifically for applicants. I remember checking my e-mail and being greeted by a list of requirements I needed to accomplish for both of the staffs I applied for: mock articles, interviews, live tweets that all needed to show my unique writing style and authentic take on issues both in and outside the four walls of the campus, that were so overwhelming in scope that I had to call up a friend just to yell in her ear for 10 straight minutes. For the next few days after, tears were shed, friends were ghosted, drafts were created then scrapped, fished out of the Recently Deleted folder, and revised in an endless and vicious cycle—I don't think I had ever written as eloquently, gone as long without checking my phone, or listened to only one playlist on loop for literal days prior to those moments, and yet I was still very unsure of my chances because I knew I was up against some tough competition: veteran staffers of high school publications, and liberal arts majors who looked like they had more personality in their thumbs than I did in my entire body. I remember beating myself up for backing out of my second choice (hi Vantage), which would significantly decrease my chances of getting in. It's just that I knew I was incapable of submitting anything that wasn't half-assed at that point, and I couldn't bear to show them anything that I myself could not give an Angel Seal of Approval.

Thankfully, all of my hard work paid off eventually. Only two days after I had submitted the folder containing my requirements to the respective editor, I was working on a paper in a cafe (the table adjacent to the door of Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, Robinsons Galleria, to be very exact) when I received the acceptance letter in my inbox. I burst into tears, crumpled to the floor, and replied with the most articulate response I could muster: “SKLDFJSDLKFJSDLKFJSDLFJSLFSDKJ THANK YOU SO MUCH I am literally crying in the middle of this coffee shop.... thank you.... so much....”

As of this writing, I've published two articles under Features: one about the ghosting phenomenon that remains prevalent in romantic relationships, and another about the experiences of Ateneans with autism spectrum disorder. My job honestly feels like both work and a vacation at the same time, because it allows me to talk about a diverse set of topics with interesting people who are experts in the field, while doing what I feel like I'm best at. But, since a part of me will always consider Vantage my TOTGA, I took on some extra work for them and wrote a film review on "G!", a movie that came out as part of the Pista ng Pelikulang Pilipino earlier this year, which has proven itself to be the worst I've seen in my entire life for reasons I cannot even begin to explain. I didn't necessarily have high expectations of it upon seeing the trailer, but I hyped myself up for it nevertheless. I even bought tickets for me and my friend Christine online because I was afraid that they would be sold out, and we dashed out of our MSYS classroom as soon as our professor said goodbye to book a Grab and hurry to SM North EDSA to make it to our screening... only to barge in the theater and see that we were the only two people in the cinema. I mean, there was one couple in the far corner, but they didn't look very present. In addition to that, I did a food review on a JSEC stall called Chopsticks. I honestly think that food is the most challenging topic to write about, because it's hard to convey how something tastes. When someone asks me to describe the viand I'm eating, I often end up just giving them a spoonful so they can see for themselves. But, I hopped on it anyway, because how could I even say no to sampling an entire menu of Chinese food for free? Several plates of dimsum and chicken later, I gave them a well-deserved five star rating and consider myself as a frequent diner. The experience was made extra fun since I was able to chat with the owner of the business, and my photographer who turned out to be someone I followed on Instagram way back in 2015 and admired for how clean and curated her feed was! (Hi, Kim and Alexis hehe)

As if all of the things mentioned above weren't already enough, I also covered a talk on the future of scientists in the Philippines (which I also have an article on—this goes to show just how diverse the scope of my work can get), attended workshops on feature writing and the relation of journalism and mental health, participated in a rally against professors involved in sexual harassment cases in the Ateneo (pretty badass behavior, if you ask me!), and became a facilitator for a high school publication in this event called Point One. I guess I have The GUIDON to thank for my lack of writer's block: they've managed to keep my brain running on hyperdrive, and my creative juices flowing more than they ever have before.

Last but not the least, of course I chose to stay in my home organization, ACTM. Although I didn’t run for any position or apply to be a part of the Leaders Core (yet), I did my best to make myself visible and show my support in any of the events we participated in or projects that we spearheaded. I signed up as a part of the logistics subcore for the annual Prepcourse, where I helped out with set design and ran some errands for officers in the different booths they manned throughout that day. I honestly have a soft spot for the project, since I remember that the first time I felt genuinely happy during freshman year was during my own Prepcourse (Orsem didn't really do it for me, sorry friends) so even though I missed the chance to be a facilitator, I still wanted to be a part of the event in some way. I also hung out with blockmates and friends all throughout Tambay Week, supported our candidates for Mr. and Ms. SOM, as well as our dance team for RIB eliminations, and dressed up as Kim Possible for the annual Halloween party we held—I was even able to go with Ron Stoppable, thanks to my friend Iverson, who dressed up as him as a surprise.

Although the obvious highlight of my stay in ACTM so far has to be attending LEAP, a three-day leadership training seminar in Iba, Zambales. I remember this particular moment where I was wandering around the beachfront, lowkey frolicking in the water, while my groupmates were playing capture the flag. (In my defense, I was never the physically adept type of person, and knew I'd be helping my team out more if I stayed out of the playing area and cheered on them from the sidelines. But, anyway, I digress.) I could see the golden flecks of sunlight glistening on the waves, and the froth from the seawater hitting my toes, and when I looked back beyond the shore, I saw my friends having fun, running back and forth across the sand. As cliche as it sounds, I couldn't help but mutter to myself, "Wow."

Because at that time last year, I clearly remember being slumped on my couch, scrolling through one LEAP-related IG story after another, feeling this sense of FOMO that I didn't know how to deal with. On one hand, I hated that I wasn't part of something that looked equal parts fun and value-adding, but at the same time, I knew that if I were there, I'd be sticking out like a sore thumb and suffering all the more because I was at the point where social interaction had become physically painful for me. Maybe that's why this LEAP was extra special to me: besides all of the great people I met and the insights I picked up along the way, it served as a reminder of how far I've come, and how much farther I have to go during the rest of my stay in college.

(That honestly would have been the perfect way to end this post, but I have so much more I have to cover. How anti-climactic.)

Aside from my newfound love for organization life, I gained a lot of new friends and strengthened the ties I have with old ones. Back then, I was very selective of those I talked to and let in my circle: I let first impressions get the best of me, or allowed shyness to take center stage every time there was a chance to meet new people. Now, I'm close to both blockmates and batchmates: I go to their birthday celebrations, support events that they're a part of, hang out in their condo units to binge on fastfood, or sometimes just sit on the Matteo Steps with them in the middle of doing requirements to vent for 10 minutes before begrudgingly returning to our tables.

I miraculously also had time to sneak in some pretty fun stuff in my schedule despite my workload. Although I wasn’t able to prioritize making content for this blog, I got my writing on the national paper! It was in the first semester of my freshman year when I heard about Inquirer Youngblood from my English professor. Apparently, they accept essays about any topic under the sun from anyone aged 29 and below. Since I felt there would be no harm in trying, I crafted this little piece that aimed to show a different side of being an only child, as opposed to the “spoiled and entitled” stereotype that is usually stuck on us. I didn’t get my hopes up so as to not be disappointed, so when a couple of days had passed and my article wasn’t showing up on print, I gave up and moved on. Good thing my friend Bea sent me a photo of the September 8 issue of the newspaper (coincidentally the same day I got accepted into The GUIDON!), or else I wouldn’t have seen that I got published. I admit that even though writing is all I’ve ever really known since I was young, I’m not a hundred percent confident in my skill, nor do I always see the purpose behind what I do. But, it’s instances like that, that remind me of why I keep at it.

Another capital-G Great thing that happened was getting tickets to the UAAP men’s basketball championship game! As someone who made Ateneo her dream school at age five because of how much she loved the Blue Eagles, witnessing them end the season with a sweep and a championship was everything to me. And getting to do so with my closest friends in my block just made the experience even better than it was. Also, seeing Renzo Subido play in person—all my friends can attest to the fact that I was facing a huge moral dilemma mid-game, because every time he made a basket, I would end up cheering for him. (With a face like that, how could I not though)

I even found my way back in the gig scene after a long hiatus, with no less than Ang Bandang Shirley, Over October, and Munimuni welcoming me back with open arms. I had got tickets on a whim with my friend from my days as a full-on K-Pop stan, Reanna, even though it was the weekend before a big Accounting exam, if I remember correctly. But, I have no regrets: I have a feeling that very few moments in life can make me feel the way I did when Umaapaw (one of my favorite songs in the world) was being played right in front of me. Surprisingly, I didn't cry when that happened—same for Wait and Sa Hindi Pag-alala, but then again maybe I was too dazed to process what was going on.

I saw Ben&Ben just a week ago, which served as the perfect way to cap off this stressful semester. The last time I saw them was way back in October 2018: conflicts in schedule due to prior commitments, or location issues kept getting in the way that it's like they had to take matters into their own hands and head on over to Ateneo just so I could see them again. Although they didn't perform my favorite song, I can't exactly say that I was disappointed because nothing really beats the feeling of seeing them and singing along to tracks that have served as the soundtrack of my life, and are practically etched on my heart. (I am actually tearing up just writing this paragraph god am I emo! I miss them already, wow! Just wanna hear Araw-Araw live, what do I do about this!)

I also managed to finish all 10 seasons of Friends despite my irregular viewing patterns—I started it during our trip to the States before the school year began, and constantly teetered between watching one or two episodes as a reward for finishing a reading due the next day and binging one season during rare weekends that do not require working on deliverables but honestly could have been used to get ahead in lessons. This is a pretty big deal, considering that I have the attention span of a sleep-deprived cockroach and haven't finished a single White People Show since... well, Austin & Ally back in 2017 (which I actually marathoned on Dailymotion, but that's a story for another day). But, I guess there's just something special about this group of pals going through the motions of their everyday lives in the eccentric, sometimes borderline stupid ways that only they can, because I admit: the emotional investment was and is very, very real! I personally identify myself as a Chandler-Rachel hybrid now (thank you, Iverson), try to see which character the people I meet are like most out of fun, and argue to no end with anyone who ever claims that Ross and Rachel (1) were on a break, and (2) are endgame.

Most importantly, I was able to do all of this and still clinch a spot on the Dean's List. I started this semester on an optimistic note: I found all of my subjects interesting, and the professors who taught them, engaging. I'd even make notes on the readings the day before they were to be discussed in class, complete with pops of color here and there courtesy of my fineliner pens and Stabilo highlighters. But, once I reached the halfway point, my motivation started waning. Papers and quizzes, oral exams and video projects were thrown in my direction at breakneck speed: I often found myself cramming output for the sake of having something to submit, and not even having the time to look at readings due for discussion the following day. It came to a point where I thought of shifting out, because I felt I wasn't doing well enough in my majors to justify my stay. Sounds pretty stupid when I look back at it, I guess I simply mistook extreme stress and fatigue with falling out of love with the only program that I ever wanted to get in when I was applying for Ateneo. Thank God I didn't give up though, or else I wouldn't be able to enjoy the fruits of my labor right now. I honestly wasn't expecting stellar grades, considering the number of extracurricular commitments I took on, but now that they're there, I'm not complaining at all! Shoutout to my favorite professors of the semester: Mam Vaswani, who taught me that there is always room for improvement even in my own area of expertise; Sir Atienza, who made lectures feel like casual kwentuhans (or sometimes even chillnumans); and Sir Rebato, who broke the world record for longest patience in the world.

I guess it's safe to say that I am the happiest and most content I have been in a while, and although I am afraid of jinxing it, I feel like it's only gonna go upward from here. I am beyond excited to see where the new year and semester take me, because I know I'll do my part in making sure it's even better and brighter than this one. If you read up to this point, you deserve a pat on the back! Maybe you only scrolled to this point to see if there were any pictures with your face on them, but who cares! It adds to my website traffic, so thank you, happy holidays, and I wish you nothing but love and light always!

[littledonkeyburrito]

I need to start coming up with more creative titles for these.

Ever kissed anyone with a nipple piercing? Not that I’m aware of, but there’s a couple of people that I’ve made out with and never seen shirtless, so who knows

What about a lip piercing? No

Nose piercing? I don’t think so

Did you sleep alone last night? Yep

How are you sitting? Cross legged on the couch

Where is your family? Probably in their respective homes

Do you plan on sleeping in tomorrow? Always

What were you doing at 12 AM last night? Sleeping

Waiting for something? A call back from any of the companies I’ve sent resumes to

How many people did you kiss last summer? I think it was only one actually, but there was a couple more that were summer adjacent.

Was yesterday terrible? Yesterday was fine

Did you reject or accept your last friend request? I accepted it but I probably shouldn’t have bc tbh I think she’ll get pretty annoying on my facebook (ex work colleague)

Do you like pretzels? They’re fine but they’re totally overrated by america

Do you wait until you’ve completely finished a certain makeup product before you buy a new one? I don’t buy makeup products

Would you say that people consider you a major flirt? I don’t know. You would have to ask “people”

Do any of your friends have children? Not yet

If you have a girlfriend/boyfriend, how long have you been together? I do not

Did you wake up before 8 AM this morning? I sure as fuck did not.

Do you wear eyeliner? Nah

Whose wall have you wrote on today? Nobody

Would you rather cry in public or make someone else cry in public? Neither, both are super awkward for me

Would you rather sleep for 3 days or stay awake for 3 days?

 I feel like I’ve done both before. Depending on what I’m doing, both have their pros and cons

Would you rather be just rich or rich and famous? Just rich

Who will you be sleeping with tonight? Nobody

Last person to make you laugh? The internet

Do you look at older pictures and laugh? Depends on the picture

When will your next kiss be? no idea

Have you ever truly thought you knew who you were going to marry? No

Do you have anything that belongs to a partner or an ex partner? No

What would you say if someone told you they were in love with your sister? That I don’t have a sister

Has anyone called you babe or baby in the last two days?  No, I’m not sure anyone’s called me that ever and I’d prefer it stay that way

Do you still talk to the person you last kissed? Currently waiting to see how long it’ll take him to message me first for once. So, kinda I guess

Who was the last person of the opposite sex to be in your bedroom?

 Um well technically my apartment is a studio and my landlord was here like 20 minutes ago so I guess it was him. But the last dude to go in the actual bedroom area was the guy who stayed with me a few weekends ago from Madrid.

Did you see your best friend today? No. We live on different continents

Are your ears pierced more than once, if at all? Just the one in each ear

If you wear skirts, are you more likely to wear leggings, or go bare? I don’t wear skirts

Are you addicted to texting? No, but I do prefer to message at least one friend every day

How many times do you knock on the door? I don’t. I stand outside and text them and wait for them to open it.

If you could move somewhere else, would you? Well I’ve sent a couple of resumes to companies in Panama and if I get offered a good job with a decent salary then I’ll definitely consider moving there.

Did you kiss or hug anyone recently? No

Does your phone ring in the middle of the night? Not since I left Australia. Was a pretty common occurrence there with my job though. The worst was when I was really tired but had to take the work phone home with me and one of my staff would call just after I’d fallen asleep and I’d still be confused as fuck when I answer but have to try to play it cool and not let them know they woke me up. Was even worse when it was a client calling...

Is there anybody you’re really disappointed in right now? No..?

Is there someone you will never forget? Many people

Can you live a day without TV? Yeah

Do you swallow gum when you’re done with it? I don’t like chewing gum

Any plans for this weekend? Nope

Have you seen anyone lately that you don’t get along with? No. There’s nobody that I don’t really get along with, especially not in this country.

Who was the last person you rode in a car with that’s not family? I think the last time I was in a car was my transfer to the airport in panama. I don’t have a car here and nobody I know has a car. I always just walk or get the metro. I don’t even usually get cabs here.

Would you be able to date someone who doesn’t make you laugh? Nah

Is there anything stressing you out currently? My bank balance is gradually getting lower and lower and I don’t have a job yet.

What kind of mood are you in today? Average. Not happy, not sad

How late did you stay up last night and why? Maybe 10 or 11. I was pretty tired from doing nothing all day

Have you ever slept in the same bed with the last person you kissed? I think the longest I ever actually slept with him was like 4 hours. Always had to go sneak back into my room before anyone woke up.

Are you mad at anyone? No

Did the last guy/girl you kissed have any piercings? No

What is the name of the last band you discovered? Not a band but I came across Alvaro Soler and I really like his music

Would you rather go to a Katy Perry or Taylor Swift concert? No thankyou

What pattern do the sheets on your bed have? The sheets are white. The doona is white with blue diamond patterns on it

Are your days full and fast-paced? Only when I travel

Do you call any of your friends by their last name? Yeah, my old flatmate usually goes by his last name. Made it a little weird when he had family visiting because I could either 1) refer to him by his first name, or 2) use his last name and have everybody he’s related to turn around and look at me

Have you ever gotten lost in a department store? El Corte Ingles. The floors are too big. I usually end up giving up which isn’t necessarily a bad thing because it’s kind of expensive there.

How long have you had the shirt you’re wearing? A few years I guess. I don’t remember when I bought it

Are you a slut? Depends on definition

What happened last time you got drunk? I drank beer with people from the office and then I went back to their apartment which was kind of like a staff apartment and a couple of the bosses lived there too. Drank some more beer, did some cocaine, patted a dog and cut my thumb on a beer can.

When’s the last time you straightened your hair? I don’t think I ever have. My hair is pretty straight on its own.

What do you want right this second? I wouldn’t mind a glass of coke

What were you doing at 10:00 this morning? Sleeping

What cell phone company do you use? Vodafone

Do you wear a bath robe? No

Do you know anyone autistic? Yeah, a few

How about someone bipolar? I think so

What do you want your job to be when you’re older? Please offer me suggestions because I have no fucking idea

What are you listening to? Nothing in particular

Does the last person you texted smoke pot? Idk. Probably, a lot of people here do bc it’s legal. He’s my landlord though so it’s not like he’s going to tell me that information

What did you wear to bed last night? My pyjamas

Who’s in the room with you? Just me

Have you ever liked someone older than you? They’re generally older than me

Do you like men with beards and goatees? Stubble is goooood. Depends on the guy though

Where do you live? Spain

Do you always lock your door? Yes. It auto-locks anyway, but I deadbolt it too.

Do you smoke cigarettes? No

Is your birthday in a winter month? In Australia, yes. Here, no.

Do you have siblings over the age of 21? Yes.

What is the last letter of your middle name? L

Have you ever skipped school just because you were tired? I skipped plenty of lectures at uni in favour of sleep. Probably a contributing factor to the failing of classes and dropping out.

Do you wear your seatbelt in the car? Yep

When was the last time you were told you were cute? Probably in Panama

Do you like Chinese food? Yes. The food when I was travelling in China was insanely good.

Have you ever trusted a guy when you shouldn’t have? Yeah I guess so

Do you have a brother? What’s his name? Sam

What time is it? 7:44pm

Is your phone close to you? It is under my left thigh (almost my buttcheek) so I can feel if anyone messages me.

What woke you up this morning? I suppose I had enough sleep

When did you last use a straw? I have no idea but you just reminded me that I bought straws recently and haven’t used any yet so I’m gonna start drinking my alcohol with straws now. Well, not right now bc I don’t want to drink tonight, but whenever I next drink at home I’ll use one.

Have you ever driven without a license? I originally learned to drive in a Mini Moke in my Dad’s backyard (he had 3 acres) when I was maybe 10 years old. So obvs I didn’t have a licence then. Also the brakes in the car didn’t work so we basically had to make sure the dogs weren’t near us 

What color shirt are you wearing? Grey. With a red/black checked hoodie over it

Do you have a ceiling fan located in your bedroom? No

What are you most looking forward to tomorrow? My life is super boring so the only thing I’m doing tomorrow is going to the post office to pick up whatever I was left a slip for.

Have you cuddled with someone today? No

Have you spoken to a relative on the phone today? No

Do you use the toilet paper with the colorful designs on it? I use the cheapest toilet paper that doesn’t feel like sandpaper. I’m not going to pay extra for colourful designs when I’m literally just going to wipe my ass with it.

What was the first thing you ate today? Spicy noodles

Do you have anything more important you should be doing right now? No

Have you set an alarm today? No

Do you keep up-to-date with current news and events? I don’t. I made a decision during a low point a few years ago to cut negative things out of my life. So I unfollowed a bunch of people on tumblr and I stopped keeping up with news because it was just making me depressed. Occasionally I google to see what’s up with my province and that’s about it. Otherwise I see what I really need to see on facebook/tumblr.

When was the last time you visited relatives? I visited my dad a few days before I left Australia

Is chapstick a necessity for you? Sometimes, yes. But if I stay hydrated enough then it’s not really an issue.

Name the last 6 people you texted/messaged:

Gabriel

João

Maggie @aturinfortheworse

Aman

Anna @intimidatethevoid

Bear

(this is a slightly unusual bunch since only half of them are people I regularly message)

How did you meet #3? Highschool

What’s #6’s middle name? No idea

Who have you known the longest out of your 6? Maggie

Who have you known the least out of your 6? Anna 

How do you know #5? Through the group chat we’re in with Maggie and Bear

Where does #1 live? Somewhere nearby. I don’t know exactly

Is #1 your best friend? No, he’s my landlord

Who on your 6 doesn’t have a job? Maggie I think..? Not sure about Bear and Anna. Also not 100% sure on João

Does #5 have their drivers license? I believe so

Would you ever live with #2? Lmao I almost do. He’s my next door neighbour.

Why did you text #4? Because he messaged me first so I replied obvs

Do you miss #3? Yeah, come to Spain you loser

Is #6 a stoner or alchie? Not anymore I don’t think

Have you ever danced with #2? No, I’ve met him like twice for us to pay our bills (our apartments run off the same metre for water and electricity)

Have you ever done anything sexual with any of them?                           Well Aman is my ex so yeah

What would your life be like without #1? I would probably live somewhere else

Is #2 your best friend? No

What do you love about #3? So many things

What do you dislike about #3? So many things. (kidding)

What is #5’s weakness? Difficulty sleeping?

What kind of car does #4 drive? I remember it’s a little black sedan but I don’t remember what type of car it actually is

What would you do if #3 & #6 were dating? Uhhh nothing probably. I’d be surprised but they’re both good people so I’d let them go for it.

Does #2 have a boyfriend/girlfriend? No idea

Have you ever seen #1 cry? Fuck no that would be weird

Have you ever kept a secret from #5? No

What is something special about #4? He’s very attractive.

Does #2 have any special talents? No idea

In one word, describe #6. Teddy

Has anyone in your top 6 hurt you? Who? Uhh no..?

Have you ever fought with #6? No

Is #1 a musician? Not that I’m aware of

How old is #4? He’s 27

Would you ever kiss #5 (if you haven’t already)? Probs not, soz bro

[tainghekhongdaycomvn]

How to Perform a Basic Local Business Competitive Audit

How to Perform a Basic Local Business Competitive Audit

Posted by MiriamEllis

“Why are those folks outranking me in Google’s local pack?”

If you or a client is asking this question, the answer lies in competitive analysis. You’ve got to stack Business A up against Business B to identify the strengths and weaknesses of both competitors, and then make an educated guess as to which factors Google is weighting most in the results for a specific search term.

Today, I’d like to share a real-world example of a random competitive audit, including a chart that depicts which factors I’ve investigated and explanatory tips and tools for how I came up with the numbers and facts. Also included: a downloadable version of the spreadsheet that you can use for your own company or clients. Your goal with this audit is to identify exactly how one player is winning the game so that you can create a to-do list for any company trying to move up in the rankings. Alternatively, some competitive audits can be defensive, identifying a dominant player’s weaknesses so that they can be corrected to ensure continued high rankings.

It’s my hope that seeing this audit in action will help you better answer the question of why “this person is outranking that person,” and that you may share with our community some analytical tips of your own!

The scenario:

Search term: Chinese Restaurant San Rafael

Statistics about San Rafael: A large town of approximately 22 square miles in the San Francisco Bay Area with a population of 58,954 and 15+ Chinese restaurants.

Consistency of results: From 20 miles away to 2000+ miles away, Ping’s Chinese Cuisine outranks Yet Wah Restaurant in Google’s local pack for the search term. We don’t look closer than 20 miles, or proximity of the searcher creates too much diversity.

The challenge: Why is Ping’s Chinese Cuisine outranking Yet Wah Restaurant in Google’s Local Pack for the search term?

The comparison chart

*Where there’s a clear winner, it’s noted in bolded, italicized text.

Basic business information

NAP

Ping’s Chinese Cuisine 248 Northgate Dr. San Rafael, CA 94903 (415) 492-8808

Yet Wah Restaurant 1238 4th St. San Rafael, CA 94901 (415) 460-9883

GMB landing page URL

http://ift.tt/2vUoOkb

http://ift.tt/1dQH9Lw

Local Pack rank

1

2

Organic rank

17

5

Organic rank among business-owned sites *Remove directories and review platforms from the equation, as they typically shouldn’t be viewed as direct competitors

8

1

Business model eligible for GMB listing at this address? *Check Google’s Guidelines if unsure: http://ift.tt/1Ag5qvp...

Yes

Yes

Oddities

Note that Ping’s has redirected pingschinesecuisine.com to pingsnorthgate.com. Ping’s also has a www and non-www version of pingsnorthgate.com.

A 2nd website for same business at same location with same phone number: http://ift.tt/2vUi4D5. This website is ranking directly below the authoritative (GMB-linked) website for this business in organic SERP for the search in question.

Business listings

GMB review count

32

38

GMB review rating

4.1

3.8

Most recent GMB review *Sort GMB reviews by "most recent" filter

1 week ago

1 month ago

Proper GMB categories?

Yes

Yes

Estimated age of GMB listing *Estimated by date of oldest reviews and photos, but can only be seen as an estimate

At least 2 years old

At least 6 years old

Moz Local score (completeness + accuracy + lack of duplicates) *Tool: http://ift.tt/1jVt1Fe

49%

75%

Moz Local duplicate findings *Tool: http://ift.tt/1jVt1Fe

01 (Facebook)

Keywords in GMB name

chinese

restaurant

Keywords in GMB website landing page title tag

Nothing at all. Just “home page”

Yes

Spam in GMB title *Look at GMB photos, Google Streetview, and the website to check for inconsistencies

No

Yes: “restaurant” not in website logo or street level signage

Hours and photos on GMB?

Yes

Yes

Proximity to city centroid *Look up city by name in Google Maps and see where it places the name of the city on the map. That’s the city “centroid.” Get driving directions from the business to an address located in the centroid.

3.5 miles

410.1 feet

Proximity to nearest competitor *Zoom in on Google map to surface as many adjacent competitors as possible. Can be a Possum factor in some cases.

1.1 mile

0.2 miles

Within Google Maps boundaries? *Look up city by name in Google Maps and note the pink border via which Google designates that city’s boundaries

Yes

Yes

Website

Age of domain *Tool: http://ift.tt/1eS2KGO

March 2013

August 2011

Domain Authority *Tool: http://ift.tt/29qXBeL

16

8

GMB Landing Page Authority *Tool: http://ift.tt/29qXBeL

30

21

Links to domain *Tool: http://ift.tt/1rfsq4g

53

2

DA/PA of most authoritative link earned *Tool: http://ift.tt/1rfsq4g

72/32

38/16

Evaluation of website content

*This is a first-pass, visual gut check, just reading through the top-level pages of the website to see how they strike you in terms of quality.

Extremely thin, just adequate to identify restaurant. At least has menu on own site. Of the 2 sites, this one has the most total text, by virtue of a sentence on the homepage and menus in real text.

Extremely thin, almost zero text on homepage, menu link goes to another website.

Evaluation of website design

Outdated

Outdated, mostly images

Evaluation of website UX

Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs

Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs

Mobile-friendly *Tool: http://ift.tt/2s7oXje

Basic mobile design, but Google’s mobile-friendly test tool says both www and non-www cannot be reached because it’s unavailable or blocked by robots txt. They have disallowed scripts, photos, Flash, images, and plugins. This needs to be further investigated and resolved. Mobile site URL is http://ift.tt/2x8ijsP. Both this URL and the other domains are failing Google’s test.

Basic mobile design passes Google’s mobile-friendly test

Evaluation of overall onsite SEO *A first-pass visual look at the page code of top level pages, checking for titles, descriptions, header tags, schema, + the presence of problems like Flash.

Pretty much no optimization

Minimal, indeed, but a little bit of effort made. Some title tags, some schema, some header tags.

HTML NAP on website?

Yes

Yes

Website NAP matches GMB NAP?

No (Northgate One instead of Northgate Drive)

Yes

Total number of wins: Ping’s 7, Yet Wah 9.

Download your own version of my competitive audit spreadsheet by making a copy of the file.

Takeaways from the comparison chart

Yet Wah significantly outranks Ping’s in the organic results, but is being beaten by them in the Local Pack. Looking at the organic factors, we see evidence that, despite the fact that Ping’s has greater DA, greater PA of the GMB landing page, more links, and stronger links, they are not outranking Yet Wah organically. This is something of a surprise that leads us to look at their content and on-page SEO.

While Ping’s has slightly better text content on their website, they have almost done almost zero optimization work, their URLs have canonical issues, and their robots.txt isn’t properly configured. Yet Wah has almost no on-site content, but they have modestly optimized their title tags, implemented H tags and some schema, and their site passes Google’s mobile-friendly test.

So, our theory regarding Yet Wah’s superior organic ranking is that, in this particular case, Yet Wah’s moderate efforts with on-page SEO have managed to beat out Ping’s superior DA/PA/link metrics. Yet Wah’s website is also a couple of years older than Ping’s.

All that being said, Yet Wah’s organic win is failing to translate into a local win for them. How can we explain Ping’s local win? Ping’s has a slightly higher overall review rating, higher DA and GMB landing page PA, more total links, and higher authority links. They also have slightly more text content on their website, even if it’s not optimized.

So, our theory regarding Ping’s superior local rank is that, in this particular case, website authority/links appear to be winning the day for Ping’s. And the basic website text they have could possibly be contributing, despite lack of optimization.

In sum, basic on-page SEO appears to be contributing to Yet Wah’s organic win, while DA/PA/links appear to be contributing to Ping’s local win.

Things that bother me

I chose this competitive scenario at random, because when I took an initial look at the local and organic rankings, they bothered me a little. I would have expected Yet Wah to be first in the local pack if they were first in organic. I see local and organic rankings correlate strongly so much of the time, that this case seemed odd to me.

By the end of the audit, I’ve come up with a working theory, but I’m not 100% satisfied with it. It makes me ask questions like:

Is Ping’s better local rank stemming from some hidden factor no one knows about?

In this particular case, why is Google appearing to value Ping’s links more that Yet Wah’s on-page SEO in determining local rank? Would I see this same trend across the board if I analyzed 1,000 restaurants? The industry says links are huge in local SEO right now. I guess we’re seeing proof of that here.

Why isn’t Google weighting Yet Wah’s superior citation set more than they apparently are? Ping’s citations are in bad shape. I’ve seen citation health play a much greater apparent role in other audits, but something feels weird here.

Why isn’t Google “punishing” Yet Wah in the organic results for that second website with duplicate NAP on it? That seems like it should matter.

Why isn’t age factoring in more here? My inspection shows that Yet Wah’s domain and GMB listing are significantly older. This could be moving the organic needle for them, but it’s not moving the local one.

Could user behavior be making Ping’s the local winner? This is a huge open question at the end of my basic audit.* See below.

*I don’t have access to either restaurant’s Google Analytics, GMB Insights, or Google Search Console accounts, so perhaps that would turn up penalties, traffic patterns, or things like superior clicks-to-call, clicks-for-directions, or clicks-to-website that would make Ping’s local win easier to explain. If one of these restaurants were your client, you’d want to add chart rows for these things based on full access to the brand’s accounts and tools, and whatever data your tools can access about the competitor. For example, using a tool like SimilarWeb, I see that between May and June of this year, YetWah’s traffic rose from an average 150 monthly visits up to a peak of 500, while Ping’s saw a drop from 700 to 350 visits in that same period. Also, in a scenario in which one or both parties have a large or complex link profile, you might want additional rows for link metrics, taken from tools like Moz Pro, Ahrefs, or Majestic.

In this case, Ping’s has 7 total wins in my chart and Yet Wah has 9. The best I can do is look at which factors each business is winning at to try to identify a pattern of what Google is weighting most, both organically and locally. With both restaurants being so basic in their marketing, and with neither one absolutely running away with the game, what we have here is a close race. While I’d love to be able to declare a totally obvious winner, the best I could do as a consultant, in this case, would be to draw up a plan of defense or offense.

If my client were Ping’s:

Ping’s needs to defend its #1 local ranking if it doesn’t want to lose it. Its greatest weaknesses which must be resolved are:

The absence of on-page SEO

Thin content

Robots.txt issues

To remain strong, Ping’s should also work on:

Improving citation health

Directing the non-www version of their site to the www one

A professional site redesign could possibly improve conversions

Ping’s should accomplish these things to defend its current local rank and to try to move up organically.

If my client were Yet Wah:

Yet Wah needs to try to achieve victory over Ping’s in the local packs, as it has done in the organic results. To do that, Yet Wah should:

Earn links to the GMB landing page URL and the domain

Create strong text content on its high-level pages, including putting a complete dining menu in real text on the website

Deal with the second website featuring duplicate NAP

Yet Wah should also:

Complete work on its citation health

Work hard to get some new 5-star reviews by delighting customers with something special

Consider adding the word “Restaurant” to their signage, so that they can’t be reported for spamming the GMB name field.

Consider a professional redesign of the website to improve conversions

Yet Wah should accomplish these things in an effort to surpass Ping’s.

And, with either client being mine, I’d then be taking a second pass to further investigate anything problematic that came up in the initial audit, so that I could make further technical or creative suggestions.

Big geo-industry picture analysis

Given that no competitor for this particular search term has been able to beat out Ping’s or Yet Wah in the local pack, and given the minimal efforts these two brands have thus far made, there’s a tremendous chance for any Chinese restaurant in San Rafael to become the dominant player. Any competitor that dedicates itself to running on all cylinders (professional, optimized website with great content, a healthy link profile, a competitive number of high-star reviews, healthy citations, etc.) could definitely surpass all other contestants. This is not a tough market and there are no players who can’t be bested.

My sample case has been, as I’ve said, a close race. You may be facing an audit where there are deeply entrenched dominant players whose statistics far surpass those of a business you’re hoping to assist. But the basic process is the same:

Look at the top-ranking business.

Fill out the chart (adding any other fields you feel are important).

Then discover the strengths of the dominant company, as well as its potential weaknesses.

Contrast these findings with those you’ve charted for the company you’re helping and you’ll be able to form a plan for improvement.

And don’t forget the user proximity factor. Any company’s most adjacent customers will see pack results that vary either slightly or significantly from what a user sees from 20, 50, or 1,000 miles away. In my specific study, it happened to be the third result in the pack that went haywire once a user got 50 miles away, while the top two remained dominant and statically ranked for searchers as far away as the East Coast.

Because of this phenomenon of distance, it’s vital for business owners to be educated about the fact that they are serving two user groups: one that is located in the neighborhood or city of the business, and another that could be anywhere in the country or the world. This doesn’t just matter for destinations like hotels or public amusements. In California (a big state), Internet users on a road trip from Palm Springs may be looking to end their 500-mile drive at a Chinese restaurant in San Rafael, so you can’t just think hyper-locally; you’ve got to see the bigger local picture. And you’ve got to do the analysis to find ways of winning as often as you can with both consumer groups.

You take it from here, auditor!

My local competitive audit chart is a basic one, looking at 30+ factors. What would you add? How would you improve it? Did I miss a GMB duplicate listing, or review spam? What’s working best for your agency in doing local audits these days? Do you use a chart, or just provide a high-level text summary of your internal findings? And, if you have any further theories as to how Ping’s is winning the local pack, I’d love for you to share them in the comments.

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[byronheeutgm]

How to Perform a Basic Local Business Competitive Audit

Posted by MiriamEllis

“Why are those folks outranking me in Google’s local pack?”

If you or a client is asking this question, the answer lies in competitive analysis. You’ve got to stack Business A up against Business B to identify the strengths and weaknesses of both competitors, and then make an educated guess as to which factors Google is weighting most in the results for a specific search term.

Today, I’d like to share a real-world example of a random competitive audit, including a chart that depicts which factors I’ve investigated and explanatory tips and tools for how I came up with the numbers and facts. Also included: a downloadable version of the spreadsheet that you can use for your own company or clients. Your goal with this audit is to identify exactly how one player is winning the game so that you can create a to-do list for any company trying to move up in the rankings. Alternatively, some competitive audits can be defensive, identifying a dominant player’s weaknesses so that they can be corrected to ensure continued high rankings.

It’s my hope that seeing this audit in action will help you better answer the question of why “this person is outranking that person,” and that you may share with our community some analytical tips of your own!

The scenario:

Search term: Chinese Restaurant San Rafael

Statistics about San Rafael: A large town of approximately 22 square miles in the San Francisco Bay Area with a population of 58,954 and 15+ Chinese restaurants.

Consistency of results: From 20 miles away to 2000+ miles away, Ping’s Chinese Cuisine outranks Yet Wah Restaurant in Google’s local pack for the search term. We don’t look closer than 20 miles, or proximity of the searcher creates too much diversity.

The challenge: Why is Ping’s Chinese Cuisine outranking Yet Wah Restaurant in Google’s Local Pack for the search term?

The comparison chart

*Where there’s a clear winner, it’s noted in bolded, italicized text.

Basic business information

NAP

Ping’s Chinese Cuisine 248 Northgate Dr. San Rafael, CA 94903 (415) 492-8808

Yet Wah Restaurant 1238 4th St. San Rafael, CA 94901 (415) 460-9883

GMB landing page URL

http://ift.tt/2vUoOkb

http://ift.tt/1dQH9Lw

Local Pack rank

1

2

Organic rank

17

5

Organic rank among business-owned sites *Remove directories and review platforms from the equation, as they typically shouldn’t be viewed as direct competitors

8

1

Business model eligible for GMB listing at this address? *Check Google’s Guidelines if unsure: http://ift.tt/1Ag5qvp...

Yes

Yes

Oddities

Note that Ping’s has redirected pingschinesecuisine.com to pingsnorthgate.com. Ping’s also has a www and non-www version of pingsnorthgate.com.

A 2nd website for same business at same location with same phone number: http://ift.tt/2vUi4D5. This website is ranking directly below the authoritative (GMB-linked) website for this business in organic SERP for the search in question.

Business listings

GMB review count

32

38

GMB review rating

4.1

3.8

Most recent GMB review *Sort GMB reviews by "most recent" filter

1 week ago

1 month ago

Proper GMB categories?

Yes

Yes

Estimated age of GMB listing *Estimated by date of oldest reviews and photos, but can only be seen as an estimate

At least 2 years old

At least 6 years old

Moz Local score (completeness + accuracy + lack of duplicates) *Tool: http://ift.tt/1jVt1Fe

49%

75%

Moz Local duplicate findings *Tool: http://ift.tt/1jVt1Fe

0

1 (Facebook)

Keywords in GMB name

chinese

restaurant

Keywords in GMB website landing page title tag

Nothing at all. Just “home page”

Yes

Spam in GMB title *Look at GMB photos, Google Streetview, and the website to check for inconsistencies

No

Yes: “restaurant” not in website logo or street level signage

Hours and photos on GMB?

Yes

Yes

Proximity to city centroid *Look up city by name in Google Maps and see where it places the name of the city on the map. That’s the city “centroid.” Get driving directions from the business to an address located in the centroid.

3.5 miles

410.1 feet

Proximity to nearest competitor *Zoom in on Google map to surface as many adjacent competitors as possible. Can be a Possum factor in some cases.

1.1 mile

0.2 miles

Within Google Maps boundaries? *Look up city by name in Google Maps and note the pink border via which Google designates that city’s boundaries

Yes

Yes

Website

Age of domain *Tool: http://ift.tt/1eS2KGO

March 2013

August 2011

Domain Authority *Tool: http://ift.tt/29qXBeL

16

8

GMB Landing Page Authority *Tool: http://ift.tt/29qXBeL

30

21

Links to domain *Tool: http://ift.tt/1rfsq4g

53

2

DA/PA of most authoritative link earned *Tool: http://ift.tt/1rfsq4g

72/32

38/16

Evaluation of website content

*This is a first-pass, visual gut check, just reading through the top-level pages of the website to see how they strike you in terms of quality.

Extremely thin, just adequate to identify restaurant. At least has menu on own site. Of the 2 sites, this one has the most total text, by virtue of a sentence on the homepage and menus in real text.

Extremely thin, almost zero text on homepage, menu link goes to another website.

Evaluation of website design

Outdated

Outdated, mostly images

Evaluation of website UX

Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs

Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs

Mobile-friendly *Tool: http://ift.tt/2s7oXje

Basic mobile design, but Google’s mobile-friendly test tool says both www and non-www cannot be reached because it’s unavailable or blocked by robots txt. They have disallowed scripts, photos, Flash, images, and plugins. This needs to be further investigated and resolved. Mobile site URL is http://ift.tt/2x8ijsP. Both this URL and the other domains are failing Google’s test.

Basic mobile design passes Google’s mobile-friendly test

Evaluation of overall onsite SEO *A first-pass visual look at the page code of top level pages, checking for titles, descriptions, header tags, schema, + the presence of problems like Flash.

Pretty much no optimization

Minimal, indeed, but a little bit of effort made. Some title tags, some schema, some header tags.

HTML NAP on website?

Yes

Yes

Website NAP matches GMB NAP?

No (Northgate One instead of Northgate Drive)

Yes

Total number of wins: Ping’s 7, Yet Wah 9.

Download your own version of my competitive audit spreadsheet by making a copy of the file.

Takeaways from the comparison chart

Yet Wah significantly outranks Ping’s in the organic results, but is being beaten by them in the Local Pack. Looking at the organic factors, we see evidence that, despite the fact that Ping’s has greater DA, greater PA of the GMB landing page, more links, and stronger links, they are not outranking Yet Wah organically. This is something of a surprise that leads us to look at their content and on-page SEO.

While Ping’s has slightly better text content on their website, they have almost done almost zero optimization work, their URLs have canonical issues, and their robots.txt isn’t properly configured. Yet Wah has almost no on-site content, but they have modestly optimized their title tags, implemented H tags and some schema, and their site passes Google’s mobile-friendly test.

So, our theory regarding Yet Wah’s superior organic ranking is that, in this particular case, Yet Wah’s moderate efforts with on-page SEO have managed to beat out Ping’s superior DA/PA/link metrics. Yet Wah’s website is also a couple of years older than Ping’s.

All that being said, Yet Wah’s organic win is failing to translate into a local win for them. How can we explain Ping’s local win? Ping’s has a slightly higher overall review rating, higher DA and GMB landing page PA, more total links, and higher authority links. They also have slightly more text content on their website, even if it’s not optimized.

So, our theory regarding Ping’s superior local rank is that, in this particular case, website authority/links appear to be winning the day for Ping’s. And the basic website text they have could possibly be contributing, despite lack of optimization.

In sum, basic on-page SEO appears to be contributing to Yet Wah’s organic win, while DA/PA/links appear to be contributing to Ping’s local win.

Things that bother me

I chose this competitive scenario at random, because when I took an initial look at the local and organic rankings, they bothered me a little. I would have expected Yet Wah to be first in the local pack if they were first in organic. I see local and organic rankings correlate strongly so much of the time, that this case seemed odd to me.

By the end of the audit, I’ve come up with a working theory, but I’m not 100% satisfied with it. It makes me ask questions like:

Is Ping’s better local rank stemming from some hidden factor no one knows about?

In this particular case, why is Google appearing to value Ping’s links more that Yet Wah’s on-page SEO in determining local rank? Would I see this same trend across the board if I analyzed 1,000 restaurants? The industry says links are huge in local SEO right now. I guess we’re seeing proof of that here.

Why isn’t Google weighting Yet Wah’s superior citation set more than they apparently are? Ping’s citations are in bad shape. I’ve seen citation health play a much greater apparent role in other audits, but something feels weird here.

Why isn’t Google “punishing” Yet Wah in the organic results for that second website with duplicate NAP on it? That seems like it should matter.

Why isn’t age factoring in more here? My inspection shows that Yet Wah’s domain and GMB listing are significantly older. This could be moving the organic needle for them, but it’s not moving the local one.

Could user behavior be making Ping’s the local winner? This is a huge open question at the end of my basic audit.* See below.

*I don’t have access to either restaurant’s Google Analytics, GMB Insights, or Google Search Console accounts, so perhaps that would turn up penalties, traffic patterns, or things like superior clicks-to-call, clicks-for-directions, or clicks-to-website that would make Ping’s local win easier to explain. If one of these restaurants were your client, you’d want to add chart rows for these things based on full access to the brand’s accounts and tools, and whatever data your tools can access about the competitor. For example, using a tool like SimilarWeb, I see that between May and June of this year, YetWah’s traffic rose from an average 150 monthly visits up to a peak of 500, while Ping’s saw a drop from 700 to 350 visits in that same period. Also, in a scenario in which one or both parties have a large or complex link profile, you might want additional rows for link metrics, taken from tools like Moz Pro, Ahrefs, or Majestic.

In this case, Ping’s has 7 total wins in my chart and Yet Wah has 9. The best I can do is look at which factors each business is winning at to try to identify a pattern of what Google is weighting most, both organically and locally. With both restaurants being so basic in their marketing, and with neither one absolutely running away with the game, what we have here is a close race. While I’d love to be able to declare a totally obvious winner, the best I could do as a consultant, in this case, would be to draw up a plan of defense or offense.

If my client were Ping’s:

Ping’s needs to defend its #1 local ranking if it doesn’t want to lose it. Its greatest weaknesses which must be resolved are:

The absence of on-page SEO

Thin content

Robots.txt issues

To remain strong, Ping’s should also work on:

Improving citation health

Directing the non-www version of their site to the www one

A professional site redesign could possibly improve conversions

Ping’s should accomplish these things to defend its current local rank and to try to move up organically.

If my client were Yet Wah:

Yet Wah needs to try to achieve victory over Ping’s in the local packs, as it has done in the organic results. To do that, Yet Wah should:

Earn links to the GMB landing page URL and the domain

Create strong text content on its high-level pages, including putting a complete dining menu in real text on the website

Deal with the second website featuring duplicate NAP

Yet Wah should also:

Complete work on its citation health

Work hard to get some new 5-star reviews by delighting customers with something special

Consider adding the word “Restaurant” to their signage, so that they can’t be reported for spamming the GMB name field.

Consider a professional redesign of the website to improve conversions

Yet Wah should accomplish these things in an effort to surpass Ping’s.

And, with either client being mine, I’d then be taking a second pass to further investigate anything problematic that came up in the initial audit, so that I could make further technical or creative suggestions.

Big geo-industry picture analysis

Given that no competitor for this particular search term has been able to beat out Ping’s or Yet Wah in the local pack, and given the minimal efforts these two brands have thus far made, there’s a tremendous chance for any Chinese restaurant in San Rafael to become the dominant player. Any competitor that dedicates itself to running on all cylinders (professional, optimized website with great content, a healthy link profile, a competitive number of high-star reviews, healthy citations, etc.) could definitely surpass all other contestants. This is not a tough market and there are no players who can’t be bested.

My sample case has been, as I’ve said, a close race. You may be facing an audit where there are deeply entrenched dominant players whose statistics far surpass those of a business you’re hoping to assist. But the basic process is the same:

Look at the top-ranking business.

Fill out the chart (adding any other fields you feel are important).

Then discover the strengths of the dominant company, as well as its potential weaknesses.

Contrast these findings with those you’ve charted for the company you’re helping and you’ll be able to form a plan for improvement.

And don’t forget the user proximity factor. Any company’s most adjacent customers will see pack results that vary either slightly or significantly from what a user sees from 20, 50, or 1,000 miles away. In my specific study, it happened to be the third result in the pack that went haywire once a user got 50 miles away, while the top two remained dominant and statically ranked for searchers as far away as the East Coast.

Because of this phenomenon of distance, it’s vital for business owners to be educated about the fact that they are serving two user groups: one that is located in the neighborhood or city of the business, and another that could be anywhere in the country or the world. This doesn’t just matter for destinations like hotels or public amusements. In California (a big state), Internet users on a road trip from Palm Springs may be looking to end their 500-mile drive at a Chinese restaurant in San Rafael, so you can’t just think hyper-locally; you’ve got to see the bigger local picture. And you’ve got to do the analysis to find ways of winning as often as you can with both consumer groups.

You take it from here, auditor!

My local competitive audit chart is a basic one, looking at 30+ factors. What would you add? How would you improve it? Did I miss a GMB duplicate listing, or review spam? What’s working best for your agency in doing local audits these days? Do you use a chart, or just provide a high-level text summary of your internal findings? And, if you have any further theories as to how Ping’s is winning the local pack, I’d love for you to share them in the comments.

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http://ift.tt/2xn9dYi

[mercedessharonwo1]

How to Perform a Basic Local Business Competitive Audit

Posted by MiriamEllis

“Why are those folks outranking me in Google’s local pack?”

If you or a client is asking this question, the answer lies in competitive analysis. You’ve got to stack Business A up against Business B to identify the strengths and weaknesses of both competitors, and then make an educated guess as to which factors Google is weighting most in the results for a specific search term.

Today, I’d like to share a real-world example of a random competitive audit, including a chart that depicts which factors I’ve investigated and explanatory tips and tools for how I came up with the numbers and facts. Also included: a downloadable version of the spreadsheet that you can use for your own company or clients. Your goal with this audit is to identify exactly how one player is winning the game so that you can create a to-do list for any company trying to move up in the rankings. Alternatively, some competitive audits can be defensive, identifying a dominant player’s weaknesses so that they can be corrected to ensure continued high rankings.

It’s my hope that seeing this audit in action will help you better answer the question of why “this person is outranking that person,” and that you may share with our community some analytical tips of your own!

The scenario:

Search term: Chinese Restaurant San Rafael

Statistics about San Rafael: A large town of approximately 22 square miles in the San Francisco Bay Area with a population of 58,954 and 15+ Chinese restaurants.

Consistency of results: From 20 miles away to 2000+ miles away, Ping’s Chinese Cuisine outranks Yet Wah Restaurant in Google’s local pack for the search term. We don’t look closer than 20 miles, or proximity of the searcher creates too much diversity.

The challenge: Why is Ping’s Chinese Cuisine outranking Yet Wah Restaurant in Google’s Local Pack for the search term?

The comparison chart

*Where there’s a clear winner, it’s noted in bolded, italicized text.

Basic business information

NAP

Ping’s Chinese Cuisine 248 Northgate Dr. San Rafael, CA 94903 (415) 492-8808

Yet Wah Restaurant 1238 4th St. San Rafael, CA 94901 (415) 460-9883

GMB landing page URL

http://ift.tt/2vUoOkb

http://ift.tt/1dQH9Lw

Local Pack rank

1

2

Organic rank

17

5

Organic rank among business-owned sites *Remove directories and review platforms from the equation, as they typically shouldn’t be viewed as direct competitors

8

1

Business model eligible for GMB listing at this address? *Check Google’s Guidelines if unsure: http://ift.tt/1Ag5qvp...

Yes

Yes

Oddities

Note that Ping’s has redirected pingschinesecuisine.com to pingsnorthgate.com. Ping’s also has a www and non-www version of pingsnorthgate.com.

A 2nd website for same business at same location with same phone number: http://ift.tt/2vUi4D5. This website is ranking directly below the authoritative (GMB-linked) website for this business in organic SERP for the search in question.

Business listings

GMB review count

32

38

GMB review rating

4.1

3.8

Most recent GMB review *Sort GMB reviews by "most recent" filter

1 week ago

1 month ago

Proper GMB categories?

Yes

Yes

Estimated age of GMB listing *Estimated by date of oldest reviews and photos, but can only be seen as an estimate

At least 2 years old

At least 6 years old

Moz Local score (completeness + accuracy + lack of duplicates) *Tool: http://ift.tt/1jVt1Fe

49%

75%

Moz Local duplicate findings *Tool: http://ift.tt/1jVt1Fe

0

1 (Facebook)

Keywords in GMB name

chinese

restaurant

Keywords in GMB website landing page title tag

Nothing at all. Just “home page”

Yes

Spam in GMB title *Look at GMB photos, Google Streetview, and the website to check for inconsistencies

No

Yes: “restaurant” not in website logo or street level signage

Hours and photos on GMB?

Yes

Yes

Proximity to city centroid *Look up city by name in Google Maps and see where it places the name of the city on the map. That’s the city “centroid.” Get driving directions from the business to an address located in the centroid.

3.5 miles

410.1 feet

Proximity to nearest competitor *Zoom in on Google map to surface as many adjacent competitors as possible. Can be a Possum factor in some cases.

1.1 mile

0.2 miles

Within Google Maps boundaries? *Look up city by name in Google Maps and note the pink border via which Google designates that city’s boundaries

Yes

Yes

Website

Age of domain *Tool: http://ift.tt/1eS2KGO

March 2013

August 2011

Domain Authority *Tool: http://ift.tt/29qXBeL

16

8

GMB Landing Page Authority *Tool: http://ift.tt/29qXBeL

30

21

Links to domain *Tool: http://ift.tt/1rfsq4g

53

2

DA/PA of most authoritative link earned *Tool: http://ift.tt/1rfsq4g

72/32

38/16

Evaluation of website content

*This is a first-pass, visual gut check, just reading through the top-level pages of the website to see how they strike you in terms of quality.

Extremely thin, just adequate to identify restaurant. At least has menu on own site. Of the 2 sites, this one has the most total text, by virtue of a sentence on the homepage and menus in real text.

Extremely thin, almost zero text on homepage, menu link goes to another website.

Evaluation of website design

Outdated

Outdated, mostly images

Evaluation of website UX

Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs

Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs

Mobile-friendly *Tool: http://ift.tt/2s7oXje

Basic mobile design, but Google’s mobile-friendly test tool says both www and non-www cannot be reached because it’s unavailable or blocked by robots txt. They have disallowed scripts, photos, Flash, images, and plugins. This needs to be further investigated and resolved. Mobile site URL is http://ift.tt/2x8ijsP. Both this URL and the other domains are failing Google’s test.

Basic mobile design passes Google’s mobile-friendly test

Evaluation of overall onsite SEO *A first-pass visual look at the page code of top level pages, checking for titles, descriptions, header tags, schema, + the presence of problems like Flash.

Pretty much no optimization

Minimal, indeed, but a little bit of effort made. Some title tags, some schema, some header tags.

HTML NAP on website?

Yes

Yes

Website NAP matches GMB NAP?

No (Northgate One instead of Northgate Drive)

Yes

Total number of wins: Ping’s 7, Yet Wah 9.

Download your own version of my competitive audit spreadsheet by making a copy of the file.

Takeaways from the comparison chart

Yet Wah significantly outranks Ping’s in the organic results, but is being beaten by them in the Local Pack. Looking at the organic factors, we see evidence that, despite the fact that Ping’s has greater DA, greater PA of the GMB landing page, more links, and stronger links, they are not outranking Yet Wah organically. This is something of a surprise that leads us to look at their content and on-page SEO.

While Ping’s has slightly better text content on their website, they have almost done almost zero optimization work, their URLs have canonical issues, and their robots.txt isn’t properly configured. Yet Wah has almost no on-site content, but they have modestly optimized their title tags, implemented H tags and some schema, and their site passes Google’s mobile-friendly test.

So, our theory regarding Yet Wah’s superior organic ranking is that, in this particular case, Yet Wah’s moderate efforts with on-page SEO have managed to beat out Ping’s superior DA/PA/link metrics. Yet Wah’s website is also a couple of years older than Ping’s.

All that being said, Yet Wah’s organic win is failing to translate into a local win for them. How can we explain Ping’s local win? Ping’s has a slightly higher overall review rating, higher DA and GMB landing page PA, more total links, and higher authority links. They also have slightly more text content on their website, even if it’s not optimized.

So, our theory regarding Ping’s superior local rank is that, in this particular case, website authority/links appear to be winning the day for Ping’s. And the basic website text they have could possibly be contributing, despite lack of optimization.

In sum, basic on-page SEO appears to be contributing to Yet Wah’s organic win, while DA/PA/links appear to be contributing to Ping’s local win.

Things that bother me

I chose this competitive scenario at random, because when I took an initial look at the local and organic rankings, they bothered me a little. I would have expected Yet Wah to be first in the local pack if they were first in organic. I see local and organic rankings correlate strongly so much of the time, that this case seemed odd to me.

By the end of the audit, I’ve come up with a working theory, but I’m not 100% satisfied with it. It makes me ask questions like:

Is Ping’s better local rank stemming from some hidden factor no one knows about?

In this particular case, why is Google appearing to value Ping’s links more that Yet Wah’s on-page SEO in determining local rank? Would I see this same trend across the board if I analyzed 1,000 restaurants? The industry says links are huge in local SEO right now. I guess we’re seeing proof of that here.

Why isn’t Google weighting Yet Wah’s superior citation set more than they apparently are? Ping’s citations are in bad shape. I’ve seen citation health play a much greater apparent role in other audits, but something feels weird here.

Why isn’t Google “punishing” Yet Wah in the organic results for that second website with duplicate NAP on it? That seems like it should matter.

Why isn’t age factoring in more here? My inspection shows that Yet Wah’s domain and GMB listing are significantly older. This could be moving the organic needle for them, but it’s not moving the local one.

Could user behavior be making Ping’s the local winner? This is a huge open question at the end of my basic audit.* See below.

*I don’t have access to either restaurant’s Google Analytics, GMB Insights, or Google Search Console accounts, so perhaps that would turn up penalties, traffic patterns, or things like superior clicks-to-call, clicks-for-directions, or clicks-to-website that would make Ping’s local win easier to explain. If one of these restaurants were your client, you’d want to add chart rows for these things based on full access to the brand’s accounts and tools, and whatever data your tools can access about the competitor. For example, using a tool like SimilarWeb, I see that between May and June of this year, YetWah’s traffic rose from an average 150 monthly visits up to a peak of 500, while Ping’s saw a drop from 700 to 350 visits in that same period. Also, in a scenario in which one or both parties have a large or complex link profile, you might want additional rows for link metrics, taken from tools like Moz Pro, Ahrefs, or Majestic.

In this case, Ping’s has 7 total wins in my chart and Yet Wah has 9. The best I can do is look at which factors each business is winning at to try to identify a pattern of what Google is weighting most, both organically and locally. With both restaurants being so basic in their marketing, and with neither one absolutely running away with the game, what we have here is a close race. While I’d love to be able to declare a totally obvious winner, the best I could do as a consultant, in this case, would be to draw up a plan of defense or offense.

If my client were Ping’s:

Ping’s needs to defend its #1 local ranking if it doesn’t want to lose it. Its greatest weaknesses which must be resolved are:

The absence of on-page SEO

Thin content

Robots.txt issues

To remain strong, Ping’s should also work on:

Improving citation health

Directing the non-www version of their site to the www one

A professional site redesign could possibly improve conversions

Ping’s should accomplish these things to defend its current local rank and to try to move up organically.

If my client were Yet Wah:

Yet Wah needs to try to achieve victory over Ping’s in the local packs, as it has done in the organic results. To do that, Yet Wah should:

Earn links to the GMB landing page URL and the domain

Create strong text content on its high-level pages, including putting a complete dining menu in real text on the website

Deal with the second website featuring duplicate NAP

Yet Wah should also:

Complete work on its citation health

Work hard to get some new 5-star reviews by delighting customers with something special

Consider adding the word “Restaurant” to their signage, so that they can’t be reported for spamming the GMB name field.

Consider a professional redesign of the website to improve conversions

Yet Wah should accomplish these things in an effort to surpass Ping’s.

And, with either client being mine, I’d then be taking a second pass to further investigate anything problematic that came up in the initial audit, so that I could make further technical or creative suggestions.

Big geo-industry picture analysis

Given that no competitor for this particular search term has been able to beat out Ping’s or Yet Wah in the local pack, and given the minimal efforts these two brands have thus far made, there’s a tremendous chance for any Chinese restaurant in San Rafael to become the dominant player. Any competitor that dedicates itself to running on all cylinders (professional, optimized website with great content, a healthy link profile, a competitive number of high-star reviews, healthy citations, etc.) could definitely surpass all other contestants. This is not a tough market and there are no players who can’t be bested.

My sample case has been, as I’ve said, a close race. You may be facing an audit where there are deeply entrenched dominant players whose statistics far surpass those of a business you’re hoping to assist. But the basic process is the same:

Look at the top-ranking business.

Fill out the chart (adding any other fields you feel are important).

Then discover the strengths of the dominant company, as well as its potential weaknesses.

Contrast these findings with those you’ve charted for the company you’re helping and you’ll be able to form a plan for improvement.

And don’t forget the user proximity factor. Any company’s most adjacent customers will see pack results that vary either slightly or significantly from what a user sees from 20, 50, or 1,000 miles away. In my specific study, it happened to be the third result in the pack that went haywire once a user got 50 miles away, while the top two remained dominant and statically ranked for searchers as far away as the East Coast.

Because of this phenomenon of distance, it’s vital for business owners to be educated about the fact that they are serving two user groups: one that is located in the neighborhood or city of the business, and another that could be anywhere in the country or the world. This doesn’t just matter for destinations like hotels or public amusements. In California (a big state), Internet users on a road trip from Palm Springs may be looking to end their 500-mile drive at a Chinese restaurant in San Rafael, so you can’t just think hyper-locally; you’ve got to see the bigger local picture. And you’ve got to do the analysis to find ways of winning as often as you can with both consumer groups.

You take it from here, auditor!

My local competitive audit chart is a basic one, looking at 30+ factors. What would you add? How would you improve it? Did I miss a GMB duplicate listing, or review spam? What’s working best for your agency in doing local audits these days? Do you use a chart, or just provide a high-level text summary of your internal findings? And, if you have any further theories as to how Ping’s is winning the local pack, I’d love for you to share them in the comments.

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!

http://ift.tt/2xn9dYi

[conniecogeie]

How to Perform a Basic Local Business Competitive Audit

Posted by MiriamEllis

“Why are those folks outranking me in Google’s local pack?”

If you or a client is asking this question, the answer lies in competitive analysis. You’ve got to stack Business A up against Business B to identify the strengths and weaknesses of both competitors, and then make an educated guess as to which factors Google is weighting most in the results for a specific search term.

Today, I’d like to share a real-world example of a random competitive audit, including a chart that depicts which factors I’ve investigated and explanatory tips and tools for how I came up with the numbers and facts. Also included: a downloadable version of the spreadsheet that you can use for your own company or clients. Your goal with this audit is to identify exactly how one player is winning the game so that you can create a to-do list for any company trying to move up in the rankings. Alternatively, some competitive audits can be defensive, identifying a dominant player’s weaknesses so that they can be corrected to ensure continued high rankings.

It’s my hope that seeing this audit in action will help you better answer the question of why “this person is outranking that person,” and that you may share with our community some analytical tips of your own!

The scenario:

Search term: Chinese Restaurant San Rafael

Statistics about San Rafael: A large town of approximately 22 square miles in the San Francisco Bay Area with a population of 58,954 and 15+ Chinese restaurants.

Consistency of results: From 20 miles away to 2000+ miles away, Ping’s Chinese Cuisine outranks Yet Wah Restaurant in Google’s local pack for the search term. We don’t look closer than 20 miles, or proximity of the searcher creates too much diversity.

The challenge: Why is Ping’s Chinese Cuisine outranking Yet Wah Restaurant in Google’s Local Pack for the search term?

The comparison chart

*Where there’s a clear winner, it’s noted in bolded, italicized text.

Basic business information

NAP

Ping’s Chinese Cuisine 248 Northgate Dr. San Rafael, CA 94903 (415) 492-8808

Yet Wah Restaurant 1238 4th St. San Rafael, CA 94901 (415) 460-9883

GMB landing page URL

http://ift.tt/2vUoOkb

http://ift.tt/1dQH9Lw

Local Pack rank

1

2

Organic rank

17

5

Organic rank among business-owned sites *Remove directories and review platforms from the equation, as they typically shouldn’t be viewed as direct competitors

8

1

Business model eligible for GMB listing at this address? *Check Google’s Guidelines if unsure: http://ift.tt/1Ag5qvp...

Yes

Yes

Oddities

Note that Ping’s has redirected pingschinesecuisine.com to pingsnorthgate.com. Ping’s also has a www and non-www version of pingsnorthgate.com.

A 2nd website for same business at same location with same phone number: http://ift.tt/2vUi4D5. This website is ranking directly below the authoritative (GMB-linked) website for this business in organic SERP for the search in question.

Business listings

GMB review count

32

38

GMB review rating

4.1

3.8

Most recent GMB review *Sort GMB reviews by "most recent" filter

1 week ago

1 month ago

Proper GMB categories?

Yes

Yes

Estimated age of GMB listing *Estimated by date of oldest reviews and photos, but can only be seen as an estimate

At least 2 years old

At least 6 years old

Moz Local score (completeness + accuracy + lack of duplicates) *Tool: http://ift.tt/1jVt1Fe

49%

75%

Moz Local duplicate findings *Tool: http://ift.tt/1jVt1Fe

0

1 (Facebook)

Keywords in GMB name

chinese

restaurant

Keywords in GMB website landing page title tag

Nothing at all. Just “home page”

Yes

Spam in GMB title *Look at GMB photos, Google Streetview, and the website to check for inconsistencies

No

Yes: “restaurant” not in website logo or street level signage

Hours and photos on GMB?

Yes

Yes

Proximity to city centroid *Look up city by name in Google Maps and see where it places the name of the city on the map. That’s the city “centroid.” Get driving directions from the business to an address located in the centroid.

3.5 miles

410.1 feet

Proximity to nearest competitor *Zoom in on Google map to surface as many adjacent competitors as possible. Can be a Possum factor in some cases.

1.1 mile

0.2 miles

Within Google Maps boundaries? *Look up city by name in Google Maps and note the pink border via which Google designates that city’s boundaries

Yes

Yes

Website

Age of domain *Tool: http://ift.tt/1eS2KGO

March 2013

August 2011

Domain Authority *Tool: http://ift.tt/29qXBeL

16

8

GMB Landing Page Authority *Tool: http://ift.tt/29qXBeL

30

21

Links to domain *Tool: http://ift.tt/1rfsq4g

53

2

DA/PA of most authoritative link earned *Tool: http://ift.tt/1rfsq4g

72/32

38/16

Evaluation of website content

*This is a first-pass, visual gut check, just reading through the top-level pages of the website to see how they strike you in terms of quality.

Extremely thin, just adequate to identify restaurant. At least has menu on own site. Of the 2 sites, this one has the most total text, by virtue of a sentence on the homepage and menus in real text.

Extremely thin, almost zero text on homepage, menu link goes to another website.

Evaluation of website design

Outdated

Outdated, mostly images

Evaluation of website UX

Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs

Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs

Mobile-friendly *Tool: http://ift.tt/2s7oXje

Basic mobile design, but Google’s mobile-friendly test tool says both www and non-www cannot be reached because it’s unavailable or blocked by robots txt. They have disallowed scripts, photos, Flash, images, and plugins. This needs to be further investigated and resolved. Mobile site URL is http://ift.tt/2x8ijsP. Both this URL and the other domains are failing Google’s test.

Basic mobile design passes Google’s mobile-friendly test

Evaluation of overall onsite SEO *A first-pass visual look at the page code of top level pages, checking for titles, descriptions, header tags, schema, + the presence of problems like Flash.

Pretty much no optimization

Minimal, indeed, but a little bit of effort made. Some title tags, some schema, some header tags.

HTML NAP on website?

Yes

Yes

Website NAP matches GMB NAP?

No (Northgate One instead of Northgate Drive)

Yes

Total number of wins: Ping’s 7, Yet Wah 9.

Download your own version of my competitive audit spreadsheet by making a copy of the file.

Takeaways from the comparison chart

Yet Wah significantly outranks Ping’s in the organic results, but is being beaten by them in the Local Pack. Looking at the organic factors, we see evidence that, despite the fact that Ping’s has greater DA, greater PA of the GMB landing page, more links, and stronger links, they are not outranking Yet Wah organically. This is something of a surprise that leads us to look at their content and on-page SEO.

While Ping’s has slightly better text content on their website, they have almost done almost zero optimization work, their URLs have canonical issues, and their robots.txt isn’t properly configured. Yet Wah has almost no on-site content, but they have modestly optimized their title tags, implemented H tags and some schema, and their site passes Google���s mobile-friendly test.

So, our theory regarding Yet Wah’s superior organic ranking is that, in this particular case, Yet Wah’s moderate efforts with on-page SEO have managed to beat out Ping’s superior DA/PA/link metrics. Yet Wah’s website is also a couple of years older than Ping’s.

All that being said, Yet Wah’s organic win is failing to translate into a local win for them. How can we explain Ping’s local win? Ping’s has a slightly higher overall review rating, higher DA and GMB landing page PA, more total links, and higher authority links. They also have slightly more text content on their website, even if it’s not optimized.

So, our theory regarding Ping’s superior local rank is that, in this particular case, website authority/links appear to be winning the day for Ping’s. And the basic website text they have could possibly be contributing, despite lack of optimization.

In sum, basic on-page SEO appears to be contributing to Yet Wah’s organic win, while DA/PA/links appear to be contributing to Ping’s local win.

Things that bother me

I chose this competitive scenario at random, because when I took an initial look at the local and organic rankings, they bothered me a little. I would have expected Yet Wah to be first in the local pack if they were first in organic. I see local and organic rankings correlate strongly so much of the time, that this case seemed odd to me.

By the end of the audit, I’ve come up with a working theory, but I’m not 100% satisfied with it. It makes me ask questions like:

Is Ping’s better local rank stemming from some hidden factor no one knows about?

In this particular case, why is Google appearing to value Ping’s links more that Yet Wah’s on-page SEO in determining local rank? Would I see this same trend across the board if I analyzed 1,000 restaurants? The industry says links are huge in local SEO right now. I guess we’re seeing proof of that here.

Why isn’t Google weighting Yet Wah’s superior citation set more than they apparently are? Ping’s citations are in bad shape. I’ve seen citation health play a much greater apparent role in other audits, but something feels weird here.

Why isn’t Google “punishing” Yet Wah in the organic results for that second website with duplicate NAP on it? That seems like it should matter.

Why isn’t age factoring in more here? My inspection shows that Yet Wah’s domain and GMB listing are significantly older. This could be moving the organic needle for them, but it’s not moving the local one.

Could user behavior be making Ping’s the local winner? This is a huge open question at the end of my basic audit.* See below.

*I don’t have access to either restaurant’s Google Analytics, GMB Insights, or Google Search Console accounts, so perhaps that would turn up penalties, traffic patterns, or things like superior clicks-to-call, clicks-for-directions, or clicks-to-website that would make Ping’s local win easier to explain. If one of these restaurants were your client, you’d want to add chart rows for these things based on full access to the brand’s accounts and tools, and whatever data your tools can access about the competitor. For example, using a tool like SimilarWeb, I see that between May and June of this year, YetWah’s traffic rose from an average 150 monthly visits up to a peak of 500, while Ping’s saw a drop from 700 to 350 visits in that same period. Also, in a scenario in which one or both parties have a large or complex link profile, you might want additional rows for link metrics, taken from tools like Moz Pro, Ahrefs, or Majestic.

In this case, Ping’s has 7 total wins in my chart and Yet Wah has 9. The best I can do is look at which factors each business is winning at to try to identify a pattern of what Google is weighting most, both organically and locally. With both restaurants being so basic in their marketing, and with neither one absolutely running away with the game, what we have here is a close race. While I’d love to be able to declare a totally obvious winner, the best I could do as a consultant, in this case, would be to draw up a plan of defense or offense.

If my client were Ping’s:

Ping’s needs to defend its #1 local ranking if it doesn’t want to lose it. Its greatest weaknesses which must be resolved are:

The absence of on-page SEO

Thin content

Robots.txt issues

To remain strong, Ping’s should also work on:

Improving citation health

Directing the non-www version of their site to the www one

A professional site redesign could possibly improve conversions

Ping’s should accomplish these things to defend its current local rank and to try to move up organically.

If my client were Yet Wah:

Yet Wah needs to try to achieve victory over Ping’s in the local packs, as it has done in the organic results. To do that, Yet Wah should:

Earn links to the GMB landing page URL and the domain

Create strong text content on its high-level pages, including putting a complete dining menu in real text on the website

Deal with the second website featuring duplicate NAP

Yet Wah should also:

Complete work on its citation health

Work hard to get some new 5-star reviews by delighting customers with something special

Consider adding the word “Restaurant” to their signage, so that they can’t be reported for spamming the GMB name field.

Consider a professional redesign of the website to improve conversions

Yet Wah should accomplish these things in an effort to surpass Ping’s.

And, with either client being mine, I’d then be taking a second pass to further investigate anything problematic that came up in the initial audit, so that I could make further technical or creative suggestions.

Big geo-industry picture analysis

Given that no competitor for this particular search term has been able to beat out Ping’s or Yet Wah in the local pack, and given the minimal efforts these two brands have thus far made, there’s a tremendous chance for any Chinese restaurant in San Rafael to become the dominant player. Any competitor that dedicates itself to running on all cylinders (professional, optimized website with great content, a healthy link profile, a competitive number of high-star reviews, healthy citations, etc.) could definitely surpass all other contestants. This is not a tough market and there are no players who can’t be bested.

My sample case has been, as I’ve said, a close race. You may be facing an audit where there are deeply entrenched dominant players whose statistics far surpass those of a business you’re hoping to assist. But the basic process is the same:

Look at the top-ranking business.

Fill out the chart (adding any other fields you feel are important).

Then discover the strengths of the dominant company, as well as its potential weaknesses.

Contrast these findings with those you’ve charted for the company you’re helping and you’ll be able to form a plan for improvement.

And don’t forget the user proximity factor. Any company’s most adjacent customers will see pack results that vary either slightly or significantly from what a user sees from 20, 50, or 1,000 miles away. In my specific study, it happened to be the third result in the pack that went haywire once a user got 50 miles away, while the top two remained dominant and statically ranked for searchers as far away as the East Coast.

Because of this phenomenon of distance, it’s vital for business owners to be educated about the fact that they are serving two user groups: one that is located in the neighborhood or city of the business, and another that could be anywhere in the country or the world. This doesn’t just matter for destinations like hotels or public amusements. In California (a big state), Internet users on a road trip from Palm Springs may be looking to end their 500-mile drive at a Chinese restaurant in San Rafael, so you can’t just think hyper-locally; you’ve got to see the bigger local picture. And you’ve got to do the analysis to find ways of winning as often as you can with both consumer groups.

You take it from here, auditor!

My local competitive audit chart is a basic one, looking at 30+ factors. What would you add? How would you improve it? Did I miss a GMB duplicate listing, or review spam? What’s working best for your agency in doing local audits these days? Do you use a chart, or just provide a high-level text summary of your internal findings? And, if you have any further theories as to how Ping’s is winning the local pack, I’d love for you to share them in the comments.

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!

http://ift.tt/2xn9dYi

[rodneyevesuarywk]

How to Perform a Basic Local Business Competitive Audit

Posted by MiriamEllis

“Why are those folks outranking me in Google’s local pack?”

If you or a client is asking this question, the answer lies in competitive analysis. You’ve got to stack Business A up against Business B to identify the strengths and weaknesses of both competitors, and then make an educated guess as to which factors Google is weighting most in the results for a specific search term.

Today, I’d like to share a real-world example of a random competitive audit, including a chart that depicts which factors I’ve investigated and explanatory tips and tools for how I came up with the numbers and facts. Also included: a downloadable version of the spreadsheet that you can use for your own company or clients. Your goal with this audit is to identify exactly how one player is winning the game so that you can create a to-do list for any company trying to move up in the rankings. Alternatively, some competitive audits can be defensive, identifying a dominant player’s weaknesses so that they can be corrected to ensure continued high rankings.

It’s my hope that seeing this audit in action will help you better answer the question of why “this person is outranking that person,” and that you may share with our community some analytical tips of your own!

The scenario:

Search term: Chinese Restaurant San Rafael

Statistics about San Rafael: A large town of approximately 22 square miles in the San Francisco Bay Area with a population of 58,954 and 15+ Chinese restaurants.

Consistency of results: From 20 miles away to 2000+ miles away, Ping’s Chinese Cuisine outranks Yet Wah Restaurant in Google’s local pack for the search term. We don’t look closer than 20 miles, or proximity of the searcher creates too much diversity.

The challenge: Why is Ping’s Chinese Cuisine outranking Yet Wah Restaurant in Google’s Local Pack for the search term?

The comparison chart

*Where there’s a clear winner, it’s noted in bolded, italicized text.

Basic business information

NAP

Ping’s Chinese Cuisine 248 Northgate Dr. San Rafael, CA 94903 (415) 492-8808

Yet Wah Restaurant 1238 4th St. San Rafael, CA 94901 (415) 460-9883

GMB landing page URL

http://ift.tt/2vUoOkb

http://ift.tt/1dQH9Lw

Local Pack rank

1

2

Organic rank

17

5

Organic rank among business-owned sites *Remove directories and review platforms from the equation, as they typically shouldn’t be viewed as direct competitors

8

1

Business model eligible for GMB listing at this address? *Check Google’s Guidelines if unsure: http://ift.tt/1Ag5qvp...

Yes

Yes

Oddities

Note that Ping’s has redirected pingschinesecuisine.com to pingsnorthgate.com. Ping’s also has a www and non-www version of pingsnorthgate.com.

A 2nd website for same business at same location with same phone number: http://ift.tt/2vUi4D5. This website is ranking directly below the authoritative (GMB-linked) website for this business in organic SERP for the search in question.

Business listings

GMB review count

32

38

GMB review rating

4.1

3.8

Most recent GMB review *Sort GMB reviews by "most recent" filter

1 week ago

1 month ago

Proper GMB categories?

Yes

Yes

Estimated age of GMB listing *Estimated by date of oldest reviews and photos, but can only be seen as an estimate

At least 2 years old

At least 6 years old

Moz Local score (completeness + accuracy + lack of duplicates) *Tool: http://ift.tt/1jVt1Fe

49%

75%

Moz Local duplicate findings *Tool: http://ift.tt/1jVt1Fe

0

1 (Facebook)

Keywords in GMB name

chinese

restaurant

Keywords in GMB website landing page title tag

Nothing at all. Just “home page”

Yes

Spam in GMB title *Look at GMB photos, Google Streetview, and the website to check for inconsistencies

No

Yes: “restaurant” not in website logo or street level signage

Hours and photos on GMB?

Yes

Yes

Proximity to city centroid *Look up city by name in Google Maps and see where it places the name of the city on the map. That’s the city “centroid.” Get driving directions from the business to an address located in the centroid.

3.5 miles

410.1 feet

Proximity to nearest competitor *Zoom in on Google map to surface as many adjacent competitors as possible. Can be a Possum factor in some cases.

1.1 mile

0.2 miles

Within Google Maps boundaries? *Look up city by name in Google Maps and note the pink border via which Google designates that city’s boundaries

Yes

Yes

Website

Age of domain *Tool: http://ift.tt/1eS2KGO

March 2013

August 2011

Domain Authority *Tool: http://ift.tt/29qXBeL

16

8

GMB Landing Page Authority *Tool: http://ift.tt/29qXBeL

30

21

Links to domain *Tool: http://ift.tt/1rfsq4g

53

2

DA/PA of most authoritative link earned *Tool: http://ift.tt/1rfsq4g

72/32

38/16

Evaluation of website content

*This is a first-pass, visual gut check, just reading through the top-level pages of the website to see how they strike you in terms of quality.

Extremely thin, just adequate to identify restaurant. At least has menu on own site. Of the 2 sites, this one has the most total text, by virtue of a sentence on the homepage and menus in real text.

Extremely thin, almost zero text on homepage, menu link goes to another website.

Evaluation of website design

Outdated

Outdated, mostly images

Evaluation of website UX

Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs

Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs

Mobile-friendly *Tool: http://ift.tt/2s7oXje

Basic mobile design, but Google’s mobile-friendly test tool says both www and non-www cannot be reached because it’s unavailable or blocked by robots txt. They have disallowed scripts, photos, Flash, images, and plugins. This needs to be further investigated and resolved. Mobile site URL is http://ift.tt/2x8ijsP. Both this URL and the other domains are failing Google’s test.

Basic mobile design passes Google’s mobile-friendly test

Evaluation of overall onsite SEO *A first-pass visual look at the page code of top level pages, checking for titles, descriptions, header tags, schema, + the presence of problems like Flash.

Pretty much no optimization

Minimal, indeed, but a little bit of effort made. Some title tags, some schema, some header tags.

HTML NAP on website?

Yes

Yes

Website NAP matches GMB NAP?

No (Northgate One instead of Northgate Drive)

Yes

Total number of wins: Ping’s 7, Yet Wah 9.

Download your own version of my competitive audit spreadsheet by making a copy of the file.

Takeaways from the comparison chart

Yet Wah significantly outranks Ping’s in the organic results, but is being beaten by them in the Local Pack. Looking at the organic factors, we see evidence that, despite the fact that Ping’s has greater DA, greater PA of the GMB landing page, more links, and stronger links, they are not outranking Yet Wah organically. This is something of a surprise that leads us to look at their content and on-page SEO.

While Ping’s has slightly better text content on their website, they have almost done almost zero optimization work, their URLs have canonical issues, and their robots.txt isn’t properly configured. Yet Wah has almost no on-site content, but they have modestly optimized their title tags, implemented H tags and some schema, and their site passes Google’s mobile-friendly test.

So, our theory regarding Yet Wah’s superior organic ranking is that, in this particular case, Yet Wah’s moderate efforts with on-page SEO have managed to beat out Ping’s superior DA/PA/link metrics. Yet Wah’s website is also a couple of years older than Ping’s.

All that being said, Yet Wah’s organic win is failing to translate into a local win for them. How can we explain Ping’s local win? Ping’s has a slightly higher overall review rating, higher DA and GMB landing page PA, more total links, and higher authority links. They also have slightly more text content on their website, even if it’s not optimized.

So, our theory regarding Ping’s superior local rank is that, in this particular case, website authority/links appear to be winning the day for Ping’s. And the basic website text they have could possibly be contributing, despite lack of optimization.

In sum, basic on-page SEO appears to be contributing to Yet Wah’s organic win, while DA/PA/links appear to be contributing to Ping’s local win.

Things that bother me

I chose this competitive scenario at random, because when I took an initial look at the local and organic rankings, they bothered me a little. I would have expected Yet Wah to be first in the local pack if they were first in organic. I see local and organic rankings correlate strongly so much of the time, that this case seemed odd to me.

By the end of the audit, I’ve come up with a working theory, but I’m not 100% satisfied with it. It makes me ask questions like:

Is Ping’s better local rank stemming from some hidden factor no one knows about?

In this particular case, why is Google appearing to value Ping’s links more that Yet Wah’s on-page SEO in determining local rank? Would I see this same trend across the board if I analyzed 1,000 restaurants? The industry says links are huge in local SEO right now. I guess we’re seeing proof of that here.

Why isn’t Google weighting Yet Wah’s superior citation set more than they apparently are? Ping’s citations are in bad shape. I’ve seen citation health play a much greater apparent role in other audits, but something feels weird here.

Why isn’t Google “punishing” Yet Wah in the organic results for that second website with duplicate NAP on it? That seems like it should matter.

Why isn’t age factoring in more here? My inspection shows that Yet Wah’s domain and GMB listing are significantly older. This could be moving the organic needle for them, but it’s not moving the local one.

Could user behavior be making Ping’s the local winner? This is a huge open question at the end of my basic audit.* See below.

*I don’t have access to either restaurant’s Google Analytics, GMB Insights, or Google Search Console accounts, so perhaps that would turn up penalties, traffic patterns, or things like superior clicks-to-call, clicks-for-directions, or clicks-to-website that would make Ping’s local win easier to explain. If one of these restaurants were your client, you’d want to add chart rows for these things based on full access to the brand’s accounts and tools, and whatever data your tools can access about the competitor. For example, using a tool like SimilarWeb, I see that between May and June of this year, YetWah’s traffic rose from an average 150 monthly visits up to a peak of 500, while Ping’s saw a drop from 700 to 350 visits in that same period. Also, in a scenario in which one or both parties have a large or complex link profile, you might want additional rows for link metrics, taken from tools like Moz Pro, Ahrefs, or Majestic.

In this case, Ping’s has 7 total wins in my chart and Yet Wah has 9. The best I can do is look at which factors each business is winning at to try to identify a pattern of what Google is weighting most, both organically and locally. With both restaurants being so basic in their marketing, and with neither one absolutely running away with the game, what we have here is a close race. While I’d love to be able to declare a totally obvious winner, the best I could do as a consultant, in this case, would be to draw up a plan of defense or offense.

If my client were Ping’s:

Ping’s needs to defend its #1 local ranking if it doesn’t want to lose it. Its greatest weaknesses which must be resolved are:

The absence of on-page SEO

Thin content

Robots.txt issues

To remain strong, Ping’s should also work on:

Improving citation health

Directing the non-www version of their site to the www one

A professional site redesign could possibly improve conversions

Ping’s should accomplish these things to defend its current local rank and to try to move up organically.

If my client were Yet Wah:

Yet Wah needs to try to achieve victory over Ping’s in the local packs, as it has done in the organic results. To do that, Yet Wah should:

Earn links to the GMB landing page URL and the domain

Create strong text content on its high-level pages, including putting a complete dining menu in real text on the website

Deal with the second website featuring duplicate NAP

Yet Wah should also:

Complete work on its citation health

Work hard to get some new 5-star reviews by delighting customers with something special

Consider adding the word “Restaurant” to their signage, so that they can’t be reported for spamming the GMB name field.

Consider a professional redesign of the website to improve conversions

Yet Wah should accomplish these things in an effort to surpass Ping’s.

And, with either client being mine, I’d then be taking a second pass to further investigate anything problematic that came up in the initial audit, so that I could make further technical or creative suggestions.

Big geo-industry picture analysis

Given that no competitor for this particular search term has been able to beat out Ping’s or Yet Wah in the local pack, and given the minimal efforts these two brands have thus far made, there’s a tremendous chance for any Chinese restaurant in San Rafael to become the dominant player. Any competitor that dedicates itself to running on all cylinders (professional, optimized website with great content, a healthy link profile, a competitive number of high-star reviews, healthy citations, etc.) could definitely surpass all other contestants. This is not a tough market and there are no players who can’t be bested.

My sample case has been, as I’ve said, a close race. You may be facing an audit where there are deeply entrenched dominant players whose statistics far surpass those of a business you’re hoping to assist. But the basic process is the same:

Look at the top-ranking business.

Fill out the chart (adding any other fields you feel are important).

Then discover the strengths of the dominant company, as well as its potential weaknesses.

Contrast these findings with those you’ve charted for the company you’re helping and you’ll be able to form a plan for improvement.

And don’t forget the user proximity factor. Any company’s most adjacent customers will see pack results that vary either slightly or significantly from what a user sees from 20, 50, or 1,000 miles away. In my specific study, it happened to be the third result in the pack that went haywire once a user got 50 miles away, while the top two remained dominant and statically ranked for searchers as far away as the East Coast.

Because of this phenomenon of distance, it’s vital for business owners to be educated about the fact that they are serving two user groups: one that is located in the neighborhood or city of the business, and another that could be anywhere in the country or the world. This doesn’t just matter for destinations like hotels or public amusements. In California (a big state), Internet users on a road trip from Palm Springs may be looking to end their 500-mile drive at a Chinese restaurant in San Rafael, so you can’t just think hyper-locally; you’ve got to see the bigger local picture. And you’ve got to do the analysis to find ways of winning as often as you can with both consumer groups.

You take it from here, auditor!

My local competitive audit chart is a basic one, looking at 30+ factors. What would you add? How would you improve it? Did I miss a GMB duplicate listing, or review spam? What’s working best for your agency in doing local audits these days? Do you use a chart, or just provide a high-level text summary of your internal findings? And, if you have any further theories as to how Ping’s is winning the local pack, I’d love for you to share them in the comments.

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!

http://ift.tt/2xn9dYi

[mariasolemarionqi]

How to Perform a Basic Local Business Competitive Audit

Posted by MiriamEllis

“Why are those folks outranking me in Google’s local pack?”

If you or a client is asking this question, the answer lies in competitive analysis. You’ve got to stack Business A up against Business B to identify the strengths and weaknesses of both competitors, and then make an educated guess as to which factors Google is weighting most in the results for a specific search term.

Today, I’d like to share a real-world example of a random competitive audit, including a chart that depicts which factors I’ve investigated and explanatory tips and tools for how I came up with the numbers and facts. Also included: a downloadable version of the spreadsheet that you can use for your own company or clients. Your goal with this audit is to identify exactly how one player is winning the game so that you can create a to-do list for any company trying to move up in the rankings. Alternatively, some competitive audits can be defensive, identifying a dominant player’s weaknesses so that they can be corrected to ensure continued high rankings.

It’s my hope that seeing this audit in action will help you better answer the question of why “this person is outranking that person,” and that you may share with our community some analytical tips of your own!

The scenario:

Search term: Chinese Restaurant San Rafael

Statistics about San Rafael: A large town of approximately 22 square miles in the San Francisco Bay Area with a population of 58,954 and 15+ Chinese restaurants.

Consistency of results: From 20 miles away to 2000+ miles away, Ping’s Chinese Cuisine outranks Yet Wah Restaurant in Google’s local pack for the search term. We don’t look closer than 20 miles, or proximity of the searcher creates too much diversity.

The challenge: Why is Ping’s Chinese Cuisine outranking Yet Wah Restaurant in Google’s Local Pack for the search term?

The comparison chart

*Where there’s a clear winner, it’s noted in bolded, italicized text.

Basic business information

NAP

Ping’s Chinese Cuisine 248 Northgate Dr. San Rafael, CA 94903 (415) 492-8808

Yet Wah Restaurant 1238 4th St. San Rafael, CA 94901 (415) 460-9883

GMB landing page URL

http://ift.tt/2vUoOkb

http://ift.tt/1dQH9Lw

Local Pack rank

1

2

Organic rank

17

5

Organic rank among business-owned sites *Remove directories and review platforms from the equation, as they typically shouldn’t be viewed as direct competitors

8

1

Business model eligible for GMB listing at this address? *Check Google’s Guidelines if unsure: http://ift.tt/1Ag5qvp...

Yes

Yes

Oddities

Note that Ping’s has redirected pingschinesecuisine.com to pingsnorthgate.com. Ping’s also has a www and non-www version of pingsnorthgate.com.

A 2nd website for same business at same location with same phone number: http://ift.tt/2vUi4D5. This website is ranking directly below the authoritative (GMB-linked) website for this business in organic SERP for the search in question.

Business listings

GMB review count

32

38

GMB review rating

4.1

3.8

Most recent GMB review *Sort GMB reviews by "most recent" filter

1 week ago

1 month ago

Proper GMB categories?

Yes

Yes

Estimated age of GMB listing *Estimated by date of oldest reviews and photos, but can only be seen as an estimate

At least 2 years old

At least 6 years old

Moz Local score (completeness + accuracy + lack of duplicates) *Tool: http://ift.tt/1jVt1Fe

49%

75%

Moz Local duplicate findings *Tool: http://ift.tt/1jVt1Fe

0

1 (Facebook)

Keywords in GMB name

chinese

restaurant

Keywords in GMB website landing page title tag

Nothing at all. Just “home page”

Yes

Spam in GMB title *Look at GMB photos, Google Streetview, and the website to check for inconsistencies

No

Yes: “restaurant” not in website logo or street level signage

Hours and photos on GMB?

Yes

Yes

Proximity to city centroid *Look up city by name in Google Maps and see where it places the name of the city on the map. That’s the city “centroid.” Get driving directions from the business to an address located in the centroid.

3.5 miles

410.1 feet

Proximity to nearest competitor *Zoom in on Google map to surface as many adjacent competitors as possible. Can be a Possum factor in some cases.

1.1 mile

0.2 miles

Within Google Maps boundaries? *Look up city by name in Google Maps and note the pink border via which Google designates that city’s boundaries

Yes

Yes

Website

Age of domain *Tool: http://ift.tt/1eS2KGO

March 2013

August 2011

Domain Authority *Tool: http://ift.tt/29qXBeL

16

8

GMB Landing Page Authority *Tool: http://ift.tt/29qXBeL

30

21

Links to domain *Tool: http://ift.tt/1rfsq4g

53

2

DA/PA of most authoritative link earned *Tool: http://ift.tt/1rfsq4g

72/32

38/16

Evaluation of website content

*This is a first-pass, visual gut check, just reading through the top-level pages of the website to see how they strike you in terms of quality.

Extremely thin, just adequate to identify restaurant. At least has menu on own site. Of the 2 sites, this one has the most total text, by virtue of a sentence on the homepage and menus in real text.

Extremely thin, almost zero text on homepage, menu link goes to another website.

Evaluation of website design

Outdated

Outdated, mostly images

Evaluation of website UX

Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs

Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs

Mobile-friendly *Tool: http://ift.tt/2s7oXje

Basic mobile design, but Google’s mobile-friendly test tool says both www and non-www cannot be reached because it’s unavailable or blocked by robots txt. They have disallowed scripts, photos, Flash, images, and plugins. This needs to be further investigated and resolved. Mobile site URL is http://ift.tt/2x8ijsP. Both this URL and the other domains are failing Google’s test.

Basic mobile design passes Google’s mobile-friendly test

Evaluation of overall onsite SEO *A first-pass visual look at the page code of top level pages, checking for titles, descriptions, header tags, schema, + the presence of problems like Flash.

Pretty much no optimization

Minimal, indeed, but a little bit of effort made. Some title tags, some schema, some header tags.

HTML NAP on website?

Yes

Yes

Website NAP matches GMB NAP?

No (Northgate One instead of Northgate Drive)

Yes

Total number of wins: Ping’s 7, Yet Wah 9.

Download your own version of my competitive audit spreadsheet by making a copy of the file.

Takeaways from the comparison chart

Yet Wah significantly outranks Ping’s in the organic results, but is being beaten by them in the Local Pack. Looking at the organic factors, we see evidence that, despite the fact that Ping’s has greater DA, greater PA of the GMB landing page, more links, and stronger links, they are not outranking Yet Wah organically. This is something of a surprise that leads us to look at their content and on-page SEO.

While Ping’s has slightly better text content on their website, they have almost done almost zero optimization work, their URLs have canonical issues, and their robots.txt isn’t properly configured. Yet Wah has almost no on-site content, but they have modestly optimized their title tags, implemented H tags and some schema, and their site passes Google’s mobile-friendly test.

So, our theory regarding Yet Wah’s superior organic ranking is that, in this particular case, Yet Wah’s moderate efforts with on-page SEO have managed to beat out Ping’s superior DA/PA/link metrics. Yet Wah’s website is also a couple of years older than Ping’s.

All that being said, Yet Wah’s organic win is failing to translate into a local win for them. How can we explain Ping’s local win? Ping’s has a slightly higher overall review rating, higher DA and GMB landing page PA, more total links, and higher authority links. They also have slightly more text content on their website, even if it’s not optimized.

So, our theory regarding Ping’s superior local rank is that, in this particular case, website authority/links appear to be winning the day for Ping’s. And the basic website text they have could possibly be contributing, despite lack of optimization.

In sum, basic on-page SEO appears to be contributing to Yet Wah’s organic win, while DA/PA/links appear to be contributing to Ping’s local win.

Things that bother me

I chose this competitive scenario at random, because when I took an initial look at the local and organic rankings, they bothered me a little. I would have expected Yet Wah to be first in the local pack if they were first in organic. I see local and organic rankings correlate strongly so much of the time, that this case seemed odd to me.

By the end of the audit, I’ve come up with a working theory, but I’m not 100% satisfied with it. It makes me ask questions like:

Is Ping’s better local rank stemming from some hidden factor no one knows about?

In this particular case, why is Google appearing to value Ping’s links more that Yet Wah’s on-page SEO in determining local rank? Would I see this same trend across the board if I analyzed 1,000 restaurants? The industry says links are huge in local SEO right now. I guess we’re seeing proof of that here.

Why isn’t Google weighting Yet Wah’s superior citation set more than they apparently are? Ping’s citations are in bad shape. I’ve seen citation health play a much greater apparent role in other audits, but something feels weird here.

Why isn’t Google “punishing” Yet Wah in the organic results for that second website with duplicate NAP on it? That seems like it should matter.

Why isn’t age factoring in more here? My inspection shows that Yet Wah’s domain and GMB listing are significantly older. This could be moving the organic needle for them, but it’s not moving the local one.

Could user behavior be making Ping’s the local winner? This is a huge open question at the end of my basic audit.* See below.

*I don’t have access to either restaurant’s Google Analytics, GMB Insights, or Google Search Console accounts, so perhaps that would turn up penalties, traffic patterns, or things like superior clicks-to-call, clicks-for-directions, or clicks-to-website that would make Ping’s local win easier to explain. If one of these restaurants were your client, you’d want to add chart rows for these things based on full access to the brand’s accounts and tools, and whatever data your tools can access about the competitor. For example, using a tool like SimilarWeb, I see that between May and June of this year, YetWah’s traffic rose from an average 150 monthly visits up to a peak of 500, while Ping’s saw a drop from 700 to 350 visits in that same period. Also, in a scenario in which one or both parties have a large or complex link profile, you might want additional rows for link metrics, taken from tools like Moz Pro, Ahrefs, or Majestic.

In this case, Ping’s has 7 total wins in my chart and Yet Wah has 9. The best I can do is look at which factors each business is winning at to try to identify a pattern of what Google is weighting most, both organically and locally. With both restaurants being so basic in their marketing, and with neither one absolutely running away with the game, what we have here is a close race. While I’d love to be able to declare a totally obvious winner, the best I could do as a consultant, in this case, would be to draw up a plan of defense or offense.

If my client were Ping’s:

Ping’s needs to defend its #1 local ranking if it doesn’t want to lose it. Its greatest weaknesses which must be resolved are:

The absence of on-page SEO

Thin content

Robots.txt issues

To remain strong, Ping’s should also work on:

Improving citation health

Directing the non-www version of their site to the www one

A professional site redesign could possibly improve conversions

Ping’s should accomplish these things to defend its current local rank and to try to move up organically.

If my client were Yet Wah:

Yet Wah needs to try to achieve victory over Ping’s in the local packs, as it has done in the organic results. To do that, Yet Wah should:

Earn links to the GMB landing page URL and the domain

Create strong text content on its high-level pages, including putting a complete dining menu in real text on the website

Deal with the second website featuring duplicate NAP

Yet Wah should also:

Complete work on its citation health

Work hard to get some new 5-star reviews by delighting customers with something special

Consider adding the word “Restaurant” to their signage, so that they can’t be reported for spamming the GMB name field.

Consider a professional redesign of the website to improve conversions

Yet Wah should accomplish these things in an effort to surpass Ping’s.

And, with either client being mine, I’d then be taking a second pass to further investigate anything problematic that came up in the initial audit, so that I could make further technical or creative suggestions.

Big geo-industry picture analysis

Given that no competitor for this particular search term has been able to beat out Ping’s or Yet Wah in the local pack, and given the minimal efforts these two brands have thus far made, there’s a tremendous chance for any Chinese restaurant in San Rafael to become the dominant player. Any competitor that dedicates itself to running on all cylinders (professional, optimized website with great content, a healthy link profile, a competitive number of high-star reviews, healthy citations, etc.) could definitely surpass all other contestants. This is not a tough market and there are no players who can’t be bested.

My sample case has been, as I’ve said, a close race. You may be facing an audit where there are deeply entrenched dominant players whose statistics far surpass those of a business you’re hoping to assist. But the basic process is the same:

Look at the top-ranking business.

Fill out the chart (adding any other fields you feel are important).

Then discover the strengths of the dominant company, as well as its potential weaknesses.

Contrast these findings with those you’ve charted for the company you’re helping and you’ll be able to form a plan for improvement.

And don’t forget the user proximity factor. Any company’s most adjacent customers will see pack results that vary either slightly or significantly from what a user sees from 20, 50, or 1,000 miles away. In my specific study, it happened to be the third result in the pack that went haywire once a user got 50 miles away, while the top two remained dominant and statically ranked for searchers as far away as the East Coast.

Because of this phenomenon of distance, it’s vital for business owners to be educated about the fact that they are serving two user groups: one that is located in the neighborhood or city of the business, and another that could be anywhere in the country or the world. This doesn’t just matter for destinations like hotels or public amusements. In California (a big state), Internet users on a road trip from Palm Springs may be looking to end their 500-mile drive at a Chinese restaurant in San Rafael, so you can’t just think hyper-locally; you’ve got to see the bigger local picture. And you’ve got to do the analysis to find ways of winning as often as you can with both consumer groups.

You take it from here, auditor!

My local competitive audit chart is a basic one, looking at 30+ factors. What would you add? How would you improve it? Did I miss a GMB duplicate listing, or review spam? What’s working best for your agency in doing local audits these days? Do you use a chart, or just provide a high-level text summary of your internal findings? And, if you have any further theories as to how Ping’s is winning the local pack, I’d love for you to share them in the comments.

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!

http://ift.tt/2xn9dYi

[kraussoutene]

How to Perform a Basic Local Business Competitive Audit

Posted by MiriamEllis

“Why are those folks outranking me in Google’s local pack?”

If you or a client is asking this question, the answer lies in competitive analysis. You’ve got to stack Business A up against Business B to identify the strengths and weaknesses of both competitors, and then make an educated guess as to which factors Google is weighting most in the results for a specific search term.

Today, I’d like to share a real-world example of a random competitive audit, including a chart that depicts which factors I’ve investigated and explanatory tips and tools for how I came up with the numbers and facts. Also included: a downloadable version of the spreadsheet that you can use for your own company or clients. Your goal with this audit is to identify exactly how one player is winning the game so that you can create a to-do list for any company trying to move up in the rankings. Alternatively, some competitive audits can be defensive, identifying a dominant player’s weaknesses so that they can be corrected to ensure continued high rankings.

It’s my hope that seeing this audit in action will help you better answer the question of why “this person is outranking that person,” and that you may share with our community some analytical tips of your own!

The scenario:

Search term: Chinese Restaurant San Rafael

Statistics about San Rafael: A large town of approximately 22 square miles in the San Francisco Bay Area with a population of 58,954 and 15+ Chinese restaurants.

Consistency of results: From 20 miles away to 2000+ miles away, Ping’s Chinese Cuisine outranks Yet Wah Restaurant in Google’s local pack for the search term. We don’t look closer than 20 miles, or proximity of the searcher creates too much diversity.

The challenge: Why is Ping’s Chinese Cuisine outranking Yet Wah Restaurant in Google’s Local Pack for the search term?

The comparison chart

*Where there’s a clear winner, it’s noted in bolded, italicized text.

Basic business information

NAP

Ping’s Chinese Cuisine 248 Northgate Dr. San Rafael, CA 94903 (415) 492-8808

Yet Wah Restaurant 1238 4th St. San Rafael, CA 94901 (415) 460-9883

GMB landing page URL

http://ift.tt/2vUoOkb

http://ift.tt/1dQH9Lw

Local Pack rank

1

2

Organic rank

17

5

Organic rank among business-owned sites *Remove directories and review platforms from the equation, as they typically shouldn’t be viewed as direct competitors

8

1

Business model eligible for GMB listing at this address? *Check Google’s Guidelines if unsure: http://ift.tt/1Ag5qvp...

Yes

Yes

Oddities

Note that Ping’s has redirected pingschinesecuisine.com to pingsnorthgate.com. Ping’s also has a www and non-www version of pingsnorthgate.com.

A 2nd website for same business at same location with same phone number: http://ift.tt/2vUi4D5. This website is ranking directly below the authoritative (GMB-linked) website for this business in organic SERP for the search in question.

Business listings

GMB review count

32

38

GMB review rating

4.1

3.8

Most recent GMB review *Sort GMB reviews by "most recent" filter

1 week ago

1 month ago

Proper GMB categories?

Yes

Yes

Estimated age of GMB listing *Estimated by date of oldest reviews and photos, but can only be seen as an estimate

At least 2 years old

At least 6 years old

Moz Local score (completeness + accuracy + lack of duplicates) *Tool: http://ift.tt/1jVt1Fe

49%

75%

Moz Local duplicate findings *Tool: http://ift.tt/1jVt1Fe

0

1 (Facebook)

Keywords in GMB name

chinese

restaurant

Keywords in GMB website landing page title tag

Nothing at all. Just “home page”

Yes

Spam in GMB title *Look at GMB photos, Google Streetview, and the website to check for inconsistencies

No

Yes: “restaurant” not in website logo or street level signage

Hours and photos on GMB?

Yes

Yes

Proximity to city centroid *Look up city by name in Google Maps and see where it places the name of the city on the map. That’s the city “centroid.” Get driving directions from the business to an address located in the centroid.

3.5 miles

410.1 feet

Proximity to nearest competitor *Zoom in on Google map to surface as many adjacent competitors as possible. Can be a Possum factor in some cases.

1.1 mile

0.2 miles

Within Google Maps boundaries? *Look up city by name in Google Maps and note the pink border via which Google designates that city’s boundaries

Yes

Yes

Website

Age of domain *Tool: http://ift.tt/1eS2KGO

March 2013

August 2011

Domain Authority *Tool: http://ift.tt/29qXBeL

16

8

GMB Landing Page Authority *Tool: http://ift.tt/29qXBeL

30

21

Links to domain *Tool: http://ift.tt/1rfsq4g

53

2

DA/PA of most authoritative link earned *Tool: http://ift.tt/1rfsq4g

72/32

38/16

Evaluation of website content

*This is a first-pass, visual gut check, just reading through the top-level pages of the website to see how they strike you in terms of quality.

Extremely thin, just adequate to identify restaurant. At least has menu on own site. Of the 2 sites, this one has the most total text, by virtue of a sentence on the homepage and menus in real text.

Extremely thin, almost zero text on homepage, menu link goes to another website.

Evaluation of website design

Outdated

Outdated, mostly images

Evaluation of website UX

Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs

Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs

Mobile-friendly *Tool: http://ift.tt/2s7oXje

Basic mobile design, but Google’s mobile-friendly test tool says both www and non-www cannot be reached because it’s unavailable or blocked by robots txt. They have disallowed scripts, photos, Flash, images, and plugins. This needs to be further investigated and resolved. Mobile site URL is http://ift.tt/2x8ijsP. Both this URL and the other domains are failing Google’s test.

Basic mobile design passes Google’s mobile-friendly test

Evaluation of overall onsite SEO *A first-pass visual look at the page code of top level pages, checking for titles, descriptions, header tags, schema, + the presence of problems like Flash.

Pretty much no optimization

Minimal, indeed, but a little bit of effort made. Some title tags, some schema, some header tags.

HTML NAP on website?

Yes

Yes

Website NAP matches GMB NAP?

No (Northgate One instead of Northgate Drive)

Yes

Total number of wins: Ping’s 7, Yet Wah 9.

Download your own version of my competitive audit spreadsheet by making a copy of the file.

Takeaways from the comparison chart

Yet Wah significantly outranks Ping’s in the organic results, but is being beaten by them in the Local Pack. Looking at the organic factors, we see evidence that, despite the fact that Ping’s has greater DA, greater PA of the GMB landing page, more links, and stronger links, they are not outranking Yet Wah organically. This is something of a surprise that leads us to look at their content and on-page SEO.

While Ping’s has slightly better text content on their website, they have almost done almost zero optimization work, their URLs have canonical issues, and their robots.txt isn’t properly configured. Yet Wah has almost no on-site content, but they have modestly optimized their title tags, implemented H tags and some schema, and their site passes Google’s mobile-friendly test.

So, our theory regarding Yet Wah’s superior organic ranking is that, in this particular case, Yet Wah’s moderate efforts with on-page SEO have managed to beat out Ping’s superior DA/PA/link metrics. Yet Wah’s website is also a couple of years older than Ping’s.

All that being said, Yet Wah’s organic win is failing to translate into a local win for them. How can we explain Ping’s local win? Ping’s has a slightly higher overall review rating, higher DA and GMB landing page PA, more total links, and higher authority links. They also have slightly more text content on their website, even if it’s not optimized.

So, our theory regarding Ping’s superior local rank is that, in this particular case, website authority/links appear to be winning the day for Ping’s. And the basic website text they have could possibly be contributing, despite lack of optimization.

In sum, basic on-page SEO appears to be contributing to Yet Wah’s organic win, while DA/PA/links appear to be contributing to Ping’s local win.

Things that bother me

I chose this competitive scenario at random, because when I took an initial look at the local and organic rankings, they bothered me a little. I would have expected Yet Wah to be first in the local pack if they were first in organic. I see local and organic rankings correlate strongly so much of the time, that this case seemed odd to me.

By the end of the audit, I’ve come up with a working theory, but I’m not 100% satisfied with it. It makes me ask questions like:

Is Ping’s better local rank stemming from some hidden factor no one knows about?

In this particular case, why is Google appearing to value Ping’s links more that Yet Wah’s on-page SEO in determining local rank? Would I see this same trend across the board if I analyzed 1,000 restaurants? The industry says links are huge in local SEO right now. I guess we’re seeing proof of that here.

Why isn’t Google weighting Yet Wah’s superior citation set more than they apparently are? Ping’s citations are in bad shape. I’ve seen citation health play a much greater apparent role in other audits, but something feels weird here.

Why isn’t Google “punishing” Yet Wah in the organic results for that second website with duplicate NAP on it? That seems like it should matter.

Why isn’t age factoring in more here? My inspection shows that Yet Wah’s domain and GMB listing are significantly older. This could be moving the organic needle for them, but it’s not moving the local one.

Could user behavior be making Ping’s the local winner? This is a huge open question at the end of my basic audit.* See below.

*I don’t have access to either restaurant’s Google Analytics, GMB Insights, or Google Search Console accounts, so perhaps that would turn up penalties, traffic patterns, or things like superior clicks-to-call, clicks-for-directions, or clicks-to-website that would make Ping’s local win easier to explain. If one of these restaurants were your client, you’d want to add chart rows for these things based on full access to the brand’s accounts and tools, and whatever data your tools can access about the competitor. For example, using a tool like SimilarWeb, I see that between May and June of this year, YetWah’s traffic rose from an average 150 monthly visits up to a peak of 500, while Ping’s saw a drop from 700 to 350 visits in that same period. Also, in a scenario in which one or both parties have a large or complex link profile, you might want additional rows for link metrics, taken from tools like Moz Pro, Ahrefs, or Majestic.

In this case, Ping’s has 7 total wins in my chart and Yet Wah has 9. The best I can do is look at which factors each business is winning at to try to identify a pattern of what Google is weighting most, both organically and locally. With both restaurants being so basic in their marketing, and with neither one absolutely running away with the game, what we have here is a close race. While I’d love to be able to declare a totally obvious winner, the best I could do as a consultant, in this case, would be to draw up a plan of defense or offense.

If my client were Ping’s:

Ping’s needs to defend its #1 local ranking if it doesn’t want to lose it. Its greatest weaknesses which must be resolved are:

The absence of on-page SEO

Thin content

Robots.txt issues

To remain strong, Ping’s should also work on:

Improving citation health

Directing the non-www version of their site to the www one

A professional site redesign could possibly improve conversions

Ping’s should accomplish these things to defend its current local rank and to try to move up organically.

If my client were Yet Wah:

Yet Wah needs to try to achieve victory over Ping’s in the local packs, as it has done in the organic results. To do that, Yet Wah should:

Earn links to the GMB landing page URL and the domain

Create strong text content on its high-level pages, including putting a complete dining menu in real text on the website

Deal with the second website featuring duplicate NAP

Yet Wah should also:

Complete work on its citation health

Work hard to get some new 5-star reviews by delighting customers with something special

Consider adding the word “Restaurant” to their signage, so that they can’t be reported for spamming the GMB name field.

Consider a professional redesign of the website to improve conversions

Yet Wah should accomplish these things in an effort to surpass Ping’s.

And, with either client being mine, I’d then be taking a second pass to further investigate anything problematic that came up in the initial audit, so that I could make further technical or creative suggestions.

Big geo-industry picture analysis

Given that no competitor for this particular search term has been able to beat out Ping’s or Yet Wah in the local pack, and given the minimal efforts these two brands have thus far made, there’s a tremendous chance for any Chinese restaurant in San Rafael to become the dominant player. Any competitor that dedicates itself to running on all cylinders (professional, optimized website with great content, a healthy link profile, a competitive number of high-star reviews, healthy citations, etc.) could definitely surpass all other contestants. This is not a tough market and there are no players who can’t be bested.

My sample case has been, as I’ve said, a close race. You may be facing an audit where there are deeply entrenched dominant players whose statistics far surpass those of a business you’re hoping to assist. But the basic process is the same:

Look at the top-ranking business.

Fill out the chart (adding any other fields you feel are important).

Then discover the strengths of the dominant company, as well as its potential weaknesses.

Contrast these findings with those you’ve charted for the company you’re helping and you’ll be able to form a plan for improvement.

And don’t forget the user proximity factor. Any company’s most adjacent customers will see pack results that vary either slightly or significantly from what a user sees from 20, 50, or 1,000 miles away. In my specific study, it happened to be the third result in the pack that went haywire once a user got 50 miles away, while the top two remained dominant and statically ranked for searchers as far away as the East Coast.

Because of this phenomenon of distance, it’s vital for business owners to be educated about the fact that they are serving two user groups: one that is located in the neighborhood or city of the business, and another that could be anywhere in the country or the world. This doesn’t just matter for destinations like hotels or public amusements. In California (a big state), Internet users on a road trip from Palm Springs may be looking to end their 500-mile drive at a Chinese restaurant in San Rafael, so you can’t just think hyper-locally; you’ve got to see the bigger local picture. And you’ve got to do the analysis to find ways of winning as often as you can with both consumer groups.

You take it from here, auditor!

My local competitive audit chart is a basic one, looking at 30+ factors. What would you add? How would you improve it? Did I miss a GMB duplicate listing, or review spam? What’s working best for your agency in doing local audits these days? Do you use a chart, or just provide a high-level text summary of your internal findings? And, if you have any further theories as to how Ping’s is winning the local pack, I’d love for you to share them in the comments.

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!

http://ift.tt/2xn9dYi

[christinesumpmg1]

How to Perform a Basic Local Business Competitive Audit

Posted by MiriamEllis

“Why are those folks outranking me in Google’s local pack?”

If you or a client is asking this question, the answer lies in competitive analysis. You’ve got to stack Business A up against Business B to identify the strengths and weaknesses of both competitors, and then make an educated guess as to which factors Google is weighting most in the results for a specific search term.

Today, I’d like to share a real-world example of a random competitive audit, including a chart that depicts which factors I’ve investigated and explanatory tips and tools for how I came up with the numbers and facts. Also included: a downloadable version of the spreadsheet that you can use for your own company or clients. Your goal with this audit is to identify exactly how one player is winning the game so that you can create a to-do list for any company trying to move up in the rankings. Alternatively, some competitive audits can be defensive, identifying a dominant player’s weaknesses so that they can be corrected to ensure continued high rankings.

It’s my hope that seeing this audit in action will help you better answer the question of why “this person is outranking that person,” and that you may share with our community some analytical tips of your own!

The scenario:

Search term: Chinese Restaurant San Rafael

Statistics about San Rafael: A large town of approximately 22 square miles in the San Francisco Bay Area with a population of 58,954 and 15+ Chinese restaurants.

Consistency of results: From 20 miles away to 2000+ miles away, Ping’s Chinese Cuisine outranks Yet Wah Restaurant in Google’s local pack for the search term. We don’t look closer than 20 miles, or proximity of the searcher creates too much diversity.

The challenge: Why is Ping’s Chinese Cuisine outranking Yet Wah Restaurant in Google’s Local Pack for the search term?

The comparison chart

*Where there’s a clear winner, it’s noted in bolded, italicized text.

Basic business information

NAP

Ping’s Chinese Cuisine 248 Northgate Dr. San Rafael, CA 94903 (415) 492-8808

Yet Wah Restaurant 1238 4th St. San Rafael, CA 94901 (415) 460-9883

GMB landing page URL

http://ift.tt/2vUoOkb

http://ift.tt/1dQH9Lw

Local Pack rank

1

2

Organic rank

17

5

Organic rank among business-owned sites *Remove directories and review platforms from the equation, as they typically shouldn’t be viewed as direct competitors

8

1

Business model eligible for GMB listing at this address? *Check Google’s Guidelines if unsure: http://ift.tt/1Ag5qvp...

Yes

Yes

Oddities

Note that Ping’s has redirected pingschinesecuisine.com to pingsnorthgate.com. Ping’s also has a www and non-www version of pingsnorthgate.com.

A 2nd website for same business at same location with same phone number: http://ift.tt/2vUi4D5. This website is ranking directly below the authoritative (GMB-linked) website for this business in organic SERP for the search in question.

Business listings

GMB review count

32

38

GMB review rating

4.1

3.8

Most recent GMB review *Sort GMB reviews by "most recent" filter

1 week ago

1 month ago

Proper GMB categories?

Yes

Yes

Estimated age of GMB listing *Estimated by date of oldest reviews and photos, but can only be seen as an estimate

At least 2 years old

At least 6 years old

Moz Local score (completeness + accuracy + lack of duplicates) *Tool: http://ift.tt/1jVt1Fe

49%

75%

Moz Local duplicate findings *Tool: http://ift.tt/1jVt1Fe

0

1 (Facebook)

Keywords in GMB name

chinese

restaurant

Keywords in GMB website landing page title tag

Nothing at all. Just “home page”

Yes

Spam in GMB title *Look at GMB photos, Google Streetview, and the website to check for inconsistencies

No

Yes: “restaurant” not in website logo or street level signage

Hours and photos on GMB?

Yes

Yes

Proximity to city centroid *Look up city by name in Google Maps and see where it places the name of the city on the map. That’s the city “centroid.” Get driving directions from the business to an address located in the centroid.

3.5 miles

410.1 feet

Proximity to nearest competitor *Zoom in on Google map to surface as many adjacent competitors as possible. Can be a Possum factor in some cases.

1.1 mile

0.2 miles

Within Google Maps boundaries? *Look up city by name in Google Maps and note the pink border via which Google designates that city’s boundaries

Yes

Yes

Website

Age of domain *Tool: http://ift.tt/1eS2KGO

March 2013

August 2011

Domain Authority *Tool: http://ift.tt/29qXBeL

16

8

GMB Landing Page Authority *Tool: http://ift.tt/29qXBeL

30

21

Links to domain *Tool: http://ift.tt/1rfsq4g

53

2

DA/PA of most authoritative link earned *Tool: http://ift.tt/1rfsq4g

72/32

38/16

Evaluation of website content

*This is a first-pass, visual gut check, just reading through the top-level pages of the website to see how they strike you in terms of quality.

Extremely thin, just adequate to identify restaurant. At least has menu on own site. Of the 2 sites, this one has the most total text, by virtue of a sentence on the homepage and menus in real text.

Extremely thin, almost zero text on homepage, menu link goes to another website.

Evaluation of website design

Outdated

Outdated, mostly images

Evaluation of website UX

Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs

Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs

Mobile-friendly *Tool: http://ift.tt/2s7oXje

Basic mobile design, but Google’s mobile-friendly test tool says both www and non-www cannot be reached because it’s unavailable or blocked by robots txt. They have disallowed scripts, photos, Flash, images, and plugins. This needs to be further investigated and resolved. Mobile site URL is http://ift.tt/2x8ijsP. Both this URL and the other domains are failing Google’s test.

Basic mobile design passes Google’s mobile-friendly test

Evaluation of overall onsite SEO *A first-pass visual look at the page code of top level pages, checking for titles, descriptions, header tags, schema, + the presence of problems like Flash.

Pretty much no optimization

Minimal, indeed, but a little bit of effort made. Some title tags, some schema, some header tags.

HTML NAP on website?

Yes

Yes

Website NAP matches GMB NAP?

No (Northgate One instead of Northgate Drive)

Yes

Total number of wins: Ping’s 7, Yet Wah 9.

Download your own version of my competitive audit spreadsheet by making a copy of the file.

Takeaways from the comparison chart

Yet Wah significantly outranks Ping’s in the organic results, but is being beaten by them in the Local Pack. Looking at the organic factors, we see evidence that, despite the fact that Ping’s has greater DA, greater PA of the GMB landing page, more links, and stronger links, they are not outranking Yet Wah organically. This is something of a surprise that leads us to look at their content and on-page SEO.

While Ping’s has slightly better text content on their website, they have almost done almost zero optimization work, their URLs have canonical issues, and their robots.txt isn’t properly configured. Yet Wah has almost no on-site content, but they have modestly optimized their title tags, implemented H tags and some schema, and their site passes Google’s mobile-friendly test.

So, our theory regarding Yet Wah’s superior organic ranking is that, in this particular case, Yet Wah’s moderate efforts with on-page SEO have managed to beat out Ping’s superior DA/PA/link metrics. Yet Wah’s website is also a couple of years older than Ping’s.

All that being said, Yet Wah’s organic win is failing to translate into a local win for them. How can we explain Ping’s local win? Ping’s has a slightly higher overall review rating, higher DA and GMB landing page PA, more total links, and higher authority links. They also have slightly more text content on their website, even if it’s not optimized.

So, our theory regarding Ping’s superior local rank is that, in this particular case, website authority/links appear to be winning the day for Ping’s. And the basic website text they have could possibly be contributing, despite lack of optimization.

In sum, basic on-page SEO appears to be contributing to Yet Wah’s organic win, while DA/PA/links appear to be contributing to Ping’s local win.

Things that bother me

I chose this competitive scenario at random, because when I took an initial look at the local and organic rankings, they bothered me a little. I would have expected Yet Wah to be first in the local pack if they were first in organic. I see local and organic rankings correlate strongly so much of the time, that this case seemed odd to me.

By the end of the audit, I’ve come up with a working theory, but I’m not 100% satisfied with it. It makes me ask questions like:

Is Ping’s better local rank stemming from some hidden factor no one knows about?

In this particular case, why is Google appearing to value Ping’s links more that Yet Wah’s on-page SEO in determining local rank? Would I see this same trend across the board if I analyzed 1,000 restaurants? The industry says links are huge in local SEO right now. I guess we’re seeing proof of that here.

Why isn’t Google weighting Yet Wah’s superior citation set more than they apparently are? Ping’s citations are in bad shape. I’ve seen citation health play a much greater apparent role in other audits, but something feels weird here.

Why isn’t Google “punishing” Yet Wah in the organic results for that second website with duplicate NAP on it? That seems like it should matter.

Why isn’t age factoring in more here? My inspection shows that Yet Wah’s domain and GMB listing are significantly older. This could be moving the organic needle for them, but it’s not moving the local one.

Could user behavior be making Ping’s the local winner? This is a huge open question at the end of my basic audit.* See below.

*I don’t have access to either restaurant’s Google Analytics, GMB Insights, or Google Search Console accounts, so perhaps that would turn up penalties, traffic patterns, or things like superior clicks-to-call, clicks-for-directions, or clicks-to-website that would make Ping’s local win easier to explain. If one of these restaurants were your client, you’d want to add chart rows for these things based on full access to the brand’s accounts and tools, and whatever data your tools can access about the competitor. For example, using a tool like SimilarWeb, I see that between May and June of this year, YetWah’s traffic rose from an average 150 monthly visits up to a peak of 500, while Ping’s saw a drop from 700 to 350 visits in that same period. Also, in a scenario in which one or both parties have a large or complex link profile, you might want additional rows for link metrics, taken from tools like Moz Pro, Ahrefs, or Majestic.

In this case, Ping’s has 7 total wins in my chart and Yet Wah has 9. The best I can do is look at which factors each business is winning at to try to identify a pattern of what Google is weighting most, both organically and locally. With both restaurants being so basic in their marketing, and with neither one absolutely running away with the game, what we have here is a close race. While I’d love to be able to declare a totally obvious winner, the best I could do as a consultant, in this case, would be to draw up a plan of defense or offense.

If my client were Ping’s:

Ping’s needs to defend its #1 local ranking if it doesn’t want to lose it. Its greatest weaknesses which must be resolved are:

The absence of on-page SEO

Thin content

Robots.txt issues

To remain strong, Ping’s should also work on:

Improving citation health

Directing the non-www version of their site to the www one

A professional site redesign could possibly improve conversions

Ping’s should accomplish these things to defend its current local rank and to try to move up organically.

If my client were Yet Wah:

Yet Wah needs to try to achieve victory over Ping’s in the local packs, as it has done in the organic results. To do that, Yet Wah should:

Earn links to the GMB landing page URL and the domain

Create strong text content on its high-level pages, including putting a complete dining menu in real text on the website

Deal with the second website featuring duplicate NAP

Yet Wah should also:

Complete work on its citation health

Work hard to get some new 5-star reviews by delighting customers with something special

Consider adding the word “Restaurant” to their signage, so that they can’t be reported for spamming the GMB name field.

Consider a professional redesign of the website to improve conversions

Yet Wah should accomplish these things in an effort to surpass Ping’s.

And, with either client being mine, I’d then be taking a second pass to further investigate anything problematic that came up in the initial audit, so that I could make further technical or creative suggestions.

Big geo-industry picture analysis

Given that no competitor for this particular search term has been able to beat out Ping’s or Yet Wah in the local pack, and given the minimal efforts these two brands have thus far made, there’s a tremendous chance for any Chinese restaurant in San Rafael to become the dominant player. Any competitor that dedicates itself to running on all cylinders (professional, optimized website with great content, a healthy link profile, a competitive number of high-star reviews, healthy citations, etc.) could definitely surpass all other contestants. This is not a tough market and there are no players who can’t be bested.

My sample case has been, as I’ve said, a close race. You may be facing an audit where there are deeply entrenched dominant players whose statistics far surpass those of a business you’re hoping to assist. But the basic process is the same:

Look at the top-ranking business.

Fill out the chart (adding any other fields you feel are important).

Then discover the strengths of the dominant company, as well as its potential weaknesses.

Contrast these findings with those you’ve charted for the company you’re helping and you’ll be able to form a plan for improvement.

And don’t forget the user proximity factor. Any company’s most adjacent customers will see pack results that vary either slightly or significantly from what a user sees from 20, 50, or 1,000 miles away. In my specific study, it happened to be the third result in the pack that went haywire once a user got 50 miles away, while the top two remained dominant and statically ranked for searchers as far away as the East Coast.

Because of this phenomenon of distance, it’s vital for business owners to be educated about the fact that they are serving two user groups: one that is located in the neighborhood or city of the business, and another that could be anywhere in the country or the world. This doesn’t just matter for destinations like hotels or public amusements. In California (a big state), Internet users on a road trip from Palm Springs may be looking to end their 500-mile drive at a Chinese restaurant in San Rafael, so you can’t just think hyper-locally; you’ve got to see the bigger local picture. And you’ve got to do the analysis to find ways of winning as often as you can with both consumer groups.

You take it from here, auditor!

My local competitive audit chart is a basic one, looking at 30+ factors. What would you add? How would you improve it? Did I miss a GMB duplicate listing, or review spam? What’s working best for your agency in doing local audits these days? Do you use a chart, or just provide a high-level text summary of your internal findings? And, if you have any further theories as to how Ping’s is winning the local pack, I’d love for you to share them in the comments.

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!

http://ift.tt/2xn9dYi

[maryhare96]

How to Perform a Basic Local Business Competitive Audit

Posted by MiriamEllis

“Why are those folks outranking me in Google’s local pack?”

If you or a client is asking this question, the answer lies in competitive analysis. You’ve got to stack Business A up against Business B to identify the strengths and weaknesses of both competitors, and then make an educated guess as to which factors Google is weighting most in the results for a specific search term.

Today, I’d like to share a real-world example of a random competitive audit, including a chart that depicts which factors I’ve investigated and explanatory tips and tools for how I came up with the numbers and facts. Also included: a downloadable version of the spreadsheet that you can use for your own company or clients. Your goal with this audit is to identify exactly how one player is winning the game so that you can create a to-do list for any company trying to move up in the rankings. Alternatively, some competitive audits can be defensive, identifying a dominant player’s weaknesses so that they can be corrected to ensure continued high rankings.

It’s my hope that seeing this audit in action will help you better answer the question of why “this person is outranking that person,” and that you may share with our community some analytical tips of your own!

The scenario:

Search term: Chinese Restaurant San Rafael

Statistics about San Rafael: A large town of approximately 22 square miles in the San Francisco Bay Area with a population of 58,954 and 15+ Chinese restaurants.

Consistency of results: From 20 miles away to 2000+ miles away, Ping’s Chinese Cuisine outranks Yet Wah Restaurant in Google’s local pack for the search term. We don’t look closer than 20 miles, or proximity of the searcher creates too much diversity.

The challenge: Why is Ping’s Chinese Cuisine outranking Yet Wah Restaurant in Google’s Local Pack for the search term?

The comparison chart

*Where there’s a clear winner, it’s noted in bolded, italicized text.

Basic business information

NAP

Ping’s Chinese Cuisine 248 Northgate Dr. San Rafael, CA 94903 (415) 492-8808

Yet Wah Restaurant 1238 4th St. San Rafael, CA 94901 (415) 460-9883

GMB landing page URL

http://ift.tt/2vUoOkb

http://ift.tt/1dQH9Lw

Local Pack rank

1

2

Organic rank

17

5

Organic rank among business-owned sites *Remove directories and review platforms from the equation, as they typically shouldn’t be viewed as direct competitors

8

1

Business model eligible for GMB listing at this address? *Check Google’s Guidelines if unsure: http://ift.tt/1Ag5qvp...

Yes

Yes

Oddities

Note that Ping’s has redirected pingschinesecuisine.com to pingsnorthgate.com. Ping’s also has a www and non-www version of pingsnorthgate.com.

A 2nd website for same business at same location with same phone number: http://ift.tt/2vUi4D5. This website is ranking directly below the authoritative (GMB-linked) website for this business in organic SERP for the search in question.

Business listings

GMB review count

32

38

GMB review rating

4.1

3.8

Most recent GMB review *Sort GMB reviews by "most recent" filter

1 week ago

1 month ago

Proper GMB categories?

Yes

Yes

Estimated age of GMB listing *Estimated by date of oldest reviews and photos, but can only be seen as an estimate

At least 2 years old

At least 6 years old

Moz Local score (completeness + accuracy + lack of duplicates) *Tool: http://ift.tt/1jVt1Fe

49%

75%

Moz Local duplicate findings *Tool: http://ift.tt/1jVt1Fe

0

1 (Facebook)

Keywords in GMB name

chinese

restaurant

Keywords in GMB website landing page title tag

Nothing at all. Just “home page”

Yes

Spam in GMB title *Look at GMB photos, Google Streetview, and the website to check for inconsistencies

No

Yes: “restaurant” not in website logo or street level signage

Hours and photos on GMB?

Yes

Yes

Proximity to city centroid *Look up city by name in Google Maps and see where it places the name of the city on the map. That’s the city “centroid.” Get driving directions from the business to an address located in the centroid.

3.5 miles

410.1 feet

Proximity to nearest competitor *Zoom in on Google map to surface as many adjacent competitors as possible. Can be a Possum factor in some cases.

1.1 mile

0.2 miles

Within Google Maps boundaries? *Look up city by name in Google Maps and note the pink border via which Google designates that city’s boundaries

Yes

Yes

Website

Age of domain *Tool: http://ift.tt/1eS2KGO

March 2013

August 2011

Domain Authority *Tool: http://ift.tt/29qXBeL

16

8

GMB Landing Page Authority *Tool: http://ift.tt/29qXBeL

30

21

Links to domain *Tool: http://ift.tt/1rfsq4g

53

2

DA/PA of most authoritative link earned *Tool: http://ift.tt/1rfsq4g

72/32

38/16

Evaluation of website content

*This is a first-pass, visual gut check, just reading through the top-level pages of the website to see how they strike you in terms of quality.

Extremely thin, just adequate to identify restaurant. At least has menu on own site. Of the 2 sites, this one has the most total text, by virtue of a sentence on the homepage and menus in real text.

Extremely thin, almost zero text on homepage, menu link goes to another website.

Evaluation of website design

Outdated

Outdated, mostly images

Evaluation of website UX

Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs

Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs

Mobile-friendly *Tool: http://ift.tt/2s7oXje

Basic mobile design, but Google’s mobile-friendly test tool says both www and non-www cannot be reached because it’s unavailable or blocked by robots txt. They have disallowed scripts, photos, Flash, images, and plugins. This needs to be further investigated and resolved. Mobile site URL is http://ift.tt/2x8ijsP. Both this URL and the other domains are failing Google’s test.

Basic mobile design passes Google’s mobile-friendly test

Evaluation of overall onsite SEO *A first-pass visual look at the page code of top level pages, checking for titles, descriptions, header tags, schema, + the presence of problems like Flash.

Pretty much no optimization

Minimal, indeed, but a little bit of effort made. Some title tags, some schema, some header tags.

HTML NAP on website?

Yes

Yes

Website NAP matches GMB NAP?

No (Northgate One instead of Northgate Drive)

Yes

Total number of wins: Ping’s 7, Yet Wah 9.

Download your own version of my competitive audit spreadsheet by making a copy of the file.

Takeaways from the comparison chart

Yet Wah significantly outranks Ping’s in the organic results, but is being beaten by them in the Local Pack. Looking at the organic factors, we see evidence that, despite the fact that Ping’s has greater DA, greater PA of the GMB landing page, more links, and stronger links, they are not outranking Yet Wah organically. This is something of a surprise that leads us to look at their content and on-page SEO.

While Ping’s has slightly better text content on their website, they have almost done almost zero optimization work, their URLs have canonical issues, and their robots.txt isn’t properly configured. Yet Wah has almost no on-site content, but they have modestly optimized their title tags, implemented H tags and some schema, and their site passes Google’s mobile-friendly test.

So, our theory regarding Yet Wah’s superior organic ranking is that, in this particular case, Yet Wah’s moderate efforts with on-page SEO have managed to beat out Ping’s superior DA/PA/link metrics. Yet Wah’s website is also a couple of years older than Ping’s.

All that being said, Yet Wah’s organic win is failing to translate into a local win for them. How can we explain Ping’s local win? Ping’s has a slightly higher overall review rating, higher DA and GMB landing page PA, more total links, and higher authority links. They also have slightly more text content on their website, even if it’s not optimized.

So, our theory regarding Ping’s superior local rank is that, in this particular case, website authority/links appear to be winning the day for Ping’s. And the basic website text they have could possibly be contributing, despite lack of optimization.

In sum, basic on-page SEO appears to be contributing to Yet Wah’s organic win, while DA/PA/links appear to be contributing to Ping’s local win.

Things that bother me

I chose this competitive scenario at random, because when I took an initial look at the local and organic rankings, they bothered me a little. I would have expected Yet Wah to be first in the local pack if they were first in organic. I see local and organic rankings correlate strongly so much of the time, that this case seemed odd to me.

By the end of the audit, I’ve come up with a working theory, but I’m not 100% satisfied with it. It makes me ask questions like:

Is Ping’s better local rank stemming from some hidden factor no one knows about?

In this particular case, why is Google appearing to value Ping’s links more that Yet Wah’s on-page SEO in determining local rank? Would I see this same trend across the board if I analyzed 1,000 restaurants? The industry says links are huge in local SEO right now. I guess we��re seeing proof of that here.

Why isn’t Google weighting Yet Wah’s superior citation set more than they apparently are? Ping’s citations are in bad shape. I’ve seen citation health play a much greater apparent role in other audits, but something feels weird here.

Why isn’t Google “punishing” Yet Wah in the organic results for that second website with duplicate NAP on it? That seems like it should matter.

Why isn’t age factoring in more here? My inspection shows that Yet Wah’s domain and GMB listing are significantly older. This could be moving the organic needle for them, but it’s not moving the local one.

Could user behavior be making Ping’s the local winner? This is a huge open question at the end of my basic audit.* See below.

*I don’t have access to either restaurant’s Google Analytics, GMB Insights, or Google Search Console accounts, so perhaps that would turn up penalties, traffic patterns, or things like superior clicks-to-call, clicks-for-directions, or clicks-to-website that would make Ping’s local win easier to explain. If one of these restaurants were your client, you’d want to add chart rows for these things based on full access to the brand’s accounts and tools, and whatever data your tools can access about the competitor. For example, using a tool like SimilarWeb, I see that between May and June of this year, YetWah’s traffic rose from an average 150 monthly visits up to a peak of 500, while Ping’s saw a drop from 700 to 350 visits in that same period. Also, in a scenario in which one or both parties have a large or complex link profile, you might want additional rows for link metrics, taken from tools like Moz Pro, Ahrefs, or Majestic.

In this case, Ping’s has 7 total wins in my chart and Yet Wah has 9. The best I can do is look at which factors each business is winning at to try to identify a pattern of what Google is weighting most, both organically and locally. With both restaurants being so basic in their marketing, and with neither one absolutely running away with the game, what we have here is a close race. While I’d love to be able to declare a totally obvious winner, the best I could do as a consultant, in this case, would be to draw up a plan of defense or offense.

If my client were Ping’s:

Ping’s needs to defend its #1 local ranking if it doesn’t want to lose it. Its greatest weaknesses which must be resolved are:

The absence of on-page SEO

Thin content

Robots.txt issues

To remain strong, Ping’s should also work on:

Improving citation health

Directing the non-www version of their site to the www one

A professional site redesign could possibly improve conversions

Ping’s should accomplish these things to defend its current local rank and to try to move up organically.

If my client were Yet Wah:

Yet Wah needs to try to achieve victory over Ping’s in the local packs, as it has done in the organic results. To do that, Yet Wah should:

Earn links to the GMB landing page URL and the domain

Create strong text content on its high-level pages, including putting a complete dining menu in real text on the website

Deal with the second website featuring duplicate NAP

Yet Wah should also:

Complete work on its citation health

Work hard to get some new 5-star reviews by delighting customers with something special

Consider adding the word “Restaurant” to their signage, so that they can’t be reported for spamming the GMB name field.

Consider a professional redesign of the website to improve conversions

Yet Wah should accomplish these things in an effort to surpass Ping’s.

And, with either client being mine, I’d then be taking a second pass to further investigate anything problematic that came up in the initial audit, so that I could make further technical or creative suggestions.

Big geo-industry picture analysis

Given that no competitor for this particular search term has been able to beat out Ping’s or Yet Wah in the local pack, and given the minimal efforts these two brands have thus far made, there’s a tremendous chance for any Chinese restaurant in San Rafael to become the dominant player. Any competitor that dedicates itself to running on all cylinders (professional, optimized website with great content, a healthy link profile, a competitive number of high-star reviews, healthy citations, etc.) could definitely surpass all other contestants. This is not a tough market and there are no players who can’t be bested.

My sample case has been, as I’ve said, a close race. You may be facing an audit where there are deeply entrenched dominant players whose statistics far surpass those of a business you’re hoping to assist. But the basic process is the same:

Look at the top-ranking business.

Fill out the chart (adding any other fields you feel are important).

Then discover the strengths of the dominant company, as well as its potential weaknesses.

Contrast these findings with those you’ve charted for the company you’re helping and you’ll be able to form a plan for improvement.

And don’t forget the user proximity factor. Any company’s most adjacent customers will see pack results that vary either slightly or significantly from what a user sees from 20, 50, or 1,000 miles away. In my specific study, it happened to be the third result in the pack that went haywire once a user got 50 miles away, while the top two remained dominant and statically ranked for searchers as far away as the East Coast.

Because of this phenomenon of distance, it’s vital for business owners to be educated about the fact that they are serving two user groups: one that is located in the neighborhood or city of the business, and another that could be anywhere in the country or the world. This doesn’t just matter for destinations like hotels or public amusements. In California (a big state), Internet users on a road trip from Palm Springs may be looking to end their 500-mile drive at a Chinese restaurant in San Rafael, so you can’t just think hyper-locally; you’ve got to see the bigger local picture. And you’ve got to do the analysis to find ways of winning as often as you can with both consumer groups.

You take it from here, auditor!

My local competitive audit chart is a basic one, looking at 30+ factors. What would you add? How would you improve it? Did I miss a GMB duplicate listing, or review spam? What’s working best for your agency in doing local audits these days? Do you use a chart, or just provide a high-level text summary of your internal findings? And, if you have any further theories as to how Ping’s is winning the local pack, I’d love for you to share them in the comments.

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!

http://ift.tt/2xn9dYi

[fairchildlingpo1]

How to Perform a Basic Local Business Competitive Audit

Posted by MiriamEllis

“Why are those folks outranking me in Google’s local pack?”

If you or a client is asking this question, the answer lies in competitive analysis. You’ve got to stack Business A up against Business B to identify the strengths and weaknesses of both competitors, and then make an educated guess as to which factors Google is weighting most in the results for a specific search term.

Today, I’d like to share a real-world example of a random competitive audit, including a chart that depicts which factors I’ve investigated and explanatory tips and tools for how I came up with the numbers and facts. Also included: a downloadable version of the spreadsheet that you can use for your own company or clients. Your goal with this audit is to identify exactly how one player is winning the game so that you can create a to-do list for any company trying to move up in the rankings. Alternatively, some competitive audits can be defensive, identifying a dominant player’s weaknesses so that they can be corrected to ensure continued high rankings.

It’s my hope that seeing this audit in action will help you better answer the question of why “this person is outranking that person,” and that you may share with our community some analytical tips of your own!

The scenario:

Search term: Chinese Restaurant San Rafael

Statistics about San Rafael: A large town of approximately 22 square miles in the San Francisco Bay Area with a population of 58,954 and 15+ Chinese restaurants.

Consistency of results: From 20 miles away to 2000+ miles away, Ping’s Chinese Cuisine outranks Yet Wah Restaurant in Google’s local pack for the search term. We don’t look closer than 20 miles, or proximity of the searcher creates too much diversity.

The challenge: Why is Ping’s Chinese Cuisine outranking Yet Wah Restaurant in Google’s Local Pack for the search term?

The comparison chart

*Where there’s a clear winner, it’s noted in bolded, italicized text.

Basic business information

NAP

Ping’s Chinese Cuisine 248 Northgate Dr. San Rafael, CA 94903 (415) 492-8808

Yet Wah Restaurant 1238 4th St. San Rafael, CA 94901 (415) 460-9883

GMB landing page URL

http://ift.tt/2vUoOkb

http://ift.tt/1dQH9Lw

Local Pack rank

1

2

Organic rank

17

5

Organic rank among business-owned sites *Remove directories and review platforms from the equation, as they typically shouldn’t be viewed as direct competitors

8

1

Business model eligible for GMB listing at this address? *Check Google’s Guidelines if unsure: http://ift.tt/1Ag5qvp...

Yes

Yes

Oddities

Note that Ping’s has redirected pingschinesecuisine.com to pingsnorthgate.com. Ping’s also has a www and non-www version of pingsnorthgate.com.

A 2nd website for same business at same location with same phone number: http://ift.tt/2vUi4D5. This website is ranking directly below the authoritative (GMB-linked) website for this business in organic SERP for the search in question.

Business listings

GMB review count

32

38

GMB review rating

4.1

3.8

Most recent GMB review *Sort GMB reviews by "most recent" filter

1 week ago

1 month ago

Proper GMB categories?

Yes

Yes

Estimated age of GMB listing *Estimated by date of oldest reviews and photos, but can only be seen as an estimate

At least 2 years old

At least 6 years old

Moz Local score (completeness + accuracy + lack of duplicates) *Tool: http://ift.tt/1jVt1Fe

49%

75%

Moz Local duplicate findings *Tool: http://ift.tt/1jVt1Fe

0

1 (Facebook)

Keywords in GMB name

chinese

restaurant

Keywords in GMB website landing page title tag

Nothing at all. Just “home page”

Yes

Spam in GMB title *Look at GMB photos, Google Streetview, and the website to check for inconsistencies

No

Yes: “restaurant” not in website logo or street level signage

Hours and photos on GMB?

Yes

Yes

Proximity to city centroid *Look up city by name in Google Maps and see where it places the name of the city on the map. That’s the city “centroid.” Get driving directions from the business to an address located in the centroid.

3.5 miles

410.1 feet

Proximity to nearest competitor *Zoom in on Google map to surface as many adjacent competitors as possible. Can be a Possum factor in some cases.

1.1 mile

0.2 miles

Within Google Maps boundaries? *Look up city by name in Google Maps and note the pink border via which Google designates that city’s boundaries

Yes

Yes

Website

Age of domain *Tool: http://ift.tt/1eS2KGO

March 2013

August 2011

Domain Authority *Tool: http://ift.tt/29qXBeL

16

8

GMB Landing Page Authority *Tool: http://ift.tt/29qXBeL

30

21

Links to domain *Tool: http://ift.tt/1rfsq4g

53

2

DA/PA of most authoritative link earned *Tool: http://ift.tt/1rfsq4g

72/32

38/16

Evaluation of website content

*This is a first-pass, visual gut check, just reading through the top-level pages of the website to see how they strike you in terms of quality.

Extremely thin, just adequate to identify restaurant. At least has menu on own site. Of the 2 sites, this one has the most total text, by virtue of a sentence on the homepage and menus in real text.

Extremely thin, almost zero text on homepage, menu link goes to another website.

Evaluation of website design

Outdated

Outdated, mostly images

Evaluation of website UX

Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs

Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs

Mobile-friendly *Tool: http://ift.tt/2s7oXje

Basic mobile design, but Google’s mobile-friendly test tool says both www and non-www cannot be reached because it’s unavailable or blocked by robots txt. They have disallowed scripts, photos, Flash, images, and plugins. This needs to be further investigated and resolved. Mobile site URL is http://ift.tt/2x8ijsP. Both this URL and the other domains are failing Google’s test.

Basic mobile design passes Google’s mobile-friendly test

Evaluation of overall onsite SEO *A first-pass visual look at the page code of top level pages, checking for titles, descriptions, header tags, schema, + the presence of problems like Flash.

Pretty much no optimization

Minimal, indeed, but a little bit of effort made. Some title tags, some schema, some header tags.

HTML NAP on website?

Yes

Yes

Website NAP matches GMB NAP?

No (Northgate One instead of Northgate Drive)

Yes

Total number of wins: Ping’s 7, Yet Wah 9.

Download your own version of my competitive audit spreadsheet by making a copy of the file.

Takeaways from the comparison chart

Yet Wah significantly outranks Ping’s in the organic results, but is being beaten by them in the Local Pack. Looking at the organic factors, we see evidence that, despite the fact that Ping’s has greater DA, greater PA of the GMB landing page, more links, and stronger links, they are not outranking Yet Wah organically. This is something of a surprise that leads us to look at their content and on-page SEO.

While Ping’s has slightly better text content on their website, they have almost done almost zero optimization work, their URLs have canonical issues, and their robots.txt isn’t properly configured. Yet Wah has almost no on-site content, but they have modestly optimized their title tags, implemented H tags and some schema, and their site passes Google’s mobile-friendly test.

So, our theory regarding Yet Wah’s superior organic ranking is that, in this particular case, Yet Wah’s moderate efforts with on-page SEO have managed to beat out Ping’s superior DA/PA/link metrics. Yet Wah’s website is also a couple of years older than Ping’s.

All that being said, Yet Wah’s organic win is failing to translate into a local win for them. How can we explain Ping’s local win? Ping’s has a slightly higher overall review rating, higher DA and GMB landing page PA, more total links, and higher authority links. They also have slightly more text content on their website, even if it’s not optimized.

So, our theory regarding Ping’s superior local rank is that, in this particular case, website authority/links appear to be winning the day for Ping’s. And the basic website text they have could possibly be contributing, despite lack of optimization.

In sum, basic on-page SEO appears to be contributing to Yet Wah’s organic win, while DA/PA/links appear to be contributing to Ping’s local win.

Things that bother me

I chose this competitive scenario at random, because when I took an initial look at the local and organic rankings, they bothered me a little. I would have expected Yet Wah to be first in the local pack if they were first in organic. I see local and organic rankings correlate strongly so much of the time, that this case seemed odd to me.

By the end of the audit, I’ve come up with a working theory, but I’m not 100% satisfied with it. It makes me ask questions like:

Is Ping’s better local rank stemming from some hidden factor no one knows about?

In this particular case, why is Google appearing to value Ping’s links more that Yet Wah’s on-page SEO in determining local rank? Would I see this same trend across the board if I analyzed 1,000 restaurants? The industry says links are huge in local SEO right now. I guess we’re seeing proof of that here.

Why isn’t Google weighting Yet Wah’s superior citation set more than they apparently are? Ping’s citations are in bad shape. I’ve seen citation health play a much greater apparent role in other audits, but something feels weird here.

Why isn’t Google “punishing” Yet Wah in the organic results for that second website with duplicate NAP on it? That seems like it should matter.

Why isn’t age factoring in more here? My inspection shows that Yet Wah’s domain and GMB listing are significantly older. This could be moving the organic needle for them, but it’s not moving the local one.

Could user behavior be making Ping’s the local winner? This is a huge open question at the end of my basic audit.* See below.

*I don’t have access to either restaurant’s Google Analytics, GMB Insights, or Google Search Console accounts, so perhaps that would turn up penalties, traffic patterns, or things like superior clicks-to-call, clicks-for-directions, or clicks-to-website that would make Ping’s local win easier to explain. If one of these restaurants were your client, you’d want to add chart rows for these things based on full access to the brand’s accounts and tools, and whatever data your tools can access about the competitor. For example, using a tool like SimilarWeb, I see that between May and June of this year, YetWah’s traffic rose from an average 150 monthly visits up to a peak of 500, while Ping’s saw a drop from 700 to 350 visits in that same period. Also, in a scenario in which one or both parties have a large or complex link profile, you might want additional rows for link metrics, taken from tools like Moz Pro, Ahrefs, or Majestic.

In this case, Ping’s has 7 total wins in my chart and Yet Wah has 9. The best I can do is look at which factors each business is winning at to try to identify a pattern of what Google is weighting most, both organically and locally. With both restaurants being so basic in their marketing, and with neither one absolutely running away with the game, what we have here is a close race. While I’d love to be able to declare a totally obvious winner, the best I could do as a consultant, in this case, would be to draw up a plan of defense or offense.

If my client were Ping’s:

Ping’s needs to defend its #1 local ranking if it doesn’t want to lose it. Its greatest weaknesses which must be resolved are:

The absence of on-page SEO

Thin content

Robots.txt issues

To remain strong, Ping’s should also work on:

Improving citation health

Directing the non-www version of their site to the www one

A professional site redesign could possibly improve conversions

Ping’s should accomplish these things to defend its current local rank and to try to move up organically.

If my client were Yet Wah:

Yet Wah needs to try to achieve victory over Ping’s in the local packs, as it has done in the organic results. To do that, Yet Wah should:

Earn links to the GMB landing page URL and the domain

Create strong text content on its high-level pages, including putting a complete dining menu in real text on the website

Deal with the second website featuring duplicate NAP

Yet Wah should also:

Complete work on its citation health

Work hard to get some new 5-star reviews by delighting customers with something special

Consider adding the word “Restaurant” to their signage, so that they can’t be reported for spamming the GMB name field.

Consider a professional redesign of the website to improve conversions

Yet Wah should accomplish these things in an effort to surpass Ping’s.

And, with either client being mine, I’d then be taking a second pass to further investigate anything problematic that came up in the initial audit, so that I could make further technical or creative suggestions.

Big geo-industry picture analysis

Given that no competitor for this particular search term has been able to beat out Ping’s or Yet Wah in the local pack, and given the minimal efforts these two brands have thus far made, there’s a tremendous chance for any Chinese restaurant in San Rafael to become the dominant player. Any competitor that dedicates itself to running on all cylinders (professional, optimized website with great content, a healthy link profile, a competitive number of high-star reviews, healthy citations, etc.) could definitely surpass all other contestants. This is not a tough market and there are no players who can’t be bested.

My sample case has been, as I’ve said, a close race. You may be facing an audit where there are deeply entrenched dominant players whose statistics far surpass those of a business you’re hoping to assist. But the basic process is the same:

Look at the top-ranking business.

Fill out the chart (adding any other fields you feel are important).

Then discover the strengths of the dominant company, as well as its potential weaknesses.

Contrast these findings with those you’ve charted for the company you’re helping and you’ll be able to form a plan for improvement.

And don’t forget the user proximity factor. Any company’s most adjacent customers will see pack results that vary either slightly or significantly from what a user sees from 20, 50, or 1,000 miles away. In my specific study, it happened to be the third result in the pack that went haywire once a user got 50 miles away, while the top two remained dominant and statically ranked for searchers as far away as the East Coast.

Because of this phenomenon of distance, it’s vital for business owners to be educated about the fact that they are serving two user groups: one that is located in the neighborhood or city of the business, and another that could be anywhere in the country or the world. This doesn’t just matter for destinations like hotels or public amusements. In California (a big state), Internet users on a road trip from Palm Springs may be looking to end their 500-mile drive at a Chinese restaurant in San Rafael, so you can’t just think hyper-locally; you’ve got to see the bigger local picture. And you’ve got to do the analysis to find ways of winning as often as you can with both consumer groups.

You take it from here, auditor!

My local competitive audit chart is a basic one, looking at 30+ factors. What would you add? How would you improve it? Did I miss a GMB duplicate listing, or review spam? What’s working best for your agency in doing local audits these days? Do you use a chart, or just provide a high-level text summary of your internal findings? And, if you have any further theories as to how Ping’s is winning the local pack, I’d love for you to share them in the comments.

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!

http://ift.tt/2xn9dYi

[dainiaolivahm]

How to Perform a Basic Local Business Competitive Audit

Posted by MiriamEllis

“Why are those folks outranking me in Google’s local pack?”

If you or a client is asking this question, the answer lies in competitive analysis. You’ve got to stack Business A up against Business B to identify the strengths and weaknesses of both competitors, and then make an educated guess as to which factors Google is weighting most in the results for a specific search term.

Today, I’d like to share a real-world example of a random competitive audit, including a chart that depicts which factors I’ve investigated and explanatory tips and tools for how I came up with the numbers and facts. Also included: a downloadable version of the spreadsheet that you can use for your own company or clients. Your goal with this audit is to identify exactly how one player is winning the game so that you can create a to-do list for any company trying to move up in the rankings. Alternatively, some competitive audits can be defensive, identifying a dominant player’s weaknesses so that they can be corrected to ensure continued high rankings.

It’s my hope that seeing this audit in action will help you better answer the question of why “this person is outranking that person,” and that you may share with our community some analytical tips of your own!

The scenario:

Search term: Chinese Restaurant San Rafael

Statistics about San Rafael: A large town of approximately 22 square miles in the San Francisco Bay Area with a population of 58,954 and 15+ Chinese restaurants.

Consistency of results: From 20 miles away to 2000+ miles away, Ping’s Chinese Cuisine outranks Yet Wah Restaurant in Google’s local pack for the search term. We don’t look closer than 20 miles, or proximity of the searcher creates too much diversity.

The challenge: Why is Ping’s Chinese Cuisine outranking Yet Wah Restaurant in Google’s Local Pack for the search term?

The comparison chart

*Where there’s a clear winner, it’s noted in bolded, italicized text.

Basic business information

NAP

Ping’s Chinese Cuisine 248 Northgate Dr. San Rafael, CA 94903 (415) 492-8808

Yet Wah Restaurant 1238 4th St. San Rafael, CA 94901 (415) 460-9883

GMB landing page URL

http://ift.tt/2vUoOkb

http://ift.tt/1dQH9Lw

Local Pack rank

1

2

Organic rank

17

5

Organic rank among business-owned sites *Remove directories and review platforms from the equation, as they typically shouldn’t be viewed as direct competitors

8

1

Business model eligible for GMB listing at this address? *Check Google’s Guidelines if unsure: http://ift.tt/1Ag5qvp...

Yes

Yes

Oddities

Note that Ping’s has redirected pingschinesecuisine.com to pingsnorthgate.com. Ping’s also has a www and non-www version of pingsnorthgate.com.

A 2nd website for same business at same location with same phone number: http://ift.tt/2vUi4D5. This website is ranking directly below the authoritative (GMB-linked) website for this business in organic SERP for the search in question.

Business listings

GMB review count

32

38

GMB review rating

4.1

3.8

Most recent GMB review *Sort GMB reviews by "most recent" filter

1 week ago

1 month ago

Proper GMB categories?

Yes

Yes

Estimated age of GMB listing *Estimated by date of oldest reviews and photos, but can only be seen as an estimate

At least 2 years old

At least 6 years old

Moz Local score (completeness + accuracy + lack of duplicates) *Tool: http://ift.tt/1jVt1Fe

49%

75%

Moz Local duplicate findings *Tool: http://ift.tt/1jVt1Fe

0

1 (Facebook)

Keywords in GMB name

chinese

restaurant

Keywords in GMB website landing page title tag

Nothing at all. Just “home page”

Yes

Spam in GMB title *Look at GMB photos, Google Streetview, and the website to check for inconsistencies

No

Yes: “restaurant” not in website logo or street level signage

Hours and photos on GMB?

Yes

Yes

Proximity to city centroid *Look up city by name in Google Maps and see where it places the name of the city on the map. That’s the city “centroid.” Get driving directions from the business to an address located in the centroid.

3.5 miles

410.1 feet

Proximity to nearest competitor *Zoom in on Google map to surface as many adjacent competitors as possible. Can be a Possum factor in some cases.

1.1 mile

0.2 miles

Within Google Maps boundaries? *Look up city by name in Google Maps and note the pink border via which Google designates that city’s boundaries

Yes

Yes

Website

Age of domain *Tool: http://ift.tt/1eS2KGO

March 2013

August 2011

Domain Authority *Tool: http://ift.tt/29qXBeL

16

8

GMB Landing Page Authority *Tool: http://ift.tt/29qXBeL

30

21

Links to domain *Tool: http://ift.tt/1rfsq4g

53

2

DA/PA of most authoritative link earned *Tool: http://ift.tt/1rfsq4g

72/32

38/16

Evaluation of website content

*This is a first-pass, visual gut check, just reading through the top-level pages of the website to see how they strike you in terms of quality.

Extremely thin, just adequate to identify restaurant. At least has menu on own site. Of the 2 sites, this one has the most total text, by virtue of a sentence on the homepage and menus in real text.

Extremely thin, almost zero text on homepage, menu link goes to another website.

Evaluation of website design

Outdated

Outdated, mostly images

Evaluation of website UX

Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs

Can be navigated, but few directives or CTAs

Mobile-friendly *Tool: http://ift.tt/2s7oXje

Basic mobile design, but Google’s mobile-friendly test tool says both www and non-www cannot be reached because it’s unavailable or blocked by robots txt. They have disallowed scripts, photos, Flash, images, and plugins. This needs to be further investigated and resolved. Mobile site URL is http://ift.tt/2x8ijsP. Both this URL and the other domains are failing Google’s test.

Basic mobile design passes Google’s mobile-friendly test

Evaluation of overall onsite SEO *A first-pass visual look at the page code of top level pages, checking for titles, descriptions, header tags, schema, + the presence of problems like Flash.

Pretty much no optimization

Minimal, indeed, but a little bit of effort made. Some title tags, some schema, some header tags.

HTML NAP on website?

Yes

Yes

Website NAP matches GMB NAP?

No (Northgate One instead of Northgate Drive)

Yes

Total number of wins: Ping’s 7, Yet Wah 9.

Download your own version of my competitive audit spreadsheet by making a copy of the file.

Takeaways from the comparison chart

Yet Wah significantly outranks Ping’s in the organic results, but is being beaten by them in the Local Pack. Looking at the organic factors, we see evidence that, despite the fact that Ping’s has greater DA, greater PA of the GMB landing page, more links, and stronger links, they are not outranking Yet Wah organically. This is something of a surprise that leads us to look at their content and on-page SEO.

While Ping’s has slightly better text content on their website, they have almost done almost zero optimization work, their URLs have canonical issues, and their robots.txt isn’t properly configured. Yet Wah has almost no on-site content, but they have modestly optimized their title tags, implemented H tags and some schema, and their site passes Google’s mobile-friendly test.

So, our theory regarding Yet Wah’s superior organic ranking is that, in this particular case, Yet Wah’s moderate efforts with on-page SEO have managed to beat out Ping’s superior DA/PA/link metrics. Yet Wah’s website is also a couple of years older than Ping’s.

All that being said, Yet Wah’s organic win is failing to translate into a local win for them. How can we explain Ping’s local win? Ping’s has a slightly higher overall review rating, higher DA and GMB landing page PA, more total links, and higher authority links. They also have slightly more text content on their website, even if it’s not optimized.

So, our theory regarding Ping’s superior local rank is that, in this particular case, website authority/links appear to be winning the day for Ping’s. And the basic website text they have could possibly be contributing, despite lack of optimization.

In sum, basic on-page SEO appears to be contributing to Yet Wah’s organic win, while DA/PA/links appear to be contributing to Ping’s local win.

Things that bother me

I chose this competitive scenario at random, because when I took an initial look at the local and organic rankings, they bothered me a little. I would have expected Yet Wah to be first in the local pack if they were first in organic. I see local and organic rankings correlate strongly so much of the time, that this case seemed odd to me.

By the end of the audit, I’ve come up with a working theory, but I’m not 100% satisfied with it. It makes me ask questions like:

Is Ping’s better local rank stemming from some hidden factor no one knows about?

In this particular case, why is Google appearing to value Ping’s links more that Yet Wah’s on-page SEO in determining local rank? Would I see this same trend across the board if I analyzed 1,000 restaurants? The industry says links are huge in local SEO right now. I guess we’re seeing proof of that here.

Why isn’t Google weighting Yet Wah’s superior citation set more than they apparently are? Ping’s citations are in bad shape. I’ve seen citation health play a much greater apparent role in other audits, but something feels weird here.

Why isn’t Google “punishing” Yet Wah in the organic results for that second website with duplicate NAP on it? That seems like it should matter.

Why isn’t age factoring in more here? My inspection shows that Yet Wah’s domain and GMB listing are significantly older. This could be moving the organic needle for them, but it’s not moving the local one.

Could user behavior be making Ping’s the local winner? This is a huge open question at the end of my basic audit.* See below.

*I don’t have access to either restaurant’s Google Analytics, GMB Insights, or Google Search Console accounts, so perhaps that would turn up penalties, traffic patterns, or things like superior clicks-to-call, clicks-for-directions, or clicks-to-website that would make Ping’s local win easier to explain. If one of these restaurants were your client, you’d want to add chart rows for these things based on full access to the brand’s accounts and tools, and whatever data your tools can access about the competitor. For example, using a tool like SimilarWeb, I see that between May and June of this year, YetWah’s traffic rose from an average 150 monthly visits up to a peak of 500, while Ping’s saw a drop from 700 to 350 visits in that same period. Also, in a scenario in which one or both parties have a large or complex link profile, you might want additional rows for link metrics, taken from tools like Moz Pro, Ahrefs, or Majestic.

In this case, Ping’s has 7 total wins in my chart and Yet Wah has 9. The best I can do is look at which factors each business is winning at to try to identify a pattern of what Google is weighting most, both organically and locally. With both restaurants being so basic in their marketing, and with neither one absolutely running away with the game, what we have here is a close race. While I’d love to be able to declare a totally obvious winner, the best I could do as a consultant, in this case, would be to draw up a plan of defense or offense.

If my client were Ping’s:

Ping’s needs to defend its #1 local ranking if it doesn’t want to lose it. Its greatest weaknesses which must be resolved are:

The absence of on-page SEO

Thin content

Robots.txt issues

To remain strong, Ping’s should also work on:

Improving citation health

Directing the non-www version of their site to the www one

A professional site redesign could possibly improve conversions

Ping’s should accomplish these things to defend its current local rank and to try to move up organically.

If my client were Yet Wah:

Yet Wah needs to try to achieve victory over Ping’s in the local packs, as it has done in the organic results. To do that, Yet Wah should:

Earn links to the GMB landing page URL and the domain

Create strong text content on its high-level pages, including putting a complete dining menu in real text on the website

Deal with the second website featuring duplicate NAP

Yet Wah should also:

Complete work on its citation health

Work hard to get some new 5-star reviews by delighting customers with something special

Consider adding the word “Restaurant” to their signage, so that they can’t be reported for spamming the GMB name field.

Consider a professional redesign of the website to improve conversions

Yet Wah should accomplish these things in an effort to surpass Ping’s.

And, with either client being mine, I’d then be taking a second pass to further investigate anything problematic that came up in the initial audit, so that I could make further technical or creative suggestions.

Big geo-industry picture analysis

Given that no competitor for this particular search term has been able to beat out Ping’s or Yet Wah in the local pack, and given the minimal efforts these two brands have thus far made, there’s a tremendous chance for any Chinese restaurant in San Rafael to become the dominant player. Any competitor that dedicates itself to running on all cylinders (professional, optimized website with great content, a healthy link profile, a competitive number of high-star reviews, healthy citations, etc.) could definitely surpass all other contestants. This is not a tough market and there are no players who can’t be bested.

My sample case has been, as I’ve said, a close race. You may be facing an audit where there are deeply entrenched dominant players whose statistics far surpass those of a business you’re hoping to assist. But the basic process is the same:

Look at the top-ranking business.

Fill out the chart (adding any other fields you feel are important).

Then discover the strengths of the dominant company, as well as its potential weaknesses.

Contrast these findings with those you’ve charted for the company you’re helping and you’ll be able to form a plan for improvement.

And don’t forget the user proximity factor. Any company’s most adjacent customers will see pack results that vary either slightly or significantly from what a user sees from 20, 50, or 1,000 miles away. In my specific study, it happened to be the third result in the pack that went haywire once a user got 50 miles away, while the top two remained dominant and statically ranked for searchers as far away as the East Coast.

Because of this phenomenon of distance, it’s vital for business owners to be educated about the fact that they are serving two user groups: one that is located in the neighborhood or city of the business, and another that could be anywhere in the country or the world. This doesn’t just matter for destinations like hotels or public amusements. In California (a big state), Internet users on a road trip from Palm Springs may be looking to end their 500-mile drive at a Chinese restaurant in San Rafael, so you can’t just think hyper-locally; you’ve got to see the bigger local picture. And you’ve got to do the analysis to find ways of winning as often as you can with both consumer groups.

You take it from here, auditor!

My local competitive audit chart is a basic one, looking at 30+ factors. What would you add? How would you improve it? Did I miss a GMB duplicate listing, or review spam? What’s working best for your agency in doing local audits these days? Do you use a chart, or just provide a high-level text summary of your internal findings? And, if you have any further theories as to how Ping’s is winning the local pack, I’d love for you to share them in the comments.

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