The author’s views are entirely their own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
I hope this summer features at least a few lazy days for you, kicking back in the shade with loved ones and a pitcher of iced tea or a tray of homemade popsicles. But the next few months can also be a really exciting time to try out new local SEO and marketing tasks well ahead of the holiday season to see what’s resonating with your community in 2023. Here are 6 smart things to try that could sweeten your local business’ summer success.
No one likes standing in line, but there’s one queue you should get in this summer and that’s for Google Search Labs so that you can get the earliest possible access to the new Search Generative Experience (SGE), shown above in Joy Hawkins’ tweet linking to this early bird article. SGE is one of Google’s experiments at incorporating AI into their search results, and while the good news is that early testers are seeing local pack-like results for local SGE searches, the rankings of these “new packs” don’t match up point-for-point with traditional packs or organic results and that’s news your business needs to know. As Noah Learner reports:
And as I reported back in April regarding Google’s AI chat Bard rollout, there is definitely some overlap between AI results and older layouts, but there are also some differences. Getting access to SGE so that you can work on puzzling out what causes those differences and understand how to earn top visibility in the new formats will be smart work for any local business.
Whether all of these AI experiments will fundamentally change your business operations or marketing practices remains to be seen. We’re all waiting to find out which products will actually move forward and how many customers will actually integrate them into their daily lives as they have with local packs, Google Maps, Apple Maps and other familiar features. While you’re in line, I recommend reading Greg Sterling’s piece, Google SGE: Meet the New Pack.
If any part of your business or inventory ties to seasonality, you’re quickly learning that you can’t count on the weather anymore. In 2021, millions of people in Oregon and Washington were desperately hunting for air conditioners when their summer temperatures became 30-40 degrees above normal. Air conditioners just weren’t a “thing” in the Pacific Northwest before, but they are now.
Where I live in Northern California, the extreme drought had gone on for so long, memories of wet winters were fading into myth. Then we got inundated with such rain this past winter that people were scrambling for umbrellas, for wood chips to fill their flooded driveways so that cars wouldn’t sink, for sandbags and French drains. No one is sure what is going to happen when our massive snowpack melts here this year…
The thing about Climate Change is that it causes erratic weather, and we’re just not able to make statements any more like “England is a wet, cool country” or “New York gets heavy winter snowfall”, or “California is dry” and base our inventory on these “facts”. Many local businesses will need to re-think seasonality and activate a more fluid supply chain and inventory structure to accommodate for weather and conditions locals aren’t prepared for or accustomed to.
They may need to extend floorspace time for seasonal products, or at least warehouse them, to be brought out at time of need so that they can be the ones selling the air conditioners to Portland and Seattle and the galoshes to people in San Francisco. Even restaurant menus need to incorporate awareness, because diners may not want to eat cold salads in a wet, foggy summer, or hot chowder when the temperature at the coast is 116 degrees.