How The HELL Is This Site Ranking So Well In Google Places?
-
When I do a search for this site it ranks number 2 on Google just below the official federation of master builders website for the keyword phase "builders in london"
this is the site http://bit.ly/Lypo8E which is a nasty looking blog which has nothing to do with builders and they don't even have an address anywhere on the site.
The only thing I can see is that they are sharing there address with a lot of other businesses and all of the citations from those other businesses are causing them to rank higher on Google places, but surely Google can't be that stupid right?
-
Hi Umit
I took a look at that listing, and it is definitely shady, I can see why you want to know why they rank. To me it looks like they are gaming the places ago fairly hard. There are numerous things that the listing is doing that are possibly against guidelines.
The first is the name, "London Builders" it doesn't just have the location, but it is also a strong keyword variation. this keyword is then repeated in the description, and the url. Using the location in your name and description is against best practices, and can get you in trouble. However it is also extremely effective. While any one of these things wouldn't be enough to rank this high, all three could have that effect. Also, the onpage signals from the site are also reinforcing the ranking.
Frankly, the site looks incredibly spammy. Its a default wordpress template with a couple of posts over the last couple of years that use the keywords. Unfortunately its a example of some of the big weaknesses that the Google Places has right now. This looks like a case of a black or grey hat seo trying to rank a company in Google Places without the company having a actual website.
-
Something else that can affect Google Places positioning is proximity to the centre of the geographical area being searched. So for London, unfortunately, that's the City of London, right where this guy has a virtual office.
The near match keyphrase for the actual business name on Google Places must be helping them out hugely. There may be something in your theory about implied credibility, too, if other highly rated businesses share that address - though my money is on the business name/keyphrase being the main culprit here.
-
LOL, So I just have to buy a keyword domain and add it to Google places then I'll be ranking over 2000 competing companies in Google places? Wow
-
The have their keyword in the domain and have added an address in Google places/maps.
-
While I'm sure those are all factors I do not believe for 1 second that it's as simple as that, but thank you for your reply.
I would test your theory but I'm pretty certain what you've said is not going to rank me number 2.
-
They have included two of the three words in your 'key phrase' in the following:
- URL
- H1 Heading
- Body
- Link
- Image
Those are all things that Google looks at when considering relevance.
Because they have a relatively small amount of text, keyword density will rank the key phrase fairly high.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google URL Shortener- Should I use one or multiple???
I have a client with a number of YouTube videos. I'm using Google URL Shortner to allow the link to show in the YouTube text (as its a long URL). Many of these links go to the same page ex .com/services-page Should I use a single short URL for each video linking to the .com/services-page or should they be unique each time? If unique, would Google possibly think I'm trying to manipulate results? Thanks in advance. I'm just not sure on this one and hope someone knows best practice on this. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mgordon1 -
Homepage not ranking for branded searches after Google penalty removal
Hi all, A site I work on was hit with a manual action penalty some time ago for spammy links built by a former SEO agency. It was a partial match penalty so only affected some pages - most likely the homepage. We carried out a lot of work cleaning up links and disavowed suspicious links which we couldn't get removed. Again, most of these were to the homepage. The disavow file was uploaded to Google last Friday and our penalty was lifted this Tuesday. Since uploading the disavow file, our homepage does not show up at all for branded searches. I've carried out the obvious checks - robots.txt, making sure we're not accidentally noindexing the page or doing anything funky with canonicals etc and it's all good. Have any of you guys had a similar experience? I'm thinking Google simply needs time to catch up due to all the links we've disavowed and sitting tight is the best option but could do with some reassurance! Any past experiences or advice on what I might be missing would be great. Thanks in advance, Brendan.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Brendan-Jackson1 -
Keywords Ranking Fluctuate
Hi Moz Community! I've been working with a client’s website for about a year now. They were hit with the original Panda/ Penguin update because of some spammy links. We have analysed and disavow sapmmy links edit anchor tag and landing pages. We've made a decent climb back while working on it keywords ranking was improved some of them are from out of 500 to top 30, but not a full recovery. There are some weird things happening that I would love some insight into. 1. Ranking for keywords are again dropping and traffic is gone: I notice keyword ranking is dropping and some of the keywords which are on 2 and 3 page, now on 9<sup>th</sup> page. And also traffic is down. Any help would be appreciated! Regards, S
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ShaunPhilips0 -
Why is this site performing so well in the SERP's and getting high traffic volume for no apparent reason!
The site is https://virtualaccountant.ie/ It's a really small site They have only about 7 back links, They don't blog They don't have a PPC campaign They don't stand out from the crowd in terms of product or services offered So why are they succeeding in topping the SERP's for difficult to rank for accounting keywords such as accountant and online accounts. What are they doing better than everyone else, or have they discovered a way to cheat Google, and worse still - ME!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PeterConnor0 -
Getting Back Links When I Cannot Add Outbound Links to My Site
I have a collection of websites that I do not control in terms of content or page creation/editing. As a result, I have no way to add links to outside sites on any existing or new pages. Given this, how can I go about finding and requesting other sites link back to our sites/pages if I cannot offer them a link to their site in return? I know that content is a link driver, but I do not control the content, so I cannot develop new content to help drive links. I appreciate any help/advice any experts can provide.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dsinger0 -
Google Preferred Agency???
I just stumbled upon an SEO company's website that says they are a 'Google Preferred Agency'. This isn't just a line of copy on the site, it's featured prominently on the site, and they use the Google logo as well. I've never heard of a 'Google Preferred Agency'. One would think that even if there was such a thing, that it would involve a link back to a profile page on Google like they do with AdWords/Analytics partners... Am I missing something, or is this company doing something a little shady? I don't want to toss the name of the company out there because I don't want to publicly bash them.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | stevefidelity0 -
Google Penalising Pages?
We run an e-commerce website that has been online since 2004. For some of our older brands we are getting good rankings for the brand category pages and also for their model numbers. For newer brands, the category pages aren't getting rankings and neither are the products - even when we search for specific unique content on that page, Google does not return results containing our pages. The real kicker is that the pages are clearly indexed, as searching for the page itself by URL or restricting the same search using the site: modifier the page appears straight away! Sometimes the home page will appear on page 3 or 4 of the rankings for a keyword even though their is a much more relevant page in Google's index from our site - AND THEY KNOW IT, as once again restricting with the keywords with a site: modifier shows the obviously relevant page first and loads of other pages before say the home page or the page that shows. This leads me to the conclusion that something on certain pages is flagging up Google's algorithms or worse, that there has been manual intervention by somebody. There are literally thousands of products that are affected. We worry about duplicate content, but we have rich product reviews and videos all over these pages that aren't showing anywhere, they look very much singled out. Has anybody experienced a situation like this before and managed to turn it around? Link - removed Try a page in for instance the D&G section and you will find it easily on Google most of the time. Try a page in the Diesel section and you probably won't, applying -removed and you will. Thanks, Scott
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | scottlucas0 -
Why did Google reject us from Google News?
I submitted our site, http://www.styleblueprint.com to Google to pontentially be a local news source in Nashville. I received the following note back: We reviewed your site and are unable to include it in Google News at this
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | styleblueprint
time. We have certain guidelines in place regarding the quality of sites
which are included in the Google News index. Please feel free to review
these guidelines at the following link: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769#3 Clicking the link, it anchors to the section that says: These quality guidelines cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative behavior, but Google may respond negatively to other misleading practices not listed here (e.g. tricking users by registering misspellings of well-known websites). It's not safe to assume that just because a specific deceptive technique isn't included on this page, Google approves of it. Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit. etc... Now we have never intentionally tried to do anything deceptive for our rankings. I am new to SEOmoz and new to SEO optimization in general. I am working through the errors report on our campaign site but I cannot tell what they are dinging us for. Whatever it is we will be happy to fix it. All thoughts greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, Jay0