Google Local Gone Loco

[gcashcraft]

I am a bankruptcy attorney in Southern California. I have been doing my own SEO since I had a couple of bad experiences paying someone to "do" it in the past. If you want it done right, do it yourself I suppose.

Anyway, I have been ranking well in Google local results. At first I peeked in at 3/3 showing on the first page of the searches. Then I climbed to Number 2 in local searches, probably as a result of finding sites and making sure my addresses, phone numbers and business names were all correct. However, this week (as I climbed to #3 spot in the local search for my city+ bankruptcy attorney, my Google local result dropped to page 2.

One of my employees rated me on google local and gave me a google + which is gone and the pictures that I uploaded to Local Google are gone. I don't know if this is some kind of penalty because an employee gave me a rating (they were completely up front about working for me) or if something else is going on. I was also trying to claim my business on Yahoo (which resulted in some kind of "Account Suspension"). I have no idea what is going on. You can take a look at my site if it helps: http://ashcraftfirm.com

We are trying to rank for "murrieta bankruptcy attorney"

Thanks for any help you can provide.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Patricia,

I wondered about that issues of an attempted merge. If you go to the Google and Your Business Forum (http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/business) and search for 'merged', 'merging' and variants you will find a veritable mountain of threads there about issues stemming from this. The merge situation is still really buggy, and most of the best Local SEOs I know are still advising against merging Google+ Local and Google+ Business pages right now because of this.

I don't want you to get taken to the cleaners again, either. I highly recommend that you check out both the local category of the recommended companies list here at SEOmoz and also this page on GetListed.org, which is also an SEOmoz-owned company:

http://getlisted.org/resources/trustedproviders.aspx

Both lists are very trustworthy. If you need to hire a Local SEO, look there for firms you can rely upon. Good luck!

[gcashcraft]

Its funny because when you google search the firm, our google+ picture is popping up, but it is not currently linking properly to the profile page there. I will have to get that worked out.

I'm sure that trying to log into Yahoo too many times is exactly what happened to get it to lock me out. I have contacted them directly, but have not yet gotten a response. I guess this the beauty of SEO.

[gcashcraft]

The employee reviewed the company rather recently within the last week or so. I am also trying to link my google plus and my google places account, so that could be doing it as well. I guess that I do need to get someone to help sort this out. I just hate to get taken to the cleaners again. It seems every time I get someone who does SEO it turns out bad for me.

Organically, you are right, my sight is going up and up. I was on page 23 a couple of months ago. Not #23, page 23. Now I am at #3. I am doing the right stuff with the organic listing. I just feel like many of the tools that I have acquired have focused solely on the organic listing, which will probably account for the larger portion of my clickthrough, but by what I hear ignoring the citations and local listings that google now places so prominently would be foolish.

Thanks for your help.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Patricia,

Issues like this are typically going to require more digging than a forum like ours can generally provide. In all likelihood, you are going to need to hire a qualified Local SEO to diagnose your issues. I'll do my best to jot down a few notes here, but a thorough investigation is likely warranted.

• Ranking drops of this kind often signal a penalty.

• Sometimes, bugs in Google's system can cause ranking drops.

• Sometimes, ranking drops are simply the result of being surpassed by a greater effort on the part of a competitor.

• Searching from my location in No-Cal for 'murrieta bankruptcy attorney', I am seeing your business at #3 in the organic results on the first page of Google's SERPs. I am seeing an organic result at the top, followed by a 3-pack of local results, followed by further organic results, with Ashcraft coming in 2 spots below the local results.

• Setting my location to Murrieta and doing the same search, I see identical results. So, I am not able to replicate what you are seeing with your business having been pushed to the 2nd page.

• Your employees should not be reviewing your business. You didn't mention how long ago he did this, but Google is pretty active regarding review spam these days, and if, for instance, they detected that this review was stemming from your office, that could trigger a penalty.

• Were you seeing the employee's review live on the page before it was removed? Or did it never appear at all?

• There is a chance that this other review on your Google+ Local page could be causing a problem:

"Pat is the best bankruptcy attorney in Murrieta, hands down! After speaking with many bankruptcy attorneys, Pat and her staff are definitely the most friendly and knowledegable that I have found. I cant say enough good things about dealing with Pat and I would highly recommend the Ashcraft Firm."

There is speculation that use of first names in a review can trigger suspicion. Obviously, you have no control over this.

• Have you, by any chance, attempted to merge a Google+ Business and Google+ Local page at any time prior to this issue arising? Right now, this can lead to all kinds of problems.

• When signed into your dashboard, what is the status of the listing? Active, pending, suspended, needs action?

• There's a link on your homepage titled 'Google+ Page' that is going to a 404 error page.

• There are a ton of issues going on with photos. I recommend you visit the Google Places for Business Help Forum and search for 'photos gone'. You will see hundreds of threads on this and perhaps an issue described in one of them will match what you are experiencing.

Sorry not to be able to offer more insight. To me, right now, it looks as if you are still doing quite well organically, but it sounds like you are seeing something different. Again, you are likely going to need to hire a consultant to help you with this to diagnose the issue, but I hope what I've jotted down gives you some things to consider. Good luck!

[KenyonManu3-SEOSEM]

You google plus page is not correctly linked to your home page. You need an actual google plus plugin on your page so that people can 1+ your business page. Other then that they would actually have to find your page through google plus and vote for it there.

I think you are having confusion between google places and google plus. they do work together very well but they are not the same thing. Log into your google account and search for google plus and google places then make the adjustments accordingly.

the yahoo penalty should have nothing to do with google unless you have in someway violated rules that pertain to both. Most likely is that you tried to login to your yahoo account too many times with credential that were different then the ones that your former SEO company had and the temporarily suspended it. contact yahoo directly they should be able to send you a card to prove your ownership directly to the business address to straighten it out.

Hope that helps