Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Local SEO
    4. Local Listings
    5. Competitor outranking me on google with their yelp, facebook and youtube pages

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Competitor outranking me on google with their yelp, facebook and youtube pages

    Local Listings
    4
    7
    4219
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • studio35design
      studio35design last edited by

      I'm working to rank for a local search term (my city wedding photographers). I'm frustrated that my competitor is outranking me not with their website (they are no. #9 and I'm #6) but with their Yelp account (#1) Facebook Account (#5) and Youtube account (#7 - not outranking me, but right below me).

      I'm going to continue working on my SEO to hopefully get higher up, but even then, they are basically dominating page 1 with their links. It gets worse on page 2. They are showing up 5 times for youtube/vimeo videos, and 1 time with a spammy landing page with no images, full of keyword anchored links to their main site.

      What gives? Since when are social media profiles outranking local sites on google organic searches?

      Could it be that our keyword is just so low competition that google has allowed all this stuff to rank so highly?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • studio35design
        studio35design @spencerhjustice last edited by

        Hi Spencer. That article is great and explains this issue perfectly. so Barnacle SEO, huh?

        Yeah, I do see that his domain authority is larger as is his likes/yelp reviews. I'm in my second year. The competitor i believe is in the 15th or so.

        At this point, I'm going to optimize my social media profiles and link them to my site.

        Ideally this will help balance that first page more. My primary effort will be to move to the first spot on the page.

        Thank a bunch!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • spencerhjustice
          spencerhjustice last edited by

          This is a strategy called "Barnacle SEO." Essentially you optimize and build links to high end business profiles like yelp because they are more likely to rank due to their high domain authority.

          Here's the most recent post I could find on it: http://searchengineland.com/barnacle-seo-making-big-comeback-local-187253

          The competitor you're talking about has a higher domain authority which already gives him a decent head start, but it's good that you're still outranking his website. What I see that's definitely helping him is that he optimized his listings for the city you're trying to rank in. He has more reviews than you and he has tons more facebook likes. He also has his Yelp linked to from his facebook and he links back to his yelp profile from his website.

          Also, to answer your last question, part of the reason these are ranking is definitely because their is fairly low competition in the space.

          studio35design 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • studio35design
            studio35design @photoseo1 last edited by

            Ultimately, this might be what I need to do. Get a series of my own links on the first page, as opposed to only my homepage. I do have some youtube videos, and by properly key wording them, they have climbed the ranks, but honestly, I don't want them to be people's first contact with me. I think its so much more productive to have links to my site.

            Now they you mention it, it might just be that the competitor's social media profiles are ranking high due to their size. Their yelp has 8 reviews and fb page over 7400+ likes.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • studio35design
              studio35design @19prince last edited by

              Thanks Darren. Over the last few months, I've done alot of that and I've managed to climb to first page fairly quickly. I'm currently on first page and ranking higher than my competitor's website. What gets me is that all their social media is also ranking extremely high. I would imagine google giving priority to actual websites, not to a bunch of social media profiles. I don't wish to rank for my own social media profiles particularly, as I want google traffic to point towards my site (and not my youtube account).

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • 19prince
                19prince last edited by

                Don't forget to do some link building of your own - on your own site. Wedding photographers have a great content ready to go; not to mention a willing audience of bloggers/websites to post it. Find some recent pictures and submit them to the wedding blogs. Have your client do an 'engagement shot' for new couple. Those photos will make it up on the couple's wedding websites - ask for a link back. Do some PR around your local media to get on the 'Best of' lists.

                studio35design 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • photoseo1
                  photoseo1 Subscriber last edited by

                  First, if they have the exact match on the keyword (which is sounds like they might) and they have a good site and seo, it may be vary hard to take the fist spots. You can always get a couple of your own on the first page. (I have one keyword with 5 places on the first page for an exact match).

                  Lets Focus:

                  How many reviews does the Yelp have?

                  Here is a Strategy for Yelp

                  You can use open site explorer to see where they have links to their Yelp Account.  Get those links to your Yelp account. How is their Yelp description written? What keywords do they use. Use a similarly keyword targeted description, keywords etc. Social bookmark your Yelp page with the keyword in the description and title.

                  Here is a strategy for Facebook:

                  How many likes does Facebook have? If they have way more fans than you and they post a lot it could be tough. If you have more fans than them make sure you have your keyword in the description of your page. Post more posts using your keyword if you can and not make it sound weird. Social bookmark a good piece of content written about your keyword that you post to Facebook.

                  Youtube:

                  Make a good youtube video, slide show type if you need, that is keyword targeted. Write a 300 word description with keywords, your site url possibly your Facebook url. Social bookmark it with your keywords in the title and description, this will increase views naturally and provide links. Wait a week after the social bookmarks have aged. Use Open Site Explorer to mine those links too.

                  They may be doing some sneaky stuff too like buying Facebook fans or Youtube views if their pages are junky and they rank. That stuff can be risky if done in high amounts.

                  Hope that gives you something to work with.

                  studio35design 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • AnkitS.1990

                    Incorrect Image is Displaying on Google My Business Knowledge Graph - Need Urgent Solution??

                    Incorrect Image is Displaying on Google My Business for our company. We have updated new image on google business But still, Google is fetching and showing old image on the google my business knowledge panel. What will be the right fix for this? Our site URL :  www.yolobus.in

                    Local Listings | | AnkitS.1990
                    0
                  • WizIQMarketing

                    Can having a google business listing harm a company selling services globally?

                    Hi, We are a SAAS platform offering cloud based solution for educators. We had a google business listing in India and recently added one for US as well. Our keywords rank significantly better in India than in US. Is it a good idea to remove these business listing? Also, what could be other factors that impact GEO SEO rankings for a online company like ours?

                    Local Listings | | WizIQMarketing
                    0
                  • SusannahK.Noel

                    Google My Business - two locations but same name and phone

                    Hello, I manage SEO for an orthopaedic practice and I'm wondering what to do about their GMB listings. They have two locations, but I'm starting to think we shouldn't have separate GMB pages for the two locations because of the advice about other GMB questions I've been reading on this forum. I read a helpful response that said you must ensure the following if you want to create separate GMB listings: Unique name Unique address (even if only a suite / office number) Unique phone number Clearly different categories on Google My Business I can only ensure one of those - unique address. The business has the same name, phone number, and categories at both addresses. What should I do about this? I would think it's important to list both addresses so that patients can be guided to the appropriate location, but is there a way to do that with just one GMB listing? Thank you, Susannah

                    Local Listings | | SusannahK.Noel
                    0
                  • stuartstein

                    For Google's Structured Data, should I change my listings from Product schema to Local Business schema?

                    I was reading Google's Structured Data spec, and I'm considering changing the schema of our listing pages from the Product schema to the Local Business schema. Is this a good idea? To give you a little more info, the pages that I'm classifying are listings for physical spaces that our website rents out for activities, such as meetings. Here's an example of a listing: https://www.peerspace.com/pages/listings/550ddcde2f352d0800fc186b  Our goal is to add the proper schema.org tags to the page so that our spaces show up in local searches, such as "meeting space in San Francisco." The problem is that when we add location microdata (addressLocality, addressRegion, etc.) to our current "Product" schema, Google tells us that "Products" can't have a location. However, we aren't quite a "Local Business" either, since we don't publicly share our space's street addresses—only the space's neighborhood/city/state for privacy reasons. As a result, we get an error from Google's Structured Data Tool as a "Local Business" page because "streetAddress" is required for Local Businesses. Should we switch to the Local Business schema anyway, even though we get structured data errors for streetAddress? Or is it better not to include the location information in the microdata so that we don't have errors? Does Google penalize you for incomplete tags? Any input is appreciated!

                    Local Listings | | stuartstein
                    0
                  • bpurdue

                    "Duplicate" on Google Local - Attorney and Business Listing

                    For our law firm, we have a Google Local listing for the firm (Riddell Law LLC).  Google also created a local listing for one of the attorneys (Riddell) (we didn't create it, but are in the process of verifying it).  Both listings are at the same address.  Moz Local says these are "duplicates" - is that true?  Would Google penalize us for this?  I am not sure how to fix it - both the individual attorney and the business are in fact at the same address. If anyone has any advice I would greatly appreciate it!  Thank you!!

                    Local Listings | | bpurdue
                    0
                  • Houdoe

                    How to deal with wrong location in Google SERP

                    Hi, If I understand correctly, Google provides search results based on the location of the user. That's fine, because most of my clients are local. But if I look at my own search results, Google thinks I'm in a totally different town. Most likely based on my IP address. Of course I can solve that for myself, but the same goes for my potential clients. Is there a way to deal with this, from an seo perspective? For instance find out where most of the the IP providers are located and target that location?

                    Local Listings | | Houdoe
                    1
                  • BohmKalish123

                    Google My Business- Will a large service area dilute local search results?

                    I am considering adding our actual service area to our Google My Business profile, but I don't want this to dilute our local search results.  As it is, we come up in the top 3 or so when searched in our HQ's city and several nearby cities when you search for us in Google Maps (although when I look at the top 10 organic for Google for some reason when you search for these cities + our keywords Google doesn't show any local results). Our actual service area is fairly large, comprising the states of CA & Hawaii & parts of CO, AZ, and UT.  I would be adding the service area by zip code rather than radius, as a radius wouldn't make any sense in this case (particularly considering the distance between HI and CA).  Is it better to keep our relatively high ranking in local results?  Will adding the service area not affect local results negatively? Also, do you know why Google isn't showing me local results when I look for our keywords + our nearby cities?  When I look for these keywords in larger cities like LA or San Diego, Google always shows me local results.

                    Local Listings | | BohmKalish123
                    0
                  • KempRugeLawGroup

                    Wrong Category Displaying Google Business Page?

                    Our firm keeps displaying "bankruptcy attorney" on google business page. Granted, we do that, as well as a variety of other services, but our primary category is "Personal Injury Attorney". I was told the categories are randomly selected, but I don't think that's true. Every time I've looked (or had other people look for us) on local, it displays as "bankruptcy attorney." What should I do? Is there a way to lock in the "Personal Injury Attorney" category, so it's the one that displays? Should I get rid of all the other categories except for "personal injury attorney?" Any other suggestion? Thanks, Ruben

                    Local Listings | | KempRugeLawGroup
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.