Local results vs Normal results
-
Hi everyone,
I am currently working on the website of a friend, who's owning a French spa treatment company.
I have been working on it for the past 6 months, mostly on optimizing the page titles and the link building.
So far the results are great in terms on normal results : if you type most of the keywords and the city name, the website would be very well positioned, if not top positioned.
My only problem is that in the local results (Google Maps), nothing has improved at all. In most of the same keyword where the website is ranking 1st on normal results, the website doesn't appear at all on the same keywords in local results. This is confusing as you would think Google think the website is relevant to the subject according to the normal results but it doesn't show any good ones in a local matter.
The website is clearly located in the city (thanks to the pages titles and there's a Google Map in a specific page dedicated to its location).
The company has a Google Places page and it has positive customers reviews on different trusted websites for more than a year now (the website is 2 years old). I focused my work concerning the link building on the local websites (directories and specialized websites) for the past 2 months. The results kept improving on normal results but still no improvement at all in the local ones.
As far as I know, there is no mistakes such as multiple addresses for the same business etc. Everything seems to be done by the rules.
I am not sure at all what more I can do. The competitors do not seem to be working their SEO pretty much and in terms of linking (according to the -pretty good- Seomoz tools), they have up to 10 times less (good) links than us.
Maybe you guys have some advice on how I can manage this situation ? I'm kind of lost here
Thanks a lot for your help, appreciate it.
Cheers,
Raphael -
Hi Raphael,
Without actually investigating your client's unique business, my response will have to be somewhat general. The main areas one would investigate would be:
1. Age of domain
2. Strength/optimization of website/inclusion of local hooks on site (like NAP)
3. Correctness of Google local listings/lack of violations/lack of duplicates
4. Number, quality and age of citations (if yours are new, you need to give them time to go into effect)
5. Consistency of NAP across all citations
6. Review count
7. Proximity to city centroid
8. Traditional SEO factors, such as linkbuilding
There are other areas that could be applicable, certainly, but these are the main ones.
Here are some resources regarding local search rankings and related factors:
http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/09/26/infographic-citations-time-to-live/
http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2012/10/02/how-long-does-local-search-visibility-take/
The above are a few selections which I feel will be highly relevant to what you are trying to understand about local search ranking factors and the time it can take for your work to go into full effect.
I hope you will find these useful!
-
The first thing I would say is I've learned not to rely on what I call Google Places "vanity searches" because sometimes your proximity may be preventing you from seeing positive results for your businesses.
I would like to know is what do the analytics look like from within the Google places login for the business. Are you getting any impressions at all? If you are, that's a good sign. If you're not getting any impressions (not even for business name + city name searches for instance) that's usually a sign of something being wrong with your profile, such as a wrong category, not enough content, a user flagged profile etc.
If you're getting impressions but not from your most desirable keywords, then really examine the content of your profile and look for opportunities to add those keywords into your Google places content without being spammy - especially not in the title of the business. Just about everywhere else is fair game thought so long as it's logical.
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
-
Schema Markup Validator vs. Rich Results Test
I am working on a schema markup project. When I test the schema code in the Schema Markup Validator, everything looks fine, no errors detected. However, when I test it in the Rich Results Test, a few errors come back.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Collegis_Education
What is the difference between these two tests? Should I trust one over the other?1 -
.ac.uk subdomain vs .co.uk domain
I'd be grateful if I could check my thinking... I've agreed to give some quick advice to a non profit organisation who are in the process of moving their website from an ac.uk subdomain to a .co.uk domain. They believe that their SEO can be improved considerably by making this migration. From my experience, I don't see how this could be the case. Does the unique domain in itself offer enough ranking benefit to justify this approach? The subdomain is on a very high authority domain with many pre-existing links, which makes me even more nervous about this approach. Does anyone have any opinions on this that they could share please? I'm guessing that it is possible to migrate safely and that there might be branding advantages, but from an actual SEO point of view there is not that much benefit? It looks like most of their current traffic is branded traffic.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
How do I Improve Google Local search position
Hi, I think its called local search position, what I'm referring to is when you do a search on a keyword and google lists not only the best matches but also usually the second match is a group of 3 businesses with telephone numbers, google reviews and at the bottom of the group it will say something like: "See results for <your keyword="">on a map. This is what I'm referring to. in anycase my question is if I click on the link to see more results on a map I'm listed as number 3, however on the search page before where the link is displayed which I just clicked on I'm not being listed and instead one business name is being listed three times, each of the listings uses the same address but a different telephone number, In addtion the business that is being listed three times is also listed in the results being returned above in this case position #1 for the keyword I have searched. I assume this has something to do with them also being listed in the group of local businesses below three time.. The business I'm interested in getting listed in this group of results is currently being listed page 2 position 5 for the keyword..</your> Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.. Thanks in advance..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | robdob11 -
Location appearing on search result. how can this be achieved?
I'm pretty sure this site is not doing any SEO but i think what made them no. 1 is the location. I already tried adding a google publisher tag to my site that points to my google page which contains my address but i still can't have the location appear.. here's a screenshot of the search result that i want to achieve: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tbdv3121rrs6zp5/Screen Shot 2013-04-15 at 9.39.30 AM.png Screen%20Shot%202013-04-15%20at%209.39.30%20AM.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | optimind0 -
Page indexed but not showing up at all in search results
I am currently working on the SEO for a roofing company. I have developed GEO targeted pages for both commercial and residential roofing (as well as attic insulation and gutters) and have hundreds of 1st page placements for the GEO targeted keywords. What is baffling me is that they are performing EXTREMELY poorly on the bigger cities, to the point of not evening showing up in the first 5 pages. I also target a page specifically for roof repair in Phoenix and it is not coming up AT ALL. This is not typically the results I get when directly targeting keywords. I'm working on implementing keyword variations as well as adding about 10 or so information pages (@ 700 words) regarding different roofing systems which I plan to cross link on the site, etc. I'm just wondering if there is a simple answer as to why the pages I want to be showing up the most are performing so poorly and what I would need to do to improve their rankings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dogstarweb0 -
Sub Domains vs. Persistent URLs
I've always been under the assumption that when building a micro-site it was better to use a true path (e.g. yourcompany.com/microsite) URL as opposed to a sub domain (microsite.yourcompany.com) from an SEO perspective. Can you still generate significant SEO gains from a sub domain if you were forced to use it providing the primary (e.g. yourcompany.com) had a lot of link clout/authority? Meaning, if I had to go the sub domain route would it be the end of the world?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VERBInteractive0 -
Ranking locally without local keywords in title?
I have a website that targets national keywords. I would like to be able to rank locally for these keywords as well without having the city in the title. What is the best strategy for this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cprodigy290 -
Google.ca vs Google.com Ranking
I have a site I would like to rank high for particular keywords in the Google.ca searches and don't particularly care about the Google.com searches (it's a Canadian service). I have logged into Google Webmaster Tools and targeted Canada. Currently my site is ranking on the third page for my desired keywords on Google.com, but is on the 20th page for Google.ca. Previously this change happened quite quickly -- within 4 weeks -- but it doesn't seem to be taking here (12 weeks out and counting). My optimization seems to be fine since I'm ranking well on Google.com: not sure why it's not translating to Google.ca. Any help or thoughts would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seorm0