Can We Outrank The Google Places Local Listing 7 pack in 2015?
-
Hello everyone,
I would like to know if it's possible and if any of you had success outranking / ranking above the Google Local Listing 7 pack?
I am in Canada and every time I search for something like (city+dentist) (toronto dentist) I do not see any organic result above the 7 pack. I searched for like 10 city and every searches the local listing are the first to show up and the organic result under it.
So I did not see any organic result outranking the Google Places and I look at like 10 different city if not more.
So I would like to know If i can rank above them for organic results with no Google places, with no physical address, local phone number and/or citations even if there is currently no organic result showing up above them ?
What do you guys think ?
Thank You
-
Hi Vasily,
You've received some great feedback here from the community and nice of fellow Canadian Jim Rudnick for letting us know he hasn't seen 7-packs in months. I digress here, but in the US, I am still not only seeing 7-packs for dental searches but am also seeing major directories outrank them organically. Ah - the fun of Local SEO!
Basically, I agree with what Brady has written. With their 3 or 7-pack display ranking up top, they are showing you what they think is best for customers and best for Google. Getting this to change is unlikely, though a major algo change on Google's part in 2015 could, of course, throw all of this out the window
For now, your best bet is to be able to achieve consistently good visibility in the packs-n-stacks in your area.
-
Saw it - in english only. I think it would take a little while until we will see it in german... THX 4 the respond.
-
Haven't seen any 7-Packs in months now...I too am up in Canada using g.ca and they're all gone for all of our own searches....
-
I believe it rolled out internationally this past month (December). Check out SERoundtable for updates. Barry's great with that stuff.
-
not really the right place, but has anyone an idea if and when Pigeon update is coming to europe?
-
You can, if you narrow your objectives, specialize and try to rank organically.
If you're trying to rank for "big city" + "short, popular and highly competitive keyword phrase" then you won't be able to outrank local search results. At least not for the short term.
The recommended approach is to carve a geographic or specialty niche for yourself, produce excellent, compelling content, and build some popularity and authority. Once that's done, you can consider expanding and going after some of the more popular and general terms like "toronto dentist".
See what Matt Cutts has to say on the matter here - www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XHAhn8HCzs.
-
Are you still seeing a 7-pack? From what I've seen, the latest Pigeon update has removed almost all local 7-packs for a more compact, 3-pack or the new "local stack" (or whatever we're calling it). When I Google "toronto dentist," I'm getting a more compact 3-pack, granted I am in the States.
To answer your original question, I'd probably say no just because it's probably not the best way to focus your local SEO efforts. In most cases the local packs are at the top of SERPs (underneath ads, of course) but very rarely are they half-way down the SERP. I have some clients targeting keywords with SERPs that trigger the local pack between organic listings 1 and 2, but that's becoming rare.
Your goal should be to rank in the local pack (or higher in it, if you're already there). What I can say is the way to possibly jumping the local pack and the way to move up in the pack are likely the same tactics: basic local SEO. There are a ton of blog posts out there from awesome experts like Andrew Shotland and Mike Blumenthal, but some important initial questions to ask yourself and audit your website with:
- Basic SEO principles: duplicate content (all forms), good title tags, img tags, etc.
- Local SEO principles: business city/state in title tags, NAP on (basically) every page, local phone number used (not 1-800), etc.
- Technical principles: all the basics, 404s, bad 301s/302s, XML sitemap, using schema for local business (or more specific schema [there's now a dentist one, I believe], etc.)
If you're a multiple location business there's a whole lot more to the Local SEO principles, but I'd recommend checking out some of the experts' and their blogs for those. Some of those recommendations and answers can be too long for a Moz Q&A.
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
-
Unlinking Google Local Listing from your GMB Account with other locations you have
I have listings that I need disconnected from my main Google My Business account. I can close, or remove which is similar as closing, but the goal is not to close the listings, just to remove the association to my google account, and im not transferring the listing as well. Anyone know how to accomplish this? Goal is to clean up old listings that are exist but I dont manage Thanks for all the help
Local Listings | | vmialik0 -
Google Business Listing with no physical office location
Hey, everyone! As a business owner who works from home and doesn't have a physical office location. Is setting up a Google business listing without location going to hurt my local search ranking? Should I get a virtual office so I have a physical location? Thank you!! 😃
Local Listings | | ichorstudios0 -
How Far is Too Far to Show Up in Local Results
Hi everyone, I have one client that is located about 45 minutes (25 miles) outside of a large city and I can't seem to help them rank within that large city. They're a relatively new business in the service industry (meaning they'll travel to an individual's residence) and in the surrounding cities closer to their physical location, they rank extremely well. In this large city, they have 3 keywords in the top 10, 2 snack pack rankings and then everything else is below 51! I have a feeling that distance depends on many things, but I am wondering if anyone has ever figured out how far away is **too far **to be considered local by Google. My feeling is that sure it would be nice to rank locally for this large city as it would open them up to a really large customer pool, but that maybe 45 minutes away is just not local (I know I personally don't consider that "local"). Again, I understand that ranking locally depends on a really wide range of factors, but I'm considering only distance in this question. Thanks so much!
Local Listings | | KaitlinNS0 -
Not showing in local for primary keyword
I have a client in the junk removal business and I can't get him to show in local for junk removal +city. Junk removal is not a Google Plus category so we have to choose Garbage Collection Service, which everyone else does as well. I've optimized the site and the local listing pretty well, much better than the competitors, but we're still not showing. It's not that we're asking to rank better, we're just trying to get on the list for the one term that makes all the difference in this business. I feel like there's a junk removal party going on and we're not invited. I've thought about a possible over-optimization penalty, but there's no G warning or message and we use fewer keywords than our competitors and have no spammy links as some of the competition does. Some companies that are no longer in business are visible. I just can't figure out what we might be doing wrong. Any ideas or suggestions I might have missed?
Local Listings | | Dino640 -
Segmenting Google Mybusiness traffic in analytics
Hi, Does anyone know if there is a way that I can segment traffic coming from my Google mybusiness listing from my organic traffic? I saw this post from a few years ago, but I'm not sure if this is still works (since so much time has passed). Any insight will be greatly appreciated. http://localu.org/blog/how-to-segment-local-search-analytics/
Local Listings | | AfroSEO0 -
Multiple locations and local directories
Hello, A client has opened a new office in another city. I have created a local landing page for this city. Now I want to build citations for it. However, I have already set up directories like Yelp/Yell with the primary/original address in the original city. Is it OK to set up new citations using the new city local address. The company name stays the same obviously. So I will have duplicate listings on the directories for the same company. Will this work? Thanks for any help
Local Listings | | AL123al1 -
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 | | BohmKalish1230 -
Local Subdomain vs. Local Subfolder
I know this is an issue that's been discussed here ad nauseum but I have, possibly, an interesting case. A third party company created our local search pages, and they perform very highly in SERPs, but are subdomains (local.website.com). But my problem comes down to two things, one of which isn't necessarily a subdomain vs. subfolder issue. 1.a. With the subdomain local.website.com we rank much higher for local search than we do for regular search on our main domain and it's respective keywords, would changing these subdomains to subfolders keep the link juice that the subdomain currently possesses and actually help our website rankings? b. And what strikes me as the most puzzling is that on local.website.com ALL of the content is identical (I can thank Copyscape for that) to the other local search pages on our own site and various other sites in our industry. I know the duplicate content is hurting our domain, which makes it even more confusing that our subdomain is ranking so highly for things like "diamonds by the yard florida". 2. We're an online only company, and I feel as though gaming the local search function isn't exactly something we should be doing, both from an ethical and an SEO standpoint. Is there any evidence that abusing the local search functions can have a negative affect on a domain's rankings? Hopefully this makes sense, if anyone needs clarification please let me know and I'll endlessly clarify. Thanks,
Local Listings | | allurez0