Maps Listing Decrease End of Aug/Beginning of September

[pdrwebsolutions]

Hi there,

I was wondering if I could get some assistance for my Maps Listings. Our property management company, Bay Management Group (https://www.baymgmtgroup.com) started in Baltimore, then added an additional location in Maryland in 2015. We’ve had great success getting both locations to rank organically and in Maps listings for most related terms (property management in Baltimore, Baltimore property management, Maryland property managers, etc.).

We have recently expanded and have opened up a new office in Philadelphia. Organic rankings have been pretty good for this location, and Maps listings were gradually gaining in the rankings throughout the summer, however, around the last week in August/first week in September, we started noticing our Maps listings decreasing in the rankings (organic has remained about the same). At first, it was just the Philadelphia Maps listings that were affected, then that started to spread into the Baltimore and Maryland related rankings (again, just in Maps listings). While Baltimore and Maryland Map rankings have started to improve again, we’re struggling to get Philadelphia related rankings back on track.

We have tried the following items, but still aren’t seeing much of a rebound.

• All Maps listings have been claimed in Google (Baltimore and Maryland were claimed ~2010 and 2015 respectively; Philadelphia was claimed in June 2017)
• Yext and Facebook have been updated to exactly match the phone number and address to how Google Maps has it listed
• The phone number and address on our website (https://www.baymgmtgroup.com/philadelphia/) exactly matches Google and Yext listings (note that the site has Call Tracking Metrics in it to change the appearance of the number when coming from Adwords or organic search)
• Updated all business information in Google Maps (NAP, hours, photos) and have used the new “posts” section to publish company updates

Last week, we also updated our site speed to perform better in Google’s Pagespeed Insights. The site is responsive and has AMP on the blog posts as well. We've also been keeping an eye on Search Console and there aren't any manual actions against the site.

Any thoughts on what we could be overlooking here that’s hindering our listing from rebounding (and improving) on Philadelphia-related Maps listings? Has anyone else noticed significant changes in their Maps listings since the end of August?

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

[pdrwebsolutions]

Hi Joy,

Thanks so much for your response! I had seen that article, but wasn't entire sure if what I was seeing in the results were directly correlated to the Hawk update.

I've attached a screenshot of the Maps rankings changes I was seeing in my ranking checker. Unfortunately, I didn't take screenshots of the live Maps results before, so it's tough to pinpoint with certainty.

I am seeing two separate businesses, each with two locations, now showing up twice in the top 10, so that could definitely be related to the update. However, since I don't have screenshots of the live Maps SERPs, it's difficult to say for sure if that's what was causing our drop in the rankings, which is why I wanted to reach out and see if anyone else is noticing any other factor[s] that we may be overlooking.

Thank you again for your feedback! It could very well be related to the Hawk update!

wMEYA

[pdrwebsolutions]

Hi Don,

Thank you for your response! It could very well be that some of our competitors have recently upped their SEO game, but I'm a bit skeptical that they all upped it at the same time.

We try to be pretty proactive in implementing the latest SEO updates, posting regularly on social media, and publishing at least 3 blogs per week. We have recently also became even more aggressive in our off-page SEO as well, trying to gain the same backlinks as our competitors (and, of course, ones they don't). We haven't seen much of a change in the results yet, but I understand that a lot of these activities take time for results to start showing.

You mentioned that when your client moved to a more competitive market, their rankings also dropped, despite site and foot traffic staying about the same. I'm wondering if since we're so new to the market and our competitors are pretty well established up there, if brand name is currently more relevant to local searchers since it's more familiar. Our site traffic is relatively the same as before, but the majority of that seems to be coming from our existing markets/clients (in Maryland).

Thanks again for your feedback. Definitely something to look into a little deeper.

[donsilvernail]

Great Article Joy,

Johnathan,

I have to think drops here on maps may be due to some of your competitors upping their game. I have a client who has recently moved locations. He was getting great traffic and local actions. Once the move occurred to a more competitive location the traffic remained but the client dropped in local actions (maps and calls)

My suggestion is to up your game with content marketing and backlink campaigns to stay in step with the competition.

Thanks,

Don

[JoyHawkins]

Do you have screenshots from before you started seeing the drop?  It's possible you have an influx of competitors now that Google has loosened the filter.  This happened on August 22 so it fits the timeline you're describing.

Here is my write-up about it: http://searchengineland.com/august-22-2017-hawk-google-local-algorithm-update-282269