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
-
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?
-
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!
-
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.
-
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.
-
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).
-
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.
-
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.
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
-
Google Listing Doesn't Appeare on 3Pack anymore
Hi, One of my GMB listing suddenly stopped ranking in the 3Pack Results. It used to always rank in 1st or 2nd position in the 3Pack results, Suddenly since 24th May it completely Flatlined, I don't know why but It doesn't show up in the results, or when I click see more. It completely vanished for that term locally. My Listing is based in Brisbane, QLD, Australia and it doesn't show up for that term in The Brisbane area. But when the Location info is Australia and not Brisbane, Australia it shows up again. I don't know what is the problem in this case... Any Suggestions will be much appreciated.
Local Listings | | Moxoms10 -
Adding Multiple Country Locations for Google Business Listings
Hi Moz community, I hope everyone is well. I would like to ask for your advice on how to show a Google Business listing in both the UK and US for our brand. I understand that you can add multiple locations to your Google listing under the 'Manage Locations' tab but I wasn't quite sure how it worked in practice. I have a couple of questions below: If we have 2 registered locations/offices (one in the UK and one in the US) are we able to create 2 separate locations that will show our business listing correctly in the right-hand margin when people search for our brand in the US and UK respectively? If so, when a user finds our business listing in the US, are we able to serve them our US website version when they click the 'Website' button, as opposed to showing them our UK website? Our US website has been created as a sub-directory from our main UK site and can be seen as: www.example.com/us/ I hope someone is able to help, and thank you in advance.
Local Listings | | Katarina-Borovska
Katarina0 -
How to Rank in Yelp
Hello everyone! I manage SEO for a pretty large brand that has close to 100 office locations nationwide. In the last year we have completely revamped our Yelp pages. This has been a great secondary source of traffic and conversions for us because of the type of industry we are in. The problem is, it can be exponentially better if we were more visible. We have done almost everything we can to make our pages as good if not better than almost any competitor regardless of geographic location. We even have the enhanced profiles (extortion) that remove competitors ads from appearing on our listings. Here is what we have done in the last year to each listing: Uploaded tons of photos Increased reviews Added proper categories Fine-tuned all of our CTAs Added in a unique and optimized business description ( Available with enhanced profiles) Set the proper service area range on their map Increased our review response rate ( both negative and positive) to 100% Still, even after months and months have gone by we struggle to rank on the first page for our service category. Doing manual searches often turn up competitors, who do not even have their listing claimed, have no photos, little reviews will rank higher than us. Even though we have an account rep because of our business size, bringing this issue up to them is about as useful as talking to a blanket. They push CPC so hard that its the last thing they are willing to help with. It has gotten to the point where I am honestly starting to believe in a self-curated conspiracy theory that they purposely hold larger brands back in organic to sell CPC harder. Obviously certain brands that hold the branding clout like a "Best Buy" would be hard to get away with. But still, we do all the right things and we are getting very minimal results compared to where we should be. Has anyone else had issues with Yelp or have any ideas on some steps we could take to appease their particular algorithm? Thanks! -Ben
Local Listings | | Davey_Tree1 -
Google My Business for 2 Websites With the Same Location
Hi,
Local Listings | | alihus
My client has two separate websites with different business names but under one location and phone number. The websites are for two separate services that he offers.
My question is that if creating two Google+ for business pages for the two businesses bad for their SEO or local ranks?
And what about creating local listings for both?(This does not seem logical to me personally!!)
Thank you for the kind answers in advance.0 -
My Evernote Notes showing up on Google Search page ?
I may just be living under a rock here in Reno, but tonight while doing a search (on desktop) for a phone number of a restaurant in Tahoe, Google served me a bunch of my Evernote notes along with my SERPS After the initial "WTFriday" moment, I realized that there was an "Evernote" bar above a series of images of what Google must think are related notes --- for example in a few weeks I am planning to take friends to Bliss & Rubicon - and I had saved the map in Evernote. Next to the map image were two notes related to daughters upcoming swim meet in South Tahoe. I did a similar search and this time a listing for hours at a local pool (near Tahoe) and two other documents came up. Since I live in Reno I thought it was odd to get all those Tahoe activities - but the fact that my Evernote on "Tahoe" things was there caught me off guard. The results were locate on the right hand where local business maps usually are -- the map and business info about the restaurant I was looking for appeared below that. ... while the left hand column features traditionals SERPs. . I am just trying to find out if I am late to the party on this ... or if serving data saved in my Evernote files is new... If anyone else has seen this, let me know. I could just be late to this. ...
Local Listings | | AJFanter0 -
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 | | Houdoe1 -
Why I'm I ranking so low on Google Maps
About 3 months I started a website (www.guyetteroofing.com) for my roofing business in Montgomery, Alabama. The site is still a work in progress, however, because the competition doesn't really market via internet it was fairly easy to rank on Google Maps. Within 1 month the business was letter "A" in Google Maps. About 3 three weeks ago my ranking was dropped considerably, not showing up at all in letters A through G. The business is still indexed in Google Maps, but only represented by a small red dot. My website is still ranking pretty high for "roofers in Montgomery", but my position on Google Maps has all but disappeared. I have no idea what I've done to be rank so low on Google Maps but still have a solid position on regular Google Search. I've checked my citations and my NAPs, there are a few inconsistencies but nothing major. How can I rank so far below my competition if I have twice as many citations, an actual website, and a Google Plus page?
Local Listings | | billyguyette0 -
Google Maps redirect notice on track-able URL's (how do I track maps visits in analytics?)
We've been using trackable URL's to track Google My Business visits in analytics for years.
Local Listings | | RedNovaLabs91
Example: ?utm_source=GoogleLocal&utm_medium=example&utm_campaign=example In the past month I've noticed Google showing a redirect notice on any listing with a trackable URL. It happened for a day or so a few weeks ago - and then it's been a more permanent situation since this past week. Redirect Notice
The previous page is sending you to: www.example.com
If you do not want to visit that page, you can return to the previous page. I'm fine with removing the trackable URL's - however - I'm not sure how to track maps visits via analytics without using them. I can't find any updated information on options. The last post on moz was in 2011 (http://moz.com/blog/tracking-traffic-from-google-places-in-google-analytics). The alternate tactics in that post no longer work. So my question is:
- How do I track Google Maps (My Business) visits through analytics without using tracking URLs?1