How The HELL Is This Site Ranking So Well In Google Places?
-
When I do a search for this site it ranks number 2 on Google just below the official federation of master builders website for the keyword phase "builders in london"
this is the site http://bit.ly/Lypo8E which is a nasty looking blog which has nothing to do with builders and they don't even have an address anywhere on the site.
The only thing I can see is that they are sharing there address with a lot of other businesses and all of the citations from those other businesses are causing them to rank higher on Google places, but surely Google can't be that stupid right?
-
Hi Umit
I took a look at that listing, and it is definitely shady, I can see why you want to know why they rank. To me it looks like they are gaming the places ago fairly hard. There are numerous things that the listing is doing that are possibly against guidelines.
The first is the name, "London Builders" it doesn't just have the location, but it is also a strong keyword variation. this keyword is then repeated in the description, and the url. Using the location in your name and description is against best practices, and can get you in trouble. However it is also extremely effective. While any one of these things wouldn't be enough to rank this high, all three could have that effect. Also, the onpage signals from the site are also reinforcing the ranking.
Frankly, the site looks incredibly spammy. Its a default wordpress template with a couple of posts over the last couple of years that use the keywords. Unfortunately its a example of some of the big weaknesses that the Google Places has right now. This looks like a case of a black or grey hat seo trying to rank a company in Google Places without the company having a actual website.
-
Something else that can affect Google Places positioning is proximity to the centre of the geographical area being searched. So for London, unfortunately, that's the City of London, right where this guy has a virtual office.
The near match keyphrase for the actual business name on Google Places must be helping them out hugely. There may be something in your theory about implied credibility, too, if other highly rated businesses share that address - though my money is on the business name/keyphrase being the main culprit here.
-
LOL, So I just have to buy a keyword domain and add it to Google places then I'll be ranking over 2000 competing companies in Google places? Wow
-
The have their keyword in the domain and have added an address in Google places/maps.
-
While I'm sure those are all factors I do not believe for 1 second that it's as simple as that, but thank you for your reply.
I would test your theory but I'm pretty certain what you've said is not going to rank me number 2.
-
They have included two of the three words in your 'key phrase' in the following:
- URL
- H1 Heading
- Body
- Link
- Image
Those are all things that Google looks at when considering relevance.
Because they have a relatively small amount of text, keyword density will rank the key phrase fairly high.
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
-
A semi client of mine reached out to me recently that another site scraped his whole site and traffic dropped significantly.
Someone that reaches out to me on occasion for help but is mostly an SEO DIYer recently had his site copied completely and his traffic dropped significantly immediately after. I have never had a client experience this in the past. Does anyone have suggestions or expertise on this? See his question and what he has done below. Jeremy This site scraped my credit site. Its appearance coincides with a dramatic sitewide decrease in Google traffic.I submitted a takedown request by paying this company $200. No results yet. My hosting company also placed blocks on the site HTML which pings my server for CSS and picture files. My Google Webmaster tools account shows inbound links coming from the copycat. Is there something more I should be doing? Copy Site: http://masqueros.com/Real Site: https://www.savvyoncredit.com/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jeremyskillings0 -
Homepage not ranking for targeted keywords (established site with somewhat ok UR&DR)
Hello everyone, i have a question regarding my homepage issue. My homepage is not showing up in google search result for all the keywords except brand name. I have checked the following things to make sure my homepage is working properly. 1.The page is indexed. 2.No canonical issues 3.No robots.txt issues. 4.Ahrefs UR45 DR55 while my competitors ranking in 2nd and 3rd page have lower UR and DR Have tens of thousands of backlinks but i think most of them are legit I suspect the problem might be the hoempage has more than 70 Anchor text (Internal links) working as directory, and many of them contain the keywords we are targeting. Will that be the reason my homepage is not ranking at all? Since the google might consider it as keyword stuffing and penalize my homepage for that. What are your thoughts on this? Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | sufanfeiyan0 -
Ranking without SEO?
We have a client that we've been doing white-hat SEO for for over 3 years and they've always been number 1 in Google for all their targeted keywords. This year, their competition has been ranking above them and our client has been pushed towards the bottom of the first page. After thorough research, we discovered that this competitor is doing no SEO at all, just regular PR which our client is also doing. Our client is even spending money in Adwords and their competition isn't. Can anyone explain how a website that does zero SEO can magically be ranked at the top now and above our competitor who we're doing everything possible for?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOhughesm0 -
I have plenty of backlinks but the site does not seem to come up on Google`s first page.
My site has been jumping up and down for many months now. but it never stays on Google first page. I have plenty of back-links, shared content on social media. But what could i be doing wrong? any help will be appreciated. Content is legit. I have recently added some internal links is this might be the cause? Please help .
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | samafaq0 -
Should i rank for one tail keyword or long tail keywords
Hi guys, for example i run a coupon site and would like to rank for the brand keyword ASOS, should i just rank for the long tail keywords for example "ASOS discount code" instead of just "ASOS"? even the traffic for ASOS itself is MUCH higher than ASOS discount code? And the relevancy of ranking at "ASOS" is fine too because is somehow relevant? would ranking long tail helps with one tail keyword too? And assuming that i am already on the second page for the keyword "ASOS" and knowing is not hard to be page one. should i just rank the one keyword?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | andzon0 -
Tags on WordPress Sites, Good or bad?
My main concern is about the entire tags strategy. The whole concept has really been first seen by myself on WordPress which seems to be bringing positive results to these sites and now there are even plugins that auto generate tags. Can someone detail more about the pros and cons of tags? I was under the impression that google does not want 1000's of pages auto generated just because of a simple tag keyword, and then show relevant content to that specific tag. Usually these are just like search results pages... how are tag pages beneficial? Is there something going on behind the scenes with wordpress tags that actually bring benefits to these wp blogs? Setting a custom coded tag feature on a custom site just seems to create numerous spammy pages. I understand these pages may be good from a user perspective, but what about from an SEO perspective and getting indexed and driving traffic... Indexed and driving traffic is my main concern here, so as a recap I'd like to understand the pros and cons about tags on wp vs custom coded sites, and the correct way to set these up for SEO purposes.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com1 -
Do legitimately earned links from unrelated sites help or hurt?
We have a few charity events coming up that have offered to link back to our homepage. While we do genuinely like the charities we are going to sponsor, I'm not sure how those links will look seo-wise. For example, one is for the local high school basketball team and another is for a Pediatric Care Mud Run. To a human, these links make perfect sense, but to a robot, I'm not sure if it differentiates these links from spam/some negative link. Granted, I understand that a small percentage of links probably won't do anything either way, but I'd like to ignore that for the purposes of my question. All things being equal, do links such as these help or hurt? Thanks for your time and insight, Ruben
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Link Building: High Ranking Site vs. Relevancy
Hello, When link building, is it acceptable to link with a site that has high authority but has minimal relevancy to our site? For example, if we sell nutritional products and the link exchange would be with a site that relates to free coupons, would that work? Also, if we are publishing articles on other sites, should we also publish them on our own site? Should we add "nofollow" if we publish them in our site?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | odegi0