Local SEO - My Ranking depends on City of the user - Rank tracker is failing

[stereo69]

Hello,

The search results differ completly depending on the user location.

The websites yoagbarcelona.org  targets poeple from barcelona:

Barcelona;

User location Barcelona web is on the last position on first page:

http://screencast.com/t/ZsIeiCeLRM

User location New York  1st.

http://screencast.com/t/PzaLbwWW4xx:

Also  SEO MOZ  rank tracker is showing me that im no 1in google.es for yoga barcelona.

The problem is that this is only true for users outside the region

The site has very bad ranking in google places and you need to go down to page 10 until my yoga studio shows up in the maps results.

I did some hardcore citation building and signed up in almost all local directories that google pulls data from within one month and optimised the google places / plus profile.

Please give me some advice how I could overcome the problem.???

Especially on what part should i focus when optimising the page. ???

Are there any other good strategies for getting into google places ???

Do I need more links from local sites or how is this local serps working ???

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Daria,

That is tough if these wrong citations are stemming from personal websites rather than business directories. I can see how it will be harder to get them changed. You are doing what would be advised - writing to the owners to request that they either edit or remove the citation. With directories, it's more formalized, so easier. But, the process is the same - finding everything you can and slogging through trying to get them changed. If a couple of weeks go by and you haven't heard from the bloggers, I would write again. You could also try commenting on the blog posts that reference the business.

Finally, you can also start a thread in the Google and Your Business Forum to discuss your inability to remove old citations:

http://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!forum/business

I'm glad a refresher on the guidelines helped you to identify and issue you were having. Good luck, Daria!

[stereo69]

Hi,

I will try my best to delete all wrong citations. Are their any good resources how to do this?

I aproched the site owners but most of them are not answering.

In one case it's a .wordpress blog and no contact at all. I already aproched wordpress but they told my that they need a court decision to give me contact or take the content down.

I will keep fighting on this.

Thanks for the Places Guidelines. I checked thema again and I din't know that I have to put suite number on line 2. Pretty anoing that in Spain only post card verification exist so now I have to wait for a 2 weeks for that little change (suite no on 2nd line instead of 1st adress line)

Thanks

Best Regards

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Daria,

Absolutely, fix those citations, if you can. Improper citations confuse Google and can drag your rankings down. In fact, your ability to rank could be being cut in half by the fact that Google is associating two different business names with the same address. That would be the next step.

And, just to be sure you have these - here are Google's Places Guidelines, to be certain you haven't accidentally violated any of them:

http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528

I think cleaning up those citations will be very important, Daria.

[stereo69]

Hello Miriam,

The situation is still the same. User location outside Spain no 1 and on the bottom of page 1 for the local user location after 10 days.

I carefully run though your 5 points list but I can only think of point 1 and 5 to affect my rankings negativly.

There are some incorrect old citation around that may harm local search relults. Also stange is that I have to go very far down to find the business in the maps results as the profile is pretty optimized but not spamy.

https://plus.google.com/111033204065378971279/about?gl=es&hl=de

Buisness name is Aditi Yoga Barcelona but some citations have another buissness name  but same other details. around 5%

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Daria,

Citations and links are both important, for sure. Did you run through my 5 point list to be sure you are okay on all of those points? I think this is important.

[stereo69]

Hello,

Thanks for all those good suggestions.

So far everybody agrees that the local citations are important but this is exactly where I started. As I'm more interesed in maps results I started stright away with citation building and be in all relevant industry and local directories as yelp, qype and all the directories where google pulls data from for Barcelona local buisnesses.

I also did use Whitespark but I found it as usefull as searching for my competitors phone number and business name in google.

So I was really expecting that I would be the other way round. Having a strong position only in the local searches but it just happend the other way round.

As next step I will do some quality linkbuilding offering discounts and other incentives to attractive communities, guestblogging, article marketing and forum posting.

[MiriamEllis]

Hello, Daria,

As both Brent & Donnie have mentioned, both citations and links are important parts of a local SEO campaign. The fact that you are doing well organically, but failing to break into the blended local rankings could indicate:

1. That you haven't yet made the right efforts with your Google+ profile and 3rd party directory listings.

2. That you are located too far from the center of business (are you located right next to the other businesses being ranked in the local pack or are you far from them?)

3. That you are suffering from a penalty for real or perceived spammy behavior (such as violation of Google's guidelines, review spamming, etc.)

4. That you haven't received enough reviews to surpass competitors.

5. That your business is too new to begin outranking older competitors.

There are other factors to consider. Those are top ones.

If you've just started building citations (thumbs up on Whitespark's tool), understand that it will take some time to for these to go into effect and begin helping the listing. The same applies to linkbuilding.

I also see room for improvement with the website itself. While it's great that you've got your name, address and phone number on your footer and contacto page, from what I can see, there are only 4 pages currently on the site. Your Horrarios y Precios page lists classes, but could not find a text description of what these classes are. I would expect a site like yours to have a unique page for each of its types of classes, and possibly pages for its wonderful instructors, too. If not unique pages for each, then at least a single page listings all of these things (optimized, of course, for Barcelona). I also do not see a blog on the site, and that might be something else to investigate. Out-writing your competitors can be a powerful approach to edging higher up in the SERPs.

Hope these thoughts help. Buena suerte!

Miriam

[SEODinosaur]

Brent explained it very well I'd like to help with your last two questions

"Are there any other good strategies for getting into google places ???"

Yes, get citations for your site. Not sure what they are in Barcelona, however in the us: yellopages.com; yelp.com; yahoo.com/local; citysearch.com; whitepages.com; chamber of commerce... Any citation site where you can list your company name address and phone number (website optional) will help. By getting citation you give credibility to your cite in Google eyes.

"Do I need more links from local sites or how is this local serps working ???"

Yes getting links from local sites is an excellent way to get better rankings locally. This will help you with your organic rankings for the term "yoga barcelona" or "barcelona yoga" or "yoga in barcelona". Ideally you want to anchor your links with a natural look (majority of your links should anchor with the URL/Brand name). I like to use SEOmoz keyword tracking tool to find my low hanging fruit (keywords with low competition and high local traffic).

[Mr.Rangen]

Back when I had an agency, we'd use whitespark.

Have you tried Whitespark?

I've seen great-beautiful rank trackers that will sometimes overlook the obvious, like pulling from a country code version of Google w/out requiring a geographically-similar based IP.

I would look into proxies with similar locations to your user and hope you don't pull from the wonkiest data center.. which seems to happen to me all the time.

Rank tracking quality is definitely declining. The fluidity and dynamic results are so temperamental right now. Always changing. Hang in there, watch your impressions and traffic as well as rankings. It's almost becoming more of a novelty value or "big picture" value than traditional, "I rank #1 for this keyword" type mentality.

Favorite resources:

http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml#topten

http://www.seobook.com/depth-review-whitesparks-local-citation-finder

http://www.davidmihm.com/blog/seo-industry/best-citation-sources-by-category/