Local SEO - My Ranking depends on City of the user - Rank tracker is failing
-
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 ???
-
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!
-
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
-
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.
-
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%
-
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.
-
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.
-
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:
-
That you haven't yet made the right efforts with your Google+ profile and 3rd party directory listings.
-
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?)
-
That you are suffering from a penalty for real or perceived spammy behavior (such as violation of Google's guidelines, review spamming, etc.)
-
That you haven't received enough reviews to surpass competitors.
-
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
-
-
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).
-
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/
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
-
International SEO : Redirecting spanish visitors to spanish site
Hi There, I have a problem I need an advice for. I run an e-commerce site in French. Things are going well. I also run the Spanish version of this site. We are starting to sell. But nothing like French site. I have traffic coming to the French site from Spain from visitors with Spanish language and they don't buy anything. That is strange as the conversion rate is good. Si I want to redirect them to the Spanish site. We sell phone parts. Our SEO is mainly based on brands, make, and reference numbers. So keywords are almost the same in both languages. Of course, site.es is aiming at google.es, and site.fr at google.fr So I am wondering. If I redirect these visitors to the Spanish site, Will it affect french site's SEO? Thanks
International SEO | | Kepass0 -
Can multiple hreflang tags point to one URL? International SEO question
Moz, Hi Moz, Can multiple hreflang tags point to a single URL? For example, if I have a Canadian site (www.example.com/ca) that targets French and English speakers can I have the following: or would I use: Any insight would be very helpful and greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance!
International SEO | | DA20131 -
Site Ranking in all countries except USA
Hello, I have a site www.apdermatology.com in is ranking #1 for
International SEO | | element8design
"Dermatologist Chelsea Mi" "Dermatologist Chelsea Michigan" In Google in Canada, UK, Australia, Etc.. But in the USA it is on the 4th+ Page, it has been this way for weeks if not months. And does not seem to come up. I originally thought maybe that google was penalizing the site although, it comes up in all other counties. Does anyone have any recommendations how to resolve this, or what the problem may be? Thanks.0 -
Why would a site lose rankings in U.S while maintaining rankings in other English locations (Canada & Australia)
What would cause a site to lose ranking in the U.S while maintaining top (1st page) positions in other English results countries such as Canada or Australia? Is this purely penguin related because of location of backlinks or are there other significant factors that could be in play? Would this rule out Panda as a cause because it's simply an "English language" targeted algo and not location dependent like backlinks (penguin)? Appreciate any insights
International SEO | | ResumeGenius0 -
Redirecting users based on location
My site is available in EN, DE, SW, SP, FR, IT, CH and JP. However, the EN sites ranks much better than the other languages, and even when searching in another language the EN homepage is normally the result that appears. Would it be worthwhile to automatically redirect users to the site in the same language they are searching in or country they are searching from? If so, how do I go about this? Thanks!
International SEO | | theLotter0 -
International SEO whats best 2 sites co.uk and com.au ?
We have the co.uk and com.au ccTLDS and currently operate out of the UK only but plans are in place for Australia. We can't get hold of the .org or .com so it has to be the ccTLD. I want to use the same site for both countries and either host 2 identical sites (same content) or 1 site with different domain names + meta tags for the 2 countries. Whats the best way to make this happen without screwing things up?
International SEO | | therealmarkhall0 -
What's the best strategy for checking international rankings?
Hi There- I am looking to optimize sites serving the UK and Austrailia markets. I feel like I have a good handle on how to go about doing that, but what I am fuzzy on is, what's the best way to monitor the SERPs for the keywords I am targeting. I know based on experience that if I just search google.com.au from here in the states, my results will be 'americanized' and may/probably won't accurately reflect what someone would see if they were search from Austrailia. Are there any good tools or tactics for seeing what searchers in the countries I am focusing on woudl see? Thanks! Jason
International SEO | | phantom0 -
Australia specific SEO tips?
For those who are conducting SEO here in Australia: A lot of the info I read, and there is a lot, is generally from the States or UK it seems. Are there any things in particular I should look out for when doing SEO in Australia? Are there any SEO tips that are particular to Australia only? What directories are a must in Australia?
International SEO | | iSenseWebSolutions0