Local site rankings have dropped off first page but Universal went up.
-
My site was performing first page locally on 6 of 20 keywords, and universally on 3 of 20 keywords. We started a link building campaign and optimization about 3 weeks ago. When I looked at the rankings today I was happy to see that 16 of 20 keywords were in the top 20 rankings universally, but not happy to see that only 1 of the 25 words were ranking locally now. I lost my local ranking on 5 very important keywords. I realize that you can not rank first page for both local and organic but its as if I traded my first page local ranking for a universal ranking that appears lower on the page. Maybe someone could point me in the right direction.
-
In this article they suggest that local/blogs about your area carry more weight in local results: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2065673/Link-Building-for-Local-Search
So, what kind of link building did you do? Citations? Blog posts?
This goes along with what Miriam said, but did you include a name, address and phone in the link building? If so, did you use the same address for all of them?
Are you using schema location data on the site you are optimizing? Do you have the meta tag for the geo location in the header?
-
I was trying to find some information or data that shows a correlation between global linking and a drop in local search results. Could you forward me any information you have on it? Thanks.
-
Hi Whmgatx,
I'm no expert at linkbuilding, but I would suggest you make double sure that nothing that was done could have caused a penalty of the Google Places/Google+ Local pages. For instance, make sure that as part of your optimization work, no one on the team over-optimized a listing, created a duplicate listing or created new listings that share items like phone numbers. Just a thought.
-
I'm guessing here since I don't have any data about your campaign, but your link building could have affected the SERPs in that way.
Linking your site from global oriented sites or sites scattered on hosts or ccTLDs around the globe, could have that effect, versus boosting your local rankings if you focus your link building campaign on relevant local sources.
Off course. there may be other factors, but from what you mention it could be the case.
Did you have a noticeable higher percentage of local link partners before starting your campaign? -
It looks like the keywords changed drastically on the 13th. My site was last indexed on the 11th so I am assuming that it can't be onsite issues ?
I guess my next step would be to find out what links have been indexed from the 13th on? Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for your help!
-
Getting served local results can be hit or miss on some phrases. It is possible that local results just weren't generated when the rankings were generated, so it had no data to go on. So, what I'd suggest doing is check your webmaster tools to get an idea of where the keyword has been ranking over the past week, and compare that to prior to your link building. When you click on the keyword in your webmaster tools it should have a list saying where it has ranked, and not just the average ranking position.
Also, I have a bunch of phrases that generate both universal and local results on the first page. I primarily work in the automotive vertical, and I see it with internal pages optimized for used cars, and having a Google Places optimized for used cars as well. The internal page only exists because the home page wasn't converting those customers very well, but it's a nice bonus to take up 2 of the top 5 spots.
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
-
Angular website and ranking
Hi guys Unfortunately I have to optimize the angular website, but I don't know how google see my website. Seo quacke (seo extension) doesn't get data from this website: https://cafegardesh.com and sitemap generation tools just crawl 1 page of this website. why? How find that google really crawl and index angular website?
Reporting & Analytics | | denakalami0 -
Link Activity to site keeps decreasing
Recently I have started seeing daily declines in the total inbound links to my site. 4 of my top 5 sources are all experiencing pretty significant declines and in fact, Pinterest has declined from a high of 16,295 links in Nov '15 to a current number that is 8,479 on 1/6/16. Any ideas on what could be causing these declines? I did upload a new sitemap in Nov, could this be the cause?
Reporting & Analytics | | ctripp10100 -
Google Analytics Landing Page Report Discrepancy
I have noticed that when I run a landing page report and use the advanced option so I can view only the landing pages that include a particular string in the URL, have noticed that I in the report, the graph at the top will say one thing, but the data below says something else. For example, the graph for one particular search shows 200 Impressions, but the info below says 700 impressions and 610 clicks. Anyone seen anything similar or have any ideas why? Thanks! Craig
Reporting & Analytics | | TheCraig0 -
Not many pages being indexed on google
Hi I am putting in to Google: site:www.mysite.com to see the pages listed on Google - the figure Google is coming back with is much lower than the actual pages, I have no crawer warning etc... What could the problem be? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | acumenadagency0 -
SEOmoz ranking off
In my last SEOmoz rankings update one of my keywords went from 1 to not in the top 50. This keyword is my brand name. It makes no sense that SEOmoz would say that it ranks not in the top 50 when I went to check it out on Google, we're still ranked number 1. I thought that this was very odd that the ranking would be so off. Has anyone else has this issue. uALPO uALPO.png
Reporting & Analytics | | MonsterWeb280 -
Open Site Explorer Discrepency
Hi, I'm just starting to look into this tool as a result of the need to analyse some work that is being carried out on my site by an external SEO company that is charging absolute top dollar. I'm sure it's a simple answer, but looking at the attached image you will see that the total links is shown as 219 which is described as links from all sources. However the report that is on the page shows only 44 links which would appear to be a report based on the same criteria. What is the difference in the numbers please? Simon siteExplorer.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | simonphumphries0 -
What is the best way to track mobile sites in Google Analytics?
Hello! I am wondering what the pros and cons of using the regular Google Analytics tracking code on a mobile site versus the tracking documentation from Google specifically on it found at http://code.google.com/mobile/analytics/docs/web/ which is still in labs mode. Does the mobile specific tracking have the same features as the regular one to be able to track events and report the same statistics? Thanks for the help on this one!
Reporting & Analytics | | CabbageTree0 -
Home page rankings disappeared - Google Penalty?
Hi, I have a clients website that I have been working on for a few months now. On-page SEO for home page is A for all target keywords. All Domain / subdomain / external link data etc. much stronger than all competition. But approx 3 months ago (before Panda update) all home page rankings (except 1 keyword) dropped out sight in Google rankings. 3 months later, still can't work out why. Sometimes rankings come back onto page 9 or so then drop out again. Deeper pages are not effected, just the Home page. Looks like a Google penalty to me but can't work out why. Any suggestions would be gratefully received. Website is - www.marrikashairextensions.com Many thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | websearchseo0