Local and Organic Listings

[SEOBirmingham81]

Hi,

My client has a number of stores across the country (UK) and ideally I would like them to appear in both the local and organic listings - at the moment I appear more often than not on page one for one or the other - I have noticed however that some pages appear in both.

I understand that Google will not place a listing for the same page in both local and organic so I need to optimise a page on the site for organic and point my local listing to a different page (home page?). On some results though I am seeing my local result appearing with the home page URL listed but the actual link points to the internal store page which is the same page that is appearing in the organic listing (both on page one). Other local listings of mine appear with the store page URL showing in the result.

I haven't set anything up differently for these stores. Can anyone explain why this is happening?

Thanks,

Dan

[MiriamEllis]

You are very welcome, HippieChick. Glad this helped to clear up a big question at your office!

[ChickChick]

Thank you, Miriam!  I've had my boss so mad at me for loosing page 1 ranking (we have Local ranking) and I couldn't explain what happened, even when I've worked so hard on the SEO of the site. (I'm no expert but there's a only a small budget at our company, and I'm the cheapest option).  I've explained this to him and finally everyone's happy!

[SEOBirmingham81]

Thanks for your help guys,

I'll do some testing and see if I get any positive results.

I'll let you know if anything works.

Cheers,

Dan

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey Dan,

Sorry, got ya.

You know, I am not sure how you go about this with any kind of reliability. Like you say, sometimes it crops up that someone has both but not very often in our experience. That said, the more abstract and hopeless the results then the more wacky and repetitive the organic results seem to get of late.

You could try and optimise some of your citations to get them up in the results on page one and possibly look at content on other sites to try and crowd out the results some with other pages that ultimately link to your clients site. We have had some good success with that for local clients.

Or, alternatively, like Miriam mentioned, try and create other, authoritative pages on the site that are also highly relevant but that may be a bit of a thankless task compared to the relative ease of standard local work.

Sounds like a greedy client wanting both.

Marcus

[Marcus_Miller]

Obviously, not a direct answer, but you could always look at getting some of your citations to rank within the results for your targeted search terms. Also, this is where possible content on other sites can be used to further crowd out those results a little more.

It's good when all rivers run to the same place!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Dan,

In general, you are correct that Google doesn't commonly show a double organic/local ranking on the first page for most companies. There are two main exceptions to this:

1. If the query,locale or both have little competition or Google lacks data about them.

2. The scenario in which a second page on the website is authoritative enough to gain an organic listing, independent of the page that is being linked to from the local result.

Around the Venice update in early 2012, double rankings became almost impossible to find. Slowly, it appears to me that they have become more common in recent times, typically in the above scenarios. There may be other exceptions, as well, but I believe these are the most typical.

[Carla_Dawson]

Hi,

I suggest the following for Local SEO

1. Add address in footer with local schemas
2. NAP - Get your site with its address if possible in local directories or magazines or blog
3. Add Site to Google's Map Maker

Good luck

Carla

[SEOBirmingham81]

Hi Marcus,

Thanks for your reply.

I think I pretty much have all bases covered that you mention, I probably didn't explain myself very well. Probably best I give an example:

A search for 'Self Storage Barking' brings up both local and organic listings obviously but I don't understand how Big Yellow have a local listing and organic listing pointing to the same page. A search for 'Self Storage Eastbourne' again brings up similar results this time for Safestore - both results point to the same page but a search for 'Self Storage Bristol' adds the long store page URL to the local listing, I guess stopping an organic listing too...

I don't understand why one local listing displays the home page URL and points to the store page and another displays the store page URL and blocks the organic listing if they are all set up the same.

Hope that explains better.

Dan

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey Dan

That's kind of confusing to wrap my head around. Have you got an example you can post?

In essence, if you have a local business with multiple locations you are doing two categories of work here.

1. Organic SEO for the site as a whole

2. Local SEO for each location

Local SEO for each location requires a few things to work well in my experience.

2.1. A page on the site optimised for each distinct location (think address, schema, NAP etc)

2.2. An individual Google+ Local listing for each location linked back to the location page

Then the normal rules of local SEO apply and you need citations, local links, reviews etc for each of your individual locations.

A consistent address is important for businesses with a single location but here the scope for things to go wrong is greater so you have to be fastidious in your approach to keeping this consistent.

Audit existing citations, standardise everything, try to get reviews for each location and if they can mention location and service it seems to help more ("If you could mention the office location and service in your review we would really appreciate it").

Your locally optimised page for each store should be able to pop up in local and organic depending on obvious factors (competition etc) and you are creating a solid landing page for localised organic traffic and pure local results (7 pack etc).

The one point here is that you will usually have lots of citations kicking about that you have not created so be sure to audit the existing listings and treat each location as a separate entity. Competition and the approach may be different in Birmingham, Manchester, London etc and the approach may need to be tailored for each location depending on the strength of competition in each area in each location.

Hope that helps!
Marcus