Places page help

[onlinechester]

Hi I was hoping somebody could provide me with some help regarding places pages.

If I search 'recruitment agencies Chester' I get this result https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=recruitment+agencies+chester&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&gws_rd=cr&ei=LsBTUr6rJ8Sw0wXt74CQAg

I am confused as to why certain sites are ranking higher than others for example:

The site with the a) ranking has no reviews and the place page doesn't seem particularly optimised.

The site ranked at c) has 2 bad reviews

The site ranked at g) seems to have a much more optimised places page yet ranks below the other sites.

Is this just a strange batch of results or can somebody provide me with more information/ help? I don't understand the ranking system at the moment.

Thanks for any help you might be able to offer!

[MiriamEllis]

Good point, Linda! It's listed as the seventh most-influential factor in the Local Search Ranking Factors 2013, but that doesn't explain what you have, regarding organic factors and the cream at the top:)

[LindaBuquet]

Yes, Miriam is right. Lots of factors in the mix.

But what controls the TOP of the 7 pack, usually the top 3 - 4 (depends on market) is ORGANIC ranking factors. So when you see a listing sitting at A that's unclaimed and has no reviews, may not even have many citations, but it's the strength of the site that put it on top - not Place page ranking factors.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi OnlineChester,

Ocelot has smartly pointed out the role of citations in the results. This is quite true, but there are several hundred other factors in Google's Local algo, so if you want to be able to diagnose the competition, you need to take many, many things into account. I recommend that you study the recent Local Search Ranking Factors 2013.

For example, the top ten factors deemed most influential are:

1. Proper category associations

2. Physical address in city of search

3. Consistency of structured citations

4. Quality/authority of structured citations

5. HTML NAP matching place page NAP

6. Quantity of structured citations

7. Domain authority of website

8. Individually owner-verified Local+ page

9. City/state in Places landing page title

10. Proximity of address to centroid

So, these are just a few to get started on. Hopefully by studying the whole report I've linked to, you will be able to begin assessing your competition. There are, of course, some instances in which spam gets into Google's local pack of results, meaning that legit businesses are being outranked by spam, but typically, what you see in the pack is based on a large number of factors, and the best thing you can do is to excel in as many of these areas as possible yourself. Hope this helps!

[ocelot]

Without looking into too much detail, you also need to factor in that the listings might have more external citations which are causing them to rank higher in the results, the landing URL in Google's opinion is a better match right down to the location of the business in the city.

Getting more external citations and completing your listing 100% will help.  Ensuring that the naming and address structure is the same across all external citations Yell, Yelp, Scoot etc.

On your URL on your Google places listing ensure that it contains the address, local telephone number of the business.  This does not always need to be the homepage especially if you have multiple locations.

Hope this helps