An apparent ranking mystery...

[cbizzle]

I built the site https://www.sylvaniachurch.com about 5 years ago, but the site has been live for more than a decade. Tyler has hundreds of churches and Sylvania Church currently site ranks second for most variations of "churches in tyler tx." Sylvania has a well-optimized homepage, several well-optimized subpages, a consistent sermon audio feed, and an increasingly used blog. In addition to what's on the site, there are a few other relevant sites that link to the Sylvania site and I have completed profiles on virtually every business listing site known to man.

Here's the oddity. The website that ranks third and even displaces Sylvania for the second place spot from time to time (http://www.crosspointecc.com/) has only been a live URL for a few years, has no readable text on the homepage other than the nav menu, has very little content on the subpages, no blog that I can find, and fewer links from less authoritative sites.

What's even odder to me is that Sylvania Church has the following numbers according to the MozBar:

PA: 26

mR: 3.64

mT: 3.28

DA: 14

DmR: 3.27

DmT: 2.74

The numbers for CrossPointe:

PA: 24 (2 less than Sylvania)

mR: 4.68 (1.04 higher than Sylvania)

mT: 5.30 (2.02 higher than Sylvania)

DA: 13 (1 less than Sylvania)

DmR: 2.98 (.28 less than Sylvania)

DmT: 3.49 (.75 higher than Sylvania)

The obvious question is, "Why does Moz like this site better than mine? What am I missing?"

Thanks for any help you guys can give!

[MiriamEllis]

That's great, Chad. Good luck in the work ahead!

[cbizzle]

I appreciate both of you. This is beyond helpful! Off to local SEO work I go!

[MiriamEllis]

Haha - thank you Egol! I think you really got to the heart of the matter in your reply here. The decision regarding what it is most beneficial to rank for (just churches or a particular religion's church) is really the point here and you spotted that immediately. Your comments are always of such insight and value.

[EGOL]

Oh... Good.   Miriam replies.  

She knows a lot more about local search than I do, and a lot more than just about anyone.

Thank you Miriam.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Chad!

Congratulations on all of the hard work you've been doing for this church. They are lucky to have someone who is so concerned about making the best possible effort.

What I see in looking at your stats compared to the other church is that you are pretty much neck-and-neck. You are higher in some areas and they are higher in some areas, so the fact that the two churches have similar rankings for this and that seems normal to me.

I agree with Egol's assessment that it would be better for you to be more specific in your optimization efforts. I can only base this on my own experience. If I am a Catholic and am new in town, I'm going to search Google for 'Catholic Church' in my town. I'm not just going to search for 'churches'. Similarly, if I am a Baptist or a Reformed Baptist, and am decided about my religion, I'm going to search for my religion's particular type of church. The only reason I can see for any religion to want to simply rank for 'church' would be if they are trying to promote themselves to people who have no decided religion ... or possibly to tourists who like to visit various interesting churches as places of interest on vacation. So, I'm not sure if the decision on your part to simply rank for 'churches' stems from an evangelical effort to interest people who are not already Reformed Baptists or if there is some other thinking behind this. To me, wanting to simply rank for 'church' is a bit like wanting to simply rank for 'store'. It's more clear and direct to be a 'Reformed Baptist Church' or a 'Shoe Store', right?

In fact, here's something odd and anecdotal: setting my location to Tyler, Tx and searching just for 'churches', Google isn't even understanding my intent in their local pack of results. Instead, they think I'm looking for Church's Chicken Restaurant! Oops! But, if I search for Reformed Baptist Church with my location set to Tyler, you'll be happy to know that your church is ranking #3 organically and has a full result, complete with its Google+ Local information. Reformed Baptist Churches as a different search gives me a local 2-pack and you are #1 in it. For just Baptist Churches however, you are not in the 7-pack but are in the organic results. Forgive my ignorance on this - I'm not totally sure what the difference is between a Baptist Church vs. a Reformed Baptist Church, but if Baptists can choose to go to various types of churches, this would be a search I'd think it was valuable to rank in the local pack for.

Given all this, what I would suggest would be:

1. Consider fine tuning your on-page optimization to be specific rather than generic about your religion.

2. Looks like you're in lots of the major citation sources but there are inconsistent and incomplete listings, according to our Moz Check Listing tool:

https://moz.com/local/details/JTI1NUIlMjUyMlN5bHZhbmlhJTI1MjBDaHVyY2glMjUyMiUyNTJDJTI1MjI3NTcwMSUyNTIyJTI1MkMlMjUyMlN5bHZhbmlhJTI1MjBDaHVyY2glMjUyMiUyNTJDJTI1MjIyODAxJTI1MjBTb3V0aCUyNTIwU291dGhlYXN0JTI1MjBMb29wJTI1MjAzMjMlMjUyMiUyNTJDJTI1MjI3NTcwMSUyNTIyJTI1MkMlMjUyMjkwMzU5MjE1OTElMjUyMiUyNTVE

Clean these up and be sure you're listed on all 15 platforms, as well as other citation sources. Pay close attention to any listing Moz Check Listing surfaces as a duplicate.

3. Your Google+ Local page has only earned 5 reviews. This could be improved, for sure!

4. Take a close look at your Google+ Local categories. You have them listed in this order: Church, Reformed Church, Baptist Church. Google wants categories to be as specific as possible, so, if you determine that ranking for Baptist Church is more important than just Church, I'd make Baptist Church your primary category. Correct categorization is so important!

5. Don't forget that Local SEO hinges largely on the concept of the user-as-centroid these days. Your congregation members on one side of town will likely be seeing a different ordering of the results than those on the other side of town. Don't overlook this important point, because it relieves some of the pressure you may be feeling about attaining some kind of ultimate #1 rankings; there are no ultimate #1 rankings - everyone sees different ones. Consider the user as centroid and the possibility of some additional hyperlocal optimization. See: https://moz.com/blog/mastering-serving-the-user-as-centroid

6. Take a close look at the mindset behind how you are promoting the church, in terms of whom you consider your competitors to be. In my view, your competitors are other Baptist Churches - not Catholic Churches, Methodist Churches, or just 'Churches' in general. Making this distinction could help you view your website and other marketing efforts in a whole new, more accurate light.

Hope this helps! My comments can't replace a formal audit, but I hope they are a useful start.

[cbizzle]

Thanks for your reply. Your tip about the title tag is particularly helpful.

Both sites should rank for variations of "churches" because most people who search "churches" aren't looking for a church directory website. They are looking for Google to list out the websites of individual churches in the area. That said, I do see that including the word "churches" could make us look more like a directory to Google, but we rank #2 in organic search in a city with hundreds of churches, so I'm concerned to make too many adjustments that won't clearly benefit.

Regarding local SEO, I have done lots of that, but we still don't rank at the top. Do you see any obvious local SEO factors that we've left undone?

[EGOL]

What am I missing?

Moz numbers do not determine Google rankings.

Google likes the other site better for this query.  Neither of your sites are appropriate destinations for a person who searches for "churches in tyler tx".    Neither of your sites should be ranking for this query.

Google might not care for your site because your title tag begins with "Churches Tyler Texas".  That title is appropriate for a church directory but not for your website.  Google knows that your site is not a directory of churches in that community.    If you search for "Baptist Church in Tyler Texas" (which I think is the perfect query for you to attract visitors) and look at how your title tag is shown, you should see that Google has changed your title tag.  They don't enjoy it for this query.

If I ran this site I would change the title tag to Sylvania Baptist Church - Tyler Texas (or something similar, being very direct about what the site is about and not trying to use the title tag to present your  site as a directory of churches.

To accomplish to goal of being visible when someone searches for a Baptist Church(es) in Tyler Texas, I would focus my efforts on local search, rather than organic search.  A good place to start learning about local search is here... https://moz.com/learn/local

Being optimized for local search will qualify your site to be listed on the map of churches that appears for the query "baptist churches in tyler texas"  OR  "churches in tyler texas".   These queries are where the action is at for your target searcher.

I see that you are on the map and in the local pack for "churches in tyler texas".   Getting better optimized for local search might help you do better for this more important query.