Has Google Local search algorithm changed in the last 6 months?

[CalicoKitty2000]

My organic search results have increased, but I noticed that my Google local search results have dropped drastically.  I haven't changed anything on the local side.  I consistently get reviews.  In my industry, I have more reviews (all 5 star) than anyone else.  It actually shows weird results, like competitors that have no reviews and don't even have all of their information filled out.  It is even showing competitors that are out of business.  I have a lot of citations with the same NAP.  I use Moz local for this purpose as well.

So, I am wondering if the algorithm has changed and if I need to update my profile to match it.

Thank you in advance!

[MiriamEllis]

Thanks so much for letting our community know you're finding a lot of help here. That's wonderful!

Sounds like you have some good improvements planned migrating to Wordpress. To me, it looks like location/contact could possibly be turned into a single page, making more room in your menu for a blog link, but that's a call you'd need to make. I can see from the blog post you've shared that you're looking to put lots of effort into the blog, so giving it a priority link makes sense to me!

Good luck with all you're doing!

[CalicoKitty2000]

This is an example of one of our blog posts... one of my favorites.  Maybe I should highlight these better somehow...

http://www.sealeveler.com/flfishingblog/summer-time-highs-lows-go-pros/

[CalicoKitty2000]

Thank you again so much!  It is amazing to find people willing to help out us small businesses. You have no idea really how much I appreciate it!

The blog is listed on the front page about 3/4 the way down (http://www.sealeveler.com/flfishingblog/florida-fishing-blog).  I have been thinking I should put it in the menu, but my husband doesn't want me to change the menu. I would have to get rid of something that's there, or make a pull down menu.  He is against pull down menus because he thinks a large portion of our customers get confused by pull down menus (a large portion of our customers aren't very computer literate and always compliment us on the simplicity of our site). But, our customer base is slowly changing to those that are used to technology. But, he likes how simple our menu is... so I keep it.... for now.    If I make my move to Wordpress... this will provide an opportunity for menu redesign.  lol!

Our blog is a combination of fishing reports and fishing stories told by my husband.   Many of them are about customers and are pretty good stories.  One of them has a video our customer sent to us and allowed us to use.  A teenager put the video together and did a great job!  We have been lacking on the stories lately because I have been starting a new business and put most of my focus there.  We will need to get back on the stories though.  We have also started fishing forecast reports, which are getting a lot of attention through facebook.  And, I plan to start to share fishing charter videos via the blog as well.

I agree on the boats page and I need to do that.  It is validating to hear you say that as well.  We are in the process of upgrading many of our boats and plan to take better photos as well.  So, thank you for mentioning that.  It puts more of a fire under my backside to hear you say that.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Calico!

So glad you are getting helpful input from our cool community, here

I did not see that you have a blog! Where is it? I'm not seeing it in the top menu. That would contain the kind of content opportunities I was thinking of. Your homepage is good. The Boats page might be a little more descriptive; effort is there and basic technical info is there, but maybe a little bit more about why each boat would be the best choice for certain 'user' groups? And I think there is more opportunity for customer stories here. I notice the 'Our Daily Catch' section at bottom of the site and that is cool, but maybe if you could work with a few of your best customers to tell their stories of what it's like to hire your services, that would provide some more color and excitement.

Excited to know you have a blog. Definitely would be important to be sure it's easy to find and regularly updated.

[CalicoKitty2000]

Thank you for taking the time to look at my site!!!  So kind of you!

I will make the updates on NAP on the Contact and Location page, good suggestion!

I have tried to balance my on-page SEO for searches for 4 of the local cities and do rank 1-4 on most of them.  So, maybe that is why the optimization isn't as clear as it should be.  I used to have keyword pages for each of the locations (when that was sort of the thing to do and I didn't know very much about SEO). Over the last 2 years, I have been redirecting them and re-organizing my site. Sometimes I feel like it might be easier to start over rather than keep tweaking my current site.  I am considering a move to WP.  I am just afraid of hurting my current rankings.

When you say "your content is on the modest side", what would you suggest I do to build it up to more impressive heights?  Are you talking technical on-page SEO?  Or, better/more photos?  Better on-page organization?  We are trying to start doing a better job at our blog (which is on WP), so my site is sort of an html / WP hybrid.  And I do know that I need to optimize image sizes, it is on my list of things to do.

Sorry if my questions seem rudimentary, I am not SEO trained and do it all myself.  I just try to do what Google says in their guide and what Moz says in their articles.

[MiriamEllis]

Aww, thank you, Robert!

[RobertFisher]

Miriam,

YOU is a ROCKSTAR!

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Calico!

Thanks for sharing. I did a 3 minute look at this and do not see any of the MAJOR problems I look for first, and I also see that your citations appear to be in very good shape for this business : https://moz.com/local/details/JTI1NUIlMjUyMlNlYSUyNTIwTGV2ZWxlciUyNTIwU3BvcnQlMjUyMEZpc2hpbmclMjUyMENoYXJ0ZXJzJTI1MjIlMjUyQyUyNTIyMzI5MjAlMjUyMiUyNTJDJTI1MjJTZWElMjUyMExldmVsZXIlMjUyMFNwb3J0JTI1MjBGaXNoaW5nJTI1MjBDaGFydGVycyUyNTIyJTI1MkMlMjUyMjUwNSUyNTIwR2xlbiUyNTIwQ2hlZWslMjUyMERyJTI1MjIlMjUyQyUyNTIyMzI5MjAlMjUyMiUyNTJDJTI1MjIzMjE3OTQzNDc0JTI1MjIlMjU1RA==

You are centrally located in the industry centroid, I don't see obvious duplicate listings and you definitely have more reviews than all but one of your competitors who are outranking you (Orlando Princess has 51).

On your website, your content is on the modest side. Could be built up to more impressive heights :). I recommend that you put your complete NAP at the top of both the Contact Page and the Location page. Complete = name, address and phone.

Going through that checklist I linked to earlier may help you turn up more nitty-gritty stuff you could be doing better, but the good news is that I'm not seeing some obvious oh-no problem at first glance. You'll need to dig deeper into competitive analysis to discover why you're being locally outranked when your organic strength is so excellent (at least for the term I looked at: deep sea fishing cocoa beach). You are doing so many thing right, it's going to take some real effort to find out why that effort isn't being rewarded in the way it seems to deserve. Sometimes, a business will drop simply because it is standing still while competitors move forward, so identifying whether you have competitors who are marketing more aggressively than your company is would be something to aim for, as well.

Sorry not to have an easy solution on this one. You've passed most of my quick tests with flying colors

P.S. Meant to add ... some of your optimization is not quite clear on the website. If Cocoa Beach is your main location, tags and text need to reflect that over any other city you might be aiming for. Content development and diversification could be very helpful here.

[CalicoKitty2000]

Sea Leveler Sport Fishing Charters

[MiriamEllis]

Hope it helps! I see you've included some keywords, above, that you're not ranking for as well as you used to. Are you able to mention which company is yours?

[CalicoKitty2000]

Thanks Robert!  I appreciate you taking the time to help me again!

Yelp calls me all the time.  I just can't get a warm fuzzy about their offering.  But, I get what you are saying.  I will look at them again and see if it makes sense now. I will check out Amazon services... that hasn't even crossed my mind!  And, I will keep an eye out for this Google services you are referring to.  I am surprised at some of Google latest changes, including getting rid of the Adwords side bar.  We don't use Adwords much anymore though.

I have to be honest, we have more business than we can handle right now.  But, I am always trying to stay on top of things, and hopefully not keep all of my eggs in one basket.  As you know, Google can flip a switch at any time and leave us upside down and then my phone stops ringing. It just makes me bang my head against the wall to see competitors that only take a couple of charters a month and not even have their Google local page filled in outranking me. Crazy!

Thanks again!  

[RobertFisher]

Funny,

I kept thinking where do I know CalicoKitty from (I remember kitty because I am a cat lover! All you haters can just go on a hatin!) as soon as I saw cape Canaveral I snapped! So sorry, I am older than I was when we first spoke!

Yes, we saw a similar and interesting jump in organic with the loss in Local. That does beg some serious algo questions!

My opinion is that this is Google preparing more and more for Google Services. Just like with Products, they know they can monetize and sooner or later, you will need to utilize G services if you want to be seen and yes, that means you pay. 
Have you looked at Amazon Services to see if they are doing anything around deep sea charters? Just curious.

Having looked at your local before, I know it is fairly sound. I really believe you have to hang in there and look to other avenues - don't rest on the organic non local piece. I really believe service businesses must start looking at what are good advertising sources. Is it Yelp, is it Amazon, etc.? BUT the caveat is you must hold any of them accountable and you need to become a tracking vampire. If it can't be tracked in real honest terms you leave them in the dust. Yelp is a big one for wanting to talk about how many people "saw" your ad. If they cannot prove converted traffic I tell clients to abandon whatever source it is. Now, our clients are able to fall back on us and we can dig fairly deep to find what is happening and what reality is. With YP I don't think we have a client today who uses it because we have just proven over and over the traffic is no good on most occasions.

But there will be good avenues for advertising and you should take them. For you, I would be looking at the Salt Water mags, etc. both digital and print. I think for many of the sport specific mags (not pro sports per se) many people still like to hold the magazine in hand.

Hope that gives a bit of hope,

Robert

[CalicoKitty2000]

Another example is "deep sea fishing cape canaveral".  You can see similar results.  Cocoa Beach isn't technically our city.  Cape Canaveral is.

[CalicoKitty2000]

Robert,

That sounds exactly like my situation. March through November last year, I was consistently ranking 1/2/3 on most of my KW searches.  I got super busy starting a new business and didn't do my own rank search (was just keeping an eye on moz reports) and when I looked again in March, I found I was ranking 3-11.  My organic search results have increased dramatically since November, however.  Over all my KW searches, I net gained 22 spots.

A good example search is "deep sea fishing cocoa beach".  I don't come up in the top 3 locally.  I am 3 on organic rank.  I am 7 on local.  As you can see, I have more reviews than anyone else.  Some of my competitors don't even have information filled in.  If you click on us, we have most everything filled in.

Do you remember me?  We talked a year or so ago when I was freaking out about my organic ranking.  

[RobertFisher]

With Local being so labile right now, we need to know what business, what vertical, etc. If you cannot share it here, you can PM me and I will be happy to keep it all confidential. 
I think all the same key ingredients for good Local still exist like NAP consistency, single page for each location, etc. You also have to look at what are competitors doing differently, are there new competitors, etc. We had a client who was ranking in their community at 2 or 3 for a long time in Local and after the three pack change all of a sudden was at 5 or 6. Our Local person who was fairly new was the one that discovered that their business we just outside the city limits for where they wanted to be listed. I am talking max 2 blocks outside. I cannot tell you that was the reason for the change, but you sometimes have to get really granular if you are to impact things.

Hope that helps,

Robert

[CalicoKitty2000]

Thank you, I am going to read this!

[CalicoKitty2000]

Nice to see you on here again Robert!  Thanks for the answer.  What information would I need to show you?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi There, CalicoKitty!

As Robert mentions, the community would likely need more details to look into this for you personally, but yes, things change in Local on an ongoing basis. This Checklist should help you thoroughly assess how well you are doing as well as trying to assess why competitors have surpassed you:

https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-checklist

The one thing I would add to this would be that, even if you are doing everything perfectly, there are some cases in which spam will outrank better quality results, simply because Google doesn't always do the best job in policing its data. Any time you reach a clear determination that a local result is genuinely spam (and not just mysteriously outranking you), you can always report it to Google.

[RobertFisher]

CalicoKitty2000

A ton has changed re Local with Google in the last 6 to 8 months. Frankly, you would have to give more info in order to assist you. On top of the Local changing, adwords and paid advertising have changed. The changes were not really at the level of how you characterize your business, etc. but we have seen many clients affected in terms of local ranking.

Best,

Robert