Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Apart from making sure your business information is 100% accurate, etc., what are your best tips to get a company ranking in the local pack? Do they need to rank well organically to be considered for the local pack or is it solely based on the consistency of their GMB page?

Google My Business plays a big part of getting your company to rank in the local pack for local search queries. Apart from making sure this is correct and up to date, where do you think the future of GMB pages is headed? Will Google eventually start phasing these out and come up with a different way to populate the local pack?

I was looking in one of my client's Google Analytics profiles, and noticed that they had two major drops in traffic before we started working with them—and they've never really recovered. The first, and most significant drop was around January 2015. And then the again, but not as drastic of a drop, was around September 2015. They are a heating and cooling company, but they are located out west so this shouldn't be a seasonality thing. Here is a link to what the BIG drop is traffic looks like in January 2015: http://imgur.com/a/Y1s8U To get a clearer picture, here are the numbers for the overall website traffic:
September 1, 2015 - September 30, 2015: 30,923 sessions
September 1, 2015 - September 30, 2016: 13,768 sessions Year over year traffic to the website dropped by 55%. Here is a link to what year over year looks like in Google Analytics: http://imgur.com/a/TPdJQ Like I said, we weren't working with them at the time so I don't know specifics about what might have caused this, but their numbers have never even come close to reaching what they used to be prior to the noticeable drop after September 2015. Does anyone have any insights into why this might be? Was there an algorithm change back then that could still be impacting them? Any ideas how to get them back to where they once were? Any input is greatly appreciated! Thanks.

I have a Google map on a website. Currently, there are only two 1-star reviews — which show next to the company name on the map. We added the map for local SEO reasons, but I’m thinking I should take it down because customer experience supersedes local SEO. Why boost search rankings if the content will drive people away from converting? So basically, customer experience > local SEO. Question: Do you all agree, or do any of you have any evidence that I should leave it? For example, it’s below the fold, so it isn’t the first thing they see, and we really need to boost their local SEO.

Hi there! I work with Company A. They've decided to merge with Company B (who we don't work with/doesn't do SEO) under Company B's name. (We would then work on Company B's website.) What would be the impact on SEO if the content from Company A's website is moved to Company B's website, and Company A's website would be deleted? Factors to consider: Both websites have a domain authority of 6 and a homepage authority of 21, and each has less than 5 backlinks. Company A ranks much better than Company B (of the KWs we're tracking, Company A ranked on Page One for 15.3% of them, while Company B ranked for 2.8% of them). So, what I am asking is: If they do the content migration to Company B's website and get rid of Company A's website, what negative impact would that have on SEO? Could we keep both sites, but change the mentions of Company A on their website to Company B? Although the URL would still be Company A's name, could Company B treat this as a microsite and take up more of the search engine real estate since Company A already has rankings? What would be another solution? The companies merging is definitely happening. Thank you in advance.

Before realized that the Moz listing should have the correct GMB account connected to it, a few local listings were purchased. Is there a way to change the GMB page it is pulling data from and sending out to directories? Thanks!

If someone leaves a review of your business on your Google My Business listing, and you respond to that review, will they receive an email notification of your response to their review? We are working with a client who has unanswered reviews from several years ago, and though it's best practice to respond to all reviews, we didn't want to respond to reviews from 2013 if the person (who has likely forgot about their experience with the business in question) is going to get an email notifying them of our late response to their review. Thank you!