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Well if half my citations aren't recognized then there's a good chance that is hurting the ranking correct?

I was saying when I google the company name "Photojennette" because I'm trying to correct NAP for this company to Photojennette Photography instead of just Photojennette, I see a ton of listings on Google SERP with " Photo Jennette McCurdy "

What your saying is that you think Google ignores a citation in regards to local ranking so long as NAP is not present.  So if it isn't a full citation with Name, Address, Phone, then they likely don't take it into account.

So my clients business name is "Photojennette Photography" and while researching citations to correct I have found a completely random issue.  There's an actress named Jennette McCardy that apparently has a ton of photos on the internet and with that are page titles like "Brand New Photo : Jennette McCardy" and "Look at this Photo Jennette McCardy"

My question is, would Google be sending my listing down because of this?  It's completely random and has nothing to do with the business.  Thanks in advance.

In my research I have found multiple citations that were both lowercase and uppercase.  Does this inconsistency effect ranking?

Because I'm still not seeing a #1-3 ranking for some of my main target keywords and the people who are have higher DA and PA by 5-10 points and I teach SEO and I want to be able to explain everything involved.

Thanks for the heads up. Didn't realize that would make much of a difference but I corrected the problem.  Also, without me doing anything, the Canonical Error is fixed...

I've put off asking this question for a long time because I know what the short answer is, but I've been working the SEO on http://www.photojennette.com for almost a year now pretty constantly and all of the measurements are positives except for authority.  Traffic has more than doubled, links sending visits has doubled, external followed links is 500% up, keywords sending is way up, pages within the site have way more links and are more diverse in their own SEO, but no matter what I can't get PA and DA to budge. In fact at one point DA dropped a point or two. (although OSE and Moz Analytics shown that competitors lost a point or two at the same time so I didn't think much of it.)  I feel like I had a good grasp on what helps DA but I'm starting to question that.  Anyone have any ideas?

All 9 of my sites quit reporting on Feb 6 and I really need to see impressions as my site just went to number 1 for my main keyword!

I came to post the exact same thing.  Feb 6 2014 was my last update on all 9 of the sites I manage.  Any word on whats going on?

The link is a front page of a website though.

http://stellyweddings.com

I understand what Canonical is for, but this isn't a duplicated page, its the front page.  Im not sure why I would get the above error in On-Page grading.  Basically saying the page is grading  a B instead of an A because of the above error.

I have a wordpress site that On-Page Grader is saying I don't have Canonical done correctly.  Here is the comment.

Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical

If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL.

Recommendation: We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply.

I have quite a few sites and have never had an issue with this.  Can anyone help?  I tried installing a plugin but that seems to have made it worse.  This is the front page of the site btw.

Miriam,

Thank you so much for your detailed response yet again.  I will address each of your comments below after having done as much research on each of them as I can.

• Have all previous citations been discovered and cleaned up?  I have used whitespark.ca as well as Google to find as many citations as I possibly could over the last couple of months.  I do know of a citation on chamberofcommerce.org where I have contact them, and they have yet to reply and one on wsyk.com as part of the businesses legal information for doing business in two different states.  I have contacted them as well and they refuse to remove it.   I'm not sure what else I could do.  The listings don't have the name correct

http://www.wysk.com/index/colorado/denver/w3n3jrp/photojennette-ltd/profile

http://www.chamberofcommerce.com/denver-co/31237013-photo-jennette/

I tried claiming the business on chamber of commerce but it says its already claimed and the owner of the company has no recollection of it.

• Are citations being built appropriately for each location?  Yes, again using Whitespark.ca to look at where the top ranking websites have citations, I have been effectively building citations for each of the locations.

• Is the Google+ Local page for each of the 2 locations violation free?  As far as I can tell, both of the Google+ Local pages are verified, and linking to their perspective pages on the site (http://www.photojennette.com/austin & http://www.photojennette.com/denver)

• Could there be duplicate Google+ Local listings or merged listings?  I wouldn't know how to find this.  I haven't seen any duplicate listings.  There is a second business with a google plus local page at that address but it is using a different phone number.  I spoke with a Google rep and he assured me that the second listing, so long as it had a different phone number wouldn't effect the other listing as far as violations.  My client said the second business could be removed if needed but I haven't removed it yet.  Could be an issue?

• Does the website appropriately reflect the 2 locations, or could there be anything on it that is confusing the bots as to the accuracy of distinct NAP for each location?  Those pages are http://www.photojennette.com/austin and http://www.photojennette.com/denver and they both include content, images, Schema citation and Google Map with the location.

• Is robots.txt setup correctly on the site, ensuring that it is fully crawlable?  The site looks to be fully indexed as far as I can see.  Robots.txt is telling google not to index some pages that the client doesn't want on Google.

• Has the site been submitted to Google Webmaster Tools? Yes.

• Has their been a previous issue with spammy linkbuilding that could be harming the site?  As far as I know, my client is the only owner of the domain and there has not been any of those types of activities.

• Is there a duplicate content issue on the website?  Moz is telling me I am free and clear of any duplicate content issues.  I have personally built each page.  There are resemblances between some of the pages, but each have their own text, alt images, meta content, etc.  I am using wordpress SEO by yoast just as a note, and also hes Local plugin.

Again, I can't thank you enough for your help.  I hope I have acurately answered each of your questions.

Does anyone else have thoughts on this?

Elchanan, thanks for your response.  I have two physical, verified locations, and I have pages for each with decent PA, linked to two different Google Plus Local profiles.  I'd love to learn more about mapmaker.

I checked out the listings on mapmaker and they look good.  Both visible but I did notice that one of the addresses doesn't have abbreviations.  So its, East Kentucky Avenue and in many of my citations I have it like it is normally which is E. Kentucky Ave.  Could this be an issue?  I submitted it as E. Kentucky Ave. and I am assuming Google decided to use the long form?

Webmaster Tools isn't telling you that it thinks your website is about Dollars, its telling you that it sees that mentioned often on your site.  You really don't need to fix anything, but perhaps adding more content about your target keyword will help push that down a bit.  Are you saying something costs "88 Dollars" all over your website or actually using a $?

If its the latter, that would be very interesting.  If its the former, remove dollar and use $ instead.  Cheers!

So it's been a few months since my most favorite thread "Local Really?" (http://moz.com/community/q/local-really) and I have worked tirelessly deleting duplicate citations, fixing incorrect NAP, and adding new citations for the two different locations my client works from.  I have added a second Google Plus Local page and verified it as well and linked it back to the page for that location on my site.  I have added Schema.org markup on each of the pages relating to the locations with the full address and correct NAP.  I research with whitespark.ca to find new possibilities and compare with listings ranking highly.

I feel like I have worked non-stop at this but unfortunately I have still seen 0 results from my examining everything.  The Google listing is still on page 14 / 20 and seems to be stuck there.  Is this fairly normal?  I'm just at a lost as I have honestly tried to adhere to all the comments and advice given by everyone here (again while seeing the competition doing none of those things.)  I think I'm just looking for that little "things look right just give it time and continue" or even "no!  you're doing it wrong still"

Thanks in advance!

So I'm wondering if someone could explain Structured Data a little better to me and what the importance is.  I also am wondering how to best add Scheme.org markup to certain pages.  I tried a plugin for wordpress and I don't think it was working correctly.  I'm specifically wanting to make sure my Google Profile is showing with my website in SERP.  I have the ?rel=author tag in on the front page and when I checked it when the Google Structured Data checker it shows it to be correct but its not displaying in SERP.

Thanks!

Well if its not a false Google Places listing you don't really need to call Google.  You have to go through the contact page of the website that the citation is listed on.  It's sometimes a bit of a journey but in the end every wrong citation hurts.

Is this listing on Google or a third-party site?  Either way you have to contact the site owner.  I have contacted Google before and had a rep help me delete a false listing.

Gavo,

I really want to make sure I understand you so I'm going to use a quick example.  Say you have a hardware store website.  You have interior pages for plumbing, lawn care, etc.  You want each of those pages for the different departments to rank as best they can, correct?  I feel like the answered marked "Good" is actually not the best answer for what you are asking.

Well the best way to do that is not _jus_t by linking to your homepage.  So long as they are healthy links, having a website that blogs about your lawn care equipment and the amazing prices with a link to that page is going to help that page rank higher for that term.  If you just have them link to your frontpage which is directed toward the business name and "hardware" you are going to the long way to the top of google.

Yes, having tons of really good strong links to your front page will give your site more Domain Authority and trust and will help your interior pages, but not nearly as quickly as if you actually have multiple links to each of the pages.  Just taking a pages Page Authority from 1-2 to 25 with a really strong Domain Authority can get you to the front page so long as the page is optimized and has a good amount of trust and links.

Could anyone provide a little more information on Whitespark?

You're speaking of the difference between Page Authority and Domain Authority.  In my experience in regards to SEO, you should treat each page as though its a separate website, that needs good solid keyword targeting, rich content, links on social media, and links from other creditable sources.  Building a ton of links to your front page will give you slightly better Domain Authority but this doesn't help your interior pages rank as quickly (unless you have a Yelp like site with extremely high +90 DA).  If each of your interior pages is treated as important as your home page, you will see better PA and DA for each of those pages and almost certainly end up with higher SERP results.

On a side note, beware of directories.  Unless you are specifically campaigning for Local results, directories could be spammy, non-creditable links that actually hurt your sites authority.

Hope this helps.

Apparently they may come back in the next few days.   So Miriam, now that I have two Google Plus Local pages (I set up and verified the Denver location today) is it ok to name each page by the location?  As it stands, both Google Plus Local pages are named  "photojennette photography"

In the past I know you have said adding a city name can be considered keyword stuffing and I don't want to do it if you think it may harm the rankings.  Google suggested and added the vanity URL "http://google.com/+photjennettephotographyAustin for the first page thats been up for a while.  Should I change the name of the page to "photojennette photography Austin" so I can change the name of the Denver page to "photojennette photography Denver"?  Thanks in advance for your guidance and response.

well I thought I had lost the G+'s because I changed the landing page from the front page to the town landing page, but now I'm thinking there has been a change at Google because the number has drastically reduced.  I'm not completely sure how the + works, but if I had to guess, the + count on your Google Plus Local Business page will reflect how many +'s your landing page has.

This page : http://google.com/photojennettephotographyAustin had over 1000 +s 3 days ago...  I changed the landing page and boom now it has 58.

As a secondary question, I know NAP is name, address, and phone number, but many of the directories and websites where I have been adding or correcting citations also have a website.  Do you think it matters whether the website is consistent to the Google listing?  So when I add a citation, I always link to the /town page (which is hopefully growing the PA and DA.)  Do you think this is helpful or should I just always link to the homepage?

As a side note, I have also realized that all the G+'s that I had acquired on the profile are no longer linking to the front page of the site, so OSE isn't acknowledging them anymore.  Don't know if this is an issue or not but just an observation.

because the company has two locations, I created a page for each location called /townname and then linked each google plus account to those pages.  The page has photos, a google map, and the correct citation with correct NAP but because it's a fairly new page, it doesn't have much PA.  I was reading up on the metrics that most people think affect rankings on Moz and people think the landing page that is link from a Plus profile having less authority can effect ranking.  I'm seeing some positive move in the rankings (a page or two) so perhaps it's starting to work

In the end there's just so much bad information out there in regards to SEO that I'm always second guessing myself.  I think I am still on the positive path that you and others have helped me too and am hoping for confirmation results as I continue to fix citations and create new ones where needed.

Just wondering what the best way to handle the landing page from a google plus local profile is.  I had changed it to page that I created for the specific location with a citation with correct NAP, but realized that in OSE that my root domain lost almost all its G+'s.  I'm torn and just looking for some advice.  I've done quite a bit of work trying to correct citations, adding citations, and reading reading reading to learn more about Google Local but the results have been pretty rough.

So i signed up and have been using whitespark.  Can you explain the moz perk a little more in detail?

I've had folks explain to me before that OpenSiteExplorer is just an estimation, etc. but there are some fairly easy statistics that seem to be different and it makes me nervous that either its wrong or I'm doing something wrong.  As you can see in the image, moz isn't read social metrics correctly.  It actually used to be pretty spot on, but as you can see with Google+'s its off.  Maybe not a big deal right?  But for my clients new Moz Analytic print outs it makes somewhat of a difference.  Any help?

UlwQs3w

I have a client who is moving and I'll need to redirect their site to a new city.  Taking local out of the picture, what is the best way to convert the site?

Here are somethings I've already done.

• Changed the title keywords

• Ensured the page grade is an A for the new keywords.

• Changed the alt tags on images on the front page.

Since I made these changes, the website has actually fallen in ranks from what it was initially ranking for the new city (the website was already ranking organically on page 2 and has dropped to mid page 3.)

Thanks in advance

Thanks Gary,

We are for sure on the same page.

Thanks Miriam, you have an article for everything!

I strongly believe that I have received the most solid Local advice I could from these forums and have started (in just a few days) to make the needed corrections.  At the same time I'm somewhat excited and optimistic that it will be a long journey but that it's a learning process.

About 5 days ago, I set my website up with "City landing pages" and I started plundering through google, fixing and claiming and correcting as many citations as I could with correct NAP.  The journey still continues today as I just got my Bing Local card in the mail and verified.  I went to check my rankings on Google Maps, just to see if anything had changed and sure enough it had.  My listing had been holding strong at page 10 (which drives me nuts) and now after 5 days of solid work its on page 18.  I have to assume that because I'm stirring the dust perhaps Google is confused and maybe in a month or so things might start moving the other way?  Thoughts?

is it common for the places listing to take a plunge when you first start working on it?  In a matter of 4 days the listing has gone from page 10 to page 18 (in the maps listings)  I could see that being a possibility since there is so much changing so quickly but just looking for some professional insight.

Ok guys I have been hard at work and found tons of good input as well as missing and incorrect listing (and I know there are probably even more) and have either fixed, requested a fix, or am currently waiting for an email back.  I also ended up with a Yahoo / Yext Power Listing that has really helped add correct listings into the mix.

I also have pages /austin and /denver fixed up with the address for each city and then have a separate contact page for each of them at /austin/contact and /denver/contact with the "schema.org" listing of the address I think*.

I do have a question about NAP.  It's not NAPW so if the the listings have different website url's is that a big deal?  I know some of the listings say photojennette.com, and then on my power listing I did photojennette.com/austin/contact and then some are just photojennette.com/austin.

I really want to fix them all and think I'll be able once Yahoo approves my listing because it says I can edit at that time, but thoughts?

You're right, I mis-pronounced.  I do understand citations I think.  I should have hopefully my work will start to fix the NAP in the citations.

You said-

These would be the pages you would be linking your Google+ Local pages to for the respective locations.

So I would link these as the website on the google plus local page business information as just :

http://www.photojennette.com/austin/contact

???

Status Update:

I have created two separate contact pages that are linked to from the menu as well as the footer.  The contact pages have a little bit different information but any advice on these would be appreciated.

http://www.photojennette.com/austin/contact

http://www.photojennette.com/denver/contact

They each include the correct NAP.  I have also linked to these pages directly from the information page for Denver wedding photography as well as Austin wedding photography.

I've also read all the above resources.  Miriam, I was a little confused as to whether I need city landing pages for this business because the business has physical locations in each place, but serves a radius in each location as well as worldwide, but I went ahead and did it.  So now there is a /austin and /denver that will have information for wedding photography as well as engagement photography in the designated areas (might even touch on other types of photography as well.)  From those pages you will be able to easily get to a page about Austin wedding photography and Austin engagement photography and the same for Denver.

Does all this sound like a baby step in the right direction?

_So, Jonathan, I think you need to sit your client down and explain to them they have a very pretty site and I love the story of who and what they are. You need to tell them that will be on the story page and you will be handling the other pages. You should create a contact page for Austin, you should do the sub directory for Denver Photog and another page for Denver contact. Use the API, place markup, authorship, review, etc. Make sure the photos are geotagged and that the Denver are on the Denver pages and Austin on Austin. That is what will fix your issue. _

I'm working on this now.  I have created /denver and /austin on wordpress.  I'm going to be creating two separate pages for contact.  One will be under /austin and the other under /denver.  They will each have the same contact form, but will have different content on them.  Do you know which wordpress plugin I need for the Google Map API to mark up the pages correctly?  Also, do i need to do this mark up to every page and post on the site?  Again, the client has two separate locations in both Austin and Denver and they are both equally important.  The client literally lives in both places currently.  I'm waiting on the Google card with the pin code to confirm the Denver location currently on Places.  I'm tackling this head on with long term goals of improvement over the next 6 months.  I plan to dedicate a few hours a week to this specific subject for that amount of time.  I understand that no ONE thing will fix it and hope to continue learning from you guys.

Marcus,

Thanks for your info.  In regards to #6, I used the link to grab the code for the address to post on the Location Listing Page.  I'm using wordpress, and when I paste the code in (even in the "code" view thats just says text, It comes up formatted a little strangely.  Is there a better way to do this on wordpress? Perhaps a plugin?  I thought about pasting into the "Head" section but then it would be on every page.  Thanks in advance.

I will be going over all of this over the next few days.  Thank you so much for the amazing support in this situation.  I spent a few hours today going through 10 pages of google results and correcting the address to one or both of the new addresses.  Hopefully this will be very helpful in NAP and lowering some citations!  I will continue to work through 5-10 pages of results for the company name search in an effort to really give some solid ground to this campaign.

In the meantime, I'm looking at my options for re-working the website to give equal attention to both cities where I am focusing on local results, Austin and Denver.  As it stands, I have those two URLS (http://www.photojennette.com/austin and /denver) 301 Redirected to /austin-wedding-photos and /denver-wedding-photos which are pages directed at organic SEO and information for the those places.  I noticed someone mentioned sub domains.  Sub-domaining would mean a whole new installed of wordpress and the theme I have running, does  /denver and /austin work or do I need to have austin.photojennette.com, etc.?  I can easily have /denver and then have /denver/location as a page.  and the same for Austin.  As for the location page, are we just talking about listing the address and maybe embedding a Google Map of the location?

Again, so very thankful for you guys.

Wow, the last few comments alone have made my subscription here at Moz completely worth it.  Thank you really for the advice.  I could take a really long time to respond to each of the above comments but I think we all know you guys are right, and I have tons of work to do.  I will revisit the thread from before and start working through it.  Now to address a few further questions (and I know I'm about to sound really ignorant.)

1. Are citations errors that are causing devalue of the listing?

2.  What is NAP?  I'm not so great with acronyms in the field.

3.  Since my last thread, I have explained to the client that the address is very important and she is onboard now so I will be doing what is needed to fix the citations.

4.  The client does offer services in Austin, Denver, and of course wants to travel for destinations.  Destinations is clearly out on local which is fine because Google is starting to rank local businesses based on proximity of the user for the terms from what I can tell.  The client has physical addresses in Austin and Denver.  They are home based businesses, not storefronts.

5.  As for my comment in the previous thread about patterns, I have thoroughly researched each one of the listings coming up in the results.  The reason why I said what I said is because I don't see many of the things you guys have mentioned on them.  For instance, none of them have their address on their site.  Most of them don't have Google Plus Local connected, etc. etc.  I wasn't trying to be arrogant (although at the time I clearly didn't know how great the advice I was getting from Linda and Miriam was and lucky it's just hard to believe I need to do all this when I know my competition isn't.  I will do it though.

6.  Google Maps API:  I'm a little confused as to what to do.  Is there a different plugin for geotagging photos?  I see WP Google Maps amongst other plugins for wordpress.  Is there a specific one?

Thanks again for your time.  You guys are right, I am extremely dedicated to learning more about local and proceeding on a good path that will be helpful to future clients as well.  I really appreciate everything.

I find Domain Authority to typically be a much stronger candidate for results.  Installing the "mozbar" to your browser and using it (make sure you are logged into Moz) will really help show you what I am speaking of.  Many times, websites like Yelp will list on the first page for a business with a page that has a Page Authority of 1, but the DA of the site is so strong that it outranks other pages with a much higher PA.

The way I see it, PA will help get a certain page to rank, but DA will get all your pages to rank (which will help diversify your SEO thus bringing way more traffic to your site for different sets of keywords.)  Remember, each page should be for a different topic, so if your front page is for your main target keyword strand, and you have a high PA but a low DA, your site is likely to rank for that one term, but all the interior pages wont.  Whereas, if you have a higher DA, you can rank higher for every page on your site with different keywords.  The best way to do this is to link multiple pages from your site.  For instance if you are guest blogging, don't just include a link to your front page.  Try to include a few links to interior pages as well for relative topics.  Also, I have actually seen Google Adwords give stronger DA.  I know many will argue this, but when campaigning on adwords, you can send different keywords to different pages.  Users entering your site through interior pages is a good thing, as Google seeing everyone come to your site from the front page can sometimes lower your DA.

Hope this helped!

Honestly, OpenSiteExplorer gives the fewest links of any site I check including webmaster tools.  Webmaster Tools shows twice as many links as OSE, and no its not showing them, Roots or Total links.

I've asked this question before and got some strong advice ( I think ) but the results have been not so strong.  I'm looking for advice on local.  I have this profile:  https://plus.google.com/u/0/114370561649922317296/about

That I need to rank for "austin wedding photographers" and I have yet to figure out a way to get it to move on the map results.  I understand these things take time, but its been a couple of months, and as far as I can tell, its still ranking on page 10 of the "local results" (meaning you search for austin wedding photographers, then click under the map listings to see Google Maps with the listings to the left.)  Furthermore, all my organic competition for the most part is now on the local results and the map is ranking higher than all but one organic.  Suggestions would be a huge plus.  Last time some folks analyzed the google plus local page and gave some tips.  Since then a few things have happened.

1.  I notice most of the Google Local listings that come up on page 1 in the map have a similar page when clicking "more info."  They mostly have a map as their cover photo on their listing.

2.  Google has merged my Google Places and Google Plus Local account so that when you click "more info" on the listing (on page 10) it takes you too the branded Google Plus Local page.  I like this, but it worries me that most of the high ranking pages don't have this.

3.  I have added a Geo Sitemap to Google Webmaster tools but it doesn't show as indexed yet.  I understand this can take up to 6 weeks?  Does this help?  It came when I bought Yoast SEO Local and generated KML files.

4. The address for Google Plus local is real address of a home, so Google doesn't show the specific address.  I used to have a mailbox center as the address but was advised to fix that.  I have sense changed the address on as many sites as I could (Yelp, YP, Superpages, etc.)

5.  Do I need an address on the website?  The client does not want her home address listed anywhere for privacy reasons.

Hope this is enough information for someone with knowledge to help.  The website is ranking first page (3 or 4 organically) for the terms I need for the most part but Local seems to be stronger.  Thanks in advance.

I'm asking for specific techniques and or examples.  I have been link building strong links from related websites and yet my DA has fallen two points in a month.