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Marie,

Since the links are pointed at a different domain that 301s to their site, would removing the 301 (killing the domain) be sufficient or do they still need to file a disavow?

Tom Waddington (one of the smartest people I know) pointed out, most of the spammy backlinks are pointing to a domain (reliant-plumbing.com) that is redirecting to your site.  Why don't you kill that domain (make it 404) and see if it fixes this?

I believe I found the problem on why they rank nowhere organically (not in the top 100) and it's likely hurting their local ranking as well outside their immediate area.  They have 97 referring domains with the anchor text "austin plumbers" and another 91 with "austin plumber".  The sites appear to be a giant PBN.  I'd suggest they do a very thorough link audit and file a disavow.

Hey GrueBleenAgency,

What tool are you using to track rankings?  Do you have the tool set to search from "austin" or from a specific zip code?  The reason why I ask is that searching from a city has been known to return really innacurate results since Google almost always knows the zip code of the searcher (usually about 90% of the time) so they don't default to a city, they default to a zip code or sometimes a very precise location if the person is using mobile.

Have you actually seen a decline in traffic or impressions according to GMB Insights?

I do actually get you for "austin plumber" when I search from your location as first in the local pack.  Organically you are way down but it's because Google is listing your emergency plumbing page which is a much weaker page vs your homepage.  Looking at the title tags, both your homepage and your emergency page are optimized for extremely similar keywords so I'd try and differentiate this more.  I'd optimize the homepage for generic plumbing terms (plumber, plumber near me) and make sure all references to emergency link to the emergency page.  Some solid internal linking will help here too.

Using the Local Falcon, it shows you ranking as expected and I have a strong suspicion you didn't actually have a ranking drop on the local pack end but just need to update the settings on the ranking tracker to make sure you're not searching on a city-level.

https://www.awesomescreenshot.com/image/3904914/1a5bb0a17deab2755bf9f579048e93a9

Ben,

If your goal is to replace every single phone number online with the tracking number, that's fine.  In my experience it is almost impossible to keep the old phone number from re-populating since it's published in offline sources (like the phone book).

What I was recommending would be good if you wanted to isolate/track JUST the calls from GMB.

I've never tried it for Bing so I'm not 100% sure.  I would not suggest doing this on Yelp.

Hey Ben,

There is a secret to doing this that won't mess up your NAP consistency or ranking.  What you need to do is move the "real" phone number to the secondary phone line inside Google My Business and then use the tracking number in the main phone number slot.

Whatever you do, don't use the tracking numbers on any other 3rd party citations.

Use this tool in an incognito tab: https://www.brightlocal.com/local-search-results-checker/

To get the most accurate results you need to search from a zip code, not a city name.

I've honestly always found it to be extremely accurate and is almost always the same thing the person I'm talking to is seeing.

I definitely would not put these in the footer.  Marie Haynes has a very good article on footer links that I normally reference: https://www.mariehaynes.com/footer-links-and-penalties/

Like Roman said, links in the footer don't offer much value anyway and put the site at risk for looking low-quality.

In order to provide advice, I'd need to know the website and the search term you're looking at.  Can you provide those?

You shouldn't have to delete any of them.  If you contact Google My Business support they can merge them and should be able to transfer reviews as well.

If the locations are fairly spread out and there aren't multiple locations in the same city, this probably isn't possible.

If they do have several locations in the same city, can you share the website + query you put into Google?

If it's just submitting new listings and not NAP cleanup you could hire Whitespark to submit them: https://whitespark.ca/citation-building-submission-service/#prices

Do you have screenshots from before you started seeing the drop?  It's possible you have an influx of competitors now that Google has loosened the filter.  This happened on August 22 so it fits the timeline you're describing.

Here is my write-up about it: http://searchengineland.com/august-22-2017-hawk-google-local-algorithm-update-282269

I just wanted to clarify, what do you mean by main page? Are you talking about the homepage of the site?

I'm looking for some examples of really well built product/service pages that have great conversion points on them. I find most small businesses do a terrible job at highlighting their features & benefits (the "why") for their services and wanted some inspiration from those that are doing a fabulous job.

I haven't seen an article recently that addresses this but can say with great confidence that organic ranking has been one of the biggest determiners of who gets filtered or not filtered in the 3-pack ever since the Possum update.  In the dozens of cases I've analyzed, usually the listing that wins is the one that has the highest organic ranking.

Depending on the scenario, it could help because it would cause Google to read your address before anything else and if you're a local business, that could help gain relevance.  This is one of those things that should be super easy to test so I'll add it to my bucket list of items to test out.

If you have evidence, feel free to add it here and I can send it over to Google.  They remove reviews for businesses that do this provided there is proof of it.

Although I haven't tested this myself, I've heard others say that removing the meta description is one way to get Google to show a bigger description in the search results because they pull information off your website instead of sticking to the character limit of the tag.

Hey There.

I actually see something different than you but I'm searching from the Toronto area which is 3-4 hours from Kingston.  I actually see this which shows the duplicate Miriam mentioned as ranking 4th and the listing you showed is actually filtered because it's using the exact same phone # and address.

Having this duplicate is doing you a huge injustice because it's not linking to the website that is ranking high organically like you mentioned and it's splitting their reviews which just results in 2 profiles not ranking as well as they would if all the reviews were on 1 listing.  Plus, since it's a violation of Google's guidelines, one of them could get removed and then you would lose the reviews on it.

I'd suggest consolidating them.  This duplicate is verified so if you don't know who created it, you'll need to get access to the listing first.  The naming convention it's using on the listing is also a violation of the guidelines.

The listing that ranks 2nd is doing some serious keyword stuffing so I would suggest you level the playing field by editing the listing and removing the keywords.

The listing that ranks 3rd and is above you should also look into as the name is keyword-stuffed, she already has another listing with her name, and the address she used on this listing actually belongs to a Re/Max agent as seen here and in Street View.

As for your 2nd question, it's hard to offer suggestions without knowing specifics

Leave them as-is.

I agree with Miriam on point #2 because by 301'ing the domains you'll also get the benefit from all their links.

In the past I have asked Google My Business to mark the old listings as "moved" to the new one.  This will cause people searching for the old brand to see the new one.  In order to accomplish this, you'll need to make sure the Google My Business listings are not verified.  If the previous owners have them claimed in their account, you'll first need to get access to the listing so you can unverify them.

For more details, check out the article that just published this morning: https://moz.com/blog/duplicate-gmb-listings

You should probably take a look at the Moz Local Search Ranking Factors survey if you haven't already.  If you want to post details about the specific business you're referring to, I can offer more specific advice.

Hey There,

Can you tell me what city or zip you're searching "orthodontist" from so I can replicate it?  Also, what's the website for your client?

It sounds like he's being filtered due to Possum but I would prefer to verify that by looking.

Hey Nathan,

Sorry this took so long. Our backlog is pretty long but Google got back to me yesterday to let me know they removed the listing all together

I would go with hotelsexample.com/state/city/ for the city pages that list all the hotels in that city.  For the listing for each hotel I'd go with hotelsexample.com/state/city/hotelname.

For the sightname it makes sense to put these under the city they're in: hotelsexample.com/state/city/sightname

There isn't anything wrong with creating multiple "city-pages" on your website targeting different city names.  Just be careful, because if there isn't enough unique content on them that is valuable to the user, they could be labeled as Doorway Pages, which are against Google's guidelines.  Phil Rozek has a great guide full of ideas for content for these pages.

What is not allowed is creating multiple listings for the same business in Google My Business. Google will remove the listings if they catch them and can possibly suspend the user's account as well.  Using addresses of relatives to create these listings would also be against Google's guidelines and would be defined as a fake listing.

I would only suggest creating multiple subpages for the location if they are targeting different keywords (products/services).  For example, if you have a location for an insurance agent then it might make sense to have 2 subpages, one targeting auto insurance and another targeting home insurance.  However, if the location just really offers one service, like a hotel, then it doesn't make sense.  I've seen chains do this and often Google only ever ranks the main location page and not the subpage because they are all targeting the exact same thing and the content is almost the same.

Exactly!

Oh, well in that case then I think you should be fine provided they don't overlap.  I copied a list of descriptions for the categories before MapMaker shut down so you can check this out if you are trying to figure out which one should go where.  You can see them here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_4yjYPVk0BFcaWHxUsmbObw8epJm-cXx-ZQstCE_byg/edit?usp=sharing

Each department would have its own listing on Google Maps if you set them up individually. There isn't a way to link them unless one is inside the other.

I would only suggest bothering with a G+ brand page for the entire company if you guys have a large customer base on G+ that would enable your posts to get +1s, shares, comments etc.

I'm not sure it makes sense for you to set up multiple listings for a marina because there aren't distinct categories you can use for each listing. If you use "marina" on all of them, that will cause them all to compete against each other and they won't rank the way you'd want them to.

What would you want the sales one to show up for on Google?  What were you planning on using for the category? I can't think of a distinct search that would be typed in by someone to designate they want sales specifically.  Departments are really only an option or good idea if you have different categories that match.

A great option for service area businesses to rank well organically in other towns is to utilize a service like NearbyNow.  They create real content that isn't just you're typical keyword-stuffed service area pages and they rank really well if you utilize the tool properly.

Also now that ads are in the 3-pack everywhere on mobile, I'm suggesting that to clients as well.

You were correct in your assumption on virtual offices - they are not allowed: http://www.sterlingsky.ca/google-updates-gmb-guidelines-virtual-offices-not-allowed-sabs/

Perfect. I updated my preferences.  I'll let you know when I hear back from Google on this.

Nathan,

Weird - I have no idea where I would update my settings to allow PMs.  Maybe Miriam knows

I believe you do have to take an additional step to set up the ads because not everyone wants them. They're done through AdWords Express so I would go here and sign up: https://www.google.com/adwords/express/home-service-ads/

In case they ask, what was the address exactly?  Was it a storefront, an office space where you worked, or just a residential address you used to list as a service area business?

Unfortunately like Miriam stated your business won't be eligible for a local listing anymore but since the office did exist there at some point, Google won't remove it and they will apply the "permanently closed" label to it. I'll check in with Google to see if there is anything else that can be done and let you know. This isn't the first time I've run into a scenario like this.

He should have a business license and should be ready to answer questions about his business to help prove he's an actual company.  The platform actually uses AdWords Express, not AdWords (unfortunately).

Using anything other than the correct physical address will most likely cause driving directions on Google Maps to not function properly.  Also, I've seen cases where ranking was negatively impacted if Google is unclear about your location.  I'd strongly advise against doing this.

Were you trying to gain ranking organically or in the 3-pack?

It's not likely you'll rank in the 3-pack for that keyword since you're not in Houston, like Logan pointed out.  They rank in the 3-pack currently if you change the city to College Station instead ("Office Furniture College Station").

However, it is possible for them to rank organically for that keyword.  Is there a reason why you guys didn't include the keyword you're targeting in the title tag? I don't see a mention of "Houston" at all.