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From what I can tell, map packs are NOT considered in the new Search Console data.
I have a client who is killing it in Maps, but is still recovering from an organic penalty making the site basically non-existent in organic ranks for anything that isn't brand. None of what the website ranks for in Maps is being counted from what I see, since the Search Console is only showing branded stuff.
Yeah, I figure it's a glitch, but never seen it before, and with their mobile stuff rolling out, I could see them testing title shortening tactics.
Still happening in incog every time, and never when I'm logged in.
Beginning today, when I search in incognito mode, Google is giving me extremely limited titles, and not really going off of the title tag. The results are horrible for users, and make me nervous as an SEO. Image attached below:
Just that one significant change in my client pool, but it's also the only client that had a large discrepancy between Google reviews and Yelp. My other clients have consistent averages, and it seems like there would only be a noticeable spike if there was a discrepancy.
Any word on if Google is using those reviews less in the local ranking algorithm?
I have a client who has an average 4 stars on most sites, but had a much lower score on Yelp. Last night, he spiked in maps for some big keywords, almost like Yelp wasn't being considered anymore.
Associating with Yelp is my first thought too, but it seems unlikely.
If I had to guess, maybe a competitor or disgruntled employee destroyed an existed listing that had strength a ranked well? If that's the case, this listing should drop off soon.
It could settle. Also, there's a "crawl control" feature in Bing webmasters, if you haven't tried that yet.
Are you running paid search ads as well? If so, I usually notice Bing bot being very active at the beginning of a campaign.
Keep in mind, if you want to use this character, a lot of people may not see it in the SERPs, and it could just make your site look glitchy like the attached image.
The focus keyword is just a little tool to help you in the backend. You can focus on more than one keyword if you'd like, just check each keyword individually in the tool if you want to use it.
Do you use your brand in your title? Is copying your brand too? If so, he's shooting himself in the foot. If not, there isn't much you can do to address the title specifically, but there are some other things you can do to make your result more desirable to click. .
Don't change your title if you believe it's the best title for your business. If you aren't using your brand in the title, this could help users with confusion. Also, if he's copying your title, make sure to beat him out in the meta description to siphon off more click-throughs. Also look into the kinds of rich snippets you might be able to put in there to make your result stand out while you work on over taking him.
This title won't have negative repercussions for you from an SEO standpoint. I usually just smile when I see something like this happen. Imitation is, after all, the sincerest form of flattery.
Yelp and Google My Business are musts for just about any industry, but after that, the priority changes depending on the industry. Industry-specific directories can play a significant part.
Here is a great guide where priority is broken down by industry: http://moz.com/learn/local/citations-by-category
WMT measures clicks from Google. This data is gathered directly from Google's properties before the visitor sees your website. On the other hand, GA measures traffic based on a script on your website that has to fire and send data back to Google. If this script doesn't fire, no data goes to Google.
There are multiple reasons why this script may not fire, including mistakes during implementation, someone leaving the page before the script loads, browsers that don't load javascript, security programs that block the code from firing, and so on. All of those factors can attribute to variations in data.
I think it's good to use both sources. When you're in a data-driven industry, it's good to collect lots of it 
Here is a post that goes a little deeper, the comments are especially intriguing: http://www.notprovided.eu/why-not-use-googles-wmt-data/
There is a saying that I think holds particularly true in our industry: "If you think hiring a professional is expensive, wait until you hire an amateur."
This is one of those "you get what you pay for" moments. Spend what you can afford, but keep in mind that there's a reason why certain SEOs charge more than others. It's because they can, due to proven results and demand for their services.
All you can do is know your budget, shop around, ask questions to be perfectly clear on the services they are providing, and then make a decision on who you want to go with. Sorry I can't provide you with specific companies, but each situation is different and requires a different set of skills. Make sure to inquire when shopping around as to whether the companies have specific experience with your kind of site and what you need looked into.
They absolutely need to removed as quickly as possible. You are in the right and that company is just doing what companies do and protecting themselves. If the articles on MOZ aren't enough to convince your client, here's one from Forbes... maybe he'll listen to that one: http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshsteimle/2013/10/09/seo-rankings-tanking-check-for-bad-incoming-links/
A large portion of my job with new clients is now link cleanup and disavows, because they suffered this kind of penalty with who was doing their marketing before us.
I'm a fan of the third one, personally. It looks like you know the terms you want to use, so if they can fit in the title naturally, the only thing that matters it which one sounds better and will get the best click through rate. In this case, "free outdoor Shakespeare" seems like it would get a bigger draw from people who saw the title, so putting that up front would be best for users.
You may not be shooting yourself in the foot with the first one from an SEO perspective, but from a CTR perspective you might be.
Which niche you decide to target on your home page is up to you, but in general, the better user experience leans towards broader terms. You can focus deeper on internal pages, but be welcoming to a large crowd (an important, more general key phrase) on your homepage.
Why I say it's up to you, is because it's important to know the risk vs. reward, there is no definite answer. Going too broad will have you fighting against giants you can't yet compete with. Focusing too narrow will limit your demographic scope and traffic. As the SEO, it's up to you to do the research and discuss the levels of risk and reward with your client. What will take longer, what kind of results can they expect from each, etc.
It can. Ideally, the same phone number will always be displayed, but in your case (and a few of my clients), dynamic call tracking really needs to be on the site.
There are solutions to this. I don't know which software you're using, and it could differ depending on the software. The solution we found that worked was to put the call tracking script in, and have it change the phone number on the website only when traffic is coming in with certain parameters.
This works well with PPC call tracking, because the traffic coming in has predictable parameters, and those can used as a trigger to fire the script. Search engines aren't going to use these parameters, so they won't effect local SEO. Depending on how much direct and referral traffic you have, you might be able to use this solution with your PPC pool of numbers, and then you can focus on separating the referral and direct traffic from the SEO traffic to get the data you need. We usually only split the PPC traffic this way, trying to do it with organic could get you into trouble.
This should do it:
#begin redirect
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^subdomain.domain.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/subfolder/$1 [R=301]
#end redirect
Regex isn't the most intuitive thing in the world, but it's a necessary evil sometimes. Here's a nice little tool to help when you have to use it: http://regex101.com/
Imagine you are a user. If you're searching the singular, you're probably looking for a SERP with websites of single venue locations to browse through. If you were searching the plural, you're probably looking for websites that aggregate, list, rank or otherwise provide you with a predetermined group of venues. So, if you are a single venue trying to rank for "venues" you're always going to struggle against those sites that naturally use the plural.
With that said, yes, optimizing for a singular will usually give you some juice for the plural as well, but not as much. If you're starting from scratch, I would recommend going for the lower competition, more relevant key term first.
And remember, more traffic doesn't always mean more results. Targeting keywords without the proper searcher intent is going to get you traffic that doesn't convert.
