What's with Google? All metrics in my favor, yet local competitors win.

[osaka73]

In regards to local search with the most relevant keyword, I can't seem to get ahead of the competition.

I've been going through a number of analytics reports, and in analyzing our trophy keyword (which is also the most relevant, to our service and site) our domain has consistently been better with a number of factors.  There is not a moz report that I can find that doesn't present us as the winner.

Of course I know MOZ analytics and google analytics are different, but I'm certain that we have them beat with both.

When all metrics seem to be in our favor, why might other competitors continue to have better success?

We should be dominating this niche industry.  Instead, I see a company using blackhat seo, another with just a facebook page only, and several others that just don't manage their site or ever add unique, helpful content.

What does it take to get ahead?  I'm pretty certain I've been doing everything right, and doing everything better than our local competitors.

I think google just has a very imperfect algorythm, and the answer is "a tremendous amount of patience" until they manage to get things right.

[osaka73]

Great information!  Thanks!  I will act on this and make some progress.

I can't believe our h1 tag (all this time) has been seen as one word FingersDueling Pianos!

[calindaniel]

Hi Bob,

I don't believe the location of your menu would cause ranking issues assuming, of course, that Google can crawl the links.

However, if you have reason to believe your rankings may have been impacted by the location of the menu I'd recommend testing it. That's the only way you can be certain.

[calindaniel]

Osaka73,

I feel like we're making progress!

I ran a quick Keyword Difficulty report for "dueling pianos" and from it an OSE report of the top ranking websites.

The top ranking business websites (excluding Wikipedia and image search) are:

• http://www.howlatthemoon.com/the-show/
• http://www.petesduelingpianobar.com/
• http://www.2grandentertainment.com/
• http://www.pointstreetpianos.com/

Interesting to note, your website has higher Domain Authority, MozRank and MozTrust by comparison. Whenever I see this, and to be honest it happens a lot, my gut reaction is that your website has a relevance issue. That is to say, Google isn't associating your website with the keyword you're attempting to rank for. Or at the very least, the algo believes your competitors are more relevant.

You may be scratching your head saying, well we get an "A" grade using the On-Page Grader (you do, by the way, I checked) however, the grader only takes into consideration onsite factors. It doesn't account for offsite factors and some secret sauce items related to your content.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I still believe your path to SERP domination revolves around your content and the development of your backlink profile.

For example, here's a what search engines seeing when they crawl your website.  Not much in terms of content for the spiders to latch onto. I would start by giving Googlebot what it wants, and what it wants its long form, authoritative content.

Next, the other challenge is in your backlink profile, specifically your anchor text and the relevance of your link sources. I reviewed an OSE backlink report and only two of your keywords include "dueling pianos" in the anchor text. Contrast this with some of your competitors and who have it in their business name, and, therefore, a majority of their anchor text.

These days anchor text can be scary; even the concept of link building has received a tarnished reputation, but I would bet my bottom dollar that the ranking issues you're experiencing are due to these two items.

[pallasart]

Thank you so much Calin, we really appreciate all your help!!!

One additional question that you might have an opinion on:

On our website the main menu bar is at the top of all the secondary pages, but on the HOME page the main menu is near the bottom because we wanted visitors to focus on the home page content first.

We weren't sure if it made a difference to Google that the main menu was under the content (at the bottom) on the home page

From an SEO  perspective would it be better to have the main menu on the home page at the TOP to be consistent with the secondary pages?

[osaka73]

Thank you very much for taking the time to look into this.  I appreciate your answer very much.  Improving our city and state pages has been on our "to-do" list for a while now.  So that will likely get a nice bump up on the priority list.

I feel confident that we can and ARE performing better overall than our competitors.  We have more content, and traffic comping from a wider variety of keywords.

But it was the homepage performance that has been perplexing to me.  It is somewhat of a splash page limited in content.  But many of our competitors have a similar homepage.

I do understand that if you add air to the floats, it raises the entire ship (that's the only analogy I have at the moment) so by improving our city and state pages, I suspect there would be some effect as well for our homepage with the main and most relevant keyword.

But are there any other suggestions or explanations as to how we can rank better with our homepage on that particular keyword.  Or why some of our competitors who aren't doing a very good job, are managing to outrank us with that keyword and their homepage?

[calindaniel]

Osaka73,

Thanks for sharing, it’s certainly helpful in understanding the challenge you’re facing.

Before I jump into my recommendations, I thought I’d take a moment to address your concern about including keywords in your domain. I’ve never experienced an issue with including keywords in a domain name. In fact, in almost every case I’ve experienced a boost in the website’s ranking for related terms and phrases. Matt gently nudges people away from techniques that can be manipulated, however, I still believe there is value in using it selectively as part of an SEO strategy.

As for the ranking difficulties you’re experiencing, I think they can be broken down into two areas.

Local Content

The content on the location pages is somewhat thin and in some cases close to being duplicate content. It’s understandable as you’re attempting to share the same message but market it to multiple locations.

I would focus my efforts on creating unique content for these pages. A few years back Phil Rozek wrote an excellent article on creating unique local content that is worth reviewing. You may also want to check out the recent article Mike Ramsey wrote on developing a local content strategy.

This, above anything else, will have the biggest impact on your local page rankings.

Local/Niche Links

Secondly, I believe the other obstacle you’re currently facing is in regards to your backlinks. I ran an OSE report for a few of your internal pages and for the most part they do not have any links.

In reality, your campaign isn’t truly a Local SEO campaign, it’s an organic SEO campaign. And, your internal pages just don’t have enough authority to outrank the home pages of some of your competitors. Not to mention, it’s also likely why you’re seeing black hat link spam outrank your website.

I’d recommend you focus on building links to your city and state pages, using anchor text when appropriate (just proceed with caution and don’t overdue the anchor text). This should help to increase the authority and rankings of your pages.

Search Engine Watch has a nice article on tips for building local links.

Best of luck with your website.

[calindaniel]

I see what you mean. Relative to your competitors your website has a lot of link authority. So, that’s likely not the issue.

Since your website is optimized correctly, for the most part, I would put it in one of two categories. Either you have a citation problem or you have an anchor text problem.

I would start by doing an audit of your business’s citations. Lean Marketing has a nice guide for performing a citation audit. You can also use tools such as Whitespark or BrightLocal if you have the funds to shell out for software. The objective is to find incorrect references to your business's NAP (Name, Address and Phone Number) and to correct them if possible. Consistency in your citation sources is key.

Next, I would review your website’s anchor text relative to your competitors. Anchor text has become a scary topic since manual and algorithmic penalties hit the news, however, I’ve found that acquiring a few links with your keywords in the anchor text can have a big impact on your website’s rankings. Just proceed with caution. Never build oodles of links with exact match anchor text, diversification is key.

If neither of these work, I would consider hiring a local SEO consultant to go through your accounts with a fine tooth comb. There may be other issues related to your Google My Business account, citations, business address, or location.

[pallasart]

We are very appreciative of all this help.  We used toi use MOZ years ago - I don't remember the Q&A being so good and useful with so many topics.  It probably was.  This thread is so timely for us.

[pallasart]

Calin: All our metrics are good and getting better.  We out rank our competitors on almost everything but can't move up.  My team member said the link on our page was not to the business Google+ account but to his personal one.  We did this months ago to get a picture on the search results - that's gone now. - I am sure they are other things we are doing wrong. If we get this fixed it will have a huge impact on our business. We have no black-hat back links (they I know of) and we try to do every right.  We will watch for every pearlof wisdome you can share with us.

[EGOL]

It's great to see appreciative people getting good advice.

[pallasart]

Thank you so much.  There are two of us working on this right now.  We are spending most of our time trying to solve our problems with our keyword listings. I'll ask my team member here for specific recommendations or problems we are having.  He's going trough your report right now so we can have our programmers implement it right away.  We really appraciate this - Bob

[calindaniel]

It's both, Bob. Including the address in your footer and on your contact page marked up in Schema.org are important steps in the process.

In my opinion, Schema doesn't have as much of an impact as say creating and verifying a Google My Business account or acquiring authoritative local backlinks, however, it's a foundational item that I always implement. Plus, it's relatively easy to do.

Once the basic onsite optimization elements are in place, my next step is to evaluate a business's citations and the website's backlink profile. In my experience, 9 times out of 10, a ranking issue is caused by one of these two things. Messy citations or a lack of authority relative to your competitors.

There is a laundry list of information I could share, feel free to let me know if you're like specific recommendations in one area or another.

[osaka73]

Thank you everyone. Here is the URL: http://bit.ly/1PeSIo4

Laura, when I said local, I was referring to local organic results.  Sorry for not being clear on that.

I feel that the most relevant keyword is dueling pianos, as that is what are business is.

Calin, thank you for that information.  Of course, now that I clarified that I meant google local organic results, it maybe change things a bit.

Although our domain name does not include our keyword, I remember an article of Matt Cutts saying that this would not matter, and even that some sites would be penalized for exact match penalties.  Also, I do use schema markup, which I have verified in webmaster tools.

We have a map page, as well.  We started using Yext, recently, as a "wallpaper" service more than anything else, to establish quick and easy consistency with our website, and google+.

I appreciate any additional advice. And will certainly go through all the advice that has so far been presented.  Thank you!

[pallasart]

I just posted something above.

[pallasart]

Thank you, Calin!

We used the tool and are know looking at the results.  Schema addresses are very important? Is that exact format or where it comes from the key?

[pallasart]

THANK YOU!Yes, we use our address - but some of our competitors on our keywords don't - and they rank higher.  We can't figure that out.  One of our guys thought you might get a better position without an address. It's sure confusing.

[MiriamEllis]

Oops - haha. That was me, signing in by accident under our Mozzer Alliance account instead of my own. So, the above reply is from me, and I'll look forward to reading your answer:)

[Moz.HelpTeam]

Great resources and feedback coming in from this super community! Nice job, everybody:)

Competitive Research: I want to be sure we're understanding one fine but vital point here. Is your business local with a real physical address in the city of search?

[calindaniel]

Hi Bob,

I took a moment to review your website. I can see multiple onsite optimization items that may be limiting your website's ability to rank in Google's local search results.

My recommendation is to start with one of Moz's resources on local SEO. David Mihm and the team and done an excellent job of categorizing information in the newly developed Local Learning Centre. They are much more detailed than I can be in providing a response.

Alternatively, you can use the Local SEO Generator to build a Local SEO Guide. Full disclosure, it is a tool I developed.

Here are some of the key issues I uncovered with your website:

Your website hasn't been optimized for the all important "local hooks". These are location specific pieces of information that, when crawled by Google, help to verify your business's location. This includes:

• Adding the City AND State to your website's title tag
• Adding Schema.org markup to your address in the website's footer
• Optimize the contact page by including the business's address marked up in Schema.org, and embedding a Google Map (with your business's address embedded in the map).

With that being said, web design is one of the most competitive niches in the world. In most cases, rankings come down to the authority of a website's backlink profile. Even in local SEO links are extremely important. If your competitors outrank you, their websites likely have more authoritative backlink profiles.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the other items to review include:

• Citation Consistency: Review the top citation sources for your industry and ensure a high level of NAP consistency across all sources.
• Citation Sources: Ensure you've submitted your business to the major citation sources for your country and industry.

I hope that gives you a starting point.

[pallasart]

Here's ours - http://www.pallasweb.com - we are having a huge problem moving up and are having the same problem.  All of our metrics are great and moving up but we can't get into the map listings.  There are two of us spending all of our time trying to figure this out.  We have been in business since 1996. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.  We used to use MOZ for years and then started back up a month ago. I think we stopped the last campaigns 2-3 years ago.

Our keywords would be web design, austin web design, web design austin, austin web design company, austin web developers, etc.

Bob

[calindaniel]

Hi Osaka73,

Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of Local SEO!

As Laura said, it would certainly be easier to diagnose your issue if you were comfortable sharing your business's name and website URL.

Speaking in general terms, here are a few areas to review/consider.

• Review your Google My Business Account: Ensure you've created, verified and optimized your Google My Business account. Find and remove duplicates if they exist.
• Citation Consistency: Review the top citation sources for your industry and ensure a high level of NAP consistency across all sources.
• Citation Sources: Ensure you've submitted your business to the major citation sources for your country and industry.
• Address Optimization: Assuming you have a single location, include the business's address on each page of the website marked up in Schema.org.
• Contact Page Optimization: Optimize the contact page by including the business's address marked up in Schema.org, and embedding a Google Map (with your business's address embedded in the map).
• Onsite Optimization: Include the city, state in landing page title tag

Assuming the above items have been accounted for, other areas that can cause ranking issues include:

• No service keywords in URL
• No service keywords in business name
• Lack of location/service anchor text in external links
• Lack of links from relevant industry sources
• Lack of links from relevant geographic sources
• Business location outside of business category centroid

A few excellent resources to review include:

• Moz's Local Learning Centre
• Local Search Ranking Factors
• WhiteSpark's list of top citation sources
• The Local SEO Generator 

[LauraSultan]

Moz Analytics is wonderful, but I haven't seen a tool out there that gives you the complete picture when it comes to auditing your site and competitive analysis. This is especially true when it comes to SEO.  Nothing can replace a comprehensive SEO audit and analysis conducted by an SEO expert.

Having said that, you'll probably get better help here if you share the URL,  your relevant keywords, the metrics you are comparing, and what you've done already to win in local search. By the way, when talking about "local search" are you talking about local map results or local organic results?