Frustrating Local Seo Question
-
I have just lost the top stop on Google Places (Pack 7) for one of my clients. The company that took it came out of nowhere to take the top stop. Now I don't mind getting out ranked when someone has worked hard to out rank me but what is frustrating is this site scores terrible across the board on just about every score that is supposed to determine on and off page ranking factors. The only place it outscores is in the link department but the site is so new there is no data available in OSE. The site has 0's and 1's for PA, MR and MT plus the keyword (kitchen remodeling) that it is taking the top spot for scores and F in the SEOMoz on page report card while the page that I optimized for this very same keyword scores an A. Plus this site has zero citations according to Bright Local Data.
What Gives?
Here is a little bit of data:
Keyword: Kitchen Remodeling
My Clients website is http://www.tandmkitchens.com
Competitors website: http://www.njkitchendesigns.com
I'm kicking his butt in every category except Domain Age and inbound link total, his inbound link total is 409 but it's only from 2 domains.
Any thoughts on how this is possible would be greatly appreciated.Thanks all and Merry Christmas!
Gary -
One of my favorite cities in the world, so I will. Thanks,
keep us posted on the outcomes.
Best,
-
Wow Robert! I owe you a Pint for sure for all that information. I'm speechless but very thankful. SEO is one of those fields that the more you learn the less you know you know. I am aware of many of the things you recommend but I guess my thought process was it didn't matter or wasn't important for Local SEO and Google places. I can't thank you enough, this is by far the best answer to a question I've ever received on this forum. I'm serious when I say if you are ever in New York City look me up and I'll buy you a good pint of Guinness. Thanks again!
-
Gary,
Instead of going into a lot on Places, I will tell you what I see and what I think would turn the tables for you. First, If you want to rank for Kitchen Remodeling in Butler, you need to do a few things. As it stands, any of the dots around you can pass you.
First, your on site SEO has to be spot on. You have Internal links from your menu only. You need internal links just like you need external. So they have a lot of internal because they have a much larger site. Look at the mega menus and the options they have. Keep working on getting back links.
On your on page, you have room in the Title tag to add Butler or even Butler, NJ and I would. With the H1, you have Kitchen Remodeling and I would add at Butler again. For the H2 I would change it to something around your keyword like: Best Time of Year to Remodel your Kitchen, etc. Then, look at your content and see if you can be more informative as opposed to flowery. (Kitchen Remodeling One Step at a Time, then list), etc. Now, here is a pet peeve of mine: You have no map on the site at all. I would have one on every page (Certainly on the Contact page).Now, you have three reviews on the Places page and they are at best very low value: They were all put on within one month and there have been none since. Trust me, it matters. I would certainly be talking with customers and getting them to supply a review. Also, is the site listed in Yahoo Local, Bing Business Portal (no), etc. BTW, when you search the same in Bing and then click on images it serves up about 50; of these roughly a third are the competitor. It matters. You need to have them on Yelp, citysearch, etc. At least 5 to 8 other than the engines.
Are your images GeoTagged? Now on Places you have to take a Google Category first, then the others can be your choice. If there is a category around remodeling as opposed to construction, I would choose it as the first. On the others, I would make sure that if the preponderance of the business is remodeling the categories are too: kitchen re, Bathroom re, Closet re, etc. I would put construction last as it is over-broad.
I think you should worry less about what the competitor is doing (I have to tell myself that every day) and make sure that you have their site so tight for local that no one else ever gets to the top. You can certainly pass the competitor with just a small amount of work...did I mention a google map???
Hope this helps,
-
Fransisco,
I actually sat in on that live webinar and it was very informative. I had already implemented many of the things Rand spoke about in that webinar. My problem is this competitor has practically done nothing to his site and he out ranks me. I'm absolutely baffled how this happens, how a site with such low scores for on page and off page factors out ranks my clients site which out scores him in just about every department, I mean he kicks his ass yet he is getting out ranked.
The only thing I can say to myself is welcome to the world of SEO!
-
Watch Rand's recent webinar: http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/content-for-local-sites-and-local-search
-
Hi Gary,
have no idea, but 409 links from just 2 domains? That sounds "dirty-white-hat ^^". It worth an abuse-message to Google using Google webmaster tools...
Otherwise, may be thats a kick and Google will detect that earlier or later ...
Seb.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Impact of Non SEO Subdomains
My company has several subdomains whose specific purpose is to act as a landing page/site for our paid search and/or email program. One of the things I've noticed on these subdomains is that they are not being excluded from the SEObots. Could the lack of proper SEO techniques on these subdomains impact our main www subdomain? What is the proper configuration we should use to make sure these sites are not considered for SEO?
Technical SEO | | APFM0 -
Local site under generic domain
Howdy Mozers, We have main website on .com domain and local websites for each language like .es, .fr, .in etc. We decided to move all local sites under main domain .com using subdirectories with gTLDs. One of the local sites has a manual penalty. Right now we are redirecting local site which have penalty using 302 redirect. So my question is. Will 302 redirect hurt our main site? Is there any other way to redirect visitors from local site without passing penalty? We have few thousands monthly users who are still using local domain links to get to our site, so we can't remove redirect at all. Best Regards,
Technical SEO | | juris_l
Juris0 -
Disavow questions
Pretty sure I know the answers to these but someone asked me to make absolutely sure so here goes, any opinions welcome: If i disavow a whole domain does it include all sub-domains on the domain also?- my answer is clearly yes. If i have network of links really bad linking to my website that are already nofollow but awful websites to be linked on, is it worth putting them in the disavow list anyway to basically tell Google literally no association? I know the whole point of disavow is to essentially nofollow the link. Opinions much appreciated, thank you guys.
Technical SEO | | tdigital0 -
Site Launching, not SEO Ready
Hi, So, we have a site going up on Monday, that in many ways hasn't been gotten ready for search. The focus has been on functionality and UX rather than search, which is fair enough. As a result, I have a big list of things for the developer to complete after launch (like sorting out duplicate pages and adding titles that aren't "undefined" etc.). So, my question is whether it would be better to noindex the site until all the main things are sorted before essentially presenting search engines with the best version we can, or to have the site be indexed (duplicate pages and all) and sort these issues "live", as it were? Would either method be advisable over the other, or are there any other solutions? I just want to ensure we start ranking as well as possible as quickly as possible and don't know which way to go. Thanks so much!
Technical SEO | | LeahHutcheon0 -
Minor SEO for Yahoo and Bing
Over the past year, we have completely optimized one of the sites we manage for Google (removed bad links, reduced keyword count, etc) and we are doing great for Google organic traffic. However, in the process we have seen a steady decline in Yahoo organic traffic and Bing organic traffic. Enough so that I am looking for suggestions for quick fixes that aren't going to interfere with the Google optimizations that we made. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | airnwater0 -
Is there an onsite seo api?
Im trying to find an api which I can intergrate with my database for onsite keyword checking. Does anyone know if there is one available on the market? thanks, Chris
Technical SEO | | seomasters0 -
Meta tags question - imagetoolbar
We inherited some sites from another vendor & they have these tags in the head of all pages. Are they of any value at all? Thanks for the help! Wick Smith
Technical SEO | | wcksmith0