Local Search Results Tanked My 1st Page Ranking
-
My site was routinely ranking in the top 2-3 in Google for my relevant search terms. Then I started working on my local SEO. Now I'm in the map list at 1-2, but my site no longer shows up with the rest of the search results. I've heard that this has been happening to other local businesses with a big Google presence.
I'm thinking that I should create some micro sites for each location listing that gives a location specific intro and then links to my main site. Then I can sever my main site from Google places. Here are my two questions:
1) Is this going to kill my placement in the map results; and,
- How long will it take for my main site to get back to its 2-3 spot rankings in Google's regular results?
-
Hi David, That's really an interesting scenario you've described of actually preferring your purely organic result over your local one. What has likely happened is that your previous organic rankings have simply blended in with your new local ones, because most local rankings are blended these days. Thomas' suggestion is a creative one and may be worth trying if you truly feel you were benefiting more from a plain organic display vs. a blended local one, but now that you've got your local info out there, how Google chooses to display it may be difficult to change.
-
So if you had to pick just one or the other you'd prefer the non-map result...
If that's the case then change the URL in your local listing to different page. You may lose your map. It may come back. But at least you get your preferred listing.
-
I've seen a drop in traffic, but it may be a business cycle. I'm a consumer bankruptcy lawyer, and we see lots of peaks and valleys in our filing rates, which correlate to the peaks and valleys in site traffic.
When I'm in the regular search results it's clear that I'm a debtors lawyer, have a payment plan etc., because of how I set up the description text. When I'm in the map results, I'm blending in with all the other results.
-
Interesting test and question.
I've noted for a long time that Google will typically put the same URL either in the maps or on the page, but rarely both.Since the maps are part of the mixed results, the mix only allows the URL to appear once. You can however rank two separate URLs.
Part of the ranking factors within local are SEO related, so creating a microsite may not allow you to rank in the maps. Honestly, I don't think microsites are a best practice here. Plus, linking back to your main site with a bunch of microsites may appear to google as a "network". That could be bad for both micro and main site.
Proceed with caution if you must proceed. Trying to "over optimize" could cause you to loose all your first page rankings. I am a bit curious why you feel you need both. Has your traffic changed since being in the map section?
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
-
Weird Indexing Issues with the Pages and Rankings
When I found the my page was non-existent on the search results page, I requested Google to index my page via the Search Console. And then just a few minutes after I did that, that page rose to top 3 ranking on the search page (with the same keyword and browser search). It happens to most of the pages on my website. Maybe a week later the rankings sank again, and I had to do the process again to make my pages to the top. Any reasons to explain this phenomenon, and how I can fix this issue? Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrmrsteven0 -
Homepage not ranking for main keyword, all other pages ranking slightly for their own keyword phrases.
Dear Mozzers, We have an ecommerce website (www.pashmina-boutique.com), we want to rank the homepage for the keyword "pashmina". Problem is, we are nowhere to be found, not even in the top 100 search results of Google. It is indexed, we have no crawl errors, except that we had some problems with our hosting (503's), the crawler of Google bumped in a few of those. And we are fixing it. Our other pages, e.g. (http://www.pashmina-boutique.com/15-white-pashminas) ranks for "white pashminas" 24th and "white cashmere pashminas" 23rd. We have done no linkbuilding, in Majestic, you can check that. We have been offline for a long time (over 6 months) and about 3 weeks ago, we did a redesign (SEO). We relaunched, everything is looking fine except the homepage isn't ranking for the main keyword. Could you guys check it out? Is it over-optimization? It can't be Penguin, Panda would be a surprise too. Or do we still have to wait for the monthly Panda data-refresh? We are currently busy with this issue, once this is solved - that the homepage is ranking - we will start linkbuilding. Mr.1000
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mr.10000 -
Removing Low Rank Pages Help Others Shine?
Good Morning! I have a handful of pages that are not ranking very well, if at all. They are not driving any traffic, and are realistically just sorta "there". I have already determined I will not be bringing them over to our new web redesign. My question, could it be in our best interest to try and save these pages with ZERO traction and optimize them? Re-purpose them? Or does having them on our site currently muddy up our other pages? Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
Best way to remove low quality paginated search pages
I have a website that has around 90k pages indexed, but after doing the math I realized that I only have around 20-30k pages that are actually high quality, the rest are paginated pages from search results within my website. Every time someone searches a term on my site, that term would get its own page, which would include all of the relevant posts that are associated with that search term/tag. My site had around 20k different search terms, all being indexed. I have paused new search terms from being indexed, but what I want to know is if the best route would be to 404 all of the useless paginated pages from the search term pages. And if so, how many should I remove at one time? There must be 40-50k paginated pages and I am curious to know what would be the best bet from an SEO standpoint. All feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Yellow pages, how to improve rankings?
We have a huge database of companies in the baltic region (www.business-baltics.com) the page is completely yellow pages with no unique texts or anything. How would you improve the Search Engine Rankings for a website like this? And how do you do a link building for a page like this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarkasKR0 -
No Results for Google/Bing Keyword Search by Domain Name
My site is bestwebconsult [dot] com When I do a search for my exact domain name in Google and bing, it does not appear at all. I have submitted a sitemap to Webmaster Tools. It is a relatively new site completed with in the last month. Built with Joomla. This leads me to believe that something is misconfigured on the website. Please advise, thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | crave811 -
Geo-specific SERP Rank Tracker that is good for hyper local results?
We've had a lot of success using Raven Tools, as well as some other tools for SERP Rankings for our clients; however, most only go down to the country level. We're researching into some good hyper local trackers (down to the city/zip level). Does anyone have any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BlastAM0 -
Hi my site dropped from page rank 4 to 0,
I have done everything the correct way and my site shouldnt break any guidelines can someone tell me where i can contact google and oppose this please? also can someone tell me if links play a part in this> of if this is something to do with the penguin update and my site has been wrongly effected? my url is below http://www.diamondwaste.co.uk/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tommyboy70