Local search optimisation
-
One of the major keywords in our industry “fireplaces” is now viewed as a local search phrase & Google seems to be displaying website results that it views to be local businesses. We have 2 stores, and for some reason they do not appear high on the rankings despite us having a physical location near by... can anyone help?
Also, we have a verified location on Google place, but even that doesn’t appear.
-
Hi Ray,
Harvey is definitely pointing you in the right direction. Definitely read David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors. It is the premiere annual industry report. *Do bear in mind that the last report (I'm a yearly participant) was published just prior to the launch of the whole Google+ Local system, so it does not reflect that big change. Here are 2 pieces I send my own clients when they are just getting acquainted with Local:
The Zen of Local SEO
http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1314The Rudiments of Local
SEO http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1344Local ranking factors are very diverse...there may be more than 200 factors in Google's local algo. Here are some of the most widely cited factors:
-
Lack of violations on your Google Places/Google+ Local profiles. Nothing kills rankings like violations. Memorize the guidelines: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528
-
Age and authority of your domain (you can't control age but you can build authority) - Local and traditional optimization of your website
-
Consistency, quantity and quality of citations
-
Quantity of Google-based reviews
-
Proximity to city centroid of the target city and proximity to Google's cluster of similar businesses
-
Traditional SEO factors such as quantity and quality of links and co-occurrence.
-
Social factors
That's just a start, but it does sum up some of the main things that go into achieving a high local rank in the city in which your business is physically located. Read David Mihm's report, the 2 articles I've linked to and the Google Places Quality Guidelines I've linked to and you will develop a very clear picture of your business' opportunities, its present failings and its room to grow.
-
-
Well, you tell Google where you are specifically located (city) via places rather than GWT.
It looks to me that your local listing is completely unoptimised.
There are no pictures or videos and the listing looks incomplete, plus it seems you have very few citations etc.
You're not ranking in local search and your listing is very weak compared to others so it makes sense.
Don't get me wrong, I've only spent 5 minutes looking at it, but IMO you need to look at local factors. The link I posted will show you lots of the things you need to do.
-
Thanks Harvey ... will look through that .Is there any way of telling Google where you are located in WebMaster tools or something like that... perhaps im missing something simple
-
Hey
Sure, but is your local listing much stronger? It looks like it's not as you seem to have very few citations from a super quick hunt.
http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml
Check out the above link (it's a LONG read!), as these are the kinds of things you proabably need to be considering.
-
Thanks Harvey
Our local listing is https://plus.google.com/107506644864807163902/posts
But for some reason it doen't seem to appear and our site doesn't show for local searches but is much stronger than the ones that do appear.
-
Hey Ray
I couldn't find your places listing anywhere. However you do seem to have very few local listings which would likely have an effect on your local rankings.
Check out this search:
"01909 449 501" -creativefireplaces.co.uk
It only shows 13 results, much less than I would have expected.
Have you changed your number at any point as consistent NAP details are very important.
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
-
How to get stars in my search results?
Is it possible for me to take my Google reviews and show them under my homepage as stars when my page is shown in search results. I provide a service, so I don't have separate product reviews. My homepage is what ranks most in the searches I target. If this is possible, what is the best way to do it technically? I have a wordpress site. Thank you in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | CalicoKitty20001 -
What is the perfect way to handle multiple sitemaps index in Search Console?
Hello friends, I have this doubt for a long and i want to share it with you. In our agency many clients have a PHP template for the home page of their sites, and also have a blog with wordpress as CMS. When i am optimizing sitemaps, I have two separate files, an index of Sitemaps created with Wordpress SEO by Yoast (which inside has separate Sitemaps tags, categories, posts, pages, authors, etc.) and on the other hand the home page sitemap with the subsections. As you know the sitemap generated by "Wordpress SEO by Yoast" is dynamic as it creates the sitemap according to current site content, and is updated every time a new entry is raised or modify any URL. This makes it very practical. I can not have a unique index sitemap sitemaps nesting inside another, as it is not allowed by Google or Sitemap protocol. I read in the Google Support you can upload multiple sitemaps to Search Console but does not say anywhere on upload multiple sitemaps index, or a combination thereof. In my case, I would have to upload two separately files, the dynamically generated with wordpress and the manual created for the PHP template. In my opinion there is no problem and Google will index everything properly performing it this way, but I wanted to share it with you to see how you solve this problem and what experiences had. Thanks and best regards.
On-Page Optimization | | NachoRetta1 -
Google search result dramatically dropped with drop in DA.
It looks like on 11/13 by site traffic dropped by like 75% and it just happens to coincide with the MOZ DA dropping to. Anyone else see this?
On-Page Optimization | | Motom70 -
Page title in Google search is defferent
Hello, Google changes the title of the main page only for my sites in this way: What I configured: My page title | my site name How it shows in Google: My site name: My page title If I checked some meta tags analyzer it will show my configured page title and also in Bing.com So what do you thing about it. Best Regards, Housam
On-Page Optimization | | anubis20 -
How to properly handle these search results pages
I work with Afternic.com and they are restructuring their website. The current search results pages generate tons of duplicate content, but it's not so clear to me what the best solution. Navigation links to all of these pages which are exactly the same and do not generate content on the specific url indicated. The results all display on variations of the url names.php http://www.afternic.com/names.php?feat=1 http://www.afternic.com/names.php?cls=1 Then they have this page with categories: http://www.afternic.com/categories.php And when you select a category, it generates sort results of names.php Now because there is no real content on names.php I'm wondering if all these url variations ought to have a rel canonical tag for names.php or if they should be blocked. If blocked, it seems we're stuck with a page that doesn't display any content. Thanks for any suggestions.
On-Page Optimization | | cakelady0 -
Pages that show in Open Site Explorer that show as 404's in search
When I use Site Explorer to find our Top Pages there are a whole series of pages like this: http://www.nile-cruises-4u.co.uk/mybestbets/mybestbets-culture.html which I think were created when we had a Bulletin Board on the site. Although they are showing in the Top Pages results when you visit the page you get the following error message: HTTP Error 404.0 - Not Found The resource you are looking for has been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. What implications result from these pages still showing in results and what action should we take without messing up our search rankings? Any advice would be gratefully received.
On-Page Optimization | | NileCruises0 -
Email in Local Search Directory Listings
Hi! I am relatively new to the world of SEO . . . let's say I'm still testing the waters. My role is at the company I work for is Local Search Specialist. I'm claiming/verifying/publishing listings for my employer's clients in attributing search directories. Yada yada yada. You guys are pros. Anyway, I have become apprehensive when listing a client's email in directories besides Google Places. I know that content matching between the client's website, Places, and attributing directories is a must; but spam is the worst. I'm trying to avoid spammers and sketchy directories contact the clients with sales pitches via email as much as possible. Should I create an additional email specifically for these directory listings and keep tabs to see if real people are using it as a means of contact? Not list the email at all? What should I do?!?!?!?!?!?!? Any insight/words of wisdom is appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | CakeWebsites0 -
How best to approach archiving badly optimised content
I signed up SEO Moz about a month ago as i'm currently rebuilding my site from scratch and wanted to learn from current mistakes. At present I use the forum software Invision Power Board to manage my site and one thing i've learnt is that it is terrible for SEO, there are so many thousands of errors listed by the crawler that it's not even worth trying to fix it. However because it has 5 or 6 years worth of content alot of which is on Google I don't want to totally remove it, rather I would prefer to archive it of with a big banner at the top letting anybody that visits it know that it's no longer in use and pointing them to the frontpage. I should note that it is in a subfolder already so the location of any of the links won't be changed. So the few questions I have are: The forum index has alot of link juice and I would like to redirect that to the new forum index, however for archive purposes the old index still needs to be accessible. Some topics are very popular and appear high in Google and have alot of backlinks. The important information in these forum topics will be available elsewhere on the new rebuilt site. Again I would like to redirect both link juice and users to the new page, however being a forum topic there are tens or hundreds of pages of old comments that need to still be accessible for reference. There are bound to be duplicate meta title and description issues with new similarly named categories appearing both on the new site and the old forum, is this going to be that much of a problem? So really what i'm asking is, how should I go about archiving this of without destroying content and rankings, but still making sure that the new stuff is getting the right exposure both to users and search engines alike?
On-Page Optimization | | freezedriedmedia0