Help! New site won't rank locally but should...
-
any help would be greatly appreciated...
picked up a new client, a used car dealer in New Jersey. Have a VERY spammy site before, tons of keyword stuffing and lots of dupe content. also had a horrible design. (www.coopscars.com)
We updated the design and the content, made it relevant and unique, fixed title tags, etc. Now he's not ranking for anything locally other than his business name. He's got a decent number of links, we've added relevant citations, his social signals are much stronger than they were...
We do lots of SEO for car dealers, and we know that he should be ranking SOMEWHERE at this point - not saying he should be page 1, but he should at least be somewhere in the top 5...
and yes, bing/yahoo are different, but he ranks over there... one page 1 for "used cars south river" - so why completely non-existant on Google?
just as a test, he put up a free website at www.coopscars.net just last week - and it's already ranking for several local terms.
I'm completely confused here - i'm not a noob, I know the tactics we've used on him work for other dealers. Thinking there's got to be something that's blocking him, especially since there aren't but maybe 15-20 car dealers to compete against locally and he still doesn't show up...
thought i'd come over here and see if anyone has any ideas...
-
Hi Greg,
From the ongoing discussion, it looks like you've got to investigate the potential of a penalty on the organic side of things (not my area), but let me take a look from a local perspective.
1. On the client's Google+ Local page (see: https://plus.google.com/105185934363953908565/about?gl=US&hl=en-US), I see a potential problem in the business description, which reads: "Coops Cars has great deals on the best used cars in South River (and the entire East Brunswick area). Affordable financing options and extended warranties available. Coops Buys Cars also - we pay cash for used cars and trucks, even if you don't buy one of ours." I recommend you remove any geo terms from that (take out South River and East Brunswick). Google has never publicly stated that use of geo terms in the description causes a penalty, but for many years, Local SEOs have observed that it can cause one. So, I'd get rid of it. To be on the safe side, I'd take the business name out of description, too.
2. Even more serious problem. Your client appears to have a duplicate Google listing going on. I did a phone number lookup in maps.google.com for (732) 334-1770 and see this: https://plus.google.com/113899383798859891141/about?gl=us&hl=en I found it by clicking the 'see all 2 results' link in maps.google.com for the phone number lookup. So, the business is listing itself as 'Coops Used Cars' and 'Coops Buys Cars'. This could be totally killing their ranking chances, locally speaking.
3. I am not seeing any other duplicates, but you need to discover if there are any. Look up different iterations of the business name, and also any old or alternate phone numbers. As you mentioned that the client was being spammy, you need to be on the lookout for anything else weird they may have done on a local level. For example, purchasing virtual addresses or using P.O. boxes in neighboring towns.
4. Okay, here's another one. The client has a phone number issue going on. The number published on his duplicate Google listing is (201) 334-0570, but the number in the footer of the website is 732-334-1770. Definitely a problem, as the conflicting numbers will erode Google's confidence in the business' NAP
5. Hmm, here's an odd one. I'm not familiar with NJ geography, but why does a phone number lookup for( 201) 334-0570 in the main Google search engine bring up a ton of listings for the business in Hackensack, rather than South River? That needs to be investigated and all citations brought into a consistent NAP format (name, address, phone number).
6. A phone number lookup in maps.google.com of (201) 334-0570 is bringing up a closed business listing with the title We Buy Any Auto. So, clearly, some spamming of the local index has been going on, and a thorough investigation is warranted.
That's about all I have the time for within the scope of Q&A, but I think with this quick glance, I've identified some key issues that are almost certainly affecting your client's ability to rank well locally. A history of spamming can be hard to overcome, but every effort needs to be made to clean up past bad actions. You may even want to hire a professional citation editor to help you. Nyagoslav Zhekov's name springs to mind (ngsmarketing.com) and his rates are quite reasonable. Definitely, this client is going to need a lot of work.
-
I think you're being hit for massive amounts of redundancy.
Numerous pages appear to be targeting "Middlesex County Used Cars" and "South River Used Cars".
I had the same experiences, on numerous sites and just recently.
Ask yourself each one of these questions...just as Google would.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html
Particularly this one:
- Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
Even though that article is from 2011...it's Google's manifesto on quality and they're systematically attacking each one of those questions one by one.
Even though each of your pages is well written and targeting different topics, your title tags and local trigger words are all very similar.
-
yep - already cleaned up a lot of those, working on getting rid of as many as we can... but not sure if those were enough to penalize him...
-
yep - already cleaned up a lot of those, working on getting rid of as many as we can... but not sure if those were enough to penalize him...
-
Hi
I have just looked at Open Site Explorer - I suspect it is a penalty.
You have loads of links from different places all for either 'Used Cars New Brunswick' or 'New Brunswick Used Car Dealership'.
You may want to clean those up before asking for a reconsideration.
-
yep - everything is perfectly OK in GWT, nothing silly w/ robots either.
Filed a reconsideration yesterday, hoping that helps...
at this point, thinking it HAS to be some sort of penalty...
-
Hi Greg Is everything okay in Google Webmaster Tool? Nothing silly like wrong geographical location or robots.txt? Have you tried a reconsideration? Would be interesting to see what others suggest Richard
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
-
# of links and how it impacts ranking
Hi everyone I was running a competitor analysis in Moz Pro of my site and 3 competitors that are ranked above me. One of the things I noticed is that my # of total links is very high compared to 2 of my competitors(please see attachment). Other seo tools are telling me the same. This is mainly due to a few affiliate sites that have us in their footer. I was wondering if this could impact our ranking if some of these sites have very low domain authority and have thousands of backlinks to our site? I am looking into starting the disavowing process. Walau
Competitive Research | | wdsguy0 -
Why is this site at no.1?
In the last 2 months, a previously unranked/unheard of website jumped straight to no.1 position for a particular keyword when searched from USA and is even ranking over many other big brands or stronger DA/PA sites. I did notice some very strange JavaScript popup links that are heavily keyword linked from the first mention of the keyword on the page content. What are they trying to do here? Otherwise they don't seem to have much PA/DA or seo going on. Why are they doing so well?!
Competitive Research | | emerald0 -
Confused about sites ranking when compared to each other
I'm looking at the keyword "snow guards" for two competitor websites: snogem dot com (SG) snoshield dot com (SS) I've been watching these two for about 4 months. SG stays in the top 5 SERPs consistently, while SS bounces around from 15-20 on Google. I've looked at the competitive link comparison and SS appears to have a much better link profile when it comes to DA. Page specific metrics in OSE show SS with a higher mozrank, moztrust, internal followed links, linking root domains, total linking root domains, and linking C Blocks. It appears to me that SG has many more links, but their links seem to be many site wide exact match keyword links, and paid for advertisements on a major site in the metal roofing industry. Honestly the linking profile of SG surprises me that they rank so much higher than SS after the Panda/Penguin updates. I have two questions: 1. When competing against these sites, should I model SG's link profile? I'm nervous to because of my previous statement thinking they will get hit with Panda/Penguin like updates. 2. What would it take to bounce SS to competing with SG on the first page? Is the number of links the only thing this site is missing, or is there something else to focus on.
Competitive Research | | kadesmith0 -
Another how the *%#^ is this site ranking question
I saw a question posted by someone a while back asking how a certain (in their opinion crappy) site was ranking in the top then. It happened that there were some good reasons for that site ranking. Well.... I have stumbled on a site that seems to be ranking for (almost) no reason at all: relatively low DA/PA very few inbound links (none seem to be that special) thin content The only thing I can think of, is that the site has the keyword in the domain name. But looking at the search results, there are other domains with exact match keyword in URL and somewhat stronger metrics that don't rank.
Competitive Research | | inhouseseo0 -
Looking for a recommendation for a site ranking comparison tool.
Hi, It seems that SEOMOZ provides only link ranking comparison with competators. I'm not conviced that this is valuable for my purposes as the comeption often has few links tool, probably the nature of the business.. First, is it worth trying to compare keyword ranking with competators? I think it is, but I'm not that experienced with SEO, especially with Wordpress/Buddpress sites. Second, any recommenations for a tool that will make this easier? Larry
Competitive Research | | tishimself0 -
Crazy SEO question (maybe I'm missing something?)
OK - so one of our customers just called us and told us an interesting story: A local SEO company called her yesterday to try to sell their services to her. She's in the process of starting SEO services with us, so she told them she wasn't interested. The sales guy told her that they were better (without even asking who she was currently using) and asked her for a term that she'd like to rank higher for. She said she'd like to rank higher for "spray in bedliners northern ky" and he said "Gotcha, call you tomorrow" He called back just now and told her to look at Google. She's now ranking number one for that term. He didn't have access to her site, so he wasn't able to change anything on her site. He won't tell her what he did, and told her it was legitimate - but it seems to me that with only off-site tactics, it'd be nearly impossible to white-hat her site to number one overnight... Any ideas what he's doing? First of all, we want to be able to tell her what he's doing, because she's curious. More importantly, we want to be sure he's not doing anything black-hat that's going to hurt our client's site. Thanks for your help, Mozzers!
Competitive Research | | Greg_Gifford0 -
List of all outbound links to a specified site
For example, I want to search for every link to my site from stumbleupon. Is there a way to do this? Much thanks in advance!
Competitive Research | | TrevorMcKendrick0 -
Government Sites Cluttering Results?
Hi Guys, Have you ever come across government sites that are cluttering up SERP's that you're trying to rank for? For a new site that I'm working on one of the keyword terms is "driving test cancellations" and is in the UK. 3 of the top 4 results are government related sites which have verry little (if not nothing) to do with the keywords. Whilst these government sites are (very) loosley related to the keyword terms, and understandably have high pa/da, what would be the best way to try and rrank higher than these sites. I'm in the process of building links and social profiles - I'm really just wondering if there's something I'm missing that is an "easy fix" for jumping ahead of these sites - or getting them removed due to their lack of relevence. Gary...
Competitive Research | | perfectweb0