More threads by dbilling

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Hi All,

I'm working with a catering business that ranks well in organic (it's almost always in top 3 organic for the search 'catering albuquerque'), but in local it ranks around 9-12. Starting in Nov 2014, I cleaned up all the local citations (moz local now says 99% and has for weeks) but that didn't help the local ranking.

Here's the page:
plus.google.com/u/0/+Savoryfarecafe/about

I'm guessing there's some sort of penalty going on? Since the business name has three categories in its name, I'm worried I might be seeing some sort of a keyword stuffing penalty. The unfortunate part is this is the actual name of the business (i.e. that's what the sign says above the door).

Hoping for a bit of help from the experts:
Is keyword stuffing likely the problem here?
If so, what should I do to fix it? (short of renaming the business)
If not, what might be causing the disconnect?
 
Hi dbilling,

I just had time to do a quick scan but don't see anything out of whack.

If the name is the name, then it should be fine. And even if it really was KW stuffing I've not seen Google do a ranking penalty for that anyway.

The main things that cause a disconnected listing are dupes - I check and don't see any...

And spammy descriptions. Repeating city more than once or KWs excessively in description can cause a ranking penalty. But since Pigeon, lots of spammy descriptions still rank. And your description is not spammy but to be on safe side I'd edit down, remove a couple links, all mentions of city and a few of the keywords.

Again, it's not bad, but since I can't find anything else AND since description is not a ranking factor, would not hurt to strip it back as a test. For consumers you can say "serving the local area" etc, instead of mentioning city outright.

I did wonder at 1st if having Mossman Center in address was a problem but found a couple other businesses that have address that way and they seem to rank.

Can anyone spot anything else?

Might want to check this post too, but I did a quick scan of the most common problems mentioned there.

<a href="http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-important/15881-troubleshoot-rank-high-organic-but-drop-out-pack.html">Troubleshoot: Rank High in Organic but Drop out of the Pack?</a>
 
Also keep in mind that the local algo takes much longer to update and relies on the organic rankings. So you will usually see good organic rankings for a bit before popping up in the local pack - sometimes up to about 3 months behind. You said you updated stuff maybe weeks ago so you may just need to give it more time for local pack results - keep working at things though, I'm sure you competitors are.
 

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