At a loss and looking for some wisdom for a clients local ranking.

[ForwardMotion]

I'm at my wits end! I have a client in my local market that I have been working with for a couple years and they have done everything I have asked and yet I'm having a horrible time getting them to rank at all. They are a service based business in the tree service category. I built their website and still doing a lot more work on it, but to get them to rank is like impossible. I have another company in the same category that is newer and further away from me and yet I have them ranking decently with not doing near as much for them yet. It really seems like they are being blocked somehow. Google Analytics and Google Console show their pages are indexed, but when I use Whitespark's Grid Tracker and Rank Tracker their rankings are horrible. It just really seems to me that something is blocking their rankings. I do know they had someone trying to sabatoge their business at one time with horrible Google reviews and changing their business hours to only weekends and off hours, but that hasn't happened for 6 months or more. Could there be something else I am missing? I'm in a small to medium sized market. I see many other tree service companies in the same area with little to no reviews, horrible reviews and no websites ranking in the top 20 and yet my client is showing in 50 to 100+ on Grid Tracker. I have worked on plenty of websites and GBP's to know what success is, but this one company is leaving me totally at a loss. Has anyone experienced this and if so, what should I be looking at to make sure something isn't being blocked somehow or if the website is somehow in a blackhole.

Sorry this is so long, but I'm just at my wits end with this one and I have to get this figured out.

Thanks for any help anyone can offer!

 

[keyserholiday]

Did they ever move? Typically when a SAB doesn’t rank, it because they moved or they never set up any citations.

 

[fisicx]

Would help @ForwardMotion if we could see the website.

Are you trying to rank the website or their Google profile?

 

[ForwardMotion]

Did they ever move? Typically when a SAB doesn’t rank, it because they moved or they never set up any citations.

They did move years ago from small town to the main town we are trying to optimize for. Unfortunately, their address is hidden since it is their home, so no way to get that moved without them getting an office in the main city. I'm going to look into the citations and see if that might help. Thank you for the feedback!

 

[ForwardMotion]

Would help @ForwardMotion if we could see the website.

Are you trying to rank the website or their Google profile?

I'm trying to get them to rank organically and their GBP. I'm going to try redoing some of their pages with better interlinking and also adding some citations and see if that might get us heading in the right direction. If that doesn't move the needle I will be back with more information. Thank you!

 

[keyserholiday]

They did move years ago from small town to the main town we are trying to optimize for. Unfortunately, their address is hidden since it is their home, so no way to get that moved without them getting an office in the main city. I'm going to look into the citations and see if that might help. Thank you for the feedback!

A few years ago, when Google removed the hidden address from the backend, it ruined moving a SAB. If they initially created the GBP in the small town, then Google still has them listed at the original address. What you need to do is create a new GBP at their current address and ask Google to transfer the reviews to the new GBP.

 

[ForwardMotion]

A few years ago, when Google removed the hidden address from the backend, it ruined moving a SAB. If they initially created the GBP in the small town, then Google still has them listed at the original address. What you need to do is create a new GBP at their current address and ask Google to transfer the reviews to the new GBP.

Ok, if I do this, are their certain steps I should follow to make sure everything goes smoothly? They have 130 reviews that I need to make sure they would get transferred over. Do I create the new listing, then ask Google to transfer the reviews, then permanently close the old one once they are moved? If you have anywhere I can go to get the steps to do this, that would be wonderful. Thank you very much for your help!

 

[keyserholiday]

To play it safe, find a way to extract the reviews. You can use Yext, PlacesScout, or any tool to grab the names, text, and links ot the reviews. Create an export and save it. Next, create a new GBP and complete the video verification. Once that is done, contact support. Tell them that you have created a new GBP, give them the link to the new one, and need to transfer the reviews from the old location to the new one.