Connecting a G Local listing with an Organic Ranking

[JoyHawkins]

Example: auto insurance metairie

noravadenhomes.com ranks organically on the first page but her Google Plus Local listing has a terrible ranking. Usually having a high organic ranking means you will have your G+ Local listing rank high and combine with the organic ranking, but I'm finding several cases lately where this isn't true.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Joy,

I just cut part of a section from my Advanced Places Training that deals with this issue.

DISCONNECTED PLACE PAGE? This is one of the problems I see often. A business has a high organic ranking but is disconnected in blended so his site and Place page are not connected. Here are the main reasons I know of that this can happen – usually it’s due to one of these problems on the Places side.

1) The location is way far from city center (not an issue lately as much)
2) Duplicate confusion (check for and eliminate dupes)
3) NAP confusion (800# or other on the site, mismatched names?)
4) Penalized for guideline violations (check for KW stuffing in description or other unwritten rule violations)

Those are usually the reason.

I just did a very brief check on that listing earlier and I didn't see any problems and could not find any dupes, which is normally the culprit.

I'll try to check more in-depth later.

Anyone else have any ideas for Joy?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

There was a duplicate until recently. It is now 404'd - here is the link:

https://plus.google.com/110716473570649059078

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hmmm, wonder if that's what did it? How long ago was it removed? Do you know?

Will be interesting to see if the next index makes it pop back into blended.
Do let us know!

 

[Colan Nielsen]

It has been gone since mid June. It was a duplicate that was created and fed from a corporate feed.

 

[Linda Buquet]

OK thanks, if it's been gone for that long, would not think it would be affecting the other listing in blended now.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Linda, what do you consider to be FAR from the centroid?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Well BACK when the proximity lockout was in affect it was obvious and I assume this trick works now as well.

Do a search for city keyword and look at the map on the main search results page. Back during the prox lockout that map was zoomed way into city center and only the listings in that area had a chance to rank.

I just was researching a listing here in another post, that I think was really far away from centroid and ranked high in organic but was disconnected. Let me go find and see if it's maybe an example.

 

[Linda Buquet]

OK here is the example I was thinking of - from post #17 in the Local SEO Ranking Game thread.

Google search: Santa Cruz Chiropractor

The #1 organic local is stewartchiropractic.net but he's not in blended.

Take a look at the map in the search above and note the map radius of listings that's included.

Then see where Stewart is: Google Maps The search map cuts off west of Twin Lakes and he's way to the east of there. BUT he also has a dupe which could be part of problem. BUT still I think he's too far out to rank in blended.

 

[Nick.SEOSpark]

I'm assuming that things like messy NAP data, lack of reviews etc (crucial local factors) may be the cause of a low ranking. I've also found problems with duplicate listings as above. It really is necessary to go through and do a good clean up job to get NAP consistency.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

I was going over some notes from a recent Local University and came across a great point that is so simple but perhaps over looked.

Google MUST be able to associate your website with your location in order to blend your Place Page (+Local Page).

 

[sergiuliano]

Hy Joy,


Sorry to disappoint you but noravadenhomes.com dosen't rank on Google Organic first page for "auto insurance metairie" or for "auto insurance" searched from Metairie.

You can see it on the first page because you are using Google Plus and you have probably +1ed it or visited it many times. You should run a depersonalized search query to see the exact ranking position

I have generated a report for you to see exactly which are the websites ranking on Google first page:

Ranking Report for noravadenhomes.com using "auto insurance metairie", "auto insurance" as keyword on TOP 5 cities in United States

Regarding your other question related to Google Plus URL Rakning is not clear for me if you are referring to Organic Results or Google Local results, can you please provide more details about it?