Does your presence in Google local pack have an effect on your organic ranking?

[leadjoint]

There is a client of mine whose website launched only a few months back. Because of a minor goofup, we are yet to set afoot in the local pack. Interestingly, during this period, there has not been any major movement on the organic listings either. I'm just wondering if our inability to prove our presence in the city through the Google business listing is causing us trouble in the organic ranking. What do you think?

 

[warrenpd]

In my experience local rankings are influenced by organic ones (pigeon update) and not vice versa. They are two very different algorithms. In a competitive market you usually have to have something ranking on the first page organically to show up in the local pack.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Good answer Warren and I agree.

But to expand a little - you can't have one without the other either.

Think of it as 2 separate algos merged.

To rank high you need a high organic ranking (typically) PLUS correct NAP, no violations and everything else that goes into having a well optimized local listing and presence.
Everything needs to jive for you to be on top.

In my training, I liken the local algo to a giant puzzle.

He who has the most and the most important puzzle pieces in the right place wins and gets to be on top.

You can have the best organic in the world and rank 1# but if you have screwed up NAP, fractured citations and G+ L violations - you aren't going to rank in the pack.

On the flip side, you can do everything right on the local side, but if your site is not well optimized you probably won't rank well either.

But to answer your Q: "Does your presence in Google local pack have an effect on your organic ranking?"

I agree with Warren, it's more the other way around. Hi local may not boost your organic. BUT high organic will usually boost your pack ranking.

What do the rest of you think???
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[Linda Buquet]

Above I answered the Q in your post title. Here is more feedback re client.

There is a client of mine whose website launched only a few months back. Because of a minor goofup, we are yet to set afoot in the local pack. Interestingly, during this period, there has not been any major movement on the organic listings either. I'm just wondering if our inability to prove our presence in the city through the Google business listing is causing us trouble in the organic ranking. What do you think?

You might find this post helpful:
<a href="http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-important/14266-local-troubleshooting-best-practices.html">Local Troubleshooting Best Practices</a>

Also depends what the goofup was. No idea what it was so don't know if that is part of the problem. But in general new sites take time to build up rank in organic.

If you want help on this specific listing, please provide link to the G+ L page and give us timeline and explain the goof.

Then if you give a link and want troubleshooting I'll have to move this down to the help and support section.

 

[leadjoint]

Thank you Warren and Linda. I do not want to share the links on a public forum. The goofup is with regard to the address - my client no longer resides in the address we have set the NAP with. So we have been unable to verify the listing yet. So when I visit the business page, it has a message that says something like "We have blocked this because we think it is spam. Unblock by verifying the code". This is getting sorted and we should verify the code by next week.

The website launched around December last year and it already ranks number 1 for the brand name search. They operate in around 3-4 categories, and they started ranking in the second page for one of the categories while for the others, they have been ranking anywhere between 50 to 100+.

I normally see a moderate positive movement upward after 2-3 months of SEO work. This time though, things have stayed the same for around two months now.

I am not too worried since we have been doing all the right things and it's possible Google wants to hold back on new websites for a while until their authority is proven. But I was curious if this is because of us not verifying its presence yet on the Business page.

 

[Broland]

Yep, I confirm that organic algo is a big part of local ranking but not the other way around. Local can take much longer to update so you may be looking at 6 months of work or so to see results due to the "goofup"

Also as far as movement on organic - Google results have been very static the first part of this year and they are just starting to shake things up again. These algo refreshes don't run on a steady set 1, 2, or 3 month cycle and they are always being tweaked. A useful tool to check Google update activity is: Algoroo - you can see the last few month are quite low on update activity and that could be part of why you feel things are taking longer than usual. Some big updates on the way though.

 

[leadjoint]

Thanks a lot for all the information Broland. That was extremely helpful. I hadn't heard about Algoroo before and this seems like a pretty useful tool to monitor.