Frozen Listing?

[cjenkins]

I have two listings, but I'm assuming proper etiquette is one at a time. Upon doing a search for "photographers in charlotte". My listing will come in high for an organic listing, but it will not appear in the local listings. For years (at least 5) I've always appeared here and had a good ranking. My web site is charlottencphotographers.co. I also have another listing for my boudoir photography which takes place at a different location. If you search "charlotte boudoir photographer" my web site of "charlottencboudoirphotographer.com" will appear, however, it doesn't show as a google places listing. This is a newer site, perhaps 6 months old. I've tried to update without changing any data, I've added photos, and more. Any help is certainly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi cjenkins,

Welcome and thanks for posting the issues so we can take a look and try to help.

I'm booked with research I need to get done for my consulting clients today, but will try to take a look tonight. Maybe one of our other local pros will give you some insights in the meantime.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Do you have 2 Google Places listings?
Are they by chance same address? Same Phone?
If so that's a problem on several levels.

I can only find one listing: Charlotte Vibe Photography - About - Google+

If the other listing is live can you give it so me so I can take a look?

Then I'll explain after I investigate some more.

 

[cjenkins]

The only other listing I have is https://plus.google.com/117964609207429920406/about?gl=us&hl=en

it's for my boudoir photography business. A little more history.....At one point there were duplicate listings for CV Photography, however, it didn't seem to affect anything. However, about 3 months ago I deleted that duplicate. When I first started the Charlotte Boudoir Photographer business, it did have a similar address. Then fearing google wasn't liking it, I updated it to the address where we actually photograph those session and there is also a different phone number for it. I have been able to find the CV Boudoir through google, but only when searching on the maps. It never comes up on a regular search.

 

[cjenkins]

Also, some of my reviews seem to be disappearing. If anyone knows of another post that perhaps I'm missing to help solve my problem let me know. This is driving me nuts because I've been pretty good at this for years. Thanks in advance.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Many are having review problems. We are attempting to get more of Google's attention on this issue by consolidating review problems in one thread.

Please see Mike's post and add yours to this thread. Google Groups

Linda

 

[cjenkins]

Thanks Linda for response about the review part. The most important problem for me first is the frozen listing issue. Were you able to complete your research after my latest response to your questions?

 

[Linda Buquet]

No I'm sorry. I am absolutely slammed with this latest G+ merge issue and that review issue and have been trying to help out more at the G forum. I'll try my best to circle back around later in the week or hopefully one of our other pros can help you out too.

 

[cjenkins]

The reviews information you've posted have really helped with that issue. Still hoping someone can give some thoughts on the frozen listing aspect. Thanks everyone.

 

[Don Berthiaume]

Regarding Charlotte Vibe Photography, I was able to find, though I'm not quite sure how I came to find it, what is possibly an older listing in Mapmaker. You can search MapMaker using "Charlotte Vibe Photography, 101, N. McDowell St." to find it.



As you see, it does have the same phone number as your current location.

There also appears to be a number of ways that each address is listed in the various directories that is also inconsistent, ie

"Charlotte Vibe Photography" "101 North McDowell" vs "Charlotte Vibe Photography" "101 N. Mcdowell" vs "Charlotte Vibe Photography" "101 N. Mcdowell St. Suite 110"

and

"Charlotte Vibe" "601 South Cedar Street" vs "Charlotte Vibe photography" "601 South Cedar St." vs "Charlotte Vibe photography" "601 South Cedar St. Studio 105E"

These are just a few of the variations that could exist. Regardless, I'm figuring these are some of the issues that are not helping your situation.

Perhaps Linda can suggest a best practice for removing this extra listing from MM. As far as the mix / variations of citations, that might be a tougher nut to crack and involve the ever tedious task of updating these citations / directories with your correct NAP.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks for digging in like that Don. I'm not sure that other listing in MM is hurting. I don't really know if it has an impact if it's only in MM and it does not come up as a dupe with phone search. So not saying it’s not a prob, just that I'm not sure about the impact. Also don't deal with MM much so not just, I guess if it's an old address you could try to mark it as closed.

Few other things I noticed.

On your Place page you only have the category Wedding Photography. Why? That means you likely won't rank for any of the other types of photograpy you offer AND if you want to rank for just city photographer then you should def have the core keyword photographer as a category. In fact just having that missing could be impacting your ranking for "Photographers in Charlotte". (DON'T use Boudoir Photographer as a cat though, due to that being the main cat on your other listing.)

So Place page cat is Wedding Photography and Place is linked to charlottencphotographers.co. HOWEVER Wedding Photography is not even optimized or even mentioned on the home page. Then when I click Wedding Photography on the site it takes me to a totally diff web site that's optimized for Wedding Photography but won't rank in blended because it's not tied to your Place page. Do you sort of see the disconnect.

Think of G like a kindergartener playing a match game. She needs to see a Place page optimized for a KW and a matching site optimized for same. (In very simple terms, it's much more complicated. There are over 300 factors that go into the combined blended algo IMO)

Your site is the main problem I think and it's not well optimized. This is NOT a thorough eval of your site, just a couple quick points AND I'm not suggesting you just change the things I'm going to mention because that would be a scattergun approach. I think you need someone to just re-eval and optimize the site. So here's just a couple points.

Home page is most important to optimize and has little content and zero SEO. (I realize for customers the home content is visual. But spiders need content.)

Title tag not well optimized and same title tag almost is on many pages.

Then you have a duplicate home page or at least the page is called home in the menu but it goes to a different page NOT the root home page. That 2nd home is a little better optimized BUT the main home page is what's linked to your Place page and is the best/easiest to put the most SEO energy into.

Then bunch of other stuff like NAP not matching on site and Place page, wrong phone format on site and no embedded G map on contact us page and lots Local Hooks are missing and some other minor issues that if all re-done by someone really good at Local SEO, could help you a lot I think.

FYI I don't do SEO for clients any more and when I did only work with Dentists, so just want to make it clear I'm not saying anything to sell you on my service because I don't offer one. But many of the Local Pros have taken my Local SEO optimization training and would probably do a great job for you if you need help.