I feel like I'm doing something wrong

[jonthefellow]

But I can't figure it out.

I'm in a fairly competitive market/industry (remodeling west suburbs of Chicago), but have niched down in the last year or so to bathroom remodeling and tile work. This coincided with a slight business name change about 18 months ago.

I've been working on content and backlinks and very slowly beginning to rank for some terms in SERPS. The business is searchable and my GMB listing will show up. But I simply don't rank on local search. Checking via Local Falcon, I'm 18th centered on my house, and 50-70+ everywhere else in my service area.

The competition that ranks ahead of me include recent spam additions, 3-star companies with no website, contractors that don't do bathrooms, and companies that are 40+ miles away. The only errors on any local SEO service I check are that my NAPs don't match because my address is hidden. I know I need to gather more reviews (currently only have 6), but that's rather slow going as I'm a one-man band and each project is 4-8 weeks of work.

Is the number of reviews extremely important? That seems to be the main difference between myself and many of the others. Is there any other obvious thing that would cause this problem? Happy to share the specific business name if that's allowed. Thank you

 

[JoyHawkins]

It's hard to offer advice without spending a significant amount of time looking at the business listing and website but here are the top reasons we run across regarding why a listing doesn't rank in the local pack: 5 Things to Check When Your Google Business Profile Rankings Drop - Sterling Sky Inc

 

[jonthefellow]

Ok, just to follow up about this: I've done some sleuthing and it seems like my business pin is located in a neighboring town (not where I live). That said, this neighboring town is where a lot of my clientele lives - ie, I would like to rank there. BUT, if it's killing my rankings altogether, it sounds like I need to change it. Am I understanding this correctly?

 

[JoyHawkins]

It wouldn't kill your rankings, it just means you'd rank in that city instead of the one you live in.