Is Local SEO for newly registered businesses getting harder?

[leadjoint]

I have been taking up local SEO clients on and off over the past several years, and have mostly had successes. My most recent client was one I signed back in January this year - it was a newly registered website in a local business niche. It's been ten months and I am still far from achieving my objectives.

Is it just me or is Google making it extremely hard for newly registered businesses? I have benchmarked my client against all the top rankers and the one clear difference is the age of the domain.

 

[mborgelt]

We build a lot of websites and have witnessed that the hurdles for new domains are often larger than existing domains. Like you, we've seen numerous cases where our client is miles above the top results but due to entrenchment or Googles nepotism for old domains we have had issues moving the meter. In our experience as long as you keep fighting the good fight the results will come but it takes a little patience and a lot of creativity.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks for asking a great question LeadJoint.

And thanks for the thoughtful reply Michael! I agree.

I'll Tweet this out and see if we can get some more insights or tips about how to rank new businesses faster.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

My experience has been Google will let you rank organically far before you can locally (maps). I think GMB page age has a lot to do with it.

I have two clients right now at about a year old and they're on the 1st page organically but are far back in maps relative to their organic ranking.

Now it's even worse because they only show 3 results. I don't think it's unrealistic to allow for a year for a top 3 map result in a competitive market and 2 years at least for very competitive markets. Which is a shame because selling 2 years to the maps (not results, phone calls, or organic listings mind you) is tough.