Personal Trainer local ranking issues

[txsigma41]

Hi Guys, I'm posting again because I need some help from the experts. Thanks to everyone's awesomeness and willingness to help and some help from Linda as well - I was able to track down that I had a duplicate listing. After taking care of that, the local rankings still havent gotten back to the top page where they were for so long.

The site in the 7 pack for the following keywords for about a year or so and then suddenly dropped out. Any ideas on why? For the sites that are ranking in the local pack, we have a decent amount of them beat in reviews/location to center/citations/on page SEO/etc - why are they outranking us?

Could this have anything to do with the organic rankings?

ANY HELP WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED THANK YOU

Keywords
austin personal trainer
personal trainer austin
austin personal training
personal training austin

Website
Google - https://plus.google.com/103766686315267215059
URL - Personal Trainer Austin TX - Complete Fitness Design

A few notes
- deleted dupe listing that client had created under a diff email back in Aug 14
- no manual spam actions in Webmaster tools
- decently clean backlink profile (submitted disavow list to clean up the junk in there)
- over 50 strong accurate citations
- only a few incorrect citations
- he is ranking around 25-30 for main keyword, with a huge traffic drop after Penguin 2.1 in October 13.

For more info, here are 2 reports from BL showing the strength of the profile
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3spifWFdnbRdVhOcUdFMi1WUnc/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3spifWFdnbRRmNiUGNoX3d4em8/view?usp=sharing


I'll be here to answer any and all questions, I just need some help

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Is there another post with that you did with more details? I'm curious about when you experienced the ranking drop?

One thing that really jumps out when I look at the 7-pack pre and post pigeon is that almost every post pigeon result has the word Austin in the business name. I'm not saying you should go and add it to your name but it's pretty interesting.

Also, a couple of the current results seem like they have spammy, keyword rich business names that don't match the website.

 

[txsigma41]

Hi Colan thanks so much for chiming in. I'm having issues posting the thread on my phone but if you check my post history and the previous thread I started. I would be happy to provide any details you needed. It happened around March or April of this year and we made no major changes to the website itself other than deleting the duplicate listing. We also optimized some of the Google+ profileissues that we thought may have been the cause.

You're right about the current companies in the pack. They mostly have low back link accountsand pages that aren't the most optimized..but maybe that's what's working?

Its also frustrating that we are still ranking 30 organically with an on page optimized site and good backlink profile.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Here's the original thread Colan:

<a href="http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/help-support-google-local/15258-site-dropped-45-places-google-maps-overnight.html">Site dropped 45 places in Google Maps overnight. What gives?</a>

 

[txsigma41]

Thanks Linda..chrome on android wouldn't let me copy/paste the URL for some reason.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Oh man, I forgot how convoluted that one was. You know there is something one of our members dubbed a penalty hangover, where even after you fix a problem the penalty lingers for 5 months or so. I wonder if there is a hangover for having 2 listings or one of the other problems.

However the timing with Penguin is also suspicious. But Penguin penalties are not my area of expertise so let's see what some others say.

 

[txsigma41]

Haha that one was definitely a mess. But thanks to everyone's help I was able to get the dupe located and deleted!

I just find it so strange that with a decent backlink profile, the site is still being punished on the organic and local side. The date drop off came right after the penguin update but I didnt know how/if that affected local.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Well Local is pretty much based on organic ranking. Maybe even more so since the Pigeon algo hit in July.

I have seen some sites hit by Penguin that still ranked in the pack but only if they were really strong on the local side. Typically if you don't rank high in organic you won't rank in the pack.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

I just find it so strange that with a decent backlink profile, the site is still being punished on the organic and local side. The date drop off came right after the penguin update but I didnt know how/if that affected local.

Link clean up can be very tricky. I'm learning this a lot lately. Its totally possible that there are still some links that are hurting you and/or you disavowed some quality links that you didn't need to. I'm no expert in this specific area but I'm picking lots of tips up along the way.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Let me know if you need help with the organic link penalty if you think that's what it is.
A friend of mine is the leader in that area.

 

[txsigma41]

Same here Colan, I've mostly been relying on some of the link authority tools to help me run through my backlink report and then sort of handpick ones to disavow. Its a shame to see that it takes until the next refresh to see if the disavow tool is working for/against you.

---------- Post Merged at 04:21 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 04:19 PM ----------

Thanks Linda! I would love some help with the organic penalty - can you PM me their contact info?

 

[Margaret Ornsby]

I believe disavow files can take up to 9 months to take full effect. Something to do with how the bots crawl the web and how ggl processes the disavow files. Really frustrating if you think you are cleaning up a problem, takes so long to see results. Can you distract yourself with positive SEO with a local spin on it? Might be more productive than chasing your tail with penguins.
Worst part about all this is the apparent bird alliance...

 

[Eric Rohrback]

Disavows have been really frustrating for some of my clients. Some saw improvement post-penguin after submitting the disavow file, and some didn't. Very odd results. Any possibility of finding a previous SEO who build those links and doing some outreach to get them to remove the ones you think are bad?

 

[jamecl]

The best way to clean up your link profile is to try to get the links removed by contacting the website owners where the links originate. That's the quickest way to recover. If you can't get the links removed, you will need to resort to disavowing the links in Google's Webmaster tool. Usually the backlink profiles get updated when the Penguin algorithm is updated. There is speculation that a release might be coming in the early part of 2015.