Ranking a client - out of my wits

[leadjoint]

Local SEO has always been my favorite since it is relatively much easier to rank websites. None of my clients have ever seen a drop till date and I am pretty proud of my strategies too.

Four months back I got a new client. This was his position:

• Ranking on the second to fourth page for most of their major keywords
• Already ranked 1-2 in the local pack
• Competition was not strong. Could be easily beaten

I gave myself three months to get them on top for the major keywords because for a website with this authority and rankings (already ranking #11 for one major keyword), this was pretty possible.

After four months of work, this one website refuses to move up. It still ranks around the same place for most of the keywords.

I suspected previous backlink history could be a problem. I noticed that the previous SEO had built quite a few links from forum profiles and blog comments. A few of them were from Casino, poker forums. I have disavowed them two weeks back.

The page loading could be an issue. Last week, we decided to remove the images that were causing the page to load slowly. It is still not the fastest, but now it is very much on the average - at least sufficient to not suffer any penalty.

I understand penalty revocations take at least 4-5 weeks to happen. But I just want to be sure if there is any other thing I need to fix in the mean time.

The website is already ranking in the local pack. And my client seems disappointed that I have not been able to help them move up by even one position. Any other suggestions?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hello, any advice we could offer would be a guess without knowing the specific client details. If you can provide those I can move this to the help section of the forum and try to get some problem solving going for you.

Thanks

 

[leadjoint]

Thank you Colan. This is the link. I have linked the client with a temporary URL so that there is no permanent trail. Please wait to 'Skip ad' to visit the actual website.

PS : For what it's worth, we already rank number 1 on Bing for the major keywords.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Did your client ever receive a manual action notification in Webmaster Tools?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thank you Colan. This is the link. I have linked the client with a temporary URL so that there is no permanent trail. Please wait to 'Skip ad' to visit the actual website.

A link to the G+ L page is better.

If I'm short on time I won't try to find and figure out how to format an overseas phone number to try to track down the listing. Often it does not work and takes multiple tries PLUS if there is a dupe we may not know which listing you are managing.

 

[leadjoint]

@Colan

The trouble is the client installed Analytics and Webmaster only in December last year - I don't have any data to correlate with any algo updates. Also, the webmaster has not shown any manual action.

@Linda

This is the G+ page. You will notice a discrepancy in the NAP. We have not changed it because the page is already ranking on the local pack while the client has recently moved to a new location and wanted their new address available on the site (for her visiting customers). As far as I know, wrong NAP affects local pack listing and not the other way round - so we did not want to meddle with it until the organic rankings moved up.

 

[leadjoint]

I think there is a lead here:

All this while, I never bothered to look into the map listings because as far as I could tell, we were already ranking in the local pack. So my only concern was building authority for the main website so that we would also rank for the organic list.

But I just started researching now and noticed this:

1. We have two map listings - one with the old NAP and one with the new NAP (which is there on the website and several other directories)

2. The G+ listing with the old NAP is the one that is getting listed on top of the local pack.

3. The new G+ listing also has the business name inconsistently written.

Could this be the reason why we are not ranking in the organic listing? I am confused how we are ranking on the local pack (where the discrepancy lies) but not on the organic list.

Thanks a lot for all the help.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Without the website I can't tell but it does have a feint smell of a Penguin penalty.

 

[leadjoint]

Hi Joshua, sorry here is the link

 

[leadjoint]

Any idea what should I be doing to fix this? There are two duplicate listings

Old listing : Ranking on Local pack but is wrong address

New listing : Not ranking, also has wrong Name (Address is correct).

Should I delete the new listing and let the old listing alone exist? Or should I delete the old listing and risk getting completely disappear from the first page of Google.

 

[Priya Chandra]

Hi leadjoint,

My understanding is that even if you delete the old listing, if there's enough compelling data out there, Google could recreate it (as an unclaimed listing) without your knowledge.

I can't access your links (expired?) but my recommendation is to delete the new listing, and change the address on the old listing.

This could cause the original listing to close, and a new one to appear or it may just change the address on the same page. Either way, you're keeping consistency and reflecting the real-world behaviour of the business. And i'm sure you'll be updating citations as well as directories so there's more data for Google to chew on

 

[JoshuaMackens]

As far as the website is concerned, the website does have a lot of exact match anchor text that is typical of a Penguin penalized site but it's not so overwhelming that I would say that's definitely your problem.

When I look at your rankings, for wedding planner perth you're on the 2nd page. That may not be where you want to be but that's not typical of a Penguin penalized site to only be on the 2nd page in a competitive niche like wedding planning.

Do you have access to Google Analytics data going back at least a year by chance?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Old listing : Ranking on Local pack but is wrong address

New listing : Not ranking, also has wrong Name (Address is correct).

Should I delete the new listing and let the old listing alone exist? Or should I delete the old listing and risk getting completely disappear from the first page of Google.

My understanding is that even if you delete the old listing, if there's enough compelling data out there, Google could recreate it (as an unclaimed listing) without your knowledge.

Actually my understanding is a little different. Google won't let you delete the old listing from maps. When you delete from dash that only removes from the account. Then the same listing is still live on maps, but it's a bare unclaimed listing.

I can't access your links (expired?) but my recommendation is to delete the new listing, and change the address on the old listing.

This could cause the original listing to close, and a new one to appear or it may just change the address on the same page. Either way, you're keeping consistency and reflecting the real-world behaviour of the business. And i'm sure you'll be updating citations as well as directories so there's more data for Google to chew on

If the name is wrong on the new one, that's what I think I would do too. But you can't delete the new listing. Now if it's a totally bogus name or a name very close to the correct listing you may be able to get support to merge them. I'd edit the old listing 1st so it's at the new address so they are close to matching. Then contact phone support and request a merge.

 

[leadjoint]

Thanks everyone for your patient answers.

One more question - have anyone here experienced organic listing issues because of duplication in maps? I just want to be sure that I am barking up the right tree here.

Do you have access to Google Analytics data going back at least a year by chance?

No Joshua, the client did not install Analytics until a month before I was hired.

So far I have disavowed a number of spammy backlinks from the past, removed a homepage carousel that was causing the page to slow down and now should fix this map as well. I just wonder if there are possibly any other things that I should fix to ensure Google rankings are true to the website's authority.

 

[Dustybones]

Thanks for the links via PM?was having issues with that temp URL as it has been blacklisted and our servers block it. I think your heading in the right direction with cleaning up backlinks, taking efforts to speed up the site and agree with Joshua that you?re not looking too bad on keywords, maybe diversify a bit. There are a ton of other keyword variations that could bring in traffic. I also think your industry is a goldmine for blog topics. Become a leader in that area for helping frantic wedding couples with the process.

A few specific thoughts about the site that might help:

- 7 pages are missing descriptions
- Make sure all images have Alt text and Titles. You can also geo tag each image using Picasa.
- Implement Schema markup as much as you can. I don?t think you are using any
- Optimize your images for faster downloads among other things. Your site is loading slow.

In general, I think if you continue to clean up the site, Address Backlink concerns, engage potential customers, and build up reviews across several sites you might see a gradual increase in ranking across multiple keywords.

 

[leadjoint]

We just updated the address on the old listing that used to rank in the local pack and now it no longer appears. Is this common?

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Thanks everyone for your patient answers.

One more question - have anyone here experienced organic listing issues because of duplication in maps? I just want to be sure that I am barking up the right tree here.

Duplication in maps should not cause organic listing issues.

 

[JimFranco]

I have the same issues with my site, was wondering if there is any update on your issues ?

 

[Eric Rohrback]

Jim,

Could you start a new thread and include web URL & Google My Business URL? I think it would be useful to keep these separate, since they're going to be different situations. It would be easier to track and get more collaboration if we spend the thread working on your specific issue.

We can move your post, but there's not much detail to start so it could be better to simply open a new thread.

 

[JoyHawkins]

@Leadjoint - those links didn't work for me so I can't see the specifics but regarding the bad backlinks - if they were built last year and they have a Penguin penalty, you wouldn't see a lift in ranking until Penguin refreshes (provided you disavowed everything correctly). It hasn't refreshed yet this year but everyone is expecting it soon.