Rankings just tanked

[Brian]

Help the sky is falling!

My clients rankings have just dropped substantially in the last week or so. The client just noticed the change today. And unfortunately the timing coincides with us taking a their new Website live. We took the new site live on Saturday. And now the client thinks that the decline in search rankings is because of the new site going live. However the new site has yet to be indexed and the old version of site still shows in cache.

There are a few odd things about the situation. First is the fact that the results I'm getting here in Milwaukee Are different from the results that the client is getting when he does a search from his computer in Cleveland So when I do a search from my computer in Milwaukee on Cleveland divorce attorney It shows it as the A listing. However when the client does the same search from his computer in Cleveland the ranking is much lower.

I have attached a screen print of the places listing. They have ranked in the A or B position for years and before that at the top of the organic. They are listed in their places account as a service area listing serving clients. They do actually serve clients at their office. However it has worked this way for years and have been hesitant to change it.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Brian, I am booked up with consulting clients, attys that need help so may not be able to do a deep dive on this one for you. Plus am out all day tomorrow for a medical procedure, so am madly trying to get caught up.

But so others can help you we need...

1) The screen shot never showed up, can you try it again?

2) Link to G+ L page please

3) Did you update the existing site so we can't see the old site that WAS ranking? Or is there still and old site and this is a new 2nd site? If so please explain and give links to which is which since the right one may not be showing up on the live listing.

4) I find it odd that this is the 2nd attorney client of your that has a service area set up since atty's usually don't and should not.

Thanks for filling in the missing links to make it easier for us to try to help you.

 

[Brian]

...

1) The screen shot never showed up, can you try it again? Screen Print Attached.



2) Link to G+ L page please https://plus.google.com/113452871278938657183/about?gl=us&hl=en

3) Did you update the existing site so we can't see the old site that WAS ranking? Or is there still and old site and this is a new 2nd site? If so please explain and give links to which is which since the right one may not be showing up on the live listing.

We did update the existing site urbanfamilylaw.com. However the old version of the site is still in Google cache. I am including that link below:
Cleveland Divorce and Family Law Attorneys, Ohio Family Law and Collaborative Law

 

[Eric Rohrback]

You've indicated that your client is a service area business (sees customers at their location), yet you have not selected to hide the address. This is almost guaranteed to get a penalty. That was the first real obvious thing I saw. Anytime I indicate a client goes to their customers, I hide the address from maps.

Maybe I missed something, but why would you initially select a law firm to be a service area business?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Eric, yes true BUT that setting is wrong. Should not be set as SAB. Should be set to customers come here.

BUT BIG PROBLEM. This listing is merged/verified. So now you are not supposed to edit anything in the Places dashboard. So I don't know how to fix this.

WHEN did you merge/verify G+?

Because the big ranking issue I see is that this listing is showing symptoms of being deleted and starting over in the ranking cycle. There is no MM history and there are no similar places on the page. So this is LOOKING like a brand new listing that started over and will likely be 6 weeks or so before it works back into the local database and starts ranking again.

 

[Brian]

Thank you for your help Linda.

Will be able to resolve the issue with it listed as customers come here?

 

[Brian]

We did the merge verify back in October approx. It appears we can go into places and make edits. We were able to change the radio button.

<input type="radio" name="serviceAreasRadio" id="serviceAreasRadioNo" checked="">

No, all customers come to the business location

<tbody>
</tbody>

Will Google accept the change or because of the Merge verify the change wont occur

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Brian, as Linda mentioned, do not make any edits in the Places Account Dashboard once a listing has merged.

 

[Andrew Sawyer]

...

1) The screen shot never showed up, can you try it again? Screen Print Attached.



2) Link to G+ L page please https://plus.google.com/113452871278938657183/about?gl=us&hl=en

3) Did you update the existing site so we can't see the old site that WAS ranking? Or is there still and old site and this is a new 2nd site? If so please explain and give links to which is which since the right one may not be showing up on the live listing.

We did update the existing site urbanfamilylaw.com. However the old version of the site is still in Google cache. I am including that link below:
Cleveland Divorce and Family Law Attorneys, Ohio Family Law and Collaborative Law

The website is likely going to take an Organic search hit for not having the business name in the title. I likely would find other things, but that's a big indicator in my book.

 

[Brian]

We merged and verified it with google+ in October. The ranking is still showing prominently in Google search(Position "C" for Cleveland divorce attorney). Do you think this will fall further in search results? The Google Places dashboard is showing steady number of impressions and actions when compared to last week or last month, is this a positive sign?

---------- Post Merged at 02:34 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 02:29 PM ----------

Is there no way out once we merge the accounts? How do we rectify the wrong entries?

 

[David Deering]

The website is likely going to take an Organic search hit for not having the business name in the title. I likely would find other things, but that's a big indicator in my book.

That's a good find and a good point, Andrew. Brian, when Andrew mentioned your title tag, I looked at it too. I also noticed that the title tag is too long and the description tag is way too long. And you should delete the keywords tag while you're at it. I'm not saying that if you fix those things, their Local rankings will instantly improve. But those things are probably hurting you in organic rankings. Just as a suggestion.

 

[Linda Buquet]

It appears we can go into places and make edits. We were able to change the radio button.

Will Google accept the change or because of the Merge verify the change wont occur

So you already changed it, even though I told you Google says you are not supposed to edit in dash?

I'm not sure what will happen. Google always says not to and I suspect it can cause data issues or something.

 

[mborgelt]

Not to be hard but there are all kinds of SEO issues with this site:

- Poor Title Tags (too long, some pages dont have them, some say "New Page" or "New Page 2"
- Poor Descriptions (too long, a lot of pages are missing description tags)
- No H1's

...just to name a few SEO items

On the local side you have a 2 other duplicate listings for the same phone number. They do not looked claim or optimized....or more importantly deleted from the system.

Minor items but I never understand why we would tell Google to "re-visit" after a certain time frame. That never makes sense to me. You want Google to come back as often as possible.