Reviewing our site in comparison to competitors, with view to improve local SERP rankings

[leves]

Im managing the SEO for a site in house.

The site is for an interior design company and the SERP result for associated search terms, features local SERP results.

Im trying to increase our sites, local SERP ranking and have been trying to explore what i can do.

Ive run a report via Bright Local to give me stats for our site, and competitors, please note that the report rankings are not fully reflective of what happens when you run this search locally (eg. when you are in the local area) as i presume Bright Local are running their search from a data centre somewhere which is not local to our company. Long storey short, when searched locally our website shows up c. position #4 in the local SERP rankings, which is just below the local pack fold.

The 3 sites that rank above our site, have c. 20-30 reviews each, where as our site has 9 reviews (all reviews to all sites are all 5*), on all other factors (apart from number of photos) on the below table, our site outranks the other 3 sites.

Our site has no major issues with citation NAPs.

Questions :

A) are reviews a massive ranking factor holding back our site ? At first i thought yes, but there are some sites on the below table, like #3, #8, #9 which have the same / lower amount of reviews than our site

B) What else could we do to improve our local SERP rankings ?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Ive run a report via Bright Local to give me stats for our site, and competitors, please note that the report rankings are not fully reflective of what happens when you run this search locally (eg. when you are in the local area) as i presume Bright Local are running their search from a data centre somewhere which is not local to our company.

Nope, you can select the searcher location in the report settings. Also, if you use the geo-grid matrix style ranking report it will give you a true local ranking picture. I highly recommend using that style of ranking report.

A) are reviews a massive ranking factor holding back our site ? At first i thought yes, but there are some sites on the below table, like #3, #8, #9 which have the same / lower amount of reviews than our site

Reviews are an important part of the mix but in most cases you can usually identify something more specific that is the cause of the rankings being held back.

What else could we do to improve our local SERP rankings ?

• Check to see if you are being filtered
• Set up a Geo-grid style ranking report to identify hyper-local opportunities
• Make sure your GBP landing page is optimized well, and has internal links going to the other important pages
• Review your GBP categories and make sure you are using the best primary categories and are using all of the relevant secondary categories
• Use the Redressal form to report competitors who are breaking GBP guidelines

 

[leves]

• Review your GBP categories and make sure you are using the best primary categories and are using all of the relevant secondary categories
• Use the Redressal form to report competitors who are breaking GBP guidelines

Thanks for the detailed response, all seems very clear, but had a couple follow up questions re. the two bullet points above :

1) As far as i can see we are using the correct primary category (interior designer) and we have c. 20 sub categories setup, which i recall GMB said it pulled from other sites around the web (presume other niche listing sites we are already featured on) the sort of secondary category heading we have a furniture designer, storage solutions, kitchen designer, bathroom designer etc.. does that sound like we have it setup correctly ? Also is there a way i can see what our competitor's secondary categories are ?

2) What are some common infringements should we be checking for on our competitor's listings ?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

1) As far as i can see we are using the correct primary category (interior designer) and we have c. 20 sub categories setup, which i recall GMB said it pulled from other sites around the web (presume other niche listing sites we are already featured on) the sort of secondary category heading we have a furniture designer, storage solutions, kitchen designer, bathroom designer etc.. does that sound like we have it setup correctly ? Also is there a way i can see what our competitor's secondary categories are ?

Those are "Services". I am referring to categories.

2) What are some common infringements should we be checking for on our competitor's listings ?

This article covers that - [2022] The Ultimate Guide to Fighting Spam on Google Maps - Sterling Sky Inc

 

[leves]

Thanks Colan, Ive noticed that the majority of the competitors outranking us are "keyword stuffing" their company names, eg. "company name + service + city" is their business title in in their GMB profile.

What would be the best way to tackle this, a) report them via the redressal form, b) join them and do the same thing ourselves ? (dont get me wrong i dont want to cheat the system as its not a long term solution, but if we are constantly losing out due to others doing this, we are kind of stuck in a "if you cant beat them join them" situation)