Should I Suggest Him To Start Over With A New Site?

[talhaawan]

Hello EveryOne,

I have got a client and his local ranking is drowned by LOCAL ONE BOX ATTACK. And he is not ranking on his main keyword any more in google local. He is ranking in organic but way down on the third page. I am not able to fix his organic even after two months. The reason is the bad link building habits by his previous seo company. And he just told me that his websites PR was 2 an now it is n/a.

And i dunno why but he purchased a phrase match domain and re-directed his brand name website to that phrase match domain. Though his branded website does not have any backlinks pointing to it i have checked it through ose and majestic.

He was relying on google places for all of his traffic but with his google places gone now and bad link building i was thinking of asking him to start over with a new website.

What you guys think should i ask him to start over?
Or should i keep doing right things and wait to see any significant improvements?

If starting over can we use his brand name website instead of buying a new one?

Thanks

 

[Linda Buquet]

Not sure about starting over with the site. Could not even guess without doing deep dive analysis which would be a paid consult. Starting over is a big project and carries it's own set of risks so I'd be remiss saying ya good idea without doing complete eval. Which is not something I even have time to do these days but if you email me I could refer you to someone.

But as far as the local ranking nothing will help him rank if the algo has determined that one-box is the best match. EVERYONE is locked out, not just your client.

But to rank high in the pack, once that one-box is gone, you need a well optimized site that is not penalized. You can have a perfect Place page and tons of reviews and citations but if the organic is page 3 you'll still have a hard time ranking, at the top of the pack anyway, because the top 3 or so in the pack are usually organic rankings.

 

[talhaawan]

Not sure about starting over with the site. Could not even guess without doing deep dive analysis which would be a paid consult. Starting over is a big project and carries it's own set of risks so I'd be remiss saying ya good idea without doing complete eval. Which is not something I even have time to do these days but if you email me I could refer you to someone.

Hi Linda,

I myself very good at doing deep site analysis and i have done this for some seo agencies as a ghost ...

But as far as the local ranking nothing will help him rank if the algo has determined that one-box is the best match. EVERYONE is locked out, not just your client.

The thing is there are other long tail keywords for which the website is still showing up, The main keyword is the only one that is hit by that one box thing. I am thinking about focusing on those keywords for his google place rankings.

But to rank high in the pack, once that one-box is gone, you need a well optimized site that is not penalized. You can have a perfect Place page and tons of reviews and citations but if the organic is page 3 you'll still have a hard time ranking, at the top of the pack anyway, because the top 3 or so in the pack are usually organic rankings.

I told the client about the situation, told him that we at the moment can not rank for the main keyword but we can try to rank for other long tail keywords for which there is 7 pack listing showing up.

And if it is 7 pack doesn't that mostly depend upon REVIEWS + CITATION (NAP).
I checked and there is no blended algo for any of his long tail keyword and he already has tone of reviews just lack of citations, actually have no citation, but he was still ranking in the past.

 

[Linda Buquet]

"And if it is 7 pack doesn't that mostly depend upon REVIEWS + CITATION (NAP)."

Thats a common myth. Usually the top 3 are there due to pure organic strength - # of reviews and citations does not matter that much. Then bottom of the pack is pulled from pure local which is more based on reviews/citations and other Places factors.

This post explains/proves my point.

How the Google Local Algo Really Works - What Rules the Ranking Order

"The main keyword is the only one that is hit by that one box thing." Ya usually the head term will be the one affected. City Dentist, City Plumber - the money keywords someone is trying spammy stuff to rank for but also city KW combos the algo is getting tricked into thinking are big important brands that deserve a one-box.