What could be stopping us from ranking locally?
-
We do most of our business in national SEO and we do reasonably well, but we are entering a niche where search engine results are served locally. This is the page we are trying to get ranked:
https://idearocketanimation.com/video-production-company/
- The page has been indexed
- We beat all the rankers in Domain Authority
- We're competitive in terms of reviews
- We're strongly competitive in terms of load time
- We are a SAB, but other SABs seem to rank, and even companies with no GMB listing rank
- We have mentioned our locality on the page and meta title
It's not that we are not ranking well... we're not even in the top 50. Is there something I've done wrong, or forgotten to do? What might be stopping Google from ranking us locally?
-
My pleasure, William! We're happy to have you here!
-
Ha! Yes I encountered your article in my research, and it was the major source of my assumptions. It's good to touch base with the author and hear that the conclusions are still relevant. I will keep listing my business as an SAB on GMB (since we're using WeWork as just a meeting place) and try to be more consistent about address in other online sources.
Thanks so much for your time.
-
Thanks for the additional details, William.
Two years ago, I wrote this piece on the eligibility of coworking spaces for GMB inclusion: https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/are-coworking-offices-eligible-for-google-my-business-listings
I recommend that you read that to get a sense of local SEO surrounding these types of locations.
I will add an update, though. Three months after I wrote the above article, Google rolled out the Possum filter. What this means is that, if any other business at your WeWork location is in the same category as your business, you will be struggling to rank at that address, because one of the chief outcomes of Possum was the filtering out of listings that share category + physical proximity.
So, if after reading the above article, you determine that you would be eligible for a GMB listing at the coworking building, but you are finding you're not ranking for your most important phrases, you may be running into the Possum filter. The only way to overcome the Possum filter is to build your "authority" to the point that Google chooses to show you and filter out your competitors. This can involve a great deal of work if you have active, motivated competitors.
Because of this, you really do need to consider what is best in terms of address for the business. Options I am seeing for you (with an imperfect knowledge of your entire business scenario):
-
If you don't have any same-category competitors at the WeWork building or within a couple of blocks of it, determine your eligibility for a GMB listing at that location. If you find you are eligible, use that address.
-
If you determine you are eligible, but DO have same-category competitors in close proximity, assess whether you have the time/funding to do a full competitive audit and then put in whatever work necessary to become the un-filtered result.
-
If you are either ineligible to use the WeWork address because of nuances of your business, or lack the resources to become the un-filtered result in a Possum-affected scenario, but you still have an office on 34th Street, use that address and list yourself as an SAB. Or, if you no longer occupy the 34th street location at all, you may need to use your home address (or the home address of the business owner, if that's not you), and, again, list yourself as an SAB.
Don't focus on whether being brick-and-mortar or an SAB helps/hurts rankings. Focus on representing your business accurately, as failure to do so can lead to listing suspension.
My apologies if, not having a completely clear vision of your business scenario, I'm missing any important details. From what you've described, this is what I see. Hope it helps!
P.S. Obviously - once you've settled on your address, you need to update all your assets and citations to consistently reflect the chosen address.
-
-
Thanks, Miriam. We had been full-time at the 34th street office, but now we are taking meetings at a WeWork in midtown, while working most of the time remotely. My research seems to indicate that Google would prefer to list us as a SAB now, since we don't have hours at the WeWork address (and that WeWork address isn't available as a Google Listing anyway, since they already occupy it.) I had also heard that being an SAB (i.e., not showing an address on Google My Business) is not a disadvantage in SEO. Could you corroborate (or disagree with) my assumptions?
-
Hi William,
Good finds from both Donna and Nicholas. Please especially pay attention to Donna's query regarding your address.
I have two additional questions for you.
-
Are you meeting face-to-face with your customers?
-
At your address, within your building, or even within the same couple of city blocks from you, are there any other video production companies?
-
-
Hi William, great looking page by the way! Some optimization tests and adjustments I would make are:
- including "New York" in an H1 or one of the H2s on the page.
- Mention New York or NYC one or two more times throughout the page copy.
- If you have a New York address, it may be beneficial to include a Google Map Embed on the page of your location.
- Build Some Internal Links to The NYC page from your blog and other pages on your website.
- Build Some Inbound Links to the NYC page if possible (Use Moz Link Explorer for top ranking competitors sites for link building opportunities)
- Adjust Your Meta Title (It does say NYC, put it could be beneficial to mention New York as well), and you could try testing your meta title as "NYC Video Production Company: Videos For New York Businesses" as an example.
- Make sure your GMB is filled out and optimized with correct business categories.
Hope this helps and best of success!
-
Hi William,
I took a quick look at your GMB Listing. It doesn't display your address.
When I plug your business name and zip into the Moz Local Check Listing tool, your business comes up with an address (34th street) that is different from that listed on your website (49th street). The 34th street address is used on a significant number of the data aggregator sites as well as sites like Brownbook, Mapquest, Yahoo Local, Yelp and Yellow Pages.
That's undoubtedly at least part of the problem. You need to fix your address so it is consistent in all places.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Accurate Rank Checking for Local SEO
Hi all, I am wondering if anyone out there has cracked the enigma of figuring out how to accurately find local rankings for multi-location businesses. I do understand that "accuracy" should be used loosely given the numerous factors that come into play for local such as distance from searcher and business location being located directly in the city of the search. So I definitely get that nothing will be entirely accurate but the programs I have used and the incognito browser approach just seems so far off. Moz tells me something different than the Google Adword Preview Tool which is different than SEMRush which is different than serps.com and so on. I have done the appending to search strings with near=city as well. I unfortunately do not trust any of them at this point. I would LOVE if my company flew me out to every single city we are in so I could do local searches but that is probably not going to happen 🙂 Any thoughts or recommendations for how I can get the most accurate local rank, even if it is an incredibly manual process? Is there an easy way for me to change my location anymore since Google stripped that option away awhile back? That was the ONLY time I felt I was getting somewhat accurate results. Thanks! -Ben
Local Listings | | Davey_Tree1 -
How to Rank in Yelp
Hello everyone! I manage SEO for a pretty large brand that has close to 100 office locations nationwide. In the last year we have completely revamped our Yelp pages. This has been a great secondary source of traffic and conversions for us because of the type of industry we are in. The problem is, it can be exponentially better if we were more visible. We have done almost everything we can to make our pages as good if not better than almost any competitor regardless of geographic location. We even have the enhanced profiles (extortion) that remove competitors ads from appearing on our listings. Here is what we have done in the last year to each listing: Uploaded tons of photos Increased reviews Added proper categories Fine-tuned all of our CTAs Added in a unique and optimized business description ( Available with enhanced profiles) Set the proper service area range on their map Increased our review response rate ( both negative and positive) to 100% Still, even after months and months have gone by we struggle to rank on the first page for our service category. Doing manual searches often turn up competitors, who do not even have their listing claimed, have no photos, little reviews will rank higher than us. Even though we have an account rep because of our business size, bringing this issue up to them is about as useful as talking to a blanket. They push CPC so hard that its the last thing they are willing to help with. It has gotten to the point where I am honestly starting to believe in a self-curated conspiracy theory that they purposely hold larger brands back in organic to sell CPC harder. Obviously certain brands that hold the branding clout like a "Best Buy" would be hard to get away with. But still, we do all the right things and we are getting very minimal results compared to where we should be. Has anyone else had issues with Yelp or have any ideas on some steps we could take to appease their particular algorithm? Thanks! -Ben
Local Listings | | Davey_Tree1 -
Local SEO: How to get local business showing up in Google Local
Hello, We moved to a small town in Council, ID. It's interesting. None of the businesses around here are showing up in Google Local - map, phone number, hours, etc. Nothing. It's all Yelp and stuff. Is there some sort of collective local SEO that has to be done to get Council, ID on the map? It's kind of strange that no businesses show up. I want to help local businesses, but I don't know if Google will even register them. We can get a group of local businesses together if we have to. Let me know what we can do. Thanks.
Local Listings | | BobGW0 -
Business Name Change and Local Listings
Hi, I'm working with a local bakery. We're going to change the name, rebuilt the site and branding, change to a new domain. My question is: Is it better to do all the local listings now, then go and update the name and website when we launch, or is it better to wait until the new site launches? Also, we're merging the catering brand into the new brand, what should I do with the old profiles from the catering business? There are 7 good reviews on various platforms (Facebook, Yelp, Google) Thanks!
Local Listings | | MichaelGregory0 -
Local sites to make sure I'm listed in - which ones?
I'd love to know what sites this community deems most important when looking at whether my business & site are listed there. I know the obvious - Google Places, Yahoo Maps, Bing Local, Yelp. Foursquare. What others do you consider to be "mission critical" to the general market? Thanks!
Local Listings | | wcksmith10 -
Google Local: When moving locations, is a new website/content needed?
I've effectively moved companies before, but I've heard that ranking locally in a competitive market after an address move it is necessary to redesign the entire website/content/domain as Google associates the old website/content/domain with the old location. Is this true? Does anyone have any direct experience with this? NOTE- I have updated citations across the internet and have regular social signals going to the new location, and this has been the case for almost 6 months now.
Local Listings | | mgordon0 -
International Local Directories
I am wondering if anyone has come across a list of local directories for all countries/ regions. Like if there is a cheat sheet anywhere for what local directories exist for Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, UK, etc.
Local Listings | | EPICcreative0 -
How to do Local SEO for few cities in US while client is in Canada
Hi, How i can do the local SEO for few cities of US however client is Canada based. Client want to promote his business in US ( specific cities). Kindly suggest how it will be posible as client do not have address in US. Cheers!!
Local Listings | | 1akal0