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There are many reasons why your site might not be ranking locally. Some of the issues that might be affecting your site’s ranking might be so complex though that only an SEO professional can help fix them. However, not all issues that affect your rank are complex.
You can easily fix some of these issues by going through a checklist of the most prevalent issues that make a website rank low.
This article is a list of some of these common issues and by auditing your website based on the list, you might come across one or two issues that have been causing your site not to rank locally.
Before we embark on showing you this nifty list, you need to be aware that when it comes to local searches, what you see in the searches from your location, might not be the same thing that someone else sees from a different location when they search for information from your locality.
Let’s get started!
Is Your Site Eligible
Not all sites are eligible to rank locally and yours might be one of them. Instead of stressing on how to get your site to rank in a particular location only to find out that it wasn’t even eligible in the first place. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Does your website represent a business with a real physical address and a physical presence in the locality in question
- Does your business conduct face-to-face transactions with your customers
- What’s the name of the city where your business is located
- What’s keyword phrase you’re targeting
If you answered in the negative to the first two questions, then that automatically disqualifies you for a Google My Business listing.
If your business is eligible, you should do some research and find out the likelihood of your business ranking for the “City Name” + “keyword phrase”.
Search Engine Updates and Bugs
If you notice that there’s been a sudden change in your website’s ranking, you need to ask yourself what has caused the change. Usually, search engine updates will result in this. You need to check all the online marketing news sites such as SearchEngine Land to find out if Google or some other search engine has made new updates to their algorithm. Another site that is quick to report any changes that might have been implemented by Google is MozCast.
By any chance, if you suspect that your site’s local rankings have been affected by a search engine bug you can check out, Mike Blumenthal’s blog, Local Search Forum, or Google My Business Forum. If you find that the issue you’re currently experiencing has been described on the forums, then there a number of approaches you can choose to take:
- You can wait for the search engine to fix the problem
- Make some minor tweaks to normalize your rankings
- Wait to see how the update plays out
Guideline Violations
It’s not uncommon to hear that search engine guidelines have been violated. This of course leads to lower ranking. In order to avoid this inconvenience, you’ll need to commit the guidelines to memory. Some common violations that you need to keep an eye out for include:
- Stuffing keywords in the business name field
- Creating listings for ineligible people, departments, or locations
- Spamming the categories
- Using your phone number for incorrect implementation
- Using your website URL for incorrect implementation
If you’re unfamiliar with any of the above mentioned points, you should take your time going through search engine guidelines. You can use flash cards as a learning aid.
Guideline violations have serious repercussions including suspensions.
Duplicates
Having duplicate listings for your site can lead to lower ranking. When you have more than one verified listing, it divides the ranking strength between all the listings. This is actually one of the leading reasons why sites are not able to rank as high as they should in local search.
Collate all the present and past Name, Address and Phone (NAP) and use the Moz Check Listing Tool which is free to use. Make sure that you note down all the Google My Business duplicates that surface in the tool, then do the following:
- If your business is a service area business or a local brick-and-mortar store and the duplicated listing is an exact match, you should get in touch with Google and request that they merge the listing. If however the NAP doesn’t match and one has a typo you should click on “never existed” to delete it.
- If you have a duplicate that involves a multi-practitioner business things might be a little bit complicated. There are a couple of things that you need to consider such as are the duplicates:
- Past or current staffers
- Unclaimed or claimed
- Is a past partner deceased
To make sure you don’t mess things up I recommend you read these articles on:
Suspension Victim
Scenario #1
Say for instance your listing had been verified but now shows that it no longer is chances are your listing has been suspended.
It doesn’t take much to get your site suspended. If you stuff your Google My Business Name field with keywords you will feel the wrath of Google, albeit a soft suspension. However, if you do notice that your listing has become unverified take it as a warning and stop violating Google’s guidelines.
During a soft suspension, your site might lose images or reviews however a soft suspension isn’t permanent and you should be able to verify your listing.
Scenario #2
On the other hand, if you find that you cannot find your listing even when using a branded search there’s a good chance that Google has handed you a hard suspension. There are a number of things that might lead to a hard suspension including:
- Violating a Google update
- Falling afoul of a new update
- Your site getting reported for an ineligible location
Say you use a fake address to list your business, once you get a hard suspension, there’s really not much you can do to rectify that, as the suspension is well deserved. However, if you feel that the hard suspension was a mistake, then I’d recommend asking for help from the Google My Business forum.
Inaccurate or Missing Listings
Sometimes when your business is a victim of missing or inaccurate listings, you might find that you’re not performing as well as you’d like in the local listings.
A tool like Moz’s Check Listing will quickly show you how accurate your listings are on various platforms such as Facebook, Google My Business, Yelp, Factual and more.
It is important to conduct these checks because Google usually will pull information from any source and fix it into your Google My Business listing.
I hope that this article has helped you figure out what you’re doing wrong as far as ranking for your local target keyword is concerned.
If you’d like to learn more about local search; how to remedy low rankings or would like to consult on how Google My Business works, you can get in touch with us for a comprehensive consultation.