Google Maps listings have been killing me

[Sherb]

<vent>

I have a client I made a perfect Google Maps/Business listing for several months ago. I have been pumping legitimate, sticking reviews to it, have everything all maxed out, followers to the Google+, posts almost daily, images, links to a verified phone number and connected website, interacts with reviews, interacts with others on Google+ page, and a verified address.

Meanwhile, it's sitting at spot 21 and the number one spot has no website, zero reviews, no filled out profile, nothing. Bah.

</vent>

 

[Andrew Scherer]

Local algo only seems to update once a month or so, sometimes longer. It will take some time before you see much fruit from your efforts.

 

[Sherb]

Local algo only seems to update once a month or so, sometimes longer. It will take some time before you see much fruit from your efforts.

Dang.

Wonderful products by the way. Your citations are doing wonders for my clients.

 

[goldnote]

My local map serp's just updated and got several spots finally. Seems like it took several months to update though.

 

[sunny_clicks]

I hope you are taking care of the On-page aspects as well. I have seen a lot of listings with nil to very low reviews and star rating making it to the top spot beating ones with full 5 star ratings and 100s of reviews. Reviews, ratings and ON-page all together influence the rankings.

 

[goldnote]

I hope you are taking care of the On-page aspects as well. I have seen a lot of listings with nil to very low reviews and star rating making it to the top spot beating ones with full 5 star ratings and 100s of reviews. Reviews, ratings and ON-page all together influence the rankings.

Sunny Clicks,
You got a point. Everything OP listed has to do with off page tactics and nothing about on page.

OP you have to have relevance to the keywords you're trying to rank, don't forget. Also there's more to ranking in Maps than focusing on just G+, you also need high authority links and proper on page seo done.

 

[Sherb]

Sunny Clicks,
You got a point. Everything OP listed has to do with off page tactics and nothing about on page.

OP you have to have relevance to the keywords you're trying to rank, don't forget. Also there's more to ranking in Maps than focusing on just G+, you also need high authority links and proper on page seo done.

Oh yes, that has been done. The site is crawling up one spot per day for a relatively difficult local search term, and has almost 25k words of relevant content, fully optimized. Meanwhile out of the 25 listings ahead of my client in Maps, three of them have websites, all three are awful.

 

[b520fp0]

Oh yes, that has been done. The site is crawling up one spot per day for a relatively difficult local search term, and has almost 25k words of relevant content, fully optimized. Meanwhile out of the 25 listings ahead of my client in Maps, three of them have websites, all three are awful.

What does "awful" have to do with rankings? If you have a lot of good citations and your social trust layer in place, only thing left to do, like the previous poster said, is to get strong PR, DA, TF links just like for organic. I have listings in the top 3 in competitive niches with 0 citations, so IMHO strong links for certain niches trump citations.

And yes, it takes awhile to see results in maps listings..this part is frustrating...so now I usually try to have a lot of the offsite in place before putting up the listing. This way my initial position starts off in a much better place as opposed to waiting for the next refresh.

Good luck!

 

[then051]

Sounds like it's getting sandboxed hard. I'm always amazed at how much Google local weighs in business / site age into the mix. With some of my more authoritative clients, rankings were super easy. But new businesses just have things tough right now it seems like.

Give it time though, it'll keep crawling up I'm guessing.

 

[mrpickles]

I read that having reviews on Google Maps / Listing and followers help 0 bit. But its all based on citations and content. along with good organic ranking .

this is where I read it, she seems to be a respected expert in the field.
http://www.localsearchforum.com/goo...go-really-works-what-rules-ranking-order.html

 

[Avid Learner]

Local algo only seems to update once a month or so, sometimes longer. It will take some time before you see much fruit from your efforts.

Andrew, can one expect a big move on the first update, or is it incremental (i.e. Google only allows small steps from the maximum ranking)?

 

[longrun]

<vent>

I have a client I made a perfect Google Maps/Business listing for several months ago. I have been pumping legitimate, sticking reviews to it, have everything all maxed out, followers to the Google+, posts almost daily, images, links to a verified phone number and connected website, interacts with reviews, interacts with others on Google+ page, and a verified address.

Meanwhile, it's sitting at spot 21 and the number one spot has no website, zero reviews, no filled out profile, nothing. Bah.

</vent>

I feel you pain! I am in the same position with one of my sites. Tried everything but still the site wouldn't shift. Right now I am trying videos and press release to see if that helps. What is frustrating though is seeing all these sites with nothing (reviews, website etc) in top three. Frankly I am beginning to think that no one understands the google maps system as there seem to be no clear pattern to the results.

 

[Worldwidebacklinks]

As said above, the map listings are a pain in the ass and get updated around once a month. Do what you can in the time being to ensure that your listing will out rank your competitors and wait.

 

[Ambitious12]

That depends upon the serps of your local area.

 

[CaptinAmerica]

I usually see a huge jump in ranking in about 2-3 weeks. Depends on location of results as someone else mentioned. One big factor I have found to work amazingly is to include schema markup language to your site to help search engines identify your "local site" with your citations and google map. you can add in "same as" to your markup language and include a link to your google+ page. This will help big G make the correlation between your website and your map listing.
If you need help ranking your google+ local page shoot me a message on skype.
Skype: UrbanAndrew

 

[ChadTKimball]

<vent>

I have a client I made a perfect Google Maps/Business listing for several months ago. I have been pumping legitimate, sticking reviews to it, have everything all maxed out, followers to the Google+, posts almost daily, images, links to a verified phone number and connected website, interacts with reviews, interacts with others on Google+ page, and a verified address.

Meanwhile, it's sitting at spot 21 and the number one spot has no website, zero reviews, no filled out profile, nothing. Bah.

</vent>

how about the number two, number three spots what kind of stats do they have? Even if the number one spot is some kind of anomaly you can get a good clue from number two and number three of what you need to do.

 

[bmminc]

It could be a "center of city" issue. Google likes to list places close to the "center" as possible.
Meaning, if 10 plumbing businesses are 10 miles down the road all bunched up near eachother, and yours is out by itself, it will be harder to rank.

No clue why they do it that way, but I've seen it happen a lot.

As for the other sites ahead of yours:
"awful" sites aren't always "awful"

It make look like a shit roasted potato..but if they have all their technical bases covered, then that is why they are up there.
On Page SEO makes a huge difference. Even if it looks like shit, if it is done correctly it will work.

Schema, Meta, Internal Linking, unique content, consistent NAP, service locations, list of services, and so on.


Also, check their citations, if they have a shit site but really strong citations from local news stations or something that could be a clue as well.

Just keep doing what you are doing, make sure your on page is on point, and you will see results over time.

If your client gets pushy about results, just let them know it takes time, and if you need to you can always grab some traffic from Facebook Ads/Adwords/Local Classifieds.

 

[MontieSkaggs]

sounds like you need more consistent citations from good sources!

 

[soldierseyes]

I got a recent client to be top on google maps listing by accident - I was trying to get him to top 3 on Google SERP. I think that the two are closely related and the key is to do on page SEO as well as get citations (back links). The way I do it is to list the business on every single business directory possible e.g. Yell. When I list the business, I make sure that I include ALL OF THE INFO e.g. opening hours, address and most IMPORTANTLY URL to the website. Aside from business directories, sometimes I try to post on local forums and local newspapers.

Time and age of the website also matters, if its a new business name and new domain name then you ll need to wait a few months.