Getting Slapped Left and Right. Help

Dude, it's completely normal for a site that hasn't established authority to dance and bounce and do exactly what your site is doing.

It's also perfectly normal for unoptimized pages to outrank optimized pages. Or to PERCEIVE that's whats happening. For instance,

You may have a site like:

homeimprovementnyc.com

With a geopage like:

homeimprovementnyc.com/locations/brooklyn-zipcode


And when a customer types "home improvement nyc" from a Brooklyn location, they might see your long tail page rather than your home page which is optimized for that term "home improvement nyc". The problem is, the term "optimized" becomes really gray when you're targeting local. It's not always so black and white. And there are LOTS of different ways to optimize not just a webpage but an entire website. EVEN IF you "optimize" the homepage to rank for geo-targeted terms (by using geo-targeted anchortext) Google can STILL pick out your geo-pages.


Now you asked for a "logical" explanation. And let me give you a disclaimer, I don't consider myself an SEO expert. I've ranked numerous local sites #1 but still consider myself more of an experienced amateur.

The term I'd use to best describe this effect is "content cannibalization". Which is very common with local sites. ESPECIALLY if a local site has lots of geo-pages. The relevancy of the home page and certain geo-pages can be so similar they literally eat each other up. So Google pulls which ever random page it wants. That's still an issue on my sites. But as long as my keywords are ranking up top I don't really care which page is showing.

Looking at your keywords I see a difference from the industries I normally target. Like you're targeting :

home appliance repair charlotte nc
appliance repair charlotte
dryer repair charlotte
washer repair charlotte
refrigerator repair charlotte

Which is ok but let me tell you something dude. I looked at your website and the architecture of your site is a disaster. No offense but there is no logical hierarchy to your menu at all.

If I were you, I'd take your "appliance repair" tab and rename it to "locations" then put that 2nd in order. Then create an ABOUT US page 1st in order. So the menu reads HOME-ABOUT US-LOCATIONS-etc. You NEED to create an about us page. On other sites I like to keep things a bit tighter. So I do HOME-SERVICES-etc etc. Then inside the "SERVICES" tab I put the "ABOUT US" first in line, then a "LOCATIONS" tab that is silo'd.

Inside that locations tab you put your different locations, and you ORGANIZE those pages like this:

Locations
Charlotte Denver Matthews Mount Holly Pineville
That's a quick way to do it right now based on what you currently have.

Then you need to beef up your other locations. Like it makes no sense why you have washer repair for matthews then dryer repair for mount holly and pineville. Do dryer, refrigerator and washer pages for each of those 3. The "locations" tab on my sites are insanely deep and organized. I do hundreds of pages within that 1 tab. Then I do a text version of the same exact structure. I duplicate the structure of my entire locations tab on that page. So IF someone decides to click "locations" rather than browse through the menu everything is laid neatly on the locations page.

Furthermore, stop putting "nc" at the end of "repair" both inside your menu and on your geopages.

Google isn't stupid and they ALREADY KNOW you website is targeting North Carolina. Some may disagree with me on this but you should never put the abbreviated version of a state or city twice in the url. It's almost like your insulting Google and real authority sites don't do that.

Finally, Charlotte is a large city with almost a million people in it. And there's 1 thing you're not doing that I do on all my sites which is use zipcodes. Charlotte alone has **22** different zipcodes none of which you are currently targeting. When I target large cities I usually do 1 page for every 3 zipcodes.

You don't have to do that but what you should definitely do is replace "nc" in pineville with the zipcode. Do the same for mount holly, matthews, denver and..... with charlotte that's gonna be a judgement call. What I'd personally do is put 28201 in place of "nc" then list the other 21 zip codes on the page. Like, "we service the following zip codes" then list them all on the page.

Make sure you do the same on all your other pages. People do type zipcodes when searching local and it'll help you pull in those long tail searches.

Overall I get the impression that you really don't care about this site. Cause there's so many things I do on my sites that SCREAM authority. Like get a video on your home page. Write a simple script, send it to Linnea Sage on fiver (she's awesome), download a bunch of reusable images from Google images, synch them to the script in powder director and get a nice video on the homepage. Your header is also really generic. Like on the top right area just says "Call XXX-XXX-XXX".

I'd write something like...

Charlottes Preeminent Appliance Repair Company!
Charlottes Premier Appliance Repair Company!
Charlottes #1 Home Appliance Repair Company!

And if this is a business put the license # in the header under the number. I looked at the entire site and can't find as much as 1 form of social proof anywhere. I mean there are a few reviews all the way on the bottom but they are hard as hell to see. If you paid $80 for a press release on here you could load that site up with tons of social proof and blow up your CREDIBILITY. There are services on here that will get you in 350+ tv, radio, news and broadcast stations. Then you put right on the home page and your about us page: "As seen or featured in: xxxxxx" and you list all the top media sites. Like "ABC, Google News, The Daily Herald, Jeffersonian, etc".

There's a specific service on here that can do that for you. Doing that on top of a video would not just skyrocket conversions but it would keep users on the site longer (I personally do 10 minute videos) increase trust, rapport, and help position you as an authority.

After you've reorganized the pages, doctored the site up a bit, then just keep focusing on getting GOOD links, more and more citations and reviews in G local. There are some really good SEO services on here like seoguy99. But I'd reorganize the pages first before doing that. Afterwards go outsource 300 citations. You can get that done for less than $100. And Google reviews, they are easy as hell to fake but if this is a clients site I'd stay away from that. Keep in mind, the more reviews you get on yahoo, yellow pages, insider pages, kudzu, yelp, etc the higher and higher you'll rank in G local.

You're not just ranking a local site you're building a funnel. You can make 30 geo-targeted YT videos targeting a bunch of specific terms then blast them with GSA. I don't do unique videos I just make small edits to each, rerender, upload, blast, over and over. And yeh, it's a lot of work. But when its done properly you make a lot of fucking money. You can sell a complete marketing funnel for $5,000-$20,000. If its your own business you'll make a shitload more than that.

Good luck,

-BB

I agree 100% with BreaknBrix, especially on the way your website is set up. The articles on Appliance repair tab, are barely legible.... I have to strain my eyes to try and read them. Like BreaknBrix said, an about us and locations tab are really important for Local SEO in my opinion.