Need help with Google+ Local SEO

I'm having trouble with some of the rankings for Google+ Local SEO for a few of my clients. According to Whitespark I actually have more citations for a keyword for a client compared to my competitors that are ranking really well.

In addition, the first peg in the local SEO only has a few citations - actually far fewer than the rest in the top 7. How can that be? I can't figure it out, and the citations provided are only to its own website and a few forums although the rest are the same. 2nd place has one review, but 1st place doesn't have any reviews at all.

Do you have any ideas on how to topple the competition?

There are too many factors to answer you based on the info in your post but, when it comes to ranking for local results in G the age of the business is the single biggest factor in my experience. For instance, a car dealership that has been in business for 50 years in a small to medium size town will be very hard to beat in local results because of their age based "authority".

Is their G profile "100% complete"?
Did you blast out 100,000 links at once to a domain that hadn't gottan any for 2+ years?
Are your client's citations coming from sources G doesn't like (spammy sites)?
Are there negative ratings on other sites for this client (like BBB)?
Is their site on a slow host?
Lots of old broken links on client's site?

R

hi

you may want to drive some high quality authority links to the page for the keyword (PR5+) depending on competition for keyword. however as Rabble said - lots of factors can affect ranking.

Greg

Hi Rabble, to answer your questions:
Is their G profile "100% complete"? -- Yes
Did you blast out 100,000 links at once to a domain that hadn't gottan any for 2+ years? -- No
Are your client's citations coming from sources G doesn't like (spammy sites)? -- No
Are there negative ratings on other sites for this client (like BBB)? -- No reviews at all on any website (but also same goes for the others except for 2nd, 4th and 5th positions. Client I'm referring to is in 11th position.)
Is their site on a slow host? -- No
Lots of old broken links on client's site? -- No


Greg -- thanks I'll look into the high PR for the keyword.

Its hard to help when you can't see the whole picture but, I would try to get/buy some links in local city directory websites then focus on getting a dozen people who are local to the business you are ranking to write 4-5 star reviews on them. They must be real, aged accounts, and if they aren't submitted from an IP address that's local to the business you're working on, big G will know and they could actually hurt your efforts.

Make some nice "free" info-ads on local.botw .org or brownbook .net or infousa .com and generate some higher PR backlinks in business profiles that are well written and professional. I have about a dozen such sites I use for this and when I get serious, and create nice profiles for my clients on them I always get good results. Good luck ~

There are many more factors than # of citations. Quality of citations being one of them and whitespark isn't much of an analysis tool for this. If you are still trying to figure this out, send me a PM and I'll help out.

Maybe your on page SEO is not targeting what you think it is, and is not a good a natch for the search query as the first place site.

To expand upon what Techxan said, perhaps you are targeting the wrong keywords. Also, your competitor could be ranking if their brand name is close to the keyword that they are ranking so highly for.

For example, if the keyword is "chicago movers" and their company name is "chicago speedy movers" then they may be ranking high b/c Google thinks the search is for their company.