Local site rankings have dropped off first page but Universal went up.
-
My site was performing first page locally on 6 of 20 keywords, and universally on 3 of 20 keywords. We started a link building campaign and optimization about 3 weeks ago. When I looked at the rankings today I was happy to see that 16 of 20 keywords were in the top 20 rankings universally, but not happy to see that only 1 of the 25 words were ranking locally now. I lost my local ranking on 5 very important keywords. I realize that you can not rank first page for both local and organic but its as if I traded my first page local ranking for a universal ranking that appears lower on the page. Maybe someone could point me in the right direction.
-
In this article they suggest that local/blogs about your area carry more weight in local results: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2065673/Link-Building-for-Local-Search
So, what kind of link building did you do? Citations? Blog posts?
This goes along with what Miriam said, but did you include a name, address and phone in the link building? If so, did you use the same address for all of them?
Are you using schema location data on the site you are optimizing? Do you have the meta tag for the geo location in the header?
-
I was trying to find some information or data that shows a correlation between global linking and a drop in local search results. Could you forward me any information you have on it? Thanks.
-
Hi Whmgatx,
I'm no expert at linkbuilding, but I would suggest you make double sure that nothing that was done could have caused a penalty of the Google Places/Google+ Local pages. For instance, make sure that as part of your optimization work, no one on the team over-optimized a listing, created a duplicate listing or created new listings that share items like phone numbers. Just a thought.
-
I'm guessing here since I don't have any data about your campaign, but your link building could have affected the SERPs in that way.
Linking your site from global oriented sites or sites scattered on hosts or ccTLDs around the globe, could have that effect, versus boosting your local rankings if you focus your link building campaign on relevant local sources.
Off course. there may be other factors, but from what you mention it could be the case.
Did you have a noticeable higher percentage of local link partners before starting your campaign? -
It looks like the keywords changed drastically on the 13th. My site was last indexed on the 11th so I am assuming that it can't be onsite issues ?
I guess my next step would be to find out what links have been indexed from the 13th on? Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for your help!
-
Getting served local results can be hit or miss on some phrases. It is possible that local results just weren't generated when the rankings were generated, so it had no data to go on. So, what I'd suggest doing is check your webmaster tools to get an idea of where the keyword has been ranking over the past week, and compare that to prior to your link building. When you click on the keyword in your webmaster tools it should have a list saying where it has ranked, and not just the average ranking position.
Also, I have a bunch of phrases that generate both universal and local results on the first page. I primarily work in the automotive vertical, and I see it with internal pages optimized for used cars, and having a Google Places optimized for used cars as well. The internal page only exists because the home page wasn't converting those customers very well, but it's a nice bonus to take up 2 of the top 5 spots.
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
-
How to analysis Product List position in Analytic for 2nd Page Clicks?
Hi All, While implementing Product list position when user move to 2nd page then position again start from 1st position so how I will know in google analytic that 1st Position clicked from 1st page, 2nd page, 3rd page etc and same way how do i know if page is sorted with highest or lowest price? I am talking about given below position. dataLayer.push({ 'ecommerce':{ 'currencyCode':'EUR', // Local currency is optional. 'impressions':[ { 'name':'Triblend Android T-Shirt', // Name or ID is required. 'id':'12345', 'price':'15.25', 'brand':'Google', 'category':'Apparel', 'variant':'Gray', 'list':'Search Results', 'position':1 }, Regards, Mitesh
Reporting & Analytics | | Arnold30 -
Link Activity to site keeps decreasing
Recently I have started seeing daily declines in the total inbound links to my site. 4 of my top 5 sources are all experiencing pretty significant declines and in fact, Pinterest has declined from a high of 16,295 links in Nov '15 to a current number that is 8,479 on 1/6/16. Any ideas on what could be causing these declines? I did upload a new sitemap in Nov, could this be the cause?
Reporting & Analytics | | ctripp10100 -
Automated XML Sitemap for a BIG site
Hi, I would like to do an automated sitemap for my site but it has more than a million pages. It would need to be a sitemap index with a separation on different parts of the site (i.e. news, video) and I'll want a news sitemap and video sitemap as well (of course). Does anyone have any recommended way of making this and how much would you recommend it getting updated? For news and , I would like it to be pretty immediate if possible but the static pages don't need to be updated as much. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | mattdinbrooklyn0 -
Huge Traffic Drop without any change on website
Hello there, I've experienced a huge website traffic drop and I can't find a reason. I redesigned and updated the SEO strategy in early December and the traffic was increasing, that's why I have no idea why that is happening. I have a video on home page and the views/day dropped a lot as well, but not as much as website visits! Any inputs? Best regards, NIB6rwF.png
Reporting & Analytics | | jancpc1 -
Very specific visitor drop
Hello there, Last week I discovered an unnatural drop in the direct traffic channel while analyzing all traffic channels. I dived into the data and discovered the following aspects of the traffic drop: The drop is only caused by: Direct traffic coming from browser Safari on Apple tablets (Safari traffic includes 83% of all direct tablet traffic) Android, mobile and desktop traffic didn't drop at all The direct tablet traffic dropped on the 1st of October It has never dropped before and it has grown naturally every month since more than a year In week 42 we only made 35% of the revenue we made in week 39. We're talking about k's. I attatched two screenshots coming from Google Analytics: the drop of direct tablet traffic compared to direct mobile traffic, and the drop of direct Safari tablet traffic compared to direct Android tablet traffic. We asked our web developer (SEOShop) about possible changes they made around the 1st of October to i.e. our mobile website. They said that they didn't change anything but they pointed to Hummingbird that has been released around that date. I can't link the traffic issue with Hummingbird though.. Can anybody let their light shine about this one? I'm very thankful. Marcel 76gzsLx,fOlkm10#1
Reporting & Analytics | | MarcelMoz0 -
Reach local driving up bounce rate...
Hi all! I have a new client that I did a website for. After a month, looking at the analytics, it shows that while the site visits from reach local is more than the organic google, the reachlocal traffic is bouncing, causing the overall website bounce rate to skyrocket. Organic bounce rate is 47.62% and the reachlocal is at 84.25% driving the overall bounce rate to 68! Duration of the reachlocal traffic is at :56 vs 3:41 for organic. (SEE ATTACHED IMAGE) I'm guessing this all means that the reachlocal traffic is obviously not quality, so does that mean they are targeting non-relevant keywords? I don't have any experience dealing with reachlocal. Should I recommend my client to drop it? And if so, how to stop that traffic from coming to the site? I'm sure this is an easy one for you pros! Thanks! ~BB MUW959h.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | BBuck0 -
Number of Visitor Entries to page via search engine
Hi, I wanted to figure out the most optimal way to track the number of visitors that comes to a specific page on my blog via search engine only. I know Google Analytics has a "top landing page" filter, but that includes all visitors that comes in directly or other channels. Is there a way to figure out how many visitors a certain page received that was generated through only search engine? Does SEOmoz have this capability?
Reporting & Analytics | | kevinyu10290 -
Is the link data from Open Site Explorer in real time or an average?
I just started using Open Site Explorer to track internal and external link data. Is this information given in real time or is it an average over a specified period of time?
Reporting & Analytics | | mequoda0