30 Reasons To Why You Are Not Ranking in Local Search Results
Today’s post is coming right out of my personal notebook of super ninja “Anti-Local Search Arsenal”. Call it a checklist of what not to do or whatever.
I have been playing with Google+ Local (Before, Google Places. Before that, Google Maps) since the starting. So, many business owners have to come to me. Everyone had one single issue. There local listing got vanished from Local Searches. And they had no idea how to get it back up on top 10 positions.
I have worked in the Local Optimization since quite a long time now. And its often been often that your local listings get effected and ranked negative.
I have made a list of mistakes below. That are common and sometimes forgetten. I hope you revisit your listing with this checklist in hand. See, if your listing passes the Not To Do List below.
If not your rankings might be suffering or may be even your listing might get penalized on long term.
Remember, Google+ Local is different from Google’s Organic Search.
I hope you use this checklist whenever you required. And it gives some aha moments if you are making the below listed common mistakes.
1. Your listing might be detected as a false business location
2. You are stuffing a lot of keywords in your business name in Google+ Local Listing
3, You have mis-matching or different NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) / Tracking Phone numbers across different data ecosystem monitored by Google
4. You have select wrong business category for your listing
5. You have created different +Local Pages with similar address & business titles
6. You have mis-matching phone number or name on your Google+ Local Landing page
7. Your website address and address shown on Google+ Local page is different
8. People have reported your Google+ Local page as violation multiple times
9. Your website is showing presence of malware
10. You don’t have crawlable name, address & phone number details on website. Hint: Don’t use images for NAP.
11. You have multiple Google+ Local pages setup which are using the same phone number
12. You are using Location based keywords on Business Categories in your +Local Listings
13. You don’t have crawlable NAP on Google+ Local page, making it difficult to identify your location
14. You have not placed your map marker right according to your exact location
15. You have placed multiple categories in input fields. Making it irrelevant.
16. Having a common Google+ Local account associated with other suppressed listings
17. You are using address which are similar to Mail Store Addresses. Google’s smart in noticing that.
18. You are stuffing keywords and city name in your description of Google+ Local page. This can be counted as spam.
19. You are using categories in your listings which are totally not compliant and do not fit
20. You might be listing a 800 number as the only available phone number on your Google+ Local page
21. You are having multiple crawlable Name, Address & Phone numbers on your main Google+ Local Page
22. You are stuffing keywords in Title Tags of your Local Listing page.
23. You might have selected to Hide your Google+ Local page address
24. Your ratings of Google+ Local page are having low numericals e.g. 1-2
25. People have written reviews on your Google+ Local page which are showing negative sentiments
26. Third party users are rating your Google+ Local listing numerically lower like. 1-2
27. You selected Service Area for Business on your Google+ Local page rather then in-location visits
28. Your WHOIS details of your domain name is mis-matching that of your NAP
29. MyMaps is referring to your location
30. You are having listing of the same place in multi-lingual making it difficult.
