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Hi Guys, Very strange indeed. For my competition, none of their page titles (Not even containing their brand) are being changed in the SERPS. But, mine is. I have to say there might be a correlation with external links. I have been working pretty hard on getting my brand (Journey Beyond Travel) as the dominant keyword that external sites link to me with. This effort allows me to 'clean' my backlink profile which leaned slightly too much on exact-match anchor text. Now that I have gone through and done this, Google has been changing my title by putting my brand first, and then my keyword phrase. Not sure if this is good or bad, but like I mentioned, none of my 'competition' has had their page titles changed and they haven't done much with their backlink profiles. I have been steadily losing my SERP position, which is another issue that anyone is welcome to look into : ) Thanks so much! Thomas

Thank you so much for your response. It may be limiting to them in some ways for marketing, but its also a beneficial change as well. I think if domain age isn't going to play too much of a part, then all the other factors still justify the change. Thanks again!

I am even more confused, we removed 90% of the anchor text links and we have just dropped again. Does anyone have any ideas what we are doing wrong? Thanks Fraser

I understand that it is used as an indicator of what the page is from the domain. But my question is if the search robots "get score" on what is filled. Exemplos: text rev=”Vote-for” rev=”Vote-abstain” rev=”Vote-against” So I ask: The examples above, do they influence positively or negatively to the external page or page that is using these parameters? [In cases that the client uses this example above, filling the rev attribute to add event markers from GA.  May have some interference for robots or else for the positioning of the page in search results? If it not influence on the points mentioned, interference may be negative / positive at in some time?](http://www.site.com)

The emd update did hurt partial matches also but as stated by Antony Wilson users do prefer them. Just make sure the emd is brandable and not spammy seo sounding.

Hi, I would change the Wordpress settings and setup a 301 redirect from non-www to www using htaccess (if you're using Apache, see e.g. http://enarion.net/web/htaccess/redirect-www-and-no-www/ for instructions how to do this). Updating the sitemaps file and resubmitting it to Google Webmasters, and manually fetching the www-version of the website with the Google crawler in the webmaster tools would be my next steps. Google and the other bots will use this signals to update their databases. Best regards, Tobias

The "dance" results you are seeing can also be contributed to where you are checking the positions from, platform (o/s, computer type, laptop, mobile etc), the country/city you are in when checking, whether you are signed in to Google etc. Clear cookies/cache/ip address each rank check and try to replicate the same variables at all times, this might give you more stable feedback. All the best :).

Many factors contribute to how well your site ranks in the SERPs. The content (both quantity & quality), structure, code, and the quantity and diversity of links pointing to your pages are just some of the factors. As Jeremy suggested, you can use the tools on Moz to reverse engineer your competitions ranking strategy.

Thank you everyone! As with anything there are two sides to ponder.

Yes Doug, you totally get my confusion. Your scenarios describe more clearly exactly what I am wondering. In the case of your third example, Matt even stated pretty clearly in the video (perhaps even both videos) that chains of redirects can be a problem. I totally agree with you that avoiding redirects altogether and updating the links is the way to go. Even Google's own Pagespeed Insight's tool often makes this recommendation when evaluating pagespeed of a site. If 301's are exactly the same as links, why would the tool recommend avoiding them? Yes, I think perhaps Matt said what he did because he was looking at 301s and links in complete isolation. If so, then what he says is believable in theory, but I can't think of how it would actually happen in practice.

thanks Simon.

Great. thanks Linda. My big takeaway here is that Yellow Pages and Industry Canada are primary data aggregators in Canada.

Hi Jonathon, David Mihm's study has stood the test of time, and in many ways is still relevant today http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml Best, Todd

Hi Monster Web, Unfortunately, without actually being able to look at your unique business, this cannot be diagnosed as there are so many variables. If you cannot share this information here, in a case like this, I would recommend that you hire one of the Local SEO firms listed on GetListed.org's recommended companies list so that you can show your info to someone in confidence to begin diagnosing the situation. In the meantime, some things to consider: 1. You say you aren't ranking for desired keyword phrases, but are you at least getting a local result when you search for 'business name + city'? If not, then... 2. How old is the listing? 3. What is the status of the listing in the dashboard (pending, suspended, needs action, etc.) 4. If the listing does exist for the search in question 1 and is simply failing to rank for desired keywords, then... 5. You might be dealing with a penalty; be sure you are compliant with all Google Places Quality Guidelines (http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528). 6. Do some competitive analysis of competitors vs. your business. I like 51 Blocks free local search analysis tool for this. http://www.51blocks.com/online-marketing-tools/free-local-analysis/ This will give you a sense of how you compare to competitors who are ranking well for your desired keywords. These are just a few thoughts. If you would like to share information about the listing, we can take a better look at your unique situation. If so, please share not only your business info, but also the keyword+geo phrases you are trying to rank for.

That's a great study - thanks for sharing it with me.

Hi David, Even if users search for a generic, non-geotargeted keyword, in dependence of the type of keyword (potential local businesses or services), user's history, location, intend, etc. Google can end-up geotargeting it and provide users with a blended or maps type of results too. If this is the case you're talking, then what Brian's commented above would be the right way to go: If your business is relevant and has presence nationwide create optimized, relevant landing pages for each of your cities starting with the most important ones, those you look to attract traffic with (featuring specific information about your business or services for them, and if you have physical presence in each one of them, then your address and phone, creating if possible additional presence for each one in Google+ for businesses too). Thanks!

Thanks Lynn, we do reply to journalist requests on a daily basis so we might just need to wait for the next property feature in a major UK newspaper, as for the other countries I agree with you but they are less important as 90% of people buying in France at present are UK based so maybe later. Hopefully with all the improvements we are doing rankings will become even better compared to what it used to be

Mathew, Even if all of your links were "built naturally" you can still be impacted by Google penalties assessed to sites that are linking to you.  If, for example, a site that is linking to you and providing your site with some amount of link juice gets penalized, it my no longer be sending you that juice.  The impact may be huge if it was a powerful link or if many of your links were coming from sites that were penalized, or the impact may be relatively minor if the penalized site was helping with your rankings in a small way. Those kinds of changes happen with or without penalties being assessed, as back links from other sites may fall away or lose value over time (link rot). It looks like you may just need to keep up the hard work of marketing you site on line to rebuild your rankings.

Hi 20_Creative, Linda has given a very helpful and on-target answer here. Your potential client is certainly entitled to having more than one website (though I find that can be a sort of complicated approach vs. simply having a landing page on the website for each store) and a Google Place Page/+ Local page corresponding to each physical store, but each location is only likely to rank for its city of location, so this needs to be understood as you plan your Local SEO approach. I recommend a quick re-fresher on the Google Places Quality Guidelines: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528