Competitor outranking me on google with their yelp, facebook and youtube pages

[studio35design]

I'm working to rank for a local search term (my city wedding photographers). I'm frustrated that my competitor is outranking me not with their website (they are no. #9 and I'm #6) but with their Yelp account (#1) Facebook Account (#5) and Youtube account (#7 - not outranking me, but right below me).

I'm going to continue working on my SEO to hopefully get higher up, but even then, they are basically dominating page 1 with their links. It gets worse on page 2. They are showing up 5 times for youtube/vimeo videos, and 1 time with a spammy landing page with no images, full of keyword anchored links to their main site.

What gives? Since when are social media profiles outranking local sites on google organic searches?

Could it be that our keyword is just so low competition that google has allowed all this stuff to rank so highly?

[photoseo1]

First, if they have the exact match on the keyword (which is sounds like they might) and they have a good site and seo, it may be vary hard to take the fist spots. You can always get a couple of your own on the first page. (I have one keyword with 5 places on the first page for an exact match).

Lets Focus:

How many reviews does the Yelp have?

Here is a Strategy for Yelp

You can use open site explorer to see where they have links to their Yelp Account.  Get those links to your Yelp account. How is their Yelp description written? What keywords do they use. Use a similarly keyword targeted description, keywords etc. Social bookmark your Yelp page with the keyword in the description and title.

Here is a strategy for Facebook:

How many likes does Facebook have? If they have way more fans than you and they post a lot it could be tough. If you have more fans than them make sure you have your keyword in the description of your page. Post more posts using your keyword if you can and not make it sound weird. Social bookmark a good piece of content written about your keyword that you post to Facebook.

Youtube:

Make a good youtube video, slide show type if you need, that is keyword targeted. Write a 300 word description with keywords, your site url possibly your Facebook url. Social bookmark it with your keywords in the title and description, this will increase views naturally and provide links. Wait a week after the social bookmarks have aged. Use Open Site Explorer to mine those links too.

They may be doing some sneaky stuff too like buying Facebook fans or Youtube views if their pages are junky and they rank. That stuff can be risky if done in high amounts.

Hope that gives you something to work with.

[19prince]

Don't forget to do some link building of your own - on your own site. Wedding photographers have a great content ready to go; not to mention a willing audience of bloggers/websites to post it. Find some recent pictures and submit them to the wedding blogs. Have your client do an 'engagement shot' for new couple. Those photos will make it up on the couple's wedding websites - ask for a link back. Do some PR around your local media to get on the 'Best of' lists.

[studio35design]

Thanks Darren. Over the last few months, I've done alot of that and I've managed to climb to first page fairly quickly. I'm currently on first page and ranking higher than my competitor's website. What gets me is that all their social media is also ranking extremely high. I would imagine google giving priority to actual websites, not to a bunch of social media profiles. I don't wish to rank for my own social media profiles particularly, as I want google traffic to point towards my site (and not my youtube account).

[studio35design]

Ultimately, this might be what I need to do. Get a series of my own links on the first page, as opposed to only my homepage. I do have some youtube videos, and by properly key wording them, they have climbed the ranks, but honestly, I don't want them to be people's first contact with me. I think its so much more productive to have links to my site.

Now they you mention it, it might just be that the competitor's social media profiles are ranking high due to their size. Their yelp has 8 reviews and fb page over 7400+ likes.

[spencerhjustice]

This is a strategy called "Barnacle SEO." Essentially you optimize and build links to high end business profiles like yelp because they are more likely to rank due to their high domain authority.

Here's the most recent post I could find on it: http://searchengineland.com/barnacle-seo-making-big-comeback-local-187253

The competitor you're talking about has a higher domain authority which already gives him a decent head start, but it's good that you're still outranking his website. What I see that's definitely helping him is that he optimized his listings for the city you're trying to rank in. He has more reviews than you and he has tons more facebook likes. He also has his Yelp linked to from his facebook and he links back to his yelp profile from his website.

Also, to answer your last question, part of the reason these are ranking is definitely because their is fairly low competition in the space.

[studio35design]

Hi Spencer. That article is great and explains this issue perfectly. so Barnacle SEO, huh?

Yeah, I do see that his domain authority is larger as is his likes/yelp reviews. I'm in my second year. The competitor i believe is in the 15th or so.

At this point, I'm going to optimize my social media profiles and link them to my site.

Ideally this will help balance that first page more. My primary effort will be to move to the first spot on the page.

Thank a bunch!