Increasing positions in local maps

[DougHoltOnline]

Our team is working with a small law firm and we haven’t had as much luck increasing their local visibility for those key terms that they would like to rank for:

• Santa Barbara accident attorney/lawyer
• injury attorney Santa Barbara
• wrongful death injury lawyers
• serious injury attorney Santa Barbara

We’ve currently got an 87% on Moz Local, 12 5 star reviews on Google+ and are working to raise the bar, however the client is unhappy not being on the top 3 - there are also instances where firms with 0 reviews, non verified G+ pages who rank higher than them. They lost a lot of links when they moved from a large marketing firm specializing in working with attorneys to our firm, which could be a factor. Although we’re gaining ground, they are considering going back as they only want the results - and I don’t blame them.

Would appreciate any tips, thoughts, or advice so we can help this client.

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Doug!

In fairness, I have to say that this situation requires a full audit and competitive analysis ;), but let's take a cursory look together, anyway.  Have you checked out Mary Bowling's competitive analysis slidedeck from the recent MozCon Local? It is amazingly thorough and just super: http://localu.org/blog/how-to-do-competitive-analysis-for-local-search/. All of those things are ones you want to investigate for this client to get a really clear picture of exactly why they are being outranked. It's a very substantial task and one the client needs to budget for.

Now, let's take a first-glance look:

1. Site is visually handsome. Nice job.

2. Complete NAP is absent from the top of the contact page. Put it there, preferably encoded in Schema.

3. Some title tags contain 'Southern California' instead of 'Santa Barabara'. Santa Barbara is your true local term and deserves most attention.

4. Have you checked thoroughly for duplicate content? I did a random search for some text on your Auto Accident page and it is bringing up this page on Geico: https://www.geico.com/claims/after-an-accident/. Some text is identical. Some is different.

5. I'd rate the content fair on this website. It's not the worst or the best I've seen. The pages describing the services are on the generic side, with nothing that would make them stand out from a competitors' pages as being more useful or informative.There is room for improvement here. Beware of awkward keyword usage. It does stick out on some of these pages.

6. Do you have 2 offices: http://www.maho-prentice.com/ventura-county/? Both physical and forward-facing? If so, this second one isn't in your footer and is not referenced on the Contact page. There does not appear to be a distinct phone number (or any number) associated with the Ventura office.

7. Duplicate cleanup is really important here: https://moz.com/local/details/JTI1NUIlMjUyMk1haG8lMjUyMFByZW50aWNlJTI1MkMlMjUyMExMUCUyNTIyJTI1MkMlMjUyMjkzMTAxJTI1MjIlMjUyQyUyNTIyTWFobyUyNTIwUHJlbnRpY2UlMjUyQyUyNTIwTExQJTI1MjIlMjUyQyUyNTIyNjI5JTI1MjBTdGF0ZSUyNTIwU3RyZWV0JTI1MjIlMjUyQyUyNTIyOTMxMDElMjUyMiUyNTJDJTI1MjI4MDU5NjIxOTMwJTI1MjIlMjU1RA==

Especially pay attention to the first duplicate that search surfaces. It's the duplicate Google My Business listing, which appears to be sharing the phone number of the Santa Barbara office: https://www.google.com/maps?cid=9808975411924782492\. Bingo! This is an extremely important find and could be negatively impacting the chance of either office ranking well in the packs. Explain to client that they must have a unique number for each location. *And do be sure that the Oxnard location is, indeed, a legitimate location (not a Regus office, etc.).

8. Be very sure that, if citations have been created for the attorneys at the practice, they are not sharing phone numbers with one another or with the practice. I am concerned about this, seeing the shared number between the 2 offices. Also, be aware that the attorney's citations can't contain the business name, and should not share categories in Google.

9. I'm going to take a look at just 1 of the 4 terms, and you can follow these steps with the others: injury attorney Santa Barbara. Remember, due to personalization and user-as-centroid, what I see will be different from what you see and what the client's clients see. Okay, this is some good news. On the map, https://www.google.com/search?q=injury+attorney+Santa+Barbara&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=injury attorney Santa Barbara&rflfq=1&rlha=0&tbm=lcl&tbs=lf:1,lf_ui:2&oll=34.42400809465862,-119.70669439999995&ospn=0.014301546346509042,0.025963783264160156&oz=15&fll=34.423087693043946,-119.70426968305048&fspn=0.03228503412244521,0.061626434326171875&fz=14&qop=1&rlfi=hd:;si: there does not appear to be any geographic inhibtor to your client doing well. They are located close enough to their competitors to avoid suffering from any geographic limitations.

In fact, your client is ranking #4 for the term I've searched, which is really good news. They are just outside of the pack for me, meaning that they may very well be inside of it when someone is actually in Santa Barbara looking for them (no guarantee there, but could be).

Top 2 competitors in this pack exceed your client in number of reviews. Competitors 3 has less. Go for 20 over the next few months with a good review acquisition program.

10. Finally, there is a strong clue here in the organic search for 'injury attorney santa barbara'. Unlike some SERPs, these are made up mainly of business websites vs. directories. Harris and Crane are at 1 & 3 organically and 1 & 2 in the local pack. What this all hints at is that it is organic strength that is driving hard in this pack and that an improvement in your client's organic strength may be critical to pack improvement. For more on this, watch this really fascinating Local U video: http://localu.org/blog/penguin-local/. Pay particular attention to Mike Blumenthal's explanation about what drives packs. And don't forget the importance of industry/geography-specific citations that go beyond getting data right with the major aggregators updated by a service like Moz Local. And remember that age matters here. The age of your competitors' efforts can be a strength it will take time to overcome, if they have been at this longer than your client, and your own efforts will take time to go into effect.

So, that's a first glance. The phone number issue is extremely important, and a real audit will be necessary here to see if there are serious issues with practitioner duplicates. Do a full assessment of the content to apprise yourself of any duplicate content issues and work on both the content and organic strength of the website. Good inspiration for that here: https://moz.com/blog/why-good-unique-content-needs-to-die-whiteboard-friday. Work on review acquisition.

And, finally, do all you can to stress to clients like this one that there are no static local rankings. Personalization and user-as-centroid in a city like theirs almost guarantees that results are varying from user to user, so it is a far wiser investment to focus on conversions rather than rankings. I totally know that this can be a hard point to get across, but it is so important to try to communicate this lesson to our clients.

I hope you'll receive other feedback!

[DonnaDuncan]

Wow. That's an excellent assessment by Miriam. Kinda hard to add to that!

I looked at citations using the same example as Miriam. You have more than the top 2 ranking sites and 35 less than #3. The quality of your citations is excellent and I see a few that actually use the words "santa barbara" in their name. I agree that it would be worthwhile trying to acquire more, and more specific to Santa Barbara, to see if that helps. Whitespark offers a good service to help you ID some of those, or you could inventory the citations of the top 3 and see if they have some you're missing. I have those if you want me to send them to you.