What Causes Large Swings in Local Rankings?

[formandfunctionagency]

I know local rankings are a complicated matter and I'm not looking for a single answer to this question, but I'm curious if any local SEOs have noticed similar issues to what I'm experiencing with trying to rank a multi-location-based business. Overall, the visibility trends for the business are up, but we keep popping into the top three spots (happened 2-3 times over the past year) for some general, particularly high-volume search terms only to fall back out and settle a week later into placements below the first page. This is particularly frustrating because the terms we're seeing this volatility for are the exact dream keywords we're hoping to rank the site for.

Has anyone else experienced the same thing and had specific findings about what was at play? Is Google testing us and finding us unworthy? Any and all insights from pros with similar experiences would be helpful!

[MiriamEllis]

Good Morning, and good question!

Yes, Google is always testing, and results fluctuations may have nothing to do with whether or not they find you worthy. For example, when the Possum update rolled out, Google simply filtered out thousands of businesses that happened to share categories and be physically near one another. Then the Hawk update happened and they dialed this filter back a bit. So, in a case like that, Google was testing something, and local businesses either weren't filtered or were filtered.

Beyond Google updates, a great many things can lead to local ranking fluctuations. These could include:

1. Searcher proximity. You find yourself ranking well in a pack when you search while in your office. You drive across town and do the same search, and you're not in the 3-pack any more. Local search rankings aren't static anymore.

2. Your competitors are competitive. They are doing things that are enabling them to surpass you in terms of authority. They are telling Google, by some combination of efforts, that they deserve one of the 3 coveted spots more than you do. Maybe they are using Google Posts and you aren't. Maybe the velocity of their reviews is better. Maybe their photos get more clicks.

3. You've done something wrong. You've violated a guideline and have been reported or caught for spam. You have duplicate listings, fake reviews, stuffed business titles, fake locations, malware on your site, problems with indexing, lack of HTTPs protocols, slow load times, etc.

Typically, lack of rankings are going to fall into these categories. For more on this, you might like to read:

https://moz.com/blog/troubleshooting-local-ranking-failures-2018

https://moz.com/blog/45-local-seo-pitfalls

Go through those two blog posts and see if you recognize any of the problems as being relevant to your brand.

If that doesn't turn up some clues, then the next thing to do is to do a full competitive audit between your brand and the brand you see outranking you. This post will walk you through that process and even contains a spreadsheet for you to use:

https://moz.com/blog/basic-local-competitive-audit

Hope this helps!

[formandfunctionagency]

Thanks so much for the thoughtful answer as always! I'm definitely going to dig into all of these resources to try and solve the mystery!

As far as searcher proximity goes, I'm measuring these national/local rankings using Moz, as I'm not physically located in the same town as the business.

To my knowledge, Google has never penalized the business. They're never spammy, reviews are all legitimate and positive, we use https and crawl tests always come back fine. However, the business does have two current locations in neighboring towns and one closed location in the town we find it most difficult to rank in. I suspect some of the difficulties of ranking multiple-location businesses are at play too.

Again, thanks for the super-thorough answer!

[MiriamEllis]

So glad to help, and wishing you good luck!