What could be stopping us from ranking locally?

[Wagster]

We do most of our business in national SEO and we do reasonably well, but we are entering a niche where search engine results are served locally. This is the page we are trying to get ranked:

https://idearocketanimation.com/video-production-company/

• The page has been indexed
• We beat all the rankers in Domain Authority
• We're competitive in terms of reviews
• We're strongly competitive in terms of load time
• We are a SAB, but other SABs seem to rank, and even companies with no GMB listing rank
• We have mentioned our locality on the page and meta title

It's not that we are not ranking well... we're not even in the top 50. Is there something I've done wrong, or forgotten to do? What might be stopping Google from ranking us locally?

[DonnaDuncan]

Hi William,

I took a quick look at your GMB Listing. It doesn't display your address.

When I plug your business name and zip into the Moz Local Check Listing tool, your business comes up with an address (34th street) that is different from that listed on your website (49th street). The 34th street address is used on a significant number of the data aggregator sites as well as sites like Brownbook, Mapquest, Yahoo Local, Yelp and Yellow Pages.

That's undoubtedly at least part of the problem. You need to fix your address so it is consistent in all places.

[NickW816]

Hi William, great looking page by the way! Some optimization tests and adjustments I would make are:

• including "New York" in an H1 or one of the H2s on the page.
• Mention New York or NYC one or two more times throughout the page copy.
• If you have a New York address, it may be beneficial to include a Google Map Embed on the page of your location.
• Build Some Internal Links to The NYC page from your blog and other pages on your website.
• Build Some Inbound Links to the NYC page if possible (Use Moz Link Explorer for top ranking competitors sites for link building opportunities)
• Adjust Your Meta Title (It does say NYC, put it could be beneficial to mention New York as well), and you could try testing your meta title as "NYC Video Production Company: Videos For New York Businesses" as an example.
• Make sure your GMB is filled out and optimized with correct business categories.

Hope this helps and best of success!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi William,

Good finds from both Donna and Nicholas. Please especially pay attention to Donna's query regarding your address.

I have two additional questions for you.

1. Are you meeting face-to-face with your customers?

2. At your address, within your building, or even within the same couple of city blocks from you, are there any other video production companies?

[Wagster]

Thanks, Miriam. We had been full-time at the 34th street office, but now we are taking meetings at a WeWork in midtown, while working most of the time remotely. My research seems to indicate that Google would prefer to list us as a SAB now, since we don't have hours at the WeWork address (and that WeWork address isn't available as a Google Listing anyway, since they already occupy it.) I had also heard that being an SAB (i.e., not showing an address on Google My Business) is not a disadvantage in SEO. Could you corroborate (or disagree with) my assumptions?

[MiriamEllis]

Thanks for the additional details, William.

Two years ago, I wrote this piece on the eligibility of coworking spaces for GMB inclusion: https://moz.com/blog/are-coworking-offices-eligible-for-google-my-business-listings

I recommend that you read that to get a sense of local SEO surrounding these types of locations.

I will add an update, though. Three months after I wrote the above article, Google rolled out the Possum filter. What this means is that, if any other business at your WeWork location is in the same category as your business, you will be struggling to rank at that address, because one of the chief outcomes of Possum was the filtering out of listings that share category + physical proximity.

So, if after reading the above article, you determine that you would be eligible for a GMB listing at the coworking building, but you are finding you're not ranking for your most important phrases, you may be running into the Possum filter. The only way to overcome the Possum filter is to build your "authority" to the point that Google chooses to show you and filter out your competitors. This can involve a great deal of work if you have active, motivated competitors.

Because of this, you really do need to consider what is best in terms of address for the business. Options I am seeing for you (with an imperfect knowledge of your entire business scenario):

1. If you don't have any same-category competitors at the WeWork building or within a couple of blocks of it, determine your eligibility for a GMB listing at that location. If you find you are eligible, use that address.

2. If you determine you are eligible, but DO have same-category competitors in close proximity, assess whether you have the time/funding to do a full competitive audit and then put in whatever work necessary to become the un-filtered result.

3. If you are either ineligible to use the WeWork address because of nuances of your business, or lack the resources to become the un-filtered result in a Possum-affected scenario, but you still have an office on 34th Street, use that address and list yourself as an SAB. Or, if you no longer occupy the 34th street location at all, you may need to use your home address (or the home address of the business owner, if that's not you), and, again, list yourself as an SAB.

Don't focus on whether being brick-and-mortar or an SAB helps/hurts rankings. Focus on representing your business accurately, as failure to do so can lead to listing suspension.

My apologies if, not having a completely clear vision of your business scenario, I'm missing any important details. From what you've described, this is what I see. Hope it helps!

P.S. Obviously - once you've settled on your address, you need to update all your assets and citations to consistently reflect the chosen address.

[Wagster]

Ha! Yes I encountered your article in my research, and it was the major source of my assumptions. It's good to touch base with the author and hear that the conclusions are still relevant. I will keep listing my business as an SAB on GMB (since we're using WeWork as just a meeting place) and try to be more consistent about address in other online sources.

Thanks so much for your time.

[MiriamEllis]

My pleasure, William! We're happy to have you here!