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Sounds to me like you're seeing these rankings, then you're trying to 'tweak/optimize' these same pages to go higher in the ranking and so those 2-3 weeks are w/ index A and then your new 'tweaked' page  Index A version 2.0  gets indexed and throws you into a new ranking/tailspin

here are two questions from myself regarding local that may help you a bit

G+ places/local - Company Categories and Pages question (including write-up questions)

Local Citation Help - New Business in Old Location of same type of business

While these may not fully and/or exactly answer your questions i believe you may find some valuable info from knowledgeable sources which could help you at least get on the right path until someone else(more knowledgeable than me on this topic) has time to really answer you fully.

Wow, thanks for that...

It's interesting, because that would take the reseller option out - as a client may want something one year and not the next.

So far the yahoo local visibility - I'm not impressed ... I 'submitted to over 100 directories' for a month i've had two listings, and my merchant circle is 'inaccurate' because the last time it was updated in their system was in November, 2012.  Of course it's inaccurate- and there's no way to submit a refresh from what i see.

By hte two listings part what i mean is i have 9 suggested citations available that i'm missing as opportunities, but yet i have accounts for all of them and Getlisted.org shows I have all but one of those, but have an account on the missing one?

Yahoo's reporting is horrible and from what i've seen so far is that its information is so outdated, great concept - poorly executed...

Yext, being handcufffed is a real deal breaker, what happens when they decide to stop their 'DISCOUNT' marketing ploy and start charging you waht they claim is their 'full price' ...  What a nightmare that would be for all your stuff to just drop.

All things considered -

Yahoo's price is very reasonable  - but it's lack of update and accuracy(IMO), and 'sub-par' reports, would make me say that it's a no-go...

Yext is a little pricey and can sticker-shock some people who are just starting up and don't understand the value of local citations completely.. But for them to have all their info, possibly get some results and then crash and burn worse than Maverick - The 'why' that happened, would not be a conversation i would ever want to have.

-- There's also Whitespark, and from what I've seen it's almost more cost effective than Yext ($4/listing), you know what they've done... and You wont be inundated with  outdated information which is absolutely useless you may of done 'incorrectly prior and fixed since then, and now notified that that thing you corrected is fixed, but we'll tell you it isn't (Yahoo if you didn't infer that from the text).

One issue I have, is that i have one site that has an address wrong completely and I can't find that citation anywhere from where they 'pulled' their information.  It's a local newspaper with a few dozen directory subsites..  Any help would be appreciated.

Anyway, I appreciate the input/discussion...  and apparently there's no easy way out, sometimes you just gotta get your hands dirty.

well if you find out a definitive answer let me know,...  This would be quite a 'deal breaker' in my eyes and a pretty significant detail that got 'left out' of their pitch.

Last thing i'd want to do is be handcuffed to yext or use it and then had all the time and effort reverted when the subscription lapses

Wow, thanks this makes perfect sense.

If i'm reading this correctly, you're saying that in the description field - no location based info whatsoever.

the actual example is home inspection which i've been steadily climbing over time and is actually a pet project of mine. Which I'm currently in a rework/push to clean up any 'spam'ish' material/loose ends.

So going back to the description -

Certified, Licensed and Insured Home Inspector  --- MORE text Here [offering services x, y, z?]--

-Would be the right way to go, and not -

Certified, Licensed and Insured Home Inspector  --- MORE text Here [offering services x, y, z?]-- Located in City, St

On the site i'm updating, I've done the schema format in the footer for the address/business and hcard via the contact page.

This leads me to the content pages, should not be geocentric beyond service area/contact pages

-- Once again i appreciate your help, and I'm really just trying to work out the kinks in this project, since a lot of articles cover this as a whole, but very few really get down to the very fine details that really dictate what that whole comes out to be.  I'm a firm believer in 'it's the little things that count', and since I've seemed to of violated the 'measure twice, cut once', I'd really like to get back there

Mariam,

Thanks for taking the time to reply, and what you are saying makes sense.  I also agree with your gut, as that what i was thinking along the lines of.

Just as someone may have a 'heavy hand' when pouring a drink, I myself can get a bit overzealous with the optimization and sometimes finding that I have to stop myself and step back and look at the big picture...

I have two questions about google places/local and Personal/Company Pages

Regarding Local and the categories section.

Should you be using strictly the predefined categories they have? or should you be creating your own?  Also say you're a car repair shop for instance. If you should be creating your own such as 'truck repair' should the city be in there as well 'Truck Repair New York/New York Truck Repair(keyword or location first?)'

When it comes to company and personal g+ places, i understand doing the rel author and its bennefits but what is the correct way about tagging this?

For instance in Wordpress, Studiopress has a section in the profile for the user g+ profile that will rel author it, and Yaost SEO says 'if you have a business page, insert it here and link your personal page as a contributor to the business page'

Should we be filling in both sections? or does this cause a conflict? Adding these items is very easy to do, but would rather do it right the first time then circle back and have to correct everything.

Any feedback/input is appreciated.

Thanks,

Thanks for the reply, been a bit MIA here...   Everytime it seems i get to  something 'new', i'm sidelined w/ something more immediate.   I have yet to really give this a shot although given your input it does seem the old fashion way is the only real way to pursue this correctly.  Tedious, but I guess it's one of those situations if you want it done, and done right you gotta do it yourself.

regarding the upstream data providers i'm aware of localeze and i just recently learned about Acxiom, are there some other ones i should be paying attention to?

Also, please do follow up - I think i read something around '100 sources' ?  That would be nice if they really can help there.  I'd utilize it definitely if it is deemed 'worthwhile'.

I guess just like anyone, i'm looking for a way to streamline the process a bit more and take out a bit of the headache and administrative work that this sometimes requires.  One of those necessary evils so-to-speak.

Thanks for the input

Yahoo local visibility and Yext are both services that offer to keep your local profiles up to snuff with each other so there aren't any 'inconsistencies' between the two.

Does anyone have a good opinion either for or against these?  I'm just curious if this is something that would be advised to use, or is the old fashion way the way to go.

Any feedback is appreciated, thanks!

Also is there a local listing one for directories that can hide your address or a good suggestion for a PO box?   I've read what Google has said prior regarding putting the po box on the second line, but I've seen mixed results and reviews from this.

Thanks for hte help, but it seemed it was just a google ranking spike for some new content and now things appear to be returning to normal

the domain in question is www.bestpriceelectricity.com

www is set in wordpress and webmaster tools

Shortly after i posted this, I saw in open site explorer that the www. had more value over the non www ....  These sites are super old, and still get 'some traffic' but haven't been updated in ages.  So my main focus was to regenerate the content  w/ all the proper tags and what not and submit for indexing.  - > and yes i also did do 301 redirects on the .htm pages

Thanks for the response, I think the fact that it is a very old domain - that google had some type of stats on it for the domain, but no preference of www vs non www.  Just had never seen this before.

This is the first time I have encountered this and am quite frankly a little baffled on how to proceed.

We have some domains that are 10 years old, and do get some hits / impressions and they have a lot of content. So I redid the site in wordpress etc...

Anyway, on Google the sites show up as www. , and on Webmaster tools,- the  www. shows no impressions or anything, while the non-www domain shows up in google webmaster tools with data.

The question is, if google displays the site as www. and webmaster tools shows data for non www.   Which one do I proceed with, finding info on this has been pretty hard to do.

Any input is appreciated,

Thanks in advance:)

It is a a banner, and does have a relevant alt tag to where the link is going. I do see that the other pages that are 'ranking' for this, are starting to fall off.  So in effect, i don't think that this is hurting me.  I think another week or two of results should yield a conclusion to this issue.

Sometimes I tend to over analyze a situation and invent problems that may in fact not be problematic at all.  Anyway, if this continues to be an issue, i'll be back for sure.  I think I may of jumped the gun on this one.

Sorry i didn't reply sooner, but thank you for answering the question.  Your article made me identify a lot of concerns and thought maybe that the practice was in fact something that may end up problematic.

I appreciate it.

I have a banner in the header that is constant across all pages except the one it links to.  It goes in before the content div and this search term is #1 across google in almost every variation, but it appears to link in a lot of the non relevant pages for #2 spots in some cases.

While this is a relatively new domain (started 03/12), but this has been a constant rank for about 2 months.

I'm wondering if this may be hurting the keyword targeting of my internal pages and if i should no follow that header image on all pages except the homepage?