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Dr Pete, based on your questions, it looks like our website has been hit by Penguin 2.0.

"(1) Did the drop happen right on May 22 (Penguin 2.0) or earlier/later? Right on May 22

(2) I see a solid loss in the top 3 - which specific keywords were these, and do they have any commonalities (branded vs. non-brand, for example)? Loss in traffic (40%) exactly after May 22nd and rankings dropped for both branded and non branded keywords anywhere from 1 to 17 positions.

(3) Were these keywords all ranking for the same page? Was it your home-page or a deeper page (it's possible this impacted a specific page or set of pages)? Pretty much, 90% of them were ranking for the Homepage but all the inner pages have been affected.

No manual penalty or warnings in GWT, pages are indexed/cached and loading normal.

Thanks again Miriam, you have been very helpful indeed!

Thanks  Miriam, this is what I have gathered from the internet as well but I needed to be sure. The excel file with all the directories and citations is ready.

A couple of follow up questions:

• What would happened with the reviews, are they moving the over to the new listing?

• In your opinion, how long does it take to get the rankings back up (assuming they will go down for while). I read Nyagoslav's article where it says ""In a competitive niche it may take 6+ months for a listing to regain the same power as its old “closed” brethren. Even in very low competitive niches it takes at least a few weeks."

• I am in the process of merging the listings (Google + and Google places), should I still proceed with changing the address or should I wait?
  Update: See response from Google Help below_: "Hello, it looks like you verified a non-storefront business in Google+ which does not make contact with walk-in customers at the business location. We don't currently support this type of business in Google+ Local. We've ask that you continue to manage it through the Google Places dashboard." ; they are_ basically telling me they will not merge the two listings.

How would you go about changing an address for a SAB (service area business) ? Phone number will remain the same, the new address is about 4 miles away, same city, different zip code.

We are having our website redesigned by an SEO company to increase CTR and for a better user experience and I was wondering what to look for and what key questions to ask. At the moment we rank very well for a few strong keywords and I m afraid that by rewriting the content and changing the website layout we might put at risk some of the rankings even for a brief period of time. This company seems to be very good so I need to know what to ask them to make sure everything goes according to plan.

Your thoughts are appreciated.

Thanks Aleyda, mobile website development is something new for and since we developed this in house, we are not sure if we have done the right thing, if we have duplicate content. Is there any way we can check for duplicate content? Could you take a look at our website and its mobile version and let us know what you think?

Thank you!

Your guy seems very professional, we are setting up a different project. For local, I chose somebody else indeed but just for troubleshooting the pages..it seems I should have hired the other company to do everything.

I was afraid you were going to say that. The Local SEO company that I work with for making sure our Google Places page and Google plus page are properly optimized suggested that in order for me to rank for my keywords, I have to put the geo terms in the new custom categories. This company has been referred by somebody that you know well, an expert in Local SEO and a Google forum moderator. I know that she just teaches those people what to do and it is up to them to implement it but I thought I would share this information here because if somebody else would have been in my place, they would have been penalized.  When I saw the company's proposal, I came here for help because you guys are the only ones that I truly trust.

Thanks for your help!

Thanks Ian, the sad part is that this Local SEO company has been referred by a very trusted Local SEO member,  which I am sure you heard about. Turns out that the company that she endorsed is not so good as she thinks it is.

Hi Miriam,

The problem is that my Dashboard has the old interface, I can still create custom categories. The question is, should I add "Chicago" to my keywords or not? Somebody else just answer here saying that this would be against Google guidelines.

Thanks Ian, I should have looked this question up before posting..I see that your response is in line with all the other ones when it comes to Google categories. Follow up question: do you have the exact paragraph on Google guidelines specifying that you shouldn't add location based information to your categories?

Thanks!

Free trial for 30 days, thanks, looks promising.

Hi Miriam, I just ask a new question and I thought I might get a faster answer here. Here is the question: in Google Local, my first category is limousine service, which I picked it from the pre-selected categories, should I create new other categories which will be basically other high traffic keywords?

This is what it says on Google Help:

"Categories: Select at least one category from the list of available categories."

Are there any rules against this practice?

I checked Mike's categories's tool as well and this is what I got: Limousine Service, limo, limos, limosine, limousine. Should I create custom categories for all these keywords? The SEO company that I work with suggested to add a Geo modifier to better target our main keywords.

I work with a Local SEO company for troubleshooting our Google Places and optimization. They suggested that in order for us to rank for the keywords we provided them with they need to change the categories. Now, those categories do not exist in Google Places and I read on Seomoz and Google help forum that we should choose from the ones in the list provided by Google. I also know that  Categories should not contain location-based information.

Should I let them do that?

Google places account does not show rankings, just impressions for top 10 queries. Seomoz rankings show only local results for my keywords not for the ones I don t know.

Thanks!

Is there a way to see what keywords I rank for in Google Places?

Thanks David!

That is always though because as you know the address is part of NAP consistency which is at the core of local ranking factors. I would suggest getting some unstructured citation (partial citations) just by using his phone number or his company name.

http://www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/13-what-is-a-citation

http://www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/12-how-to-identify-quality-citation-sources

Good luck!

What makes Google choose when to show a local listing vs an organic one?

I found this resource a few days ago, have a look please, I think it answers your question.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2013/01/23/html5-vs-native-mobile-apps-myths-and-misconceptions/