Welcome to the Q&A Forum

No problem, let me know if you have any other questions!

Hey Scott, What Ioganr has mentioned is correct. Google+ pages, per se, are no longer really the core URLs of your local data on Google. Rather, what happens these days is that your Google My Business dashboard data is being displayed in a variety of ways, and that the URL you'd be most likely to link to these days for any purpose would be the Maps-based URL, like this: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Whole+Foods+Market/@38.596632,-121.364044,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x5f6895a3853012bc But, linking to this on a RFQ page is probably going to be a distraction from what you'd like users to do there, yes.

Hi Scott! Good question! Your specific industry is likely to dictate whether a widget will be useful, but I don't really know of a general widget that would directly impact local or localized organic rank. One might indirectly impact rankings if the presence of it enticed users to stay on a page longer, but I think it really depends on whether users found it highly useful and different than some app they already have on their cell phone (like weather!). I do recommend that you check out this 2015 post from Phil Rozek about building location landing pages. It's a good one: http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2015/04/06/25-principles-of-building-effective-city-pages-for-local-seo/ Hope it helps!

Thanks, Erick. We do have a verified listing for one of the locations (verified many months ago) and it isn't showing as expected. We're waiting on post cards for the other locations, but I am concerned that they won't show up either.

Very tempted to write that post.

Hi Jess, You'll probably want to figure out what kind of SEO work you need done, technical or editorial. Technical optimization of a website deals with a site's code, user experience, and overall performance while editorial optimization deals with content, linking strategy, and conversion goals. Structured data fits right in the middle, with both technical and editorial expertise needed. Which one to prioritize depends on the resources you have and how fast you need to see results. It will also depend on how competitive your chosen keywords are for the pages you want to rank. I recommend you offer to pay for ranking performance. Offer a certain amount of compensation commensurate with the number of pages that improve for selected keywords over a certain amount of time. You can get a good baseline right here on Moz.com, and then monitor progress every week or two. Insist on proper SEO strategies and put payment penalties in place for any black hat activity. I've work under this model with several clients and they all seem to be pretty happy being able to see what they're buying. Before you do all this, make sure it's cost effective--advertising might give you more bang for your buck in a shorter amount of time, depending on your type of business. Kevin

Agreed. We used to have the video on the homepage, and we recently moved it to a page of its own. I do think we should incorporate it into other pages for the best effect.

Hi Jess, I'm not a heavy iOS user, but I've heard a few good things about this app: http://analytiksapp.com/

Thanks, Chris. I always do forget about that, but I'll go check it out now!

Hi Jess, Unfortunately, it's a pretty universal complaint of SABs that they get second class treatment from Google's local product. This has always been the case. There are numerous open threads on this topic on the Google And Your Business help forum, and you might find a good matching case there that will help you diagnose the nuances of your own scenario: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/pin$20marker$20wrong|sort:date This one provides instructions for moving the pin: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/pin$20marker$20wrong|sort:date/business/aokxdjIY2Mk/dxwa5x_2fmkJ Also highly recommend you peruse this discussion: http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/google-local/19572-incorrect-pin-marker-map-google-mybusiness-page.html Hope these resources are helpful!

Local SEO for big companies often is really bad. great answer

I can only say that I would not use it for my own content.

I'm getting something a little different out of this. I plugged rugcare.com into SEM Rush. It shows a considerable spike in traffic in June, then a very big drop in July. Joehadeed.com and bergmanns.com are showing relative spikes and drops as well. So there's a possibility that a bigger competitor is eating everyone's share. Though when I plug rugcare.com into Majestic SEO, it shows 55K redirect links pointing to rugcare.com. Majestic picked this up in late June, which may account for the sudden spike in rankings and traffic, followed by a steep decline in July. It also appears that the site received a number of links from housecleaningadvice.com with the anchor text 'upholstery cleaning tips - rug care'. They appeared to be nofollow, and I can't find the links anymore, but I wouldn't take a link from that site at all. It looks like it's part of a typical blog spam network. I don't want to scare you, but have you received any warnings in GWT? I also can't find these three pages on the current site via nav or crawl: https://web.archive.org/web/20131230215654/http://www.rugcare.com/carpet-cleaning https://web.archive.org/web/20131014021917/http://www.rugcare.com/oriental-rug-cleaning https://web.archive.org/web/20131014021812/http://www.rugcare.com/carpet-and-rug-repairs Was there any particular reason for their omission? Do you know how much traffic those pages used to receive? It looks like the oriental rug cleaning page would have accounted for a chunk of traffic on it's own. Now it just 404s.

In a situation like this it is very difficult in my opinion. One thing I was unclear on, does the client own the brand, or are they just a franchisee? That makes a bit of difference as to what I would suggest.

Hi Jess, you are using the correct dimensions (which are listed at the link posted by Trenton above): Smallest size: 480x270 pixels Largest Size: 2120x1192 pixels Are you able to post a couple of links to these pages so I can get a true picture of what is going on? (Or links to blurred out, screenshots, mockups, etc if privacy is a concern.) Or has this issue been resolved? Would love an update, thanks! Christy

Few things. Reason why your title is below meta description? Seems awkward. Put keyword into H1 preferably. Put more content onto homepage if that is the page you are trying to rank. I aim for 800+ words. Your link profile foundation is really good. You have a very easy site to work with and can see some pretty good rankings. Main issue is you lack links with the anchor text you are trying to rank. Thats an easy fix for the most part. 51 DA? Wish my clients would have similar clean sites to work with. Would make my life sooooo much easier. Your content looks like its farmed. Grabbing it from a content farm? Try to create higher quality content and send social signals to it. Also, its best to put blogs + excerpt + date stamp on homepage. Lastly, you are getting 70/100 in terms of desktop page speed. Have to optimize images, minify JS/css/html. and move JS to footer. I assume your site is hosted in the US? Response time is a little slow so you might consider using a CDN. I see that you are located in SD, I am in LA. If you want to chat, PM me.

Thanks. Our address is on our site, and we have hundreds of citation. We are a paid YEXT partner as well as Locaeze. Our area (DC Metro) has literally dozens of towns wihtin miles, so we need a stratgy for us (and our clients that works) We feel we have tried everything. THanks so much for your reponse! Scott M /CEO ImageWorks

Good to know, Jess! I'll mark your question as 'answered'. Thanks to everyone on this thread for contributing such helpful answers.

Thanks for that!  My boss updated it quickly yesterday ... it's fixed now. I suppose Google is just slow to catch up.  We have links to FB on a lot of our other sites, but I'm going to do some extra link building for the page over the next few days.  Hopefully that will help!

Thanks, everyone!  I appreciate the help!