Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Competitor outranking me on google with their yelp, facebook and youtube pages
-
I'm working to rank for a local search term (my city wedding photographers). I'm frustrated that my competitor is outranking me not with their website (they are no. #9 and I'm #6) but with their Yelp account (#1) Facebook Account (#5) and Youtube account (#7 - not outranking me, but right below me).
I'm going to continue working on my SEO to hopefully get higher up, but even then, they are basically dominating page 1 with their links. It gets worse on page 2. They are showing up 5 times for youtube/vimeo videos, and 1 time with a spammy landing page with no images, full of keyword anchored links to their main site.
What gives? Since when are social media profiles outranking local sites on google organic searches?
Could it be that our keyword is just so low competition that google has allowed all this stuff to rank so highly?
-
Hi Spencer. That article is great and explains this issue perfectly. so Barnacle SEO, huh?
Yeah, I do see that his domain authority is larger as is his likes/yelp reviews. I'm in my second year. The competitor i believe is in the 15th or so.
At this point, I'm going to optimize my social media profiles and link them to my site.
Ideally this will help balance that first page more. My primary effort will be to move to the first spot on the page.
Thank a bunch!
-
This is a strategy called "Barnacle SEO." Essentially you optimize and build links to high end business profiles like yelp because they are more likely to rank due to their high domain authority.
Here's the most recent post I could find on it: http://searchengineland.com/barnacle-seo-making-big-comeback-local-187253
The competitor you're talking about has a higher domain authority which already gives him a decent head start, but it's good that you're still outranking his website. What I see that's definitely helping him is that he optimized his listings for the city you're trying to rank in. He has more reviews than you and he has tons more facebook likes. He also has his Yelp linked to from his facebook and he links back to his yelp profile from his website.
Also, to answer your last question, part of the reason these are ranking is definitely because their is fairly low competition in the space.
-
Ultimately, this might be what I need to do. Get a series of my own links on the first page, as opposed to only my homepage. I do have some youtube videos, and by properly key wording them, they have climbed the ranks, but honestly, I don't want them to be people's first contact with me. I think its so much more productive to have links to my site.
Now they you mention it, it might just be that the competitor's social media profiles are ranking high due to their size. Their yelp has 8 reviews and fb page over 7400+ likes.
-
Thanks Darren. Over the last few months, I've done alot of that and I've managed to climb to first page fairly quickly. I'm currently on first page and ranking higher than my competitor's website. What gets me is that all their social media is also ranking extremely high. I would imagine google giving priority to actual websites, not to a bunch of social media profiles. I don't wish to rank for my own social media profiles particularly, as I want google traffic to point towards my site (and not my youtube account).
-
Don't forget to do some link building of your own - on your own site. Wedding photographers have a great content ready to go; not to mention a willing audience of bloggers/websites to post it. Find some recent pictures and submit them to the wedding blogs. Have your client do an 'engagement shot' for new couple. Those photos will make it up on the couple's wedding websites - ask for a link back. Do some PR around your local media to get on the 'Best of' lists.
-
First, if they have the exact match on the keyword (which is sounds like they might) and they have a good site and seo, it may be vary hard to take the fist spots. You can always get a couple of your own on the first page. (I have one keyword with 5 places on the first page for an exact match).
Lets Focus:
How many reviews does the Yelp have?
Here is a Strategy for Yelp
You can use open site explorer to see where they have links to their Yelp Account. Get those links to your Yelp account. How is their Yelp description written? What keywords do they use. Use a similarly keyword targeted description, keywords etc. Social bookmark your Yelp page with the keyword in the description and title.
Here is a strategy for Facebook:
How many likes does Facebook have? If they have way more fans than you and they post a lot it could be tough. If you have more fans than them make sure you have your keyword in the description of your page. Post more posts using your keyword if you can and not make it sound weird. Social bookmark a good piece of content written about your keyword that you post to Facebook.
Youtube:
Make a good youtube video, slide show type if you need, that is keyword targeted. Write a 300 word description with keywords, your site url possibly your Facebook url. Social bookmark it with your keywords in the title and description, this will increase views naturally and provide links. Wait a week after the social bookmarks have aged. Use Open Site Explorer to mine those links too.
They may be doing some sneaky stuff too like buying Facebook fans or Youtube views if their pages are junky and they rank. That stuff can be risky if done in high amounts.
Hope that gives you something to work with.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Unsolved Has anyone noticed the Google quote request response rate never changes?
We respond to almost 100% of our quote requests, yet every quote email that comes in from Google shows a 27% response rate and it never changes. Has anyone else seen this or have any insight into it?
Local Listings | | r1200gsa0 -
Adding Multiple Country Locations for Google Business Listings
Hi Moz community, I hope everyone is well. I would like to ask for your advice on how to show a Google Business listing in both the UK and US for our brand. I understand that you can add multiple locations to your Google listing under the 'Manage Locations' tab but I wasn't quite sure how it worked in practice. I have a couple of questions below: If we have 2 registered locations/offices (one in the UK and one in the US) are we able to create 2 separate locations that will show our business listing correctly in the right-hand margin when people search for our brand in the US and UK respectively? If so, when a user finds our business listing in the US, are we able to serve them our US website version when they click the 'Website' button, as opposed to showing them our UK website? Our US website has been created as a sub-directory from our main UK site and can be seen as: www.example.com/us/ I hope someone is able to help, and thank you in advance.
Local Listings | | Katarina-Borovska
Katarina0 -
Google My Business -Choosing Multiple Categories
Hi friends, I'm trying to work out what would the practice be for a business who is operating in different categories in terms of displaying those categories in Google My Business account. We have a client who is supplying both catering and cleaning products (both categories are core). In this case, listing those two categories in GMB would be alright or should I expect a negative impact on results related to both categories as we have chosen multiple categories? Any advice would be appreciated greatly!
Local Listings | | bbop331 -
Google Business Listing with no physical office location
Hey, everyone! As a business owner who works from home and doesn't have a physical office location. Is setting up a Google business listing without location going to hurt my local search ranking? Should I get a virtual office so I have a physical location? Thank you!! 😃
Local Listings | | ichorstudios0 -
How to Rank in Yelp
Hello everyone! I manage SEO for a pretty large brand that has close to 100 office locations nationwide. In the last year we have completely revamped our Yelp pages. This has been a great secondary source of traffic and conversions for us because of the type of industry we are in. The problem is, it can be exponentially better if we were more visible. We have done almost everything we can to make our pages as good if not better than almost any competitor regardless of geographic location. We even have the enhanced profiles (extortion) that remove competitors ads from appearing on our listings. Here is what we have done in the last year to each listing: Uploaded tons of photos Increased reviews Added proper categories Fine-tuned all of our CTAs Added in a unique and optimized business description ( Available with enhanced profiles) Set the proper service area range on their map Increased our review response rate ( both negative and positive) to 100% Still, even after months and months have gone by we struggle to rank on the first page for our service category. Doing manual searches often turn up competitors, who do not even have their listing claimed, have no photos, little reviews will rank higher than us. Even though we have an account rep because of our business size, bringing this issue up to them is about as useful as talking to a blanket. They push CPC so hard that its the last thing they are willing to help with. It has gotten to the point where I am honestly starting to believe in a self-curated conspiracy theory that they purposely hold larger brands back in organic to sell CPC harder. Obviously certain brands that hold the branding clout like a "Best Buy" would be hard to get away with. But still, we do all the right things and we are getting very minimal results compared to where we should be. Has anyone else had issues with Yelp or have any ideas on some steps we could take to appease their particular algorithm? Thanks! -Ben
Local Listings | | Davey_Tree1 -
For Google's Structured Data, should I change my listings from Product schema to Local Business schema?
I was reading Google's Structured Data spec, and I'm considering changing the schema of our listing pages from the Product schema to the Local Business schema. Is this a good idea? To give you a little more info, the pages that I'm classifying are listings for physical spaces that our website rents out for activities, such as meetings. Here's an example of a listing: https://www.peerspace.com/pages/listings/550ddcde2f352d0800fc186b Our goal is to add the proper schema.org tags to the page so that our spaces show up in local searches, such as "meeting space in San Francisco." The problem is that when we add location microdata (addressLocality, addressRegion, etc.) to our current "Product" schema, Google tells us that "Products" can't have a location. However, we aren't quite a "Local Business" either, since we don't publicly share our space's street addresses—only the space's neighborhood/city/state for privacy reasons. As a result, we get an error from Google's Structured Data Tool as a "Local Business" page because "streetAddress" is required for Local Businesses. Should we switch to the Local Business schema anyway, even though we get structured data errors for streetAddress? Or is it better not to include the location information in the microdata so that we don't have errors? Does Google penalize you for incomplete tags? Any input is appreciated!
Local Listings | | stuartstein0 -
Google My Business - bulk location upload vs. single upload
Hi there, I have a question regarding Google My Business listings: We currently have a business with few offices (less than 10). Each office has it's Google listing under the same Google account.
Local Listings | | OrendaLtd
We plan on opening new offices at a certain pace, let's say two a month, which means we'll have more than 10 listings in the near future.
As far as I recall, Google allows up to 10 listings per account, which means it won't suffice. On the other hand, We do not have 10 offices at the time being, which means we're not eligible for a bulk upload. Any ideas how to handle this situation?0 -
How to get a verification tick next to the URL in a Google Plus Local page?
Google Plus Local: https://plus.google.com/+PrestedHallFeering Website: www.prested.co.uk So how do I get the verification tick next to the URL on this businesses Google page? Also, even though the website is much strong then those in the map listings for Wedding Venues In Essex, whats preventing this website from appearing in there? My local optimisation knowledge is poor!
Local Listings | | jasondexter0