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Category: Local Listings

Examine the impact of maintaining consistent and accurate local listings on your local SEO strategy.


  • I've had a few SMB clients who have experienced drops in website traffic once their Google Places listing has gone live. It's hard for the average SMB to understand that this may not be a bad thing because they actually may be received more leads direct from the local SERPs. So while I can try to explain this to my clients, it'd be nice to have some broad data on how searchers interact with Google local listings. I'd love to learn what percentage of people call direct from the SERPs instead of clicking through to the business' website link. Obviously, the percentages would vary across different verticals, different devices & depending on whether the search query was branded or non-branded. I'm after some rough average data, so if anyone could point me in the right direction, that'd be great! 🙂

    | Dave_Eddy
    0

  • Polyvore is looking for an SEO Specialist (Contract role)! Click here to apply:  https://hire.jobvite.com/j?aj=oZv4Yfwg&s=Moz As an SEO expert, you will help acquire users to Polyvore through organic search. You will also be key to helping engineering team understand SEO best practices. Our ideal service provider is someone who has a deep understanding of SEO in the e-commerce space. Key Responsibilities Audit all Polyvore pages and help the engineering team understand their relative importance to SEO Provide SEO best practices for e-commerce space and help build out automated tools to ensure these best practices Help investigate issues related to SEO including but not limited to changes in organic search traffic Review upcoming designs from SEO perspective & suggest improvements before the changes are implemented What does success look like? Overall increase in organic search traffic to Polyvore A set of automated SEO tools that help catch SEO issues proactively A monitoring plan to catch SEO issues early (i.e. which tools to use, what to track, how to predict potential issues) Click here to apply:  https://hire.jobvite.com/j?aj=oZv4Yfwg&s=Moz

    | seomoz_polyvore.com
    0

  • Hi guys i need help i cant decide which path should i take but 1st let me start by discussing about my goal and the company background. The website is a listing more like a classified ads that manually verify each listings before we approve and we only allow listing of condominiums nothing else. We cover 10 countries. Our current website structure is like this http://website.com/singapore http://website.com/thailand http://website.com/malaysia and so on our goal is to dominate each local search queries, like lets say we like to rank our domain http://website.com/singapore where people from singapore who uses local search engine could find condo's in singapore is local search engine like http://google.com.sg whats the best way to do it? should i leave the structure of our site that way or through subdomain? http://singapore.website.com as what i have researched its more beneficial if we use subdomain but most articles are old im not sure if this can still be achieve today. To all gurus please enlighten me. What strategy should i choose, any tips would also help. Thank you very much. (sorry for my bad english, its not my native language)

    | geefex6nsy
    0

  • I have two questions: 1. Schema code for Global business: As a company which works with clients across the globe, we like to create a well defined schema that doesn't limit and appear as a Local Business to Google. I assume "http://schema.org/LocalBusiness" means a local business to Google. If we use it, will be be affecting the ranking in global searches? 2. Page and location to keep the code What could be the best place to keep the schema code in a web page? - Homepage/ About us page / contact us page and Footer links are the options. I hope applying CSS on it too wouldn't be an issue. Looking forward to learning your thoughts.

    | macronimous
    0

  • Hello Everyone, We have a client that has 2 of the same websites, that have the same content, different phone numbers and different content for the Homepages however, there are a few differences that has been done to both with different functionality. For the last 3 weeks, we have been trying to rank "1. www.websitetoronto.com" as this is the branding of the company, and is for 18+ content. We also have "2. www.websitetor.com" that is PG13 content which is for google places for business aka google+ for business (which is still in pending mode, and is the older site about 7 years old, and was ranked before. The reason for both the sites is that Google Places for Business Listing does not allow any adult content, and our main branding "**1. www.websitetoronto.com" is for 18+ content. Here are the specs for both the sites. ** 1. www.websitetoronto.com New Registered site to be ranked organically (however this is no where in the SERPS) as its serving the older site previously No Google Places for business listings.
    - This is the actual branding of the company and is for 18+ content We have already started building links, organically and white-hat only. Unfortunately (its not showing for our main keywords in the SERPS) ** 2. www.websitetor.com** 7 Years old Google Places for Business (Still in pending mode) not to be ranked organically blocked from searches - robots sets to
    User-agent: *
    Disallow: / Removed all the links in WMT including We have change all all the links for point to "www.websitetoronto.com" What is the best way to make this work with google, so that we have both websites performing for the different functions and without losing the google places listings for 2. www.websitetor.com and to rank 1. www.websitetoronto.com a) Do I add any tags? Rel=?
    b) Should we remove 2. www.mywebsitetor.com from WMT?
    c) any other tips and suggestion to get www.mywebsitetoronto.com to rank would be great! Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated. Also, the owner want this set up this way so, we cannot reverse as he wants the **1. www.websitetoronto.com as the branding. **

    | EVERWORLD.ENTERTAIMENT
    0

  • Unlike a blog, classified sites tend to sell items that eventually are no longer available, and it's almost every page on the site that works like that (except category pages for example) We have 2 options at the moment: We keep the old ad urls. Note that these urls won't be linked from on the site anymore. They will technically only exist in Google's index. When someone comes through to them, they are present with a suggested replacement ad that is currently available. So 5 years from now, most of the "indexed" pages on the site that google sends traffic to will be these pages that simply tell you about another ad. Not nice, but so many classifieds are doing it like this. 301 the deleted/sold/expired ads to a relevant existing ad. Might have scenarios resulting in soft-404s. Both have pro's and con's, but any further insight into the matter will be great!

    | DotSlash94
    0

  • At the special rich snippet at the top of the SERP, we have 5 phone numbers, but 2 of them are for something specific and need to be removed. Do you know how to do this? I've looked up the 2 phone numbers and they appear to only be on PDF documents. Any ideas?

    | FOTF_DigitalMarketing
    0

  • We want to target both Dutch countries .NL & .BE (Belgium & Netherlands).
    Should we go for the 2 ccTLD's using rel-alternate, or go for one TLD, .EU or similar? We currently have an SEO project going on where DNS.be & DNS.nl are equally important. Currently we are using the rel-alternate meta data. The .be website is doing fantastic, the .nl one seems stagnant and not really getting to target. For a similar project, we are now wondering whether we should go for the same approach, or just pick one TLD (.EU or similar). Note: we cannot create content that is regionally specific, since the content is just what it is and cannot be altered.

    | Brainlane
    0

  • Hi Guys, Looking for a advice on having multiple phone numbers. We have dealers who have both a sales phone number and service phone number for the same address. Is it possible to specify this in Google Places so both numbers are displayed in the SERP GP listing as shown below link? Link - http://tinyurl.com/mto86ts Or is it possible to even add multiple numbers on the actual GP local page ? http://tinyurl.com/n7r9w3d Any advice on this? Seems to be from my initial research, the only way to two numbers is via the description. Thanks,
    Matt

    | MBASydney
    0

  • We were earlier using the meta keywords tag on our pages and on reading a recommendation on Moz for the same being redundant, we went ahead and removed the same! Can anyone provide inputs on whether the meta keywords tag is really irrelevant or actually detrimental to a page? Thanks

    | prsntsnh
    0

  • I have a local content based website which gives information of services under different categories and subcategories in a segment across multiple localities. Our menu is found across all pages and the menu has about 150 different links to sub-categories and categories. On any listings page that comes up, when you choose a particular category or sub-category, we have another 100 links relating to the individual listings in addition to the menu which is consistent across all pages. Is this a problem?

    | prsntsnh
    0

  • Hi there! I've recently added a new listing in our Google Places for Business account. When adding the basic info initially, the category suggestions where in English, so I just picked one. We are based in The Netherlands however, so I'd like to use the Dutch categories. When I edit our existing listing, the category suggestions are Dutch. When I edit our new listing, suggestions keep showing in English. Does anyone know how I can change this? I tried to switch language settings in my Google account, but it seems like the categories are just stuck on a certain language once the listing is set up? Thanks for your help!

    | RBO
    0

  • What is the largest difference between Moz Local account and using Whitesparks Citation Builder? Does anyone use both together?

    | cschwartzel
    0

  • We see that our Domain Authority is hovering around the same mark for over a year now. I have 2 questions - How important is DA? Does it affect your Google Page Rank? What would ideally be the things that we need to keep in mind if we are to increase our Domain Authority? Thanks

    | prsntsnh
    0

  • Our firm keeps displaying "bankruptcy attorney" on google business page. Granted, we do that, as well as a variety of other services, but our primary category is "Personal Injury Attorney". I was told the categories are randomly selected, but I don't think that's true. Every time I've looked (or had other people look for us) on local, it displays as "bankruptcy attorney." What should I do? Is there a way to lock in the "Personal Injury Attorney" category, so it's the one that displays? Should I get rid of all the other categories except for "personal injury attorney?" Any other suggestion? Thanks, Ruben

    | KempRugeLawGroup
    0

  • Hi All, as most know, directories are taking over the SERPS as of late, and my question is: What "tells" Google that it is a directory? What does Google look for that gets these directories showing? I understand the big ones probably have back-room deals with Google, but I am seeing some smaller ones showing. Any ideas?

    | BBuck
    0

  • The following two photos show the problems that we are having with setting up our Google authorship. What steps would be necessary to correct these errors? abyP0Vg db4ZOgA

    | Dynamo-Web
    0

  • Is there anything similar to Moz Local in London, UK? I need to run citations for 2 local businesses 'but' and want to use 'trusted' platforms. Please share you experiences and how this has helped your clients. Thank you Gary Victory

    | GaryVictory
    1

  • One of our clients decided to launch a 2nd website to market specific products and services that they provide. The trouble is, they have the same address, phone number and have a similar name. Whilst we have had some success and both websites are on page 1 for their primary keywords, I have a bad feeling that they may have hit a glass ceiling. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to perform local SEO?

    | maxweb
    0

  • Hey guys,  any advice is very welcome , I m´ ranking  locally a  website in the bay area for cabinets www.cabinetsbayarea.com we picked this domain name more for SEO purposes because it has the two most important keywords that we want to rank. My issue is that the real busniess name is HEMA DESIGN CENTER, so i dont know if we should change the name in the chamber of commerce to CABiNETS BAY AREA or list the business as HEMA DESIGN CENTER, with this website www.cabinetsbayarea.comr. We only mention the real name in the About Us. CABINETS BAY AREA it is more as a deparment of the real business name HEMA DESIGN CENTER What should i do? Thanks a lot, David

    | conexion33
    0

  • Hi, we have a client that has 2 distinct divisions 1)XYZ Construction and 2)XYZ Pools  they reside at the same address and share a phone number.  They do have 2 different websites.  How can we handle this from a Local listing perspective without getting our listings merged or penalized?

    | JohnWeb12
    0

  • Our zipcode is wrong on our Google Plus page for one of our offices. Exactly, one month ago I corrected it, but it immediately reverted to the wrong one. Then, I think I read the change can take 4 weeks...we'll it still hasn't changed. Two weeks ago, someone from Google Places even called and I told him to change it manually, he said he would...still not changed. What can I do to get this zip code corrected? Thanks, Ruben

    | KempRugeLawGroup
    0

  • 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?

    | studio35design
    0

  • I own a lawn care company and I currently have it listed with its actual address. I have been reading that service companies with a actual address listing MUST change their listing to hide their address and show a service area. As you can imagine, the business is extremely seasonal and any negative impacts to my listing would hurt the company. If it makes a difference, the majority of lawn care and landscaping companies are listed with their actual address. So my questions are: (1) Should I change the listing now? And if so, what kind of impact will this have? (2) Should I wait until late autumn to change it so it can recover during the winter. Or, (3) should i just leave the listing how it is now? Thanks for taking the time to answer the questions, I appreciate it.

    | cestbob
    0

  • Doing some analysis for a clients and it have come to our attention that some of the competitors in this area have 16 to 18 categories, many duplicate and keyword stuffed. I tried to find a specific action to report this to Google, I am aware you can report spam for websites does this apply to the places pages as well?  Can you just use the report abuse or report spam links?  Anyone have any experience with this type of action with Google?  Thanks.

    | AFoust
    1

  • Hello Everyone, After 6 Months, Google has removed us from Google Places for Business and Maps. We did everything properly and we where serving on the 3rd position. Now it seems that the listing is back in Pending? 1. Does anybody have any suggestions how to proceed or how to handle this? 
    2. Can we use places listings again using the same Address? 
    3. How long will it take to process again?  
    4. We also heard that some one might of complained?? Your help is much needed. Thanks

    | EVERWORLD.ENTERTAIMENT
    0

  • Hello everyone, If I have pending google places listing, and I added my websites robot.text to block search engines. Will I still get accepted in Google Place? The reason is. We want to block the Google Places listings from search, and only show up on the google places listings. As we have to have a similar website with more explicit content we want to rank on the search results. www.mywebsitetor.com (google places) (PG) 
    www.mywebsitetoronto.com (organic ranking) (A) Hope this make sense, thanks for your help.

    | EVERWORLD.ENTERTAIMENT
    0

  • Hi Gang, State requirements mandate that our law practice (Keller & Keller) properly display their distinct business entities on all advertising materials, including our website. Specifically, our offices are set up in a way that makes Indiana's law office an LLP, New Mexico's an LLC, and Michigan's a PLLC. All 3 offices/states are represented on a single domain, but I want to be careful about mixing the different registration titles (LLP, LLC, PLLC) throughout our site when we commonly refer to ourselves simply as Keller & Keller throughout the main pages and in our content. I worry it may negatively affect our local listings? (One idea is to place a simple 'disclaimer' in the footer throughout our site that identifies the business entities, however, I'm still concerned this too might affect/confuse our local listings?) All thoughts, advice, and theories are welcome! Thanks, everyone! (And to my fellow Yanks, enjoy a safe Memorial Day weekend!) W-

    | Wayne76
    0

  • What is the best and latest technique to optimise a website target lots of multiple local areas - I have a site where we want to target 10-15 local areas - at the moment the content mentions the local areas but not all of them as I felt it was going to turn into a list or keyword stuffing.I still see sites creating individual pages for each local area and including the areas in the url - the client wants to try and resist this as they do not want a lot of "bullsh*t" pages - (there exact words). What are the latest techniques or options? What have people tried and been successful with or equally failed with?

    | JohnW-UK
    0

  • Hello, Are there any plans to expand Moz Local to Canada? In the mean time, does anyone have a suggestion for a similar tool for Canadians?

    | jenmcardle
    1

  • Hello All, I have an Ecommerce website with a number of different depots which customers can pick products up from. I have created a Google Places listing for each of my depots. My website has a unique page for each of my Locations. Should I have a link from the individual website location pages to the corresponding Google Places Page ?..  Currently I only have a link from the Google Places page back to the website Location Page ? Should the images I  have in my google Places listings contain the relevant Location name in the image file names ? Is there any useful pointers for SEO tuning for google places or articles anyone could recommend ?.. thanks Sarah

    | SarahCollins
    0

  • Hello Moz Community! My name is Colby. I work with Comit Developers here in the US, but I currently have a client that is in need overseas. My client is looking for SEO work in Switzerland. We've never worked in this country, but we are willing to outsource to get a little help. I am looking for some smaller SEO companies in or nearby Zurich. Does anyone have any ideas? We are looking for companies who can charge fair prices. I'm not sure how expensive the Swiss market is for SEO, but I'd love some insight. Can anyone help me?

    | ComitSEO
    0

  • Hey guys, I know that this doesn't quite fall under this community, but I thought I'd ask anyway. I've got a client currently who is an Electrician. They're primarily electricians that offer a lot of services, such as air conditioning installations, LED lighting, Solar Panel & heaps more, currently I'm trying to properly categorise the Google Places listing. I'm looking at other Google Places listings in the "Electricians Melbourne" type searches & many of them have Electrician as a category. However, when I attempt to do this, I'm unable to get the same result.
    Has anyone else seen this, or know why I can't get Electrician as a category & when others are?

    | KBB_Digital
    0

  • I really trust the MOZ communities opinions on this and would appreciate any help. Our company has a competitor that puts our brand name in the majority of their craigslist ads. If you search craigslist for our product name, 80-90% of the results are this one company. Can anyone recommend a REPUTABLE flagging service that can flag their ads that break the craigslist TOS by using keyword spam? I'm open to any and all suggestions.

    | seo-hunter
    0

  • Hi, how are you? I'm Having some problems with my clients Google Places/Plus listings. Everything is OK, but I can't get my website linked. I'm talking about what I point out in the image. I tried following this instructions: https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1713826?hl=en&ref_topic=3052532, but I can't find the Link website button next to my website URL. Do you know why is this happening? Thanks! 6v1eDG4

    | arielbortz
    0

  • Just starting work on a client providing care services in the local area.  They have a number of local branches in the area, but no Google+ page (which we will sorting shortly). One of the first things that struck me about the company is the offsite citations are a mess. Their addresses all have different information and they have several phone numbers for each branch. I've been trying to gather a full list so that I can go through them and either change them or ask for log in details if necessary. However, this is time consuming and there is no guarantee that I will get them all. I know that moz local has a tool to do this quickly, but it the grader seems to only work in the USA, we're based in the UK. I'm also trying to use whitespark to get a list, but this is difficult due to all the different phone numbers being used. Does anyone know of another tool that can speed up this process and ensure that I get all the citations?

    | maxweb
    0

  • Hi there. I went to www.google.it and did a search for "Scuola di inglese a Miami" (English school in Miami) The result I got was that one Company (Kaplan International) ranked with several listings at the same address and with different languages. I read several time that you are only allowed to have one listing pr address. How is this possible? Will they eventually get merged or penalized? Best regards maps?q=scuola+di+inglese+a+miami&ie=UTF-8&ei=psJ0U5DFAcnXOdbIgNgG&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ

    | E_F
    0

  • I have a local client who is adamant about not publishing their address anywhere online. They are a local (regional) company, and work out of their home. I advised that PO boxes do not fill within "accurate guidelines" for Google Places (and moving forward any citation building is going to be tough). Any way to get around this besides buying a generic mailbox that isn't a PO Box? They feel putting their home address anywhere leaves them vulnerable to people showing up at their home, and considering the industry they are in, it is possible this could lead to negative confrontations and I understand their concern. Any ideas for me?

    | cschwartzel
    0

  • Hello, If you have assign a website in Google places that is in Pending mode, and you removed the website in WMT, from the searches. Will be denied in google places? Thanks for your help.

    | EVERWORLD.ENTERTAIMENT
    1

  • Our physical address is not manned because we primarily go to the customer site either electronically or in person.  So technically, we are not supposed to check the box in Google+ " I also serve customers at my business address."  Having the box unchecked hides the address on the Google+ page leaving just City and State.  Now that we have submitted our location in Moz Local, we see this causes an inconsistent listing issue.  The address shows in other listings but not in Google+.  On one hand, we do not want people showing up to our location expecting to find us there when we are not.  On the other hand, we want our listings to be consistent so that customers can see that we are local and can deliver our services in person when necessary.  So what should we do about this? p8A6ZW5 ReWtbOa

    | BoundlessData
    0

  • In a larger city (london for example) when there are dozens of one specific industry, how does Google choose who to show in their local results? For example if I type "solicitor london" it shows me 7 local results, but I know there are far more than 7 solicitors in London. Do they change as frequently as the rest of the serps or is there something you can do to ensure you get in that local search? Added to this, does being part of a chain/franchise make a difference? Help/thoughts/advice would be appreciated.

    | Gordon_Hall
    0

  • Hi all, I work for enterprise app development & mobile consultancy, Mubaloo. I recently asked a question around getting better rankings for London-based search results. One answer was to set up a local listing for Mubaloo's London office. I thought I had done by setting up our London office up on Places for Business - is this the same as a local listing? In addition to this, I can't connect our existing Google+ page to our local Mubaloo Bristol & London listings as Google has created separate pages for each! Is anyone else having this issue? Can it be resolved?

    | donaldsze
    0

  • Hi, How i can do the local SEO for few cities of US however client is Canada based. Client want to promote his business in US ( specific cities). Kindly suggest how it will be posible as client do not have address in US. Cheers!!

    | 1akal
    0

  • Hi There, I have a new client who wishes to rank in Google UK for 'Antique Fireplaces London'.  Currently they rank 49th.  They do not know their logins for Google Local (where they have 40+ positive reviews).  And have very mess social activity (which i am trying to sort out). The domain is around 8 years old - website has just been redone (drupal) where a lot of the former SEO errors were corrected) but they seem to be outranked by much newer websites that have much lower domain authority and less inbound links.  My client also has much more recognition in online trade magazines and newspapers than most of their competitors. Would buying some additional domains with the keywords they wish to rank for help? Or will this look dodgy to google? Any other quick tips to give them a boost?

    | skehoe
    0

  • Hey Guys, Does anyone have any insight on how to remove incorrect results from the Google Search Results? I've tried several ways to remove this incorrect listing and the problem still exists. Website has its headquarters location data on several pages of the site (about, contact). Website has a Google+ account and the website links to the correct Google+ account. If anyone has any insight or tips on how to get this removed and/or changed to the correct result it would be much appreciated. iBk0xbo

    | Netmasons
    0

  • Hello all 🙂 I've just started doing some local SEO citation stuff, using Whitespark. I'm wondering if it's a good idea to run different searches/listings for different keywords for the same business? For example, 'digital marketing manchester' and 'website design manchester' - or would you simply just do one keyphrase? All help appreciated!
    William

    | Seabrook
    0

  • Hello Everyone, I had previously added Structured Data for reviews for my product pages, which worked, and has slightly bumped up CTRs. Now, I am trying to get dates and locations to show up in the SERPs (Products are classes). Google's Structured Data Testing Tool shows that the data is being read without any errors, but I cannot seem to get them to show up in the preview (or actual SERPs). https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cleanedison.com%2Fcourses%2Fentry-level-solar-energy-training%2F If anyone could take a look and let me know if there is anything obvious I missed, it would be much appreciated. Thanks

    | CleanEdisonInc
    0

  • Was on the phone with Google Support about duplicate, verified pages showing up and they said they're doing a "cleanse" in which an automated system is reviewing existing listings and making decisions as to how those look, which often results in a new page that Google then automatically verifies. Their Support phone system has been bogged down with people calling in, but I'm not seeing anything when I search about this issue. Is anyone else experiencing this?

    | copyjack
    0

  • I understand that several citation places take over a month to get listed, but I just don't understand why. Granted, there's nothing I can do about it, but I'm just curious what the hold up is based on. Thanks, Ruben

    | KempRugeLawGroup
    0

  • I am working with an Insurance agent and he has Google Alerts setup on his company name. He has received two alerts where his name only appears in the URL. If you click the links they bring you to a competitor's Yahoo Local profile page with their name and info. If you look at the URL it has his company's name and city in the URL. Could a competitor be claiming his listings and then changing the business name, phone, address and URL to their own? Does the URL on Yahoo Local listings stay the same after a business changes their name? This has happened with two of his listings in two different cities, he has two offices in one state. But not with the same competitor, it has happened with two different companies. Any idea what could be happening? I would be happy to PM the URLS, I just don't want to post them publicly here. Thanks!

    | MainelySEO
    0

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