Local Citation with multiple offices
-
We have 5 different offices and each has its own google+ page and yell page. At first they were ranking poorly and the wrong offices were coming up for searches in that town so we change the name to :
BusinessName (Location1)
BusinessName (Location2)Etc. those listing all starting to rank top for searches in Location1 and Location2. We have now been told that it is bad for our overall SEO to have the business name appearing differently in different listings and this led me to look at Moz Local. My question is should I remove the (Location1) from the Google+ business listing so that all our offices have the same name (but obviously different addresses) even though it appears to have a negative impact on rankings?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
-
Nice feedback here. The one thing you've asked about that I don't believe I've seen addressed is your question regarding having geographic modifiers in your business name. You are correct - Google does not want these, unless they are part of your legal business name or DBA.
This was a bit of a goofy situation. Originally, Google's guidelines expressly forbid the use of anything but the legal business name or DBA in the business title. Then, in the fall of 2013, they suddenly changed their policy on this, permitting business owners to add descriptors. So, at that point, lots of business owners jumped on this and added city names and other descriptors. A little over a year later, Google reversed their policy, returning to their original stance on this in which they do not want city names, state names, etc. in the business title unless they are part of the real-world business name.
You can read the guidelines here, under Name: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en
-
Thank you that is very helpful. I have gone through and upated almost all of the listings but I am having real trouble with Facebook and wonder if you can help.
We have one Facebook page which is linked to our head office address. One Moz Local it says that our other 4 offices do not have facebook pages. Is there no way of adding offices to facebook or do I literally have to create a new facebook page for every office? This seems silly and a bit annoying as we only really want one single facebook page for our company rather than one for each office, but if this is the only way to do it then will the SEO benefit of having a facebook page outweigh the hassle of managing 5 and the confusion it will cause customers?
Thanks
-
Hi there
Take a look at Whitespark - or you can take a look at BrightLocal's list and vet out those that benefit your business most.
If you have addresses for your business dedicated directly to those cities, you should be fine and not needing to add in (city name). Search engines and crawlers are smart enough to pick up on the address and locality of your Google+ and other citations to return them in proper searches.
Let me know if you need any more help!
-
Thanks. Unfortunately I just tried to sign up to Moz Local but it is US only (I am UK based) so it wouldn't let me :(.
Each of our offices has its own google+ page as I couldn't see any way of adding all the offices to 1 page. The business has one name, the name is the same at all offices "Business Name" but each office does have a different address and phone number. Are you saying that it is better for all my google+ pages to be called "BusinessName" rather than "BusinessName (London)" and "BusinessName (Manchester)"?
-
Hi there
If your business locations have separate NAP information, then you will need to do a listing for each location. Moz Local has great bulk upload capabilities so you will be in great hands there.
If all businesses have the same name, make sure that all of those names are correct with different addresses and contact information - this is extremely important as Google and other search engines use this information to verify your business for search. You don't need to delete anything, just update the information in your Google+ page, and also make sure each location has a Google+ Business page - complete with their information and a link to the company website (if they don't have their own site). Make sure that the main Google+ page is verified as well. You may be able to verify all of those pages but that might take some research.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Google Local Changes Randomly & Our Site Keeps Dropping Off Search
I work for a university where we have 2 law schools. We have our one school on the other side of the state that has been around for a very long time, and then a newer school that is right on our main campus that has been around for about 5 - 10 years now. The newer of the 2 schools is having so much trouble being able to claim the name of the school in google search. If you type in the name of the school the other school (the one that has been around longer) was coming up in the google local on the right of the screen and their web URL was never showing up in search. This is a huge problem because the accreditations of the 2 schools are different, and students are showing up at the wrong school for their interviews. Search will only show a domain name that used to be owned by the older school but now gives information for both of the schools. So it'll show up in search results, but only under that other domain and not their own domain that has their name in the domain name. This school has an updated google mybusiness listing, and a google+ page with the correct listing. I've added some schema data around the business address on their site and JSON for the google+ page, and have re-indexed their sitemap a few times after some changes have been made and we are using their name more in the site. This fixed everything for a short while and we were getting the appropriate google local listing and their site was appearing in search results above the site that advertised both schools. Now, after about 3 months, it has reverted. I had the older school showing up in the google local, and the site that advertises both schools is the ONLY domain appearing. I've re-indexed the site after finding out that Drupal's timestamps that they automatically add to sitemaps aren't optimized for how google reads it. This has gotten the local listing back, but I still have the wrong domain appearing, it is the one advertises both schools instead of the domain that has this school's information. I don't mind that the one advertising both shows up, but if a user is searching for that particular school I would really like to get that domain to appear first above the one advertising both schools and the older school. Right now the new school isn't even in search results except for being under the site that advertises both. I wasn't sure if this was something that Moz Local could help me fix by adding the listing across the web, or if there is something else on the sites I can be doing to help them solidify their name in google search/local. Also - is this subdomain that is advertising both of them hurting them or help them? I was thinking about taking that domain down to one page that acts as a direction source to the 2 domains rather than having a ton of information and keywords that take over the results for their name since that domain is older (and used to be associated with the old school only before the new school was built) Thank you for any advice on this issue as I'm still pretty new to SEO and to the university. Thanks again!
Local Listings | | amaray4030 -
Phone number inconsistencies - local search
Hi, Can you help me with something that is probably straightforward? A website which displays a different phone number to visitors to the one in the source code is using this for tracking purposes I assume? Since the phone number in the source code matches with the local citations I am assuming that there is no harm here in terms of local ranking? Thanks
Local Listings | | AL123al0 -
Do you need contact details (NAP) on every page of your website for local search ranking ?
We’ve got a clients site which doesn't have the contact details on every page, all the contact details are on the /contact page which is using the schema.org local business markup Some sites that our outranking us locally have their contact details on all pages, where as others only have it on the contact page also. Is having your contact details on every page a ranking factor for local search ?
Local Listings | | mike8780 -
NAP question and Google local.
Hello, My client has successfully grown one of their event venues locally (lets call it venue A) and on the back of that bought two more venues (B & C). Then created an umbrella company to manage all three. He now wants to market the umbrella company and so redirected the original successful venue domain (A) to the new umbrella company domain. The umbrella company is located at the same address as the original venue A. So it shares the same address, phone number, website as venue A but a different name. All this done before me. He has a Google local page for the original venue - venue A- and changed the domain on it to the new one. He also has Google local pages for the other two venue locations. But doesn't have a Google local page for the umbrella company. Now he finds rankings are down. Looking around I can see that his citations are all based on the original successful venue name A - but he has changed the website URL on many of the citations to the new domain.So a bit of a mess as we have a mixture of addresses, same phone number for all 4 , different business names for all 4, same website for all 4. If all the venues plus the umbrella company are in the same city, but have different names and addresses but the same phone number (for bookings) and web address, are they allowed a Google local page each? I suggest just having a Google local page for the umbrella company and remove the others as they are not actually separate businesses although they do have different addresses. But unsure if this is correct or necessary. Not sure how to progress with this one and any help appreciated?
Local Listings | | AL123al0 -
Local SEO For Agents
My company has local offices all over the United States, similar to what you would find with insurance, financial advisory services or real estate. We would like these individuals to rank in their local communities. A few questions: (1) Do we need to set up a unique local website for each of these agents or can we build a unique page for each of these agents on our main website. (2) Agent(s) within a city can each provide their services to individual in or near that city, but they don't offer their service regionally or nationally. (3) The agents are generally home based and while there is no concern having their phone number listed, there is some issue with showing a private home address. How does this limit local search and are there any alternatives. Thanks in advance
Local Listings | | APFM0 -
Local sites to make sure I'm listed in - which ones?
I'd love to know what sites this community deems most important when looking at whether my business & site are listed there. I know the obvious - Google Places, Yahoo Maps, Bing Local, Yelp. Foursquare. What others do you consider to be "mission critical" to the general market? Thanks!
Local Listings | | wcksmith10 -
Is there any way to stop yahoo local from adding names to local listings?
I've been coming across many yahoo listings that have a "First Name, Last Name-Business Name" as the listing title including one that I came across that includes my name and my company's business. There's no reason why I should be listed on the listing. Yahoo, says that they pull data from other sources: Localeze ExpressUpdateUSA YP Yext But none of those sites have my name connected to them other than in the account information. Yahoo, doesn't seem to have a good way to fix their listings. I sent their customer support an email about it but I'm not expecting to get much out of it. Does anyone know of a good way to get around/fix this?
Local Listings | | spencerhjustice0 -
Nitpicky NAPS Local Question
I'm about to setup all our NAPS for our Tampa office with Moz Local, and I'm curious about one small thing: suite vs ste? I have read that what matters most is consistency, but since I haven't set it up yet, if anyone had any experience with full names being written out doing better/worse than abbreviations? Thanks, Ruben
Local Listings | | KempRugeLawGroup0