How do I treat multiple buildings on the same college campus on Google for local SEO?
-
Should I delete them? Simply give them a different address like "City, State, Zip"?
I see the benefit of having key buildings on campus in Google Maps, but I don't want those to affect my accuracy score and, thus, my local rankings for SEO.
-
I hope you succeed with your quest to make it easier to get college businesses listed. I am helping with a music festival in February on Sacramento State's campus. Hundreds of people attending, many who will get lost because the building is not on the map. The campus road system is convoluted with random detours and dead ends to slow down the speeders who are late for class.
-
Hi Gabe,
-
If they don't have separate phone numbers, then I personally would not advise building citations for them. Google wants the number you list for a location to connect as directly as possible to the specific location. Lacking this, I wouldn't build citations, but you might find varying opinions on this.
-
Yes, if you decide to build citations for each building, you are talking about building a complete, unique citation set for each locations. So 20 buildings would equal 20 citation sets.
-
In a correct scenario, properly created listings for multi-department businesses should not water anything down. However, your scenario may not qualify as 'correct', given lack of unique numbers.
-
Here's an example. This is USF: https://www.google.com/maps/place/University+of+San+Francisco/@37.7766466,-122.4528717,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x8085874a311220bb:0x6a56ca6f837ff84e!8m2!3d37.7766466!4d-122.450683
And here is a unique building on this campus (note separate phone number): https://www.google.com/maps/place/Phelan+Hall/@37.7762416,-122.4497874,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x68467e565121581b?sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjEjOWA7YDQAhVkilQKHbXTA0YQ_BIIeDAK
I haven't looked closely at how this university is doing things, but I was able to find that example in a couple of seconds. Hopefully, you can find others.
Adhering to the letter of Google's guidelines, any citation set you build should have a real world guideline-compliant name, direct phone number and accurate street address. Any variation from this can lead to problems. Hope this helps!
-
-
This creates more questions than answers...ha. Feel free to direct me to a resource. I've done a hefty amount of research on SEO and local SEO, but still have lots of questions for the higher ed sector. Questions:
- If the university doesn't have separate phone numbers (and you can't list phone extensions on FB and Google), will a different "business name" and landing page suffice for each department?
- If I treat each department as distinct, am I creating a different property in Moz Local for them? If I had 20 departments, I'm paying 2,000 dollars a year then, right?
- If I do make every department distinct, does that "water down" the university brand or does it give me more opportunities to rank?
- What's standard protocol for universities? Looking for someone who has thought through this and is successful at it. Looks like people are doing things all across the board. I just want to do it right.
Thanks!! Really appreciate this community.
-
Hey Gabe,
Because Google continues to dominate Local, we normally take our queues from them. Google's guidelines allow a unique listing for major departments of campus-style entities like colleges and medical centers. Google states:
- Individual practitioners and departments within businesses, universities, hospitals, and government buildings may have separate pages. See specific guidelines about individual practitioners and departments for more information.
Publicly-facing departments that operate as distinct entities should have their own page. The exact name of each department must be different from that of the main business and that of other departments. Typically such departments have a separate customer entrance and should each have distinct categories. Their hours may sometimes differ from those of the main business.
- Acceptable (as distinct listings):
- "Walmart Vision Center"
- "Sears Auto Center"
- "Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Dermatology"
- Not acceptable (as distinct listings):
- The Apple products section of Best Buy
- The hot food bar inside Whole Foods Market
For each department, the category that is the most representative of that department must be different from that of the main business and that of other departments.
- The main business "Wells Fargo" has the category "Bank" whereas the department "Wells Fargo Advisors" has the category "Financial Consultant"
- The main business "South Bay Toyota" has the category "Toyota Dealer" whereas the "South Bay Toyota Service & Parts" has the category "Auto Repair Shop" (plus the category "Auto Parts Store")
- The main business "GetGo" has the category "Convenience Store" (plus the category "Sandwich Shop") whereas the department "GetGo Fuel" has the category "Gas Station", and the department "WetGo" has the category "Car Wash"
So, basically, for each set of citations you build for a major building on the campus, you need to have a unique name that adheres to the guidelines, and where possible, a unique category (can be hard with schools), I HIGHLY recommend also having:
-
A unique phone number for any department you list
-
A unique landing page on the college website for that department, linked to from the GMB listing and all other citations.
What you need to strive for is that if English Hall has its own citations, they are consistent across the web. Moz Local can really help you ascertain inconsistencies and duplicates. You want to have the NAP+W be as consistent as possible everywhere, shoring up Google's trust in the validity of the data they have about your business.
-
It is a nightmare sometimes. I've done a few audits and found everything from important blocked resources to important landing pages that are only accessible in a pdf format.
Your welcome. Let me know if there are any additional questions you may have. Feel free to shoot me a message.
-
Good insight. Yeah, I'm in higher ed trying to fix our issues and finding that most higher ed institutions have similar problems. Thanks!
-
Well, there are a lot of SEO issues in the higher ed space I've seen. Since that would not be considered a "publicly facing department" I would imagine that would be overkill. My rule of thumb generally is if it provides good user experience go for it.
-
Ugh. I'll have to start a new thread addressing that specific issue. When I'm signed in to Moz Local, it doesn't say that's even an issue in the duplicates section. Our departments don't act as distinct entities (own phone numbers, billing, etc.) since we're a small university. University of Kentucky, for instance has a different location for ever dorm and does this:
Yadayada Dorm
University of Kentucky (instead of the UK address)
Lexington, KY 40390Good user experience, but, again, good practice?
-
When I run the local search I see two verified listing for 'Ashbury University' with different addresses I would consolidate those first. Also, according to Google's guidelines 'Publicly-facing departments that operate as distinct entities should have their own page.' As long as the name is different from that of the main campus you will be fine. Keep the other buildings listings open.
-
Thanks for your insights.
Yep. I'm using Moz Local to help me with this. They don't have different addresses. Just different locations (as I'm sure you can imagine).
Doesn't really help me figure out if I should close all the buildings (which is unhelpful to the user) for the sake of local SEO. Pros/cons? Risks/benefits? What kind of things am I weighing?
-
I think this is a unique issue I think there might be a few different ways of handling it. I am assuming those buildings have different addresses and specific functions. The first option you can claim those local listing etc in local directories and properly fill out the local information accordingly. Or the second option would be to just maintain one listing for the school overall.
I would use Moz's local search tool and see how you already appear in the listings. Personally, I would lean towards having one local listing for the campus and if you have separate sister campuses I would claim those as well.
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 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 -
2 Businesses, Same Location, Different Google My Business Accounts?
This is not my area of expertise, but I have a customer with a unique problem. They are primarily an agency that assists student-athletes nationwide with the college recruiting process. They also have a non-profit organization that runs soccer camps for local kids only. The soccer camp would of course benefit from having it's own GMB page, but they've been told by Google that they can't use the same address as their recruiting business. They are in the same office and moving/adding an office isn't an option at this time. Does anyone have any ideas on how to overcome this issue without risking penalty from Google? Should they change their business name to combine both and add categories for their non-profit? They're such disparate businesses that I'm reluctant to have them do this, but is that the best/only option? Thanks all!
Local Listings | | camarin_w1 -
Using Hashtag for Google My Business
I was told by a Google My Business representative to include #{keywords} in my description. I was told this would boost my rankings. Has anyone else heard of this?
Local Listings | | Smart_Start0 -
How to deal with wrong location in Google SERP
Hi, If I understand correctly, Google provides search results based on the location of the user. That's fine, because most of my clients are local. But if I look at my own search results, Google thinks I'm in a totally different town. Most likely based on my IP address. Of course I can solve that for myself, but the same goes for my potential clients. Is there a way to deal with this, from an seo perspective? For instance find out where most of the the IP providers are located and target that location?
Local Listings | | Houdoe1 -
Google Local: When moving locations, is a new website/content needed?
I've effectively moved companies before, but I've heard that ranking locally in a competitive market after an address move it is necessary to redesign the entire website/content/domain as Google associates the old website/content/domain with the old location. Is this true? Does anyone have any direct experience with this? NOTE- I have updated citations across the internet and have regular social signals going to the new location, and this has been the case for almost 6 months now.
Local Listings | | mgordon0 -
What to do with duplicate Listings for Business in Moz Local Tool?
Hi Everyone! Just another newbie Local SEO looking for a solution. I was searching my business listing in Moz Local and it returned two addresses.
Local Listings | | psuh528
Listing #1: 925 B Street #402 San Diego, CA 92101, 67623
Listing #2: 925 B St, #402, San Diego, CA, 92101 Do I need to remove the listing with two zip codes showing up? (I don't see any of my profiles showing up with two zip codes though.) Listing #2 is accurate yet the local moz tool tells me that my Google+ page is 69% complete. How is it possible that Listing #1 scored a 97% complete on Google+? Would you recommend putting the suite number in Address Line 1 or separated in Line 2? Does it even matter? Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks!0 -
Looking to out source some link building...
But I want to be VERY careful. I just want to out source some local listing etc... type of stuff. I am not looking to get thousands of links per client, I am looking for someone to check the local listings create, claim and edit as needed as well as reaching out to relevant local companies for links i.e. - we work with hotels and resorts, some have large meeting facilities so links from wedding photographers, event planners etc... just citing our clients as venues... etc... Again, I am not looking for, nor do I want, and link schemes etc... just some legitimate building. We are just getting too busy (not complaining) Any suggestions?
Local Listings | | Vizergy0 -
Google Maps Help
Hello, I'm helping 2 clients with Google Maps Client 1
Local Listings | | ogdcorp
Has 4 Locations, I claimed all 4 but when searching his name only 3 are showing up on the first page.
All 4 show up when clicking on "More results" Client 2
Has 3 Locations, all of them were claimed by another company 1 year ago. But now I cant re-claim them unless the other company releases them but that wont be easy. Any suggestions? Also, when dealing with multiple locations is it better to have 1 email address for all or 1 email for each? Thanks0