Question about local listings for traveling service

[Ron10]

I have a band that performs all over my state and was wondering if i could add my business to google local listings in all the cities that my band performs in.  How would i go about that being as there would be only one phone number and no local address?  I'd love to get the traffic from the local listings that come up for certain search phrases.  I wasn't sure if Google would look at that as spamming though.  I do have contract musicians that play with us in each of those cities and could list their home address as the  address just in case i have to have an address on the listing that is local.  How do businesses that provide services in multiple cities by traveling to those cities usually  list their businesses? any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Ron,

I'm the Local SEO Associate here in Q&A. The response Robert has given you is correct. Google's guidelines would not allow the procedure you are describing. The requirements in order to qualify for a Google Place Page are that you have:

1. A legal business name

2. A local area code phone number

3. A physical street address (not a P.O. box or virtual office) to which customers either come to do business with you or from which your employees depart in order to serve customers at their locations (think chimney sweep, landscaper, etc.)

I think your situation is rather interesting, in that I do detect some grey area. What follows is not my suggested advice, but it does point out some of the lack of clarity and potential loopholes in the guidelines. I present this only for educational and hypothetical purposes.

Let's say your band is actually a company with a registered, legal business name. Let's say your main headquarters are your home in San Francisco. Let us further say that you appoint 3 band members as franchise owners. These franchise owners have their headquarters in Berkeley, Oakland and San Jose. Let's say that each franchise owner has a distinct local area code phone number and street address (all under the company's legal business name) and each franchise owner is empowered to take bookings over the phone, hold practices at their facility and that the band heads out from these franchise headquarters to do a gig in each of the respective 3 cities, as well as from your main office in San Francisco.

In a situation like this, one could almost reason that it would be logical for each of the franchises to have their own Place Page.

But in reality, I would call this an extreme long shot, and I believe Google could well consider an abuse of their intended use of the system, hence my warning that this is not my advice. It's interesting to consider, though. Situations like yours are why I would like to see more minutely detailed guidelines published by Google.

In all honesty, I believe your most above board move is to get a very clean, violation-free Place Page in place for your business in the city in which it is located, and then do what other go-to-client business models do: depend on your organic efforts for additional visibility in the cities in which you serve.

When I work with a client like, for instance, a mobile notary public, my process is to get her site well-optimized for her city of location, get her local business profiles created and claimed and then put a plan in place for creating very strong content on her website for the additional cities in which she serves. Of course, both she and I would love for her to be able to have a Place Page for all of the cities in her service area, but this simply isn't how Places works.

I would recommend that you read the Google Places Quality Guidelines yourself in case anything I've written isn't clear: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528

Good luck with the band! Sounds fun!

[Ron10]

You said, "I would also put a page on the site for each city and use Google Maps, etc. on that page for that location."

I already have a page on the site for each city telling about the different venues in those cities we  have performed in, etc.  What exactly did you mean about using Google Mapes on that page for that location?  Thanks so much for your help!

Take care,

Ron

[RobertFisher]

Well, you can't, really. You have to have a distinct location and phone in the area you are using for Places. For your home "location" you can put info about being in other areas but it will not help you in my experience. Say you are in Texas and live in Dallas but play in San Antonio, Houston, Austin, El Paso, and Waco. (Don't knock Waco RG3 just won the Heisman there). You would set up your Places account in Dallas with a Dallas phone and address. The only option for the other cities is to have a location address and phone (No PO Box).

With your contract musicians, you could use their address but would likely be served to have a different phone than what they have. You need a land line if at all possible. But, if Google should believe for a moment you are gaming the system they will take you down.

Make sure if you go this way that the person knows what is going to happen once you put the listing in Places. Otherwise you will run in circles. I would also put a page on the site for each city and use Google Maps, etc. on that page for that location.