What URL Should I use in Google Place Page?

[tcseopro]

Alright, I have a client that has 1 website and 14 locations. We want to create place pages for each of their locations but my question is which URL should I put in the place page and why?

I can put in the root domain into each place page, or should I put in the URL that lands on the actual location on the root. example: domain.com/location1

Thanks!

[MiriamEllis]

Hello Brandon,

Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question! I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum, and will do my best to give you a helpful answer.

Yes, using the landing page of each respective location is a smart plan. If there is a main home office, you might send that one to the homepage, but otherwise, I like the practice of using well-optimized city landing pages.

A quick heads-up on this. Don't be surprised if the URL Google displays on the various Place Pages looks like it's going to the main domain. They often do this, but if you click the link, it leads to the landing page.

And, be sure you are not using any URL that redirects. That's forbidden by the guidelines.

I highly recommend that you read this 2010 Eric Enge interview with Carter Maslan, particularly the area in which Carter discusses multi-location businesses:

http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-carter-maslan-032710.shtml

A few of Carter's remarks are now somewhat dated, simply due to the passage of time, but this portion of the interview is one I continue to refer to as the best advice regarding multi-location businesses:

Eric Enge: Let’s say you have more than one location, 100 for example. In your view, is it helpful to have individual pages on the website for all of the locations? Also, is it helpful to have the Google local business center linked to each of those individual pages rather than having 100 locations that point to a single web address?

Carter Maslan: I can tell you what I think the ideal end state is, and there are various levels of getting there. Ultimately, we would like to have the store-specific page known so that people can just click through and see today's specials and any kind of adjustments for that particular day. We would love to have all of that information on a direct click to the most specific page for that location.

That’s what we encourage, but there are still a lot of chains and things that just link to their top-level domain. I guess it's a split answer. We want to get to a store specific page, but we are not uniformly there across all of the businesses.

Eric Enge: Could that potentially be encouraged by making it a ranking factor, for example?

Carter Maslan: Yes. I guess there are two sides to it. If you create a store-specific page that really just has an address, it wouldn't be as helpful as having some genuinely good content on the page that the user would really appreciate having as the first click-through experience. That’s what I think we need to work through.

We don't want to arbitrarily tell people that they must create a store-specific page, because we are really just trying to find the most useful page for that business. That’s why I am not so definitive on the store-specific page or not. I really just want what’s best for the retailer, store or businesses, first and foremost giving the user what he would want to see when he clicks on that business.

Eric Enge: Say you have a store-specific page that lists specific and individual things about just one store location. Depending on the kind of business that could be an inventory list that shows you've got extra stock?

Carter Maslan: There is a chain of stores that carries yoga equipment that my wife really likes. They have special yoga instruction, carry special brands, and host lectures on some special days. There are all kinds of things that the retailer does that relate to that specific store location, and there is also a general corporate catalogue page. So this is not black and white, and even though we want to encourage it, it's not that there is a definitive guidance saying companies need to have that page.

Eric Enge: Obviously it’s good if there is a quality page with information unique and specific to each location.

Carter Maslan: Yes, that's great. If we know that there’s good information about that page, then that helps on search and the snippets that we can show on the search results, because we know that the page is referencing that place. It does help even if it ends up not being the page that you list as your primary homepage. If there is good content that we know is content about that place, then it helps us do a better job with query results.

If a company has a page that's store-specific and talks about its class schedule, and there is one that says its holding Tai Chi class tonight and someone is searching for places to do Tai Chi, then that helps us to score it. If a lot of people have found that page helpful about the Tai Chi class, then when people search for Tai Chi we would know that that location has something to do with Tai Chi.

*Bear in mind, Carter was not providing this information as though it were Google's 'official' stance, but I think it's as close to a plan of action as you can get in this specialized type of work of dealing with many locales.

Hope this is helpful. Good luck!

Miriam

[watkinsheating]

Great question. I agree with Adam that linking to a good local landing page is more useful to the user. Like Brandon, though, I am wondering if there is a ranking impact for either the places page in the 7pack or the landing page in the organics. It seems like google would want to see these pages in agreement on the bricks & mortar address. Hoping for a good discussion on this.

I do have a set of local keywords where we rank #1 in both the 7 pack and #1 organic with the local landing page.

[AdamThompson]

In most cases, I would tend to put the URL for each location - much more useful for the user.