Various region phone numbers

[webfeatseo]

I have a client who serves multiple regions but does not have physical locations and operates out of only one.

Since he does business this way he only has one Google Places listing with the address hidden. However, he has a phone number on it that is localized to one of the regions.

Will this hurt him for ranking in the other regions? To clarify - he has a cincinnati phone number but also has indianpolis, columbus, dayton, and others listed as areas served.

Would it be best to just get him a 1800  number and put that in there?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for contributing to this question. I would recommend that you read and memorize the Google Places Quality Guidelines, which specifically forbid the use of virtual addresses. Here they are for your perusal:

http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528

Specifically, the guidelines state:

Do not create a listing or place your pin marker at a location where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations. If you operate from a location but receive mail at a mail box there, please list your physical address in Address Line 1, and put your mail box or suite number in Address Line 2.

If you don't conduct face-to-face business at your location, you must select the "Do not show my business address on my Maps listing" option within your dashboard. If you don't hide your address, your listing may be removed from Google Maps.

Hope it helps to read those. It's not fun to get in hot water with Google if you violate their policies!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi WebFeat,

Yes, it is forbidden by the Google Places Quality Guidelines to use virtual office addresses, so don't to that.

I have had Local SEO clients in a similar situation to the one you've described. To be totally honest, if the client has once office, he should really only have one local area code phone number, but I'm aware of the fact that many service providers have multiple regional numbers, in part for the totally above board reason of saving their clients long distance phone charges. Looks like this might be the case with your clients, as his numbers are in two different states, right?

So, let's say that the client wants to keep his regional phone numbers. I would suggest that he put them on a page of his site, couched within an image to prevent them from being indexed. The one number that he should keep in real text and use as a local hook on his contact page, footer, about page, etc., is the one that matches his physical street address. So, if he's located in Cincinnati, his real text phone number should be the one with the Cincinnati area code.

And, this should be the number used on his Google Place Page and on all of his directory listings and other citations. Consistency in this is critical.

Explain to the client that should Google find and index half a dozen phone numbers for they same business, they are likely to become 'confused' and lose trust in the validity of his business and profile. He definitely does not want that to happen!

Regarding 800 numbers...yes, that might be an alternative to his having the other regional numbers if his goal is to save his clientele long distance charges. But the advice is the same here - put the 800 number in image text, not real text, on the site, and honestly, I don't recommend putting it anywhere on the Google Place Page. Google does offer the option to provide a secondary phone number on the Place Page, but given their history of automated duplicate creation, merging and etc., I think treating the Place Page (and Google) as simply as possible is the best route to go.

Regarding rankings, my advice unchanged because failing to earn Google's trust outweighs and potential (unlikely) rankings the client might earn from publishing regional phone numbers., If the client needs to gain visibility for cities in which he isn't physically located, you have 2 tasks ahead of you.

1. Discern the client's business model to understand how to optimized the Place Page. If the client serves all customers at his brick-and-mortar address, then you simply input his physical address and allow it to be displayed. If the client serves some clients at his brick and mortar business and others at their places of business, you can show the address and also use the service radius tool. However...this is something to be a little careful about. The distance between Columbus, Ohio and Indianapolis, Indiana is apparently 175 miles. I would not recommend using the service radius feature to indicate a distance like that. In fact, I have seen some indication in the past that choosing a service radius greater than 30 miles may have a negative impact on your rankings. What I've noticed about this pre-dates Google's major policy change regarding the use of this feature, so I don't know exactly how circumference of service radius is affecting rankings these days, but it's something to consider carefully. I think if I had to use the radius tool for a client with locations like yours, I'd check out the miles between his Ohio cities (if he's located in Ohio) and see if any of them fit within the 30 mile radius, just to be safe. *I am having to guess about this here, because of the new policy change. I haven't seen any new mentions of possible effects since that change was put in place.

2. If the client is serving his customers in a variety of cities, utilize copywriting and linkbuilding to build secondary organic visibility for the cities beyond his city of location. He is unlikely to achieve actual local rankings for these other cities if his vertical is at all competitive because Google will typically view his competitors actually located in these other cities as being more relevant results. That being said, you can achieve good organic visibility for the client if you can showcase his work in these secondary cities with creative copywriting and targeted linkbuilding.

Hope I've covered everything you've asked about. Your question is a good one, deserved of a complex answer because there are so many ways to go at this wrongly. It's easy to make a mistake, but with good advice from you and good planning, the client can approach his goals the right way, without risk of penalization. Good luck and thanks for coming to Q&A with your question!

[webfeatseo]

correct me if i am wrong but isnt it incorrect practice to generate virtual addresses?

[Mark_Jay_Apsey_Jr.]

The local number in that region helps him in that region and hurts him in the other regions. There are several outsourced solutions available for him to generate google places listings with virtual addresses in the other regional areas. Make sure that you get the google places listing before you pay. We have worked with one firm that has helped us with a bunch of new clients.

That strategy is going to allow him to maximize his value in all locations, with an 800#.

Hope this helps. Please lay the thumbs up on me if it helped...