Getting citations from different cities for a travelling band
-
Hi mozzers! i play in a band that is based in Austin, TX but travels to all cities across texas. I've been told i need to have citations in place to help my organic rankings in the cities across Texas that i perform in.
1. What are the best ways to get citations to rank locally in each city for my band? i have a page set up on my website for each city that we perform in. Do i set up accounts on local business directories in each city that i perform in with a link to that city page on my site? I have performers that i hire in each city and can use their address for the local address on each business listing but my business phone number would be the same for all cities. I don't want this to look black hat to google by filling out business listings for many different cities with the same phone humber but my customers are in fact in all these major cities almost more than in my home town.
2. Since i can only fill out a google places page for my home city, what other ways can i get citations to help my organic rankings in all the cities that i perform in?
Thanks in advance for everyone's input!
Ron
-
Hi Ron,
Good to know your city landing pages are doing well organically. Regarding SM, yes, things like Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube could all be good ways to generate visibility for your business. You can create a local Facebook page, tweet about your local appearances in different cities, optimize your videos for different cities, etc.
Regarding your trumpet player's home address, honestly, I feel if you had to defend this to Google, they might not go along with the reasoning. You might argue that this is a place your band practices and from which you all head out to engagements in that city, and I can kind of see stretching it to that, making me hesitate to say 'delete it'. Provided that the trumpet player's listing also has a unique local phone number, you could leave things as they currently are and if all stays well, then fine, but should you notice a drop in rankings for your main listing at any point, that second location might be something to view as a culprit. Now, if the second listing is sharing a phone number with the main number, then that is a different story and it is definitely putting at risk your main listing rankings.
-
Also, I have had listings in 3 business directories in one of my service cities with our trumpet players address for the last 4 years with the link pointed to that cities landing page and ranked number 2 on page one for years. Should I delete those business directory profiles?
-
I already have city landing pages for my service cities and they are ranking well organically. When you say go for high social visibility in my service cities, what did you mean by that? I already have Facebook, twitter and google plus accounts but haven't focused them on my service cities. I've seen other bands start a Facebook account with key phrases in it that rank in the top 5 when the city name is in the name of the Facebook page. Is that what you had in mind? Thanks so much for all your help!
Ron
-
Hi Ron10,
This is completely correct from Chris:
"In your case, I'd avoid anything that might look inappropriate--no additional accounts, no trying to rank in local in other cities--nothing. As a business model, you fall outside of what's normal and you don't want to trip any flags. Period."
You should set up a single Google Places for Business page (if you don't already have one). If it's brand new, check out this visual guide to the very new dashboard: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/04/02/visual-guide-to-the-new-places-for-business-dashboard/. Your single local listing should center on your core NAP (name, address, phone). If this is your home address and phone number, that is fine, provided they aren't shared by any other business. You should choose to hide your address in the dashboard and then use the service radius function the dashboard will show you.
You can certainly build out citations, but they must focus on your city of location, not on your service cities. That's just how Local works.
As Chris has suggested, for your service cities, developing content on the website, videos, and strong social profiles will be the best efforts for your band. Reviews will be important, too. I highly recommend you consider the practice of creating city landing pages on your website. Suggest you read an article I wrote on this topic a few months back (see: The Nitty Gritty of City Landing Pages; http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1403). Happily for you, you are going to have a ton of options for creating cool content about the your performances in the different cities. Lots more exciting than a carpet cleaning company has for cleaning rugs in Cities A, B, C and D.
Go for high local visibility for your city of location, and high organic and social visibility for your service cities and you'll be on the best track!
-
In your case, I'd avoid anything that might look inappropriate--no additional accounts, no trying to rank in local in other cities--nothing. As a business model, you fall outside of what's normal and you don't want to trip any flags. Period.
You need to trade on your brand. What is your brand? What kind of music is your brand? What kind of people listen you your brand's music and what do they do during the day and after your shows? What other brands does your audience relate to? What brand of instruments do you play? Where do you hang out after a show at your venues? Who are your groupies and who are they connected to in the cities where you play? These are all things you can create content about.
Interviews. Do video, written, audio interviews with every personality in every city you play in. Seek out those people who will interview you there and get them done.
Press releases. Use a PR company to do press releases to announce your next/future venues and tie your acts to the venues, not the addresses of hired performers in those cities. Use G+ to build your brand and release video of your performances that tie back to your G+ account.
Don't think about how to game the system, you don't need to do that. Learn how the system works and maximize the features available to you in the system and you'll do OK.
Are you getting the point? Local is about who and what you're connected to in a city or town, and how you tie that in to your domain and your social profiles.
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
-
Mentions if domain slightly different to brand name
Hi, Just a question/discussion regarding mentions. I have read for the last few years that Google is able to give credit to websites who get mentioned without a link. Even a few months ago there was a big article on the Google update at the end of last year saying how mentions would become an even stronger signal than a link. My question is, if anyone knows, is there any evidence that Google and other search engines are able to give ranking credit to websites whose brand name is slightly different from the domain? Can the search engines figure out that it is the same thing? If not, then there must be a lot of brands missing out. Thanks.
Branding | | Brian_Dowd0 -
How to get more Facebook likes
Hello, We're doing a $5/day like campaign with our cover photo on this Facebook page. What tips do you have in getting more likes, we're only getting like 2 a day. We need lots. Themes: Healing with alternative healing methodologies (orgonite - healing devices, MMS - a powerful supplement) Helping wolves Helping bees I know we're an interesting niche and hard to advise. Here's our site. What tips do you have, just for Facebook?
Branding | | BobGW0 -
Top level domains showing wrong meta tag des in different country
Hi Everyone I have 3 top level domains - and its showing up my meta tag description in USA and Australia search for my NEW ZEALAND meta tag description. Not sure whats going on, but now that im ranking for all top level domains in those countries it looks weird having a NZ in the Search when its a USA and AUSTRALIA domain name. See the attachments Cheers new
Branding | | edward-may0 -
Two domains for different countries? or one big domain with folders?
I know this might sound as a newbie question or maybe not, here it goes. I've had a client for the past 2 years, and we have accomplish many good things for his local website .com.ve (venezuela). It's been so good that he is opening a branch in Dominican republic .com.do. The content, strategy and even the services are exactly the same, but the owner wants to have different site for each country. Of course he only wants to pay for one domain. I do want to share our success ont the .com.ve with the other domains and he actually owns the "global" domain .com with his brand name. So, what should I reccomend... Develop a second site and start from scratch? Migrate my blog from the .com.ve site to the .com site and give each country a separate folder? /ve /do?. What it's the best scenario for me to have all the traffic we have earned transfer to the global brand and to have separate info for each country... Thank you so much for your answer that I kno would be great. Dan
Branding | | daniel.alvarez0 -
How to Force Merge 2 Place Listings (Both Incorrect & Different) for Same Business
Hi,
Branding | | emerald
I'm not sure what action to follow as nothing online seems to describe my Google Place situation - trying to merge 2 completely incorrect business listings for our company, that are also not identical. We have 2 listings on Google Places for our 1 company but a recent address number change has added further complication to already incorrect and different listings. our first/oldest listing was created by google but with incomplete business name, wrong map pin, completely wrong address, but shows our trip advisor reviews. created by us a year ago (we didn't realize the dupe issues) with full business name, correct address at the time (now incorrect since address number change), correct map pin, full description photos and info. This does not link to our trip advisor reviews. How to merge these when they aren't curently identical or correct? All online help seems to explain identical dupes but not this situation. What updates I tried recently: After some research, I changed all citations on the web to no.2 business name (except trip advisor who would not change), our new address number and then updated our no.2 address listing. But has stayed pending for months. It seems to be live, but still with the old incorrect address that does not match citations or our website. When I tried claiming both places with same account it showed the same pending new info I updated for no.2 in dashboard (so I can't edit no.1), but this data is not is not live on either. Last week I decided to do something radical, so logged in with a different account to reclaim no.1 and copied all information pending in no.2 to no.1 so that they should be exact same and hopefully force to merge. Both are pending and 2 different accounts now. What else can I do? We can rank locally while the 2 listings are like this. Should I call Google helpline and explain?0 -
Can we publish two guest posts on one domain with same pen name but different linking website?
Can we publish two guest posts on one domain with same pen name but different linking website? Actually I have been doing guest posts with pen name “Jane Andrew” for “abc.com”(bit old and well performing website). Now I need to post for a new website “xyz.com” on some old domains (where I have already published my articles) so the situation is that I want domains and pen name to remain same but linking website would be different. I had few questions in my mind regarding that and I would be grateful if you help me getting the required information. Is it right from SEO, branding and marketing point of view? How Google interprets this? Is there any harm for the old well performing website or for the new one? And also both websites are owned and managed by the same owner.
Branding | | shaz_lhr0 -
How to get Google to link external review sites in Google Places
Hi, I have several company profiles in Google Places and Google Sites, I also have the same profiles for those companies in review sites like Yelp! and so on. I have seen that other sites have links on the bottom where Google points to those external review sites, but that doesn't happen for me yet, is there a way to tell Google that I have profiles on other review sites so they can link them or is it Google whenever they find them that will link them? Here's an example: http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=14126341780178539960&hl=en At the bottom you'll see that it says: Reviews from around the web Now this is one of mine: http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=12168877126282825032&hl=en Now how do I get that line at the bottom provided that I know there are reviews out there in other sites? Is there something I can do? Or is it all about Google doing it whenever they see fit? Thank you!
Branding | | tass0 -
Travel agents are creating Google Place pages for our properties - is this a bad thing?
I'm currently trying to develop a clear understanding and policy for my company on how we deal with Google place pages, specifically where we stand on places pages being created by our agents. We run a business in the travel industry with a number of locations around the world. Our services are sold via travel agents. Naturally, we set up places pages for each of our locations but recently we've noticed agents setting up places pages for these locations with different titles & their own contact details (same address though). In one case we've received verification postcards which we've been asked to pass on. The pages are set up in 'good faith' to promote business in the agents respective countries and languages but i'm concerned that we are ending up with multiple pages for the same location, hurting our brand, losing our own pages through being buried and ending up with our account being suspended at some point down the line. There are a number of terms on Google guideline page, in particular, this one: "Do not create more than one listing for each business location, either in a single account or multiple accounts." I contacted my Adwords account manager but didn't get a very clear response on this. What i'm looking for is some 3rd party, definitive advice/opinions on this scenario. Should we be asking agents not to create place pages? Why should they list.. could it end up hurting both of us? Are there pros and cons to this or is it a clear cut case?
Branding | | seoec0