Local Results for Regional Headquarters

[20_Creative]

A potential client of mine is an appliance and furniture retailer in the region with several brick & mortar stores. They have their headquarters (and main store) located here in town, and then in several towns within an approximately 25 mile radius, they have satellite stores that specialize in certain products.

They see their best results both for hits and for in-store conversions from Google Local results, wherein people search for "Furniture" or "Television Stores" and they appear in the top two or three results. The problem is, the satellite stores have a limited inventory (they are actually brand specific stores operated by the client in a sort of franchise concept. Each one has their own website). The client wants to optimize for the headquarters, and I am considering various options.

I know that since they have a presence in these towns that are within 25 miles, I could set up an "area of service" listing by verifying their other stores as locations for the main store, which would get their central store and main website listed in the local results in those towns. However, if this project comes together well, I will also be doing SEO for their satellite stores. I don't want to list those locations as part of the headquarters store, and then later be unable to list them as their own business locations, as well.

Example:

• Customer in HOMETOWN searches "Furniture" - They get headquarter's local listing and website.
• Customer in SATELLITE AREA A searches "Furniture" - They get satellite's local listing and website.
• Customer in SATELLITE AREA A searches "Television Store" - Satellite Store A doesn't stock TV's, but the HOMETOWN store does. Customer gets headquarter's local listing and website based on "area of service" set up through SATELLITE STORE A.

Is there a way to do this? This isn't black hat at all, even if it seems slightly iffy. The store is still local (just less local than some others), and the company does sell those products. Just not at the satellite locations. Because of the Franchise style of the Satellite stores, they're not allowed to associate those products directly with the satellite stores in any way.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi 20_Creative,

Linda has given a very helpful and on-target answer here. Your potential client is certainly entitled to having more than one website (though I find that can be a sort of complicated approach vs. simply having a landing page on the website for each store) and a Google Place Page/+ Local page corresponding to each physical store, but each location is only likely to rank for its city of location, so this needs to be understood as you plan your Local SEO approach. I recommend a quick re-fresher on the Google Places Quality Guidelines:

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

[LindaBuquet]

"I know that since they have a presence in these towns that are within 25 miles, I could set up an "area of service" listing by verifying their other stores as locations for the main store, which would get their central store and main website listed in the local results in those towns."

Actually that's not how local works and would cause problems on a few levels. The service area setting is only for businesses that go out to the customer - like plumbers. It's not for retail stores.

Plus setting service area does not help the slightest bit as far as ranking in other cities. It only shows customers how far you will drive to service them on-site.

In local if the competition is medium to heavy and decent size town you typically will only rank in the city you are located in. So the main store is not going to rank in city A unless competition is very low. You can test by searching City A + KW  and see if only businesses from that city show or if listings show for the city the main office is in.

So best strategy is to optimize each location for their primary categories in the city they are actually in.