Map-pack results for multiple locations in the same city
-
We just started working with a local business with several offices across Virginia. All of their locations have G+ local pages, and all rank pretty well in map-pack results for their respective cities....except for one location.
Two of their offices happen to be in the same city. One ranks well in the local pack, and the other one is totally buried. This is the only location that doesn't rank in the map-pack for its target local queries.
This company still has a TON of work to do to clean-up their citations and improve their G+ local pages across all the locations, but I'm wondering if there are any best practices for handling two locations within the same city...we obviously want both offices to rank in the map-pack, and don't want to do anything that might hurt the one that is currently ranking well.
I'm confident that generally cleaning up their profile across the board, and adding new citations for all locations would be beneficial, but would appreciate any suggestions or best practices for getting both locations in this one city to perform well.
Thanks!
-
Incredibly smart answer Miriam. I'm going to steal this line: "In general, inclusion of more than one result in a single pack for the same brand is the result of tremendous dominance or lack of competition."
Miriam covered it all, I'll just say that things are somewhat different post-Pigeon. In the past it was very difficult to get more than one listing in the pack. But now with Pigeon I've seen packs where ALL 7 were for the same business. Example: one medical practice and 6 Drs at the same practice. That never used to happen before. And it's not really fair if there are 30 other businesses in that city that one locks everyone else out.
But Pigeon has not settled in yet and it appears they are still testing and training it. So I would not count on that continuing and I've only seen it happen in some smaller less competitive markets.
So all you can really do is follow Miriam's advice and continue working on all the best practice stuff you can. Consumers searching via phone that are located closer to location B will more likely see that one.
-
Hi Djreich!
Good topic! In general, inclusion of more than one result in a single pack for the same brand is the result of tremendous dominance or lack of competition. You don't mention the industry your client is in, so I can't really guess at their competition, but rule of thumb would be that if your pack is a 7-pack and you've got 7 or more competitors in that city offering the same service, getting Google to grant a single business more than 1 spot is going to be uphill work on desktop devices. You may have a bit of an easier time on mobile, depending on the proximity of the two businesses to the customer performing the search. If it's only a 3-pack (more common since Pigeon), getting more than one spot in it is going to be a real long shot, unless you are the only game in town. And remember, what you see is not necessarily what this company's customers see, on desktop or mobile devices.
It's good that you are going get the citations clean and consistent for the second location. That's vital! From a content perspective, each of the 2 locations should have its own, strong page on the website, linked to from a top level menu, including Schema-encoded NAP and good text content about the respective locations. If the company has a blog, continuing to build out content for each location would be smart, too. Working on social for both locations would be a good idea, and don't ignore video marketing as a way to get a very visual result for a second location, even if you can't make it into the pack. Review acquisition, particularly of Google-based reviews, could help. I would also think that doing a competitive analysis of who is coming up in the pack would be very important, enabling you to see if there are any weak competitors in there who might be bumped down by specific positive actions on your client's part.
I wish I had a tried-and-true formula for you on this, but the variables of pack size, user location, authority of the brand and level of competition make it pretty impossible to predict whether getting 2 spots in one pack is a reasonable goal or pie-in-the-sky. You will be doing a complete analysis of all of this, and may find weak spots or the competition may just be too stiff to reasonably be overmastered, in which case, diversifying keywords goals for the 2 businesses and/or going after organic rather than local visibility may be a better strategy.
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
-
Google My Business -Choosing Multiple Categories
Hi friends, I'm trying to work out what would the practice be for a business who is operating in different categories in terms of displaying those categories in Google My Business account. We have a client who is supplying both catering and cleaning products (both categories are core). In this case, listing those two categories in GMB would be alright or should I expect a negative impact on results related to both categories as we have chosen multiple categories? Any advice would be appreciated greatly!
Local Listings | | bbop331 -
How do you fix a Google My Business Location Issue if the road doesn't yet exist on Google Maps?
My core question is just: How do you fix a Google My Business Location Issue if the road doesn't yet exist on Google Maps? Do I have any other options other than to just wait on Google to catch up with reality? Here's the background: I work for a hospital. We just opened a clinic on a street that is real and has a U.S. Postal Address, but Google Maps doesn't recognize it, and redirects people to a house . This is our postal address: 8343 S 168th Ave Omaha NE 68136-1677 If a patient enters the following into google maps, 8343 S 168th Ave, the location the map autofills the wrong zip code, and sends them to a home that is on S 168th Ave. (where in theory a home would exist if it had that home number). The road does exist in that portion of town. If a patient enters 8343 S 168th Ave, Omaha NE 68136, google maps takes you to the correct location, but it automatically changes Ave to St. The verified Google My Business listing also lists it as Street, even though on the back end I've put in the word Avenue, and it shows up in the right place. If however someone just searches by name "Chalco Clinic" the right Google My Business comes up. This is the Google My Business page I'm referring to: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Nebraska+Medicine+-+Chalco/@41.1754796,-96.1787153,15z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xf77aefb4e27f865!8m2!3d41.1754796!4d-96.1787153 And even though it says it's on a Street, on the back end of the claimed listing I've used "Avenue". In case it matters, this is the landing page for the location: https://www.nebraskamed.com/chalco
Local Listings | | Patrick_at_Nebraska_Medicine0 -
Google Maps Remove from maps option - Does that mark as permanently closed?
We have a client that has an old G maps listing that keeps popping up. The newer listing (less than 2 years) has over 150 legit 5-star reviews, but the older, crappy listing (about 4-5 years old) with 5 reviews keeps coming up in maps. I noticed that Google has new options available, and you can now request that the listing be removed from maps. In the past, this type of option did not "remove" the listing, but rather marked it as "permanently closed." We want to completely remove it from maps altogether but cannot allow the time to reverify and activate if it marks it as permanently closed. Both have the exact same address and different business names. Both are located in our Google manager account. What is the fastest and most efficient way of getting this removed without risking the "permanently closed" showing up and having to re-verify/reclaim? Calling GMB directly?
Local Listings | | David-Kley0 -
How change image for business search results
Hello, I want to change my business listing search image, Which appear while Searching My business For related keywords. How should i change it?? have uploaded but Google still uses old image . is there any way to change it ??? Thank you in advance
Local Listings | | iepl5
falguni0 -
Google My Business for 2 Websites With the Same Location
Hi,
Local Listings | | alihus
My client has two separate websites with different business names but under one location and phone number. The websites are for two separate services that he offers.
My question is that if creating two Google+ for business pages for the two businesses bad for their SEO or local ranks?
And what about creating local listings for both?(This does not seem logical to me personally!!)
Thank you for the kind answers in advance.0 -
No Appearance in Local pack - group practice favored
Hi, One client has a website, Google My Business etc of his own. He ranks ok to good locally for search terms. However, his entry simply won't show up within the local n-pack (where it objectively should) and also does not appear in the map. It seems to me that instead a group practice with a colleague that has both their names in its name/title. (Moreover, it is in the same spot - they decided to go with different websites and entries of their own, though.) For some reason, this practice is also connected to the ranking website of our client. I suppose (NAP problems and previously used phone tracking numbers aside) that this group practice essentially blocks the real client-entry from appearing. Has anybody made such experiences? (My provisional ToDo would look like: Disconnect the group practice from the client's website; erase/merge it if possible; do proper LocalSEO otherwise.) Regards Nico
Local Listings | | netzkern_AG0 -
Google My Business page no longer appearing with search results
Title pretty much says it all--my company's local Google+ page has always appeared under our listed website information up until very recently. I'm also noticing the same with our competitors. Has anyone else just began to experience this? Our NAP, map, photos, and review are still displayed to the right of the results, but nothing is linked to the actual Google page itself. Am I missing something? Thanks!
Local Listings | | LMcLaughlin0 -
One Location - Multiple Businesses
We have a client that has multiple businesses running out of the same address with no difference in suite number - what's the best way to work with this considering NAP? The owner runs several different service businesses and a few online businesses (all legit) out of the same large office space and we want to try to figure out how to get him listed locally with the obvious NAP issue. We can get new phone numbers, but not sure of the best way to handle the duplicate address issue. Thoughs?
Local Listings | | DougHoltOnline0