Local SEO case with two physical locations
-
I hope someone can help me make some decisions. I did read a lot about Local SEO lately but I’m not sure what way to go with this client.
Client:
- Service provider with two physical locations (service is provided on the physical location).
- In the coming 12 month there will open 1-2 new physical locations in other cities.
- Has only one phone number. I will try to advise them to get a local phone number for both locations. But they prefer one (mobile) number to keep things simple.
- Clients are willing to travel for the service, since it’s a one day course they take. Current clients do come from a lot of different locations.
- The competition for around 5-6 big cities is pretty low since there aren’t a lot of service providers who deliver these courses.
Questions:
- Should I put both addresses in the footer? It’s a best practice with only one location. I think it’s handy for users with two locations as well but I’m worried about how Google sees this. Also this will get confusing when the client passes 3-4 locations.
- If the client sticks with one mobile phone number, should I make a Google + local page for both physical locations? The Google guidelines clearly state they prefer a local number as much as possible.
- If I add “Our service areas “ to the top navigation and make a unique place page for every city (to rank organic aswell) is it wise to link those local Google + pages to the unique page about this service? Normaly I would go for yes, but I want to add places with and without a physical location under the same navigation.
With just one location I would just focus on that city and add unique pages for the other pages. I’m getting a bit stuck between best practices since the client got opportunities with multiple strategies.
I hope you guys (and girls ) can help!
-
So glad that was helpful, Bob! Good luck!
-
Great! Glad you got it straightened out.
-
Ryan, my final thanks to you for taking the time to respond! I got what I need to make my decisions.
-
Thanks a lot Miriam! This definitly helps!
-
Hi Bob,
Okay, thanks for clearing that up. Let's look at your other questions now.
What’s your take on putting up two (or in the future 3 locations) in the footer?
There is no official rule about this. Personally, I have drawn the line at 8 locations in the footer and have never seen any issue from that many, so you should be okay with 3.
Besides that, how would you combine for example 3 pages about the physical locations with unique pages for a other 10 city’s that are in the service area of your business
Your description of the business model does not seem to me to be a service area business (like a plumber). You are a brick and mortar business - you do not travel to customers in a service area and the fact that customers come to you from other towns is not really enough reason to optimize for these town terms. If, however, you have a legitimate connection to these other towns, like you teach classes in them, host events in them, sponsor events in them or other connections along these lines, then there may be opportunities for content publication. If there are not connections, then you should focus on your 3 physical location cities and, perhaps, their hyperlocal neighborhoods. More on this:
http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide
http://moz.com/blog/mastering-serving-the-user-as-centroid
Last but not least, would you say a part time entrepreneur with a physical location that’s only open for 3-4 days a week could claim a local google + page?
Google's only guideline about this is:
In order to qualify for a local Google+ page, a business must make in-person contact with customers during its stated hours.
There is no guideline stating that you have to be open 7 days a week, so if you have set hours of business during which someone walking up to your door is going to find a staffed business to receive them, you should be good to go. Just be sure you are accurately listing your hours of operation when you create the Google+ Local pages for your 3 locations.
Hope this helps!
-
It are day courses and we are the only one that does rents the place.
-
If we want we could place a huge billboard outside
-
It does have our company name on the door
-
We are there around 3 days a week fulltime.
I would definitely say we have the authority to represent this building since it's just a normal office building we rent and we turned it into a classroom, a place to lunch and a small place to do some administration.
So yes, it are classes. But we aren't part of a larger facility and it's our permanent location.
-
-
Hey Bob!
I'll look forward to replying in detail to each of your good questions, but first want to ask for clarification on one really important point. You write, "classes are only given with enough signups."
I should have caught this earlier in the thread. Are you saying these are not businesses, but classes, like an instructor teaching yoga classes a few times a week inside of a larger facility like a gym? If so, this is very important to know, as Google does not authorize creating Google+ Local pages in this scenario:
An ongoing service, class, or meeting at a location that you don't own or have the authority to represent. Please coordinate with your host to have your information displayed on the page for their business within their "Introduction" field. (from https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en)
Please, let me know if the above describes the business model, because the scenario is quite different if it does.
-
Hello Miriam,
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I learned a lot from your previous posts on Moz.
What’s your take on putting up two (or in the future 3 locations) in the footer?
I know it’s a best practice with one location but I’m not sure what will happen when we put two addresses in the footer (especially when we can only claim one local Google + page). We really want to communicate those locations to our clients since it’s really important information for anyone who takes our classes.
Besides that, how would you combine for example 3 pages about the physical locations with unique pages for a other 10 city’s that are in the service area of your business.
Normally I would add those service area pages to the main navigation, but would it make sense to use the same format for service area’s as for places with a physical location? With format I mean the combination of information and unique content based on the interests of those local searchers.
Last but not least, would you say a part time entrepreneur with a physical location that’s only open for 3-4 days a week could claim a local google + page?
I ask this because I want to know the borderline. Since our second location really feels like.. uhmm a legit physical location. We are there every week, are the only business that does rent this place (we pay for the whole month), serve our customers there and we communicate the address very frequently (that’s really needed since there are a few competitors located in the same area). So the only reason why it shouldn’t be a local Google + page is because we are not open the full 5 days a week (besides the phone number which can easily be fixed and I already did recommend to the client since the branding/trust benefits are already enough to switch).
It feels like the Google guidelines are written specific for classic retail companies. In our (niche) industry there are maybe one or two competitors who are open 5 days a week since classes are only given with enough signups.
I hope you can share your view on this case!
-
Good feedback from Ryan on this.
As he's mentioned, Google+ Local pages relate to staffed physical locations rather than service cities, so your client can have 1 Google+ Local page per staffed physical location he operates. Do not create Google+ Local pages for any service city where the client doesn't have a physical location.
He should definitely have a unique phone number for each location.
-
Currently your client is at a disadvantage due to not having physical, staffed, testing centers and thus doesn't qualify for Google Local in the same way as competitors that do. Even if your competitors have one receptionist staffing the building during non-testing hours but is open to receive inquiries and appointments that puts them ahead of your client. If the outlay isn't there for an additional phone number then I would compete on service and service area, not trying to outstrip the competition with fictitious locations. If you're successful at that then perhaps growing to the point of having fully leased centers makes sense. Cheers!
-
Hmm I find it hard to make a decision on this point. I fear that treating this as a brand isn’t optimal for the local SEO and will put the company in a disadvantage over competitors which are “based” in that city. Although the guideline does state “staffed during normal business hours”.
Normally I would say that’s the way to go but in this industry it’s very common to only be staffed when there are courses. And 50% staffed feels like the same as an entrepreneur who has a part time job as well (let’s say a coffee corner which is only open in the weekends). In that case I would say having a local page is just fine.
Decisions, decisions…
What is your view on point 1 and 3?
-
Hmm... This is kind of borderline with the physical location requirements outlined by Google, "If your business rents a temporary, "virtual" office at a different address from your primary business, do not create a page for that location unless it is staffed during your normal business hours." Even though it's staffed for testing it's not staffed when you'd expect people to contact you or 'visit'. That only happens with your online interactions. It'd probably be most accurate to do the business as a brand, with addresses for the testing centers. They likely don't need separate phone numbers as they're not staffed locations. Anyone visiting outside of testing hours would find an empty building.
-
Thanks for your response Ryan. The client rents this place full time but it isn't always staffed. There are 2-3 courses every week at the location (these take the whole day).
-
I'd definitely invest the minimum $$ required to get a phone number per location. These could all be setup to forward to the one mobile number--still keeping things simple that way while also allowing for each location to have a number.
Some questions though, are these physical locations client owned/leased and operated? Like is a permanent establishment with regular office hours and such? Or is this a testing service that is renting space just in time to deliver the course?
Cheers!
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
-
What's your proudest accomplishment in regards to SEO?
After many years in the industry, you come to realize a few things. One of of the biggest pain points for us at web daytona was being able to give clients a quick keyword ranking cost estimation. After multiple trial and error and relying on API data from one of the most reliable SEO softwares in our industry, we were able to develop an SEO tool that allows us to quickly and accurately get the estimated cost for a given keyword (s) using multiple variables. Most agencies can relate to that story. It’s something my colleagues and I at Web Daytona have been through before. Finding the cost and amount of time needed to rank for a keyword is a time consuming process. That’s why it’s a common practice to sell SEO packages of 5-10 keywords for about $1000-2000 / month. The problem is not all keywords are equally valuable, and most clients know this. We constantly get questions from clients asking: “how much to rank for this specific keyword?” It’s difficult to answer that question with a pricing model that treats the cost of ranking every keyword equally. So is the answer to spend a lot more time doing tedious in-depth keyword research? If we did we could give our clients more precise estimates. But being that a decent proposal can take as long as 2-5 hours to make, and agency life isn’t exactly full of free time, that wouldn’t be ideal. That’s when we asked a question. What if we could automate the research needed to find the cost of ranking keywords? We looked around for a tool that did, but we couldn’t find it. Then we decided to make it ourselves. It wasn’t going to be easy. But after running an SEO agency for over a decade, we knew we had the expertise to create a tool that wouldn’t just be fast and reliable, it would also be precise. Fast forward to today and we’re proud to announce that The Keyword Cost Estimator is finally done. Now we’re releasing it to the public so other agencies and businesses can use it too. You can see it for yourself here. Keyword-Rank-Cost-Ectimator-Tool-by-Web-Daytona-Agency.png
Local Website Optimization | | WebDaytona0 -
Checking subdomains/ site structure of a website for International SEO
Dear Moz community, I am looking into two websites for a friend and we want to understand the following: What is the site structure as per the sub domains? e.g currently it is .com/en/ or .com/ru/ or .com/zh/ Using the crawl report, each page has a en or other language version. I take it this means that we have to create copy, meta titles and descriptions for each of the languages even if the page is the same but in a different language? To avoid duplication of content would you suggest canonical tags to be put in place? To check hreflang mark up, I couldn't find anything in the code which makes me thing a script is automatically translating this? This is the first time I have started to look at international SEO and want to understand what to look for in an audit of exisiting sites. Thank you,
Local Website Optimization | | TAT1000 -
Weird: Local Landing Page Not Showing In "City + Brand" Search Query
Hi Mozzers, I've noticed something strange that I can't quite wrap my head around. I'm hoping it's an easy fix and I'm just overlooking something. Backstory: I'm managing all things digital for a local flooring retailer that has 6 showrooms in the region. I've done basic local SEO - local landing pages with proper markup, GMB set up and verification, Moz Local scores are in the 80% range for each location and improving steadily, etc. However, one of my locations is way behind all of the others in both organic searches and the map. Recently, I did a search for "city + brand" for this particular location in an incognito window and the page came up on the 4th page. When I perform the same search for any of the other locations, the respective landing page come up 1st or 2nd along with the homepage. I even searched using the title tag as well as a few more specific searches and still nothing on the first page. This is weird, right? Has anyone experienced this before? Search Console came back perfect, so no penalties and it's definitely being indexed. For reference, the page I am referring to is http://www.nextdayfloors.net/locations/columbia/ and the location query I am using is "Columbia, MD" Any help is much appreciated! Thanks! Tim
Local Website Optimization | | AinsleyAgency0 -
Listing multiple schema Things (e.g. Organization, LocalBusiness, Telephone, Locations, Place, etc)
Greetings All, My law office features many pages with what are essentially directory listings (names, addresses, and phone numbers of places, agencies, organizations that clients might find helpful). Am I correct in assuming that using schema for each of these listings might cause confusion for search engines? In other words, are search engines looking for schema on pages or sites to tell them only about the company running that page or site, or do search engines appreciate schema markup to tell them about all the pieces of content on the pages or that site?
Local Website Optimization | | micromano0 -
Ranking for similar local keywords
Hello All, It's my first day using a Moz Pro account and it all seems really good so far! Our business has 26 stores throughout the UK so I created a store locator page that has a page for each store. Inside here, I've created unique content for the same products for each store and it's really working wonders. The problem here though is one of my locations (Rotherham) contains two stores - so I feel that they'll both be fighting for the position all of the time. Would a canonical tag be suitable for this? I do need both pages to appear in Google's map results but as for organic rankings of keywords - it shouldn't matter too much if just one page appears. Thanks! Liam
Local Website Optimization | | LiamMcArthur0 -
Localized Search Results
I'll try to setup this question: I go to Google.com and set the search tools to a particular city that I am not in (say I live in Nashville but set the search tools for Rockville MD). I do a search for a specific term without a location modifier such as "chrysler town and country" and I don't see the website I'm looking for in the first 100 results. Then I keep the search tools the same, but change the specific search to "chrysler town and country rockville md" and the website I'm looking for is now the #1 result. What would affect the difference? I would have expected the website to have a similar ranking in both situations.
Local Website Optimization | | perkfriday0 -
General SEO Help
Hi Everyone, **Website: **www.helppestcontrol.com I've been working on a wordpress based website for the past few months now. This is a new website that we designed for an existing company that decided to rebrand. The previous website had little to no traffic.. so we've basically started for scratch. I've followed SEO guides and have completed many of the basics. We started using MOZ just under a month ago and have made a ton of changes based upon those suggestions. With all of this being said, we have seen some slight improvements in traffic, but nothing truly noticeable. In fact, 90% of our traffic is coming from a Facebook PPC campaign. I think the main struggle is that the company has such a wide operating based (a ton of very small towns and cities). We created an optimize page for each one (same content, just switched out the keywords).. in hopes of driving traffic. Is this the correct approach? Or should be optimize for general terms such as "Bed Bug Removal" versus "Bed Bug Removal Barrie"? I was hoping that the community could take a look at the website (maybe run it through a few tests) and give me some more suggestions. I would really appreciate any feedback. Thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | Timrhendry0 -
How do I fix duplicate content issues if the pages are really just localized versions?
Does this still hurt our SEO? Should we place different countries on their own respective domains (.co.uk, etc)?
Local Website Optimization | | fdmgroup0