Local SEO Best Practices for 2,000+ 'location' service area business
-
Hi Moz Community!
We operate a business where we have a network of 2,000+ technicians around the country who help people repair their mobile phones. These techs do the fixing at the customer's location, making them service area businesses. Even after scouring all of the go-to places on local SEO, I'm struggling to find best practices for this type of situation - the fact that our techs are operating in service areas presents a number of challenges. The biggest one, it seems, is that inevitably service areas are going to overlap. When I talked to a Google rep on this he said this "might" cause our locations to get de-listed and we'd just have to test and find out. Other challenges include the fact that we cannot bulk upload the service areas of our techs, and we cannot bulk verify - meaning there is a ton of work to do at our scale.
Any suggestions on where to go to find resources on this specific topic, or an example of someone doing this well we can model?
Thanks everyone!
-
Great idea, thanks again David.
-
Not entirely sure that's an accurate response. There are plenty of SABs who have not claimed a Google My Business Page and yet are still in the Maps index -- and ranking QUITE well. Here is just one example.
I would try submitting a few locations to each aggregator and see which one has the primary feed in these categories. My guess would be Infogroup or Acxiom in this particular case.
-
Thanks David! At your recommendation I talked to Infogroup, Acxiom and Neustar. The information I got from Infogroup (which they said came directly from Google) was that a listing with them, or any aggregator, wouldn't get us a listing on Google Maps - SABs needed to be directly on GMB to be listed.
Given our budget will only allow for one aggregator for now, is there one of the three aggregators that would make sense to do first?
Thanks again.
-
It's going to be a lot of manual work at this point unless/until Google allows for SABs to be included in bulk upload. I'm not so sure I'd even try to tackle GMB yet, but instead focus on aggregator submissions and primary vertically-relevant directories like Thumbtack, AngiesList, Yelp, YP. Those should honestly get you pretty far in terms of rankings (although obviously you won't get the benefit of being able to choose a featured photo, etc.).
-
I do have experience of this, but not on that scale. I would certainly be proceeding with caution and like the Google rep, I think that there could be an element of risk, mainly down to the fact that there will be so few working examples of this to compare it with.
Is there any way you could roll out test groups to see how well they work? If you start with a smaller evaluation group, there is less at stake if something goes awry.
-Andy
-
Thanks Andy, that makes sense. The Google rep I spoke with seemed to think we'd be ok to 'test out' what happened if two service areas overlapped, and that if they got de-listed it would not affect our other locations. However, given the fact he couldn't tell me for sure what would happen seems to mean there would be some risk to that. Any experience with this?
-
**...this "might" cause our locations to get de-listed **
As I started reading, that was my exact thought.
Overlaps are going to happen from time to time with some listings, but you would have to try and keep it as clean as humanly possible, and where you think an overlap might happen, you could consider removing it to avoid issues. Losing one listing by your own hand, is better than losing the lot to Google.
I haven't had to deal with something quite as large as this in the past, but there are similarities with other clients that spring to mind.
Someone else might pop along with additional ideas or examples for you.
-Andy
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
-
Home Service Ads Interview 2017 - Plumber
I am not sure how I feel about home service ads so far. They are supposed to make it easier for home service businesses to connect with clients but the difficulty level seems to be off the charts. I have my first client scheduled for an interview tomorrow. We have 2 previous interview schedules and something went wrong on their end. I have a Plumbing client about to do the video interview? Does anyone have any experience to help my client with the interview? What questions will they ask? What does he need to be prepared for to pass the interview? From a manager/consultant standpoint, does the client need an Adwords manager if he is running home service ads?
Local SEO | | PSLab0 -
Rank not improving despite best practises
Hi there, I have a photobooth hire company in and have been working on getting our site onto the top page for keywords relating to our service and location for almost a year now, but am really struggling to see rank improvement despite my best efforts. After a major penguin update back in mid 2014 I noticed that due to some bad practises from a company that we previously hired, our rank began to plummet. So in the aftermath of that, I found myself having to clean up and disavow a lot of spammy and broken links. This was back towards August last year and despite trying to "clean the slate" and continue to build better backlinks (mostly through reputable directories) I'm still getting little to know rank increases. Is there a possibility that the site is still being black listed by Google in some way and thus all my best practises for the last 6 months haven't really helped at all? Thanks
Local SEO | | 16seo0 -
Local Seo Start Up?
Hi I've recently started a Web design and Local SEO business in the UK and would love some advice on best practices and resources to do best by my clients. The last thing I want to do is get their site banned or penalised by Google. In the past I have used article marketing to get 100s of backlinks but I understand it isnt that simple anymore.I might add that I always did SEO for my own sites, never offered it as a service to others. So, I'm less reluctant to take chances. From looking at the competition in the local market I won't have to get too many backlinks to outrank most other companies. Just need to get the right good quality links. I am fairly experienced with onsite SEO. ANy advice or relevant resources would be greatly appreciated.
Local SEO | | malkeenan0 -
Google Business Details on the SERP
Good morning, We've recently launched Pea Soup Digital, a new UK-based digital agency. However, when you search 'pea soup digital' in Google, the business info doesn't appear on the right-hand-side of the SERP. But when you search 'peasoup digital' it appears? Our Google+ and business account have the name registered as separate words - Pea Soup Digital - so why is Google doing this? It's not the end of the world, but slightly annoying. Is there anything we can do? There's also an issue of our privacy policy page ranking above the home page. I know it's early days (1 week), so Google might be sorting itself out, but I guess we could add this page to the robots.txt file? Cheers, Lewis
Local SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
How worthwhile is schema markup for a local business?
One of our clients was told that they need to implement schema on their website, and now they're very concerned that the lack of schema might be holding them back. We could certainly implement it for them, but I'm doubtful how much of a difference it will make. The client is a plastic surgery practice, so their content is fairly straightforward (services, locations, photo galleries, etc.). We're planning to add schema markup to their name, address and phone info in their website footer, but we're not sure if it's worthwhile doing anything beyond that. (I'm assuming schema markup for customer ratings would best be handled by a dedicated review management system like RealPatientRatings.com). What would you recommend for schema implementation?
Local SEO | | ClearPivot0 -
Whitespark or Moz Local
Hello all, We can't use Moz Local as we're in the UK. Tempted to use Whitespark, but not quite sure what the differences are between the two. Also, can a website design / digital marketing agency be considered to be a local business - in Googles eyes? Thanks!
Local SEO | | wseabrook
William1 -
SEO for a web based company with no physical presence.
Hi I only have experience working in Local SEO and now Im facing the challenge of 1 clients which is based in Australia and wants to sell in Australia (protein bars) but the company doesn't have a physical presence. What do you think would be a good strategy? Do you think I still need to create NAP citations (if so that would probably benefit the SEO for one city and leave the others with less SEO influence?). Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Nico
Local SEO | | niclaus780 -
I'm starting an internet marketing company along with a newspaper company
I'm starting a project for a newspaper company where I just started working as the in-house SEO. I'll have ownership along with the newspaper for this new internet marketing company and could use some advice.Should I build our new site on the newspapers domain with good pr already or start a fresh site from square one. I'm trying to weigh out the pro's and cons and I'm still undecided.This news company has been around since the 50's and the trust is there. But just one sticky situation with an uneducated client could hurt the reputation of the newspaper.Your thoughts please!
Local SEO | | onetwotree0