Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What is the naming format for locations is it brand name--Location name?
-
I am trying to arrive at an agreeable format for consistency across the ecosystem for our multiple locations. Is there a character limit for the location name?
-
Hi Lina,
What does the street signage for the business say? That's typically the answer.
But definitely do go through Google's guidelines with a fine-toothed comb, as they offer specific advice for multi-department and multi-practitioner companies (a common scenario in medical practices). Please, read the guidelines and let the community know if questions remain after that.
-
This is very helpful. I work in the health industry and we have multiple locations with different names so my question is should my brand name be included in all locations naming, for example, my brand name is Nature health and one of my locations is called Martha Medical plaza should I list it as Martha Medical Plaza or Nature Health Martha Medical Plaza?
-
Hi There!
I believe you're asking about how to name your multi-location business across its local business listings. The answer is, you should name it exactly as it appears in the real world, on your store signage, print marketing and the way the telephone is answered there.
So, if you own McDonald's, you're going to name the business just "McDonald's" on all of its listings for all of its locations. You wouldn't have "McDonald's San Diego", "McDonald's San Jose", "McDonald's Santa Clara", etc.
So, unless a city name is part of the real-world business name, don't included it in the name field of your citations. In fact, to do so would be considered a violation of Google's guidelines, which you can read here: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en-GB
*The one exception to this is Facebook. If you're going to create a Facebook listing for each of your locations, you DO need to add some kind of modifier to it, as Facebook won't let you create multiple listings for the same name. So, in this one case, you likely would add the city name to the business name field, but on all of your other listings, follow Google's guidelines and don't include any extraneous keywords in the business name.
Hope this helps, but if I've not clearly understood your question, please feel free to provide further details!
-
Multi-location domain structure
When using the centralized approach, an ideal location URL would look something like this: https://www.yourbrand.com/new-york-city-ny/325-manhattan-midtown-east.
From a local search standpoint, it’s important to create metro and location pages so that your brand appears in SERPs for non-branded and geo-modified phrases. Those pages (e.g., Google Maps, Apple Maps) can also be associated with your local business listings by using the appropriate location URLs. It’s important to ensure that those pages also have the appropriate content, metadata and structured data in place to appear on organic local search queries.
Notice the location page is set up in a subdirectory of the root domain (not a subdomain) so that the root domain can assist this page with internal linking strategies to drive more ranking authority
If your brand is selling products in a physical store, creating pages under the primary location page to show things such as updated inventory by store location can help give the consumer more useful information as they decide where to make a purchase.
In conclusion
Local landing page subdirectories can be very beneficial for the overall health of your local SEO strategy, particularly if your brand has a multitude of brick-and-mortar locations. As Google continues to evaluate and leverage different ranking factors, centralizing your efforts with a focus on one primary domain will benefit lower-level location pages, giving the physical business locations a sound SEO foundation that is set up to allow for more prominent organic rankings.As search engines continue to refine their ranking algorithms, the battle to drive greater traffic from the SERPs becomes more critical as time goes on. Having a solid, centralized foundation that focuses on developing individual location pages can give your brand the edge in helping capture the attention of brand-agnostic consumers in an attempt to turn them into your customers.
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
-
Adding Schema to multi-location Wordpress Website using Schema Pro
All, we're building a new version of our existing website using Wordpress and have both Yoast SEO Premium and Schema Pro installed. Our site has 70, a medical practice, has 70 different locations. Each one of our locations has a page tile like the following: "Los Angeles | ABC Dental". The first part of the site title is the town we're located in followed by our site name. Using Schema Pro, we're not sure about what to place into the "Name" field. You can see the direction from Schema Pro for local businesses here, https://wpschema.com/docs/add-schema-markup-for-a-local-business-page/ By default Schema Pro has the name field set to Site Title. However, using this on all 70 or our landing pages wouldn't provide the local aspect we want. It would just say ABC Dental. We changed this to use a new custom field where we could enter a more descriptive name. Using our page title example of "Los Angeles | ABC Dental", would we simply enter this into the name field of Schema Pro? If not, would we format this another way such as "ABC Dental Los Angeles" We could use some help in a strategy for Schema markup for multi-location businesses, in particular, the name field. All other information such as address, phone number, etc seems rather straight forward. Thank you for the assistance
Local Listings | | morciuoli0 -
Trading As Business Name
Some businesses are set us with a company name but trade under another name (or numerous other names). What's the best way to handle this when it comes to Knowledge Graph & Schema.org and what about NAP consistency? Am assuming the only way to handle this is to do something like this: Blue Widgets Ltd trading as Cars UK Or is there a better way?
Local Listings | | GrouchyKids0 -
Radius Size around GMB location for google local search
We are a digital marketing agency Our clients are (virtually all) retail automotive dealerships. We compete in various market places coast to coast (USA). Since Google puts retail automotive dealerships under Local SEO umbrella, is it known ( published ) how large is the radius around my client's Google My Business rooftop's address? How wide is their search 'reach' according to Google? Asked another way, in a triangular, three SEO geo area, with one city being at the epicenter of the population dispersion, and my client, versus my client's competitors being different distances from where the majority of the population emanates from, all other SERP factors being equal (assumption) between the two competitors, how far is each clients REACH from a Local Search standpoint. Is this known? Published by Google. ONE example: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/BMW+of+South+Albany,+U.S.+9W,+Glenmont,+NY/42.7662693,-73.8138088/@42.6727121,-73.7993527,12z/data=!4m9!4m8!1m5!1m1!1s0x89dde0fe8829c405:0xd915fb9b3b60bf33!2m2!1d-73.7973301!2d42.589211!1m0!3e0
Local Listings | | GaryT_SEO1 -
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 -
Local SEO: Special charakters in brand name?
Hey guys, we run a local gym in Germany located in Nuremberg called: "STUDIO N°1 - natürlich fit". Our domain is: www.studio-no1.de We are currently working on a new website since our current Website isn't really SEO optimized. Until then I would like to start optimizing some off-page attributes. As far as I know one of the main points in Local SEO is that your firm is registered at important directories. In our case we are already registred in most of the important german directories. The problem is that our oficicial company name has a special charakter included. This means that in some cases we have "N°1" and in some others "No1! Our Google Business name for example has "N°1", facbook not (no special charakter allowed). Germanys most important site for listings: Gelbeseiten, doesn't even allow special charakters in brand names.... On which name should I focus to get all the business listings to have identical NAP informations? Does it even matter? Schould I focus on "STUDIO No1 - natürlich fit" or "STUDIO N°1 - natürlich fit"? I hope you could understand my problem. Big Thanks Jonas
Local Listings | | Jo_Da0 -
No Location option in Incognito Search Settings
I was checking on a client ranking and went to Incognito in Chrome for the search. I went to search settings to set the location and thought I had done something wrong. I closed and went back to search settings and still no location setting. See attached. Interestingly, when I went to my signed in Chrome and set the location and then went to incognito and went to search settings, then location showed up for me. This also begs a question about why Google has this where you must be signed in to set a location in Incognito mode. Thanks for any input you have, Robert G1lS9EK.png cRRlULo.png
Local Listings | | RobertFisher0 -
How to deal with wrong location in Google SERP
Hi, If I understand correctly, Google provides search results based on the location of the user. That's fine, because most of my clients are local. But if I look at my own search results, Google thinks I'm in a totally different town. Most likely based on my IP address. Of course I can solve that for myself, but the same goes for my potential clients. Is there a way to deal with this, from an seo perspective? For instance find out where most of the the IP providers are located and target that location?
Local Listings | | Houdoe1 -
Citation building for multiple locations
Hey everyone, I think i've got a good handle on citations, but had a question regarding multiple locations. I'm going to be doing citation building for a local lawyer, and he's got 4 locations. I'd like to build citations for each of his locations, but I was wondering if the business name needs to change? Ie. If I am building citations for Town 2 and Town 3, should the business name be listed as "Company Name Town 1" for the first location, and "Company Name Town 2" for the second? Or is it fine to use the company name throughout all citations, and just change the location/phone number to the location based info? I'm just worried about Google seeing differing info, but the same company name, and possibly penalizing me for it. Thanks in advance!
Local Listings | | RCDesign740