Welcome to the Q&A Forum

You say at the top that corporate likes to use brand name + location on the website... but then it seems like you're talking about directory listings...

As long as you're consistent with the business name on all citations, you should be OK... if all of your citations say "Bubba's Widgets", but then on the website it says "Bubba's Widgets - Dallas", then you're still ok...

We work with tons of car dealers who have a long dealership name, but then when they mention the biz name throughout the site, they use a shorter "lingo" version of the name... never causes any problems.

If you're talking directories, that's an entirely different situation, and can get hairy... Even though Google now allows a single modifier to be added to the end of a biz name, you're still safer just using the actual business name in all your citations. Just explain to corporate that you cannot risk getting flagged, and that the directories are strict about what you can put in for a business name.

Glad I could help!

Check out the Whitespark Local Citation Finder, if you haven't already - it's pretty awesome...

Another few non-link related things that will be a big help for local search optimization:

Also, make sure you get their Google+ Local pages claimed and optimized. Work hard on a review strategy so they can start acquiring positive reviews.

If you're brave, you can try merging their G+ Local page with their G+ Business page - then you've got an integrated maps/social presence, which can lead to some cool things...

also, you can set up Google Authorship, so that the business owner's photo shows up next to their listings, which can help click-throughs.

check out the help page here: http://www.seomoz.org/help/open-site-explorer-faq

is your site new? that could be a factor...

OSE isn't going to show EVERY link - and keep in mind, if you have about 150 links showing in WMT, it's possible that those are from less than 50 unique domains... but even if not, if none of the sites linking to you are sites that get crawled by OSE, then your site won't show any link data.

(so if you're not linked to by one of the URLs it uses, which is only about 25% of the URLs in Google's index, you won't show link data)

also, I noticed that you're don't have a 301 in place for your non-www version of your URL - you need to get that in place, it's important to avoid them being seen as separate sites.

You've still got several options.  First and foremost, use Open Site Explorer to check out the links that your client's competitors have. You'll get lots of ideas, assuming that there are local competitors in the area. If not, check competitors in other cities, see what they're doing and do something similar locally.

Next - add some useful content to your client's site. Become an educator about that niche and post regular, unique content. Use that client's expertise to your advantage and share it with the local community. Build social connections to share that content.

Seek out local bloggers and build relationships with them. Once you're introduced and they know who you are, share some of that expertise with them - you could either get a guest post on their blog, have them guest post on yours, or have them write about your client's business.

Ask customers what they want to see on the site - not really crowd-sourcing, but just finding out what customers in that niche would find useful. Then do it.

And don't forget about citations - depending on the niche, local citations can sometimes be just as powerful as links (or even more powerful) when it comes to local ranking.

You need the H1 to be visible for it to "count" - sure, you've got text here, but it's being hidden by the CSS, which is replacing that text with your image file.

You'd be much better off with a visible H1 headline containing text AND with your logo image being embedded with a standard image embed tag that ALSO has alt text for that image.

yep - so if you have a service location in Dallas, TX, and the location-specific page on your site for that location has a URL of www.YourDomain.com/dallas-cleaning-services (using your cleaning example from earlier)

you'd then have the URL for that Places/+ Local listing use that specific URL

That post is from March, and there have been several major changes to the +Local system since then - most importantly, Places went away and became Google+ Local at the end of May...

But now I get you - you're a service business only - you're only using the address/phone number for verification purposes... people will never go to that location.

In that case, you DO have to hide your address - BUT, you still have to have a real physical address in that city. Without a legit address, you'll never have any hope of ranking.

The multiple locations part of the question only comes into play if you're talking multiple cities. In that case, you're fine - but if you're trying to show multiple locations in a single city (because you have multiple service vendors there), you're going to run into problems, unless you have unique phone numbers and addresses (and unique location-based landing pages on your site would help a lot here too)

If you're ONLY a service business and customers never come to you, you will have to hide the address - but also make sure you don't try to do any merge with a Google+ Business page - until they change the rules, you aren't allowed to do a merge with an SAB.

Your best resource is to use Open Site Explorer to research the backlink profiles of your competitors. Grab the URL of someone in your area that does what you do, put it into OSE, and download the list of URLs it spits out. THIS is your "list" of sites that you need to use to get links from.

Like I said, a link from about.com or wikihow.com aren't going to count for much, because anyone can get a link from those sites. Building links doesn't mean just going out and filling out forms to list your site on directories or going to public article sites and putting in articles that link to you. Because of that, you'll be hard-pressed to find a list of sites like those that you could use, because there aren't really any SEOs out there who would recommend that tactic.

Check out what your competitors are doing - that's your best source of relevant links for your particular business.

Why does Google do lots of things that don't make sense?

If you're wanting to show up in the Map Pack for local results in various cities, you HAVE to have a "real" physical address in that city. You can't hide the address and have any hope to rank.

Now I understand the phone issues. Your best bet would be to find some business phone service that lets you have unique local numbers for each city that all forward to a single phone. That way, you've got "real" local numbers but still a single point of contact for the business. If you want to verify each location by phone, you'll have to be sure that there's no automated answering system, or you're going to have to rely on postcard verification.

You're also going to need to have multiple location landing pages on your website. Each city will need its own page on the site, so that the unique address and phone number info will match the map listing.

Remember - you don't have to list yourself as a "service area business" - you can still have an address at a specific location, even when you send employees out to do the work. The address has to be in the listing if you want that listing to show up.

You've got to look at the quality of the site and how it's going to "count" if you get a link. Anyone can get a link by setting up an about.me profile... so while you've got a  link, it's not going to be as valuable as one that you earned with good content.

The source of the link matters, as does the context.

It's not just a numbers game anymore - you've got to get links with real value. Typically, if it's a website where any Tom, Dick, or Harry can get something out there with a link on it, it's not going to be a very valuable link.

You want links from relevant sites, and you want them to be from sites that you can't just go fill out a form or publish a post on.

Wow - that's a pretty all-encompassing question... I'm working on a blog post on exactly this subject...

But to really condense it all down - there are still a TON of bugs in the system, so don't attempt to merge your +Local listing with your +Business page unless you're absolutely sure that you don't have any data problems (so if you can push an update through the Places Dashboard and it shows up on your listing).

You'll need to request the merge by re-claiming your location through your +Business page, and it'll require postcard verification. After you've requested the postcard, don't change ANYTHING on the page or you can potentially break it and land your page in G+ Purgatory.

Once you get them merged, never use the Places Dashboard to change anything - do it all through your G+ page, or through community edits.

The release this weekend of the new +Biz management screen shows that hopefully they're moving in the right direction with a better admin experience. But for now, it's still pretty disjointed.

You CAN see some cool stuff on the right side of the SERPs once you've merged the two if you implement the rel=publisher tag... and we've seen G+ business posts get indexed VERY quickly.

BUT, you can't merge your +Biz with your +Local if you are a business with multiple locations - it's currently a 1-to-1 relationship - so if you want a single social feed for multiple locations, don't merge.

That was pretty high level... hope it helped...

We have physical addressees, the question is can we have multiple addressees for one business with a few adresses hidden?

- if you want to go for local rankings, you can't have hidden addresses. Places/+ Local listings won't show up unless they've got an actual physical address that isn't hidden.  Also, if it's a single business, but you're trying to make it show up in multiple locations/cities, you've got to have a "real" address for each Places/+ Local listing. If you use the same name, address, and phone number, you'll run into problems because it'll get tagged as a duplicate listing.

Google also offers a business phone account. Now would we need to set up the business account number since this is a business? or can we just use the free local number they provide? After all this is going to be a business...

- if you're using Google Voice, you're forwarding to a "real" number anyway - is there a reason you can't just use your real number? You'd be MUCH better off just using a "real" local number if you're wanting your listings to have a chance to rank.

No, 1 main number may only have 1 GV forwarded to it. There are workarounds with multiple forwarders though."

Any sources that can lead to help?

- again, would never suggest for any of my clients to do this. If you're setting up legitimate listings for legitimate businesses with actual locations, each location should have its own unique phone number. Just use those numbers.

Can you have more then one listing?

- You can't have a hidden address if you want to play in Google Places (now Google+ Local). Don't get a PO Box either, it's got to be a physical address if you want to be able to rank locally.

Can you use a free Google Voice number?

- You can - but we always suggest that our clients use a real phone number. Having a "real" local phone number in your listing is a huge relevancy signal - remember, Google knows that your GVoice number is really just forwarding to another number. Better to play it as safe as possible. It's also important that you have the same local phone number in all of your local citations AND that the same local phone number is on your website.

Can you forward the number to a main number?

- Again, you can - but that doesn't mean you should. Why would you not just use the actual business number? NAP consistency in your citations is a huge factor in ranking locally. If you have a main number, use the main number.

Can the listing be in an office building? Such as a rented space...

- as long as you have a unique address (with a suite number or some identifier to set your biz apart from others in the same main building), you're fine

For a non SAB listing with the address visible -

Can you use free Google voice numbers for each listing and  forward them to one main number?

- definitely not - again, Google knows where those numbers are being forwarded to. If you have multiple locations for a single business, each location should have a unique phone number. Use that location's number in the Places/+ Local listing, and make sure that the URL on the listing is pointing to a unique landing page for that location that has the same unique local phone number.

When you say "without blogs" are you saying you don't want to use other blogs as a resource for possible links, or you don't want to create a blog for your own website?

There's a big reason that so many SEOs will talk about blogs when they're discussing linkbuilding. If you can build up a relationship with a local blogger, it's fairly easy to get them to write a post about your business/product (depending on what industry you're in, obviously).

If you don't want to have a blog, you'll need to carefully examine the content on your website. Using a blog lets you write extremely specialized content, so it's easier to share that content and get links. It's all about being useful and unique. If you're not going to have a blog, you'll need to make the content on your website even more awesome, because if it's just like all the "other guys" that do what you do, there's really no reason to link to you over the other guys.

But, that being said - check out your competitors using OSE and see what they're doing. That's going to be your best gauge of what you should go after. Check out Garrett Finch's Link Prospector, it's pretty awesome at helping you come up with a good starting list of targets.

yep - already cleaned up a lot of those, working on getting rid of as many as we can... but not sure if those were enough to penalize him...

yep - already cleaned up a lot of those, working on getting rid of as many as we can... but not sure if those were enough to penalize him...

yep - everything is perfectly OK in GWT, nothing silly w/ robots either.

Filed a reconsideration yesterday, hoping that helps...

at this point, thinking it HAS to be some sort of penalty...

any help would be greatly appreciated...

picked up a new client, a used car dealer in New Jersey. Have a VERY spammy site before, tons of keyword stuffing and lots of dupe content. also had a horrible design. (www.coopscars.com)

We updated the design and the content, made it relevant and unique, fixed title tags, etc. Now he's not ranking for anything locally other than his business name. He's got a decent number of links, we've added relevant citations, his social signals are much stronger than they were...

We do lots of SEO for car dealers, and we know that he should be ranking SOMEWHERE at this point - not saying he should be page 1, but he should at least be somewhere in the top 5...

and yes, bing/yahoo are different, but he ranks over there... one page 1 for "used cars south river" - so why completely non-existant on Google?

just as a test, he put up a free website at www.coopscars.net just last week - and it's already ranking for several local terms.

I'm completely confused here - i'm not a noob, I know the tactics we've used on him work for other dealers. Thinking there's got to be something that's blocking him, especially since there aren't but maybe 15-20 car dealers to compete against locally and he still doesn't show up...

thought i'd come over here and see if anyone has any ideas...

well... sorta...

your best bet is to move the blog over so it's on the same domain name as the store... that way, as you build useful content, if/when that content gets links, they're coming to the same root domain.

and i wouldn't really suggest making the blog the home page of the main URL. You need more content there, but that's not the solution.

either way, you definitely need to work on the content on your site. Do your keyword research, figure out what you're targeting, and optimize the site for your terms. Doesn't really matter that the business name doesn't have search volume, you'll be targeting terms that DO have volume.

and if your blog is all on the same domain, you can send all your traffic to the same root domain - instead of sending traffic to your blog, that's not necessarily going to continue over to your site.

Ahmad -

I would definitely suggest working on your overall SEO strategy. A quick look at OSE shows that you only have 6 domains linking to you, and one of those is just a comment on a blog post that's not related to anything wedding. Also, other than the items on your site, your site has almost no content. You don't have the phrase "engraved wedding glasses" on your home page anywhere except the single text link... and on the page for "engraved wedding glasses" you have it in the title tag (good), at the end of your H1 (it'd be better if it were first), and a single time in the page text (which is only a few short sentences).

If your goal is to sell a ton of engraved wedding glasses, you need to create a lot more content on your site about engraved wedding glasses. If it's your biggest push, you should definitely optimize your home page for that term as well.

As far as links go, you'll need to work on getting more links, and if you're going to stick with the current strategy, those links should point to the "engraved wedding glasses" page instead of your home page.

I see you've got a blog - you might want to consider setting up your blog to be on your primary domain name - that way, any links you get will count towards your primary URL instead of a completely separate one. Also, you need to write some posts about "engraved wedding glasses" and why people need them (and why they should buy yours). Currently, your blog doesn't even have data in OSE, which leads me to guess that there aren't any quality inbound links there either. Linking from your blog to your site won't matter if the blog doesn't have any authority or relevance.

Pravin -

You definitely CAN... but that's not always the best idea. We do car dealer websites, and we feed our dealers' inventories out to hundreds of online classified sites. Many of our dealers also use eBay motors. Our system allows them to either write a single description that goes to every property, or separate descriptions for website, eBay, and classifieds.

You should be able to do the same thing with your site. You should always have a bit more detail and depth on your own website, but if your system doesn't allow for you to do so, you'll probably still be ok. The search engines are smart enough to realize that the different online stores and classified sites are all selling the same product (and won't assign a dupe content penalty).

Remember - you should always look at your website and create content/descriptions that your customers (and potential customers) will find the most useful and relevant. Write for people, not for search engines. Plus, you've got different audiences on the other sales platforms, so unique descriptions might help with conversions, based on the audience you're trying to reach. BUT, if you're not able to, you should be ok with using the same description across the board.

just to update everyone...

just like last time, we're "mysteriously" back in the rankings one week to the day after submitting a reconsideration request...

we know it wasn't a manual action, so maybe the reconsideration request pings someone that can fix the algorithmic mistake? not sure... but it's definitely interesting that both times, we're "back" one week after sending in the request...

Thanks Marie -

As far as the dupe content issue on your attached search, that was an issue with the way our devs built our site system - instead of serving up 404 pages, any URL that was hit that didn't exist lead back to the home page...

we just corrected that last week and now have proper 404s...

BUT - every site we host has this same issue, so if that was penalty-worthy, we'd have a lot more sites penalized...

same thing with the dupe content on other sites  - in the auto industry, every dealer feeds his inventory out to other websites, so you usually have anywhere from 100-300+ other websites with the same images and vehicle descriptions... not ideal, obviously, but that's now it works in the industry... but again, this happens to every dealer, so if that's what caused his penalty, it should have affected other dealers as well... so we're still stumped...

ok guys - hoping someone out there can help... (kinda long, but wanted to be sure all the details were out there)

Already had this happen once - even posted in here about it - http://www.seomoz.org/q/client-s-site-dropped-completely-for-all-keywords-but-not-brand-name-not-manual-penalty-help

Guy was a brand new client, all we did was tweak title tags and add a bit of content to his site since most was generic boilerplate text... started on our KW research and competitor research...

in just a week, from title tag and content tweaks alone, he went from ranking on page 4-5 to ranking on page 3-4... then as we sat down to really optimize his site... POOF - he was gone from the Googs...

He only showed up in "site:" searches and for exact matches of his business name - everything else was gone.

Posted in here and on WMT - had several people check it out, both local guys and people from here (thanks to John Doherty for trying!) - but no one could figure out any reason why it would have happened.

We submitted a reconsideration request, explaining that we knew we hadn't violated any quality guidelines, that he had less than 10 backlinks so it couldn't be bad linking, and that we had hardly touched the site.  They sent back a canned response a week later that said there was no manual penalty and that we should "check our content" - mysteriously, the site started to show back up in the SERPs that morning (we got the canned response in the afternoon)

There WAS an issue with NAP mismatch on some citations, but we fixed that, and that shouldn't have contributed to complete disappearance anyway.

SO - the site was back, and back at its page 3 or 4 position... we decided to leave it alone for a few days just to be sure we didn't do anything... and then just 6 days later, when we were sitting down to fully optimize the site - POOF - completely gone again.

We do SEO for a lot of different car dealers all over the country, and i know our strategies work. Looking at the competition in his market, he should easily be ranked page 2 or 3 with the very minimal tweaking we did...

AND, since we didn't change anything since he came back, it makes even less sense that he was visible for a week and then gone again.

So, mozzers... Anybody got any ideas? I'm really at a loss here - it makes zero sense that he's completely gone, except for his biz name... if nothing else, he should be ranking for "used cars canton"...

Definitely appreciate any help anyone can offer -

(rolling eyes)

I need a big "I heart google" shirt...

so we filed a reconsideration request the week that this happened, then got a reply that it wasn't a manual penalty and that we should look at the content.

so we filed another one, with a very in-depth explanation that we hadn't changed much content, we weren't violating any Google guidelines, and we hadn't done anything to trigger an algorithmic penalty...

since this started, we didn't do anything on his site - zero changes to content (wanted to wait until we heard back from the 2nd request) - we added a single link from a car dealer directory site (that you have to call to be listed in) the day we realized he had dropped from the SERPs, but nothing since then...

the ONLY thing we did was finally sort out his + Local listing - the address was displaying as 916 but is really 915 - but since he didn't know who registered his Places page, we had to re-verify... so there were 2 verified google accounts with access to the Places dashboard, which apparently causes issues and problems... we got that sorted out so that we're the only account with access... and we updated the address...

then we got a reply Monday from our 2nd reconsideration request that was word-for-word the same as the first one - no manual penalty, check your content, blah blah blah...

and as of Tuesday of this week, BAM - he's back in the SERPs... he's around page 3 or 4 for most of his targeted terms, so the little bit of initial optimization we did has him ranking higher than he was before he signed up with us...

so - don't know if the Places/+ Local address being off by a few numbers was the problem (probably not, cause that problem was there before we started) or if the second reconsideration request got someone to look and fix something... or if it was just a really random algorithmic hiccup...

Thanks Marcus -

as far as the Craigslist stuff - it's duplicated because he lists his inventory on Craigslist. We see this with all of our dealers who list inventory on CL, but it's never penalized anyone.

Also, inventory is fed out to hundreds of classified sites, so you'll see supe content there as well - but it's never hurt any of our dealers (and it's extremely common in the auto industry)

As far as the other websites that come up, they're other customers - 99% of our websites have the same menu buttons, as they're pretty standardized in the auto industry... and for those customers who don't do SEO, there's really generic basic text which leads to similar/duplicate content issues.  But again, it's never caused a penalty before...

can't do anything about dupe content on the vehicle side of things, but we'll definitely update the content on his custom pages... and obviously we'll start linkbuilding...

hopefully that will be enough to get him back in...

yeah - the system shows the home page whenever a sold vehicle page is requested (i know, not the right way to do it at all - fighting that battle with our dev team already)

but the same thing happens with all of our customers' sites (over 1000), and no one else is penalized for it...

We just picked up a new search client a few weeks ago. They've been a customer (we're an automotive dealer website provider) since October of 2011. Their content was very generic (came from the previous provider), so we did a quick once-over as soon as he signed up. Beefed up his page content, made it more unique and relevant... tweaked title tags... wrote meta descriptions (he had none).

In just over a week, he went from ranking on page 4 or 5 for his terms to ranking on page 2 or 3. My team was working on getting his social media set up, set up his blog, started competitor research...

And then this last weekend, something happened and he dropped completely from the rankings... He still shows up if you do a site: search, or if you search his exact business name, but for everything else, he's nowhere to be found.

His URL is www.ohioautowarehouse.com, business name is "Ohio Auto Warehouse"

We filed a reconsideration request on Monday, and just got a reply today that there was no manual penalty. They suggested we check our content, but we know we didn't do anything spammy or blackhat.

We hadn't even fully optimized his site yet - we were just finishing up his competitor research and were planning on a full site optimization next week... so we're at a complete loss as to what happened.

Also, he's not ranking for any of the vehicles in his inventory. Our vehicle pages always rank on page 1 or 2, depending on how big the city is... you can always search "year make model city" and see our customers' sites (whether they're doing SEO or not). This guy's cars aren't showing up... so we know something is going on...

Any help would be a lifesaver. We've been doing this for quite some time now, and we've never had a site get penalized. Since the reconsideration request didn't help, we're not sure what to do...

Mat, thanks again for the suggestion. I've used Linked groups for other purposes, so using it for guest blogging opportunities seems like a good idea.

Thanks for the suggestions, Mat. Have you had any success with doing this in LinkedIn groups?

Besides My Blog Guest, does anyone know of any good guest blogging communities?

The aforementioned, based on my few weeks of use, seems like a great community for guest blogging. Curious if any similar sites exist.

OK -

so one of our customers just called us and told us an interesting story:

A local SEO company called her yesterday to try to sell their services to her. She's in the process of starting SEO services with us, so she told them she wasn't interested. The sales guy told her that they were better (without even asking who she was currently using) and asked her for a term that she'd like to rank higher for.

She said she'd like to rank higher for "spray in bedliners northern ky" and he said "Gotcha, call you tomorrow"

He called back just now and told her to look at Google. She's now ranking number one for that term. He didn't have access to her site, so he wasn't able to change anything on her site.

He won't tell her what he did, and told her it was legitimate - but it seems to me that with only off-site tactics, it'd be nearly impossible to white-hat her site to number one overnight...

Any ideas what he's doing? First of all, we want to be able to tell her what he's doing, because she's curious. More importantly, we want to be sure he's not doing anything black-hat that's going to hurt our client's site.

Thanks for your help, Mozzers!