I definitely would not put these in the footer.  Marie Haynes has a very good article on footer links that I normally reference: https://www.mariehaynes.com/footer-links-and-penalties/

Like Roman said, links in the footer don't offer much value anyway and put the site at risk for looking low-quality.

Unfortunately like Miriam stated your business won't be eligible for a local listing anymore but since the office did exist there at some point, Google won't remove it and they will apply the "permanently closed" label to it. I'll check in with Google to see if there is anything else that can be done and let you know. This isn't the first time I've run into a scenario like this.

Hey Nathan,

Sorry this took so long. Our backlog is pretty long but Google got back to me yesterday to let me know they removed the listing all together

Hey Ben,

There is a secret to doing this that won't mess up your NAP consistency or ranking.  What you need to do is move the "real" phone number to the secondary phone line inside Google My Business and then use the tracking number in the main phone number slot.

Whatever you do, don't use the tracking numbers on any other 3rd party citations.

Depending on the scenario, it could help because it would cause Google to read your address before anything else and if you're a local business, that could help gain relevance.  This is one of those things that should be super easy to test so I'll add it to my bucket list of items to test out.

Nathan,

Weird - I have no idea where I would update my settings to allow PMs.  Maybe Miriam knows

There isn't anything wrong with creating multiple "city-pages" on your website targeting different city names.  Just be careful, because if there isn't enough unique content on them that is valuable to the user, they could be labeled as Doorway Pages, which are against Google's guidelines.  Phil Rozek has a great guide full of ideas for content for these pages.

What is not allowed is creating multiple listings for the same business in Google My Business. Google will remove the listings if they catch them and can possibly suspend the user's account as well.  Using addresses of relatives to create these listings would also be against Google's guidelines and would be defined as a fake listing.

I would only suggest creating multiple subpages for the location if they are targeting different keywords (products/services).  For example, if you have a location for an insurance agent then it might make sense to have 2 subpages, one targeting auto insurance and another targeting home insurance.  However, if the location just really offers one service, like a hotel, then it doesn't make sense.  I've seen chains do this and often Google only ever ranks the main location page and not the subpage because they are all targeting the exact same thing and the content is almost the same.

In case they ask, what was the address exactly?  Was it a storefront, an office space where you worked, or just a residential address you used to list as a service area business?

Perfect. I updated my preferences.  I'll let you know when I hear back from Google on this.

Ben,

If your goal is to replace every single phone number online with the tracking number, that's fine.  In my experience it is almost impossible to keep the old phone number from re-populating since it's published in offline sources (like the phone book).

What I was recommending would be good if you wanted to isolate/track JUST the calls from GMB.

Tom Waddington (one of the smartest people I know) pointed out, most of the spammy backlinks are pointing to a domain (reliant-plumbing.com) that is redirecting to your site.  Why don't you kill that domain (make it 404) and see if it fixes this?