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Hello Bill,

Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. The NAP is really the key, more so than the website. For the business to be able to treat each specialty as distinct, it would need to become 4 distinct companies, each with a unique legal business name, legit physical street address and local area code phone number. This scenario would enable the owner to have a unique Google Place Page for each of the businesses, instead of just one Place Page for all of his specialties (as well as having unique listings in all of the other local business indexes). As things currently are, he is permitted to have only the one listing per index.

This is the case for most businesses like that of your client and by building out his content on his website, you are doing pretty much what you can do for his organic campaign (plus linkbuilding, social media, video etc., of course).

The tough thing about clients like this one, is that they typically not only offer a menu of very varied services, but they also tend to serve in a number of surrounding cities. So an SEO/Local SEO campaign typically looks something like this:

1. Get the client listed in the major local indexes.

2. Campaign for reviews in a variety of sources.

3. Get citations for his Google Place Page

4. Build out a body of service-related content on the website.

5. Build out a body of geographic content on his website.

6. Build links every which way

7. Engage in additional forms of marketing that will be most effective at reaching the client's audience (email, video, social media, blogging, etc.)

Now, in entering into all of this work, the client must be informed up front that his chances of ranking above the fold of Google's results are mostly going to revolve around his services in his city of location, in that he may achieve grey pinned local results for these 'service + geo' terms. He may not be able to expect top rankings for all 4 services. In any service city where he isn't physically located, the client should be made to understand that he is most likely to have to rely solely on the organic rankings below the local results, as Google will be viewing his competitors with physical locations in those cities as most relevant.

Clients like these are more complicated than, for example, a dentist with an office in Denver. But, that being said, there are substantial benefits to engaging in the work. Even lower rankings for terms can lead to trickles of monthly traffic and if these convert to phone calls and bookings, it has all been worth it.

Good luck!

Hi Matt,

I spoke with Local Search Godfather, Mike Blumenthal, about your issue. He remarked that in cases like yours, whomever claimed a listing last controls it, and that if too many listings for this client's franchise locations have already been claimed, there's a strong chance your request for a bulk upload will be denied. He recommends that the business owner reach some kind of amicable agreement with the different store owners/managers. Also, Matt, you are aware that Google+ Local still isn't set up to allow multi-location dashboard management yet, right? So, yes, you could have multiple listings in the Places dashboard, but you mustn't attempt to merge them at this point, because the system doesn't support this yet.

Hope this helps!

Greetings Tony,

Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum. While I have no hard data to share with you (haven't ever seen a conclusive study published on this) I think your guiding light should be deciphering the relative importance of your 2 target audiences. What percentage of the business occurs nationally and what percentage occurs locally? This figure might, then, dictate how much effort you should be putting into national vs. local efforts on and off the site.

Local SEO can certainly be done in addition to national SEO. It sounds to me, however, that you have heavily slanted all pages towards geographic terms. If local business is only a small portion of the rankings, I would be inclined to simply put the complete NAP (name, address, phone number) in the footer site wide, put it on the contact page and optimize perhaps 1-2 other pages on the site with local information...perhaps the about page (visit us at our offices). Then, get the business profiled in the various local indexes.

There isn't a template for doing this. Every business is slightly different, and the competitiveness of your vertical and nature of your products/services may create nuances that simply can't be answered with a broad 'do this'. For example, a company might offer plumbing services locally, but sell plumbing fixtures nationally. Different pages would need to be devoted to the different areas of work - the planning and organization is very important, so that those pages suited to neighbors have been optimized locally, while those that have a national focus are not being presented narrowly, as if they were only meant for neighbors.

Tracking and testing how people are using the site, once you've attempted to gear certain pages towards certain audiences, will be very important. This is what will tell you whether you are getting it 'right' or not.

Hope this helps!

Miriam

Hi Donovan,

I received your PM and see you asked this question here as well. If you know a listing was created and claimed and it isn't showing up, I would suspect a penalty, suspension or deletion of the listing. Are you in control of the account? Can you see a listing in the Places dashboard? If so, what is the status of it? Active, pending, suspended, needs action? An issue like this can be tough to diagnose without actually seeing the listing/knowing what to look for.

Kyle's advice is correct regarding doing a business name+ city search in maps.google.com. That's typically a good way to discover if a listing exists, but if you're working on this client's Local SEO, you need access to their Google account so you can see what's going on in the dash.

Dear Russel,

Thank you for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum. I should start by mentioning that there are some differences in Local depending on the country in which you are operating. You may need to look for extra tips specific to your country (I'm in North America) but here are the essential steps a local business needs to take.

1. It is critical before embarking on a local campaign that you understand that the heart of local in NAP (name, address, phone number). Nearly everything is dependent upon the consistency with which you publicize your legal business name, physical address and local area code phone number. You only qualify as a local business if you have these three things (NAP). Whether you are on your website or off your website listing yourself in local business directories, you must consistently list your NAP in all places without variation.

2. Create an excellent, strong website with terrific content that has been written from a geographic perspective. In other words, if you are a dentist, you will be writing about the city and state you are in as well as the services you offer. You want a great homepage, great service pages, great city landing pages if you have more than one physical location and a strong contact page. Make sure that your title tags, meta, alt tags are locally-optimized and make sure that your complete NAP is in the header, footer or side navigation on every single page of your website. Make sure that your complete NAP is the first thing you put on your Contact Page.

3. Once you have your great locally-optimized website up and running, you will begin the process of getting your business profiled in the various local business indexes. In most countries, the most important of these is Google Places. It is absolutely vital that you read Google's Places Quality Guidelines and not violate any of them. Here is the link:

http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528

You are allowed one listing per physical location, unless you run something like a medical clinic, in which case each doctor may have his own listing in addition to one listing for the whole office. Do not attempt to keyword stuff your Place Page or misrepresent your physical location. Pay special attention to each of the rules in the guidelines. Failure to comply 100% with the guidelines can lead to penalization or banning of your account. Each of the different local directories has their own set of rules that you must acquaint yourself with, and there are many, many places you can list your business. In the USA, many people choose to create their Google Place Page and then pay either Localeze.com or Universal Business Listings to automatically submit their business to a large number of local directories. Or, you can choose not to pay these companies and do it manually yourself. Here is an excellent post from Myles Anderson at Search Engine Land regarding the top 50 citation sources for the US and UK:

http://searchengineland.com/top-50-citation-sources-for-uk-us-local-businesses-104938

4. Beyond inclusion in the major local business indexes mentioned in step 3, there may be other niche directories specific to your industry in which inclusion would be valuable. For example, if your business restores vintage cars, there might be some vintage car directories where you would want to be included. These niche resources you will need to hunt for yourself, depending on your industry.

5. In addition to getting profiled in directories, local business owners must also tackle the subject of user reviews. You will want to be listed at review sites and you will want to actively manage your reviews. Yelp is very major in the USA. TripAdvisor is international for travel-related sites. Essentially, you want to keep track of when and where people are reviewing you and then, if possible, thank them for their praise or attempt to help them feel better if they were dissatisfied with your service. Here is my oft-cited article on which review sites allow you which powers of response:

http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=502

It is essential that you develop a healthy approach to dealing with negative reviews. You must learn to respond gracefully and wisely so that you don't escalate a situation from bad to worse. There are numerous good articles out there on the web about responding well to negative reviews. Apart from responding to voluntary reviews, you will want to put a process in place for encouraging reviews from your happy customers. But remember - do not write fake reviews for your own business, do not pay any marketer to write fake reviews for your business and do not pay any marketer to post reviews that have been gathered from real customers. Reviews must ALWAYS be posted by the user directly - never by you or anyone else.

6. Once you've got all this going, what you do next depends on the type and competitiveness of your industry. In some small towns with low population and low competition, you may never need to do any more than what's already been covered, but for any business that has to compete a little harder, your next options might included beginning a blog on your site to improve your content and keep it fresh, getting involved in Social Media, video marketing, email marketing, linkbuilding or other forms of marketing. Don't forget, local businesses often need to make plans for offline marketing as well. What you do depends on how hard you need to work to get to the top. Lots of choices! I hope this response will get you started in local with the right understanding and a pro-active mindset.

• Miriam

Hi Bob,

To be honest, I'm unfamiliar with the designation 'room number', though 'suite number' is highly common. To me, a room number sounds like something in a hotel or school. Is a room the same thing as a suite? I'm curious.

At any rate, yes, if you are in a multi-business building, it is vital that your business is differentiated from the others with a number or letter of some kind. If your profiles and citations lack this, then the danger is that your NAP signal is being partially shared by other businesses. This could lead to duplicates, merging, penalties, etc., that could sap the strength of your listing.

Your job is going to be to clean up as many possible citations as you can so that your business is correctly listed at the address (including the number or letter) at which mail gets delivered to your business.

I highly suggest doing this:

1. Yourself, manually.

2. Hiring an expert to do this for you manually.

I would not recommend using any type of automation in this situation as tools may fail to turn up all instances of listings with this NAP discrepancy. Create a spreadsheet, fill it with links to your citations, work to correct them and check them off the list when you see that the change has gone into place on the various citations. Lots of work, but worth it to secure and clarify your NAP signal.

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for coming to Q&A with your good question. I'm the Local SEO associate here in the forum. I have a few resources and thoughts to share with you and hope they will be helpful.

Read this post and discussion at Andrew Shotland's blog. It's old, but still worth reading:

http://www.localseoguide.com/geotargeting-location-by-ip-address-seo-death/

Here is a 2010 Webmaster World discussion on a similar topic:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4201741.htm

Unfortunately, I have never implemented this type of IP-based serving and if I had to do so, I'd really, really study the matter to make sure that what I did wouldn't kill my SEO/Local SEO or possibly be viewed as cloaking. It's rather daunting. I'd like to ask one of our traditional SEOs to step in to see if they have a more experienced opinion on this subject.

Now, on another note, I think you are struggling with organization here. Remember, Google views your city of location as the city to which you are most relevant. If you are in San Francisco, then 'San Francisco' is your most critical geographic keyword. Because of this, you are going to want to make the main thrust of the local optimization of your website focus on San Francisco. So, if your homepage, contact page and main content pages are geared towards San Francisco, then this is correct.

Then, if you need to drill down to talk about neighborhoods like the Sunset District, the Castro or Russian Hill, you can build out content about these, but it will always be of secondary importance to your main geo term, 'San Francisco'. You can certainly mention these neighborhoods on your homepage and elsewhere on the site if it will be helpful to users, but your main tags for your main pages and your contact page and footer should stick to San Francisco in most cases. The same rule of thumb applies if you are creating city landing pages, too.

Hope this helps, and sit tight here. I will ask one of our other SEOs to chime in regarding serving different content to different users.

Miriam

Bob, yes, it matters if your suite number is missing. You need to find out why Google dropped it from the postcard. I recommend you try to call the Google verification issues phone number.

http://support.google.com/places/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1399021&page=ts.cs

Hi Web Design Barrie,

This is an interesting scenario. Most typically, when a business opens a second office that essentially offers the same services in a neighboring city, the new content/new location will simply be added to the existent site. A new landing page for the new city will be developed, the new NAP will be added to the footer, and new content will be added over time featuring work in the new city. A new Google Place page and other new local business index listings will be created for the new physical location. So long as you aren't dealing with a ton of branches of the business, this process works just fine.

You are going a different route, building a completely different website for the new branch. So, yes, because you are offering the same services at second location, you are thinking correctly about the need to rewrite all content so it's not a duplicate of site #1.

If your businesses are local, you shouldn't be using an 800 number. If you have to, put it in an image. Local search hangs, in part, on your local area code phone numbers and these should be totally distinct for the 2 different offices.

Don't worry about the code. Millions of sites share the same code.

The images are also not a big worry...but if the two offices are so identical that you can use identical imagery for them, it again makes me wonder about the decision to build a separate site. What about shots of your unique building, staff and other features at location #2.

Finally, the big thing you're going to want to attend to is that all Local SEO is handled expertly as you roll out the new business. What you're trying to avoid is Google becoming confused about the 2 businesses and merging their data. *See again my point about the phone numbers. Make sure good local SEO hooks are part of both sites, consider using hCard or Schema and take care to be error free when you create your Google Place Page and other listings.

It should be fine if these things go well. Out of my own curiosity as a Local SEO...I would really like to know about the process then led to you deciding to build a second site. I can think of certain instances in which this would be the best choice, but more often than not, going with a single site makes sense. If you have the time, I'd like to know how you decided to go this other route.

Hope my response is helpful!

Miriam

Hi Cvissi,

I strongly recommend that you do not attempt to claim any client's listings into your own account and that you do not claim multiple, unrelated businesses into a single account. Each client should be in control of his listing, even if you are the Local SEO on the project. My advice is to claim each listing individually, preferably into the client's domain name email. This will prevent major future headaches for you and your clients.

Hi Bob,

How nice of you to help your friend out. Let me give you some ideas here:

1. Debi should add at least 5 photos to her Place Page...preferably 10.

2. Debi should add at least 2 videos to her Place Page (not one, but two, as adding one video may actually make her listing less complete than more so due a mysterious glitch in the system)

3. I'm not liking the description. Think of the Places Description as a sales pitch. What can Debi say about her business that would inspire me to phone her? Has she won awards? Will she help me achieve a specific goal? Is she the most skilled in the area? Does she have certain credentials others lack? Figure out the USP and make that the description. A little more on this...until a year or two ago, the Google Places Quality Guidelines specifically forbid the repetition of any word in the business title or categories, or any geographic term, within the description field. Google removed this from the guidelines a few updates ago, but I have remained suspicious that it may still be factor. Because of this, I don't use my local SEO clients' business names or category phrases in their descriptions. I don't know what Debi's USP is, but I would write a hypothetical description like this:

Voted 'Best In Town' by Desert Living Magazine. Empathetic, skilled coaching. Achieve your goals at affordable rates.

Something like that. Something persuasive.

4. Debi needs to earn reviews. Help her put a plan in place to encourage them.

5. Debi needs to earn citations. Get her listed in all the typical free local business indexes. Consider using a paid citation finding tool like Whitespark's at: <cite>www.whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder/</cite>

6. Remember that the optimization of the Place Page is only a small part of her overall local rankings and visibility. The strength of the website is the most important factor, especially since the Venice update. Nearly all local rankings are now blended in nature (meaning organic seo + local seo is the winning combo). I glanced at Debi's site and think it needs a review by a good local SEO as it it lacking in some basic best Local SEO practices. In your shoes, I would give Debi the above info and then advise her that she should invest in working with a quality Local SEO in improving her website. This will be her smartest move.

Hope these suggestions help, Bob!

Miriam

Hi Echo1,

The process of changing an address is the same for both a brick-and-mortar business and an SAB.

1. Change the address on the website

2. Go to the Google Places Dashboard and edit the address there. Follow these guidelines:

Verified business owner of a page, and is your business moving locations? Here's what you do.

"Edit your address in Google Places for Business or in the Google+ page admin area, whichever you are using to manage the page. This will either make a new page or edit the address on the existing page. It may take a week or two after editing your address before you see an update. At this point, you may need to go through a verification process again. Don't worry -- this is normal.

If you see a page that's still got the old address, click on Report a problem and mark that location as closed. Provide the link to the new address or information about the new location if possible. You can find more instructions on closing a location here: Remove a listing or mark a place as closed or moved - Places for business Help (http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=154102)"3. Locate all of your citations on other sources and edit the address there to reflect the change.4. Monitor your Google+Local/Place Page to be sure the listing never reverts to the old address.And that should do it. Not surprised if there is confusion surrounding this issue. Google has changed their policy twice in the past 6 months. The guidelines I've quote above represent their most current policy. Hope this helps!

Hi JustDucky,

I've been working in Local for 5+ years and yours is a question I have seen asked frequently, but for which I have never seen an official study performed, the question being: does being local make you less national. All of the informal discussions I've ever had on this topic indicated a big no on this. Local is better thought of as an addition to your traditional, national SEO, rather than a detractor from it. So, my guess is that your ranking drop is unrelated to you claiming local listings (most of which take more than a couple of days to go into effect and ripple out onto the wider web anyway).

I do know that there have been some big changes reported recently...potentially an algo shakeup of some kind that has nothing to do with Local. I'm going to ask one of our expert traditional SEOs to pop by this thread to help you investigate possibilities for your loss of traffic. I would be very surprised if the local listings had anything to do with this. Hang in there!

Miriam

Hi Gael,
The Google Places Quality Guidelines (see: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528) are very clear for situations like this one:

You also can't create a Places listing for 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 their Place Page within their Description field.

So, unfortunately, the dance teacher is not eligible for creating their own Place Page for these places where they teach classes. They would need to coordinate with the studio owner to be mentioned on the studio's Place Page/website.

Hi Adam,

I second Tim's suggestion of thoroughly reading David Mihm's 2011 Local Search Ranking Factors report. Some things have changed in the past year since the report was published, but the basic information remains the same.

I like to approach Local SEO from a mindset of healthy, thorough promotion rather than manipulation. This will stand you in good stead for the long haul. If you are a beginner at this, I can offer some rule-of-thumb tips to get you started off on the right foot.

1. In order to qualify for inclusion in Google Places, you need a business name, a unique local area code phone number (not a toll free or redirected number) and a dedicated street address (not a shared address, not a P.O. box, not a virtual address. These three elements are commonly referred to as your NAP (name, address, phone number).

2. The number one rule in Local is not to violate any part of the Google Places Quality Guidelines. See:

http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528

Learn the guidelines by heart and revisit them often to check for Google's not infrequent updates.

3. Be absolutely consistent in your publication of your NAP. Make sure it is identical on your website, your Place Page, other local business listings and any reference to you anywhere on the web. Inconsistent NAP can lead to duplicate and merged Google Place Pages, which are a giant pain in the neck. At the outset of any Local SEO campaign search for existent listings and make sure the data is accurate. If it isn't, try to get it fixed.

4. Your website is your top Local Search ranking factor. It needs to be beautifully structured and properly optimized for Local Search. Put your major effort into creating the best site you can.

5. Get listed in the major local indexes including Google Places.

6. Once you've gotten your business listed, work on citation building and review encouragement. These things help you to rank, too.

7. Depending on the competitiveness of your industry and locale, you may also need to engage in some linkbuilding to help with your rankings.

8. What I have found to be one of the major areas of time/money investment for most local businesses is in quality, creative copywriting. Because of the power of your website, its words are of great value. Initial and ongoing copywriting will need to be part of most Local SEO strategies.

Your probably already guessed this, Adam, but basically, Local SEO involves a lot of creativity and hard work. There are no tricks or shortcuts. Just genuine effort. With the right mindset, you can outrank your competitors and serve your customers well.

Hope this helps!

Hi BobGW,

Provided you are getting them from quality sources, then, no, I would not be concerned about having more citations that competitors. However, if you have far surpassed your competitors in the number of citations you've earned and it isn't achieving a defined goal (like rankings for certain target keywords), then I would recommend that you devote effort to other pieces of the puzzle. So, for example, if it's obvious that a business is lacking reviews, turning your attention there would likely be a wiser use of time/budget than continuing to build citations if you've already outdistanced the competition in that area.

*Nota Bene: Though you didn't ask about this, Bob, I will add - don't get a ton more reviews than any of your competitors. While you want to have more reviews than your direct competitors, you don't want to earn a TON more as this can look spammy.

Hi Donnie,

Unfortunately, yes, competitors can report your business as closed. Here is a legacy thread on this from Mike Blumenthal's copy of the old Google Places Help Forum which he saved when they shut it down:

http://places.blumenthals.com/threadb6b9.html

And here was a highly visible article from the New York Times on this problem:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/technology/closed-in-error-on-google-places-merchants-seek-fixes.html?_r=2&hp

Mike Blumenthal was so irked by this that he actually closed down Google's own listings in Places with a couple of clicks: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2011/09/14/google-places-now-permanently-closed-with-2-clicks-its-getting-worse-not-better/

Now, these issues were all from last year, prior to the Google Places changeover to Google+ Local, so let's take a look at some very recent reports of this issue:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/business$20reported$20as$20closed/business/1MOJVhteWoQ/Y8zW4MIH86cJ

And pay close attention to Linda Buquet's advice on this thread:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/business$20reported$20as$20closed/business/sZVZ65w4ESE/U_i3NqX6DXYJ

And here is a thread that actually got a response from a Google employee:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/business$20reported$20as$20closed/business/-zkCEShnwj0/Qk1SXUTClEsJ

Basically, Donnie, if your business gets labeled with the closed label, you are going to have to try to appeal to Google either through the forum or their troubleshooter. There is a long, long history of issues with this, as you can see. Sometimes, this issue stems from competitive sabotage, and other times, the root of the problem can actually be duplicate listings or other problems.

I really hope the links I've provided will bring you up-to-date on this troublesome topic and point you in the right direction for resolution!

Hi Josh,

Thanks for describing this scenario so thoroughly. My take on this may not come as good news to the business owner, but he deserves to have a proper understanding of the situation.

What the business owner did in setting up Google Place Pages for non-physical locations was a violation of the Google Places Quality Guidelines (https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en) three years ago and remains a violation now. The current guidelines really put this in black and white:

Do not create a listing or place your pin marker at a location where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations.

Because of the clarity of Google's stance on this, the only legit way for the business owner to maintain listings in his various service regions would be for him to get genuine physical locations there with non-redirecting, distinct phone numbers. If he can see that having these listings, under whatever circumstances, has benefited his business, then perhaps he would be open to renting modest office space from a company like Activspace.com which would give him a real walk-in door and phone hookup. Thus the violation would be removed.

The addresses would, of course, then be new and the listings would need to be edited (rather than suspended). The one downside of this is that it's highly likely that he would lose some or all of his Google-based reviews attached to these businesses, because of the new address, but that would be a small loss compared to the total loss of his listings. This change of address (and possible phone number if the ones currently being used are re-directing) must then be followed up with a citation cleanup campaign in which you would find as many references as possible to the old NAP data and update it with the new data. With these legit offices in place you could then proceed as normal with the Local SEO campaign and begin building new citations for the various offices.

It may be that the business owner would only be able to afford renting space for one or two of his other locations, in which case, anything that falls outside of this should be removed via Google's troubleshooter.

The only possible alternative to this would be for him to appoint regional managers amongst his staff and change the business model to turn a handful of his employees into receptionists who are authorized to answer direct phones, book appointments and manage business out of their home offices. This can be an iffy solution, however, because Google can see that these businesses are run out of homes and the forecast is less clear as to Google's stance on this. Google knows that businesses are home-based, and for a single location, using a home address (hidden) should be fine. But there is some grey area as to whether service area businesses operating out of home addresses call up red flags at the Googleplex. I have seen some outrageous things in which people are posting on Craigslist offering to pay total strangers for the use of their home addresses to appear local. Google's ultimate position on this is not totally understood - thus my designation of this solution as iffy.

If the business owner cannot get legitimate spaces for any of his service areas, then, yes, you would need to remove the other Place Pages.

What if you do nothing? This question deserves to be asked and a considered answer provided to the business owner. As he has seen, Google doesn't do a great job of upholding their own rules much of the time. Businesses can get away with all kinds of violations for indefinite periods of time. The problem with this approach is that the business owner never knows when the axe will fall, and if his main, legit listing is associated with a bunch of spam listings, he could possibly see his whole account penalized. If he is then heavily penalized or even banned, he will go from having a lucrative presence in Google+ Local to having little or none and this is likely to prove disastrous for any local business. He really won't have a leg to stand on in pleading with Google to reconsider his business after rushing around trying to clean up his record - an awful scenario! So, while you could potentially decide to let the spam listings ride, understanding the risk being run should figure largely in such a decision.

As I see it, your job as the new Local SEO on the project is to educate the client as to the realities of the situation, the opportunities in front of him and the possible outcomes of different routes he might take. Personally, I won't work with a company that persists in wanting to violate Google's guidelines once I've explained the guidelines to them, but some Local SEOs will work in grey areas. Happily, you get to make your own rules about the work you do with clients. I think the main thing is to understand and share all possible information with the client so that everyone is operating with awareness.

Hope this detailed response is helpful both to you and your client!

Hi Bob,

First, I would like to say that I applaud your business. MS is such a tough condition and it's wonderful that you are helping people with this!

Are the 4 terms you've listed based on keyword research, or are they the product of brainstorming? I definitely recommend that step number one for you be using a keyword research tool. Google's free Adwords keyword tool is a good place to start. However, it's important to understand that neither this tool nor any other will provide you with accurate estimates of geographic terms. When doing keyword research for Local SEO, you want to search for product, service and topic terms, without any geographic words appended to them. Then, you can take your list of found keyword phrases and add your geo terms back in.

What I feel is missing from your list of 4 terms is you. People looking for 'MS' or 'Multiple Sclerosis' may have many intents...they may be doing research for symptoms, looking for a doctor or, simply, a definition. What you are offering people is a service for people with MS. This clarification is missing from your keyword phrases, and while you may eventually target these broader terms by narrowing the competition down to Boise, your core pages like your homepage, contact page and about me page are going to need to be optimized for who you are and what you offer.

Let's look up 'health coach'. And let's compare it to 'personal trainer' or 'lifestyle coach'...these are terms I've heard lots of time, though you'll have to let me know if they are accurate descriptors of your business. The Google KW tool says:

Health Coach 40,500

Personal Trainer 673,000

Lifestyle Coach 2,400

So, 'health coach' looks like a good strong term, and while not as searched-for as 'personal trainer', if it is more accurate for your profession, it looks like a good term to go on.

Now, let's see if there is anything more utterly specific to being a 'ms health coach' or 'multiple sclerosis health coach':

ms health coach 91

multiple sclerosis health coach 0

So, there is a small amount of traffic for the first term, and you can certainly put it on the list because it does describe exactly what you do. Let's look at the list to see if any other terms look good:

living with ms 8,100

ms diet 6,600

ms support groups 1,900

Perhaps these are things you can help people with? These may not be the perfect words for you, but if they were a good match, you could start to form title tags like:

Living With MS To Your Fullest, With Boise MS Coach Bob Weikel

or

MS Support Groups in Boise led by MS Coach Bob Weikel

Brainstorming other ideas, I'm coming up with further terms:

multiple sclerosis coach 46

multiple sclerosis therapy 18,100

ms coach 4,400

multiple sclerosis help 4,400

multiple sclerosis program 1,300

Could be some gems for you in there. In fact,  MS Coach looks like it could be a very clear term for you, but I'm less certain when I look at results for that search. One is from the MSAA's life coaching program, but others are about sports coaches and women coaches. So that needs to be investigated further.

At any rate, these are just some ideas to get you started. I would recommend that you make a list of every possible term you can think of associated with your profession, plug it into a keyword tool, and see what you get. And remember, do your research without geo terms. Add them later. These terms can include city names, county names, regional names, state names, neighborhood names and zip codes. Here is a nice, free tool I came across recently that helps you determine top geo terms for you region:

http://www.localmarketingsource.com/local-keyword-research-tool/

It's going to be very important that you handle the Local SEO of your website correctly, so that you are making it really clear where you are, who you are and what you do.

Hope my thoughts are helpful to you, and good luck in the wonderful work you are doing!

Hi Leo,

Tom has linked to a very important piece from Local Visibility System regarding directories that allow you to hide your address. The author, Phil Rozek, actually wrote a more recent follow-up piece to this, so do check this out here:

http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2013/04/22/private-local-citations-where-can-you-list-your-business-but-hide-your-address/

So, start with the article Tom linked to and then follow up with the one I've linked to, as it provides further citations sources that enable one to hide the address.

If the client does want to explore options other than his home as his location, then P.O. Boxes and Virtual offices must be avoided. Instead, he would need to rent a real office - perhaps from a company like Activspace.com, which gives you a real front door and phone hookup. But, honestly, countless businesses are run out of the home and Google gets this. Fortunately, many of the top directories support the hide-address feature, and while there are some directories your client won't be able to be listed in, putting him at something of a disadvantage in comparison to competitors who don't need to hide their address, there are still many place he can be listed.

Do be prepared, of course, to follow up this change of address with a great big citation cleanup campaign so that you can bring all mentions of his old address into compliance with his new location.

Good question! Glad you asked it!

Hi KS_

Good question. So, essentially, what you are doing would be termed 'Local SEO' rather than just SEO. Local is its own discipline. I will give you a brief outline here of what a Local SEO campaign looks like, in a step by step format. These are general guidelines.

1. Do keyword research without geographic modifiers (no city or regional names). Looks like you are already doing this.

2. Take your list of discovered core keywords and add your geo terms to it. This might include city names, county names, regional nicknames, zipcodes, neighborhood names and other terms.

3. You might also like to use Google Insights to surface other terms by setting your region to Canada and plugging in terms like 'home health care + calgary'. Add found terms to your list. Here is a link to this tool:

http://www.google.com/insights/search/

4. Due to your keyword research, you now have guidance as to the focus of your content development and optimization of the website at hand.

5. Your keyword findings will be reflected in the titles, tags, headers, internal links and copy of the website.

6. Understand that all of Local Search hangs on 'NAP' (name, address, phone number). The client must have a unique business name, unique street address (not a shared address, not a P.O. Box or virtual office) and a unique local telephone number in his city of location. He must also have in-person transactions with his clients in order to qualify for Local inclusion. NAP must be published consistently across the website and across the web.

7. Make sure that the complete NAP is on the contact page of the website, and I also recommend putting it in the footer, sitewide. I recommend using Schema to mark up the NAP. Here is a link to a schema creator for local businesses: http://schema-creator.org/ Be sure to choose the 'organization' tab.

8. Write unique, non-duplicate content for every page of the site. Make it excellent.

9. Once you have the website in great shape, you will be going off-site to build listings and citations. You will likely be starting with Google Places/+. Be sure to follow all the rules: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528

You will then be building other listings and working on citation building for the client. The most reputable citation discovery tool currently available is Whitespark's: http://www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/2-using-the-local-citation-finder

10. The client will also need to win reviews from his clients on a variety of sites. You need to be aware of the different rules of each review site so that you don't accidentally violate them.

11. Depending on the competitiveness of the client's industry and region, you may then need to engage in other forms of marketing such as linkbuilding, social media, video marketing, offline marketing, etc.

Again, these are just the bare bones guidelines and there are nuances involved in pretty much every step . I highly recommend that, if Local SEO is new to you, you read David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors Report 2012:

http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml

This is the industry's most important annual survey and includes the feedback of the top Local SEOs in the world. It is a great place to get acquainted with the core issues and challenges surrounding the discipline and is a great read.

I hope this gets you off to a good start!

Hi Anthony,

I want to link to some resources for you to investigate here.

Back in early 2012, I had a conversation with Mike Blumenthal which prompted him to write a brief piece on the then-common advice of building links to the old Google Place Pages. He accurately summarizes why this practice was a poor idea:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/24/google-places-myth-linking-to-your-places-page/

However, a lot has changed in the past year. A lot! Here is a more recent conversation on this topic at Linda Buquet's Local Search Forum, presenting differing opinions on linkbuilding in the new +Local environment:

http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/local-search/202-any-benefit-link-building-google-local-pages.html

Your question has inspired me to ask Mike B for an update on his 2012 piece. I don't handle linkbuilding in-house at my company, and I think what you've asked about is really important. I'm going to suggest to Mike that he do a follow up (if he's not too busy) and let's both stay tuned to see what he says. Also, stay tuned for the new iteration of David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors 2013, which is coming soon (and eagerly awaited!) Hope what I've linked to helps, and I do plan to shoot Mike an email to see if he might have time sometime soon to do an update on his earlier much-cited piece.

Hi GreenHornet,

Yes, the use of call tracking numbers in Local has long been a problem, because it can ruin the clarity of your all important NAP (name, address, phone number) signals. Here is one of  David Mihm's early posts on this topic, from 2009:

http://searchengineland.com/be-wary-of-call-tracking-numbers-in-local-search-26895

A couple of years later, and also on Search Engine Land, Chris Silver Smith wrote this post regarding call tracking 'solutions' that could be categorized as cloaking:

http://searchengineland.com/for-local-seo-lack-of-call-tracking-solution-spawns-cloaking-70198

I'll excerpt from Chris' post here, regarding options:

" Avoid call tracking numbers for your website and for any online directories or online yellow pages which are being actively indexed by Google and other local search engines. Using them in banner ads, in PPC ads, and on landing pages which are set up to not be indexed is fine, so they can be used for paid search advertising with zero local SEO impact.

If you have used call tracking numbers in the past or are using them now, discontinue it. You’ll need to periodically audit local information sites to see if your listing info with the tracking number continues to appear on websites online, and carefully update/remove the tracking numbers from them.

If you think you’ve been penalized for using call tracking numbers from a provider who added cloaking software to your site, remove the offending code and submit a reinclusion request to Google explaining what happened.

As part of your standard phone script at your business, consider asking callers directly where they found your listing. Have employees who answer the phone write down responses for you to see later. This remains an excellent and free way of polling to see how effective different channels are performing.

If you are in some sort of unavoidable situation where you must get some phone tracking information, implement the tracking numbers for a brief period of time without using any sort of cloaking code. I would suggest only using tracking numbers for two or three months, maximum, and that should be sufficient to get a rough idea of how effective a particular channel is performing — then, return to using your regular phone number and audit to fix any places where the tracking number continues to appear."

Also in 2011, Greg Sterling covered Telmetrics' introduction of a call tracking solution that doesn't use call tracking numbers, but to be honest, I never saw this idea covered by anyone else and can't say how heavily it was adopted or how well it works:

http://searchengineland.com/telmetrics-introduces-call-tracking-without-tracking-numbers-93450

In 2012, the only thing I've really come across is part of an interview at SEOBook of Jake Puhl and Adam Zilko:

http://www.seobook.com/interview-local-marketing-experts-jake-puhl-adam-zilko

Here's the relevant text:

"Call Tracking Recommendations (Or Not?)

Back to Topics

Eric: Yeah, we do see that a lot, especially with people who are trying to do campaigns with different phone number tracking, where they put different phone numbers in yellow and all these different places. Do you have anything? Do you use a specific type of call tracking application?

Adam: No, we completely recommend against it, absolutely 100% against it. Any time you have any variations with your map, your name, your phone number, like Jake said, you're going to weigh down your citations, weigh down your listing, weigh down your trust with Google and that's been a big thing. We've seen, even without any other sort of off page efforts, just by cleaning up your citations across the web, we've seen a significant increase in rankings, many, many times because of that.

Every now and again, you come across, say, a seven pack with dentists, you see one that maybe doesn't have a website, in a very competitive market. Typically, it's because his citations are so dialed in, he's been in one place for 30 years and the only data out there is exactly the same, so there's a lot of trust with the map. The same kind of rules apply. We completely recommend that you never use a tracking number, and if you have to use one on your site, you put it in the form of an image file, and we'll even go as far as to make the all tag on it their actual phone number. There's just no room for any confusion at all."

I've not seen this discussed any more recently than this, and the consensus of opinion pretty much remains the same as it has for the past 3 years since this subject was first spotlighted. To wit: Call tracking numbers are bad for local campaigns, and if you absolutely have to use them, you need to make an effort to hide them, as discussed in some of the above articles.

I suggest that you read through everything I've linked to above so that you can make an informed decision about this. Hope these resources help!

Hi Jake,

Oh, my, that sounds like a really bad situation! Yes, you've got to get rid of these. If these listings are duplicates of an accurate, honest listing with a genuine physical street address, then the best thing to do is to use the 'report a problem link' on each page. Do not claim these listings! But do be logged into the client's authoritative account while you report the problems. Click the 'place is a duplicate' box and describe as best you can. In the description field, include the URL of the single, accurate listing. State that you are the business owner and are attempting to clean up spam created by a previous SEO company. Be as detailed as you can.

Now, once you've accomplished this, you need to engage in a citation cleanup campaign, searching the web for all possible references to these bogus addresses associated with the business name or phone number. These also need to be cleaned up to try to clean up Google's data cluster about the business.

Nota Bene: Before I touched this project, I would let the incoming client know that, while I will make my best effort, this level of spam is pretty egregious and I cannot guarantee results here because of this. The business may already be penalized. Bad citations may continue to auto-populate for years to come. It's really a mess. So, I would do my best, but 40 spam listings in 5 cities is a scarily tall order for anyone to clean up.

Hang in there, Jake. I'm not surprised you're already exhausted!

Hi Mark,

This is a good question about a common phenomenon. So, basically, you are performing 2 different types of searches.

When you search for 'real estate agent', by itself with no geo modifier, you are performing what I would call an 'organic search', and leaving any geo personalization up to Google. I'm not in the Netherlands, but this appears to me to work the same in the US.  So, the local results you are seeing for a broad organic search like that are coming from Google's identification of your location, rather than a signal of intent you would be sending to the search engine by including a city name.

But, when you add  your local city name to your query, you are clearly telling the search engine that you are interested in local results. This is actually a different type of search than the first example I've given.

Also, you can perform a third type of local search. For example, let's say you live in Los Angeles, but are looking for a real estate agent in San Francisco. You may, again, get slightly different results when you search for 'real estate agent san francisco' because you're not actually located in San Francisco.

So, each type of search is different, and Google is going to display somewhat different results for each query type.

I have a fabulous article for you to read more about this phenomenon. Here is Nyagoslav Zhekov's piece on this from August. Think you will really like it:

http://www.ngsmarketing.com/the-two-types-of-local-search-and-how-local-seo-should-reflect-them/

Read that through, as I'm sure it will give you some very good information.

So, basically, what a question like this boils down to is...if I rank at the top in one type of search, and lower down in a different type of search, what factors are at play that are affecting this? This will require an analysis of your own marketing efforts as well as an analysis of your competition. From this, you may be able to discover that in one set of results, on-page SEO strengths are enabling some businesses to outrank others, where as in another type of search, off-page factors such as proximity to centroid, linkbuilding, citations or reviews are the reason for some businesses outranking others.

Hope this helps!

Hi SilkStream,

I want to be sure I'm correctly understanding what you've described. Does this check out?

• You've got a unique website page for every city in the UK

• You only have physical locations in some of these cities

• You have published the complete NAP (name, address, phone) of the business on these city landing pages, reflecting your physical locations

• You are now wondering if it would be okay to add the NAP of physical locations to the pages for neighboring cities where you have no physical location.

Yes? If so, then here's what I think:

No, I would not recommend this. Here's why: right now, you are telling Google, "This Google+ Local page corresponds to this city landing page where we have a physical office. See, the NAP matches. This is the authoritative page on our website for our physical office in City A."

Now, if you start putting City A's NAP on the non-physical location pages for neighboring cities B, C, D and E, you are making Google say, "Wait, I thought this phone number went with City A. But it seems to have something to do with cities B, D, D and E. Same with the address. Where's the authoritative signal?"

In other words, I think the practice you're considering could actually cloud the clarity of the signal you are sending to Google about your NAP.

Instead of taking this route, I would be more inclined to put calls-to-action on the non-physical location pages and link them to the nearby physical office pages. In other words, I would put a CTA on the pages for non-physical location cities B, C, D and E stating, "Come see us in nearby City A," This CTA would link to the City A page and that's where your users (and the bots) could find your complete City A NAP.

This would be how I would handle this. And, of course, I would be sure that you've got unique content on all of these pages. Hope these ideas help!

Hi Stray Cat,Your question isn't stupid at all and there is a great discussion happening here. I'd like to throw in a few details for your consideration.First of all, you cannot rely on the numbers provided by keyword research tools if you are including geo terms (like ny) in your phrases. There is currently no tool that provides accurate numbers for local keyword research. So, you can use things like Google Adwords Keyword Tool and Google Insights to give you an idea of search volumes, but numbers are not to be viewed as accurate. Most Local SEOs do their keyword research without geo modifiers and then add these terms back into the list of discovered product, service and brand terms.If you were my client and were a NY painter, we would be targeting all 3 variations of your example terms. So, in the body copy, we might find sentences like:"Call The Painter New York Schools Have Hired 234 Times Since 2003 For A Beautiful Job!"and"When Hiring A Painter In New York, Always Request A License Number Before You Sign A Contract."and "A Professional New York Painter Will Always Present Documents Proving That He Is Licensed, Bonded and Insured."You can come up with better sentences than these which I've just reeled off, but the point is that you need to find ways to incorporate all of your core phrases into the copy. I further believe that it's not necessary to group keyword phrases together every time. If one line in your copy is talking about New York and the next is talking about painters, you are still using your keywords and signifying to bots and humans what your business does and where it is. Go with the lighter touch when you can, to avoid having copy that reads like a robot wrote it, and remember that your local search rankings are dependent on tons of different factors. The optimization of your pages is definitely a core factor, but it is only one factor.

Hi David,

While Ruben is correct that the use of P.O. Boxes is a violation of the Google Places Quality Guidelines, there is a chance that you can get help with this via the Google Troubleshooter located here:

https://support.google.com/places/

Click the contact button and go through the troubleshooter. You should see a blue 'Call Us' button appear in the form and if you can speak to a Google rep, they may be able to help you with the verification issue.

However, before you can do this, it's important to understand that any Google+ Local page you create must be based on the physical location of the business in question and not any associated P.O. box. So, for a client in this town, you'd need to create the listing, have postcard verification fail and then go through the troubleshooter in hopes of getting direct help from Google staff in verifying the validity of the business. This will be extra work on your part, and you should prepare you clients for this hangup by explaining Google's limitations in regards to small towns like yours where everyone picks up mail at the local post office. Be sure not to guarantee that you can get the listing verified for them, but tell them that you will make a best effort to make it happen.

Hope this helps!

Hi Joel,

Without actually being able to see your specific business, the cause of your lack of first page rankings is hard to judge. Some things a Local SEO would look at in reviewing your situation might include:

• Your proximity to the centroid of business (are you located within the main cluster of businesses on Google Maps for your key search phrase or are you far away from the cluster)

• Potential existence of duplicates. This comes up frequently in industries like real estate, law and the medical field because multi-partner practices took Google up on their guidelines that stated you could have 1 Place Page for the main practice and a unique Place Page for each partner, as well. This has all gone to heck now, and no one I know is recommending doing this anymore because of Google's tendency to merge similar listings, sapping rankings, and also, their official refusal to remove duplicates. See:

http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/hot-topics-catalyst-blog-archived/8-google-places-duplicates-�-have-doctor-dentist.html

and

http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/local-search-general-discussions/861-dr-dupes-google-local-user-edits.html

So, that may be an issue affecting your ability to rank.

• The consistency of your citations across the web. If you work for a mutli-partner firm, there is a chance their may be mixed up details out there about you or your partners. Lack of consistency can definitely hamper rankings.

• Your domain age. If other firms are older than yours (web-wise) they may have a slight-to-moderate edge over you, even though you are making greater efforts than they are. Also, real estate is one of the toughest verticals, particularly if you are in a populous area (a big city). It can be tough for newer competitors to break into established SERPs that already have a ton of strong businesses in them.

Those are a few things to consider. It sounds like you are doing a lot of things right, Joel. I recommend you check out 51 Blocks' local competitive analysis tool to be certain you are actually doing more than your competitors appear to be doing:

http://www.51blocks.com/online-marketing-tools/free-local-analysis/

It's free and a very cool tool.

This is as far as I can go without seeing your actual business in action. I hope these ideas are good food for thought.

Hi Catherine,

In my opinion, the very best thing you can do for this client is to tell her, "No way, don't do that!". If the client chooses to build a second yoga business at the same location with a new name/new website, she will be creating a citation consistency nightmare that will almost certainly lead to lost rankings for her original business. She may find herself dealing with merged listings or suspension of her account. If she chose to use a neighbor's address, that would be an obvious violation of the guidelines, so that's not an option either.

I've run into situations like this with incoming clients I'm consulting with. My job in such cases is to warn them that a plan like this is not in line with Google's vision of Local. Of course, a business owner should be able to make any moves she wants to with her company, but if what she does is going to create problems with Google, then she needs to realize that Google will not be a viable option for promoting her business. The hard fact is that, these days, few people can do business without Google's help, so creating business models that fall outside of their guidelines will seldom be a plan for success.

You will be doing this business owner a major favor by steering her away from this idea, I believe. If she wants to close her original business and start a new one with a new name with the 5 other Yogis, that's fine. Your job will be a major citation cleanup campaign. This is the only option I see open to her that will not result in a huge headache for this business owner. Hope this helps!

Hi Zeke,

Oh, clients like these are a handful! Explain, very clearly, to the client that the reason their listings went under review was because they broke the rules. What they want to do now is still breaking the rules and could risk their one legitimate location's rankings if Google decides they are spamming the index. Don't be vague. Be totally straightforward on this. Show them the guidelines: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528

Especially this part:

Business Location: Use a precise, accurate address to describe your business location.

Do not create a listing or place your pin marker at a location where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations.

Do not create more than one listing for each business location, either in a single account or multiple accounts.

Businesses that operate in a service area, as opposed to a single location, should not create a listing for every city they service. Businesses that operate in a service area should create one listing for the central office or location and designate service areas. Learn how to add service areas to your listing.

If you don't conduct face-to-face business at your location, you must select "Yes, this business serves customers at their locations" under the "Service Areas and Location Settings" section of your dashboard, and then select the "Do not show my business address on my Maps listing" option.

If the client cannot see that these rules are precisely describing that what they want to do is a violation, my advice is to drop them like a hot potato.

Local SEOs strive to help honest business people - not to abet rule breakers. If your client changes his tune after he sees the guidelines, then you can offer him an alternative, legitimate strategy that would work along these lines:

1. The client may go after true local rankings for his city of location by running a well optimized website that incorporates important local hooks, by having a single Places listing/Google+ Local Page that follows all the rules, and by building citations for his single, legit address.

2. If he is a service-radius-type business (like a plumber, carpet cleaner, chimney sweep) and serves customers at their locations rather than at his location, then he must comply with the hide address rule on his single Places Listing.

3. All of the above goes toward achieving high local rankings within the pinned, lettered blended/local pack of results.

4. Now, to approach the task of ranking well for his service cities (as a plumber, carpet cleaner or lawyer would), he can begin to showcase his work in these other surrounding cities where he is not physically located by created awesome city landing pages for each. These pages must feature totally unique, first class copy (no cutting and pasting copy, no thin content). He can create a unique page for each city that he serves.

5. He can then work on earning links to these pages to improve their chances of rankings.

6. Unlike the goal of steps 1,2 and 3, the goal of steps 4 and 5 for his service cities will be organic rankings - not local rankings. Google predominantly views any business as being most relevant to its city of location - not its service cities, so this is vital for the client to understand.

By following the above method, the client will be doing all he can to try to gain high local rankings for his city of location terms, and high organic rankings for his service city location terms. This is a completely valid way of working with this type of business model. Lay it out clearly for the client what you can do, and then let him make a decision. If he just won't see the light, walk away...he's going to be living in penalty land until he decides to play by the rules. In my own work as a Local SEO, I have learned to shoot straight with clients like this one who are spamming either because they don't understand the rules, or because they do know the rules and want to bend them for their own perceived benefit. The first type, I have a wonderful opportunity to educate. The second type, I can be quite direct in stating that I only offer guidelines-compliant services. Then, let them decide. Good luck and I hope this helps!

Hi Dmitriy,

Glad you asked. Vacation rentals are ineligible for inclusion in Google's local index, as stated in the Google Places Quality Guidelines, which state:

Rental or for-sale properties, such as vacation homes or vacant apartments, are not eligible to be listed on Google Maps and should not be verified. Instead, verify the listing for your sales or leasing office or offices. If you have a property with an on-site office, you may verify that office location.

Because of this, your efforts will need to be organic rather than local in terms of marketing the individual vacation cottages. Hope this helps!

Hi Bryan,

Unfortunately, at this point, multi-location businesses are still not being supported by the new Google+ Local system. There is no way to link multiple Google+ Local pages within a single brand and you should not attempt to create a Google+ Local page for each location or to try to merge them. Clark has linked you to an early article on this from Mike Blumenthal from around the time that Google rolled out Google+ Local, but read one of Mike's more recent posts on the huge amount of issues going on with this before you make a move in any direction:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/11/28/having-issues-with-your-glocal-social-merge-my-advice-dont/

So, for multi-location businesses, you can still create a listing for each unique address via the old Places dashboard, but should not try to create a Google+Local page for each of them. At some point, this will be possible, but it hasn't happened yet, so you will need to stay tuned into the news on this which is constantly being updated. Just last week, for example, Google announced that all service radius businesses have to delete their Google+ Business page (if they have one). This is a brand new rule that will affect countless businesses adversely if they don't happen to hear about it. Point being: with all things related to the whole Google+ system and especially with Google+ Local, you've got to stay on top of the news on a daily basis.

Hope this helps!

Hi Taysir,

This is a good question and one for which there is no 'right' answer, in my opinion. Taking the approach suggested by your spreadsheet, your chief danger would be thin or duplicate content. After all, your services in Oakland are likely to be identical to your services in Fremont, or in the multiple cities in your service area. You can go this way, of course, provided you can find a genuine reason for creating this type of content and have the resources to make each page totally unique. Often, I've found that this is not the case, so I prefer to recommend this approach in most SMB cases:

You create 3 types of pages.

1. City Landing Pages, one for each city, talking about the location and summarizing services. These pages would be optimized for your CORE service phrase + city name.

2. Service Pages, one for each service. You can link to these from the city landing pages. These would be optimized for the individual service, but not for a particular city.

3. Future Pages. I like best to give the client the ability to blog about their projects and news on an on-going basis, giving them the opportunity to begin building up content that covers a variety of keyword combinations, over time.

I find that this approach makes projects with SMBs manageable. We get really strong pages for each of their cities and each of their services onto the website, and then give them the power to begin showcasing their work in various cities via an on-site blog.

So, that's my typical project structure. I'm not saying that you can't go the other way - the way you've mentioned - just that there is an inherent danger in that approach with small, local businesses because they may be tempted to create a ton of content at once that is of low quality instead of being exceptional.

Hope this helps!

Hi Jake,

I'm sorry I didn't see your question earlier. It didn't make it into my notifications somehow.

So, if I'm understanding correctly, this is a construction business that specializes in townhome construction. For businesses like this, these things are possible:

• Does the business have a unique (not shared) physical address, even if it is a home office, and do they have a dedicated local area phone number? If yes to both, then they are completely right for Local SEO.

• Google will see the business as being chiefly relevant to its city of location. So, if the builder were in San Francisco, his best shot for true local rankings will be for San Francisco-based searches or searches containing the geo term 'san francisco'. He will not be likely to obtain true local rankings for any city but his city of location, nine times out of ten. There are some exceptions.

• With his business name, street address and phone number, this builder is able to list himself in Google Places/Google+ Local, but only one time. He may not create additional listings for his service cities. He is allowed to have only one listing per physical location.

• Because the business serves clients at their locations (unlike a brick-and-mortar store), the business MUST choose the 'hide address' feature when creating the Google listing. Google does not want anything but brick-and-mortar businesses to show their address and it is estimated has penalized thousands of businesses for failing to comply with this rule.

• Again, because the business goes to its clients, it is not eligible at this time for a Google+ Business page. Don't create one. If you already have, Google wants you to delete it.

• The business can then go on to build citations in all of the various local business indexes, but again, only for its city of location...not other service cities. If there are any citations with bad, old, or varying addresses, business names or phone numbers on them, they must be corrected. Consistency of citations is key to rankings.

• On the website, the NAP (name, address, phone number) must be identical to what is published in Google's local index and in citations across the web.

All of the above goes toward getting this business high rankings in the lettered/pinned local results.

For service cities where the business builds townhomes, but where they have no physical office, there are several options the business can pursue in hopes of gaining ORGANIC (not local) rankings.

• Create city landing pages on the website that showcase the builder's work in these other towns.

• Pursue social media campaigns that raise awareness of the company's work in these other town.

• Earn/build links to the city landing pages.

Remember, everything you publish on the site should be unique. Don't duplicate content across the city landing pages. Write up projects, take photos, show videos, display testimonials and other good stuff to make each page unique. Again, the goal of this work is typically to gain organic rankings for the other cities where the builder serves, but isn't located. That being said, it is sometimes possible for this work to achieve local rankings, most typically if the business works in a non-competitive market, in a non-metropolitan region. But, mainly, keep the two goals separate (local rankings for the city of location; organic rankings for service cities).

Be sure to follow all of Google's rules (http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528) and keep up with the news on the Google+ front as it is constantly changing.

Hope this answer helps, and again, I'm very sorry you didn't receive the fast reply you should have.

Hi Taysir,

Both P.O. boxes and virtual offices are forbidden by the Google Places Quality Guidelines (see: https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en)

Unless your client is an area of very low competition or in a very rural area, then he should not expect to rank in the local pack of results for anything but his city of location. It's important to set his expectation about this, so that he understand that this is simply how Google works. Let him know that the use of P.O. boxes or virtual offices will only harm his trustworthiness in the eyes of Google at the same time as confusing his customers.

So, he can go for local rankings for his city of location, and then go after as much organic visibility as he can for his other location-less service cities by developing content that reflects his work in these places. I think you will find some good inspiration for this in this article:

The Nitty Gritty of City Landings Pages

All SABs struggle with this situation, but it is totally possible to earn good core local visibility for the location city and additional organic visibility for the service cities with the right strategy. Good luck with the work ahead!

Good discussion going on here, guys. I just want to clarify one point in this discussion, as I'm concerned that some of the advice may confuse others. It has been stated in this conversation that:

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.

I respectfully disagree...with part of this. Yes, you must have a real physical address in the city in which you're hoping to rank locally, but for service radius businesses, it is certainly possible to rank while complying with Google's hide-address law. In fact, some Local SEOs have observed that complying with the hide address rule can actually boost local rankings. Conversely, failure to comply with the rule has resulted in estimated thousands of listings being closed by Google.

So, yes, you need the address as your foothold in the city, but if you serve clients at their locations rather than your own, hide that address. And don't worry about rankings being put out of reach by complying with the law. They are actually far more secure for you if you comply.

Hi SEOSarah,

Therein lies the major challenge of this type of content development. You've got to define something unique about each service city in order to have something important and legitimate to write about. This is easier for some business models than others. For example, a house painter could show his beautiful work in San Jose on one page and his beautiful work in Santa Cruz on another, along with writeups of his projects. He could also do city-specific special offers, interviews, tips, etc.

A large company that is doing a good job of this is REI.com. Search for a location there and you'll see how they are putting different content on their different landing pages. Pretty good example.

But, as I've said, this can be harder for some companies than others if every branch of their business is an exact duplicate of all others. Something to consider for an industry like the one you've mentioned might be interviews with key staff members at the branch - people that the local customers could then meet in person to talk to about their finances. Putting a personal face on a "bland" business might help differentiate this company from competitors, and would simultaneously give you unique content for city landing pages.

Hope this helps!

Hi Zac,

As you are a single company, I would recommend going with a single website with unique pages for your different offices. Google completely understands that law firms and other local businesses have more than one office and as you are presumably offering the same services in both Austin and Dallas, I don't really see the need for a different website.

What will be important is that you have a unique local phone number as well as a unique physical street address for the new location so that you can full participate in the creation of local listings for your new office and not let the Austin location detract from the Dallas one or get 'confused' with it.

From all I have read, there is no difference (rankingwise) between this approach:

austin.copplaw.com

and

copplaw.com/austin

I prefer the latter, personally, but you can go either way without trouble. I think you will need to do some minor re-optimization of core pages of your website to cover that you have 2 locations and then will need to work on city landing pages. Let me link to a piece I recently wrote on this topic, for situations just like yours:

The Nitty Gritty Of City Landing Pages For Local Businesses

http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1403

Can you go with a new website instead of building out your current site? Certainly, but I prefer the latter because it is:

1. Easier to manage

2. You don't have to rebuild the wheel - you've already built it

3. You need have no worries about publishing duplicate content on a second site

4. By presenting CoppLaw.com as a single entity with multiple offices, you will be presenting your business authentically as an impressive, growing law firm with the clout to operate 2 locations.

Hope this helps!

Hi Jayt,

Very good question! Step one is to explain to the client that inclusion in Google's local results is based on the business having:

1. A physical address in the target city (not a virtual office, p.o. box or shared address)

2. A local area code phone number in the city of address (not a toll free number, call tracking number or shared number)

3. In-person transactions with customers, face-to-face, either at the company's offices (like a lawyer or doctor) or at the customers' locations (like a plumber or carpet cleaner).

From your description, your client's business is virtual (serving customers over the phone and online) and therefor, is not eligible for local inclusion. Share the Google Places Quality Guidelines with the client so that can see Google's own explanation of their policies:

http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528

Because of your client's virtual, national business model, building visibility on a local level via Local SEO is out. Rather, your client will need to rely on organic SEO in an effort of gaining secondary organic visibility for service+ geography terms (not primary organic visibility via the local packs of results). Realistically speaking, unless the client is in a non-competitive market, this will be an uphill battle, because it is Google's current preference to show mostly true local results for queries they believe have a local intent. If Google already has plenty of businesses that meet the above 3 criteria, your client will need some incredible SEO work to convince Google to show them organically for queries relating to geographic regions where they have no physical presence.

I hate to sound negative, and I'm not saying this goal is impossible, but the client needs to be given the education that will help him understand how and why Google operates the way they do in relation to local data so that the client can make the smartest investment of time, money and effort. Organic SEO may be able to take the client part of the way, but don't forget about PPC. That may have to be a large part of the mix for any company seeking this type of national dominance. Hope this helps!

Seconding the opinions of Clive and EGOL here. And, particularly want to highlight EGOL's point about not imitating competitors' poor practices. It might help to view these competitors as being just one Google action away from getting dinged for this strategy.

It seems like the challenge for you here is to create something that helps customers understand the geography of your services, without simply duplicating the same page and swapping out city names. I would recommend putting some creative resources behind figuring out how to meet this challenge.

Hi Joe,

I consulted once with a photo booth rental service in the past. Does your client's business model work like this: from a central location the business delivers booths to customers - customers do not come to the photo booth rental service's office. If that is an accurate description, then the address should be hidden on the listing regardless of what the business' address is. In other words, your client's address should always have been hidden and a service radius or cities served selected on the listing. If it isn't like that right now, it's in danger of being penalized or removed.

Now, regarding the transfer of ownership, I am understanding that this will mean the main office will now be at a new physical address. In that case, yes, the Google Place Page/+ Local page should be updated to reflect the new address. This is very important, not only because it's always important to list a true and correct address for any business, but because, in future, the new owner may need to re-verify the listing for some reason and if the postcard is sent to the old address, he won't receive it, making it impossible for him to verify.

Regarding the process and possible fallout of moving, both your client and the new owner should read this article from David Mihm:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/local-search-moving-locations

I think that will really help you to understand the work ahead. *Be prepared to possibly lose reviews because of the move. This happens.

Thanks for coming back with further questions on this. Unfortunately, changing tags and maps doesn't make your text content "different enough" to lessen the concern that Google may view what you are doing as duplicative.

Basically, your business model is a local business with a single location. If you wish to gain organic visibility for your services beyond that single location, it's true that developing landing pages for these other locations is a best practice ... only provided that the content of them is actually useful and largely unique. You are in a similar scenario to a plumber, who has a single location from which he offers a set of services to a variety of neighboring towns. His Local SEO is going to be anchored to his city of location, but his organic SEO can branch out to represent his work in the other towns he serves. There is nothing spammy about him featuring this work in his service cities, but unless he has something unique to say about his work there, he's going to end up with a weak site burdened with duplicate content clearly designed for search engines instead of for the assistance of consumers.

I recommend taking a look at a blog post I wrote here a couple of years ago that offers tips for creating strong, diversified landing pages in a scenario much like yours:

https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages

You will need to dig deep into your resources to create this type of useful, unique content.

As for your competitors, your question is reasonable. If Google doesn't like thin, duplicate content, why do we see people getting away with it? To this, my answer is:

1. People were getting away with all kinds of things the day before an update like Penguin or Panda. They woke up the following day to a changed world in which their lack of effort was no longer being rewarded.

2. If you've realized that your local industry is riddled with poor quality content, see this as your opportunity to beat out lazier competitors. If you deliver the superior experience, it may give you a very valuable edge, while also safeguarding your reputation and rankings against Google filters and penalties in future.

Hope this helps!

Hi Nikster,

Marcus has given a terrific reply. I'll add just one tip. I think 51 Blocks' competitive analysis tool offers great insight into why different businesses might be surpassing your own for various queries. The tool is free and I recommend you give it a whirl:

http://www.51blocks.com/online-marketing-tools/free-local-analysis/

Hi Stuart,

Because true Local results are so heavily slanted to where the business is located, as opposed to where it may serve its remote customers, your client's main efforts will have to focus on the main city of location. This typically means that visibility for  secondary geo terms (like those you've mentioned) are going to have stem from your organic efforts (on-page content, off-page links, etc.).

I appreciate your high standards in not just wanting to create nonsense pages describing the regions of the city. These will be of little interest/use to humans - I agree. So, the client needs to help you brainstorm a reason to write about her involvement in those areas. For example, does she do any corporate work for business in Clapham? Could she talk on a Clapham page about how she was hired to come in once a week for a 10 minute massage for each employee as a perk that boosts company morale. Something like this? Or, does she give training workshops in Battersea? Could she write about a seminar she organized there or even just attended?

Creativity is what it's all about when it comes to writing copy that has a genuine purpose and at the same time showcases the work of the professional in various geographic regions.

If you can couple this with linkbuilding, you have a good recipe for gaining organic visibility for terms beyond the single major city term.

Hi Doug,

I would typically think of this as an either/or situation, rather than recommending both. I've seen quite a few people asking your same question: do they need to be on UBL and Localeze, and what about Yext while we're at it? My personal preference would probably be for Localeze, but I definitely think you should check out the discussion about this topic on Phil Rozek's recent post on Localeze downgrading their previously free listings:

http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2013/04/17/rip-localeze-free-business-listings/

Read the whole conversation going on in the comments. I think it's a great discussion!

Hi SirMax,

Nice to see you here today. For starters, it's important to remember that local rank is founded not on the concept of where you serve, but where you are physically located. From your description, I'm not totally sure whether your client is planing on opening new offices in new cities or whether his service area radius is simply expanding to include other cities to which he will travel from his physical office to render services. I'm also not certain whether your client has a physical location in City A and City B, but I think you are saying he only has one in city A. If I'm mistaken, please let me know, but for the moment, let's say City A is your client's core local term because it is where he is located, and all other geo terms (cities B, C, D, E, F, etc) are his secondary terms.

In such cases, this is what I do for my clients:

1. City A is in the tags, headers and copy of the homepage and contact page and, possibly, about us. The complete NAP (name, address, phone number) is in the footer sitewide)

2. Cities B-F are mentioned once on the homepage, as in, 'From our location in San Francisco, we come to you speedily in Berkeley, Oakland, San Jose and Mill Valley'.

3. In the navigation, I structure a menu containing landing pages for each of the cities the client serves, including his city of location. The menu links to these landing pages and the pages feature copy that is unique. Landing pages like these are a great place to showcase real projects in each of the cities (i.e. here is Mrs. Jones' carpet in the Sunset District of San Francisco before and after we cleaned it and and here is a testimonial from Mrs. Jones and here is a video of us using our new truck mounted steam cleaner, etc.). Don't just copy and paste the text from one city landing page to another - make it unique.

4. But remember, your exterior local properties (Google+ Local Page, Bing Local Page, Yelp Profile, etc.) are all going to focus on city A, because that's where you are located.

I have seen this method work well for my clients. Now, your concern is that you have already optimized core pages for 2 cities instead of just the city of location and, apparently, your work has engendered high rankings for both the location and service city. If the client is only physically located in City A and you've manage to get him ranking for City B as well, removing city B from his core pages (home, contact, etc.) could well cause a ranking drop for city B. But, if the client has offices in both cities, you can continue to optimize for both on the core pages (this is just fine) and create the city landing page to feature his work in cities C--E in which he is not located.

Hope this explanation makes sense, but please let me know if I've misunderstood your client's business model or if you have further questions.

Hi Todd,

There are number of issues going on here. In the scope of Q&A, I can't provide a full audit, but will jot down some issues I see.

1. The site is not locally optimized. This is a big piece of the picture. You've got to work your geographic keywords into important areas like title tags and main copy. Organic factors are a major component of high local rankings.

2. There is a serious issue going on on your Google+ Local page. 3 of your 4 reviews are from employees of your company. This is a violation of the guidelines. These guidelines (located at: https://support.google.com/places/answer/187622?hl=en) state:

Conflict of interest: Reviews are only valuable when they are honest and unbiased. For instance, as a business owner or employee you should not review your own business or current place of work.

You should get your employees to remove those reviews and not allow staff to review the business in future.

3. Uh-oh! This is a big problem, too. Your Google+ Local pages lists your phone number as 616-531-9973 but the number you are listing in your website footer NAP is 616-530-0093. These numbers should be identical. You should have a single local area code phone number associated with the business name and address, so, seeing this, I suspect that you have a citation consistency issue going on. If you've got different phone numbers published in different places, this is definitely a problem and needs to be resolved.

4. Do you meet face-to-face with clients at 3101 Prairie St. SW or do all transactions happen in the homes of your clients where caregivers are rendering services? If the latter, you should be complying with Google's hide address rule. I'm not totally clear from visiting your website whether your business is a Service Area Business (like a plumbing company) or qualifies as brick-and-mortar. If an SAB, failure to hide the address on your Google+ Local listing will typically result in penalties and ranking issues.

5. Great you are using GetListed. Looking at your to-do list there, it looks like you haven't yet created a listing at Yelp, Nokia or eLocal. Once you've got all of GetListed's suggested listings under control, you can continue to build out citations at many other places. If you check out the Learning Center at GetListed, you will see 2 articles regarding best citations by city and best citations by industry. Check those out, and do further research to see if there are other places to see where your business should be listed.

Again, my remarks cannot be seen in the light of a full audit, but what I have managed to turn up in a few minutes of looking should clue us both in that you've got some pretty serious issues going on. These deserve immediate attention. If you aren't currently working one-on-one with a Local SEO consultant, you may want to consider hiring one, and there is no better list of trusted providers than the list at GetListed at https://getlisted.org/static/resources/trustedproviders.html. If I was able to find this many problems at a glance, you may have others going on and a professional audit may be the very best thing you could do for your company. Hope this advice helps!

Hi Tyler,

That's great that you're aware of Linda's forum (I'm a mod there, too:))!  I recommend writing your title tags in a more natural manner than the example you've given above. I'd go with something more like that:

Contact Moe's Italian Pizza In Springfield, IN At (XXX) XXX-XXXX

If you've found that 'gourmet' is a vital keyword for the page, you could work that in instead of the phone number, but I always try to put the phone number in the title tag of the contact page. See how my example reads naturally? Like a human would speak? In my opinion, this is the optimum way to go. Rand agrees with this method, too. I recommend you watch his WhiteBoard Friday from earlier in the year in which he talks about naturalness in title tags:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/6-changes-every-seo-should-make-before-the-over-optimization-penalty-hits-whiteboard-friday

Also, be careful about repeating keywords, as covered in Linda's thread which SEO5 has smartly linked to.

Hope this helps!