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Thank you, gentlemen! I've just thumbed up each of your thoughtful replies and really appreciate them. In sum, it seems that most of you don't like this practice, but that there may be some instances in which you could see a company doing it. Good to know!

Egol - thanks for the link. I recently had to look at a TON of newspaper websites all over the US and so many of them have pages exactly like that. A few are doing a better job and actually have reviews and other content on the pages, but so many were just empty pages with the name and address of the business and then a ton of advertising. Not a lot of value, for sure!

Thanks again, everybody, for the well-considered feedback.

Hey Donnie,

We're have a good chat today, aren't we? So, now, I'm still trying to understand your intent here. You can't get free listings via Yext. You have to pay for them as Yext's service is a paid service. I just know I'm not catching your meaning here. Do you have an example to share of an offer you've seen or something like that?

Maybe what you mean is...is there any ranking benefit to paying Yext to get your citations vs. you getting them for yourself, manually. If so, my answer would be: not that I've ever heard of. On an agency level, tools like Yext's are time savers and thus valued, but I still believe that manual citation development is the best way to have the most control over what you are doing.

Hi Rahul,

I am assuming that you are talking about Google Place Page categories. Hopefully, I'm correct and my response will be pertinent.

A first step is to look at the top ranking competitors of your clients to see what Place Page categories they have chosen.

I consider it critical to choose at least 3 of Google's pre-set categories, and I use Mike Blumenthal's awesome local categories tool to see what my choices are:

http://blumenthals.com/index.php?Google_LBC_Categories

If it's necessary to choose custom categories, make sure they describe what the business is rather than what it does. So, 'plumber' vs. 'plumbing'.

Never include location information in the categories (no city names, no zip codes).

In addition to looking at competitors' Place Pages and using keyword research tools to turn up potential categories for your client, never skip the step of asking the client which categories HE thinks are most important. Very often, you will find yourself working with a client such as an attorney who may fit 8 or 9 different potential categories. He needs to help you narrow this down to his 5 most important categories (typically, the ones in which he does the most work).

Keywords you are using to optimize your clients' websites differ in that they can describe what the client does (plumbing) instead of just what he is (plumber) and they will certainly incorporate geo data (cities, counties, neighborhoods, zip codes, etc.). You have a wider latitude to work with on the website, whereas in Places, you must fit yourself neatly into a 5 phrase box without violating the guidelines.

Additional notes:

I found this article to be pretty good:

http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2012/03/05/13-best-practices-for-picking-google-places-business-categories/

Don't miss the comments on that post, too.

There is strong evidence that picking categories well is one of the most important steps in creating a Google Place Page. Hopefully, my feedback and the information in the article I've linked to will get you off on the right foot with this. Good luck!

Miriam

Hey Robert!

Your question threw me for a loop. It made me say, "Review, price, cuisine filter in the carousel. What on earth is that?" Why did I ask this? Because I've never seen it!

I then tossed a question about this out to a few colleagues and the 3 who replied don't see the filter option either. I was able to find a screenshot of what you are talking about on this blog post regarding hotels back in May:

http://blog.acorn-is.com/2013/05/google-places-link-gone-new-local-carousel-results.html

But neither hotel nor restaurant searches in my town or the two towns you mentioned are delivering me this option in Chrome or FF.

So, what do we make of this, Robert? I guess we have to put it down to all the testing Google must be doing right now with this new product. It's really strange that you and your office mate are able to pull up different results. I have no explanation for this (oh, Google!). I'd certainly like to get to play with that option myself. I suppose if Google decides it is a good feature, we'll all see it eventually, or it could simply disappear.

I'll leave this thread open for discussion in case some of our other members can shed light on whether they are or aren't seeing the filter toggle. Thanks for bringing this up! A new puzzle.

Thanks for the link, WebFeat!

Unfortunately, there are a number of violations going on on your Google Place Page. I will try to recap them as usefully as I can here:

1. You are not allowed to put a phone number in your business description. Only your actual legal business name belongs in that field. What is it? Junk Removal? Or is that a keyword you've tried to use?

2. You are not allowed to use an 800 number as your phone number.

3. You should not use geographic terms in your description or repeat words that are already in your legal business name. So, if your legal business name is Junk Removal, don't use 'junk removal' in the description and do not use the city name.

It's my opinion that these three things have made Google doubt the validity of your listing. My opinion is validated by the fact that when I search Google Maps for 'junk removal covington ky' I am seeing your business listed on the map with a round dot instead of a teardrop.

The round marker tends to appear in 1 of 3 scenarios:

1. Google does not recognize the address as valid (doesn't have it in their system)

2. The business owner did not enter their address fully or correctly

3. The business owner has clicked the box to hide their address when creating their Place Page

You will need to determine which of these 3 things is happening, and you will definitely need to clean up the violations on your Place Page.

Further, when I did a search in G Maps for your phone number: (800) 332-5888 ‎, I am seeing two different Place Pages for what appears to be the same business. Perform this search and figure out which of these listings is your legitimate, authoritative listing and then report the duplicate using the 'report a problem' link at the bottom of the duplicate Place Page.

All told, the listing is suffering from multiple problems. It will take effort and time to get the record cleaned up. I wish you luck and recommend that before you make a move in any direction, you read in full the Google Places Quality Guidelines: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528

Google's policies are not really intuitive, and without memorizing the guidelines, it's easy for anyone to make mistakes. Good luck!

Miriam

Hi SearchParty,

I definitely vote in favor of the latter - a single website with landing pages for each of the physical locations. With this method, the marketing you engage in will go toward building the authority of all locations. Mini sites with exact match domains tend to be candidates for thin and duplicate content, so I'm not a fan. Beyond this, I think they overly-complicate the scenario, when a single domain with strong content for each location keeps things simple for human visitors and the bots.

Hi Cake Website,

I'm looking into whether  the query in your example would be in danger of being removed. I'll return as soon as I have a good answer.

Miriam

Update:

Hi Again Cake Website.

Here are the only guidelines I could find:

http://www.google.com/+/policy/content.html

Cyrus Shepard kindly pointed them out to me. They state:

"Your Profile Picture cannot include mature or offensive content. For example, do not use a photo that is a close-up of a person’s buttocks or cleavage."

You might like to check out this article by Anne Smarty on the subject of using logos as profile pics:

: http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/social-media/logo-as-google-plus-profile-picture

And, apparently there was one instance of Google cracking down on an individual who made an obscene gesture in his profile:

http://parislemon.com/post/14907295522/dear-google

Right now, it seems Google is allowing just about anything in profile pics with a few exceptions, so you can at least start out with your practice's photo. Whether it might get removed in future, I can't really say because the guidelines are not very detailed. Hope this is at least of some help to you in deciding your next move.

Hi Steve,

The important thing to understand is that there is not currently a KW research tool that gives accurate data on geographic terms. Maybe someday, but for now, the KW research process involves mainly searching for your product/service/informational terms and then adding in the geo phrases. Because you are in Denver (a major city) you will get some KW data with 'denver' included, but I wouldn't consider it totally accurate.

That out of the way, yes, the results are typically slightly different for people searching from a Denver IP address vs. people using 'Denver' in the search phrase. They are not usually wildly different, but there is definitely some variation.

If your clients are in Denver, you need not be overly concerned about this, because Google will typically identify them as Denver based and show them Denver results regardless of whether they use a geo-modifier or not. In optimizing your website, follow the basic example Ben has given. Include 'Denver' in the titles, headers, copy, etc. of your core pages and city landing pages and you will be doing what is customary. You are not attempting to compete for IT Support nationally; you are trying to compete locally, so those geo terms are critical for you.

Hope this clarifies things, but if my answer brings up more questions on your part, don't hesitate to ask.

Hi David,

Google currently does not support linking a single brand page to multiple local pages. There is no ETA for when they will support this, unfortunately. Google is just saying, 'hold tight'. For more on this, here is a thread from the Google and Your Business Forum:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/business/fehWAQftZUI

Hope this helps!

Hello Ryan,
Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I want you to know that your query inspired me to ask two of the best Local SEOs in the country for their opinion on this, and they both agreed that this oft-repeated advice about building links to Place Pages is bogus. I wanted to check with some of my chums before answering your questions, because I see this advice being given all the time on websites, and it's one of those strange myths of SEO that are self-perpetuating.

The reasoning that it is not worth it to build links to Place Pages is that they are not indexed, therefore, building links to them is like throwing stuff into a black hole.

If you feel linkbuilding will be necessary to enabling your client to rank better, build links to his website. Not his Place Page.

Hope this helps!
Miriam

Hi Varun,

You can put your complete NAP (name, address, phone) on every page, but most typically, local business websites put this in two major places: the sitewide website footer and the Contact Us page. It can also be a good idea to have it in the site masthead to help visitors instantly know that your business is local to them. I would only put it on the rest of the pages of the website if it made sense to do so. It certainly won't hurt you if you want to put it on every page, but I don't think it will be of more help than simply having it in the places I've specified, above.

Hi Again KS_ So glad to be able to help you. Let's take your questions one by one.

1. Yes, directory submissions are quite important, though not all of them are equally important. Here is an excellent post from Nyagoslav Zhekov covering Canadian citation sources: http://www.ngsmarketing.com/local-citation-building-study-part-4-local-business-directories-around-the-world-canada-uk/ And another terrific one from Jim Rudnick: http://www.canuckseo.com/index.php/2011/05/diy-canadian-citations-our-2011-update/ As for Classifieds, I'm not completely sure I'm familiar with your intent. If you can get a permanent listing of your business on a local classifieds site, that would be great, but if it's an advertisement that comes and goes, that wouldn't really be the same thing as a permanent citation.

2. Check out the 2 links in my answer to question #1. These are great resources for Canada. These resources will list important general citation sources for all Canadian business types. Beyond this, if you are looking for citation sources specifically for Calgary businesses, or specifically for elder care facilities, you will need to discover these by manually searching for them. Look for Calgary business directories, elder services directories, etc., in Google and see if you can get cited there. No general article is going to list these types of directories, because they are niche-specific, but with manual searching, you can find them.

3. Local SEO comprises everything in the world of traditional SEO, and adds to it the concept of geography. So, anything you might do in a traditional SEO campaign is also applicable to a Local SEO campaign. As I wrote in my original response: "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."

4. The definition of a Local Result has changed constantly over the past 6 years. Right now when people talk about a Local Search Engine Result, they are typically referring to a result or set of results accompanied by the little teardrop shaped pin and comprising information both from the company's website and other sources like Google Places or +. You may also hear this referred to as a blended local result, because it draws information from a mix of sources. For example, my search 'home health care calgary' brings up these results. Scrolling down the page of results, you will come to the set of pinned local results, ranking A-G. Those are the local results. Google can show these results for a variety of search phrases. For example, my search for 'home health care calgary' brings me these local results, regardless of the fact that I'm in the USA. On the other hand, if someone in Calgary searches just for 'home health care', without adding 'Calgary', Google can also show them local results, based on their IP address. So, local results can be returned based on query or location. Hope these answers have helped!

Hi Titan552,

When I am explaining to my Local SEO clients how to view search engine rankings, I say something like this:

"You are ranking in the B position (2nd) in the blended/local results for X term. You are ranking 3rd in the organic results for X term".

I differentiate between the two types of results, because they stem from different factors, though some factors are shared. Let me show you this as a live example, to be totally clear. Look at the results on this page for the query 'dentist san francisco':

https://www.google.com/search?q=dentist+san+francisco+ca&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

SFGreenDentist is in the B position (2nd) in the blended local results (the ones with the lettered pins). DrMarkle.com is ranking #4 organically. In other words, SFGreenDentist.com has managed to achieve high local rankings and DrMarkle is doing pretty well organically, but hasn't broken into the true local results with his/her efforts. If you, instead, looked at the first page of the SERPs as a whole, I suppose you could say that SFGreenDentist is 5th overall and that DrMarkle is 11th, but I would not recommend doing this, particularly if you are working with Local SEO clients because it is important for them to understand that these results stem from 2 different sources.

This often comes into play, especially, when dealing with service radius businesses (like plumbers, landscapers, chimney sweeps, etc.) who serve in a number of neighboring cities. The way Google is handling local rankings at this point, the typical strategy for, say, a plumber physically located in San Francisco would be for him to go after a primary blended/local ranking for 'san francisco plumber' and to go after secondary organic rankings for other cities where he serves where he is not physically located. In other words, for terms like 'plumber san jose', 'plumber oakland' and 'plumber santa clara', he would be targeting organic rankings for the most part, because Google is unlikely to show him in the true local results for these searches due to his lack of a physical location in the neighboring towns.

So, viewing these 2 types of results as separate makes good sense, in my view, because the work and potentials of gaining high rankings in them requires different factors and tactics. Hope this helps!

Hi Silhouette,

If I'm understanding this correctly, your client has

1. Two business names (for example, Red Rock Dental Clinic and Green Tree Dental Center)

2. These two locations are in the same city, but have COMPLETELY different addresses AND phone numbers (let me know if the phone numbers are the same)

3. Completely different dentists and staff at the two offices (if not, let me know)

4. A single website representing both businesses.

If the above is correct, the dentist has two options.

1. Bring their branding into a state of cohesion so that their dental practice has just one name. Then, you would simply create 2 landing pages on the website - one for each of the location, and include the complete NAP of both in the footer and on the contact page. If they go this route, your job will be to do a citation cleanup campaign to edit all mentions of their business on the web so that the single, chosen business name is properly associated with both locations.

2. If they have to keep both names for some reason, then I would recommend that they develop a completely separate website for one of the locations. Here's why: the core signal a local business sends to the search engines is comprised of its name+address+phone number+website. If the client maintains 2 names, they are sending a very confusing signal to the bots that both Red Rock Dental Clinic and Green Tree Dental Center are the business' name. Imagine the bots hitting the website and say, "Wait, what is the name of this business???".  This could lead to a number of problems including citation inconsistency, merged listings, duplicate listings and ranking failures. So, if they must keep the 2 names, I suggest they separate them completely with two different websites. Note, in this case the NAP must be completely separate (the phone number cannot be the same for the two different addresses). And, the content would need to be completely different on the two different websites.

Either route would be fine, but their current scenario is not, in my opinion, okay. Having two different businesses share the same website just isn't something I would ever recommend to any local business owner, even if he owns the two businesses. Upshot: they need to solidify their branding or expand their marketing with the development of a second, unique website.

Hope this helps!

Greetings VernonMack, Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum. Your question is a good one and, happily, the answer here is simple. You need to use whatever your legal business name is. If your DBA uses ampersand, then consistently use this to describe your business on your website, local listings and elsewhere. If it uses and, then use that. Be consistent and you will be fine.

Hi Beehive,

This is a good question. So, as I understand it, you originally had a city-specific domain name when you were a single location business. You now have six locations and have moved to a purely branded domain rather than a city-specific one and this site has a unique page for each of your locations (which is good - a best practice - provided the content is unique on each page).

I would not recommend putting all six city names in your homepage title tag or in the title tag of any other page. Once a business expands like yours has, you've got to come up with a different strategy than the one you were using for a single location.

Questions:

Did you 301 redirect the old domain to the new one?

Did you update all of your citations to reflect the new domain name? Realize this will take time to go into effect. This is very important.

Suggestions:

You might like to read this post about local landing pages: http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide

Study the part about Business Model III in the above guide, if you've not already read it. It applies to your business model.

A multi-location local business that I think is doing a good job with their Local SEO is REI.com. Check out their location landing pages.

You must now start building the authority for each of the 5 new locations, with content development, citation building, review acquisition, social outreach, etc.

I hope some of these thoughts will be helpful to you.

Hi Raphael,

Without actually investigating your client's unique business, my response will have to be somewhat general. The main areas one would investigate would be:

1. Age of domain

2. Strength/optimization of website/inclusion of local hooks on site (like NAP)

3. Correctness of Google local listings/lack of violations/lack of duplicates

4. Number, quality and age of citations (if yours are new, you need to give them time to go into effect)

5. Consistency of NAP across all citations

6. Review count

7. Proximity to city centroid

8. Traditional SEO factors, such as linkbuilding

There are other areas that could be applicable, certainly, but these are the main ones.

Here are some resources regarding local search rankings and related factors:

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

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/09/26/infographic-citations-time-to-live/

http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2012/10/02/how-long-does-local-search-visibility-take/

The above are a few selections which I feel will be highly relevant to what you are trying to understand about local search ranking factors and the time it can take for your work to go into full effect.

I hope you will find these useful!

Hi Thomas,

As you are running a design/SEO business, then Google does not consider your business model as truly local to anywhere and will only show organic results for queries like 'web design nyc'. So, everyone competing for phrases like this must do so organically. Your efforts will likely need to include on-going content development, link building and, perhaps, an additional outreach via Social Media, video marketing, etc.

Content development will most certainly stand at the core of your strategy, so finding something of interest and value to write about that will be relevant to your desired NJ audience is the task at hand. For web design firms, a natural choice would be beautiful writeups of projects you've completed for NJ businesses. You might also begin doing features of NJ-based businesses with awesome websites, or websites that could be improved, or websites that help the people of NJ is some special way. You can display some of your expertise by critiquing what works. Basically, you're going to have to brainstorm some great ideas that would make for excellent content and then keep brainstorming and writing so that you can begin to build authority around search terms that relate to New Jersey. But, again, the end goal here will be organic rankings rather than local ones, simply because Google stopped displaying web design and SEO firms for common local queries some years ago.

Your creativity is your best asset towards achievement of your goals. Lots of work ahead! Good luck!

Good for you, Silhouette! You've advised the client well. It will be important as you move forward to make sure that the original site no longer references the second location, and then there will be citation cleanup, etc. And be sure you are not duplicating text on the two sites. These need to be two totally distinct websites. Glad to hear the client was willing to see the light of day on this. Way to go!

Hello Hawkvt1!

Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum and will do my best to give you some helpful feedback.

Thumbs up for Ross for remembering the slight stir created a few weeks ago regarding this very topic. Mike Blumenthal wrote a good piece on this here:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2011/12/06/google-places-onsite-review-stations-aok-with-google/

Read the whole article. And definitely read the comments that follow it, too. This should give you a good summary of the issue.

Like Mike, I felt that Google's encouragement of this practice was a poor choice because of the wide door it is opening for abuse. This practice has never been viewed in the past as appropriate by any review index, and there has been some evidence that some review entities were using signals of this as a way to weed out spam.  I am not actually recommending this practice to my own clients at this point, but according to Google, it's okay.

You will need to make a judgement call on this. If you feel the benefits are substantial, you can go forward with Google's apparent sanction, but I remain wary. Hope my thoughts help!

Miriam

Hi Webguru,

If you don't have physical locations in these cities, then you do have to be very cautious about taking this approach of building local landing pages. Unless you've got something totally unique to say on each page, then yes, you could actually be lowering the quality of your website by publishing tons of thin/duplicate/near-duplicate pages.

My advice is to go to this article:

http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide

You should probably read the whole article, but from what you're describing, it sounds to me like your business will be covered in the section for Business Model IV. Check that out to help you determine whether local landing pages or a different strategy will make the most sense for your customers, the search engines and your business.

Hi CodingStuff,

Good question, and I empathize with frustration on this. The At A Glance feature often points up the most absurd snippets. You can report the issue through this form:

http://support.google.com/places/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1386120&page=ts.cs

....but, Google will apparently only consider changing it if it contains totally wrong information (like jewelry appearing on a restaurant listing) and even then, it's unlikely to see action happen on their part. So, this leaves us with trying to understand the cause/source of these snippet sentiments. Mike Blumenthal wrote a great post on this in 2011 when these first appeared:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2011/08/30/google-places-descriptor-snippets/

In that post, he points to a Bill Slawski piece on a patent that appears to relate to this sentiment display:

http://www.seobythesea.com/2011/08/google-boost-search-rankings-category/

And here's a good discussion on this topic in Google's forum:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/business/wDRAXAl1gyA

The sources of the snippets have appeared to stem mainly from reviews, but also from links and website content. Usually, it's pretty easy to trace language in the snippets to things that have been said in reviews, at least in my experience. So, here we come to another hands-are-a-bit tied situation, because you aren't able to control what people say in their reviews. Even one bad review can end up tacking an awful sentiment to your profile in the At A Glance section.

I have never seen research done on how often Google internally refreshes At A Glance sentiments, but it stands to reason that the acquisition of a gentle but ongoing stream of positive reviews for the business would be the strongest action one can take to hope to see a change in the sentiments. Without seeing your actual profile, I have to speak broadly on this, but that would be my basic advice. You can make an effort to report the issue to Google and there is a slim chance you might get somewhere with that, but in most cases, you'll just have to work at getting reviews in hopes of seeing an eventual change to the snippets.

For good recent reading about the topic of getting Google-based reviews, here's another piece by Mike Blumenthal that you may find helpful:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/09/24/asking-for-reviews-post-apocalypse/

I hope these resources help you feel up-to-speed on this sometimes frustrating topic. Good luck!

Great discussion here with many excellent points covered by everyone who has responded. I will only add, because I think this is something that may come up frequently, Google's new Keyword Planner Tool only changes the way you might do keyword research - not the way you optimize a site. It is still vital to locally optimize the website. The only difference is that you hopefully now have more and better insight into important terms to include in your optimization.

Hi Silhouette,

If this was my client and they wouldn't bring their branding into cohesion, nor build a second website, I honestly wouldn't know how to advise them. Their desire to promote two differently branded businesses on the same local website is a recipe for all kinds of trouble, as we've discussed, so there wouldn't be some 'right' way to do what you're asking about. I would tell the client that they will likely end up with a mess on their hands in their citations and ranking failures and that I couldn't work with them if they weren't going to take my advice about this. Remember, this client has hired you because of your ability to advise them. If they won't take the advice, your hands are tied. I'd have a last conversation with them and then, if they couldn't respect the fact that they've hired me for my expertise in this matter, I would drop them. Clients who can't take advice are not good clients.

If there is some kind of problem with funding that is preventing them from immediately building a new website, you could offer to give them 3 months or whatever to accrue this funding, during which time you will do nothing. Don't build any citations for either business or do anything social. Then, when they've got the necessary funding, you could build out the second website, do a thorough citation cleanup campaign and then begin building new citations as needed.

I understand, it can be so frustrating to encounter businesses like this who, because of their thinking, are on the road to potential disaster. But you can't force them to let you help them. If they won't listen, they are kind of setting themselves up to learn from experience. If you drop them now, explaining the reasons why you are doing so, you may very well hear back from them in six months when they realize their results are all messed up.

Hope this helps!

Hi Keith!

Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum. I will do my best to answer your question.

It's a very common practice for companies to have a single website for their multiple locations. For example, an auto dealership with locations in San Jose, San Francisco and San Rafael does not need to have 3 websites. They can simply have one and do landing pages for each of the three cities.

The main benefit I can discern of consolidating your client's 3 sites will be greater ease of management.

One thing I can imagine that you are going to need to be careful about is this: do sites 1, 2 or 3 duplicate one another's content in any way? If so, you need to avoid this. Don't have the landing page copy for the 2 different locales be the same.

Another thing I'm curious about is the locales of the 2 physical offices. How far apart are they? If they were in different states, I'd be inclined to keep the businesses on separate sites, but if they are in the same state, I think having the one site will be fine.

My only other concern would be potential lost rankings for the other sites. Are they old and established, or relatively new and low ranking? If the former, it would be a tough decision to get rid of them. If the latter, this re-organization could be a smart idea.

Finally, do realize that when you make changes in Google Places, it can cause a temporary shakeup. Even small changes like altering the domain the Place Page is pointing to can result in a time delay until Google's updates its index. Prepare the client for that possibility.

I hope my thoughts have been helpful, Keith. Good luck!

I just now found this conversation and I want to commend Travis for digging in.

Some other things to consider:

1. Age of the domain and also of the local campaign. If Lifepoint got an earlier 'start' on the web than Sylvania, this could have something to do with it.

2. It does not look like an industry centroid is at play here, because both churches seem fairly equally distant to what I see as the cluster for 'churches in tyler tx'

3. Could Sylvania have any negative issues like duplicate listings that could hold them back?

You might like to check out:

http://moz.com/blog/troubleshooting-local-ranking-failures

Hi Webfeat,

I'm  very happy with the way this project turned out (I wrote the copy) for a storage facility in Canada. As you will see, each location has its own page, with totally unique content and NAP for each of the 3 locations:

http://www.storwell.com/

Here's another client of mine that I've begun working with to develop a set of unique pages for each of the cities his carpet cleaning company serves:

http://www.eminentcarpetcleaning.com/

The site isn't ideal at this point, but it does show the method of beginning to build out city landing pages in the In Your City section.

The thing to remember is that Google is always going to see a business as being most relevant to its city of location, so typically, what you are going for with brick-and-mortar businesses is local rankings and what you're going for with service radius businesses is organic rankings for the service cities...but the success of this method is dependent on a) competitiveness of the vertical and b) client budget.

Hope this helps and maybe other will add some more.

Hi Tammy,

Your question isn't at all silly. What are you using to track local rankings? What tool? Or are you doing this manually?

Do bear in mind that there is no authoritative, set ranking for any local business. Why? Because Google personalizes the results for all users. So, what you see ranking #1 on your computer in your location may not be what I see ranking #1 for this term. Though you can get a relative idea of rankings, you can't really get an exact idea, making it important to educate clients on the fact that other metrics are a better gauge of marketing results. Traffic and conversions really matter! Rankings matter, too, of course, but not as much as phones ringing.

Hi Dana,

Thanks for the list of ampersand brands! Fun.

The thing about this that is odd to me, from a local perspective, is that I know Google can surface a onebox/knowledge graph for law firms with both the ampersand and non-ampersand versions of their names. I've seen it. This may all boil down to authority or a lack thereof. Interesting.

Hello VernonMack,

Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum. I think the most important point to respond to in your post is this one. You write:

Using the actual physical address, seems to be what google would prefer, but the address is actually on the outskirts of the city and would mean that competitors that have addresses closer to the city center would show up before us.

It isn't so much a matter of Google's preference, but a matter of adhering to their guidelines which specifically state that you must use your real physical address. Unfortunately, this means that businesses likes yours on the borders of major cities do not have the strength to overpower the rankings of competitors actually located within the big cities. As you can imagine, this is a very common issue for all local businesses located just outside of metropolitan locations. Google will always view you as most relevant to the city in which you are located, so for your company, that will be El Cajon - not San Diego. I cannot recommend attempting to mash up the city and zip of the two different locales.

You can, of course, create content on your website about any work you do within San Diego, but should not expect this to take precedence over your actual physical location.

I truly sympathize with the wish to compete for the big search terms, but the usefulness of Google Places depends on accurate representation of data. For now, you are located in El Cajon and should correctly list yourself as such. If it becomes clear to you in future that you need to move locations into the city of San Diego, you will be doing what some other local business owners have done due to Google's handling of location. For some businesses, moving shop just isn't feasible, but for others, getting that inner city address is a must and a smart move.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

Hi Benners,

Good question. The H1 tag is majorly important to customers and much less so to bots, so I would always recommend going with natural language over strictly optimized language. In other words, I would recommend:

Receive Compassionate Physiotherapy in Our Relaxing Boston Office

as opposed to

Physiotherapy Boston Is Our Specialty ... or something like that.

Sometimes, you can strike a balance between the two, though, along the lines of:

For Caring Physiotherapy, Boston Patients Have A Compassionate Option Here at GreenTree

I would advise taking this approach not just with onpage tags, but also with title tags, too, due to their prominence in the SERPs. My bias is definitely toward natural in everything:)

Hi Vistage, I'm not totally certain I understand your questions. Are you saying you have reviews on Google+ and Yelp asking whether you should republish Yelp and Google based reviews on your website using schema? If so, the answer is no. Do not republish reviews on your website. You can certainly link from your website to your review profiles, but you should not take the content and reprint it on your site, using schema or anything else. Does this answer your question, or am I not understanding what you're hoping to know? Please, just let me know!

Hi SEOSarah,

I want to be sure I'm correctly understanding your question. Google has been localizing results for some years now, so I'm not clear if this is what you are referring to, or if you are referring to something new. Also, it might help if you could be a little more specific about what you mean by including geo-specific keywords. Where? On the website? Elsewhere?

In general, if you are marketing a local business, then it remains quite important to utilize geo terms in your website optimization. Nothing about this has changed, and the recent Local Search Ranking Factors 2013 still cites this practice as being highly relevant.

If this isn't what you're asking about, I'll be happy to pop back in to read your further details!

Hi Paul,

Sometimes, you will get an automated response before action takes place. However, if a month has gone by, I would go the Google And Your Business Forum and report the entire issue, including your report to the troubleshooter. See if a TC will take interest in your plight and escalate for you.

Hi Gary!

Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I second Vahe's excellent response. It is in the client's best interest that you help them set up their own account, and be sure that they have in writing what their email/pass is for it. Chances are, they will work with many different marketers over time, but their properties should always belong solely to them.

Cheers!

Miriam

Hi Again,

For more opinions on header tags, you might like to check out:

http://moz.com/blog/some-opinions-on-the-seo-myths-realities-fight

http://moz.com/community/q/are-h1-tags-important-or-influential

http://moz.com/community/q/h1-tag-proper-uses

Hope these help!

Hi Vistage SEO!
Okay, I'm glad I understood. Now, this might be easiest for you, if your website happens to be WordPress based. It's a WP plugin for schema encoded reviews:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/review-schema-markup/

If your site isn't WordPress based, Search Engine Watch coincidentally just published a really good piece on this topic today:

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2223886/How-to-Add-Reviews-to-Your-Site-Using-Schema-Structured-Data-Markup

I think you will find that article answers pretty much all questions you might have on this. If anything isn't clear after looking over these two resources, please come back and ask.  Good luck!

Hi SEOSarah,

So glad I got it right. You are right that Google localizes tons of results for the user. Including geo terms in your optimization will help Google to understand that you are relevant to these results. And, then there is a whole different category of search in which the user isn't looking for results that are local to them - for example, a user in Chicago searching for a hotel in Dallas. He wants local results - just not results that are local to his own city, because he's making a trip. Bottom line, definitely keep utilizing geo terms! Glad you asked.

Hi SilkStream,

What you are experiencing is almost certainly the dread attack of the bad Google one boxes. This is a documented phenomenon going on right now, believed to be fallout from the Hummingbird Update. Instead of showing a complete pack of results for queries like this, Google is surfacing single spammy results with forbidden, spammed business titles. Some listings are for businesses that don't even exist anymore! It's an extremely poor user experience, obviously, and hopefully one Google will fix with another tweak of the dial.

I recommend you do some reading on this. Here are some great resources:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/09/28/hummingbird-local-knowledge-graph-shitty-search-results/

http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/google-local-important/10000-attack-bad-google-local-one-boxes.html

Hang in there. I really hope Google will fix this soon!

Hi Derek,

Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum.

Now, my answer to your question is going to be of the it-depends type. Does your business have:

• A physical street address (not shared, not a virtual office)?

• A local area code phone number?

• Face-to-face interaction with clientele, whether at your office or at their homes/businesses?

I ask these things because they are the requirements for inclusion in Google Places, which is pretty much the big cheese in Local. If you can say yes to all 3, then we're good to move forward. If any of those items is missing, then Google will not consider your business to be local.

Moving along, I want to mention that this is one of the most common questions I see being asked. Business owners want to know if having a local campaign will decrease their national or international presence in the eyes of Google. To date, I have only ever seen and given common sense answers to this question and have never seen:

• An official study on this, with actual stats

• An official pronouncement from Google on the subject

So, the advice I can give you here is going to be the general advice given on this topic, and should not be considered as though it is based on studies or words from the horse's mouth. The general consensus of opinion on this is that it is fine to run a modest Local SEO campaign at the same time as doing your National/International SEO.

What this might look like:

You put your complete local contact info in the footer of your website site-wide and you add it to your contact page. You devote a page or two to talking about your local office, local services, etc.. You get your business profiled in Google Places and other relevant local business directories, being sure to carefully adhere to the guidelines. You seek and manage your reviews. Finally, depending on the competitiveness of your market in your geography, you may do a little linkbuilding to give you a boost over other local competitors.

It is my belief that the percentage to which you engage in local SEO efforts should be commensurate with the percentage of local business you do. So, if 90% of your business is international and to 10% of it is local, then it makes sense for 10% of your efforts, content, linkbuilding etc. to be devoted to local. In such a case, you would NOT want to go and rewrite all of your title tags to include your city name in them or otherwise highly optimize for your local geographic terms, but a modest campaign, at least in the collective wisdom of the Local SEO community, should not harm your other rankings.

I do wish some company with good Local skills and extra time on their hands could do a thorough study of this FAQ so we could have some more visible conclusion to cite, but I hope this general advice will be helpful to you in making up you mind. Good luck!

Miriam

Hi Kevin!

I apologize for not noticing your thread earlier. Don't know how I missed it!

You are describing so well what happens when a multi-site approach begins to get out of hand. While you could, of course, run 5 different websites, the long term health of the brand is likely going to be best served by consolidation, with proper redirects being set up from the old sites to the new umbrella site, and citations being corrected to reflect the change of URL. You'll likely want to dedicate good resources to earning some new links, while you're at it, to the main site, to strengthen your hand, and a dedicated review acquisition campaign would be smart to throw into this mix, too.

Could you lose rankings? Yes, it's possible, but you can mitigate this as much as possible with proper redirects.

The major benefit of consolidation will be that, going forward, every single action you take will go to strengthening the brand, rather than you having to slice that up 5 different ways. Your goal will be to become the dominant player in your city for everything you do with an incredibly powerful website backed up with a unified marketing plan.

I do recommend going with folders rather than subdomains. It's simpler.

Hoping you'll get some other opinions from our community, and that this one helps. Wishing you luck in the work ahead!

Hi Max,

Have you figured out why your listing was suspended?

Here are some resources for you to investigate:

http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/google-places-help-support/969-google-places-account-suspended.html

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/under$20review/business/jJLBJaQpqFo/KaKQeKgqhMsJ

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/business/xgP-vdm6kbk

http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/local-search-general-discussions/1182-clients-lies-have-caught-up-them.html

There isn't a simple answer in cases like these. The best thing to do is to figure out why you were suspended (if you can) and then see if you can find a case similar to yours documented out there. Some say that a suspended listing is dead. Others say it's possible to get back into Google's good graces. I recommend you read the above and see if some clues pop up for you.

Totally agree that time off is necessary now and then to keep the mind fresh. Hope you enjoy your break!

Hi OOMDO,

I'm not sure I'm fully understanding the work model you are describing here. Let me share some info in hopes that you'll see an answer in it, but if not, please provide further details.

Regarding the number of Google+ Local pages you may have, the Google Places Quality Guidelines state:

Departments within businesses, universities, hospitals, and government buildings may be listed separately. These departments must be publicly distinct as entities or groups within their parent organization, and ideally will have separate phone numbers and/or customer entrances.

So, in the case of an auto dealership, the business could technically build one Google+ Local page for its service department and another for its sales department, if these have different front doors and separate phone numbers. Is this what you are asking about?

Hi Kye,

Thanks so much for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum and will do my best to help you.

Just to confirm, I am seeing in your screenshots and link 2 variants of your address:

805 West Broadway, Vancouver, BC V5Z 1K1 (604) 220-7490 ‎

507-805 West Broadway, Vancouver, BC V5Z 1K1 (604) 220-7490 ‎

I had to tap a Canadian colleague on the shoulder to confirm that this order of 507-805 is a typical format in Canada (here in the US, suite numbers always come at the end of the street address - never at the beginning). So that seems typical.

Next, in an attempt to troubleshoot this, I looked your business up on YellowPages.ca as they are Canada's major local data provider. I searched for 'Vuppie Real Estate Team Vancouver BC' but could not find your company listed there. So, that's a dead end, but also a useful note to you that your company should probably get listed there as Google Places relies heavily on that source in your country for accuracy and confirmation of data.

Next, I searched Google Maps for your phone number. It signals that there are 8 listings with that address, but , rather annoyingly, when I click the link to show me what they are, it won't show me. Can you account for 8 listings for the phone number - perhaps 1 for the office and 1 for 7 distinct partners in the realty office?

A G Maps search for your business is only turning up your one listing, so perhaps that mention of 8 listings is nonsense.

Next, I did an address search within maps for your address of 805 West Broadway
Vancouver, BC V5Z 1K1

Looks like there are a ton of businesses at this address. I see:

Ainsworth Geoffrey Dr‎ -Balevi Ben Dr‎ -Bergman James H Dr‎ -2 reviewsBuffets Vancouver‎ -12 reviewsDr. Belinda Weltman - ClearView Orthodontics‎ -Dr. E. Dwayne Karateew‎ -1 reviewIntegral Dental Lab‎ -Millenaar Diederik W Dr‎ -Pharmasave‎ -Platinum Denture Clinic‎ -1 reviewRoss William H Dr‎ -Taylor & Blair Personal Injury Lawyers‎ -TD Bank Financial Group‎ -3 reviewsTony's Coffee‎ -1 reviewVancouver Dental Spa‎ -2 reviewsVancouver Dentist Dr Ara Elmajian & Assoc.‎ -Vancouver Dentist on Broadway Dr. B Kwoo‎ -3 reviewsVancouver Hearing Centre‎ -Vuppie Real Estate Team‎ -9 reviewsWillow Dental Care Vancouver‎ -10 reviewsOut of curiosity, I began mousing over these and saw that about 8/10 of the do not have suite numbers/unit numbers of any kind attached to the address. Only a few do. So that's interesting. Why is Google recognizing only a small portion of suite #s for all of these businesses? Is it because the business owners didn't realize they needed to list a suite number to differentiate themselves from other occupants of the building or because, as is the case with your listing, the number has abruptly dropped out of sight? Don't have an answer to this, but it's a good question.

Now, when an issue like this occurs, I typically run a quick search of the Google Places Help Forum to discover if there is a rash of reporting of a similar error. Again, Google drops the ball as the functionality of their search tool is down. This is the case at least 50% of the time with what should be the most useful tool for searching for common current issues.

This leaves me with two comments that may be of some or no relevance to what you are experiencing:

1. In the United States last week, a bunch of us saw our client's addresses which were formerly listed with Suite 205 or what have you change in formatting to #205. This was remarked on and we wondered if Google was experimenting with a change of the way they are handling suite numbers. I wonder if something similar could be going on in Canada and if the number has gone missing in action only temporarily? You didn't mention when this change occurred.

2. The other recent suite-number-type news is that Google just updated their Google Places Quality Guidelines to state that if you have a suite number, it needs to be listed in the second line of the address. This was a big change, and I bet many business owners have no knowledge of it. Here is a link to the guidelines where you can read the language yourself:

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

I find myself wondering what would happen if you edited your listing to include the suite number in the second address line. It might trigger re-verification which would be a pain in the neck. I wonder, too, about the fact that because it is common in Canada for such numbers to come first, your updated listing would then look funny to Canadians. So, the question really is - is it worth it to do this?

My questions for you are:

• Have you noticed any drop in rankings?

• How old is the listing?

• Do you know when this change actually happened?

My one concern, really, is that the listing may become merged with any of all those other businesses showing at this address which are not differentiated by a suite number. Do your reviews look okay? Anything there that shouldn't be?

My Advice To You:

Open a thread at the Google Places Help Forum on this topic and see if you can get Vanessa to reply to it. It's a very good question and my normal methods of troubleshooting have not yielded any reliable clues. You should point out that a number of the businesses at your address are also not showing a suite number at this point and that you are concerned about a) merging and b) clients not knowing which suite to visit when they come to what must be a very busy building.

On a final side note, Kye, I would recommend an edit of your Places description. It's not considered a best practie to put geographic info in your description...Google might view it as spammy. The description currently reads:

Pete Shpak is a Top Vancouver BC Realtor/Real Estate Agent focusing on Condo and Home sales in False Creek, Yaletown, Kitsilano, Fairview, Coal Harbour, Downtown, Gastown, West End & Lower Lonsdale

I'd edit that.

Please, feel free to return to this thread with further info/questions.

Miriam

Hi There!

It's fine to include a short list like you've highlighted. What you don't want to do is to create a large block of text that is simply a list of tons of cities or zip codes as Google has specifically stated they don't approve of this. But if you are just mentioning the 5 cities you serve, I think you'll be A-OK, particularly as you are linking to internal pages for further detail.

As to not including these in your top level navigation, the decision about this would need to stem from how important these pages are to your customers and your business. If they are secondary pages rather than core pages, perhaps you'd want to create a section for these landing pages with a small sub-menu that governs it? But, if these are core pages, I'd want them in the top level navigation.

Hope this helps!

Hi Max,

Are you aware of the advice that if you move, you should create a new listing? Just wanted to make sure you knew that.

Hi Jason,

The explanation of your business model is helpful in a number of ways. Interestingly, (and excitingly), Google+ Local actually has a category for magicians.

Go to Mike Blumenthal's category tool (http://blumenthals.com/Google_LBC_Categories) and type 'magician' into the search box. Here's what you'll see:

Category: Magician

Synonyms: magic, _magician_s, parties, party, magic, _magician_s, parties, party, magic, _magician_s, parties, party

As a Local SEO, I find this extremely interesting because it immediately clues us in to how Google categorizes and views your business, indicating that these are core terms that should be included in the development of your local business profiles and website optimization.

I am not sure from your description whether you are making specific efforts to promote your business via Local SEO. I would think you should be doing so, provided your business meets the following criteria:

1. Has a name or DBA

2. Has a dedicated street address (even if it's a home address that you hide when creating your local business listings)

3. Has a local area code phone number

4. Makes face-to-face contact with customers (like when you perform your magic act)

If you can say 'yes' to all four things, then you should be doing Local Search Marketing to promote your business to its fullest.

Unfortunately, whether you are researching terms like 'magician' or 'entertainer', keyword research tools can give, at best, a general picture of actual local traffic. Things like the Google Keyword Planner Tool and Google Insights can help to form this general picture, but you sort of have to make an assumption that people in major cities are, indeed, looking for magicians and entertainers.

As a local business, the core of your geographic optimization is going to be based on the city in which you are physically located. If your street address is in Cleveland, then this is what Google sees you as the most relevant answer for, when it comes to user queries. You can work to appear high in the LOCAL results (often called the 7-pack) for people searching for variations of the term 'magician cleveland' or for searches searching for 'magician' from a device located in Cleveland. Again, we are talking about LOCAL results here.

Now, many business models may be located in one city, but also travel to serve additional cities (think of plumbers). Because of Google's bias towards physical location in the city of search, these service area businesses are unlikely to appear in the Local results for these additional service cities. Instead, they have go after gaining visibility in the ORGANIC results for these additional service cities.

Currently, best practices for achieving this involve the creation of city landing pages. One page for each city where you serve. The content on each page must be unique and awesome. It should be optimized for what you do in the city where you do it. You can read a detailed explanation of this practice here:

The Nitty Gritty of City Landing Pages For Local Businesses

How well this practice works depends on how competitive your local market is, and how much work you may need to do to promote these pages. Gaining even a modest amount of visibility in the organic results for your additional service cities can make phones ring, so this will be an important area for you to investigate. Hope this helps!

Hi Oneserve,

It is a good idea to try to get in touch with Google about this, but in the event that you get the answer that the pic is being pulled algorithmically and they can't do anything about it, here is further reading on this topic:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/02/19/why-a-business-should-always-add-photos-to-their-google-plus-page-for-local/

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/wrong$20photo/business/2wMTWwhCXLU/ahmDkltk8D0J

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/wrong$20photo/business/zVyGBuVUDHQ/PpKvFWjNs0cJ

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/wrong$20photo/business/aB32adqlkHo/59t3Oll6HmkJ

Hope this helps!

Hi Again Bix,

As I suspected, this may be difficult/impossible to have remove. My only good suggestion on this is to try using the Google Maps Troubleshooter to see if you can get some help that way, but I think you may be stuck with that link being generated by the algo:

http://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!forum/maps

Too bad there isn't a simple solution for this. Just one of those things where I wish there was more support!

Miriam