Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Ivgi,

I'm responding on this thread rather than on the first one I responded to. I received the email you sent me and took a very quick look at your company's website. Within the scope of Q&A, I'm afraid no on can do your keyword research for you - that's a big process that will require an investment of multiple hours of time. What I can do is give you my honest take on your situation in hopes that it will help your company to make a good decision.

• I think there is a lack of clarity in the business model. I am not familiar with the online shopping business model and have not worked with this type of business before, but it seems to me that if your company only delivers groceries to two places, then you aren't just an 'online grocery delivery', you are in some way a local business. I'm not positive about this, but whomever handles the work for your business needs to totally clarify what the business model is. You've stated that you deliver to two cities. Then I see something on the site about nationwide delivery. Which is it?

• The website is not giving me any type of value proposition. Why should I be shopping online? Why should I be shopping online with your company? What is the value? How do I get groceries? Who delivers them, when, etc? The site isn't telling me.

• The website copy needs a complete overhaul. It appears to have been written by an ESL copywriter, and as the audience is likely to be primarily speaking English as their first language, the problems with the copy will not instill trust in the quality of the business.

• It may be that the overall architecture of the website needs to be re-done, and for sure, the company needs a clear strategy for exactly what they are doing. The front entry page appears to indicate that there are 2 different sections to the site, one for each city. But what about the nationwide offer?

These are just a few of things I see in my brief glance at your website. It is my belief that your company's success depends on hiring a professional SEO and Usability team to do a complete audit of the website and create and implement a strategy, based upon market research, that will enable the business to clarify is model, message and promotion options. If they are expecting you to do this in-house, and you are, as you say, a beginner, then the company's expectations are not on-track.

I would strongly urge the business to choose the very best firm they can afford. You need real pros to do this right...perhaps check out the list of recommended companies here on this website.

http://www.seomoz.org/article/recommended

I hope my suggestions are useful. I truly do believe that your company needs expert assistance with their online marketing and should not be expecting an in-house novice to get them results. That is too much responsibility to put on one staff member's shoulders, given the size, scope and needs of the website and the business.

Hi Todd,

Thanks for your detailed reply. I'll answer, one by one:

1. All main pages of your website need to be optimized with your geography in mind. Remember - you are not trying to rank for 'home health care' or 'visiting nurses' - you are trying to rank for your keywords+your city name. You don't care if people in Texas find you. You care if your neighbors can find you and the local optimization of your website is a big part of what will make this possible. I am going to link you to a guide I give to all of my new Local SEO clients. I think it will be a helpful read for you:

The Rudiments of Local SEO

2. Good idea!

3. Call tracking numbers are taboo in Local Search, unfortunately, because they cloud the purity of the NAP (name-address-phone number) signal you need to be sending to bots and humans. For more on this issue, read this article by Chris Silver Smith (http://searchengineland.com/for-local-seo-lack-of-call-tracking-solution-spawns-cloaking-70198) and this more recent one by Mike Blumenthal (http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/05/14/a-guide-to-call-tracking-and-local/) to get the history and current understanding of this issue. These articles will teach you what you should and shouldn't do with call tracking numbers.

4. If the majority of your business is being transacted at clients' locations then you are an SAB and should be hiding your address. It's estimated that Google has penalized thousands (likely more) of businesses for failure to comply with this rule since they announced it in May of 2012. How you comply depends on whether you have the old or new Places dashboard. The new one makes the procedure more automatic, but I'm not sure which dash you have, so this is something you should research further.

5. Many good Local SEO firms offer audits, but their rates will all be different. You should expect to invest at least a few hundred dollars in a good one. I recommend that you visit that Professional Assistance page on GetListed and contact a few of the providers there to inquire about their rates.

Hope this helps!

Hi Bob,

I second Russ' suggestion regarding real-world networking in your community. Chances are, you know more about marketing than most of your neighbors and if you can start using that expertise to benefit the community, the people you help will hopefully begin referring you to friends and family. Are there opportunities for you to present at local business meetings, such as chamber of commerce events? Could you host a seminar, geared toward a specific sector of the business community? Additionally, begin blogging regularly about the local business scene. Talk about important industries. Give free advice. Make friends.

From a purely local (as in Google local) standpoint, you are allowed to list your business only if you make face-to-face contact with your customers. Making that part of your business model will enable you to build citations, most of which are free. With good citations, reviews and the right organic strength, you can work toward local stack rankings.

Hope these thoughts are helpful and good luck to you!

Hi Storwell,

Google's decision as to what qualifies as a citation source is not in your hands and Google has not given a definitive public explanation as to how a website becomes deemed appropriate as a citation source. It's an interesting suggestion that if enough people linked back to a certain source, Google might eventually come to recognize that source as a trusted citation provider. This might be a factor in their determination process (i.e. if enough links are indicating that a source is of importance, some type of consideration might be triggered  at Google). Interesting idea, as I've said, but I have never read or heard anything to indicate that this is true or correct.

Your best bet is likely to devote your time to getting your business cited by those entities that Google already considers to be appropriate for your industry and region. Using Whitesparks' Local Citation Finder tool will get you off to a very strong start with this process:

http://www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/2-using-the-local-citation-finder

My feeling is that your results will be most effective if you focus on what Google feels are the best citation sources, rather than trying to find a way to convince them that some other source should be included. Hope this suggestion is helpful to you.

Per your response, to Tyler Fraser, let's keep the conversation positive and friendly here in Q&A. Everyone is here to learn and help and we appreciate everyone's participation.

Hi Glen,

Can you provide further detail as to what you mean about 'bouncing around'? Please, describe that behavior more thoroughly.

Now, without actually investigating your listing, my response will have to be pretty general. Here are some factors to consider:

• Proximity to city centroid

• Age of domain

• Consistency of NAP (name, address, phone) in citations

• Age, authority, pace and number of citations

• Optimization of website

• Compliance with the 'hide address' rule, if appropriate

• Existence or lack of duplicate listings

• Compliance with all other guidelines

• Authority, number and pace of reviews

These are some of the core factors. One thing you might like to do is run your site through 51 Blocks' local competitive analysis tool which lets you compare your site to the top 10 on some of the top local ranking factors:

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

This is a new tool and I'm really excited about it. It's getting good press in the localsphere, and right now, it's free. Why not check that out and see if you notice something important, as well as considering all of the points on my list. Hope this helps!

Hi Raymond,

Great question. Here is what I would advise this client if he were mine.

First, I would determine how distinct the 2 businesses are. If, for example, one is a pizza parlor named Joe's Pizza and the other does high end catering for weddings and is called Weddings by Josef, then these really are distinct businesses. In this case, the owner should be utilizing a completely distinct:

1. Name

2. Phone

3. Street Address

4. Website

5. Google+ Local Page

I do not recommend that Joe's Pizza and Weddings by Josef go the suite number route at the same address because I think their is a chance the businesses could be merged. Instead, I think your suggestion of the catering business being run out of the home of the owner makes sense. And, yes, he should definitely be hiding his address on the Google+ Local page for the catering company, though not, obviously, on the listing for the restaurant.

There are other business models in which catering is just a service offered under the same brand. For example, there is the big franchise, Subway. You can go eat sandwiches at their restaurant, or you can hire them to cater an event. In this case, Subway should simply be building out their own brand to reflect that they offer both in-house food and catering services. They are entitled to only one Google+ Local page, and can select catering as one of their categories. They can build up content on their corporate website to reflect that they do catering.

So, I think the answer to which of these 2 routes is right for your client is to totally clarify his business model. Is catering part of his restaurant's brand, or is he really operating 2 different businesses? Hope this helps!

Hi Ruchi,

What you are experiencing is a common phenomenon. Your former organic rank has been subsumed into your new blended/local rank. This is why you are no longer seeing your organic result as a separate result.

This usually occurs once a business begins engaging in Local Search Marketing in some form. Perhaps you claimed your Google+ Local listing or started building citations on various local directories recently?

Unless you want to completely delete all local references to your business, then your current blended/local rank is here to stay.

It is possible to go after a secondary organic ranking by optimizing a second page on your website. This doesn't always work, but it sometimes does if the competition isn't too tough.

I'm interested to know why you would prefer to have an organic listing over a blended/local one. Are you experiencing something negative? Feel free to provide additional details if your questions/concerns have not yet been answered.

Hey J.P.I hope you'll get lots of community feedback on this one. I don't have any hands-on experience with the business side of Hotel Finder, but here are some suggestions:

1. Read this: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2015/09/google-hotel-ads-makes-it-easier-for.html

2. And this: http://insideout.com/blog/2015/08/30/google-hotel-finder-changes-bed-breakfast-inns/

3. And if you are willing to 'do anything,' consider talking to these folks: http://acorn-is.com/. They are known in the Local industry for specializing in the hospitality arena, and though I don't have any personal experience with them, I have heard good things about their work and expertise from numerous sources. The name I associate with that business is Lisa Kolb, and she's the one I'd be talking to in your situation.

Hope this helps!

Hi Aviva, I see you started a thread at the Google Place Help Forum about this, which is exactly what I would have recommended doing. I cannot find any documentation of a situation similar to yours. You are either dealing with a bug, or a possible penalty of the account - that would be my best guess. I know my neighbors to the north (Canada) frequently bemoan the fact that they are under-served by Google Places, in comparison to the U.S., and the fact may be that non-US businesses are dealing with even more problems, bugs and exclusions than we are here. I'm really hoping you can get a Google rep to respond to your question as the scenario you are describing does not appear to be common. Good luck!

Hi Raymond,

If the restaurant and the catering business share either a physical address or phone number, only one of them should be locally optimized and locally promoted. If you were to try to promote both this this way, Google would be confused. The listings might be penalized, merged, etc.

So, back to my earlier point, if he wants to gain a local presence on the web for 2 different companies, then he needs to get a distinct physical address and phone number for the catering company.  With that, he can promote both businesses locally, as 2 distinct entities. Without that, he has to pick only one to promote.

I hope this is totally clear. It is a little complicated!

Hi Pushkar,

I just wanted to clarify - when you write 'Top 7 Ranking' - are you talking about Google's Local 7 pack, or are you referring to organic rankings? Your screenshot shows organic rankings, so perhaps that's what you mean, but Google's organic results typically consist of more than seven entries, so I thought I would be sure.

If you're looking to learn more about the pros and cons of EMDs, I recommend this YouMoz post from last year:

http://moz.com/blog/the-exact-match-domain-playbook-a-guide-and-best-practices-for-emds

Nice, Jordan. And funny how good old pen-and-paper can still sometimes be easier than opening .docs, typing things, etc. I like your common sense approach.

Hi Bjolley,

Thanks for coming to the forum to ask your question! I'm glad to see Members contributing their thoughts, but think a point needs to be clarified here.

This is not a case of claiming the 'best' profile and making it your client's authoritative Place Page  - it is a case of claiming the CORRECT profile - the one for the business' legitimate location.

At this point, if this were my client, I would not be worrying about losing a few reviews on his phony Place Pages. I'd be sweating whether his account would be penalized before I could report the bogus listings through Google's report a problem link.

Now, that being said, I have seen cases where Google has accidentally displayed the reviews for one geographic location on another location's Place Page, but so far as I know, there is no way to save the reviews. Tell the client they are lucky you are trying to clean up the mess and that going forward, they will need to work on building up new reviews over time to replace what has been lost.

As a final thought, before you report the incorrect Place Pages, why not copy the good reviews and use them as testimonials on the client's website? You might even try doing this with hReview markup code to see if Google will eventually pick them back up again and display them on the authoritative Place Page. But first things first...tell the client you've got to get that record cleaned up as best you can, and fast!

Good luck to you!

Miriam

Hi Dan, Rich snippets come and go in the SERPs, so I don't have a simple answer to that, but it is definitely a best Local SEO practice to add your complete NAP (name, address, phone number) as the very first thing on a Contact Us page. You do not have to have it on your home page. This will not hurt you in any way. In addition to this, it's a good idea to place the same in your footer, sitewide, but you seem to be indicating that you have no way to do this. Why are you unable to do so? I'm curious.

Hi DarrenX,

You've gotten some very good feedback here. In sum:

1. Let your customers review you where they want to. A diverse review profile is good insurance against massive review loss (which happens in big waves on Google). If you lose some reviews at one site, at least you still have some at other sites.

2. When you have a chance to gently steer a customer toward a review site, Google+ Local is always going to be a top choice, because they dominate all local business verticals. Yelp is the obvious runner-up, given how much prominence Google currently gives their pages, but it is against Yelp's policies to ever ask for reviews, so you have to be careful there. Then, depending on your industry and geography, as members have said, you will find that certain directories happen to attract more reviews than others. See where your competitors are prominent and keep those directories in-mind.

The above is best practice advice for local businesses. However, you indicate that your current client is virtual rather than local, and develops software. I am not experienced with your industry, but would suspect that product review and technical publications/websites would be your target review sources. Maybe things like: http://reviews.cnet.com/?

I think the key here for you is to figure out where your customers are. Where do people go to find software reviews? That's where you need to be prominent.

Hi Pedram,

While some platforms do allow for bulk uploads of data (see: https://support.google.com/places/answer/178024?hl=en), you will need to provide a local, non-redirecting phone number per each physical location in order to comply with the Google Places quality guidelines which state:

"Use a local phone number instead of a call center number whenever possible."

Be careful, too, of the eligibility of your locations. You mention that many of your locations are 'administrative'. Do they comply with this guideline?

Only businesses that make in-person contact with customers qualify for a Google Places listing.

Some links you might want to check out:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/bulk$20uploads/business/wNhEV4RgVPw/0tVTlwIqU_8J

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/bulk$20uploads/business/4ciD52RZ2eA/VD4ohx1RIEwJ

http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/google-places-help-support/1093-just-check-my-understanding-current-state-play.html#post4438

I hope these tips help!

Hey Andy!

Another very cool suggestion. Is the voice recorder something that came out-of-the-box with your phone, or is it an app you installed? I like your method very much!

Hi Ocsearch,

Keri is correct. The use of P.O. boxes and virtual offices is prohibited by Google's Places Quality Guidelines which you can read in full here:

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

Here is the portion of the guidelines that speak specifically to your query:

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

• Do not create listings at locations where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations. Listings submitted with P.O. Box addresses will be removed.
• Use the precise address for the business in place of broad city names or cross-streets.
• 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.
• Businesses with multiple specializations, such as law firms and doctors, should not create multiple listings to cover all of their specialties. You may create one listing per practitioner, and one listing for the hospital or clinic at large.
• Do not include information in address lines that does not pertain your business’s physical location (e.g. URLs, keywords).

So, basically, the business in question needs to make a critical decision: will they be willing to publish a legitimate address in order to receive the benefits of participating in Google Places? If not, then Google will not consider them to be appropriate for their index.

Hope this helps!

Miriam

Hi John,

I'm in 80% agreement with what our members have replied. Changing the website address should not affect local rankings as a stand-alone fact...but, if the new website is different than the old one, in terms of content, optimization, authority, links, citations, etc., then yes, you could be in for some ranking changes. The strength of the website is the biggest local ranking search factor, so I believe you may see some ranking changes, unless the new website matches the old one in all respects.

Hi vzPro,

I want to be sure I understand your question. Are you saying that in trying to create citations for Greenacres businesses, indexes/directories are automatically changing the city name to Lake Worth? If so, it could be that Greenacres is not a recognized city name, in the eyes of these indexes/directories. This was my first thought, as I believe I've seen a similar situation reported in the Google and Your Business Forum.

However, I did a simple Google search for 'shoe store greenacres fl' and Google is showing me some local Greenacres results, but they are mixed with Lake Worth results and one West Palm Beach result, interestingly. So, Greenacres appears to exist in Google's index of cities. This begs the question: if not on Google's local product, then on which product are you experiencing this issue of the city being automatically changed, if I have correctly described what you are experiencing?

When oddities like this arise, typically the best thing to do is to get in touch with a Google Mapmaker RER to see if they can help clarify Google's view of the geography. Please, feel free to provide further details.

If this is a local business (rather than a virtual one) and the goal is Local rankings, then Google is going to see the business as most relevant to its city of location, regardless of how you optimize the website. Presumably you will be listing the physical address in the suburbs on the Google+ Local page and on various directory listings and Google will most strongly associate the business name with this location - not with a nearby desired major city. So, unless the business completely forgoes Local SEO of any kind, doesn't publish an address anywhere and only pursues organic results instead of local ones, Google will see the business as most relevant to its city of location and commonly rank it in local results for searches containing the City B term or stemming from City B-based devices. Organic rankings for City A will have to be seen as a secondary goal. Hope this helps!

Nice! Thanks for confirming, Andy.

Hi Rahul,

Google has certain sites from which it draws third party photos (such as Panaramio, Yahoo, etc.). In order to get links like that, you would have to be considered one of Google's trusted third party image sources. Does this answer your question?

Miriam

Hello Vladislav,

Interesting question. Now, 'gutter ma' isn't exactly what I would call a local search. Local searches are typically city-based. So, for you, if you're located in Springfield, true local searches would be for things like 'gutter cleaning springfield' or searches without the 'springfield' but being performed on Springfield-based devices.

So, when we're looking at the more random results for a statewide search something like 'gutter ma' (which probably is not how most people would be searching for your services) we see a variety of locales represented. Setting my location to Springfield, this is what I see:

1. Abbott Window & Gutter Cleaning, Inc.

   <cite>www.abbottwindowandguttercleaning.com/</cite> 1 Google review

2. 2 Kane Industrial Drive

   Hudson, MA
   (978) 562-1744 |

   Minuteman Leafguard

   <cite>www.leafguardgutters.com/boston-ma/hudson</cite> Google+ page

3. 50 Boston Road

   Lowell, MA
   (978) 256-0092 |

   Insul-Kings

   <cite>www.insulkings.com/</cite> 1 Google review

4. 66 Farm Road

   Marlborough, MA
   (508) 481-0666 |

   Marlboro Gutter Cleaning

   <cite>www.cleangutter.com/</cite> Google+ page

5. 	Plymouth, MA
   (800) 994-3000

   Gutter Pro

   <cite>www.gutterpro.com/</cite> 2 Google reviews

6. 60 Medford Street

   Somerville, MA
   (617) 868-2673 |

   Carroll Seamless Gutters Inc

   <cite>www.carrollsons.com/</cite> Google+ page

7. 16 Jacques Street

   Worcester, MA
   (508) 488-9999 |

   Custom Insulation Company, Inc.

   <cite>www.custominsulation.com/</cite> 2 Google reviews - Google+ pageMore results near Massachusetts »

As you can see from this search, Google is selecting businesses from many different cities within the state. What their algo is for doing so on a broad search like this, I do not know. But, at least on my search, it doesn't appear that they are simply putting up listing from the state capitol (Boston). The selection looks quite random to me and I have no idea how one could influence it because of the apparent randomness.

Also, I would truly question the value of ranking in a local pack like this for a state based, unspecific search. Presumably, people are looking for your client for 'gutter cleaning' not just 'gutter' and if they are leaving off any geo terms at all, Google will show them local results based on their location, and if they are adding a city term, it would presumably be their own, in which case, your client has the best chances of ranking in the local pack of results for their city of location.

Hope this helps!

Hi Vz,

Yes, I do think this could cause problems. It seems you are not actually having to solve an issue like this, but are just curious about it. In my opinion, this is the type of issue one would either need to take up with the RERs at the Google Map Maker Forum (http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/map-maker), or try to get direct help with from Google staff at the Google Data Issues phone number (http://support.google.com/places/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1386120&page=ts.cs). Additionally, it might be necessary to talk to whichever directories are automatically changing the city name to see if something can be done about this. Inconsistent NAP is a major issue, so resolution, if possible, would be very important.

Hi Wayne,

Thanks so much for the clarification! I would put it this way - the primary category chosen will be the one your client has the best chances of ranking for, and this will typically also be the main, or one of the main, terms the website is optimized for. Carefully choosing your secondary categories is also very important, and building out content on the website that matches these terms is a very good, strong step. However, whether this alone will enable the client to rank will be completely dependent on how competitive the client's unique market is. If he has few competitors for these other terms, this could be enough, but if the competition is tougher, you may have to go the extra mile to start seeing results. The extra mile might include earning links to these pages, social efforts, video marketing, etc.

I do want to clarify that none of Google's pre-set categories reflect services, however. All of them reflect what a business is (dentist), not what it does (root canals), so it's important to keep that in mind.

So, I think you have a very good initial plan: carefully choose the 9 other, non-primary categories and build out content for them. See where this gets the client. You might find he's now ranking for a few of the categories, but that for others, additional efforts will need to be made. Hope this helps!

You're receiving really excellent technical feedback here from the community checking for potential technical issues, and it seems like you've ruled a lot of this out. So, I'm going to make a comment which may seem a bit different, from a user viewpoint rather than a technical one.

Visiting your site and seeing that you were in Florida, I thought that perhaps 'Native American Palm Huts' (the name of the business) might have something to do with the palm structures called Chickees that are traditionally built by the Seminole Indians in your state. See: http://www.semtribe.com/Culture/Chickee.aspx. The designation 'Native American' immediately makes me think that a business is talking about a product that is Native-made (which is a term protected by the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Arts_and_Crafts_Act_of_1990, a truth-in-advertising law).

And, at first, I saw this statement on a couple of pages of your site that made me wonder if your company is an Indigenous one making these Chickees for local tribes, "We Do Major Construction for the Native Americans."

But, on further perusal of the site, I think I understand that what the company actually makes is the types of huts typically associated with Polynesia - tiki huts/bars. Interestingly, as I looked into this a little more, I saw that you may have some competitors who are using Chickee and Tiki interchangeably, or, at least linking the 2 structures together though they originate in very different parts of the world ... like here: http://www.bigcypresstikihuts.com/tiki_hut_history.aspx

What all of this is making me wonder about is whether the company name, and the practice of referring to the products as Native American, and other semantic keyword combinations might be:

1. Confusing to users (it was to me at first).

2. Confusing to bots (sending signals to them that you are trying to rank for something traditional/historical rather than a completely different commercial product).

3. In compliance with the Indian Arts & Crafts act (is your company Native-owned?). If you are Native-owned, I would definitely suggest highlighting this as an excellent feature of the business. If you are not Native-owned, you may need to consider re-branding, or, at least, do some careful study of that law.

I also want to take a minute to mention that the site is not especially well optimized from a purely Local SEO perspective, but it may be that you've decided to go after the state rather than specific cities. I wouldn't overlook Local SEO, as it could cut down some of your competition as you work toward ranking for broader geography.

I do think there's some growing room here, both in terms of improving your existing content and developing new content as you go along. The site is pretty small, and rather than an image gallery (which has no text) you could be building well-written project showcases which would have local relevance and considerably expand the website.

Finally, anecdotally, I want to share that I have seen cases in which the brand of a business was either too generic or too random to send a good signal to the bots that a user was looking for that specific, commercial business rather than some other sort of known term. For example, if you had a swimming pool business that was named just "Florida", it would be a stretch to convince Google that people searching for 'Florida' are actually looking for your company rather than the state. That's an extreme example, and your business name does contain the keyword phrase 'Palm Huts' but I mention it because the language we use can sometimes send signals to both humans and bots that we may not have considered.

Something to think about, and I hope these first impressions as a new visitor to your site may be helpful.

Greetings, Michael!

Thanks for coming to Q&A to ask your question. While a complete audit of both businesses would take some doing and is really beyond the scope of what I can do here in the forum, I think the obvious reason one of those business is ranking for 'best bar' is that the name of the business is 'best bar  (b que)'.  Google may be understanding queries for 'best bar' as having an intent to find this business.

Other members are taking a proactive stance in asking you what you are doing for your business. Are we all reckoning correctly that these 2 businesses are your competitors? If so, have you done everything possible for your own business, in terms of a local search marketing campaign. Specifically,

How strong are the local hooks in your website?

How strong is your local content?

Have you got a good link profile pointing to the site?

Is your Google Place page violation free and complete?

Are there duplicate listings or other problems that could be tanking your rankings?

Are you actively encouraging Google-based user reviews? Does any competitor have more reviews than you?

Are you listed in major third party local business indexes and review sites?

Are you building up a strong citation profile to your Place Page?

Shane Thomas is right to mention the importance of reviews - but I did want to be sure to mention that Google and most other review entities specifically forbid the use of incentives in exchange for reviews. You must inspire happy customers' goodwill rather than attempting to give them bonuses if they will review your business. And Yelp doesn't want you to ask for reviews at all (though this is something of a grey area).

It's smart to look at the competition, absolutely, but the only thing you can control is what you are doing with your own business. Hopefully some of these ideas will be helpful to you! Good luck!

Miriam

Hi Dan, My guess from your question is that you may be a virtual business competing against local businesses for your specified search term. As you've probably seen over the past few years, Google is placing increased emphasis on their local results whenever they believe a search may have a local intent. Your search term could definitely have a local intent, so this is Google's reason for showing these local businesses. You are correct that one of Google's displays is to show their local results below 1-3 organic results. But, another quite common display is for the local results to be first on the page. This is what is showing in your first link. If you saw the display for this kw phrase go from one type to the other, that is just a sign of Google's constant changes to their presentation of data. It could stay the way it is today, or change tomorrow. So, for virtual businesses who do not qualify for inclusion due to lack of physical location, results like these can be a huge drag. But for local business owners, they are great. Google's goal is to present the information they believe will be most relevant and helpful to the user. In the case you've cited, Google has decided that more people want local results than organic ones, presumably.

Hi Lisa,

I would recommend that you try to have a phone call with Google staff. Follow this process.

1. First, find all duplicate listings and click the 'report a problem' link on the right hand side. This will take you through the report a problem trouble shooter.

2. Then, I would wait a couple of weeks and if nothing changes, use this troubleshooter:

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

Choose this option, as I am presuming you've got incorrect data issues spread out over a variety of duplicates:

Listing data, including title, address, phone, URL, categories, hours, description, or coupons

Then click the 'yes' button.

You will get a phone option and can hopefully have a conversation with a live person at Google regarding your multiple issues with the client. If they give you advice, I would then check up on the validity of it by visiting the Google and Your Business forum to see if it matches similar advice being given there by other Google employees (http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/business).

Regarding claiming an existent listing, please read the following:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/05/17/basic-places-practices-update-how-do-you-claim-an-owner-verified-listing/

And be sure to follow all of the links in the above piece to get the full picture from Mike Blumenthal on this. Hope this helps!

Nice answer from Keith! I'll add to this that, from a purely organic perspective, most structured citations (i.e. citations built on local business directories) do contain a link to your website or a landing page on your website. Given the role links play in organic, I'm sure these help a little, though I can't quantify how much. It may not be a whole lot, given the predictability of these types of links for local businesses. Your website is your strongest organic ranking factor if you are a local business, so it needs to be great!

Hey There!

Good suggestions from the community about studying the Beginner's Guide so that you can be more specific in your query here, which should ensure much better community feedback. Also, I see you've categorized this as a local strategy question. May I recommend that you go through our Local SEO Checklist, for advice specific to Local?  See: https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-checklist

Hope this helps!

Greetings!

Thanks for coming to Q&A to ask your important question. This interview with Eric Enge is over a year old now, but his advice holds true, in my opinion:

http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-carter-maslan-032710.shtml

The part of the interview relating to your scenario is this:

Eric Enge: Let’s say you have more than one location, 100 for example. In your view, is it helpful to have individual pages on the website for all of the locations? Also, is it helpful to have the Google local business center linked to each of those individual pages rather than having 100 locations that point to a single web address?

Carter Maslan: I can tell you what I think the ideal end state is, and there are various levels of getting there. Ultimately, we would like to have the store-specific page known so that people can just click through and see today's specials and any kind of adjustments for that particular day. We would love to have all of that information on a direct click to the most specific page for that location.

That’s what we encourage, but there are still a lot of chains and things that just link to their top-level domain. I guess it's a split answer. We want to get to a store specific page, but we are not uniformly there across all of the businesses.

Eric Enge: Could that potentially be encouraged by making it a ranking factor, for example?

Carter Maslan: Yes. I guess there are two sides to it. If you create a store-specific page that really just has an address, it wouldn't be as helpful as having some genuinely good content on the page that the user would really appreciate having as the first click-through experience. That’s what I think we need to work through.

We don't want to arbitrarily tell people that they must create a store-specific page, because we are really just trying to find the most useful page for that business. That’s why I am not so definitive on the store-specific page or not. I really just want what’s best for the retailer, store or businesses, first and foremost giving the user what he would want to see when he clicks on that business.

Eric Enge: Say you have a store-specific page that lists specific and individual things about just one store location. Depending on the kind of business that could be an inventory list that shows you've got extra stock?

Carter Maslan: There is a chain of stores that carries yoga equipment that my wife really likes. They have special yoga instruction, carry special brands, and host lectures on some special days. There are all kinds of things that the retailer does that relate to that specific store location, and there is also a general corporate catalogue page. So this is not black and white, and even though we want to encourage it, it's not that there is a definitive guidance saying companies need to have that page.

Eric Enge: Obviously it’s good if there is a quality page with information unique and specific to each location.

Carter Maslan: Yes, that's great. If we know that there’s good information about that page, then that helps on search and the snippets that we can show on the search results, because we know that the page is referencing that place. It does help even if it ends up not being the page that you list as your primary homepage. If there is good content that we know is content about that place, then it helps us do a better job with query results.

If a company has a page that's store-specific and talks about its class schedule, and there is one that says its holding Tai Chi class tonight and someone is searching for places to do Tai Chi, then that helps us to score it. If a lot of people have found that page helpful about the Tai Chi class, then when people search for Tai Chi we would know that that location has something to do with Tai Chi.

Now, bear in mind that Eric was stating this as an opinion of best practices rather than an official statement from Google, but barring having a distinct website for each of the franchise's locations, yes, having a unique page for each business will be a good idea. And, of course, each location must have its own local area code phone number and street address. This will qualify each branch to have a unique Place Page which can then link to its respective landing page on the website.

Parting advice - do make an effort to make the landing pages unique. Don't just cut and paste copy, changing the address and phone number. Write unique copy about each business!

Hope this helps!

Miriam

Hi Onlinechester,

I believe what you are describing is the quite common phenomenon in which the previous organic rank of a business for a given query is subsumed into a newer local ranking (a ranking in the pack of lettered, pinned results). Since the Venice update in early 2012, it has become uncommon for any single business to have both a local and organic page 1 ranking for any search term. There are exceptions to this, but as a rule, if you've got a local listing, you're unlikely to have a secondary organic one on the same page of the SERPs.

Some marketers have published pieces on managing to achieve a double page 1 ranking for local clients. Here's an article on that topic by Adam Steele:

http://www.nightlitemedia.com/2012/05/organic-and-google-places-ranking-on-page-1/

There's also a good discussion going on about this topic at The Local Search Forum:

http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/google-local/1816-disagreement-my-client-over-organic-vs-g.html

I recommend you read both resources and see if what I've written is accurately describing the common phenomenon you are experiencing.

If not, please come back with further details.

Hi Call Ring Talk,

You have already received such awesome and helpful replies from the community, I will only add a bit here, some of which will be a summary of what others have written.

Local rankings depend on a ton of different factors. Where you have a physical location, your best bet is typically to pursue local rankings. If you are a Service Area Business (SAB) you must pursue organic rankings for your service cities. Per your original question, the development of city landing pages on your website is one of the best tactics for achieving organic rankings for cities where you serve but where you have no physical location. For more information on the topic of city landing pages, I have been told that this piece has been really helpful to a ton of people:

The Nitty Gritty of City Landing Pages

If the whole concept of Local SEO is new to you, I recommend that you read through all of the articles on GetListed.org, which is a MOZ website. Here is the link to the Learning Center:

https://getlisted.org/static/resources/

I further recommend that you follow Local Search Godfather, Mike Blumenthal, on a regular basis:

blumenthals.com/blog

And that you review the 2012 Local Search Ranking Factors report, though many things have changed in the past year. For many years running, this has been the premiere Local SEO industry survey:

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

One of the keys to successful Local SEO for any business is staying on top of the nearly-constant changes that happen in this area of marketing. Keep current and it will serve your business well!

Hi Silkstream,

Thank you so much for clarifying this! I understand now.

If I were starting with a client like this, from scratch, this would be the approach I would take:

1. View content development as two types of pages. One set would be the landing pages for each physical location, optimized for each city, with unique content. The other set would be service pages, optimized for the services, but not for a particular city.

2. Create a Google+ Local page for each of the physical locations, linked to its respective landing page on the website. So, let's say you now have 25 city pages and 46 service pages. That's a fairly tall order, but certainly do-able.

3. Build structured citations for each location on third party local business directories. Given the number of locations, this would be an enormous jobs.

4. Build an onsite blog and designate company bloggers, ideally one in each physical office. The job of these bloggers would be something like each of them creating one blog post per month about a project that was accomplished in their city. In this way, the company could begin developing content under their own steam that would meet the need of showcasing a given service with a given city.  Over time, this body of content would grow the pool of queries for which they have answers for.

5. Create a social outreach strategy, likely designating brand representatives within the company who could be active on various platforms.

6. Likely need to develop a link earning strategy tied in with steps 4 and 5.

7. Consider video marketing. A good video or two for each physical location could work wonders.

I'm painting in broad strokes here, but this is likely what the overall strategy would look like. You've come into the scenario midway and don't have the luxury of starting from scratch. You are absolutely right to be cleaning up duplicate content and taking other measures to reduce the spaminess and improve the usefulness of the site. Once you've got your cleanup complete, I think the steps I've outlined would be the direction to go in. Hope this helps.

Hi Melissa!

This is likely one of those scenarios in which you'll need to work with a Local SEO company to get a full audit and competitive analysis. A quick look at this can yield some information, but may not dig deep enough. Here's what I see at a glance:

1. This is not a strong page and something is odd with the formatting of it. I see a very large amount of white space on the page before the text starts. Text is thin.

2. I am unable to find this page http://www.crmi-online.com/shredding-greenville-nc.html in your navigation menu. Where is it? I was only able to find it by clicking the link you shared in your post.

3. As Logan has mentioned, going with a multi-domain approach is not likely to be a good idea. I am a bit confused by the number of businesses you have. In your footer, I see:

Corporate Office & Sales in New Bern

Record & Data Center in Greenville

I am assuming that these are both offices of CRMI, but the way you have these listed almost makes that look like 2 different businesses with those names, meaning you could be sending a confusing NAP signal to bots.

Are these both forward-facing offices of CRMI that the public comes to? Do both offices offer the same or totally different services?

4. If both are forward facing offices, then you should have a unique landing page for each on the site and link their Google My Business listings and their citations to those landing pages. Do not use forwarding URLs in citations.

5. Is your core search term 'shredding greenville nc'? If so, I am seeing your company ranking #2 in the 3 pack for this. I also see you ranking #2 for 'shredding service greenville nc'. Are you seeing something different?

So, that's just a really quick glance with more questions, maybe, than answers. Please, feel free to provide further details. You've started a good thread

Corporate Office & Sales
507 Pollock Street  Suite 4
PO Box 280
New Bern, NC 28563

Corporate Office & Sales
507 Pollock Street  Suite 4
PO Box 280
New Bern, NC 28563

Corporate Office & Sales
507 Pollock Street  Suite 4
PO Box 280
New Bern, NC 28563

Hi John,

Thanks for coming to Q&A to ask your question. In my personal experience, I have seen listings marked as 'personally closed' eventually drop out of the index if no further changes are made to them, but as to how long this takes, I can't give you a firm answer. Mike Blumenthal's in depth post on this topic comes to the same conclusion regarding unknown length of time, and you might like to read it:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2011/09/28/google-places-what-does-the-new-business-permanently-closed-process-look-like/

The alternate route to sitting around waiting to see when this would happen would be to reclaim the business back into the client's account and then follow the steps for reporting the problem of the business having moved and having another, authoritative Place Page.

At the beginning of 2011, I wrote a post about experimenting with reporting a closed business:

http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=926

4 weeks later I heard from Google and wrote about their marking the business as closed and emailing me

http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=958

At that point, I could still find the flagged-as-closed business in the index. Your question here prompted me to go and see if this was still the case. I discovered that the shop I reported as closed now appears to have disappeared from the organic and Places results, a year later. Wish I could tell you exactly when this happened, but I didn't keep following up on this. At any rate, it did happen eventually.

Hope this helps, John!

Miriam

Hi CWseo,

Yes, the 'in' search has always done that. Odd, isn't it? I've never understood why Google does that in that way, but it's been like that since 2010.

Hi Abith,

Typically, yes, your inclusion in the local results is likely to cause the disappearance of your previous organic rank. This is because your previous organic rank will be subsumed into your new blended local rank. It has been uncommon since the Venice update of early 2012 for any business to have more than one page one spot in the SERPs. Exceptions to this:

1. In areas with low competition (like a single bakery serving a large rural area with no competitors) or areas for which Google lacks much data.

2. When a second, interior page of a website is strong enough to achieve a second organic ranking, independent of the index page which is typically what is used on the Google+ Local page.

Sometimes, I'm surprised by the exceptions I run into out there in the wild, but typically, no, if you have a local ranking, you generally won't also have a page 1 organic ranking.

Hi JohnWeb12,

Sounds like an exciting project! So, here's the deal. The guidelines you are dealing with are these:

• _Individual practitioners may be listed individually as long as those practitioners are public-facing within their parent organization. Common examples of such practitioners are doctors, dentists, lawyers, and real estate agents. The practitioner should be directly contactable at the verified location during stated hours. A practitioner should not have multiple listings to cover all of his or her specializations. _
• _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._See: https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en

• The separate 4 locations MUST have unique phone numbers, because they are going to be associated with unique physical addresses.

• With the practitioners, this is a subject surrounded by grey area. I highly recommend that you read the discussion on Mike Blumenthal's post in which there are many interesting points raised surrounding this very topic in the comments:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/02/14/google-local-quality-guideline-update-allows-for-multiple-departments/

I recommend you read the entire thread to pick up on some of the nuances surrounding the doctors having an identical phone number and the concerns about merging. Mike's advice on this:

"I think having the same phone number is OK by the rules but unfortunately the algo may merge the listings. I have some that are the same that have stayed intact and others that have merged."

My feeling is that each of the 4 offices should have a unique phone number, and that the guidelines do not require that each doctor have his own within the practice, but that there is some risk of merging if they don't. The guidelines are not 100% clear on this, as is the case with many points of order surrounding Google+ Local. I hope the post I've linked to will help you consider the ins-and-outs of this topic!

Hi Neil,

Agree, this is a little complex. Is there a staffed, physical presence at the health retreat during stated office hours, and do customers come to that location? If so, then, yes, you can create a Google My Business listing for it if you feel it meets all of Google Guidelines: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en

Be sure you're carefully reading the guidelines regarding ineligible business models.

Hi Robert!

I want to make sure I understand your question. Can you define what you mean by an 'affiliate'? Obviously, Google allows UGC from anybody on Place Pages (any user), but I'm not quite sure this is what you mean. Thanks!

Hi DWallner,

I found your Google And Your Business Forum thread, here:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/missing$20photo/business/1OKqBIi9DW8/dZbbPQBAQFkJ

The fellow who wrote to you is a Google Top Contributor, which, while not being the same thing as a Google staffer, is the next best thing. However, his suggestion in his last response to you is not appropriate, as I am assuming your business is a service radius business, and therefore, is ineligible for merging.

Google Places still exists as the dashboard via which service radius business like yours can control their local listing. On the public side, what you put in your Google Places dashboard is what should display on your Google+ Local page (Google's new public local product).

I agree, what you are experiencing is very odd. You have a ton of images on your +Local page to choose from, but Google is displaying some type of weird placeholder for you in the preview. While not a disastrous thing, I agree you are right to want to discover the cause of this.

I have seen this suggestion, elsewhere, of trying to upload a photo through the public option. I don't consider this gaming the system. It's an experiment to see if you can jog Google into displaying something for your business. The image system is buggy and it can still take several weeks for photos to appear, though often it is faster than this now.

My only other suggestion would be to poke the listing. Have you tried this? If you don't know what 'poking' is, just ask, and I'll explain it.

I don't have an answer for why you are experiencing this. It could well be a bug, but, if it is, I'm not finding documentation of similar problems in the places I would expect to find such reports. Please, follow up with me on the above.

Good discussion going on here! While I agree with the comments here that strong local businesses are still faring well in the SERPs, I, too, have noticed Google's bias towards Yelp and actually blogged about this recently. A few years ago, there was a similar situation going on with Merchant Circle. Practically every local search would bring up Merchant Circle listings, but it seems to me that MC has now been replaced by Yelp with similar results. I rarely see MC results on page one, but Yelp has become extremely dominant. This could change, of course, but for now, having a well-maintained Yelp profile is very important for most local businesses.

Hi Alex,

Dana is correct - it should have no negative effect, provided you maintain efforts in both areas (organic and local). You can build authority both ways, simultaneously, without conflict.

Hey There!

When properly deployed, development of tools for any type of business can have several different goals:

1. User engagment

2. Resultant brand recognition via use of the tool

3. Ranking well for tools of that type

4. Customer acquisition

Yes, publishing a really excellent tool could indirectly impact your domain's rankings if lots of people engage with the tool and link to it using keywords that are important to your business, but I wouldn't recommend looking at search engine rankings as the core goal of tool development. Simply putting a tool on your site because competitors do overlooks how effective it can be to have a thoroughly-planned marketing strategy that covers whether your potential customers will find such a resource useful, how you will build + deploy this resource and how you will set about marketing this resource so that it becomes a major asset to your business.

For inspiration, you might look right here on Moz. We have a free tool called Check Listing that helps local businesses do a quick health check of their local business listings on major platforms in the US and UK. That's something useful that local business owners and marketers would like to be able to do, so the tool serves a definite purpose. If the visitor finds the free tool useful, they've just had a good experience with Moz and might be interested in learning more about our paid Moz Local software. If they like what they see, they might become a customer, and they might tell their colleagues about Moz Local, and they might even write a blog post on their own website, linking to Moz Local. And if enough customers do this, then yes, Moz's relevance to keyword searches like 'local seo software' could be positively impacted.

In other words, there are many paths to providing a useful + positive experience to each consumer, and a good tool can be a great option where that is interest/need and a market in which you can compete as a provider of that needed tool. It's definitely something that takes a lot of initial research, planning, development and marketing to be successful, so give this careful thought, and see what your business could do to begin being present on a variety of user paths, which, if deftly done, could yield many rewards.

Hi Jason,

If that is the source of the snippet, then the business is more or less stuck with waiting for Google to update its cache. How frequently Google does this for a given site is dependent on many factors. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in Q&A but I'm going to ask one of our excellent traditional SEOs to stop by to speak to you about the cache. Hang in there!

Miriam

Hi Ve,

While getting your business listed via Google Places/Google+ Local is a start, it is just the beginning of what you need to do to achieve high rankings. This is an enormous topic, so let me link to some resources that I feel will be beneficial to you in starting to understand the big, exciting world of Local SEO.

This is the Local SEO industry' premiere annual report on Local Search Ranking Factors:

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

This is a piece of my own to help you get into the right mindset for a successful Local SEO campaign:

The Zen of Local SEO

http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1314

And here is another:

The Rudiments of Local SEO

http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1344

And, as Jason has pointed out, SEOmoz recently acquired David Mihm's GetListed.org and you will find some really helpful articles and a great tool at the link Jason provided.

Hope this gets you off to a great start!