Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Pete, you crack me up:)

Hey There!

Just want to weigh in that I agree there are 2 things you should consider:

1. That your citations are now inconsistent and need to be updated web-wide to reflect the changes you've made

2. That you need consider how Pigeon may be at play here. Lots of businesses have lost rankings due to this algo change.

Hello to our wonderful community here!

I'm updating an old list of free tools to use in a local search marketing campaign. The original list was created before there were quite so many paid tools in our industry, and it definitely needs an update!

I'd like to ask, are there free tools you find yourself using these days in marketing local businesses? These could be related to any aspect of your campaigns.

I'd love it if you'd share your favorites with me, especially if they are things you feel others might not be aware of but which are working really well for you! Thanks for any suggestions you can provide.

Hi David,

Thanks for coming to Q&A with your excellent question. I'm going to respectfully disagree with the conclusion that you should advise the client to keep going forward with the shared address. Clearly, this has worked relatively well so far, and that's the way things are with Places...you can go along with things that don't fit the guidelines for months or years...but if a penalization or merge happens, getting it fixed is truly daunting. Having a unique street address is part of the magic NAP combination that should be the basis of every Places record.

I think the client's greatest possible peril here is a merged record with the other businesses that share the office. His details, reviews and citations may get mashed up with those of the other businesses and the strength of his record may be a) sapped or b) disqualified.

My advice is to have the client set up a suite number with the post office or whatever authority is in place in his community. Definitely understand that this will involve a great deal of work in getting all of his citations/listings corrected, but it is work that will almost certainly have to be done at some point and putting it off only means more work later after more citations have accrued. And, I would much rather engage in this work now, before a negative action happens to the Place Page than after something bad has already happened.

What I am curious about is this: you state that the client has no suite number but that Google is listing one (400). Where is this coming from? Was there ever a suite number associated with the business? Could this be evidence that merging is already going on and that one of the other businesses has submitted a suite number but that it has become attached to your client's record as a result of conflation? I'm a little concerned about that.

At any rate, I would recommend that your client follow the standard procedure in this situation of getting a legal suite number assigned to him in the building to which he can receive mail. It may seem counter-intuitive to do this while things are going relatively well, but the client should be told that the happiness could end suddenly and drastically if Google takes any special notice of the situation going on in the building.

Hope these thoughts are helpful. Good luck!

Miriam

Hi Wayne,

That's what I thought. Here's my take on this. There are two distinct types of keywords you can optimize a local business website for. I think of these as 'is' and 'does'.

Examples of 'Is' Keywords:

Plumber

Arborist

Dog Walker

Examples of 'Does' Keywords

Plumbing

Tree Trimming

Dog Walking

In other words, one set says what a business 'is', the other set says what a business 'does'. Google has always wanted categories, whether custom created or chosen from their pre-set taxonomy, to reflect what a business is - never what it does. In optimizing a local business' website, it is certainly important to include these kinds of 'is' keywords in your work, but you shouldn't limit yourself to this. You'll want to include relevant 'does' keywords, too, because people certainly search both ways.

Keyword research will, of course, be vital to determining which kinds of 'is' keywords are being searched for most for a given business. I consider that Google's pre-set category taxonomy (the only one that will be available to any business once all listings have transitioned to the new Places for Business dashboard) gives us certain clues about how Google understands and organizes types of business. Since we care so much about Google rankings, we need to pay attention to what Google is signalling to us and incorporate these very big hints into our optimization. But we need to build additional content that reflects all the other findings of our kw research, there will typically be lots of 'does' terms in there.

This line of reasoning is why I have to be very frank with low-budget clients who come to me saying that they only want a one-page website, or a five-page website. There are so many keywords we should ideally be optimizing for, and there's no way to cram them all into a tiny site. Pretty much every local business, even if they have to start small, should have a plan for content development that will grow the size of their website to eventually include lots of different keywords. When you start small, though, Google's pre-set categories definitely need to be given consideration, in addition to the most searched terms discovered in your keyword research.

Long answer! But, you've asked a very good question, Wayne, and I wanted to give you a big-picture view of this, based on what I've experienced. Hope this helps!

Hi Atticus,

Just want to clarify that you are not seeking actual local rankings for this, as rental buildings are considered ineligible business models per Google's Local Business Information Guidelines which read:

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

So, if Local is out due to the business model, then this becomes a purely organic puzzle. Google's treatment of a query like '44 Wall St' is going to be varied, due to the lack of specificity of such a query. They are not sure why you are looking for this address and the results I see consist of a variety of answers on Google's part including Mapquest results, some attorneys that work there, some rental offices, etc. In other words, the results are a hodgepodge.

"44 Wall St office space" is a much clearer query, in terms of its intent. Competition looks extremely stiff for this, and searching from California, I see you coming up on page 3 of Google's organic results. Moving up in a situation like that is likely going to result from the typical organic factors (authority, age, activity, freshness, etc.) If you're not duplicating content or building bad links, then it's probably not a penalty - just a competitive environment.

I'm hoping you'll receive further feedback from the community on this!

Whoa - that's not only a great tool, Igor, but your strategy for how to use it is quite amazing! Thank you so much for the suggestion. Very, very cool!

Hi Ayetti,
Josh has given you one resource. I can give you some more.

Here is an excellent article by Myles Anderson at Search Engine Land on the top 50 citation sources for both the USA and UK:

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

Also, read David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors Report from 2011. This is the premiere survey in the Local Search Industry. Good comments and data about citations/directories there:

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

Finally, go to GetListed.org (also a David Mihm product) and go through the process of entering your legal business name and zip code to see what results you get. Then read through the further information on the site about other places to list your business.

You essentially have 2 choices - to do all submissions manually, or, to create your Google Place Page manually and then do a paid submission via either Localeze of Universal Business Listing. If you go the paid route, they submit the business to a ton of directories (can't remember the exact number off the top of my head but it's quite a few). If you do it manually, you have more exact control over where you list yourself and the details you provide on each listing.

Then, beyond the regular local business indexes, there may be important industry-related directories where it would be good for your specific type of business to be listed. Those you will have to hunt for yourself. For example, if your products were Made-in-the-USA, you might want to find some little directories that focus specifically on that.

Hopefully, these resources will be helpful to you. Good luck!
Miriam

Hi Daniel,

You can attempt to transfer reviews with this form (https://support.google.com/business/#topic=2794267&ts=3054546,3141976&contact=1) but given the fact that your old page is gone, I'm not sure what will happen. I've not seen any form for transferring posts, but suggest you research that to see if you can turn something up.

Are you able to get into the dashboard for the new page? Have you verified ownership of it?

Good Morning!

If I'm understanding your question correctly, you are saying that you have 100+ dealers. The term 'dealer' may be confusing to me, as I'm associating it with something like car dealers (brick-and-mortar businesses without a service radius). Do your dealers travel to cities to have face-to-face transactions with customers, like a plumber would? As you've mentioned that you're using the service radius tool on the Google+ Local page, I'm going to assume that these employees do travel to various cities within their service radius to give service. If I'm wrong, please do explain.

So, back to the equation here. You have 100 dealers, and let's say that each of them has a 50 mile service radius with 20 towns and cities in it. If you went the route you're asking about of creating a page for each of these cities, that would mean developing 2000 pages on the website (20 X 100). While this is not an impossible task, it is an enormous one, and the chief danger in it would be the creation of thin, duplicate content that could lower the quality of the website. So, if you were to use this strategy, the requirement would be the manpower and money to create 2000 excellent pages on the website. These city landing pages would need to feature unique content, perhaps showcasing each dealer's projects in a given city.

A half-hearted approach, however, would do more harm than good, so if the business lacks the resources to pull this off, then a better strategy would be to create 100 pages (one for each dealer) optimized with the complete NAP encoded in Schema and featuring an overview of the dealer's work in his city of location. I would not recommend optimizing these pages for the other cities in the service radius. Google's Webmaster Guidelines frown on lists of cities served, so this would not be something you'd want to put on these pages. You could include some type of map on these pages illustrating the service area, to get the point across.

If you are forming a long-term strategy under a long-term contract with this business, then once you've got the 100 pages developed, you might create a plan for beginning to develop service city landing pages for each dealer over time, at a rate that is commensurate with the client's resources to get this work done correctly. It would likely be the work of many months or years to cover every town and city, so finding a way to scale this would likely be the chief challenge in such a project.

Again, if I've misunderstood the business model, please do clarify.

Hi RajeevEDU,

Your business model matches with Business Model IV as laid out in this blog post:

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

You might like to take a gander at that to consider your options. Hope you find that to be a good read!

Good Morning, and good question!

Yes, Google is always testing, and results fluctuations may have nothing to do with whether or not they find you worthy. For example, when the Possum update rolled out, Google simply filtered out thousands of businesses that happened to share categories and be physically near one another. Then the Hawk update happened and they dialed this filter back a bit. So, in a case like that, Google was testing something, and local businesses either weren't filtered or were filtered.

Beyond Google updates, a great many things can lead to local ranking fluctuations. These could include:

1. Searcher proximity. You find yourself ranking well in a pack when you search while in your office. You drive across town and do the same search, and you're not in the 3-pack any more. Local search rankings aren't static anymore.

2. Your competitors are competitive. They are doing things that are enabling them to surpass you in terms of authority. They are telling Google, by some combination of efforts, that they deserve one of the 3 coveted spots more than you do. Maybe they are using Google Posts and you aren't. Maybe the velocity of their reviews is better. Maybe their photos get more clicks.

3. You've done something wrong. You've violated a guideline and have been reported or caught for spam. You have duplicate listings, fake reviews, stuffed business titles, fake locations, malware on your site, problems with indexing, lack of HTTPs protocols, slow load times, etc.

Typically, lack of rankings are going to fall into these categories. For more on this, you might like to read:

https://moz.com/blog/troubleshooting-local-ranking-failures-2018

https://moz.com/blog/45-local-seo-pitfalls

Go through those two blog posts and see if you recognize any of the problems as being relevant to your brand.

If that doesn't turn up some clues, then the next thing to do is to do a full competitive audit between your brand and the brand you see outranking you. This post will walk you through that process and even contains a spreadsheet for you to use:

https://moz.com/blog/basic-local-competitive-audit

Hope this helps!

Hi Again QLKASDJFW,

I had heard some talk at the end of 2011 regarding CBS ramping up a local program, such as this blog post by Peter Krasilovsky:

http://localonliner.com/2011/12/19/cbs-goes-deeper-with-local-content-via-examiner-com-deal/

I haven't had time to look into exactly what they are doing, but frankly, I am shocked by the price you were quoted. $1500? A month? I can't think of ANY service that would be worth a price tag like that, and exactly as you say, you can pay UBL or Localeze a fraction of that for automated local directory submission. I don't have all of the facts about what CBS is offering, so I'm going to decline to make a broad pronouncement on this, but the price tag alone has definitely made me say, "what the heck?" and I think reading Robert's story is a very good idea.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I can't find any documentation from any of the sources I commonly read either praising or condemning this offering. I do know it's not listed among the top 50 citations sources in Myles Anderson's 2011 Search Engine Land article:

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

I'm going to ask around amongst my colleagues on this and see if any of them has an educated opinion on CBS Local Pages to share.

Again, very good question, and Robert, thanks for sharing your frustrating story.

Hi Waqid,

For search terms with a local intent, Google is definitely biased towards true local businesses with physical locations in the city of search. National companies often do employ the tactic you mentioned of building landing pages for various cities they would like to rank organically (not in the local pack of results) for. Unfortunately, this is often not handled well and results in national websites with hundreds or thousands of thin or duplicate content pages. Coincidentally, I brought this very issue up here in Q&A, asking for feedback from the community. Here is the thread, which I believe you will find to be highly relevant to your question:

http://moz.com/community/q/a-page-for-every-conceivable-city-in-the-us-seeking-community-feedback

Hope this helps!

So glad to help! I'll number my recommendations for easiest reading:

1. Use only the legal business name for each dealer. Do not add keywords of any kind, nor change the legal business name in any way. If the company is ABC Plumbing, this is how it should be listed in all cities. Use the legal business name with absolute consistency on the website, the Google+ Local pages and on third party citations.

2. Each dealer must have his own local phone number. Do not use a toll free number, a vanity number, a call tracking number or a shared number. If you want to put a toll free number in an image on the website landing pages, that's fine, and you can list a toll free number as the secondary number on the Google+ Local pages, but always put the unique, local number first.

3. Yes, the complete NAP will exist only on those website landing pages that relate to the cities in which the business is physically located. You will not be putting NAP on the 'location-less' city landing pages. That's good that you have the resources to create unique copy for these pages! You can optimize these pages for the service cities and the business name, but do not put the address and phone number of the physical office in the neighboring city on these pages.

That should cover it. Good luck with the work ahead!

Hi DeploySEO,

It does sound like you're on the right track realizing that content development is going to need to be a major priority here. Don't underestimate the amount of creativity this process requires and deserves - you want to create a finished body of content that your customer love and of which your company is really proud. Wishing you good luck:)!

Hey Ed,

I know just how you're feeling about this, and sometimes, you can be so deep in the weeds of a project, you can begin to feel a bit lost. I think this happens to everybody now and again.

Yes, remove that review schema from the homepage. It could possibly be a spam signal. Not 100% positive about that, but I think it may be so.

Another suggestion: I know that rankings are important. I get that. But I've had clients in the past who overemphasized this beyond what was reasonable, narrowing their focus so that they lost sight of the bottom line: conversions. Yes, you have to have visibility to earn conversions, but it could be that you need to turn down the dial on the rankings focus for a bit and see how well the current rankings you have are converting to appointment bookings, or some other valued metric. Could there be usability improvements made that could take the same amount of traffic you're getting right now and increase the phone calls it is yielding, or the time spent on the site, or the links your content is earning? Maybe focus on that for a bit, and then come back to the rankings picture.

Hiring an expert for some consulting might also be a bright idea, if you hire someone truly qualified. I'm thinking along the lines of a Joy Hawkins, here ... not just a run-of-the-mill Local SEO. A true expert will often notice things a brand is overlooking, and from what they notice, a picture emerges of what is and isn't possible for the business. That can be very valuable.

Wishing you best of luck!

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

Interestingly, your question comes in at a time when Google has just made a rather major change to their guidelines. This update happened just a week or so ago. In 2010, Google's guidelines for physical address read this way:

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.

So, P.O. Boxes were totally out.

Then, on Feb 10 of this year, they published this new guideline (actually, they published a new guideline on the 8th, but then changed the wording of it on the 10th):

Do not create a listing or place your pin marker at a location where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations. If you operate from a location but receive mail at a mail box there, please list your physical address in Address Line 1, and put your mail box or suite number in Address Line 2.

So, according to most interpretations of the new guidelines, you are now allowed to put a P.O. Box as the second line in your address. Presumably, this means that if Google's verification postcard will reach you there. Now, this just happened, and I have yet to hear from anyone that they've successfully done it, but this would be the right time for you and your client to give it a shot. For the first time, there is a chance it will work.

You can read more about the guideline updates in this good article and discussion at Mike Blumenthal's blog:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/02/10/google-places-rescinds-po-box-rule-change/

Hope this helps! The very real problem of areas of the country not receiving mail delivery is one I have blogged about in the past, and I'm glad to see Google trying to offer some type of solution. Hope it works!

Miriam

Hi Nick,

I would say you need to accomplish:

a) Getting the company to get a new phone number

b) Getting the developers to put a landing page for each location on the site

c) Building new citation for the new location, not piggy-backing onto citations for the old company. After all, despite the fact that The Car People occupy a building that was previously occupied by another business, there is no relationship between the two (or, at least, there shouldn't have been, if not for that decision to keep the other company's phone number)

d) Tell the client that some of the decisions that have been made are going to make it essential to have a lot of patience here while you try to create a data cluster out there on the web that Google can trust. Right now, it's unlikely that they have this. It's going to have be created over time with a lot of care.

Hi Titan552,

The fact of the matter is that there is little research to support a rock-solid conclusion on this. Here is a list (partial, I think) of the business types supported by specific Schema:

http://schema.org/LocalBusiness

Here is my thinking on this - if specific schema exists for your category of business, you should use it. After all, the whole point of Schema markup is to make information as explicit as possible. If it's possible to 'label' a business as being a physician, then that is more descriptive than simply calling it 'organization', 'local business'. I just recently discussed this with some colleagues and this is the conclusion we reached. This conclusion, as I've said, is not based on studies of any kind. I don't know of any that have been done. It more of a common sense approach. Hope it makes good sense to you!

Excellent and passionate discussion here, guys! Proud to see this kind of care and growth being exchanged in this thread.

Leslieevarts, you've asked a truly important question here. I would agree with this:

1. EMDs can still help but if you do change over to the new domain, I would expect you to see a drop like EGOL has described. And don't forget that, in Local, you would need to have a plan in action to correct every citation that exists for the business to edit the domain name, too, should you choose to go with this route. Your drop could last months, years, or even be permanent. Tough decision.

2. As Robert has pointed out, it would not be a good idea to run 2 local websites at once. The chaos that can result from this choice would be most unwelcome for the you and the business owner, so steer clear of this.

So, basically, I feel that the answer to your question depends on whether the client determines that he can face an indefinite period of loss because the hoped-for eventual gain will be great enough to make it worthwhile.

Very fine suggestion, Chris!

Hmmm, that's troubling, Andre.

I honestly don't have an answer to this. May I recommend that you try submitting a thread to the Google Visualization API forum:

http://groups.google.com/group/google-visualization-api

I would love to be able to help you, but am afraid I don't know how to resolve the error messaging you are receiving. Maybe someone over there will have encountered it before and will be able to tell you what's up? Good luck!

Miriam

Hi ThinkCreativeGroup,

If the restaurants have different names (i.e. Bob's Pancake House vs. Bill's Burgers) then you should keep them on separate domains and do all marketing completely separately without making any effort to link the two to one another.

If there is some shared history, you could put it in a non-indexable infographic along the lines of "The Jones family opened Bob's Pancake House in 1938. In 1950, they invented their famous buckwheat cake stack. In 2012, son Bill opened Bill's Burgers across town". If, for reasons of pride, the owner wants to highlight something like this, that's fine, but I wouldn't do it in indexable text.

If the restaurants are two branches of the same brand (i.e. both of them are Bob's Pancake House) then, yes, you could develop a single website with a landing page for each physical location. You would then be linking to each of these landing pages from the citation building campaign for each location.

Hope this helps!

Hi C2G,

While each directory has its own rules, Google is quite clear about their stance on this, in the Google Places Quality Guidelines:

Businesses that are under construction or that have not yet opened to the public are not eligible for a listing on Google Places

So, at the very least, until your client has moved, you cannot update his Google+ Local page. I will add to this that, because you should never publish anything but the current NAP (name, address, phone) of a business on a website or its citations (for fear of clouding the record and harming current rankings) you probably should not do advance work on this of any kind.

Instead, this would be a good time to be sure you've created a spreadsheet of all of the client's current citations, so that as soon as the move is official, you're working off an organized document doing his citation editing. And, if it's in your job description to do so, the coming months would also be a good time to come up with the content you'll be publishing once the move happens. This could include both editing of current content, including on-page SEO, and the development of new content announcing the move.

So, in my opinion, the next 3 months will be a good time for organizing and planning, but the actual 'doing' should wait until the move actually happens. Hope this helps!

Hey Don,
Thank you. Yes, this has become a pretty hot topic again since Google's revision of their guidelines.

Hey Sean,

Hope you reported the fake address listings. Those are the ones that Google will actually remove!

Hello Jastos, Thanks for coming to Q&A with your good question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum and will do my best to give a thoughtful answer. In the simplest possible terms, a company's legal business name should be the name it is publishing in all places across the web including its website, local business profiles, review sites and etc. Google's exact language on this from their Places Quality Guidelines reads: Business Name: Represent your business exactly as it appears in the offline world. I take this to mean that if your business is Joe Plumber, Inc., then that's how you should consistently appear on all web records. Now, as it happens, your question is one that I've actually discussed with my colleagues in Local. The smartest Local SEO I know says that Google is typically sophisticated enough to understand that Inc. and Incorporated are the same thing....kind of like the difference between Ave. and Avenue. They get what it means. So, is this a huge issue for your client? No. That being said, I think most Local SEOs would agree, putting the time into making the listings and references consistent would be a best practice. It might not be your #1 task to accomplish, but, yes, I think it would be worth it to do the job when you can. Hope this helps! Miriam

P.S. Sorry for the run-on paragraph. Having a little trouble with line breaks tonight in the forum. Hope you can still read that sensibly.

Paul,

Your answer was incredibly helpful - so much so that I'm going to endorse it. You not only pointed me in the right direction, you really helped me to feel confident that this will be a good solution for my client. Sincerely appreciate it!

Hi JCDenver,

First, I want to zone in on your statement about the Hummingbird Update. When I think of this in connection with Local SEO and lost rankings, the first thing that springs to mind is this situation:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/01/08/mining-for-google-hummingbird-guano-in-so-cal/

Are you talking about this? Have the results for your target city morphed into a single one-box for a spammy listing? Wanted to ask about this first.

Regarding lawyer vs. attorney, the important thing to find out is how your regional audience searches. Lawyer vs. Attorney is a classic example of this, as apparently, people in different parts of the US prefer one keyword over another. See the comments from Linda Buquet on this post regarding this:

http://searchengineland.com/google-merges-insights-for-search-with-google-trends-134629

This would be something you would need to further investigate, as it has become a bit harder to surface these regional differences. Hope this gets you started.

Hi There!

Your first link is taking me to a page not found page.

While I'm not certain why your Hyberbad page isn't showing up, I do want to mention that the page is striking me as over-optimized. In a very limited amount of text, the word Hyberbad is appearing more 15 or so times. Some work is ahead of this business in improving the quality of their content, ensuring there is no duplicate content, being sure the pages are seen as purposeful instead of as doorway pages. I would suggest improving the quality of the pages, toning down optimization and linking to both service locations from your top level menu.

Hope this helps!

Good ones, Sean! Thanks for contributing to this. Especially like your prediction about 'near me' searches

Hey Just Ducky,

I have a client who had an e-commerce website for years. We re-designed their site and the sales shot up insanely higher (their original site was really bad). A couple of years into working with the client, Local became big. The client has a little studio/shop that people can visit, so we did some Local SEO for them as well. Rankings have not fallen...but more important, sales have continued to increase annually.

Miriam

Hi Rodney,

What you are experience is pretty much what all non-local businesses have been experiencing since Google began displaying local packs for queries even if they don't include geo-terms. There is nothing you can do to influence whether Google feels your search terms have a local intent or not. If Google has decided that they do, then the local pack is probably here to stay for your core search terms. As you are not a local business, your best hope lies in the following:

1. Building up enough organic authority so that you are ranking alongside the local pack - but not in it

2. Paying for visibility via Adwords

Option one will likely take a great deal of time an effort. Option two can be instantaneous, but will require an outlay of money. Hopefully, you can find a feasible strategy that combines both of these efforts and gets you as much visibility as you can achieve without being a truly local business model.

Hi Paul,

I suggest you read this read at the Google and Your Business Forum:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/don$27t$20have$20login|sort:date/business/4xaVk1BwuwE/vGMWweSeo2cJ

Hope it will help!

Hi KS!

Unfortunately, that's not really a practice I would recommend to my clients at this point. There's been some indication in recent times that while Google is completely fine with a single-location home-based business, it's very easy for them these days to see that a string of houses is being used to indicate locations in more than one place. It's my gut feeling that they don't approve of this practice and that they would take action against Google+ Local listings created in this scenario. But, in any case, your lack of in-person contact with customers means that the business does not qualify for Google+ Local listings or local pack rankings, regardless of whether you have legitimate business offices or are using the addresses of your friends. So, this may be kind of a moot point. Virtual businesses need to compete organically and utilize PPC, social media, video marketing, etc. to earn visibility - but Local SEO is not the right marketing discipline for them.

Hope this helps!

Good ones, Gyi! Thank you for contributing. Agree with everything on your list ... with the possible exception of (hopefully) less spam. This always seems to be at the bottom of Google's own list. Haha

Really enjoyed your points.

Hi Jason,

Almost anything is possible in the SERPs in this regard. You can have an organic listing, a Place Page, a one box, blended listings and everything but the kitchen sink.

Without seeing your listing in question, I am wondering if your keyword phrase is one that just happens to return Places-only results (what we used to refer to as the 10-pack and the 7-pack and the 3-pack). Are competitors' results local-only (places-based) or are they blended organic/local results for this search term?

How strong is the client's site? Is it well optimized?

Sorry to be answering your question with more questions but some more details might help, though you certainly don't need to highlight your client if you aren't permitted to.

Miriam

Hi Alex,

I agree with Dana. It will be important for the new dentist with the separate business name to establish his own suite and local phone number for a variety of reasons.

• He needs to be able to get his own phone calls

• He needs to be able to get his own postal mail

• Were he to market himself at the same address and phone as the other practice sharing the office, he would likely end up harming the other dentist and precluding himself from being able to develop his own business on the web.

The new dentist needs to set up his own website, of course, and be sure that all of his citations reflect his own name, address, phone and website.

The only alternative to this would be for the 2 dentists to combine their practices under a single name, but it doesn't sound like this reflects their real-world situation.

Hey Ruben,

What I would consider these types of sites to be would be industry-oriented citations. And you definitely want those. Do you want to pay for citations there? It depends on how they perform. Pay for links ... no! Earn links ... yes, probably. You might like to check out this recent video over at LocalU that is talking about the value of links:

http://localu.org/blog/video-deep-dive-on-links-and-local-marketing/

I think it presents a really no-nonsense approach to judging the value of links for local businesses.

Hi Luke,

Hmm ... that doesn't sound right to me. I may be missing something, but unless these 38 pages for each location have genuinely been created about the location and things relating specifically to it, I would not stick the NAP on there, just for the sake of putting it on a bunch of pages. What you're describing to me sounds like some kind of afterthought.

I also wouldn't change the footer around like that. It could create usability difficulties if it's changing throughout the site. Rather, my preference would be complete NAP only at the top of a single landing page per physical location, and NAP of all 8 businesses consistently in the sitewide footer. And, again, NAP of all 8 on the Contact page.This is what I consider to be the normal structure.

As for what to do with those several hundred pages, are they of really high quality? Are they city-specific or just generic to the business' topic? An example of city-specific might be something like a website for an arborist. He has a page for City A talking about how Dutch Elm Disease has hit that city. For City B, he has a page about birch tree borers that have affected that city's trees. So, from the main city A landing page, he could link to the Dutch Elm piece and for the main city B landing page, he could link to the birch borer page, as additional resources.

But if the content is just generic and you're trying to divvy it up between the cities, if there's not a strong contextual relationship, then there isn't really a good reason for doing so.

I can see that, Donna. The race will be to the swift, for sure. Go small local businesses, go!!!

Hi Echo1,

Nice to see you here!. Your question is timely. Check this out:

http://marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/google-places-update-do-not-support-location.html

Linda's post is well worth reading...and it contains these 2 important links:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Places/thread?tid=0c8ca117c0cbfb60&hl=en

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Places/thread?hl=en&tid=6cccf153cc8b6d8b

I believe you these links will really help you.

Out of curiosity...are you positive you were speaking to Google reps? They have been doing calls lately. And they really made Local SEO Andrew Shotland mad. You might want to read:

http://www.localseoguide.com/hey-seos-if-google-maps-calls-dont-answer/

Uh-oh!

Good luck with your 'do not support' issues. That has been one that has plagued places so steadily for so long.

Hi Onlinq,

In case it will help you in your study of this, common terminology for these types of results would be the 'knowledge graph' or 'knowledge panel'. Specifically what I believe you're searching for would commonly be referred to as the 'local knowledge graph for brand name search'. Confusing, huh? There are several different types of graphs/panels. No one is absolutely certain of the exact factors that trigger a knowledge graph for a branded search, but if your Google+ efforts are new, chances are, you need more time to build up your authority in a variety of ways.

This is a relevant thread in the Google And Your Business Forum:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/no$20knowledge$20graph$20for$20brand/business/vw8BU9xgYDo/yVhVQZsMEVwJ

Here's another:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/knowledge$20graph$20brand/business/4s9TXre8giw/meekDzCr8koJ

To develop your authority as a local business, start with these 20 factors:

http://moz.com/blog/top-20-local-search-ranking-factors-an-illustrated-guide

Then study all of the top local ranking factors:

http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

My sense is that the local knowledge graph for brand searches appears once Google deems that a business has enough online authority to merit one.

Hi Cole,

Unfortunately, yes - the set of pages being surfaced by Patrick would pretty much fit Google's definition of doorway pages, in my opinion.

The content has been duplicated across multiple pages, simply switching out the city names.

I recommend a couple of things here:

1. Read the thread I started about the doorway pages update when it rolled out: http://moz.com/community/q/how-google-s-doorway-pages-update-affects-local-seo

2. If you are currently developing these thin/duplicate content pages for yourself and your clients, this is definitely a great moment for you to rethink your strategy. It's my personal belief that content should only be published if it is unique and helpful. If you don't have unique content to publish on these types of city landing pages, then you don't have a reason to publish them.

Each local business that wants to cover cities in which they lack physical locations faces this same interesting challenge - identifying the legitimate connections between the business and the focus communities. These real-world connections need to be showcased on the landing pages. If they don't yet exist, the business needs to discover if the relationships can be developed and then showcased. If there are no opportunities for relationships, then these types of page don't really belong on the website in question.

Fortunately, a website design company has the opportunity to build direct relationships with its clients in the various cities it is serving. For example, if Alexandria is a city in which you have clients, your Alexandria page can be the place you write up these projects, including project descriptions, customer testimonials , video content, etc. When you've achieved showcasing, perhaps, five great clients on the Alexandria page, see what else you can do to make it unique. For example, does you company host or participate in industry events in this city? Sponsor a little league team there? Have a unique take on rising industries in the city? Anything you can think of that will demonstrate the strong relationship you've built on the business scene in a town will prove to new potential customers that you are very involved in serving businesses in their city.

There are no shortcuts here. Developing the writing for these pages calls for your greatest creativity and a decision to allot time and funding to creating city-related pages that are the gold standard in your industry and geographies. This mindset has always been appropriate, but now, with Google's doorway update, it has become a must.

3. Recommend you also read:

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

http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2013/04/30/16-ways-to-create-unique-local-content-for-cities-where-you-want-to-rank/

Sounds like a good plan, Luke! Good luck with the work, and be sure the calendar is crawlable

Nice predictions, Brett! Count me as one of the folks who thought G+ was simply irrelevant for most local businesses after the big G+/Local break-up. Lo and behold, I've spoken with industry folks I respect who have told me they are still getting traction from it in 2016 for some clients. I'd love to see more people writing about the specifics of this.

Hello Llsa,

Thank you 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 helpful answers.

1. Email addresses

Yes, it is ideal to claim/create a client's Google Place Page with a domain-based email address, but if this just isn't possible, you'll have to settle for doing it with a gmail address or other address. As WrightIMC has stated, you should not experience any actual penalty for this, but I believe that it's best to do it with the domain-base address whenever possible because of its ability to send a stronger trust signal to Google that you are the owner (or that the client is the owner).

2. Radius

It's vital to understand that Google will always view the actual physical address of the business as its key signal of relevance. Yes, for go-to-client business models (like carpet cleaners, landscapers, etc.) this isn't ideal because they may serve in a wide area. But, if the carpet cleaner is in San Francisco, Google views him as most relevant to San Francisco. His competitor in Oakland will be viewed as most relevant to Oakland. When I work with clients like this, I develop a strategy with them for getting high organic rankings for their service area, while the main local results must surround their actual city of location. That's just the way Local works.

Exceptions to this: if you have a client in either a rural area where there are few businesses, or you have a client with an unusual business model creating a situation of low competition, the client may well show up in results outside of his city of location because he is one of the only providers of what he does. This does happen...but not in metropolitan locations, busy suburbs or industries with heavy competition.

3. Tips

Study exactly what the competition is doing. Duplicate their strategy. And then go one better!

Hope this helps!

Miriam

Hi Eduardo,

I just wanted to add a note to this good conversation. For local businesses, Google will show IP-based results if they believe the search query has a local intent. So, the factors governing actual local results (for things like restaurants, plumbers, hotels, etc.) are highly influenced by the searcher's location, or by him adding a geographic keyword to his query.

For example, searching from my location in the US, if I search for 'hotels alcapulco' Google is showing me their local carousel of hotel results for this city in Mexico, regardless of the fact that I'm not located in Mexico. Google 'gets' that I want to see hotels in Mexico. But, if I search for 'history of the Mexican flag', Google is showing me general, organic results including things like Wikipedia. So, whether one gets local results or organic ones appears to be based on the language of the searcher's query + Google's concept of the user's intent. Usually, they get this right, but there are some instances in which you may get local results when you didn't really want them. For example, I might search for something really generic like 'shoes', and then Google isn't totally secure about my intent, so they are showing me both local and national results.