Hi AHolyman,

I'm going to rock the boat a little here. Unless you are in a non-compete contract with a client that excludes taking on same industry clients in the same city, there is no reason you can't work with more than one. Each client is likely to have different strengths, budgets, goals and attributes, even if they are in the same city. For example, dentist A may specialize in sleep dentistry, while dentist B is excellent with children. Unless you're under an exclusivity contract, I don't see anything unethical about helping them both.

Hi John!

Good questions. I'll answer it in 3 parts for the sake of organization:

1. No - Google does not penalize anyone for hiding their address. If the business does not receive customers at a staffed location during stated hours of operation, then not hiding the address is a violation of Google's guidelines (see: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en) and this violation is what could lead to possible action on Google's part. So, don't think of hiding the address as something that will incur a penalty.

2. That being said, there is a school of thought in the Local SEO world that in a scenario of uneven competition, businesses with a staffed, physical office that welcomes customers during stated business hours may have a slight advantage over competitors who do not have these amenities and are therefore hiding their address in compliance with Google's guidelines. So, the nuance to understand here is that if in the 7 or 3 packs in your client's industry/geography, some competitors can show their address while others have to hide it, the former may have some advantage. No one knows the exact degree of this hypothetical advantage, but it may exist. On the other hand, if in your client's packs, all of their competitors are in the same boat and are having to hide their addresses, the playing field is completely even so no one has any hypothetical advantage. It just depends on what the field of competition is like in your client's packs.

3. To my knowledge, Google is the only major engine with this hidden address requirement. For any other local business platform, the choice to display or hide the address is a personal one. Your clients can be broken down into two categories, when it comes to this:

a- Client has privacy concerns and doesn't want their street address displayed anywhere. In this case, the Local SEO on the project will need to stick to building citations only on those platforms that support hidden addresses.

b- Client has no privacy concerns and doesn't care if their street address is displayed in various places. In this case, there are no restrictions on where you can build citations.

Obviously, client B is at an advantage, because he will be able to create citations in more places.

Hope this breakdown helps clarify your options.

Hi Samuel,

Google will consider you most relevant to whatever your physical address is - this is the locale for which you can work towards your main local/blended rankings.

Beyond this, yes, you can work for organic visibility for other towns you serve in. Having a unique landing page for each of your major service cities is a smart way to go. You can then linkbuild to these pages to go after organic visibility.

I agree that you should not simply go the route of listing towns in a list. Have you considered blogging? Instead of putting too many geo terms per page, have you considered using a blog to showcase weddings you've done in Camden, etc.? A few photos of your band, folks dancing, pics of the venue and 400-600 words of text describing the event, songs the couple requested, testimonials from the bride and groom or family members would make a strong blog post on the subject and could get that long tail traffic you seek. The nice thing about this would be that it would naturally generate very unique content. Though I'm sure there are similarities in all your gigs, each one must be a little bit different, right? And, it would enable you to optimize part of your site for things like regional and neighborhood/district names.

I hope this is a helpful suggestion.

Hi Chris,
You've received some good suggestions here, and Matt's post at Small Business SEM is a good read on this. At the end of the day, there is currently no tool of which I am aware which offers a comprehensive or accurate picture of local search terms. This is something that comes up again and again in the Local SEO industry. I consider myself fortunate to be in daily contact with some of the best Local SEOs on the planet, and basically, the suggested process for doing keyword research for local businesses is this:

1. Perform keyword research as though Local was not your goal. Just use your main keyword terms (plumber, plumbing, leaking faucet, toilet overflowed, etc.).

2. Make a big list of these terms.

3. Then, go in and add your core Local terms (city, region, zip code, etc.) to each of the terms.

4. If you are working with clients in a region of the country where there are unique language variants, explore these with the business owner. For example, a Canadian plumber may say 'hot water tank' vs. the 'hot water heater' of the USA. Keyword research tools may not show you these variants because their data isn't coming from the targeted geography of the business. So, discover regionalisms and make sure they are being given preference, as this is the way your client's customers talk and search.

You will end up with a big list of terms to work with from this process. Hope this helps!

Hi Kesil Consulting,

I'm going to answer your questions in reverse order, because your industry falls under a special category of handling on Google's part. Google does not consider SEO and Web Design companies to be truly local and stopped giving them inclusion in their local SERPs at the beginning of 2010. You can create a local listing, but if you search for your search terms+ city in the main engine, you will not see Google returning any true local results. Everything will be organic. If you were a plumber or a lawyer, it would be a different story.

Because of this nuance, while you can certainly build citations if you wish, the effect other businesses could expect of this pushing up their local rankings will not be applicable to your company.

On your first question, all of local hangs on NAP (name-address-phone number) and each component is vital. I'm not sure about what you have read in regards to address not being important (feel free to show me a link to the article you read), but consistency of NAP is critical to any Local SEO campaign. Any variance in any of these 3 elements can cause disaster, so, when listing any company in any local business index, it's crucial that these elements be identical.

Hope this helps!

Hi Wayne,

Great question and appreciate your stated intent to make the website as useful as possible for clients. I recommend you start by reading this post (you are business model III): http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide

Basically, one approach I am recommending in that post is to optimize your core pages for your brand and service keywords and optimize your office landing pages for your geo keywords. Think about a massive brand like McDonald's. Apparently, you can order a big mac at any of their 30,000 restaurants. Their brand is so strong, they don't have to say, 'We offer a big mac in Boise, a big mac in Boston, a big mac in Detroit." They've got this : http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/full_menu_explorer.html for everybody, right? It wouldn't really be useful for customers if McDonald's had a separate menu page for every fast food joint in every city around the world.

Now, of course, you are not McDonald's and your brand doesn't have quite this authority, I'm assuming. Take a look at REI.com. Look at the way they've got all of their products and then, separately, they've got great landing pages for the cities in which they are physically located, with good, unique content on them. Here's a somewhat smaller brand you can take inspiration from.

Additionally, to continue on with your work of providing useful content to the different communities in which you serve, you might consider having a blog that does speak to the differences of laws, even if they are minor, in the various cities/states. But your overall website structure could look like:

• Core pages, optimized for the brand and service keywords

• Landing pages, optimized for the brand and geography

I'm not saying this is the only approach to take, but it strikes me as a simple and sensible one.

Hi There!

What you need to do for a multi location scenario is have a unique Google+ Local page for each location. Whether you use the social features on these or not is up to the company. Will Scott recently wrote a really good and simple explanation of the different types of Google pages here:

http://searchengineland.com/how-to-get-google-my-business-right-for-your-medical-practice-practitioners-212768

I think you if read the above, you'll be able to get a good strategy together for managing your social/local presence with the right types of Google pages.

Hope this helps!

Hi Van,

Good question! I'll do my best to answer.

There are two forms of customer feedback:

1. Reviews published on third party sites. This would be reviews customers are publishing directly, themselves, on your company's profiles at places like Google+ Local, Yelp etc. This content belongs to the platform on which it is published. It does not belong to the business owner and should not be republished on his website. Many review platforms have guidelines specifically prohibiting the re-publication of reviews elsewhere.

2. Testimonials published on the company's website. This would be praise the business owner receives from customers via email, filling out a rating card at the time of service or by some other means. In this case, the business owner chooses to publish this content on his website. He can use Schema markup to format these testimonials so that they are ideally crawlable, and may even earn the business stars in Google's SERPs. In this scenario, the business owner owns the content and is free to publish it on a Testimonials page of his website or something similar.

These two forms of user generated content should not be confused. They each exist in a separate 'box' and each have distinct uses.

I'm very excited these days about a recently launched tool, GetFiveStars.com, that makes it super easy for any business to earn both testimonials and reviews, keeping within the guidelines I've mentioned, above. Using GetFiveStars, the process for the business owner will look something like this:

1. At or near time of service, business owner asks customer to use GetFiveStars to leave feedback.

2. The tool is programmed to judge if the feedback is positive, based on a 10 point rating scale. If positive, the feedback is automatically pushed to a designated testimonials page on the website in Schema-encoded format.

3. The customer is then prompted to go further in the process to leave a review on their favorite review site.

4. But, if the initial feedback is not positive, this gives the business owner the chance to go back to the customer to try to rectify the situation, hopefully lessening the chances that the customer will go leave a negative review somewhere on the web.

Really, it a pretty brilliant system. You could replicate this process yourself, but GetFiveStars makes it so easy. I recommend you check it out!

Hi Donnie,

Okay, I think I get it. Sorry to be slow on the uptake. I believe you saw this page on Yext:

http://www.yext.com/products.html

Yext's PowerListing product is described like this:

PowerListings

Business listing management made simple. Easily add your business
listings to premier local search sites like Yahoo!, Yelp and WhitePages.

It then goes on to list 9 directories for which they are charging you a certain amount  and 30+ directories for which there is no price listed. I found the setup of this page to be very vague, so in the spirit of offering you a really clear answer, I actually phoned Yext just now and spoke with John, a Senior Account Manager.

As I understand it, you've got 2 options with Yelp. You can purchase the $499 deal which will apparently give you enhanced listings in a variety of directories. He described these enhanced listings as ones that you could purchase yourself from the listed companies, but the benefit is central management of all + a quoted 50% cost savings from what you'd be charged if you made direct purchases of the enhanced listings.

Alternatively, you can purchase the Emerging Package from Yext which costs much less and which consists of listings in all the non-priced directories on that page I've linked to, plus you can choose a la carte enhanced listings with from the priced directories, but will be charged the retail price for these. Again, the benefit here is central management.

Now, here's something nice. John asked me to let you know that if you would like to talk to him directly, call him at (917) 210-6709 and he will not only be happy to answer your questions, but he will also give you a discount if you decide to sign up. How about that?

But, to return to your basic question, Donnie - will having an enhanced listing in a 3rd party directory positively influence your Google Local rank more than a free listing? You know, I would be very surprised if this is the case. I have seen no studies to indicate this, but I can't answer this with 100% certainty. So, my approach to purchasing Yext's service would be that managing the listings would be easier and that quoted 50% discount off the list price for enhanced listings would intrigue me if my clients wanted enhanced advertising. My clients are, for the most part, too strictly budgeted to warrant this, so that's a factor.

Hope this helps!

Miriam

Hi Kevin,

Great topic and a tough situation! You are quite right that neither you nor the client will able to control what Google is displaying in their 7-packs for these multi-branch/same city scenarios, unless the overall business decides to promote one branch and not the others. Now, if the brand is known and the customer is doing a brand search, Google will often show them all of the branches nearby. Example: if you just look up McDonald's, chances are, Google is going to show you several of these that are nearest to me in a single pack.

But, if the competition is for non-branded phrases (tires, muffler repair, oil change, autobody shop, etc.) then it does seem to me that Google seldom shows the same brand twice in the same pack, at least in the US. Not sure if this is different in Canada. For example, if I look up 'tire shop' Google shows me 7 different businesses in the pack - there are no repetitions of any brand within the result.

So, this scenario your client is in is almost guaranteed to result in unequal treatment of the businesses ... with one important exception you should consider discussing with the client. One of the most important developments that's been growing in Local SEO over the past few years relates to how the user has become the new 'centroid' of search, particularly in mobile local results. What this means is that if your client has one tire shop at one end of Toronto, and a second at the other end, there is a very good chance that the user will be shown the result that is physically nearest to him at the time he performs the search.

Given that this phenomenon clearly now exists, the strategy I would be recommending to the franchise would be to market all branches with equal effort and then, step back and leave it up to Google to parse which location is nearest to each given searcher. This will be the best any business can do in this situation. And I would back this up with research into hyperlocal blogging and advertising, based on neighborhood-related terms.

Good luck!

Hi Max,

For a tool like Moz OSE, it's a matter of depth that is likely preventing us from crawling through directories' millions of pages to find just one link on your particular listing on such a site. This does not meant that the links in your citations do not count as links - just that a crawl may not find them. Also, important to mention that the key point of building citations is not links - it's about ensuring that your business NAP is available and consistent on a variety of platforms. This makes you accessible to your customers and also strengthens search engines' 'belief' in the validity of your data.

Hi Genkee,

website.com/butchers-in-mytown is perfectly fine, provided it is a reflection of the content of the page.

Hi Kade,

Good question and one that comes up frequently, because so many businesses are just outside the borders of major cities. The simple answer is - Google considers a business as being most relevant to its city of location. So, if you're in Plano, Google views you as a good answer for searches containing the word 'Plano' or for searches from Plano-based devices. Google does not consider you as primarily relevant to Dallas.

Some businesses have actually taken the rather drastic step of relocating just to get into those big cities, or have even moved within their city of location to get closer to the city centroid and improve their chances of rankings. Chris Silver Smith recently published a very good piece on this potentials and pitfalls of this approach:

http://searchengineland.com/relocation-relocation-relocation-a-new-local-ranking-tactic-135325

So, where does that leave a company like the one your friend owns? If you can't outrank Dallas businesses in the blended-local pack is their anything you can do?

The one path many businesses explore taking is to create city landing pages on their websites for their service radius cities. For example, if your friend does a lot of construction work in Dallas, he could have a page on his website showcasing his work there. And, he could back this up with an ongoing stream of blog posts highlighting his work in Dallas.

Will this enable him to outrank Dallas-based competitors? It's unlikely, and pretty much out of the question when it comes to his blended local rankings, but he may be able to get some secondary organic rankings for Dallas-related searches, driving some targeted traffic and leads.

I would discuss this idea with him, once he understands how Google views his business as being relevant to Plano because of locale. This isn't a dead-end situation, by any means, but it's definitely a challenging one, and calls for much creativity and effort.

Hi Garret,

You might like to check out our list of recommended companies here:

https://moz.com/community/recommended

Additionally, as you've categorized this as a local question, if you are looking for Local SEO help, another good resource is the list of contributors shown on the last Moz Local Search Ranking Factors survey: https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

All the folks shown in the Contributors box on the right side of the survey are recognized experts in the field.

Hope this helps!

Hmm, $200 a month is a pretty small budget. In your client's market, it is a really small budget! His competitors are almost certainly spending 5, 7 or 10 x more than than that a month. Look at a respected service like LocalSpark (https://www.whitespark.ca/localspark-local-seo-service) Average budget for them is about $1500 a month, with a proviso that they may need to charge more if warranted.

What can you do for $200 a month? Perhaps offer him a couple of consulting hours once a month to give him ideas for things he should then undertake himself? From personal experience, I wouldn't even begin to offer implementation at that price point, unless it was writing maybe one blog post a month for him, which just isn't going to get him far in that market. So, maybe you can be his ideas man for that budget ... or maybe he'd better go on EGOL's diet and save up some money to be able to take a better approach in future.

Hi There,

Your question is especially good, because it perfectly highlights a practical concern and actually points to an answer. You're right: it would be hard to find something different to say about 1 inch screws vs. 2 inch screws vs. 3 inch screws. So, if the screws are all actually the same brand, why not combine them onto a single page with a dropdown for purchasing the various lengths? Think of how clothing retailers sell a pair of pants. They don't have one page for small, another for large, and another for extra large, right?

So, the idea here is to envision that you've got a single page for screws made by X brand and it has all of the different length purchasing options on it. Much easier for the customer. And, you can come up with some good content about this brand of screws. Is it aluminum or steel? Why is that good, in terms of durability? Is it made in the USA? Is it suitable to particular projects (appliance repair, home building, fixing screen doors?, etc.). Does it come with a satisfaction guarantee? Are there photos of the product? Videos of it being used? Consumer reviews of the product? Quotes from the boss?

If you can put all of this content once onto a single page instead of finding ways to repeat it on 20 pages for 20 different lengths of the same product, you're likely to come up with a much stronger page with a better chance of ranking well.

Hope this helps!

Hi Joseph,

I want to be sure I understand your question. I believe what you are asking about is why it is uncommon for a business with a local ranking (with the grey lettered pin) to also have a first page organic ranking? If I'm misunderstanding, please let me know, but I'm pretty sure that this is what you are asking about.

Let me give you some history on this. Prior to the Venice Update in March of this year, it was quite common for strong local businesses to be able to dominate the search engine results. A single business might have a pinned local ranking, one or more organic rankings, video results and citations (from places like Merchant Circle and Yelp) all on page 1 of the Google search engine results.

After Venice, however, there was a pretty obvious change in this that was noted by lots and lots of Local SEOs and Local business owners. Suddenly, if you had achieved a Local rank, you were very unlikely to have a second, organic listing on page 1. In fact, for some months, I could not find a single business that was achieving this multi-spot dominance any more.

However, we started to see some changes in this a few months away from Venice. Linda Buquet and some other Local SEOs managed to get double rankings by optimizing a secondary page of a client's website in a few instances. Adam Steele of Nightlight Media wrote a piece on this topic, which you can read here:

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

Definitely read that to see if it helps. However, I believe that things have changed again. I am encountering enough instances of businesses being able to get multiple page 1 rankings these days to believe that there has been some tweak to the environment. However, I will add that where I am seeing these double rankings tends to be in smaller towns with modest competition, though there are some exceptions to this.

I would not advise you to build 2 different websites for the same business. That would likely lead to confusion on Google's part and a possible loss of trust in your profile/loss of rankings. Rather, it's important to understand that when you achieve a local ranking (in the pinned local results) you haven't actually lost your organic ranking; it's simply been subsumed into the blended/local ranking which is comprised of both organic and pure local factors. Nearly all results I see these days are blended results, drawing on both organic and local signals. Very, very few are the old Pack results any more.

So, what can you do? Don't knock a high Local ranking. Heatmap studies indicate that more eyes are drawn to the local listings than the organic ones. But, do build the strongest site you can, ensuring that all pages are properly optimized and that all of your Google Local participation is violation free. And, expect the display to keep changing. I could hit publish on this right now and wake up tomorrow to discover that Google has again changed the ratio of businesses getting double page one rankings. This stuff is constantly in flux. Hope this information helps!

Hi Stacy,

Your question is smart! It's good you're working to understand this, and I'll do my best to explain how this works on a local level. I'm going to break this into 4 parts.

1. Because your business is located in Akron, your Google local pack rankings will be confined to appearing for searchers who are either searching from a device in Akron, or, including the term 'Akron' in their search ... like 'magicians akron'. You are unlikely to achieve local pack rankings for any other city than Akron, because of Google's bias toward physical location. In order for you to achieve local pack rankings in Cleveland, you would need to have a physical location there.

2. Because of the above, your ability to be visible for Cleveland is going to be confined to organic results rather than local ones. For starters, you will need a Cleveland page on your website. You don't have a physical location there, of course, but you can strive to create the BEST page in your industry/geography. You'll want to make this page totally amazing, with fantastic content, and link to it from the top level menu of your website. What would be natural here would be for you to thoroughly showcase some of your gigs you've done in Cleveland. Write them up, show photos, videos, testimonials from customers, FAQs, talk about Cleveland, your work there, etc. Be sure you're implementing best SEO practices in the text and tags of the page. In addition to your menu linking to this Cleveland page, link to it from other pages within the site and then begin the work of earning inbound links from third party sites. The better the page is and the more links it has earned, the better your chances of this page showing up in the organic results for Cleveland-based-or-related searches.

Once you have built this best-in-industry/geography page, consider blogging to continue to grow your 'Cleveland-ness'. I'm not very familiar with your industry, so you'll likely have better ideas than I would regarding what to blog about, but I'd think further showcasing of your events, posts about magic, posts about magic shops, magic tricks, magic venues in Cleveland would be a start. Promote the posts socially. Each one is a chance for a potential customer to end up on your site, saying, "Hey, I want to hire this magician!"

3. The third thing you have to consider is competition. If local pack rankings in Akron, and your best efforts to rank organically for Cleveland are not getting you the visibility and gigs you need, if may be that the competitiveness of the searches you are going for is just too tough for a new business to surmount and you will need to rely on PPC. You may only need to pay for clicks temporarily, until you've achieved local/organic visibility, or, it may need to be a permanent part of your marketing strategy.

4. Finally, be aware that Google is currentyl going through the greatest upheaval in Local in recent memory, converting formerly free local pack rankings to pay-to-play home service ads (see: http://searchengineland.com/google-home-services-ads-plumbers-locksmiths-san-francisco-beta-226469). In the next few years, you may be _required to pay for placement. _This could be bad, if your budget is slim. Or, for a business like yours, it could be good if Google will allow you to pay enough to appear for searches in a neighboring city where you're not physically located. Not sure if that will work that way, but it might. So, stay tuned in on these developments.

Hope this helps!

Hi Steven,

There is no ideal length. Different platforms have different minimum and maximum requirements, and if you're using Yext, I would expect they have that, too. In Moz Local, we have a 250 character minimum, which is pretty average. In manual citation building, it's long been considered a best practice to write a number of descriptions of varying lengths for use on various platforms, but with the advent of automated citation building tools, you typically would just write one. So, I'd say 250 minimum, but definitely write more if there's more to say. Be concise, but take the time to highlight the key points you feel will influence customers (or the congregation, in your case!) most. Hope this helps!

Hi Charles,

Thanks for the clarification. What I'm going to give you here is a quick rundown, but I'll include some links at the end for further reading. I'll break this down into a numbered list for easier reading.

1. It's critical to understand that the most powerful element of your local search engine rankings is your website. This means that...

2. It needs to be well optimized in terms of traditional SEO factors and...

3. It needs to have strong local hooks in it. Your NAP (name, address, phone number) needs to be in all the right places (typically on your contact page and in your footer sitewide). Consider utilizing hCard or Schema to make your geographic signals as clear and strong as possible. Also...

4. The content on your website has got to be as good as you can make it. Go for thoroughness, depth, clarity and good local SEO on every page of the site. Look at what your competitors are doing and then do more.

5. Because the website has become such a key to rankings, everything you've ever learned about SEO and search engine rankings applies. So, this means the strength of your domain name, age of the site and such elements are likely factors as well as the whole linkbuilding aspect of SEO. It all counts.

6. Once you've got your site in shape (plus a plan for ongoing content development) you can look off the site for opportunities. These include the obvious, such as inclusion in Google Places and other local business indexes, and also the 'hidden', meaning citations. You mention in your post that you have tried a variety of things, but as you haven't mentioned citations, perhaps this is an area you've yet to explore. Citations are to Local SEO what links have always been to traditional SEO. Once upon a time, Google displayed some of a business' citations right on its Place Page, but they stopped doing that, making citation research more difficult for Local SEOs and business owners. This has led to the development of tools...

7. Right now, Whitespark's Citation Finder Tool is pretty much the standard in the Local SEO industry. There is a free version of the tool, but it's not very helpful. The paid version is great. Here is the link:

http://www.whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder/

8. And if you are are in the US or UK, don't miss Search Engine Land's post on the top 50 citation sources:

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

Essentially, you want to build as many citations as you can over time for your business.

9. Reviews are part of the scenario, too, but Google is still very unsophisticated in this area. Their ability to value quality vs. quantity has not been demonstrated. You do want to get as many reviews as you can...but there are just too many instances of businesses with, say, 20 reviews, outranking businesses with 100 of them to draw a truly clear picture of the correlation between reviews and rankings. They play a part, but they do not, in my opinion, compare in power to the website or the citations.

10. Returning back to point 6 and the obvious work...obvious though it may be, it's absolutely critical that you build a violation-free Google Place Page. If you don't read the guidelines, you are likely to make a mistake, because Google's rules are not intuitive. Here are the guidelines:  http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528

Hopefully, my answer will get you off to a good start. I highly investigate the following:

David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors:

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

A recent webinar we had here:
http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/all-about-google-places

And become a regular reader of Mike Blumenthal's blog. Mike is widely considered to be North America's leading expert in Local:

blumenthals.com/blog

Cheers!

Miriam

Hi Gidon,

What you are seeing is likely part of the recently documented phenomenon of the Hummingbird update. Since that time, a ton of broad searches like this are, for some reason, returning a single one box result instead of the more typical 3 or 7-pack type of local result. You'll actually see this locksmith coming up as the only result in Google's main search engine as well as the Maps display you did the screenshot of. There isn't anything you can do about this, so far as I know, because it appears that Google's algo is currently turning up these odd results for numerous terms, but you can read more about the issue here:

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

and

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

I recommend you read both posts and all their attendant comments. I'm afraid businesses finding themselves affected by results like this can't do much beyond hanging in there until Google does another tweak to remedy this problematic lack of diversity in the SERPs, but at least you will see from reading the above posts that you are not alone. I hope Google pays attention to this promptly. It's not a good user experience.

Hi Mememax,

Good question and you're getting some good feedback here. Honestly, what these business owners need to do is have a website, even if it's only a single page. Barring this, Google will show their Google+ Local page as their home base these days, but having these listings link to their page on a directory site is not something I would recommend. Even if the business is broke and wants to set up a generic, free WordPress.com (not .org) site, that would be preferable to any arrangement that puts the control of their home base on the web in any other person's hands.

I'm a strong advocate of clients owning everything in their name, even if it's just a freebie website to start out with. And, as the website is such a HUGE local search ranking factor, modern business owners have got to understand that having the best website they can afford is a must, not an option, if they want to compete and use the web as a tool that drives business to their business. If they can't manage to make this investment, they will be left behind. That's just the way things are now, so it may be that the best thing you can do is make them understand that their primary investment needs to be in getting a website before they even consider where to list themselves. Hope this perspective is helpful!

Hi Mark!

Thanks for asking this good question. While there is no limit to how big a website can be, I think you can see from the general response here that most members would encourage you to stick to manually developing quality pages rather than automating hundreds of thousands of pages, solely for ranking purposes. I second this advice.

Now, I would like to clarify your business model. Are you a physical, actual business that customers come to, either to buy paintball equipment or to play paintball in a gallery? Or, is your business virtual, with no in person transactions? I'm not quite understanding this from your description.

If the former, I would certainly encourage you to develop a very strong, unique page for each of your physical locations. If you have 10 locations (with unique street addresses and phone numbers), then that would be 10 pages. If you've got 20 locations, that would be 20 pages, etc. But don't approach these with a 'just switch out the city name in the title tags' mindset. Make these pages as exceptional as possible. Tell stories, show off testimonials, share pictures and  videos, entertain, educate, inspire. These city landing pages will be intimately linked into your whole Local SEM campaign, provided they each represent a business location with a unique dedicated street address and unique local area code phone number.

But, if you are considering simply building a page for every city in the UK, I just can't see justification for doing so. Ask yourself - what is the value?

There are business models (such as carpet cleaners, chimney sweeps, general contractors, etc.) that go to their clients' locations to serve and for which I would be advising that they create city landing pages for each of their service cities, but this would be extremely regional...not statewide or national or International. A carpet cleaner might serve 15 different towns and cities in his region, and I would encourage him to start gathering project notes and testimonials, videos and photos to begin developing a body of content important enough for him to start creating strong, interesting and unique pages for each of these cities. But I've also had local business owners tell me they want to cover every city in California, for instance, because they think it will help them to do so, and I discourage this.

Even if the business is virtual and doesn't have any in-person transactions with clients or physical locations, I would still discourage this blanketing-the-whole-nation-with-pages approach. A national retailer needs to build up its brand so that it becomes known and visible organically for its products rather than your theoretical approach of targeting every city in the nation. In short order, the mindset behind that approach just doesn't make good horse sense.

And, as others have stated, adding thousands of thin, potentially duplicate pages to any site could definitely have a very negative effect on rankings.

My advice is to make the time to start developing a content strategy for cities in which you have a legitimate presence. If budget means you can't hire a copywriter to help you with this and to speed up the work, accept that this project deserves all the time you can give it and that a slow development of exceptional pages is better than a fast automation of poor quality pages.

Hope this helps!

Ah! That's a good one, Michael, but I get why it's more of your wish than a firm prediction. David Mihm hopefully predicted Google would focus in on review spam in 2018 and was sorry to have to report it did not happen. Maybe 2019 will be the year - here's hoping!

Thanks for reading and for adding your smart take. I hope our community will keep this thread rolling with more good guesses!

Hey Christopher,

Unfortunately, Google doesn't have a function for setting seasonal dates/hours. Here's a recent thread from the Google forum, including a response from a Top Contributor:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/business/V4cjaNYIS6w;context-place=topicsearchin/business/seasonal|sort:date

Here's another:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/business/U1Vo5-afRDo;context-place=topicsearchin/business/seasonal|sort:date

It's my memory that Google once forbid the inclusion of seasonal businesses in their local product, but this language no longer exists in their guidelines. If you report the business as closed, then you will likely lose rankings ... just not a great situation. Is there no staff at the location at all during the off-season? Not even to take phone calls?

Hi Greenhornet77,

Good question. Schema and hCard both work. I used hCard for several years on all my local clients' sites, but I've transitioned now to Schema because of the agreement between all search engines that it's readable by them. If Schema is new to you, check out this generator:

http://schema-creator.org/

For local businesses, be sure you start by clicking the 'organization' tab in the left nav. You have a choice of course, and to date, hCard still appears to be working fine, but a lot of SEOs were ticked when Google stopped supporting geoSitemaps (see: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/03/28/google-still-supporting-kml-files-but-not-the-use-of-geo-sitemaps/), and perhaps they may be less inclined in future to abandon schema because it's supported by multiple engines. Just a thought.

Hi Catherine,

I'm terribly sorry to hear about this worrisome experience you have had and agree with you that people's privacy concerns are totally legitimate. Let's start with your most immediate concerns. If your address exists around the web and you are worried that someone is stalking you, you might want to start by contacting the local police to make them aware of the situation. They may have important advice for you that you simply won't get on a marketing forum. You might want to take extra precautions, such as ensuring that your home security is up-to-date and that your neighbors are aware of your concerns and can let you know if they see anyone strange on your property. Tell a friend or relative and arrange to check in with them via text or phone periodically each day so that they know you are okay.

The marketing side of this is important, but your safety comes first. If you fear for your safety, take precautions first.

Having said that, we can look at this from the marketing side as well. Let me clarify for you, and for others on this thread, Google's position on address.

• If you have a brick-and-mortar address that accepts walk-in traffic during stated business hours (like 9-5), then Google does want your address to be visible on your website and your Google+ Local page. Typically, home-based business models do not accept walk-in traffic, but public businesses like retail shops and restaurants do.

• If you are a home-based business, however, and do not accept walk-in traffic (maybe you accept in-home appointments, or you travel to your clients' locations to serve them), then you should be hiding your address on your Google+ Local page. As to publishing your address elsewhere, such as on your website or your third party citations, that is up to you. Yes, there is some indication that it's more trustworthy in Google's eyes if they can cross-reference your hidden address in their database with other instances of it they find non-hidden around the web, but you can still achieve visibility without publishing it. You can simply publish your business name and local phone number on your website if privacy concerns are paramount to you.

I recommend that you read the 2 following articles by Phil Rozek about local business directories, beyond Google Places for Business, that allow you to hide your address when listing your business:

http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2012/08/13/can-you-rank-well-in-local-google-without-revealing-your-street-address-anywhere/

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

As these articles will describe, there are many directories that allow you to be listed while hiding your address, and for a business owner with privacy concerns, these are great resources.

If you decide that it's important for your home address not to appear anywhere on the web, you can choose from one of two approaches:

1. Discover all references and edit them yourself.

2. Hire a company like Whitespark to do citation cleanup, the goal of which would be to get your address hidden where possible or to delete references where hiding an address is not allowed. Whitespark just launched a new citation cleaup service you might want to check out.

I want to stress, however, that either method will take time for edits to go into effect, and you will have to follow up periodically to be sure nothing has re-surfaced. In the meantime, I strongly advise that you put your safety concerns first and contact authorities and your personal support circle so that you can feel safer. Sending good thoughts your way.

Hi Alan!

Good question! Provided that each physical location has its own local phone number, then citation building (the practice of building listings on local business directories) is almost certainly going to be an appropriate part of your marketing strategy. When dealing with 200 locations, the use of tools and services that can automate at least some of the process for you will be a tremendous time-saver.

Moz Local is one such service. In order to use this service, you will need to have either a unique Google+ Local page or Facebook Place page for each of the physical locations, already in place. As Ray-pp has mentioned, you should take advantage of Google's bulk upload, which allows you to create a .CSV of all listings and upload them all at once, rather than building 200 individual listings by hand. The good news is, if your Google .CSV is formatted properly, you can also use it in our system So, you'd want to get the Google listings in good order and then, once they are live and verified, upload the same .CSV to Moz Local. This will likely save you a tremendous amount of time in getting the listings pushed out to our 7 supported partner sites, which are some of the most important local data sources on the web.

Hope this helps!

Hi Adam,

We need to pedal back here to this:

"The site we are optimizing for him uses the same company, tracking number and a virtual address in the same city. "

and this:

"We have listed the new site in the citation directories...Another thing, Google+ Local for the new site is created and verified but is not showing up in local pack."

You have some root issues going on here. Both virtual offices and call tracking numbers for Local businesses are taboo in Google's local products. For legitimate participation in Google+ Local, your client needs to have:

1. Face-to-face transactions with customers either at the place of business (like a restaurant) or at the customers' locations (like a plumber).

2. A unique, physical street address (not a virtual office, P.O. box or shared address)

3. A unique local area code phone number (not a toll free, call tracking or shared number).

If the client cannot meet all 3 of the above criteria, then he is not suitable for inclusion in Google's local products, and he is not appropriate for a local citation building campaign.

So, this is actually the issue that needs to be sorted out first. Whether your client's failure to show up in the local results is due to a penalty stemming from Google considering the listing to be spam or stems from other issues is sort of moot, here, because the business model you are describing does not sound truly local to me.

For further reading, I recommend that both you and the client study Google's Places Quality Guidelines:

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

You will see precisely why the business model you are describing is problematic in the above guidelines.

Regarding the call tracking phone number element, read:

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

Read that post and all of the links in it, as well, for full information on the history of issues surrounding call tracking numbers in the world of Local SEO.

My feeling is that a wrong estimation of this client's opportunities may have been made here and that Local SEO is being pursued in vain until he can meet those requirements. Having 2 websites now in existence for the client is only going to compound the issues. I never recommend double sites for local business owners, but where there is some reason why they feel they MUST have more than one website, I advise them to make sure that their NAP (name-address-phone) is only published on one of the websites. Everything hangs on NAP in Local and if you're telling Google that both www.johntheplumber.com and www.sandiegoplumber.com are located at 123 First St. San Diego, CA., this will confuse Google and potentially lead to duplicated listings and ranking drops. Total clarity and consistency of data are vital to any Local SEO campaign, but in this case, your first step is going to be to assess the client's actual business model and then determine whether they have a legitimate place in the local index or need to pursue purely organic SEO due to a lack of the elements essential to local inclusion.

Hope this helps!

Thank you for sharing your prediction, Donna! Agree with you that reputation management and link building (including linked unstructured citation building) will be recognized as competitive difference makers. I believe structured citations will remain table stakes in 2019 (something you have to have to get in the game).

As for major players, yes, I think there's a possibility we may see a change. I won't go so far as to name a particular brand, but there are several majors who appear to keep making the same mistakes to their own detriment as far as public sentiment is concerned. Unless we see learning and change from these mistakes, they could be in trouble. We'll see!

So glad you added your thoughts. Hope we'll see more community members join in. Wishing you a wonderful new year, Donna!

Hi John,

As Bill suggests, you're probably best off going with Google's preferred address format, as they are 'the big cheese' in Local. Then, be sure to correct all other citations, and the website content, to match that.

I would not be concerned about the business name, though it is rather long. It's true that Google does penalize spammy business names, but they don't do a very good job of catching so many of them, I'd be very surprised if this was the root of your ranking issues.

Getting your citations consistent will be a big start, but it looks like you also need to implement a program for earning Google-based reviews, and I would recommend doing a run-through of the Ultimate Local SEO Review by Casey Meraz to see if there are other areas that need improvement: https://moz.com/blog/ultimate-local-seo-audit

Hi Zachary,

Good question! You are quite right...Google has never publicly outlawed usage of geo terms in the business description field. Advice against this comes from Local SEOs who have seen this practice ding listings. In conversation, I've heard top Local SEOs I know say it can ding a listing anywhere from 4 to 20 positions in the local serps. It's a hidden, not-publicly-acknowledged penalty. So, definitely don't do this. I think the best use of the business description is as an elevator pitch. For example, if a business has won awards locally (Voted best local clinic by Community Magazine), that's a great USP. Figure out what the USP is and put that in the description, exclusive of geo terms.

Will you see live exceptions to this in the SERPs? Yes. Google doesn't catch everything. But you know Google...if they do catch you, punishment is swift and awful.

Thanks for asking your question. So many people are unaware of this hidden penalty.

Hi Radhakrishnan,

You're receiving some good advice here. I'll add some points.

1. First, determine if the business model is truly local. In order to qualify, it must have a unique physical address (no virtual offices or P.O. boxes), a unique local area code phone number and make in-person contact with customers.

2. From your description, I'm assuming that this is an SAB (a service area business). In this case, you are permitted to create just one Google+ Local page per physical location. You can also build citations on other local business directories for this physical location. What you cannot do is build them for cities where the client has no physical office.

3. Instead, for these location-less cities where your client travels to serve his customers, you must rely on organic SEO in a effort to gain organic visibility for these other cities, because you are unlikely to gain true local rankings for any city in which the business isn't physically located. Your core effort will be the creation of city landing pages on the website for each service city. Each page must be totally unique and awesome (no cutting and pasting from one page to the next. I recommend you read:

The Nitty Gritty of City Landing Pages for Local Businesses

4. Beyond simply creating the city landing pages on the website, you'll be employing other SEO techniques to promote them, such as earning links and social mentions. You may also want to encourage the client to continue blogging about his various service cities. Locally optimized videos can also be really powerful.

5. BrickTech has linked to my article illustrating the top 20 local search ranking factors. Beyond this, you can go straight to the source by reading the entire Local Search Ranking Factors annual report at: http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

There is a ton to do for any local business! These steps should get you started, and just remember with the development of city landing pages, the content must be unique and terrific to avoid stamping the website as low-quality/spammy.

Hope this helps!

Hi Craig,

I agree that duplicate content is a concern here. Let's say your client is a plant nursery with 5 locations. Typically, what I would do would be to create 5 branch landing pages (one for each of the nurseries) and these would be locally optimized, but my inventory pages would not be assigned to a specific location. If my plant nursery client has the same 500 tree varieties in the 5 locations, I do not find it reasonable that I would turn the nursery into a 2500+ page website. This is way beyond the scope of any local business site I've ever created and I can't imagine any way a local business could reasonably create that much unique content for the same 500 trees. Nor can I envision that this would be necessary, if as you say, the scenario isn't terribly competitive.

I'm curious as to whether your client is actually a plant nursery owner. I ask, because I live in a pretty garden-oriented state - California - and even in bigger cities, there are only going to be a modest number of plant nurseries. I would be surprised if people are doing a ton of actual searching for 'orange trees san jose', 'liriodendron trees san jose', 'birch trees san jose'. I would assume they would be searching more for things like 'tree nursery san jose', 'plant nursery san jose' and that if I ranked highly enough for these things, I would convert at a high level.

Now, that being said, should there be special things the client would like to highlight, perhaps on a seasonal level, like 'bare root fruit trees now on sale' or 'special on trees for shade gardens' that apply across all branches of the franchise, a blog might be a good solution for this, bringing extra attention to certain inventory items.

My thinking is that, if your client was a virtual e-commerce company, then yes, getting high rankings for every single item in the inventory would be essential, but the optimization would not be associated with geography in any way. Thus, you would have a single page for each product - optimized only for the product name. But, once you bring geography into this, the concept of optimizing each product for each city just puts the project beyond what will be typical (or, I would say, necessary) for a local business website. Take a look at how major franchises are doing this. I don't think McDonalds' has created a page for 'Big Mac+ City Name' for every city in which they have a restaurant, right?

Does this make sense, Craig, or am I missing your point?

Hi Brooks,

This is such a good topic. It's one I've encountered previously.

So, the issue is that your particular business model has national applicability. Digital marketing is a topic of national/international interest, vs. if you were creating content for something like your local farmer's market association or something along those lines.

Despite this, as you've realized, the national interest your content is earning (congratulations, by the way) is building your authority relative to its topic. In a RankBrain environment, this is definitely a good thing. Appearing as a result for national searches means you are also appearing as a result for your target clients in South Carolina when they do those same searches. Remember, too, that organic authority underpins local rankings. So, there is no negative here, if Google is more and more associating your domain with expertise on a set of topics.

Basically, you are in an enviable position here to turn a good thing into a better thing! The leads you are getting from non-local clients could actually be a wonderful opportunity for you to create some goodwill, both B2C and B2B. Hopefully, Brooks, as an active member of an industry, you've gotten to know some other good folks at quality agencies. Instead of just turning these leads away, why not refer them to people you trust? And, ask friendly colleagues that if they ever get leads from businesses in SC, they think of you, as your business thrives on serving these particular customers. I have found, over the years, that potential clients sincerely appreciate being referred to a trusted source. It's such a confusing world out there, sadly littered with scammers, and you can help out a business owner in an important way by doing more than just saying "no".

Hope these thoughts are helpful!

Hi Patrick!

Great topic and here are the first 10 steps I would focus on:

1. Make a spreadsheet with the NAP+W of every office and every practitioner you are planning to market.

2. Check the spreadsheet to make sure no office or practitioner you are planning to market is sharing a phone number with any other entry on the spreadsheet.

3. Also check the spreadsheet to make sure that each office of practitioner you are planning to market has its own landing page on the website. In other words, the office in Lincoln has a dedicated website page, the office in Omaha has a dedicated website page and Dr. John Jones has his own landing page on the site, too. Be sure that each entry in your spreadsheet has a clear, unique URL associated with it (that's the W in your NAP+W).

4. Now, once you've ensured that there is a unique landing page on the website for each entity you are marketing, be sure that the content on those pages is unique and truly helpful. Major funding and effort should go toward this step, as content quality is going to play a key role in both organic and local rankings. Advise the client that they need to make a big spend here.

5. Now, re-read Google's guidelines, paying very close attention to the guidelines for Chains, Departments & Practitioners. Be sure you are current on Google's policies as they sound like they will be highly applicable to your client. Follow these guidelines to the letter.

6. Now, do a citation audit to discover existing citations, duplicates and any inconsistency problems. Document your findings. Make corrections where necessary.

7. Getting all of the above ducks in a row will get you where you need to be to start building a unique citation set for each entity (office or practitioner), referring to your spreadsheet to be sure you've got the right NAP+W for each. Build citations on all of the major platforms. You might choose to use a service for this step, like Moz Local or Whitespark, Bright Local, Yext, etc. Given the scope of the project, a paid service could end up saving valuable time.

8. Then, follow this up by building citations on healthcare-specific entities. You may find a service that builds healthcare citations, or you may choose to do this step manually.

9. Once you've got the content right and the citations developed, the next focus will be earning reviews. These are very important, given their impact on both rankings and conversions. Be aware of any laws governing Nebraska regarding healthcare advertising/solicitation and then create a viable strategy for earning reviews on the major platforms and medical platforms for each entity you are marketing

10. All of the above represents a normal strategy for most local businesses. You need to do these things, even if they are the same things your client's competitors will be doing. Step 10 is where this gets interesting and it's what I'd call the 'competitive difference maker'. As the marketer, you need to audit how the client's direct competitors are marketing themselves in Nebraska and figure out what they either aren't doing at all or aren't doing well that your client could do to make themselves stand out. This is where you will invest creativity, time and funding once you've got the basics covered.

I've seen advertising dollars spent foolishly in the medical field. For example, a one-horse town with just one hospital in it investing in billboards encouraging people to choose that hospital for ER care. If there's only one hospital in town, people don't have a choice and don't need to be convinced to go to the hospital when they break their arm, right? That's a case I've always remembered because it seemed so unnecessary.

By contrast, I saw something that appeared to be an app for an ER in a different region with several hospitals which apparently predicted wait-times for patients, making it easier for them to pick which hospital to go to for fastest service. I didn't look into the details of this fully, but I though the convenience it provided patients was an interesting idea. I wonder how it's working out.

What you need to find is something your client can do that is going to make them more useful, convenient, accessible or beneficial to patients than their competitors are. This step 10 is where your brilliance as an adviser really has a chance to shine!

Hope this helps and good luck with the big project!

Hey Bob,

I like VZpro's answer on this one. One area I always try to take advantage of is that some directories allow for a much longer business description than others. At the beginning of a citation campaign, I write descriptions of different lengths so that I have them at the ready for using on the different platforms. Those longer description field allow for a very robust (and optimized) description of the business, so that's something I never pass up.

Good Morning!

Unfortunately, the results you are seeing are consistent with a tweak Google made a few weeks back that has brought up some extremely low quality one boxes. The tweak is surfacing many old, spammy results like the one you've highlighted. Here are two good discussions of this weird phenomenon:

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

The above forum thread in 8 pages long, and I recommend you read the whole thing, as it includes many examples and, also, some things people have tried in regards to reporting the bad results.

Then, I would also suggest you read Mike Blumenthal's article in which he ties this tweak to the Hummingbird Update. Very smart:

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

And, if you'd care to read more on this topic, you might want to take a glance at:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/NMh_bk5MXX0

The problem is very widespread. Google is aware of it and I expect they will turn the dial again at some point to improve what is currently a very poor search experience. There may be some hope in reporting a specific instance, as you will read about in Linda Buquet's forum thread, but for the most part, this may just be one of those sit-tight situations that we have to endure until Google takes action. Hang in there.

Hi Radi!

Your question is an important one, but without being able to look at the actual business, the community will have to provide general answers rather than specific ones. It's perfectly fine if you can't share your client's info - but it will limit the specificity of the feedback you'll receive here.

Local ranking issues generally stem from one or more of the following:

1. Guideline violations

2. NAP consistency problems

3. Review inequalities

4. Poor organic strength

5. Newness

6. Citation volume inequalities or citation newness

7. A history of past issues with the business or its account (past violations)

8. Geographic limitations (user as centroid, distance from industry centroid, etc.)

There can be other things, but these are the big ones. A look at the 2015 Local Search Ranking Factors survey is going to be the best place to start considering the many, many factors that contribute to rank:https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

It sounds from your description like the business and/or your campaign are new. It's important to understand that age does matter, and that it takes time for things like citation building to go into effect. So, if you're doing the right things (building consistent citations, earning slow but steady reviews, building great content on the website, etc.) then it may just be a matter of time before you see this pay off. It's really important to set client expectations properly regarding this. But, at the same time, it's also vital to be sure that there are no guideline violations, duplicates or a past history of problems, so that you are squaring away those things that can hinder the good efforts you are currently making.

Hope this helps!

Hi Jonathon,

Unfortunately, I am still seeing issues on your Google+ Local page, as we saw when you previously posted the client's business. I recommend you go back and review the answers you received on those previous threads to be sure you've made every effort to remedy possible problems.

I want to clarify one thing here - if a client is a home-based SAB, they do not have to put their address on their website. They only need to enter in the dashboard of those platforms that allow the address to be hidden. It needs to be a legitimate address that is being entered, but you don't have to put it on the website.

Is this ideal? No. Why? Because Google will have the address in their dashboard and will come to the website looking to verify its accuracy. If there is no address listed there, then Google has less data to go on, so that is less than ideal, but is a reality for many home-based businesses. If your client has competitors with public studios who are able to show their addresses on their website, we might guess that they have a bit of advantage over your client, because their NAP is more easily cross-referenced by Google. But, I did want to chime in here to say it's not absolutely essential to publish an address on the website.

As Marcus has mentioned, citation cleanup is going to be essential here, due to the past existence of a type of address that was a violation of the Google Places Quality Guidelines. It's good you've gotten started on this. It can take some time for Google to re-index your corrected citations, so you may need to wait a bit to see the benefits of having made that effort. I will stress - you must be totally thorough in this work. Even one bad citation can breed multiple bad listings across the web because of the way data is shared in the local search ecosystem.

Like Robert, I am positive your heart is in the right place trying to help this client. You've received an enormous amount of feedback here at Moz from the whole community about this client - that's what we're here for! - and I hope you've been able to implement some of my previous advice about learning as much as you can about Local SEO in order to be better able to advise local business owners like this one. I provided a variety of learning resources on a previous thread of yours, and I hope you are checking those out on a regular basis. Local is definitely an on-going learning process for everyone involved in it.

Hey Rod,

While there hasn't really been any more news that I'm aware of on this, you might like to check out the thread on Linda Buquet's forum, which has some additional discussion and some other links in it, for further reading:

http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-important/29401-google-warns-about-doorway-page-algo-update-could-affect-local.html

Hi Rachel!

Without being able to see this directly (it's totally okay if you can't share) advice here will have to be general rather than specific. Yes, you can get docked for having Google My Business listings that don't follow Google's guidelines. I recommend that you phone Google directly so that you can talk to them about what happened and see what your options are for closing out the listings, if appropriate. You can get on the phone with Google via the CONTACT US button here: https://support.google.com/business/?hl=en&rd=1#topic=4539639

Hi Huisjames,

Yext and other local submission services are intended for physical businesses rather than virtual ones. They really are not a good fit for location-less businesses and your efforts would likely be better spent earning links that are relevant to your industry rather than your geography.

The BBB is a different story as they do have categories for e-commerce companies. You might like to read this Moz Q&A thread on a similar topic:

http://moz.com/community/q/at-what-point-does-bbb-accreditation-become-a-good-investment

Hope this helps!

Hi There!

The decision here is whether you wish to run 2 completely independent companies or if you are planning to consolidate everything into one company.

If the former, and you are having in-person transactions with your customers, then you would establish the unique physical locations of the business on the website and create unique sets of citations for them on the major local business data platforms. This is predicated on you having a unique name, address and phone number for each business - as well as a unique website.

If the latter, then you'll need to bring all of your assets under one roof, merging Tonik and Ola into a single business and establishing a single website for this merged company. Then, if you have face-to-face transactions with your customers, you can build out your citations based on the name, address, phone number and website of this company.

Hey Luke!

Good topic - here's the scoop:

1. Yes, if the owner gets away with it, this tactic could help them rank in additional geographies, BUT ...

2. It puts them at risk for Google take down of the listings in question, and could potentially influence Google's view of the whole business. Suggest you read:

http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-important/26844-busted-warning-attorneys-regus-non-compliant-offices.html

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/12/11/google-some-days-i-just-shake-my-head-today-is-one-of-them/

If you believe some of your competitors are falsely claiming to have staffed, physical offices, you may report them as spam.

Hope this helps!

Hi Donna,

This is a very good question. Google does not have an official guideline on this, but I would make a best guess that a string of homes being promoted as business locations could be something they would look for as a red flag. Now, given that this is just one other location, I'm not 100% confident that this is the cause of the rejection of the PA listing, but it might be. Some thoughts surrounding this:

-Are customers coming to the home in PA to do business?

-Are employees going from the home in PA to customers locations to serve them? If so, are they serving a completely different service area than the DE business? And, when trying to create the GMB listing, did they hide the address and set a service area or did they try to have a visible address?

-Who answers the phone at the PA location? Do they say, "Good Morning! Company Name. How can I help you?" or do they say, "Hello?" like a resident rather than a business? Could Google have called the business and gotten the latter greeting rather than the former?

-Does the PA location list a distinct phone number from the DE one, or did the owner try to list the DE phone for the PA business?

End of the day, there isn't a guideline on this, but there might be some details to the case that could lead to possibly being able to convince Google that the PA location deserves a listing. Might be. A rejection can be hard to overcome.

Hi Edward,

You are totally right to be concerned. This is spammy, extremely so:

http://www.generalplumbingsupply.com/American-Canyon-CA-v1.HTML

That enormous block of links to low quality pages for cities in which the business isn't physically located would almost certainly raise eyebrows with Google. The block of city names is a violation of Google's guidelines referenced on this page:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66358?hl=en

And the duplicate content from page to page is a major taboo. The presence of this duplicate content is definitely downgrading the overall quality of the website and is likely to fall afoul of Google.

From my look at the site, it appears to me that this is a brick-and-mortar plumbing store with 5 physical locations. By no stretch of the imagination is it okay to be featuring text like this:

"Kitchen And Bathroom Products In Fairfax, CA" when there is no physical location in Fairfax.

I got to this page http://www.generalplumbingsupply.com/Kitchen-And-Bathroom-Products-In-Fairfax-CA-v1.HTML from the American Canyon page. Google Maps says American Canyon and Fairfax are about 35 miles apart, so stating that the store's products are 'in' Fairfax is simply untrue. The customer is not going to appreciate what could very well come off as an attempt to mislead him, right?

I think you are absolutely right to be concerned. In your shoes, I'd be flipping out at this extremely blatant, spammy approach. I'm not quite understanding what the relationship is between you, your client and the store, but if this business came to me asking for a consultation, I'd tell them to read their SEO the riot act. The business owner needs to understand that his rankings and reputation are being put at risk by this practice. I would get rid of all of those scores of pages ASAP and take the following approach:

• A single, unique, high quality page for each store

• Use the blog to write about legitimate connections with any city where the business isn't physically located. For example, if the American Canyon business owner travels to Fairfax to hold a seminar on green plumbing practices, go ahead and write it up. The operative word here is 'legit'.

I think this article will really help everyone involved in the project to correctly identify what this business model is and how to promote it in a user-friendly, safe manner:

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

If there's some nuance I've overlooked in this situation, please don't hesitate to provide further details, and I sincerely hope my no-nonsense reply on this one may save the business owner from a massive headache!

Hey There!

I totally get how this can be complex. While I think it's important to mention the areas which you virtually serve, what I, personally, don't find to be a good strategy is one in which any business that serves nationally tries to create a page for every city. The services they are offering across the country are the same, and the only reason to create a page for each city would be if the services are somehow different from city to city. This is different than a local business that has to describe their services in a small handful of cities to make it clear where they will travel to. For a virtual/national/international business, I don't know of a way to create unique content for hundreds, thousands or millions of cities and towns when the service is the same for all.

There needs to be another approach to clarifying countries served than a city-by-city approach. But, I wouldn't be the expert on this, because I work primarily in the Local SEO field. I could see, if you serve 3 different countries, having a unique page for each country explaining hours or operation, languages spoken, etc., ... but not every city. It doesn't seem scaleable or realistic to me to do this this way for a virtual business.

I'm going to ask for some additional input from our team from staff members with more experience in national/international SEO than I have. Please stand by, and thanks for asking a good question!