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Hi Peter,

I'd like to be able to offer a comprehensive answer here, but without actually being able to audit the client's unique situation, we can only make guesses. What I can tell you is that, these days, Google is typically able to handle multiple businesses at the same address, provided the business is clearly unique, has a unique phone number, a unique landing page on the website and other factors like that. Here's a post on Search Engine Land about multi-location SEO problems: http://searchengineland.com/local-seo-multi-location-businesses-224732

Being very general here, your third location is likely not showing up for a branded search because:

1. There is a problem with the listing, like a shared phone number, a violation or NAP confusion.

2. The location isn't 'strong' enough in some way to be shown for the search.

3. Something odd has happened, like a merge.

My best advice here is that you get the client's permission to share their story over at the Google and Your Business Help forum, sharing complete details in hopes of getting a TC to take a look with you. But, I would only suggest you do this after you have ruled out some/all of the above so that you can tell the TCs your listing should be clean, strong and guideline-compliant.

Hope this helps.

Hi David!

I believe you are referring to the knowledge panel and I think this great post from Mike Blumenthal should really hit the spot:

http://localu.org/blog/local-knowledge-panel-doesnt-show-google-can/

Hope it helps!

Hi Brian,

Yes, you can (and should) be using the location landing pages on the website as the website links in your citations for a multi-location business. So, your citations for your business in Chicago can link to mycompany.com/chicago and your citations for your business in Denver can link to mycompany.com/denver. Just be sure that:

1. You are consistently linking ALL Chicago citations to the Chicago landing page on the website. Don't link some to that page, some to the homepage and some to other pages. Consistency is key.

2. Be sure each of the location landing pages is of very high quality, with complete NAP at the top (preferably in Schema) and very good content. No thin, duplicate content.

3. Be sure each location has its own local phone number.

Hope this helps!

#3 is a winner from my perspective, too.

Nice feedback on this thread, everyone. Great to see!

Hi Gayane,

Thanks for the link and the further information. You could go either way with this, but personally, I would stick with designating the business as brick-and-mortar. If you choose the settings for a service area business, Google will determine whether or not to hide your address, and if you are the only business in your locale/industry with a hidden address, there is some chance that you could see a ranking drop in Van Nuys. And, given your location (a busy, competitive place) setting a service radius is unlikely to cause you to show anyplace but Van Nuys, anyway. So, personally, I'd stick with the settings for brick-and-mortar because you are eligible, and I would pursue the work described in my point #2, above.

Hope this helps!

Hi Again:)
As Donna has said, the lack of footer NAP could have a a negative SEO impact, but if this argument does not sway the customer, I would totally set it to one side and explain to the business owner that customers are entering their website on a variety of pages (not just the homepage) and having the complete contact information on every page of the site definitely increases the chances of phones ringing. Why make the customer click extra links and hunt around for a phone number or address? Give it to them right away! Making it as easy as possible for the customer should increase conversions and that is language any business owner can understand.

Hi Rosemary!

Regarding 800 numbers, please check out this recent thread: https://moz.com/community/q/1800-number-for-google-local

Regarding our rates, they are the same for all accounts up to 100 listings. After that, you become eligible for our Enterprise pricing and support

Hi Lincoln!

I'm sorry to hear about the troubles you're having! I want to preface what I'm going to write with my opinion that your scenario is likely to require a full audit by an SEO who knows both traditional and local SEO. The Moz Q&A Forum is a great place to get at-a-glance opinions on things, but should not be seen a replacement for a formal, dedicated audit of your company. So, what follows is just my at-a-glance take on this. I am not going to look at penalties - I am just going to look at this from a local perspective.

1. Your website is not locally optimized. There is no contact information. No local phone number, address, etc.

2. So, next step for me was to guess at a Philadelphia zip code and look up your business in our Check Listing tool. The only option I see as a result for your business is located in Morgantown - not Philadelphia. Is this your business:

https://moz.com/local/details/JTI1NUIlMjUyMkJhcnRsZXR0JTI1MjBQYWlyJTI1MjBQaG90b2dyYXBoeSUyNTIyJTI1MkMlMjUyMjE5MDE5JTI1MjIlMjUyQyUyNTIyQmFydGxldHQlMjUyMFBhaXIlMjUyMFBob3RvZ3JhcGh5JTI1MjIlMjUyQ251bGwlMjUyQyUyNTIyJTI1MjIlMjUyQyUyNTIyNjEwNTA3MDczOCUyNTIyJTI1NUQ=

3. If the above is your business and you are not located in Philadelphia, aiming for Philadelphia-related rankings is going to be a major uphill battle. Doubtless there is major competition from companies physically located in this city who are going to have a significant inherent edge over your business unless you can get an office in Philadelphia.

4. The Check Listing results indicate that almost no citation building has been done for the business. Of the 15 platforms this tool surveys, you have listings on just 3, so it doesn't look like much off-site local search marketing has been done.

5. Your Google+ Local page has earned 0 reviews: https://plus.google.com/107698063096203549335/about?hl=en-US

6. You should research local algo changes that may have occurred around the time that you noticed any drops.

So, in just a minute or two, I'm seeing some important things that, in and of themselves, could explain a lack of visibility for the locally-focused searches you're hoping to rank for. The site is not optimized locally and isn't being marketed locally and the physical location is a big question mark. This is just a start, of course, but I hope it's helpful to get started thinking about these basics that you'll need to begin addressing in your marketing efforts.

Here are some links I think you'll find really helpful:

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

http://moz.com/learn/local

It's really smart of you to be investigating all of this, Lincoln, and I'm wishing you good luck!

Hi Lauren,

Google+ links have pretty much disappeared across the board. Here's a good link to get you started on learning about the big shakeup Local started experiencing in August:

http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-important/9397-major-update-missing-links-google-local-pages-new-review-windows.html

Hope this helps!

Hey Raymond!

Jim has linked you to my great big post on the art of local landing pages. Hopefully, you can read it and identify a sensible strategy there.

Now, I'm not a New Yorker, and so this business of boroughs has always been a bit of mystery to me, but one thing that I will add to what you'll read in my post is how clearly hyper-local sensitivity is ramping up in search. My honest preference for structuring local websites is:

• one page per city

• one page per service

I totally understand that every local business owner worth his salt wants to rank for every possible combination of service/geo-term. Of course! But the only time I feel this landing page strategy should be undertaken to represent every possible combo is if the business owner has considerable creative or financial resources to devote to make a potentially enormous number of pages of a very high quality. Clearly - your competitors aren't hearing this advice if they're just spinning thin/duplicative content to cover the waterfront.

Now, all this being said, with Google become more and more intelligent about neighborhoods, and the mobile (and desktop) user becoming the new 'centroid', my take on this is that neighborhood (borough?) names are only going to become more important in signifying that a business is physically close to a given user. So, if I were consulting with a small HVAC company without endless funds, I'd probably suggest something like this strategy:

• one page per city

• one page per service

• frequent but gentle mention of boroughs/neighborhoods throughout the website, as appropiate

• hyperlocal blogging on an ongoing basis that emphasizes these boroughs, if the company or copywriter can swing something authentic and good to write about

I think frequent content of this sort could make phones ring. Hope these are helpful ideas!

Hi David,

So glad you asked, as we've just released the 2015 Local Search Ranking Factors survey, which should help give you the most comprehensive possible picture of the factors that are believed to most influence both local and local/organic rankings:

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

These factors are also applicable to Maps, so a thorough study of the survey should be helpful.

Hi Zachary,

Almost across the board, Local SEOs will recommend the single site approach for the multi-store scenario. Recommend that you check this article out:

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

...and that you do a close study of how REI.com handles their multi-location business on their website. Especially look at the effort they put into making each location landing page on their website unique. Hope this helps!

Hey Brian,

Hate to say it, but it would likely have been better to edit your existing listing rather than closing it and creating a new one, and given that these businesses seem to have shared the address and phone number, I would recommend studying this piece by Joy Hawkins about permanently closed businesses:

http://imprezziomarketing.com/seo-blog/google-maps/is-permanently-closed-killing-your-ranking-4-case-studies/

If Google already suspected that the 2 businesses were actually 1, given the shared address and phone, the above is something you may need to consider.

Hey Neil,

Yes, having the practice's city name in the URLs is a perfectly fine tactic, as long as it's reasonable, but the main thing here to remember is that this is just one tiny thing that should be happening on any local business website. You want your basic SEO right, of course, but as the link Ryan has shared will demonstrate, there are just tons of things that require effort. No one's rankings are going to boil down to any one of the factors. The goal is to make a superior effort in your city and industry across many, many factors.

Hi There,

I believe BOTW listings are still free, unless this has recently changed: http://local.botw.org/helpcenter/jumpstartproduct.aspx

I agree with John that it's very important that you create a unique landing page on your website for each store and be sure all citations you're building link to these pages.

Hi Joshua,

Good for you for letting the client know that duplicate content landing pages for the cities are not a good idea. If the client is rural and the competition is low, I honestly wouldn't be recommending city landing pages at all in this scenario, unless their is a genuine reason for the business to be describing its activities in cities B, C, D, etc. Again, without knowing the nuances of the specific business, it's hard to give great advice. So, I can only take a general stab at this.

Let's say the client is a farm supply store located in Sonora, California. They are the only farm supply store within a 20 mile radius, and they want to be sure that customers in neighboring communities like Angels Camp, Jamestown, Colombia and Groveland know they exist. I would likely recommend a strategy like this:

1. Optimize all key pages of the website for product/service terms + Sonora

2. Earn testimonials from the farm store's loyal customers who come to them from various towns and include these throughout the product/service pages, including the name of the town the customer comes from.

3. Build citations for the Sonora-based store

4. Put a blog on the site and, on a modest basis, blog about industry-related events in the all the surrounding towns. Good content for the blog would be things like planting forecasts for the various towns at the different mountain elevations, coverage of farm stands, rural fairs, bake sales, mills, large animal vets, farming demonstrations, school gardens and anything else that relates to agriculture taking place in the neighboring communities that shop at the farm store for products.

5. Consider offering town-specific sales, contests and other promotions.

Given the rural location and low level of competition, this would likely be all the business would need to do to become very dominant for its goods and services within its own city and in the neighboring communities. It should not be necessary in any way to create those thin, duplicate content pages. A modest but well-planned effort should be all this business needs to succeed.

Hey Neil,

Smart topic, and yes, you are right that Google has stopped showing the description in pretty much any relevant place. It's still showing on Google+ Local pages, but as almost no links exist to Google+ Local pages anymore, few people are likely to ever seen the description. Nevertheless, the description is information you are giving to Google about your business, even if they don't display it. So, in my opinion, it's still worth it to write a good, non-spammy description.

On a side note, I find it particularly weird that a couple of GMB dashboard updates ago, Google went to the trouble of allowing rich text in the description. That seemed like a great feature. But, it's become of rather minimal value now, with the description being all but absent from what the typical user will see.

Hi Brian,

Good for you for discovering these. The process I would recommend would look like this:

1. Create a strategy for launching a set of new, excellent pages that cover the basics without needing to cover every possible combo as these duplicate/thin pages are likely trying to do.

2. Launch your new pages.

3. Delete the old ones and say, 'good riddance!'

Hi Brian!

If you'll see my #3 suggestion, above:

3. If you'd like to start working toward gaining some additional visibility for other cities you serve, you will need to do so organically rather than locally, via the creation of unique content and earned links to that content.

Hope that helps!

Hi James,

I agree with Richard on this - you want to aim for the traffic that is most relevant to your client. For a small business, ranking organically just for health insurance is likely to be out of the question, but ranking locally for health insurance in his small town should be achievable.

Hi John,

So, if I'm understanding correctly, both companies will now be named Company B, but there will remain 2 distinct physical locations. You have 2 options here, that I can see:

Option 1

Make a legal business name change so that you have Company B Boston and Company B Philadelphia as the legal names of the 2 companies and run them separately. Keep the 2 websites, being sure that the NAP on Company B Boston is only on site #1 and that the NAP on Company B Philadelphia is only on site #2. Do not share phone numbers or any other part of the NAP. Edit all citations accordingly.

This option will allow you to maintain the 2 websites and, hopefully, build up the strength of the poorer site over time.

Option 2

This is likely the better option. Name both companies Company B. Bring any good content aboard from the poorer website and then redirect the poorer website to the stronger one. Create a unique landing page on the new, consolidated website for City A and City B, ensuring that the addresses and phone numbers are unique. Edit the citations so that all of them for location A point to the City A landing page and that all of them for location B point to the City B landing page.

This option allows you to go with a single website, single brand and means all of the future work you do is going toward building up the authority of a single, very strong company.

Hope this advice is helpful!

Hi There!

Chances are, this is going to be an uphill battle; the ability to compete successfully with the likes of Google's own location-based packs of results + organic results featuring individual business websites + powerhouse directories like Yelp is going to depend on the resources you have to put into the development and marketing of the directory.

The competition is stiff for anyone entering the directory scene these days, but if you're creating something that doesn't yet exist, the best hope would be in becoming THE authoritative source for the niche. What can you do that will add value users can't get from Google 7-packs or Yelp's reviewers? What kind of content can you create that will earn you a spot amongst these already-established players? These would be the questions I would be asking myself to determine whether I wanted to dive into this new venture.

Hi Jack!

Thanks for asking a good question. Local listings are all about physical location - not about services or instruments. Google's guidelines (https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en) do a good job of describing this. So, your local listings represent your physical location and not the variety of services you offer. Because Moz Local relies on Google and Facebook for valid data, we'll want to find just one listing per location you operate from for the business on these platforms. You can, however, use the business description field to talk about your services, the instruments you teach, etc. Hope this helps!

Hi Miri,

Good feedback from the community. You might also want to check out these, on this topic:

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

and from just this week:

http://moz.com/blog/mastering-serving-the-user-as-centroid

Hey Ruben!

Eric is correct and this thread at the Google and Your Business Help Forum with the reply on it from a TC confirms Google's policy on this:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/business/SVQj4YfZccs;context-place=topicsearchin/business/remove$20old$20listing

Hi GSO!

Thanks for the further info on this. So, the typical structure for this would be that you would have 1 unique page per physical location the business operates, backed up by a unique set of citations for each of these physical locations and would then rely on Google to surface the location that is deemed nearest or most relevant to the searcher. If you have multiple physical locations within the same city, this is an ideal opportunity for thinking hyperlocally, and I believe you will find my latest Moz Blog post to be helpful in understanding this type of marketing mindset:

http://moz.com/blog/mastering-serving-the-user-as-centroid

Remember, whether you are structuring this with subdomains or subfolders, the landing page for each physical location needs to be completely unique. There is no good excuse for duplicating content on these pages. My rule of thumb on this is that if you can't devote the energy to making these landing pages really strong and unique, don't make them at all.

Given that one of the reasons Google omits results is to weed out things that are too similar, this is all the more reason for the business in question to overhaul their pages to be sure they are unique. That being said, understanding the user-as-centroid scenario is going to be very important for this business, so that they will be encouraged to promote each location equally and then leave it up to Google to pick the results they feel are either nearest or most relevant to each given user.

Hey Brian,

Donna is absolutely correct in her explanation. Just for further clarification:

1. Local business listings relate to physical location only. They do not relate to, and should not be created for, cities where you don't have a physical location.

2. You don't want to undermine the good rankings you've achieved for your city of location by accidentally violating Google's Guidelines.

3. If you'd like to start working toward gaining some additional visibility for other cities you serve, you will need to do so organically rather than locally, via the creation of unique content and earned links to that content.

Hope this helps!

Hi Adam,

Good comment! I'm also thinking about the multi-site scenario - particularly the multi-mini-site scenario. I've never been a fan of this approach and it does seem like the update could be applied to this scenario. Not sure yet ... but could be.

Hey Donald,

YP can be a good citation for a local business but I am puzzled by the sheer number of links you've found - 2500? Most businesses would not have 2500 listings (unless they are McDonald's or something like that). What is the origin of this many links from a single entity?

Hi Harry,

The first thing here is to explain to the client Google's bias toward physical location. In most cases, your client will be outranked in the local results by any competitor who has a physical location where your client has none. With that understanding, please, find your business model in this article and read the suggestions. I believe you'll find them to be helpful, but if you still have questions after reading, definitely come back with them!

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

Hi Gary!

In addition to the Moz Recommended Companies list Erica has linked to, you might also check out the Contributors box on the annual Moz Local Search Ranking Factors survey we publish, as all participants are recognized Local SEO experts.

Hi Harry,

Agree with Ryan here that your client is in an excellent position to rank organically (if not locally) for additional cities, given the non-existence of competitors in his 30 mile radius. However, you have 2 major challenges to address and overcome.

1. A car dealership is a brick-and-mortar business without any obvious relationship to any city beyond its own. This is not a service area business that goes to towns B, C and D to repair plumbing or trim trees. So challenge #1 is to sit down with the client and do an honest assessment of whether the two of you can discover a legitimate connection to cities B, C and D. Just off the top of my head, this might include:

• Sponsorship of events, sports teams or other things in cities B, C and D

• Rotating regional specials, as in, bring us a piece of mail with your address in City B and receive a 5% discount on X at our dealership

• Participation in industry-related happenings in these other cities. For example, blog coverage of an antique car show, an auto race, a vintage car club, teaching at a driver's training school or teaching road safety to students.

• Blog coverage of industry-related news or laws pertaining to cars, traffic, safety, etc. that is applicable to each of the specific cities

• Endorsements of or tie-ins to businesses in the other cities. For example, partner with an auto garage in City B to provide some kind or special for doing business with both companies.

These are the types of things you need to brainstorm. If no relationship to the other cities exists, then the customer can't move forward. He must either mine his business model to discover these relationships or begin to build them so that he can prove he is a relevant result for these other cities.

2. Challenge #2 hinges on the quality of what you and the client develop together. You mention that you are already working on city landing pages. The client should aim for just 1 page per target city on the website and make it as interesting, useful and strong as possible. Do not create thin or duplicative pages. This is not a good marketing strategy for any business, under any circumstances. Once you have got the basic page in place featuring the 'relationship' content, consider developing an on-site blog to continue on with this work, producing new writing on an on-going basis about contests, events, specials etc. You don't have to do tons of this, because of the lack of competition. Even a single blog post a month for each of the target cities will likely get you pretty far in what you're hoping to achieve, because of the client's fortunate lack of competitors. In all efforts, stress quality to the client and this should be a viable strategy.

Hope this helps!

Hi Ryan,

I'll be happy to take a look at this with you. Would you be able to answer a couple of questions please?

• What keyword phrase are you wondering about? Is it 'pool cleaning', 'pool service'?

• Are you asking about local pack rankings or organic rankings?

• Are you adding a geomodifier (like Peoria) to your search term? If so, what is it?

• Or, are you not adding a geomodifier, but are simply searching from your device based in Peoria (or some other city)?

These details will help clarify this for the community. Thanks!

Hey Rod,

This is Google's def. of Doorway Pages: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2721311

If you read through that carefully, I think the conclusion you may draw is that the difference between what Google is describing as a doorway page and what you may hear Local SEOs referring to as 'local landing pages' or 'city landing pages' or what have you, would be uniqueness and quality. This is my reading of this, anyway.

If you are going to create landing pages, as in the case of a local business serving multiple cities, I would suggest making maximum effort to ensure that each page is a thorough, unique, stand-alone resource for visitors. Don't throw up a bunch of thin, similar pages. Go for uniqueness and high quality. Hope this helps.

Hi Jess,

Can you provide further detail regarding what your relationship is to Carr Workplace? What is your business? Did you set up a listing via Google My Business for it? How does your business operate? The more detail you can provide, the better answers you should receive from the community.

Hi Brian - Your instinct about this is correct. Spun pages tend to be of very low quality and largely duplicative. Ideally, if you have an important city/service combination, you should be investing the time it takes to create a unique page from scratch about it. If the term is worth it, the time is worth it.

Hi Rich,

Here's what you'll want to do:

1. Build citations on only those directories which support hidden addresses. Phil Rozek has done the most work of anyone in the industry on surfacing lists of these, which you can see here:

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/

*Please note, those posts are couple of years old, so you may want to do some of your own research to see if there is anything different or new, but in the main, those lists should be a great start for you.

2. Build links, yes, but do be advised that these may/may not have quite the same impact as citations. They should help, nevertheless. Interestingly, the quality/authority of inbound links to the domain were judged to have the 2nd greatest impact on organic rankings in the most recent Moz Local Search Ranking Factors but only the 12th greatest on local rankings. This is pretty typical, but I think it's important to note that many Local SEOs are advising increasing focus on link earning as a result of the universal rollout of the 3-pack, making local rankings harder to win and organic rankings more important to earn.

So, there's my expert opinion Hope it helps!

Hi Bob,

Okay, thanks for clearing that up. Let's look at your other questions now.

What’s your take on putting up two (or in the future 3 locations) in the footer?

There is no official rule about this. Personally, I have drawn the line at 8 locations in the footer and have never seen any issue from that many, so you should be okay with 3.

Besides that, how would you combine for example 3 pages about the physical locations with unique pages for a other 10 city’s that are in the service area of your business

Your description of the business model does not seem to me to be a service area business (like a plumber). You are a brick and mortar business - you do not travel to customers in a service area and the fact that customers come to you from other towns is not really enough reason to optimize for these town terms. If, however, you have a legitimate connection to these other towns, like you teach classes in them, host events in them, sponsor events in them or other connections along these lines, then there may be opportunities for content publication. If there are not connections, then you should focus on your 3 physical location cities and, perhaps, their hyperlocal neighborhoods. More on this:

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

http://moz.com/blog/mastering-serving-the-user-as-centroid

Last but not least, would you say a part time entrepreneur with a physical location that’s only open for 3-4 days a week could claim a local google + page?

Google's only guideline about this is:

In order to qualify for a local Google+ page, a business must make in-person contact with customers during its stated hours.

There is no guideline stating that you have to be open 7 days a week, so if you have set hours of business during which someone walking up to your door is going to find a staffed business to receive them, you should be good to go. Just be sure you are accurately listing your hours of operation when you create the Google+ Local pages for your 3 locations.

Hope this helps!

Hi Ryan,

Thanks for the clarification. While the site is very appealing visually and I can see the work that has gone into it, I believe you have a duplicate content issue going on. For example, I cut and pasted this text from your Carefree Systems page, "An ionized pool is one of the greatest pleasures you will experience. Once" and it is coming up on multiple websites. Check this out:

https://www.google.com/search?q=An+ionized+pool+is+one+of+the+greatest+pleasures+you+will+experience.+Once&oq=An+ionized+pool+is+one+of+the+greatest+pleasures+you+will+experience.+Once&aqs=chrome..69i57.1106j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8

Let's try another. From your Ionization page text, "pool vacuums first came out. Today you probably won’t"

https://www.google.com/search?q=pool+vacuums+first+came+out.+Today+you+probably+won’t&oq=pool+vacuums+first+came+out.+Today+you+probably+won’t&aqs=chrome..69i57.1272j0j1&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8

So, this would be my first top priority with the site. Discover all duplicate content and write fresh, unique content for the pages. I also noticed that some pages have very little text on them. It's worth it to take the time to really write out the very best, most complete and engaging content you can for every single page you publish on the website.

I cannot say what percentage of lower rankings than competitors may be being caused by duplicate content, but it certainly is a red flag. Hope this insight is helpful as a place to start.

Oops - haha. That was me, signing in by accident under our Mozzer Alliance account instead of my own. So, the above reply is from me, and I'll look forward to reading your answer:)

Hi Andrew,

Good topic! I don't believe the scenario you are describing would actually fall under Google's guidelines for practitioners. Rather what you are describing sounds more like Google's rules for on-going classes at a location, if we view you performing a test at someone's facility as being like a class. So, this would not qualify for a listing, and to further compound this, Google does not want call centers listed as phone numbers. So, in a nutshell, I would not move forward with this idea.

The links from the .edu, however, could prove nice if done in a modest, user-friendly way.

Hope this helps!

Hi Charlie,

I'm sorry you haven't yet received any feedback yet on this question. Mike Blumenthal's writing on this topic (which you've already read) is as much as I personally know about on this, having never personally implemented a call tracking strategy for a local business. I'm hoping someone in our community will still reach out to you on this, but it may be that having read what you've read, you know as much as most folks on this topic. It may be you'll need to experiment to learn more.

Hi Swendt!

In most cases, yes, you'll want to update the existing GMB listing with the new data. But just to be sure you're covering all bases, do check out this great recent article from Search Engine Land:

http://searchengineland.com/business-owners-guide-moving-office-234671

Hope this helps!

P.S. Just a heads up that you may need to postcard-verify again with Google when you move. Not always, but sometimes.

My pleasure! And wishing you best of luck!

Hi There,

I'm so sorry, but I've never marketed a business in the UK or Ireland. If you don't receive a response from a UK marketer in the community, I recommend taking your question to Google's own Google My Business forum:

https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Google-My-Business/ct-p/GMB

You are certain to get an answer there.

Hi Pete,

Hmm ... it doesn't sound right to me, either. Almost sounds like doorway pages, though without actually seeing it, I'm not sure about that. It doesn't sound blackhat, per se, but it sounds like it might not be going in a Google-approved direction. I guess what you'd want to do here is to see if you can do something similar, highlighting your own most popular categories, without making them into navigation-less islands. Interesting topic!

Hi Rachel,

Yes, that's pretty much what I was concerned about. Unless that's an office that's staffed during normal business hours, then having a GMB page for it would be a violation of Google's guidelines. It would be important to show those guidelines to the client and explain to them that Google not only has the ability to read signs on the fronts of buildings, but will likely remove the listing should they realize its just a postal address. Not only this, but the takedown of the NY listing could also negatively impact the NJ listing.

So, the very best thing you can do for this client is likely to be totally honest with him, show him the guidelines and explain that he is risking the good name of his company (in Google's eyes) by attempting to appear to be physically located in a place that he isn't. Most business owners care way too much about the future of their companies to do something like this, once they have the proper education. That's where we come in, to help clients make sound decisions based on our own education.

There are appropriate ways to market a business in locations where you don't have a physical office - ways that have no risk attached to them and that have been endorsed by Google - but having a GMB page for a mailing address isn't one them. Hope this helps and good luck to you in helping get your client a better, safer path!

Hi Pete,

Hmm ... could be my Yankee lack of knowledge here. What is a tool hire affiliate? This isn't an industry with which I'm familiar here in the US, but my best guess is that you rent tools (like mowing machines or bulldozers) to people. Yea or nay? At any rate, it sounds like what you are talking about might be similar to something we used to have here in which industrial strength vacuum cleaners (hoovers) are located at the front of grocery stores. The stores don't own the machines. Rather, the machine owner has a sort of kiosk within the store from which they rent their machines. Is this similar? In such a case, you'd need to have pages specifying that your products can be found INSIDE such-and-such market at 123 Front Street. You can create web-based content for these, but should scrutinize the Google guidelines to see whether you qualify for Google+ Local pages or not: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en

Does this help, Pete?

Hi Rachel,

When a business is a service area business (like a plumber, locksmith, electrician, housekeeping service, etc.) it's totally fine to build content on the website about the cities they serve, even if they aren't physically located there. It's a best practice for these types of business models to have a page on their site for each major service city. Requirements are that each page be totally unique and of high quality. The thing you want to research here is landing page content. Here's an article of mine from 2014 on this. Some of the terms are outdated due to Google changes, but the basic ideas are the same:

https://www.google.com/search?q=moz+local+landing+pages+guide&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

This is a start, but it would be a great idea to research this topic further for other ideas about the types of content you might create. However, unless the business has postal queries, including the mailing addresses on the pages will not help and might just be confusing. Hope this helps!

Hi Pete,

I want to be sure I'm clearly understanding your business model. You are saying yours is an e-commerce site, which is most commonly a virtual model, but you are also saying you have locations. Are these locations physical locations unique to your business (not like having your products in someone else's store) and do your employees interact face-to-face with customers who come to rent your products? If yes to all these, then there is no problem with you having a page for each of your physical shops - no problem at all. Just be sure each page you create is unique and useful and linked to from your navigation.

Please, let me know if there is some facet of this I'm not quite getting. For now, the practice of having a unique page for each of your shops is still a best practice.