Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hey There!

Thanks so much for taking the time to contribute to this discussion. The geographic variations you mention sound normal to me, but the issue of the companies consistently ranking highly for no apparent reason is interesting. Are you saying the search is yielding a onebox (just one result) or a normal pack? Is the name of the business an exact or close match of the keyword phrase you're searching for? Is the business right in the middle of a cluster or similar businesses? Sounds like a good puzzle!

Hey Chuck,

At first glance, I'd say your domain name (http://NewYorkJazzEvents.com) would be sending a very strong signal to Google that your website is promoting jazz events in NY ... not that you are promoting wedding bands. Your case might well be one of the rare ones that calls for re-branding, but I'd also recommend spending a few minutes watching this recent WhiteBoard Friday which relates highly to the topic of how Google evaluates the quality of content:

https://moz.com/blog/google-may-analyze-evaluate-quality-content-whiteboard-friday

Hope this helps and that you'll get lots of good feedback from others in the community.

Hey Tom,

I see how this could be problematic. In general, Local SEOs will cite the guidelines Joey has, in which Google states they don't want this:

Location information, such as neighborhood, city, or street name, unless it is part of the real-world representation of the business.

So, short answer here is that you need to leave your name exactly as it appears in the real world on your websites and the citations that you can control (and, of course, your Google My Business listing). I wonder if it would be possible for you to reach out to the top 20 aggregators appearing for your core search and ask them to edit your listing name. If not, then the consolation here is that the playing field is level if competing colleges area all suffering the same fate with the aggregators. In other words, their percentage of NAP inconsistency would be the same as yours.

Anecdotally, what you're experiencing is also experienced by all multi-location businesses that list their locations on Facebook. Facebook won't let you have more than 1 FB Place with an identical name, so you have to be Joe's Diner Boston, Joe's Diner Chicago, Joe's Diner St. Paul, etc. Again, because their competitors are all in the same boat, it's something they don't really have to sweat.

100% NAP consistency isn't normally achievable. You want to be as consistent as you can, but don't stress about attaining absolute perfection, and my bet is that the inclusion of your city names on these aggregators is not hurting you very much, if at all. So, this would be a see-what-you-can-do-and-then-leave-it-at-that situation. Hope this helps! Interesting thread.

Hey There!

That infographic looks like it has some good stuff in it! It does look like it's a few years old, so beware of any outdated terminology. You might also like to check out some of these resources on the Moz Blog:

https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages

https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-checklist

https://moz.com/blog/why-good-unique-content-needs-to-die-whiteboard-friday

Hope they help!

Hi Kristen,

Yeah, I just don't think Google+ really caught on the way Google might have hoped. But Posts could totally be interesting, if it becomes widely available.

Hi Michael!

By happy coincidence, I wrote a very BIG guide on this topic just recently here on the Moz Blog:

https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages

And this post talks about organizing the structure of your landing pages based on your business model. See the infographic at the top of:

https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-checklist

Hope these hit the spot !

Hi Stephen,

My apologies, but I am simply not very familiar with geographic designations in your country. In the US, Local SEO geared toward local pack rankings is totally hinged on cities, never counties. If counties are an important search term for your business, you can make an organic effort in that regard with content you build on your website to reflect these terms, but the core of your Local SEO will be city-based, not county-based, and will apply to the city/cities in which you are physically located.

I hope you'll receive further feedback from the community.

Hi Michael!

There are 3 common approaches to your scenario which can be described as follows:

OPTION 1

This represents a very basic, good structure to be used when all service cities are deemed of equal importance:

• Build a unique landing page for each city served, optimized for each city + general info about your work in that city

• Build a unique landing page for each service, optimized for each service but not optimized for geo terms.

OPTION 2

Given Google's extreme bias toward physical location, this option can be used to maximize your optimization for your city of location, while still giving secondary focus to additional service cities where you lack a physical location:

• Build a unique landing page for each city served, optimized for each city + general info about your work in that city

• Build a unique landing page for each service, optimized for each service and also optimized for your city of location, strengthening the association between your services and your core city.

OPTION 3

This option should only be considered by companies with significant funding and exceptional creative resources that will ensure that all pages are unique and useful rather than duplicative, thin and harmful:

• Build a unique page for every possible keyword/geo combination. So:

Cloud Computing Sherman Oaks

Cloud Computing Van Nuys

Computer Repair Sherman Oaks

Computer Repair Van Nuys

etc.

*Again, this last approach should only be undertaken if you are positive the content you'll be developing has a definite purpose for users and that you won't end up weakening your website with a big menu of weak pages.

Options 1 & 2 tend to be the best bet for smaller companies with reasonable resources. Option 3 can work, but only where creative possibilities and big budget are available.

Hope this helps lay this out in a way that makes sense!

Hi Anton,

Good question! To my eyes, these appear to be two legitimately unique companies. One installs windows and doors, and the other is selling blinds and curtains. I see you have separate phone numbers for the business, so checking that off my list. Good. Here are the 3 things I'd suggest you make certain of:

1. Be sure NO content is being shared between the two websites. Sometimes, businesses get a bit lazy about this. Audit both sites to be sure they aren't sharing content.

2. Beware of any linking strategy the companies may have undertaken to try to boost one another.

3. Be careful about Google categories. If possible, do not share Google categories between the two businesses. I mention this, because if you're using shared categories between two businesses at the same address, there is some chance that Google could mistake the intent and wrongly decide that this is really just one company trying to pose as two.

Those would be my 3 little provisos. Hope they help!

Hey Ryan,

Just checking in with you again, wanting to be sure you saw my earlier reply. I had asked some questions to help our community get down to the heart of your query. Hope we'll hear back from you!

Hey Jake!
I'm so sorry to hear you're feeling discouraged. That can be tough, when you work hard but aren't seeing results. Now, my main advice to you here is that you're going to want to consider having a really good Local SEO firm audit your entire situation, but in the meantime, I'm going to give you some cursory feedback on this.

1. I am really not a fan of the one-page website approach. I know, these have been trendy for the past couple of years, but given the SEO limitations inherent in them (no title tags, fewer link opportunities, difficult to grow content, etc.), they are simply not an approach I would recommend to my own clients.

2. My preferred approach would be to go with a more traditional structure, with an excellent, unique page on the website for each service you offer an each city you serve.

3. Yes, the core of your Local SEO will be anchored to your physical location and you'll put a major focus on this on the website, understanding that it's for your physical location that you'll be trying to rank in the local packs, but as mentioned in point 2, you can also build out great pages for your additional service cities. Here are 2 links that should help you get the gist of this approach:

https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-checklist

https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages

4. I know, it can be tough when you've put a lot of effort into a website to reevaluate whether it's the right vehicle for success or is holding you back. In this case, I'd start with very careful consideration of all of the above.

5. From there, you're going to want to move on to the other things covered in the above checklist. It's believed that several hundred factors contribute to local rank (see: https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors). And you'll definitely want to audit your citations. Our free Check Listing tool (moz.com/local/search) is a good place to start.

I hope this feedback is helpful. It's just at-a-glance and can't replace a professional audit, but I hope it provides some good context for evaluating the efforts you are making to meet your goals.

Nice discussion going on here. To be honest, I am still unaware of any tool that does a very good job with local-specific kw info. I have never really trusted Google's numbers on this, so my rule of thumb remains to do keyword research without geomodifiers and then simply add the geomodifiers into your kw list for optimization purposes.

The one proviso here is when you are dealing with a product/service that is called totally different things in different regions (pop vs. soda vs. cola). There are many, many examples of this and it is going to require regional research (interview the business owner and staff to define local terminology) to get the terms right.

Hi Anton!

EGOL is truly a content expert, and I second his suggestion that more content would be the top priority here. You mention ranking failures. What terms, specifically, are you failing to rank for? And are you looking at local or organic rankings? Do you feel you've built strong enough content for those terms? Have you gone through something like our Local SEO Checklist to try to identify problems, like citation inconsistency, reviews, technical issues, etc? https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-checklist

The truth is, there are a couple of hundred factors that are believed to impact local rank. Auditing your own presence and comparing that to an audit of your competitors generally yields many clues as to why you are being outranked. Hope the Checklist will be a good jumping off point!

Hi Matthew!

Good question! Best advice: build just one website and one set of citations for this business. What you are describing sounds to me (and would likely sound to Google) like a single business in a single physical location that has purchased other businesses in order to expand its menu of services.

Unless the business genuinely has unique forward-facing departments (like a hospital campus with one dept. for X-ray and another for ER) then the client would be taking a needless risk trying to promote the business as though it were 5, 6 different companies all in that same building.

Remember that Google reads street-level imaging. Should they take a look at the building's signage and see Big Guy Marketing on the sign, but see that the owner is also listing Little Guy Printing, Medium Guy Car Wraps and Funny Guy Graphics in his Google My Business dashboard all in that same building, Google would rightly have cause to be suspicious that they are being spammed, by a single marketing company trying to look like multiple businesses.

The good news here is that the owner is already wishing to consolidate. He should do so, and then you and he can both focus on building out one really awesome brand with a powerful, diverse menu of services (but just one set of citations)!

Hope this helps!

Hi Ken,

If you and your fiancee are marketing the business yourselves, the area you need to study is Local SEO. It's important, of course, that you understand traditional SEO, because that's the foundation of Local, but the form of marketing that will be most specific to your business model is Local.

Local SEO is city-based. I see optimization on this site for the county rather than the city. You need to focus on Bensalem rather than Bucks County, in your title tags and content. You can target other cities as well, if your fiancee does photo shoots in them that she can highlight, but Bensalem is your marketing anchor, the city you occupy, the city you'll be building citations around and the city Google will see you as relevant to.

Your homepage needs some more content and I see some thin pages elsewhere, as well, but it's great effort is being put into the blog.

I'm going to recommend that you and your fiancee sit down with our Local SEO checklist to take the website from its current state to a more competitive state: https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-checklist

It's a big document, and if you pay careful attention to each section, I believe it will really help you take the business forward.

So happy to have you in the community, Donna

Hi Gal,

My suggestion would be to go forward like this:

URLs:

domain.com/chicago/21-main-st

domain.com/chicago/32-center-st

Title Tags:

Brand City Street

Others in our community may have different suggestions, but the above seems simple and consistent to me.

Hi Lee!

I agree with you that it makes good horse sense to craft unique citation descriptions, but to be pragmatic about this, the past 5 years have seen the development of citation building services (Moz Local, Whitespark, Yext) etc. and, normally, these services are going to push out a single description for you, and that description is then going to make its way further down the stream to platforms higher level platforms push to. In other words, duplication of descriptions isn't only an outcome of using most citation building services, but is pretty much baked into the situation in which data upstream moves downstream.

So - if there is a specific platform on which you feel having an extra unique description might help (like, maybe a Yelp profile), go ahead and write one, but, at this point in the game, I'm honestly no longer worried about duplicate citation descriptions, given that they are pretty much unavoidable.

Hi Jordan!

Regarding your local landing pages, I think you'll find this Moz Blog piece really fills the bill: https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages

Regarding optimization, with just 2 cities, you may be able to include both in the tags and titles on some of your main pages (home, about, contact) but that kind of depends. So, for example on your homepage title tag, you could have

Green Tree Bank: Serving Jackson, OR and Yola, CA

Or, you can skip that approach and just go with the brand and a message on main pages' tags and focus very heavily on geographic terms on the landing pages. It something to experiment with.

Main thing is, those landing pages should be viewed as 2 of the most important pages on the website, as they are the ones your citations should link to and your customers will be reaching most easily via those citations. Make these pages shining stars, expending all possible resources to offer an exceptional, persuasive experience in order to maximize conversions.

Hope this helps!

Hi There!

We had a thread about Wix websites and their issues a few years back. I've found it for you:

https://moz.com/community/q/wix-is-it-any-good-for-seo

Hope it helps!

Hey Gal,

I'm personally a fan of title tags like this one on Phil Rozek's homepage:

http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/

I love it when they contain a mix of sentiment and keywords, because this makes them stand out in the SERPs.

It's fine to have your brand name in most/all of your title tags, and I think it's REALLY important to have in on the homepage, the local landing page, the about page and contact page. Beyond that, with both title and H tags, I recommend being creative.

That's right, Kuldeep Singh!

Each physical locations should have it's own GMB listing and will earn its own reviews.

Hi Rosemary,

You are right to be concerned about promoting virtual locations. The only safe thing for them to do is to honestly state their real, physical locations and develop organic content around other cities they serve but lack locations in.

Hey Ricky!

I would say this boils down to how well that directory ranks for your client's core search terms. $50 is quite a bit to ask for a listing, you know, but if there is some reason being ranked on this directory in this town would help your client earn rankings they can't get on their own, it might be worth it. So, do some searches to discover how authoritative the directory is.

Hey Chad!

Interesting topic. Two thoughts on this:

1. I'm assuming that the optimization for the street names is already baked into your client's real estate listings. As in 3 BD/2BR Home at 123 Turtle Creek Drive. Right? It certainly makes sense to me that you would optimize the home listing pages with their street as well as their city.

2. I'd give some thought to 'near me' searches as well (as in 'homes for sale near me') which Google stated doubled in 2015. This phenomenon is largely tied to local pack results, but, of course, it's forbidden to build Google My Business listings for 'for sale' properties. Nevertheless, there could possibly be some organic opportunity to begin competing for near me phrases for the small area your client serves. Content development + optimization + link earning would be key here.

Hope this helps!

Hi Patrick,

As each of these is genuinely a forward-facing department with its own phone number, then listing each should not be regarded by Google as spam in any way. Many hospitals and colleges have numerous departments. It's true - this will lead to quite a cluster of markers on the map, but if customers zoom in, Google will spread them out. Hope this helps!

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the additional details. Okay, so I now understand that you have 2 physical locations and sell/rent a menu of products.

You have 2 options.

Option 1

You create a unique, strong landing page for each of your locations. This post explains the types of content you'll want to include on these pages. These pages overview your complete service menu, but focus highly on addition information that relates specifically to that locale. You'll want testimonials/reviews (see this post) and other types of persuasive content that engender trust in what your company does in that target city.

Separately, you'll also create a set of pages for each of the services you offer. Describe each service in great detail on its own page. Link to these pages from the city landing pages and vice versa. You can mention locale on these pages, but the main focus should be on the items you rent/sell.

Be sure all of the above pages are easily accessible from a top level menu.

Continue to build out content on the site or attached blog over time.

Option 2

You create a unique page for every possible keyword combination. So, you'd have a Memphis Floor Scrubber Rental page and a Nashville Floor Scrubber Rental page, and so on.

You can take this approach, but only if you can avoid the pitfalls of redundancy/duplicate content. It's kind of old-school at this point to take this approach. Unless you can find a very strong reason to create all of the pages for the good of users, this method can be a bit of an overkill and can often result in a low quality site with a lot of thin or duplicate content instead of a high quality site with best-in-class pages.

So...

I typically prefer Option one for small-to-medium businesses, with maximum effort being put into making the smaller set of pages very high quality.

And don't forget to link all of your citations for the Nashville location to your Nashville page, and the same goes for Memphis.

Hope this helps

Hey James!

Joy Hawkins wrote an excellent post on this topic last year. Check it out:

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

Should be just what the doctor ordered!

Hi John!

This is a good question. I highly, highly recommend watching Rand's Whiteboard Friday: https://moz.com/blog/google-may-analyze-evaluate-quality-content-whiteboard-friday

This does a better job than I can, in a few sentences, to explain how an individual page of your website relates to your overall brand. I think this is where your thoughts are going with this. Please, watch the video and come back with further questions.

In the meantime, what I'll say is that what you are actually trying to do is to build topical authority. So, if your business is a landscaping company serving the San Francisco Bay Area, all of those individual topical pages you are building to represent your service areas (San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, etc.) go toward building your overall authority. And, too, of course you can build internal links from your location landing pages to your homepage, if appropriate, but that may not always be the case.

Hope the video helps!

Hey There!

Like others on this thread, I'm not seeing the same results you are for those search terms. Yelp is one of the top ranking directories for many brand and service searches, so having it rank highly is not unusual. It's possible for a Yelp result to outrank a website if the website isn't very strong. As for how to build up your own rankings, please check out our Local SEO checklist. Everything on that list will help you compete and, hopefully, begin to surpass weaker competitors. You'll want to audit both your own business and that of any competitors for a complete picture. Hope this helps!

Hi Frank!

Your plan sounds good to me. Be sure the set of location landing pages is easily accessible either through a top level nav menu, or via an indexable store finder widget. And, of course, aim for the highest quality content on each of these page. Have you got something like this in place yet on each of the location landing pages: https://moz.com/blog/the-complete-guide-to-creating-onsite-reviews-testimonials-pages

Getting your citation management going is critical (great to hear you'll be using Moz Local for this!). Don't overlook the importance of getting reviews. Google My Business reviews should be primary, and then focus on the other platforms your customers would commonly use to review businesses in each city in your industry.

And, finally, in 2017 (depending on the industry) you're going to want to delve into attribution within the Google My Business dashboard, if it's offered. Attribution, IMO, is about to get pretty big.

Hope this helps, and I do believe you've outlined a sensible plan. You might want to through our Local SEO Checklist to be sure you're firing on all cylinders: https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-checklist

Good luck!

Hi Neil,

My pleasure! If you're a multi-location business, one solution to scaling would be to assign a social marketer at each location and give them access to that Facebook Place with a schedule you'd like them to follow for social sharing. How much time will need to be invested into this will be dictated by the competitiveness of your geo-industry.

If staff size limits this, I would suggest just getting basic details onto the Facebook Place listings, and then further researching Facebook's other types of pages (see:https://www.facebook.com/pages/create/) to determine whether you'd be able to also run a single company page for the whole business which you could focus your social efforts on. This, however, is outside of my area of knowledge, so it's something you'd want to research well.

Hi Justin,

Glad those resources helped, and your follow-up question is one I'd answer with 'it depends'. When a business' city of location is the major city (like, let's say San Francisco) then, yes, I would strongly optimize all main page elements with that city, because - hey - it's the BIG city! But, let's say the business is located in a small town outside that city (let's say Mill Valley) and there are larger cities the business serves (like San Francisco), then I might be a little more sparing in overemphasizing the small town. So, this is really a case-by-case thing. You should experiment with different forms of optimization if the physical city isn't the major city, and see how this affects conversions. Hope this helps!

Thanks for taking the time to reply! I wondered exactly that same thing about restaurants. I wonder if interiors or food shots are more influential. I'd love to see a study on that, if someone does one.

Hi Matthew!

Good for you for reaching out for help on this. EGOL has caught some really important problems with the website and these should be top priority fixes. Hopefully you (or your webmaster) can overhaul the website and get rid of the errors and then devote resources to improving the overall quality of the site's content.

Additionally, you'll be wanting to work on your citations. I just popped your name/zip into our free Moz Check Listing tool and see inconsistencies and duplicates: https://moz.com/local/details/JTI1NUIlMjUyMkVzdGVzJTI1MjBSb29maW5nJTI1MjIlMjUyQyUyNTIyNzU3MDMlMjUyMiUyNTJDJTI1MjJFc3RlcyUyNTIwUm9vZmluZyUyNTIwYW5kJTI1MjBDb25zdHJ1Y3Rpb24lMjUyMiUyNTJDJTI1MjIxNTkwMiUyNTIwQ291bnR5JTI1MjBSZCUyNTIwMTY1JTI1MjBBJTI1MjIlMjUyQyUyNTIyNzU3MDMlMjUyMiUyNTJDJTI1MjI5MDM3MDcyMjE5JTI1MjIlMjU1RA==

At a glance, I'm particularly noting a lot of inconsistencies in your business name. Any place you list or mention your business name (on local business listings, on your website, etc.) you should be totally consistent. There are other inconsistencies as well.

You'll want to begin working on earning more Google reviews as well as reviews on other platforms that are important to your customers.

I noticed your address on your GMB listing is visible. Do customers actually come to your location? If not, Google wants you to take steps to hide your address on your listing because you are an SAB (service area business).

So, you're on a journey here. The good news is that there are specific reasons the business hasn't yet achieved the rankings it wants, and these are all things you can attend to. I suggest, in addition to acting on advice you're receiving from the community here, that you go through our Local SEO checklist: https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-checklist

Hope it helps, and good luck in the work ahead in 2017!

Hi Patrick,

Very important questions!

Adding to Laura's caution on this ... if ABC Home Services is actually just a single company, then Google does not want multiple Google My Business listings created for each service it offers. Obviously, the business is offering quite a variety of things, but if it's really all just one company, then it's only eligible for a single Google My Business listing, regardless of the approach that is taken with the number of websites built. And, if it's just one company, building multiple websites with shared NAP on them would not be a safe approach. If this were my client, this is the rough strategy I would recommend:

1. Build a single website with awesome content on it for each of the services offered (roofing, carpet cleaning, etc.).

2. Build a single set of citations for the company

The only safe alternative to this would be to legally register the companies as completely separate with totally distinct names, do not have an umbrella website, have a unique website for each with no shared content, have a different physical location and different phone number for each business, and do not interlink the businesses in any way.

Any variation on this (such as a shared address) could bring Google scrutiny to the situation and carries a measure of risk as Google might determine that it's just one business attempting to appear like multiple companies. Google can usually handle multiple businesses at the same address, but if they are in some way related to one another, this can raise red flags.

Laura has also made mention of departments within businesses. This commonly applies to auto dealerships, hospitals, school campuses, etc. Google suggests that these business models should each have a unique front entrance to qualify for multiple GMB listings. I've not seen this model applied to a home improvement business, but it's something you could ask Google about.

Hope this helps. Very smart of you to fully research this before creating a marketing plan!

Happy Travels, Alan!

Google permits the development of what are called 'multi-practitioner listings'. In other words, a real estate firm with 2 partners is eligible for 3 listings (one of the business and one for each of the practitioners). My advice:

1. If you go with this approach, you would also build out a set of citations for each practitioner as well as those you build for the business. By citations, I mean other listings on platforms beyond Google My Business (Facebook, Yelp, Superpages, Localeze, Infogroup, etc.). You would typically link the business' listings to the homepage, and the practitioners' citations to their respective landing pages on the website, though you'd only want to do the latter once you have built an extremely good landing page for each of the two partners. Finally, wherever possible, choose different GMB categories for the two practitioners to try to skirt around Possum as best you can, so that your practitioners can avoid the heaviest effects of that filter.

2. Alternatively, you can decide not to build multi-practitioner listings and can simply build out the GMB listing for the brand and skip building citations for the partners. This is simpler, does not get tangled up in Possum (unless there are other real estate firms in your building). If you go this way, I would still recommend building content on the website representing the two partners, for the sake of users.

Does this make this a bit clearer?

Hi Neil!

Good questions! As Jordan has stated, yes, each physical location should have a unique citation set. So, that means a unique Google My Business Listing, Bing Listing, Yelp Listing, etc. *I respectfully disagree with Jordan's suggestion about Facebook. You should be creating a unique Facebook Place for each location.

Important: Be sure that none of the locations shares a phone number with any of the others, and that all are physical locations (not virtual offices) that are staffed during stated business hours.

Hope this helps!

Good job getting the improvements going, Matthew! Nice!

Regarding Google My Business, it's Google's own rule that service are businesses (plumbers, electricians, and often various types of general contractors) hide their address. So, to strictly adhere to the guidelines, yes, you'd need to hide your address if you only go to customers to serve them rather than them coming to you (like to a retail store). My view of your scenario is a bit third-hand, but I would normally tend to think of roofing contractors as being SABs, unless they had some sort of showroom to which customers come. So, you'll have to make a judgement call here. The risk of leaving it up is that Google may think you're not complying with their guidelines, simply because your industry would typically be considered an SAB.

That being said, some experts believe that Google couldn't actually care less about whether the address is hidden or not, because they appear to do a very poor job of enforcing this rule. I concur with the lack of policing of this, but it's ALWAYS important to know the guidelines so that you can follow them as closely as possible. And, no, hiding your address should not impact your rankings. There can be some nuances to this I can't really get into without knowing the history of your business and its geo-industry competition.

I have a last question for you, Matthew. When I was looking at your GMB listing and looking at G Maps, I was a little confused about not being able to see your road name on the map. Could be I'm overlooking it, but are you sure the street address you've listed matches Google's database? I run into this issue a lot, particularly in rural areas, so, just be sure:

1. The street name matches what that street is called on Google Maps.

2. Cross check this with your local USPS and also consider using https://smartystreets.com/ to see how the post office names that street.

Hey To All My Favorite Local Folks Here!

Have clients in the hospitality industry? You might be interested in this Mike Blumenthal post in which he does a good job of voicing the frustration business owners may feel when their preferred Google profile photo is overridden with Google's preferred pic. The post does more than just vent, though ... it actually hints at something quite fascinating that Google may have just offered up to the hospitality industry by switching from hotel-preferred exterior shots to Google-preferred interior shots of rooms.

Mike's contention (and it's one shared by many in the industry) is that Google makes moves like this because they are maximizing profit. From the image switching that just happened, I think it makes sense to theorize that Google has gathered enough internal data to convince them that room shots lead to more bookings than do exterior views of lodgings. This wouldn't surprise me at all. When you're looking for a place to stay, it's the room you're going to stay in that matters most ... not really whether the exterior building is made of brick, wood or stucco, right? Certainly, a beautiful, fancy building could sway you, but if the rooms look awful inside, that's probably a deal breaker.

If Mike is right, then I think Google's image switcharoo offers an extremely compelling reason to follow Google's lead and shine a major spotlight - on your website which you CAN control - on your interior photography. This suggestion could apply at all levels of the industry, from major hotel corporations that might want to rethink homepage contents and interior page layouts, to country B&Bs that have never made the investment in getting a pro photo shoot done that will truly showcase their rooms. I know, as a traveler, I've seen everything from stunning to downright dark, distorted and scary when it comes to hotel room photography.

If Google knows it gets more bookings when good clear room shots are given pride of place, your hotel clients might want to be taking notes on that.

Do you agree? As a hospitality industry Local SEO (or even as a traveler) what do you think is the most influential booking factor? Do you have any tips to share with others in the industry or an opinion on Google's switcharoo? Please, share with our community!

Hey There Garrett!

You're right that parallax has been the subject of some controversy when it comes to SEO. Here are a couple of good articles to dig into:

https://moz.com/blog/parallax-scrolling-websites-and-seo-a-collection-of-solutions-and-examples

https://www.semrush.com/blog/parallax-vs-seo-web-design/

In visiting your website, I noticed that your company offers SEO as a service, so it's super important that your team fully researches the pitfalls/benefits of optimizing in a parallax environment before offering this to clients. The articles I've linked to are a good start, but hopefully you can research this further. I'm by no means an expert at parallax, and I've asked a teammate to take a second look at your very good question to see if they can add more. I hope this is a helpful start to a big learning curve!

Hey There!

I just responded on your other thread with this link: https://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide

I would also recommend reading: https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages

Please, read through both posts and then, if you have further questions specific to your business, don't hesitate to let us know here.

Hey David!

That is confusing! Likely, you will have to go to Google on this one, but first:

1. Is your client the only lawyer at his new practice or are there multiple lawyers?

2. Can you gain access to the listing you are calling 'the old listing' to edit it?

Hi Andrew,

I agree with Jason that there are some nuances to this situation that could make it easy to give wrong advice (I also agree with him that Phil is a brilliant Local SEO consultant and it might be worth your while to reach out to him for some private consultation, during which you can show him the actual business). In the meantime, it's important to remember that Local SEO hinges on physical location. If Business A is located in Dallas and its airport limos operate from within that city, then this is how Google will see your business and it's what dictates what you can build out local listings for. But as to Business A's subcontracting relationships with Businesses B, C and D in other regions of the country, how you handle this in terms of content development would likely center around things like:

1. Whose brand is being used in those other regions? Is it Business A's brand, or the brands of the subcontractors?

2. What is the exact subcontracting relationship?

3. If the brands being used in the other regions aren't Business A's, could it confuse Google/hurt the business to associate it with these regions where there is no physical presence?

You'll want to dig deep into these questions and others (possibly with a consultant) to arrive at a strategy that helps the business instead of hurting it.

Hi Gal,

Can you answer a few of questions here, please?

1. Does your new business have its own phone number, not share by any other business?

2. Does your new business share Google categories with the existing business at the location you've moved into?

3. Is there a relationship of any kind between your business and the existing business at the location you've moved into?

4. Does your new business have its own front entrance, or do customers of both businesses enter by the same door?

5. Is your business staffed during stated business hours?

Please, be as detailed as you can to receive best feedback from the community. Thanks!

Hey Alex,

I want to be sure I'm understanding this fully. Some questions:

1. Is artificial grass the main product your business sells?

2. If that's right, are you saying that your domain name is something like Alexs.com instead of AlexsArificialGrass.com?

3. And if that's right, are you asking if your landing pages should look like alexs.com/country/city/artificialgrass instead of just alexs.com/country/city? Or, something else?

4. And, finally, I'm curious about the use of a country name in your URLs. Do you have offices in more than one nation?

Hey Travis!

Thanks for mentioning Wyndham's photo push - sounds like they are going with the tide on this. Interesting! Makes good sense - I've stayed at some of their properties and they are pretty solidly nice (and have kitchens! *see my earlier comment). And good for you, Travis, for challenging yourself to be more out and about in the world at wide. Life on the computer can be a bit isolating at times ... I'd say a busy hotel would be the perfect antidote!

Appreciate you sharing some thoughts on this thread.

Hi Brent,

Great topic! So, fundamentally, yes, the business isn't being honest in representing itself to the consumer public as being in a city where it isn't actually located. So, from an ethical standpoint, this is problematic.

From a search standpoint, Google is going to rely on the physical address of the business. If the company's website and citations state that it's at 123 Anderson Road in White Horse, SC, no amount of optimizing for Greenville is going to fool Google into thinking that the business is physically located there. Because of this, the company cannot expect to rank in Google's local packs for Greenville-related-or-based searches, unless there is almost no competition in this company's geo-industry (like they are the only gas station servicing a 25 mile radius).

I know - it's a drag that a business just outside of city borders is typically out of the running for local pack rankings, but Google's bias towards physical location is very strong. Where does this leave a client like yours? It depends on the exact nature of its business model. Some questions:

1. Do your clients' customers come to the physical location of the business, or is it a service area business (SAB), like a plumber, that services customers in a variety of towns?

2. Does the company also have customers in the town where it's physically located, or is it only getting customers from Greenville or other cities?

Please, let the community know what you can. If you're not able to share the identity of the client, that's okay, but the more specific you can be, the more customized feedback you'll receive here.