Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for those details. I agree, there's a bit of grey area here. What your scenario actually is most reminiscent to me of is a car dealership with a department for print and and department for signs (like a department for parts and another for sales). However, what is making this a bit unusual is that the second business is actually in a completely unique building with its own walk-in front entrance. I see 3 options here:

1. You determine that your second business is actually just a set of products your company offers and that a second Google My Business listing is not warranted, because you aren't supposed to create separate listings for your menu of products/services. You work harder on your organic SEO to get ranking organically for your signs products. PPC could help here, too. Risk level: none.

2. You treat the signs element of your business as a department of your company. You keep everything under the same business name, with the same website, but with a unique, non-redirecting phone number in the second building that is answered by someone who says "Heritage Printing & Graphics, Signs Department." You do create a separate Google My Business listing. Your website contains a landing page for the signs department that the Google My Business listing for it links to. Risk level: moderate. There is a chance here that Google could determine that the business should have marketed it itself as laid out in option 1 and is trying to spam Google. I know that's not what you're trying to do, but Google will have their own interpretation. They are used to seeing hospitals, schools and car dealerships have separate departments. They may not view a print shop the same way.

3. You do operate the second business as completely separate, with a unique address, unique non-redirecting phone number and unique website that does not interlink with or duplicate the content of the original business in any way. You might even consider branding that second business totally differently as 'Zippy Signs' or something like that instead of associating it with the Heritage brand in any way. If you keep this 100% separate from the first business, I'd rate the **Risk level: mild. **It's odd ... if this business were in a totally different part of town, the risk would be none, but it's the fact that it's next door to the the first company that is giving me a little bit of concern.

My advice: weigh each of these 3 options carefully and then phone Google directly to discuss with them. You are not a spammer who has something to hide. You are a legitimate business owner who is trying to understand his marketing options, and should have no fear of discussing this directly with Google.

Hey There!

This does sound like a complex scenario - even a bit of a messy one. Ideally, what the brand would have done here was to build a single website with a single store locator taking users to an appropriate landing page based on the city or zip they type in. The single website would feature a single product menu, accessible to all users regardless of city, removing any risk of creating duplicate product description pages. Something along the lines of how REI.com handles their web presence (you might like to show that to the client).

Instead of taking this approach, am I right in understanding that your client got into this thousands-of-subdomains predicaments in order to provide single-user access to a specific franchisee in a specific city, while not allowing him access to the entire website? Or, for some other reason?

Happy to have you be part of this community, Travis!

Hi Mishel,

Thank you for inviting the community to brainstorm this important decision with you. I'm visiting your gallery page right now, and unfortunately, half of the sliders aren't loading for me ... I'm getting an "invalid slider ID or alias" message instead. The page loaded very slowly for me, and while technical SEO/UX isn't my area of expertise, the current state of the page concerns me, due to broken sections and slow loading. From a brief look at your site, it seems you carry a variety of garage door options and are looking for a way to provide a big-picture presentation of all the options so that the customer can drill down from there to the product that most appeals to them.

Instead of using sliders, how about breaking down the garage doors by types (wood, steel, swing, etc.) and then presenting the main page for them something like this Crate & Barrel setup for outdoor umbrellas: https://www.crateandbarrel.com/outdoor-furniture/outdoor-umbrellas/1

From this page on Crate & Barrel, you can then drill down to a unique page with each umbrella on it, which would be a great place for you to write fully about each garage door choice.

Hi Cole,

I'm not sure that adding schema to businesses that are not yours would directly benefit you, though it might benefit the stores in question. Can you explain what your goal is with this?

My pleasure, Nails. Good luck!

Hey There!

So sorry, but I don't have experience with bulk upload on WebMD, though I have seen references to it. Here's a page that might help you get in touch with the company: http://www.wbmd.com/contactus.shtml

You might also try tweeting them at @WebMD

Hope it helps!

Hi There,

I really like Donna's answer, and I think, on an even more basic level, the fact that you are feeling overwhelmed and oppressed by the workload is a clear indicator that the agency has bit off more than it can chew.

Unless the business was doing consulting ONLY (in which case 3 hours per month of consulting for each client might be tenable), it does sound to me like your agency has enlarged its client stable without making the necessary hires to enlarge the staff. A larger agency could certainly be handling 50 clients, but your company is small. The business sounds like it is at an important turning point at which it should consider:

• Reducing the client list

• Determining to take fewer but more lucrative clients

• Determining to continue to grow the client stable, but only after making the necessary hires to grow the agency

I'd be completely frank about this with your agency - let them know it's causing you genuine stress because you don't feel you can deliver quality because the staff is being over-tasked. If the agency is committed to building a respected brand and lasting success, wise decisions are necessary here, and you could be instrumental in helping to protect the brand from earning a reputation for poor quality work. Good luck!

Hi Neil,

There is no known issue with using a mobile number, but do make the investment in getting a dedicated one for your business, one that you answer with the business name at all times. Don't mix business with personal. That would be the only proviso on this. Otherwise, you'll be fine with a mobile number.

Hi D E!

Thanks for the opportunity of looking at your client's site. A foundational concept to understand is that the company's local pack rankings will depend on their physical address, not on the addresses of the homes they build in various communities. So, as the home builder is in Saint Louis, their local pack rankings will be most achievable for searches containing the words 'st. louis' or stemming from Saint Louis-based devices. They are unlikely to rank in the local packs for any city other than St. Louis because of Google's documented bias towards physical locale of the business.

So, where we move beyond this kind of understanding of how local packs work is when we are going after additional organic rankings, instead of local ones. For this purpose, building out content that showcases the homebuilder's work in specific neighborhoods or in neighboring cities supports goals of ranking organically for searches that use these geographic terms. For a good example of how to build landing pages that serve users making these types of searches, please read: https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages

In that post, you'll see an example of how a house painter could create a landing page showcasing his projects in a specific community, so that seems quite similar to what you're hoping to do.

That being said, I can't predict whether city landing page or style-of-home landing pages will convert better for your particular client. Are you tracking how people currently interact with the website? When a potential customer contacts the business, are the asking what styles of housing are available, or are they inquiring about neighborhoods? Answering questions like these will necessitate some serious research.

Without knowing all of the details, I'd be inclined to think that you could have both a set of landing pages based on the neighborhoods of St. Louis, and then a separate gallery depicting popular home designs, regardless of what part of the city the homes are in. You'd have the best of both worlds that way, but if there's a reason why you have to choose one or the other, only real research into the preferences and needs of the client's customers can provide a data-based answer.

Got it! There are 2 options I can see here, and like I said, I'd be very inclined to do some consulting with Linda Buquet in your shoes, if she were available, and show her the complete details of the scenario.

From the limited details I have on this, I see 2 options for you:

1. Do a total citation audit first to make a record of all listings located at suite B and formerly occupied by the retiree. Then, if one of your 3 dentists will be occupying suite B, you would be editing the name (and I'm assuming phone) of these to reflect the new dentist. The main problem with this would be reviews ... it's likely that they would reference the retiree and that could be problematic.

2. Read this thread and the links it contains regarding Dr/Dentist duplicates: https://moz.com/community/q/dental-practice-google-and-dentist-personal-google You may need to minimize the old listings and create new ones.

I have to confess, the situation with the firm occupying two suites is throwing me a bit. I've never personally dealt with a business that was organized that way, and it's unusual enough for me that I'd be inclined to seek professional consulting, particular given Google's very irregular handling of listings for doctors and dentists.

At the very least, I hope my reply points you in a good direction for further research into how your practice should handle this.

Yeah, I'm sorry I'm not seeing a really good resource for you, Kevin. It's early days. The person who takes on the task of writing that resource will have valuable information to share. I would say your best hope is in experimentation with this, but I don't see that anyone has figured out a solution to the important questions you've asked.

Hi Tony,

What you are asking about is a 'Place Label'. Here's Google's official page on those: https://support.google.com/business/answer/6056435 Hope this helps!

Oh, my, I'm totally laughing at myself right now. I read your business name off your initial screenshot as 'OLD' rather than 'QLD' so I was searching for the wrong name. Hahah!

I was seriously wondering what 'old drone photography' was!

Okay, so yes, this is a GMB listing:

https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Queensland+Drone+Photography/@-27.4678042,152.8889523,11z/data=!4m8!1m2!2m1!1sqld+drone+photography!3m4!1s0x6b914dad2b40df69:0x6c4ea8347f585873!8m2!3d-27.5639479!4d152.882636

Looks like you've got some work cut out for you earning reviews, Tony, and the Google trust that goes along with them. Let me link you here to our Local SEO Checklist so that you can methodically go through any problems that might be holding your business back in Google's eyes, as well as helping you create a strong strategy for locally marketing your company.

Hope this helps!

Hi AL123al,

If you're marketing a business with just two locations, it's fine to have contact info for both in the footer. I don't think there's a "best" way here. I think you should do whatever works well for your customers and ensures that they can instantly surface info for getting in touch with you.

I believe you're also saying you've included the names of two cities in your homepage title tag. As you've only got two locations, that seems fine to me. If you had more than that, I think you'd start running out of room, and your title tag might look kind of run-on and spammy, but if you're just writing a tag something like:

Award-winning Oakland, Berkeley Realtors | HMS Realty

... you should be fine.

Hi There!

If the client is running 2 distinct legal businesses (like a landscaping company and an accounting firm) from a single address, then he should get a unique phone number for the 2nd business, be sure the websites feature completely unique content, and then he will be eligible for a Google My Business listing for each.

If, however, the client is actually running one business but is attempting to make it look like two companies (like an HVAC company trying to sell its heating services as though they are a separate business from its cooling services), then he is only eligible for 1 GMB listing, regardless of the number of websites he builds.

In fact, in the latter scenario, having a second website for the company is not normally advisable, because what you are then doing is putting partial duplicate NAP (name, address, phone) on two websites, instead of one, possibly leading to a loss of trust on Google's part about the authoritative data for the business. In most cases, Local SEOs will recommend that a single business at a single address should go with a single, powerful website.

But, if the businesses are legally distinct, it''s normally okay that they share the same address, so long as the phone numbers and websites are unique.

Hope this help, and definitely do share Google's guidelines with the client. They help answer many questions like these.

Whoa! I see that. That looks really different to me. It's not an old school authoritative one box. It's two businesses, side by side, that when clicked, brings up new SERPs and the knowledge panel. Something about this is teasing my brain, like I once saw an example of something similar, but I just can't place it. It's certainly interesting!

What I can say is that Google is testing a ton of things right now. They've got the new image carousel, and then there's the whole local pack paid entry thing making buzz. What you've shared here looks like a test to me. And check this out. Look up 'law schools california'. A totally different display!

Thanks for sharing this. I'd be curious to know if you're seeing it on other similar searches.

Update: Check out Dr. Pete's article here: https://moz.com/blog/google-glossary

Looks like a Rich Lists SERP with only 2 entries. Hat tip to Darren Shaw for pointing that out to me

Hey Emma,

Donald's advice is good. I noticed you categorized this thread under Local Website Optimization and am curious if you are talking about the same local business publishing two websites. There can be quite a few nuances to that, if so. Please, feel free to provide further details if you'd like further community input

This is a great question. Matt has given you the list of the partners we trust with our Moz Local tool. I'd like to add a bit more about this.

Once you've got the basic citations built (Google, Facebook, Yelp, the list Matt shared, etc.) you're going to want to start looking elsewhere, and there are 2 things that can really help you judge the relevance of a citation source that have nothing to do with PR or other metrics like that.

1. How well does that site rank for your keywords? If it ranks highly, it's a good bet you should be listed there, as long as that doesn't come with some ridiculous price tag.

2. Are your customers actually using that platform? If the source also supports reviews, look up your competitors in your city. See if people from that city are leaving reviews on the site. That's a quick way to see if it's being used.

Likely, you are going to find yourself wading into the niche directory space once you've moved beyond building standard, core citations, and my honored colleague Phil Rozek just happened to publish an amazingly good piece on this topic: http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2016/07/27/niche-local-citations-dont-get-enough-love/ It not only contains good advice, but also some good links to further reading on this topic of niche directories. I think that post is going to light up your day

Remember that for local businesses, both industry platforms and geographic platforms are possible citations sources. If you're a chimney sweep in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for example, relevant citations could include being listed on the National Chimney Sweep Guild site, and also on the local Tulsa Chamber of Commerce site, or on a local news site, etc. Think in both directions: industry & geography. Most local businesses can build many good citations this way, expanding their visibility as they go.

Hope this helps!

Hi Emma,

It's so helpful that you've shared the links. Thanks!

Okay, so unfortunately, what this brand has done is to create duplicate websites with duplicate content on them. As this is a national bank, with locations in two states, and we're talking about what an SEO would do here, the answer is, an SEO would almost assuredly advise this brand to consolidate its presence into a single website. If the bank chose to go with two domains because they might have believed this would help their rankings, any benefits of that are likely being undermined by the fact that they've made a misstep by creating sites not just with some, but with what seems to be 100% duplicate content.

So, rather than worrying about how to differentiate duplicate websites, the brand will be best served by consolidating to a single, branded domain. This takes away any concerns about duplicate content, or any need to differentiate.They can simply have a single site, with a unique page for each branch.

It might help, in speaking to the CEO or CMO, to have them look at a larger bank, like Bank of America. They have a single, corporate website. They don't have 50 websites to represent the 50 states they serve. If the brand here continues to grow, it will be heading that way, having to manage 3, 10, 20 websites. It's not a good plan for the future. So, hopefully, while the business only has locations in 2 states, they can refine their marketing strategy, consolidate, and then set about thinking of ways to invest wisely in content dev, social outreach, etc, that is brand-wide, while also investing in making their location landing pages on the website as helpful and highly-converting as they can possibly be.

Hope this helps!

Hey Steven,

Ryan & Varun are correct in the quote of the Google guidelines. You just want to use the name of the church across all three locations unless the churches officially rename themselves with modifiers. You might need to research this a bit. I've never marketed a church and I'm not sure how they are legally registered. Do they have some form of county registration or license? If so, and they feel that their congregation members may be getting misdirected or confused, they might want to consider officially rebranding the three locations so that their location names are part of the church names. So sorry, but I've only worked with commercial entities and am not sure how churches register themselves in communities. I'd look into this, because I think there may be a legitimate concern here, given that the website doubtless differentiates between the 3 locations in the way they are referring to them, and ideally, you'd like their citations to match that, so that James River Church West Campus is being referred to exactly that way, everywhere on the web. Time to do some research Good luck!

Hi Gremmy9!

Congratulations on expanding your practice - and on doing such good work in the communities you serve.

Growhat has made some good suggestions. He's linked to an older Moz blog post of mine - here's a newer one on the same topic that I believe will help inspire your work: https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages

I think your question has two parts to it, given that you've only got two locations now but plan to have more in the near future. Right now, having two-three pages on your website with a moderate amount of duplicate content on them isn't likely to cause much, if any harm, to your rankings. But, you are being very smart in forecasting this into the future, when you have 5, 10 or 15 locations throughout your state or in a variety of states. If you end up with 1/2 of your website being redundant content, that could start to get a bit worrisome, right?

So, your work right now is to develop a template that will ensure that as much of the content on your homepage and landings pages is as unique and as helpful to customers as possible. I would recommend that this template work something like this:

1. Put the full NAP (name, address, phone) of each location at the top of its landing page (not at the bottom as in your mockup). People need to see that information first to understand that they are looking at the page representing the office nearest them.

2. Then, offer a brief, unique summary of the treatments offered at this practice. You shouldn't have a problem describing this in a unique way if you take the target community into consideration. Explain that you serve both adults and kids. Try to hone the message to the community, based on whatever data/statistics you may have about that community.

3. Then, find 1-2 unique success stories from clients in that target city to share. If you wish to follow this with the information about "Our Anxiety treatments really work", I like your idea of creating a little infographic for that, to break up the page content and make it more digestible. But, I think most of this information should be conveyed in the opening description (types of ailments treated and why your methodology works).

4. Then, introduce the therapists at that location, along with reviews/testimonials concerning their work.

5. Highlight 3rd party reviews following this, on whichever review platforms matter most to you clients in that city.

6. Repeat NAP, put a map, and write out driving directions. Include social media links, if appropriate.

7. End with a clear call to action. Let the website user know what you'd like them to do, whether that's call you, book an appointment, etc.

Within the above, when a specific service/ailment/etc. is mentioned, do internally link to the authoritative page on that topic. So, for example, if you have a page about OCD, and on the landing page you are mentioning that you help people with OCD, feel free to link to the authoritative page on the subject.

I think with a structure like that, the majority of the content will, by nature, be unique, because you will have a unique therapist to introduce, unique testimonials/reviews, unique NAP, unique directions, etc. Your introductory paragraphs will be the only part you really have to noodle over to make unique and compelling to the target audience. The question I'd ask is, "Is there something that would really resonate with our potential clients in X city that is unique to X city?" Maybe there's been a natural disaster there that had increased anxiety. Maybe clogged freeways there cause anxiety? Maybe environmental pollution? I'm not sure ... you are the expert, but I would strive to make that introduction as highly personalized to the community as I could, without turning anyone away.

Hope this helps, and that the blog post I linked to will give you further ideas!

Hi Cornelius,

Good question! Virtual offices are not permitted by Google's guidelines as they are not deemed to be real physical locations. If you have a client who doesn't have an official office, they will be better served using their home address and listing themselves on those directories that allow the address to be hidden, rather than using a virtual office which is a Local SEO taboo!

Phil Rozek has written a couple of good articles over the years on which directories allow one to use their home address while hiding it:

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

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

Hope this helps, and please let our community know if you have any further questions about this important topic.

Hey Brian!

Thank you so much for clarifying that you were seeing this as part of a tool's terminology, as well as some references elsewhere. Sometimes, different folks have different names for things. Here at Moz, I think we'd be more inclined to refer to this as "Evergreen Content" or even "10x Content" (see: https://moz.com/blog/how-to-create-10x-content-whiteboard-friday). While I'm not sure I agree with the Yoast quote Roman found about needing to build another website if you have more than 10 superlative pages (if you are a local business, creating multi-sites is generally a BIG no-no), I think the main idea here is that every website should have a set of pages that are:

1. Frequently linked to internally because they provide the most authoritative answer to a question

2. Way better pages than your competitors have created

3. Perennially useful

If this can be used as a a definition of "cornerstone" or "evergreen" content, then I wouldn't limit this to having to be a landing page. It could be a core page (like an about page). It could also be a video or an infographic. It could be a landing page, or it could be a blog post.

I think the key here is not confining this to a specific format of content, but, instead, identifying your best and most useful pages and remembering to internally link to them so that they are easily discovered by consumers. Looking at your analytics, the findings of tools like Moz Pro, and listening to your customers is going to help you identify which pieces of content are your best. And, typically, best is going to equal the content that specifically supports the various stages of the user journey, be that awareness, consideration, decision, or conversion. Conversion is almost always the end goal of content, but each stage has to be supported, and evergreen content can play a role at each stage of the journey.

So, summing up, I wouldn't confine the definition of this type of content to a single format (it could be any type of page or form of media), and I also wouldn't state that you can only have X number of cornerstone pieces on a given website. A small site might only have 3-5 of these, but a larger site could have 20, 30, 100. Identify the most important topics for supporting the consumer journey, and then be sure that your resources are better than your competitors. Finally, be sure you are intelligently linking to these cornerstone pieces internally, so that they are ideally accessible.

Hope this helps, Brian!

Hi Cornelius!

Another great question from you. Here's how to understand this:

1. If these are 3 legally distinct businesses (a lawyer, a bakery and a chiropractor) all at the same physical location, and each is staffing the office during stated business hours and each has its own unique phone number, you should be A-OK. Google is pretty sophisticated at parsing out multiple businesses at the same address these days. But...

2. If you ever suspect that these are NOT 3 legally distinct businesses, hold on. If, for example, a legal firm is trying to pretend that its personal injury services, estate services and criminal law services are 3 distinct businesses, then they are being spammy as all get-out trying to list them as 3 different businesses. It's the Local SEO's job to tell them they shouldn't do this and that they are headed for a listing takedown if Google, competing Local SEOs or the public notices what they have done. Another example of this would be an HVAC company trying to bill itself as two different business: one for heating and one for cooling. Eligibility for local business listings revolves around physical location, not the number of services a company offers. So, one physical location for a single business = a single local business listing.

There are some exceptions to the above, like a multi-practitioner office or a multi-department campus. Happily, you'll find that the Guideline For Representing Your Business On Google lay this all out in pretty clear terms, and these are what Local SEOs study and refer to in creating local search marketing strategies that keep clients safe from penalties and takedowns. If you're just getting started marketing local businesses, start with the guidelines. Google has been the dominant player in Local Search for over a decade, and so their definitions of good vs. bad practices have, perforce, become industry definitions in many, many ways.

Hope this helps!

Hey Kevin,

I think this may be helpful on the local side of things: https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages

Hey Ira,

I agree with Kevin, given that it sounds like you've run out of options with YP's customer support. Just be sure you do close out the old listing and don't end up with duplicates. It's kind of odd that YP says they will close a listing, but won't let you reclaim it. Strange policy.

I wish YP was a Moz Local partner so that we could surface and manage the listing for you, but they're not in our network

Sorry there's not a better solution for you here.

Hey Roman!

Thank you so much for joining this conversation. For my own clarification, is this your advice, or Yoast's:

Websites should have a minimum of one or two cornerstone articles and a maximum of eight to ten. If you want to write more than ten cornerstone articles, you should probably start a second website.

Hey Ira!

Believe it or not, I was going to go fetch that list and republish it here, but then saw you had done so. Thanks a ton! Looking at those categories related to home, private residence, etc. makes me wonder very much what Google has in mind here. Those are not categories in Google's category base so, why include the 5 different iterations of dwellings?

Perhaps they might be some guard against malicious spam? If adding a place has been opened broadly to the public via this feature, wiseacres might add their untidy friend Joe's house to it with a jokey business title of some kind (Joe's Pigsty). Choosing one of the 5 residential categories might immediately alert Google that these are not businesses and should not be accepted? Hmm, maybe.

Or, could it be that Google now wants us to start labeling our homes? That seems very strange to me, but then, why those 5 categories?

You've noticed something quite interesting here, Ira. Thanks for sharing the list.

Hi Aquib,

Great question, with a somewhat complex answer. If your business is local, then, yes, you want to create a unique, researched and optimized page for each of your services. Write fully about each service, including its value proposition, pricing, photos, videos, reviews, etc. And, if you've got a multi-location local business, you also want to create a unique, research and optimized page for each of your physical locations. These types of pages are table stakes for nearly all local businesses.

But, once you've got these basic pages published, our thinking has to shift a bit. It's not that more pages = good for SEO. In the past, much of SEO hinged on the idea that you wanted to create a unique page for each core keyword phrase that research indicated would be a top performer for you. Sometimes this led to some kind of foolish structures, like a website having a page optimized for "car repairs" and another page for "auto repairs", and sites would end up with huge numbers of rather weak pages as a result.

Now, post-Hummingbird and in a RankBrain environment, we have to think differently, because these have signaled to us that Google is now capable of understanding the shared intent behind similar phrases. Google knows that searches for "auto repairs" and "car repairs" have the same intent, and optimized content development has shifted to think of keywords in terms of topics instead of as standalone phrases. What smart businesses are doing is identifying the most important topics to their companies and their consumers, and then mapping all of the keywords that fit within that topic to a really strong, thorough page that covers the topic.

So, let's say you own an auto garage, and one of the things you offer is repair of the new Tesla cars. You plug "tesla auto repairs" into a keyword research tool like Moz Keyword Explorer, Answer the Public, or the Google Adwords KW tool and you see a whole bunch of keyword phrases that relate to this topic, like "tesla auto repair cost", "tesla engine replacement cost", "tesla repair center", "tesla body work", etc. In the past, you might have created a unique page for each of these terms, but modern SEO would typically advocate combining all of these related phrases into a single authoritative article that covers everything a consumer could possibly want to know about getting their Tesla worked on in your shop. The goal of this page is to establish your authority and guide the user toward a conversion. We believe that Google is now identifying domain names with authority on specific topics, so if this were your business, you'd want to establish authority on this topic with a best-in-geo/industry page on this topic.

To dive deeper into Hummingbird and RankBrain, definitely look at the two links, above. If your competitors are stuck in the old ways of creating large numbers of weak pages, your understanding of how Google is evolving could be a competitive difference maker for your brand. Hope this helps!

Hi Bridget!

I'll respond to your important question with numbers, for easier reading:

1. Moz Local will surface any listing we discover that strongly matches your Moz Local listing. We're making you aware of the existence of these listings, but this does not necessarily mean that they are, in fact, duplicates. It's up to the customer to decide whether a listing is a duplicate or not.

2. It's very important that your law firm study the Guidelines for Representing Your Business On Google. Read the entire document and pay particular attention to the sections on naming and practitioners.

3. Google does allow multi-practitioner firms to build a listing for the business and one for each practitioner. If there is only one lawyer at the practice, Google doesn't want him to build a separate listing, but if there are multiple lawyers, then it's allowed to build a listing for each of them, in addition to the listing for the practice. This is all laid out in the guidelines

4. If there are multiple practitioners, it is highly advised that each one has his own, unique phone number, not shared by any other practitioner or by the business. He should be directly contactable via the number. And, it is also advised that you create a landing page on the website for each of the practitioners and link their listings you build to these pages. All of this serves to differentiate one practitioner from another and one practitioner from the business, itself, hopefully securing you against ranking problems, accidental merges, customer misdirection, etc.

So, in sum, practitioner listings are not true duplicates, but you must follow guidelines for creating them and be sure that the practitioners are being properly differentiated from one another and from the business. And, finally, if you judge that a listing Moz Local surfaces for you is not a true duplicate, you can use the 'ignore' button to have it removed from the list.

Hope this helps, and please let me know if you have any further questions!

Hi There!

To clarify, are you talking about your local or organic rankings?

Oh, that's really interesting, Ira! Flooring Contractor is definitely a standard category in Google's category base. The fact that SABs seem to be excluded makes me think about how Google differentiates between what they think of as a 'place' instead of an SAB. SABs, for example, are excluded from the Google Places API, and the reason they gave for this is that SABs aren't 'places'. So, when Google's new feature is asking you to 'add a missing place', it could be that they mean this only in their own, literal way.

Unless they expand to include common SAB categories, looks like this feature may be a no-go for any non-brick-and-mortar enterprise.

Thanks for sharing your experience with this. I guess it's back to the GMB dashboard for your flooring client. Good luck!

Hi Arzawacki!

Kudos to you for opening this up to the community for feedback. I second EGOL's wise advice that educating yourself about SEO is going to improve your game as a designer by leaps and bounds. Rather than reiterate what EGOL is saying, I want to take a few minutes to give you some specific feedback from a brief look at the website you've linked to:

1. I like things about this site. I like the creativity of the language that has been used. "Ah hail no". Funny. I can see you've worked hard not to take a "vanilla" approach to what might otherwise be considered a "boring" subject.

2. The green is not working for me. It's too loud for my comfort, making it hard for me to attend to the content on the screen. The effect is dramatic (again, kudos for creativity) and if this were a movie I were watching, those green skies would be truly ominous. But, this is a website with the purpose of selling a service which I, the consumer, need to be sold on, and the very vivid color juxtaposed with the black background and grey text is making it really hard for me to read the content, which is how we sell the service. If you keep the site, I would tone down that green and brighten the text. This article has some good, visual examples of what I'm referring to: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/text-over-images/

3. The site is not well-optimized for local consumers. If this business is serving a local clientele, the site is not providing sufficient signals for consumers to fully understand this. It lacks the title tags, locally-optimized text, images, contact page contents and other factors that say "We serve here, come on in.".

4. The text content of the website is, in itself, extremely brief. The homepage is all but empty, when it should typically be one of the strongest pages of the website. You mention in your critique of the SEO company's other sites that you have seen that they seem "crowded" to you. This is the perennial debate between Design/UX/SEO folks: how do we keep things tidy while also getting maximum oomph from the website's content? Right now, the site is erring on the minimalist side, in my opinion, because there just isn't enough there to convince me that this service is THE ONE for me. You know how you've created the FAQ page? That's a good place to start to get into the mindset that this entire website exists to answer customers' questions, on every page. Right now, it's not doing that. Again, look at the home page. If I hit this page, am I going to pick up the phone and dial because this page has convinced me I've found the company for me? If not, the homepage isn't working for the company.

Summing up:

If you decide to keep the site, it needs some pretty substantial overhauling.

If you decide to hire an SEO company, I highly recommend hiring a company that specializes in Local SEO but also has organic SEO in their back pocket. Right now, adequate local hooks just aren't there in this site and they need to be incorporated.

If you decide to learn SEO, you'll begin to see these types of issues in your daily work, and to be able to spot within a few minutes whether websites are capable of truly serving consumers while also sending the necessary signals of authority/relevance to search engines. I'm really glad you're here in the Moz community, as it's a great place to advance your education to the next level!

Hi Tony,

This is a Google+ page:  https://plus.google.com/b/101693763581475613867/+QlddronesAu/posts?gmbpt=true&hl=en-GB

It is not a Google My Business listing.

I am not able to turn up a GMB listing for your business searching for its name + Bellbowrie Australia.

To get a Google My Business listing, you'd be starting here: https://www.google.com/business/

I confess, I'm a bit confused about your mention of postal validation, though. That sounds like you DO have a GMB listing. Here's an example of one in the USA:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Whole+Foods+Market/@34.4392639,-119.7453563,15z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x66264a82c405f0ea!8m2!3d34.4392639!4d-119.7453563

Do you have a maps-based link like this for your business?

Hey There!

I see that you started a previous thread on this topic that received an answer: https://moz.com/community/q/mysterious-location-based-serp-issue

Is there something about your question that wasn't answered?

Hi John,

So, what you are talking about is called Containment Information. Google says:

• Containment information indicating that your business is located inside another business (whether or not the businesses are part of the same organization).
  • Not acceptable: "Chase ATM (in Duane Reade)", "Apple Store at Stanford Shopping Center", "Benefit Brow Bar - Bloomingdales", "Sam’s Club Tire & Battery (part of Sam’s Club)", "Geek Squad (inside Best Buy)"
  • Acceptable: "Chase ATM", "Apple Store", "Benefit Brow Bar", "Sam’s Club Tire & Battery", "Geek Squad"

See the full guidelines here: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en

Regarding your URLs, I would go with

domain.com/city-street

Regarding keywords, this is tough because you are talking about so many locations. Typical advice looks like this

...but only if you have the resources to build a good, high quality page for each of the 1700 locations. If you do, I'd focus on service + city + regional terms and synonyms on the pages.

I might suggest, given the size of this client, that you hire a good Local SEO to consult with you, to whom you can show the actual business in confidence. The goal would be to have them confirm GMB eligibility, actually looking at your client. There can be nuances to that our community might miss, not looking at the actual business model. Investment in an hour or two of consulting with a top notch Local SEO would seem a wise investment to me, given the very big scope of the project. We have a list of trusted Local SEOs here: https://moz.com/learn/local/trusted-providers

Hope this helps!

Hey Adam,

Honestly, I am not able to answer your question with total certainty. What I've personally experienced is that Google's volumes for local keywords have always, always felt "off" to me. When a tool tells you that no one in X city is searching for something you are positive they are searching for (like water heater repair, or housekeeping, or yard maintenance), you're just left saying, "huh?". I thought this recent Whiteboard Friday did a good job of explaining why some of Google's estimates aren't reliable, in terms of Adwords:

https://moz.com/blog/unreliable-google-adwords-keyword-volume

I'm hoping another community member will be able to give you a more satisfactory answer on this, but thought you might like to watch that video in the meantime.

Oh, wow, Kristen! Two (or three) heads are better than one! I didn't realize that field was one you could type in. You are absolutely correct. Thank you so much for pointing this out, and it will be so interesting to see how long it takes for the listing you've created to appear. Really appreciate this discussion and the little clues being uncovered. Cool!

So great you are sharing your research here, Ed!

One thing I wanted to point out. You mention:

"Also I've got the city names in the names of my business.  So there's BusinessTown and BusinessOtherTown as the names of the companies.  This is really important. "

Important to clarify that, unless you've legally named each of your branches X+CityA, X+CityB, etc., then it's a violation of Google's guidelines to add city names to your GMB listing business titles. Wanted to be sure this is pointed out, as the keyword stuffing of the GMB title with city names is, perhaps, the #1 form of local spam.

Wow! That really was fast. Now, where do you go from here? Are you being directed to claim the listing in order to take control of it, add photos, etc?

So appreciate you following up as you test this out!

Hey Searchout!

Some great points from Ed here. I'll add a few thoughts, in case it helps:

1. Yes, local pack rankings are key and you are right that they are not static. Don't over-focus on rankings, because searcher-proximity causes so much variety. While it's nice to see rankings go up, it is far more meaningful to see actual conversions go up (visits, phone calls, bookings, in-store traffic, sales, forms, etc.)

2. If your brand has built enough authority (think Taco Bell) you are likely to find yourself ranking for pretty much everything with very little effort. If you're not Taco Bell yet, then, yes, you need to work on the old combo of content+links and invest whatever effort you can in wise engagement with the ever-growing list of Google Local Knowledge Panel features (reviews, photos, Q&A, posts, bookings, menus including the new service menus, descriptions, etc.) Track and see what is moving the conversion needle. No one thing is going to do it. As you mentioned, review count and star ratings do not move the ranking needle as much as you might expect. You see businesses with fewer or worse reviews outranking those with more and better reviews every day. When you see that phenomenon, it makes you realize that focusing only on reviews would be foolish, but, at the same time, you don't determine from this that reviews can be ignored. They are part of a bigger picture.

3. Basically, what you are shooting for is building the overall authority of your brand while implementing best practices at a location-specific level every step of the way you can. Over time, you are trying to become one of the Taco Bells of your industry, at which point, for reasons we can't fully explain, your "authority" seems to build strength on its own. On your way there, be sure you are complying with all guidelines, making use of all relevant features, investing in creative content, and most importantly, offering the kind of service that makes your customers do much of the work of building your authority.

Hope this helps!

Thanks, Wendy!

I'm looking at the result you've shared, and in the knowledge panel (on the right) I do see the box labeled Website, linking to the website. Also, clicking on the map to get to your GMB listing, I also see a good, working link to your website:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Maybelle+Center+for+Community+(formerly+Macdonald+Center)/@45.524164,-122.676669,15z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xfbc0ab862da909a4!8m2!3d45.524164!4d-122.676669

Are you still not seeing the website button next to the directions button in the panel? If not, that's very curious, indeed, and I'd recommend checking from a different computer to see what you see.

Good, Ed. I was sure you, specifically, understood this, but was concerned that others might not understand the distinction between being legally named something, and keyword stuffing the GMB business title field.

Recommended reading, Gal, from start to finish: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/11/25/guide-to-using-call-tracking-for-local-search/

I hope it's muy helpful!

Hey Greenery,

Congratulations to you and your client on what must be a very successful marketing strategy! You've ended up with an embarrassment of riches, and that's not a bad thing, but it's certainly understandable that the client doesn't want to waste resources fielding queries from unqualified leads.

From the list of actions you've taken, I can see how thoughtful and thorough you've been in trying to limit unwanted calls. I can add just a few suggestions:

1. Put something in the sitewide masthead stating "Serving Cities A,B and C"

2. Include something similar in your calls-to-action in the main body of the pages. Something like "We'll come to you in A,B, and C. Call (XXX)XXX-XXXX today!"

Alternatively, you and the client might want to look at this scenario in another way. Consider:

1. Is the client getting enough interest from non-local clients to indicate that the should establish a second locale? Not it another state, perhaps, but in a neighboring region of the state? If there is tremendous demand for his service, could this indicate that it's time to consider expanding?

2. If expanding is out, is there an opportunity here for lead generation? What if your client formed a trusted partner network to send out-of-area customers to a trusted provider? Could this yield benefits that would justify the effort? Monetary benefits? Professional benefits? Social benefits?

I'm just saying, before you turn those ineligible customers away, you might want to look at this interesting situation from a creative angle to see if getting "too much of a good thing" could actually be parlayed into something positive for the business and consumers.

Hey Andy & Kristen!

I would just love it, if you get a chance, if you could let us know what kind of turnaround time you see with this. Thanks so much for being willing to share the results of the experiment with the community. Very cool!

Good morning!

Thanks so much for bringing your question to the community. This is what I'd recommend:

1. Instead of having a landing page for each city + a contact page for each city, I suggest you combine them. The landing page should contain the contact information, as well as the content. No need to make visitors go to two different pages. So, simplify here, and 301 redirect the 10 contact pages to the 10 city landing pages.

2. Definitely don't recommend building out yet another set of pages for this additional content you've described. Make the single landing page for each city as comprehensive and unique as possible. Put all of the relevant content about your services in a given city on that city's landing page.

3. It is important to avoid weak, duplicate pages, for sure. Hopefully, you can tell different stories on the different pages, even if the services you offer are the same. Some good ways to diversify the narrative on a landing page include showcasing your projects in the city and including reviews from customers in the city (both text and video w/transcript). You might find this post helpful in building very strong and substantially unique city landing pages for your business: https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages

Hope this helps, and please feel free to ask any further questions.