Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hey Luke!

NAP consistency was judged to be the second most influential pack ranking factor on this year's Local Search Ranking Factors (https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors) so, yes, it's of major importance! Hope this helps.

Hey Derek!

In your shoes, I would track down Linda Buquet at her localsearchforum and beseech her to share some of her amazing knowledge of dental Local SEO with me

But, in the meantime, it would help if you could clarify - are you bringing the retiree's practice under the umbrella of your own? In other words, if your client is Green Tree Dental at 123 Main St. Suite A, then is Retiree Dental at 123 Main St. Suite B now going to be part of Green Tree Dental's offices, occupying both sides of the hall? Or is Retiree going to close its doors at Suite B and NOT be occupied by Green Tree?

Hi Julie!

So sorry to hear of the trouble you're having with that. It's not an uncommon scenario. There are basically two steps to take to try to resolve this:

1. Do a competitive audit between the business and the partner. Set up a spreadsheet so that you can compare the metrics of the two entities you're investigating. Look at keywords in business title, DA, PA of the GMB landing page on the website, review count, rating and sentiment, possible duplicate listings, citation accuracy/spread for each, etc. Once you have those metrics, you may be able to spot some specific reason why Google is favoring the partner over the firm. If not, move on to step 2.

2)  If the client judges that the partner outranking the firm is harming a critical metric like conversions or revenue, you can decide to minimize the partner listing to try to demote it, if the client agrees. Remove photos, remove hours of operation if you can, point the listing to a low PA page on the site (typically a partner page rather than the home page, unless your partner has a strong landing page?), remove any keywords from the partner's title, etc. At the same time, try to earn a few good new links for the landing page of the firm, and showing a bit of extra love to the firm's listing can't hurt. Add new photos, maybe start scheduling some Google posts, do some Q&A.  Hopefully the combination of minimizing the partner and maximizing the firm will generate the desired results.

This won't be the right solution for every scenario, but if it's deemed that the partner outranking the firm is negatively impacting the business to a degree that the partner's listing prominence needs to be sacrifice for the sake of the brand, hopefully my instructions will help!

Hey Bob!

First off, way to go in advising the client to remove footer spam. That's really a big first step. Here are some thoughts:

1. This is not great, on the homepage:

Larry has worked with clients from Milwaukee and many other locations including Chicago and the Racine Kenosha area.  Dogs from Waukesha, West Allis and Wauwatosa have been trained at Salty Dog Farms.  Clients from Sheboygan, West Bend and Fox Point have been pleased with Larry’s dog training skills.

I understand what you're trying to do here, but it's coming across as forced. Here's how I would recommend approaching this, in a totally natural way:

• I see that Larry is located in Cedar Grove, so from a truly local standpoint, he is only 'entitled' to rank in Cedar Grove packs, right? So, we have to think of organic rankings and the only connection I can see is that his clients (the dogs) are located in various towns and cities. So, here's what you do.

You get Larry to document with text, photos, videos and whatever else you think would be good for 5 dogs he has trained or is going to train - one from each of the cities he is hoping to associate his business with - and in addition to documenting key moments of the training process, you also get a text or video testimonial from the happy owner at the end of the program.  For example, "Sunny used to jump on the table whenever the family was eating. Here he is doing that. Here's Larry training sunny that this is not good. Here's Sunny behaving at dinner time."

You create 5 new pages on the site - one for each of his 5 most important target cities. These pages are something like "Dog Training: Chicago - The Case of Sunny, The Adorable Pomeranian" and "Dog Training: Waukesha - The case of Bingo, The Tough Terrier". You'll need to carefully choose very happy customers who are willing to participate in having their dog featured in a training story.

The videos don't have to be professional, but they need to be socially shareable. If the dogs are funny/cute/weird, that would help! The stories need to be told very well.

You create these pages with a good balance of text to images/videos and, finally, to make the link to the city authentic, Larry goes to visit the dogs in their homes and takes a short video, which he transcribes to show how Sunny and Bingo are now happy dogs in their Chicago/Waukesha homes. You put this on the pages, too. It would be nice if he could meet up with the owner and the dog at some recognizable landmark in the town.

Further, you take the welfare of Chicago and Waukesha dogs to heart, and also on these city/dog pages, you do some homework and surface resources for them ... dog parks, pet food shops, most popular vets (based on reviews) in that specific city. You include these as resources for dogs there.

And, finally, think of something other than what I've suggested. Brainstorm with Larry. What would really help dogs/owners in the cities? Include this in the pages, too.

Pick the 5 most important cities and start with those. It will be a big project. Don't just aim for good, unique content - aim for 10x content and try to make it as share-worthy as possible. Fortunately, people are crazy about dogs, so this is a really good industry to try this for! What you will end up with is a stronger page than many competitors will have, that not only ties Larry to cities, but also showcases his expertise.

2. The website needs some local work. It's not clear from the first impression where this business is located. Look at the homepage. You have to scroll to the bottom of the text to get a hint of geography. Improve geo-signals, not just with text but with visuals, too. How about a photo of Larry and his dog entourage somewhere geographically recognizable?

3. Nothing about the way the business is currently being presented is immediately telling me why I should use this company instead of another. What is the key selling point? Gentle training? Satisfaction guarantee? 30 years experience? Find the message that persuades and make it much, much clearer.

4. Some usability work is needed. Logo doesn't link back to homepage, etc.

5. If the footer was spammy, have you checked out NAP consistency in the citations?

I think you know you've got a ways to go with this, Bob, but the good news is - it's a very 'friendly' industry and there is definitely hope of taking this business from where it is to where it wants to go! Hope you'll get further feedback!

Hi David,

Excellent topic. My rule of thumb in judging the optimization of title tags goes something like this:

1. Does the title tag accurately describe the page's contents?

2. Could any modifications be made to the tag that could improve it, while strictly maintaining its accuracy.

So, in your case, it sounds like you are marketing a multi-practitioner legal firm. It's helpful to remember that tools are meant to provide suggestions, not lay down the law.

While I'd be concerned if you said that the title tag for every page of your website was identical, I wouldn't be concerned if the tags for each of the practitioner pages are similar, if each of the attorneys provides the exact same service. I would recommend that you look at the findings of the keyword research you are doing and see if there are some variant ways in which people search for tax attorneys, and see if you can somewhat diversify the tags for the group of practitioners using this information.

For example, the title tag of Bob Jones' practitioner page might read:

Tax Attorney Bob Jones, Proudly Serving Atlanta since 1987

And Sally Jones' title tag might read

_Atlanta Tax Lawyer Sally Jones, Founder of Jones Financial _

And Frank Jones could have:

Call Atlanta CPA, Frank Jones at (404) 222-2222 for prompt service

In other words, be as creative as you can, but never stray from accurately describing page contents. And do be sure the other pages of the website are making as complete use of your keyword findings as possible. Doubtless, people have all types of questions about tax attorneys that you can create content around. And this content, in the RankBrain era, will all help with your goal of building the client into an authority (in Google's eyes) for a particular topic (tax law in the city of location).

Tools are helpful. They alert us to potential problems. But they should be seen as good assistants rather than as dictators. Do what is real first, and then use tools to discover if there are nuances that can improve the presentation and optimization of any business you market.

You may already have seen this in the past week or so, but it's new to me! Check out this screenshot from the bottom of the Local Finder for a search for 'electricians houston':

http://screencast.com/t/NKW3KuxIuPo

I saw this first referenced by Issac Hammelburger at Phil Rozek's G+ Community and see this as yet another Googl-ish thing to do, crowdsourcing data. They are trying to make it easier to add GMB listings, undoubtedly for owners who have never heard of Google My Business, but I've not yet tried the feature out. If you click on the ADD A MISSING PLACE link, you'll be able to input core data about a business. There's also a link to claim the business present.

Has anyone here in our super Local SEO community tried to add a business via this new feature? Are you seeing it in a lot of local finders? What do you think of it?

Hey Dwayne!

Thanks for starting a good discussion. I agree with Chris here, in that the scenario you're describing is the main reason why most Local SEOs would urge you to go with a single site with landing pages for each company location on it, as opposed to a multi-site approach. You can look at it like this:

1. With a single site approach, everything you do on that site (publishing content, earning links, earning testimonials, accruing age, etc.) goes to benefit all of of your locations at once. Your brand gets maximum 'juice' out of everything you do and grows in strength over time.

2. With a multi-site approach, you are responsible for creating unique content for X number of sites instead of just one. Unless you've got the funding/creativity to keep up a steady stream of unique, helpful content on all of the sites, you will end up in a conundrum like this one, wondering if you should spin the same piece across multiple sites (not a good idea) because you just don't have the time to be writing 3, 6, 9, 12 different unique and awesome blog posts every week or even every month. Imagine writing just one really awesome piece that builds your brand and supports all of your locations. So much easier and appealing, right?

So, the above is kind of the long answer. The short answer is, no, it's not a good strategy to spin content. If you can't write something unique for each website, better to leave it alone. If you feel it's imperative to keep 3 websites instead of consolidating into one, you might try a relay approach in which you focus on Site 1 in February, Site 2 in March, site 3 in April and then back to site 1 in in May, etc. Not ideal, but might make it possible for you to focus on creating something really strong for 1 of the 3 sites, and then move onto the next one.

Good discussion!

Hello there! You've come to the right place. Local SEO hinges on the physical location of your business and its customers. If you have a physical store in NYC, you can work towards competing for visibility in Google's local packs for users and queries surrounding that city. If you have a physical location in LA, same story.
What you can't do is hope your NYC store will show up for users in LA. Local search doesn't work that way. Rather, you'd need to pursue organic rankings and paid advertising in markets where your business lacks a physical location.
_Moz just published the Essential Local SEO Strategy Guide, which will teach you all the basics of local SEO for free! Hope it helps: _https://moz.com/local-seo-guide

Hi Susannah,

Google My Business listings relate entirely to physical locations. So, if you have 2 physical locations, you are eligible for 2 GMB listings. However, the practice should definitely assign a unique phone number to the second location, as Google wants the number you list to connect as directly as possible to the location.

Having the same business name is no problem at all, and, in fact, you should not add any modifying keywords to either name (like a city name). List the name exactly as it appears in the real business world for both listings.

Finally, in regards to web pages: it's ideal to create a unique landing page on the website for each of the physical locations. So, the GMB listing for Location A would link to the landing page on the company site for Location A, and the GMB listing for Location B would link to the landing page on the site for Location B. Location landing pages represent very powerful opportunities to target content to a specific set of users. Make the content unique and as helpful as possible, and don't forget to put the name, address and phone of the business at the top of its respective landing page. Finally, be sure the citation set you build for Location A links to landing page A, and the same goes for Location B.

You can read more about landing pages here on the Moz Blog: https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages

Hope this helps!

Hi OhMichael!

Greg Gifford's 2015 post on Local content silos may be a good place to start with this, as it offers a good diagram of how these work: http://searchengineland.com/local-content-silos-secret-local-search-success-223371

Whether you take this approach or a different one, yes, the main question is: what content belongs on pages that describe a single location of a multi-location business? These 2 articles may help a lot with that:

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

https://moz.com/blog/the-complete-guide-to-creating-onsite-reviews-testimonials-pages

Basically, whether you build a single landing page per each location, or you build a cluster of silo'd pages, what belongs on those pages is whatever content you feel will be most helpful to consumers at that location, and will be most persuasive that the location is the right choice for their transaction. Please, check out those articles and then definitely let me know if they spark further questions. Happy to keep talking!

Hi Blue Corona,

I'm with the community on this - lowering the visibility of those reviews on the website is not going to prevent  potential customers from finding them on Google, so this will be an ideal opportunity to really start throwing yourself into earning some excellent Google reviews, leading to the positive sentiment outweighing the negative. Here are some resources that could help:

https://whitespark.ca/review-handout-generator/

https://moz.com/blog/the-complete-guide-to-creating-onsite-reviews-testimonials-pages

https://moz.com/blog/mastering-owner-response-quintet-google-my-business-reviews

https://www.getfivestars.com/blog/13-ideas-make-business-complaint-friendly/

I totally get that it could be embarrassing for the company right now to have those negative reviews showing up on the website, but consider:

1. This is temporary. You must have a plan to drown out those couple of negative reviews with a slow-but-steady acquisition of positive reviews.

2. Google has been very clear about wanting unmoderated reviews on websites that use review schema to markup their own reviews that they are gathering directly from consumers. In other words, in Google's eyes, your reputation should be unedited. Right now, the business has a customer service issue being reflected on Google - this is presently the reality of the business, and while it's not flattering to the business, it is authentic. So now, it's the time to make an authentic response with a) resolution of problems b) excellent owner responses and c) acquisition of improved reviews over time.

Hopefully, the company can really get on this. An estimate 92% of consumers read online reviews and it's a given that this business' potential customers are seeing those negative reviews on Google. I'd make improving this scenario priority #1, over any technical or SEO considerations.

Hey There!

Yes, the strategy you're mentioning is a good one. In your scenario, I recommend:

1. A set of city landing pages

2. A set of service pages

It just gets too confusing if you try to mix the two up. *Just be sure each page you get is of very high quality and non-dupicative. This article might help:

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

As might this one, though it's 3 years old now:

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

Good luck with the project. The more you can involve the owner/expert staff at the business in this phase of content development, the better

Good question, Nathan!

If the business model is changing from local (defined as serving customers face-to-face at your location or at theirs) to virtual (no face-to-face contact with customers anywhere) then it will no longer be eligible for a Google My Business listing. If this is the case then, yes, you'll need to act on this, and unfortunately, as you are not simply moving to a new location, you are likely to end up with the red 'permanently closed' label on the listing. I recommend reading Joy Hawkin's article from 2016 on this issue in case you see any nuances that might apply to your situation:

http://searchengineland.com/google-fixing-permanently-closed-problem-242364

And, I would further recommend contacting Google's support to ask if they have any further advice for you, as your situation is not the run-of-the-mill moving locations scenario, but represents a complete change of business model.

Dear Nanton,

Ed has given you an excellent list. I will add that if you want to tackle this in the most organized possible fashion, look at the results of the Local Search Ranking Factors 2018  survey of local SEO experts. Create a strategy based on the factors which experts are saying have the most impact on both organic and local rankings + your own knowledge of your unique market. Be as intentional as possible in your efforts and be sure you have analytics in place to measure the outcomes of specific campaigns. Hope this helps!

Hey There!

In addition to Ria's smart tips, I would focus on links when you need to move the needle. Earning/building links on authoritative local and industry websites would be key here. This is one of the only things, honestly, that can make a serious difference when you are in a super competitive geo-industry market (like a personal injury attorney in LA!).

And I want to emphasize content publication - your ultimate goal is to become Google's idea of being THE authority on your topic, whether that's auto glass repair, organic groceries or yoga. You can become THE authority to Google by becoming THE authority to local consumers - the site they turn to for specific topical information, and that they link to, share, review, etc.

There are believed to be several hundred factors that Google takes into account in determining local pack rankings, so, understandably, it's a pretty nuanced environment. A bakery in rural California is going to be able to rank well with very minimal effort, but their location in San Francisco is going to have more of an uphill battle, simply due to the strength and breadth of their local competition.

Something to keep on your radar: the annual Local Search Ranking Factors 2017 study will be being released here on Moz soon. This polls the opinions of some of the top Local SEOs in the world, and you will be able to gain expert insight into what really brainy folks feel is impacting rank most heavily today, both in the local and local-organic results. So, stay tuned for that as it's coming soon!

Hey Jason,

Thanks so much for the answers to my questions. Okay, I'm going to number these points for organizational purposes:

1. Holy crow! There are a LOT of Internet marketing firms in Brisbane.

2. Go to Google, look up "SEO brisbane" and then click on the Map. Now, begin zooming in on the map, click by click. From my location in the US, it took me 9 zoom levels before your company appeared. You are 11th in the Local Finder view to the left of the map at this zoom level for me. So, the good news here is that your listing does exist. The bad news is, it's not making it into the higher echelons of Google's local rankings. I'm not sure if this is a classic case of the Possum filter, because the nearest business I see to you in the same category is over on Adelaide St (Code Digital), which looks to be a couple of blocks away. I've heard some anecdotal reports of Possum having an effect at that distance, but I can't say with 100% certainty here. Nevertheless, whether this is an artefact of Possum or not, the solution is likely to be same: you've got to convince Google that it is your business that deserves to show at the automatic zoom level instead of the businesses of your competitors.

3. First, you've got to root out problems. I noticed one oddity looking at your reviews. It appears that you've reviewed your own company in the past week. You should remove the review as this violates Google's guidelines and be SURE you aren't violating them with any other reviews you've gotten. You also need to root out any potential Google My Business duplicate listings. Unfortunately, Moz Local doesn't currently operate in Australia, so you may need to do this manually, or hire a company like Whitespark to help you root out duplicate listings or other problems with your citation set. I'm also curious about the way you've formatted your Google My Business address:  Level 4/196 Wharf St, Spring Hill QLD 4000, Australia. It has been years since I've consulted with a local business in Australia. What is Google's standard formatting of floors/suites in your country? Should they come before or after the actual street numbers? I'd double check on that.

4. Next, you've got to do a competitive audit of the competitors who aren't being filtered out. You've got to stack up their numbers against yours (local ranking, organic rank, age of domain, age of listing, DA, PA of GMB landing page URL, review count, review rating, link profiles) to try to identify what elements of the competitor's presence Google is favoring over yours. Then, you've got to try to beat those numbers/stats.

5. Next, you should carefully comb through the businesses outranking you to see if they are violating any of Google's guidelines. For example, it appears that one dominant player (Webgator) may be spamming the business title of their GMB listing (they're listing themselves as WebGator SEO Brisbane) when this does not match the logo on their website. I'm unable to see street-level signage for them looking at Google Streetview, so I recommend that you a) drive over there and take a photo of their sign and B) phone them and see how they answer the telephone. If they are simply "WebGator" in either instance, then their addition of the keywords SEO Brisbane to their GMB title would be something you would want to report as a violation. You should do this same process for any other competitor who is outranking you with a spammed business name. And, of course, make sure your own hands are clean in this regard and that you aren't violating any guidelines.

6. Know that you are in an extremely competitive and crowded market. It's not going to be easy to move the ranking needle, but it's not impossible.

7. Test proximity factors. Where do you rank locally when you are standing in front of your business looking at your mobile device? How about 2 miles, 5 miles, 20 miles, 50 miles away? Remember that local rankings are NOT static and can alter drastically depending on the location of the searcher.

8. I'm not doing a genuine audit here. It's just a 5-minute glance from me, and one thing that is bothering me here is the fact that your business is coming up 12th organically for me for the search term, but isn't appearing until zoom level 9 on the map. This would make me anxious enough to do a complete audit, referenced in point number 4, and if I didn't have the in-house skills to do it, I'd hire a heavy hitting Local SEO for the job.

This is as far as I can go right now, Jason, but I hope it gives you a game plan. Good luck!

Hi Bee!

Without looking at the actual listing, the community will only be able to offer some guesses. If you can share the website of the business, I'll gladly look more closely at it for you, but if that's not possible, it's okay.

The first thing I'd try to rule out here is the Possum filter. Find out if your client shares a dock, marina or building of any kind with a business in the same industry as itself. Even if the business is down the street, if there's another yacht-related company located in the same general area as your client, Google's Possum filter could be causing your client to be filtered out at the automatic zoom level of Google Maps.

If your client confirms that there are other yacht-related businesses at or near their address, here's how to see if Possum is impacting the business. Go to Google Maps and type in the core search term for which the business is trying to rank. Then, begin clicking on the zoom level to get more and more zoomed in. If your client appears on the Map at a zoomed in level, but does not appear at the normal zoom setting, then it's likely Possum.

If this experiment helps you determine that Possum is at play, and even if this experiment isn't conclusive that it's Possum, the task for you as the Local SEO on the job will be to do both an internal and a competitive audit. This will look like:

1. Ruling out for your own client anything problematic like guideline violations, spam, malware on the website, robots.txt issues, limiting business location, etc., while also documenting your finding about your client's complete online health (age of domain, on-page SEO, link profile, DA, PA, citation health, age of GMB listing, etc.). Do a full audit.

2. Then, take your client's numbers and statistics from your internal audit and set them side-by-side with the top-ranking competitor in the local pack for the search term. See what this top competitor's strengths are and compare them to your client's weaknesses to determine why Google is favoring their listing over your client's.

3. Finally, create a strategy to bring your client's numbers/stats up to the level of the top competitor, as best you can.

Again, if you can share the client's website, our community will gladly take a look, but if that's not feasible, what I've outlined here is the basic process that lies before you. Hope this helps!

Hi There!

I believe you're asking about how to name your multi-location business across its local business listings. The answer is, you should name it exactly as it appears in the real world, on your store signage, print marketing and the way the telephone is answered there.

So, if you own McDonald's, you're going to name the business just "McDonald's" on all of its listings for all of its locations. You wouldn't have "McDonald's San Diego", "McDonald's San Jose", "McDonald's Santa Clara", etc.

So, unless a city name is part of the real-world business name, don't included it in the name field of your citations. In fact, to do so would be considered a violation of Google's guidelines, which you can read here: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en-GB

*The one exception to this is Facebook. If you're going to create a Facebook listing for each of your locations, you DO need to add some kind of modifier to it, as Facebook won't let you create multiple listings for the same name. So, in this one case, you likely would add the city name to the business name field, but on all of your other listings, follow Google's guidelines and don't include any extraneous keywords in the business name.

Hope this helps, but if I've not clearly understood your question, please feel free to provide further details!

Hey There,

Donald is correct that virtual offices, P.O. boxes, etc. are ineligible as far as Google My Business listings go. What you are describing is a Service Area Business (SAB) if you are going to the homes of your clients or other remote locations to serve them. So, in order to be guideline-compliant, you'll want to list yourself as an SAB, using your home address, which Google will then hide publicly. The most important thing here is to avoid violating Google's guidelines ... that is a much more important consideration than how something affects your rankings.

There has been debate over the years as to whether businesses with physical, public addresses have a ranking advantage over home-based businesses with hidden addresses, it's true, but until you do get a staffed physical office to which customers come to do business with you, it's not accurate to represent your business as having one. So, list yourself accurately and focus all the energy you have on the ranking factors you can control. Hope this advice is helpful!

Good Morning!

Thanks for bringing your question to the forum. Without looking at your actual client (totally fine if you're not permitted to share) the best I can recommend is that you do a competitive audit between your client and their top competitor. This post will walk you through the process:

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

Yes, the spam backlinks and and pages could have hurt the company, especially if they are small, and it can take time for your fixes to go into effect, but local rankings are made up of SO MANY signals, you really have to treat each business on a case-by-case basis to discover what is holding them, specifically, back. I'd recommend doing the audit, and putting the metrics of your client side by side with the business you see doing best for the desired keyword phrase. Compare and see if you can identify your client's weaknesses vs. the strengths of the high-ranking competitor.

And, while you are doing this, keep in mind that local pack rankings are not static. Due to the factor of proximity, the rankings a customer at one end of town sees will not be the rankings a customer at the other end of town sees. So, at best, you can get a "sense of" how your client appears to rank at city or zip code level, but you can't get a set-in-stone sense of how he ranks at a personal level without actually driving around his town, checking mobile and desktop rankings to see how they are altered by your physical presence.

Good afternoon!

If the practice has determined to build GMB listings for its practitioners, then, yes, building out citations for them would be the next step. These strengthen the chances of the doctors ranking for their specialties, both in the local packs and in the organic rankings. Typically, when you start navigating scenarios like this, some form of automation is going to help. You don't want to be dealing with 600 citations for 6 doctors manually

Hi Daniel!

Thanks for asking a good question. It sounds like you've got a complex issue here, so I'll number my thoughts to reply:

1. If your competitors are spamming you on Yelp, then your first step should be to document that as much as you possibly can and report it to Yelp: https://www.yelp-support.com/Reporting_an_Inappropriate_Review?l=en_US Be prepared to offer any proofs you can that these are actually competitors doing this to you.

2. No one that I know of has ever published a study as to whether owner responses on Yelp impact the rankings of Yelp listings. It's an interesting question, but not one I can respond to with data, unfortunately.

3. If you are able to get Yelp to remove spam reviews, problem solved. If, however, you can't prove to them that these are your competitors and they leave the reviews live, then I would strongly recommend replying to them. Otherwise, what you are doing is giving up any control you have over writing any part of this narrative of your brand online. Yelp reviews are public, and negative reviews with no owner responses tell the public that the brand doesn't care and leaves customers in the lurch when they have a problem. The opposite of this can be a brand like yours that responds with accountability and support when a customer complains, showing the public that your business takes care of customers and will take care of them. However, it's definitely challenging to do this when a review is actually spam. It all feels rather fake to apologize for a fictitious negative experience, but the thing is, your potential future customers don't know the negative experience is fake. So, you just have to do your best to demonstrate that your brand listens and cares, even if you believe what you're listening to is fictitious.

4. It also sounds like you need to work on getting real reviewers that meet Yelp's filter criteria to review you. Darren Shaw wrote a good tutorial on this last year, and I think it will really help you with this: https://whitespark.ca/blog/how-to-get-yelp-reviews-that-wont-get-filtered-and-improve-your-rating/

5. Be sure you are building up an excellent review base on other platforms like Google, Facebook and whatever directories matter most to your market.

6. Hang in there. You can't ignore Yelp right now, but they are only one portion of your reputation, and you're not alone in having a hard time navigating their filters and spam problems. Hopefully, you can prove you've been targeted with spam and get some/all of it removed. But, if you can't, re-focus on the core of providing exceptional customer experiences and diversifying the number of places you receive reviews, and that should help you continue to grow a positive reputation. Review sites are all having a hard time with spam, and it's their problem to solve if they want to remain relevant to consumers.

Hope this helps!

Hi PrimeSource1!

Thanks for asking a good and important question. Because your business model is solely digital, you would not qualify for Google My Business optimization, with or without an office. Google's guidelines not only exclude the use of virtual offices, but they also prohibit participation by brands that don't meet face-to-face with their customers. So, in this case, it sounds like your funding will be better invested in organic SEO, PPC and Social rather than local SEO.

When a business does have face-to-face interactions with its customers, but doesn't have a dedicated physical address, two alternatives to explore are:

1. Using your home address for a single location (not using a bunch of home addresses for multiple locations, though)

2. In some cases, the use of co-working spaces.

But, with a digital-only model like yours, these aren't helpful. Rather, if you're hoping to gain a presence in particular regions of the country, you'll need to do so with content, linkbuilding, on-page optimization, social outreach, PR, and, likely, paid advertising. Hope this helps!

Hi There!

This must be very frustrating, indeed. It's a really interesting case, actually. Looking up "racine" in Google and observing Google's red border on the map, I see your client as actually being just inside the city border of Racine. So, I think you actually have a case here for speaking to a Google rep about the incorrect designation showing up on your Google Business Profile. I would take a screenshot of the client's pin marker, and then a screenshot of the map search for Racine. It proves that the client is physically in Racine rather than in Mount Pleasant, so Google's designation is wrong.

Once you have your screenshots, this is what I would do:

Send a tweet to Google's Twitter support at https://twitter.com/GoogleMyBiz telling them you have an incorrect city designation showing up in their category summary and want to show them an image.

Be sure you are following them on Twitter as they will likely want to DM with you.

Once they get back to you (I find it takes 1-3 days typically) upload the screenshots you've taken and explain the problem and ask if they can help, as the map shows their text is wrong.

See what they can do.

Come back to me and tell me what happened.

Hope this helps!

Hi Jonathan,

Opinions vary as to which tools are best, but I recommend you check out the tools at the following sites:

http://www.brightlocal.com

http://www.myseolabs.org/

https://www.placesscout.com/

Also, check out the tool mentioned in the thread at the Local Search Forum:

http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/local-seo-ranking/2332-super-hot-free-local-rank-checker-bonuses.html

Hope these will be some good resources for you to consider.

Hi Mike,

If the businesses you're searching for are local in nature, then EMD one-boxes are a known, documented phenomenon currently troubling the SERPs. This is fallout from the Hummingbird update. Read more about this here:

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

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

I'm positive that Google is aware of this unintended outcome of the update in which weak, spammy or even closed businesses are ranking in one-box fashion, but as to when Google will tweak the dial to fix this, we just don't know. Hang in there. Lots of people are writing about this, because it is creating such a blatantly poor user experience.

Hi Eastco,

Good discussion going here. Of first importance: you must determine whether your client truly qualifies for local inclusion. From your description, this isn't totally clear to me. Can you answer yes to all of these 3 points about the client:

1. Has a unique physical address in the city of location (not a shared address, not a P.O. Box, not a virtual office).

2. Has a unique local area code phone number in the city of location (not a share number, not an toll free number)

3. Has in-person transactions with its clients, either at the location (like a restaurant) or at the clients' locations (like a plumber).

If the client doesn't meet all 3 of these criteria, he doesn't qualify for inclusion in the eyes of Google. As you've mentioned your client develops software, the question naturally arises as to whether the business meets face-to-face with its clientele or if the business model is solely virtual.

So, that's step one - to determine qualifications for local inclusion.

On to your second question regarding wishing to target a whole country - yes, you would need a physical office (and all of the 3 above criteria) for each location you wish to target. McDonald's would be a good example of this. Obviously, they have a national (and international presence) but they also have a physical presence in countless cities across the nation. So, you'd have to approach it like that.

Regarding your third question, there has never been a keyword research tool that offers accurate data about local keyword searches. Local SEOs typically do their research by searching without geo modifiers and then adding the geo terms back into their list of discovered product/service/brand terms. That being said, Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends/) does offer you some ability to play around with location settings, but the accuracy of the data is going to have to be seen as relative rather than black-and-white.

Hope this helps!

Hello MFC,

Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. If I've correctly understood your query, you are saying that you are seeing competitors doing linkbuilding to their directory listings. Is this right?

While I can't see a real problem with the idea, I'm also not sure it's a very good use of time/funding. Given that Local is so Google-centric, and that it is the strength of your website which is so big a factor in your rankings, building links to your own property (your website) is likely to be a much better idea than building them to 3rd party sites.

Also, of perhaps relevant interest is this recent discussion regarding building links to one's Google Place Page. I had a discussion with Mike Blumenthal about this, which he subsequently turned into a blog post. I recommend that you read it, including the great discussion below the post:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/01/24/google-places-myth-linking-to-your-places-page/

Hope this helps!

Miriam

Hi Tony,

Essentially, your keywords will be similar, yes, though hopefully you will make room for many variants as you're creating the different pages. My hope here, though, is that your main focus here will be to create really excellent pages that tell a great story and convert customers. Yes, you've got to think about keywords, but that is just step one.

I would also be careful of approaching this with a 'rank it fast' mindset. How quickly and highly these pages rank will largely be dependent on the strengths of your various competitors. In a scenario of low-competition, you can expect to achieve visibility more easily than you can in a really tough one. The tougher the competition, the more work you may need to put into promoting these pages so that they build authority via the earning of links, social mentions, etc.

Good luck with the work ahead!

Hi Kirmeliux,

I recommend this excellent post by Mike Blumenthal on what is and isn't possible at this point in the G+ environment:

http://localu.org/blog/merge-google-pages-usually-cant-now/

Hi TheCTC,

Thanks so much for your feedback. I will bring it to the attention of SEOmoz staff. We appreciate hearing your ideas!

Hello, Sharon,

I'm so sorry to hear your blog was strongly affected by the August 1st update. From what I've read, health/fitness is one of the categories which has been most obviously impacted.

We are still in the early days of speculating about which signals Google is focusing on.

Here is Dr. Pete's post detailing what Moz has seen happen with this update:

https://moz.com/blog/googles-august-1st-core-update-week-1

Marie Haynes also wrote a blog post offering a theory that Google's focus may be E-A-T signals (expertise, authoritativeness, and trust), which I recommend that you read if you haven't already, bearing in mind, of course, that this is only a theory: https://www.mariehaynes.com/the-august-1-2018-google-update-strongly-affected-ymyl-sites/ She offers some suggestions for things you might analyze and attempt for your website.

I hope these at least offer some information, and if you wish to share your domain name here, perhaps our community can make some specific suggestions even though no one but some folks at Google can be totally sure what was targeted and how a site can attempt to recover.

Hi Wayne,

It sounds like you've taken such a great approach with your national clients. This mindset will also serve you well in Local, although Local SEO is definitely a distinct practice. I've been working in Local SEO for about 7 years now, and would like to offer you some resources to start getting you up-to-speed in this unique discipline.

I'll start with David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors 2012. This is the premiere annual industry report. It's a survey of some of the top Local SEOs on the planet, and while the last survey took place just before Google made the big change from the old Google Places to the new Google+ Local, the report is still relevant in nearly every regard: http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml

Next, I will give you two articles of my own which I share with incoming clients and which have received a nice bit of industry acclaim in 2012. These 2 articles lay out what I can consider to be the best mindset and the best tactics for approaching a Local campaign. They should fill you in on the key areas of focus you will need to understand and keep in mind:

The Zen of Local SEO

http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1314

The Rudiments of Local SEO http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1344

Finally, I'd like to link you to what is generally agreed to be the top Local SEO blog going. This is Mike Blumenthal's blog, and should become weekly reading for you if you're delving into Local: http://www.blumenthals.com/blog

A couple of other Local blogs I highly recommend for regular reading:

http://www.ngsmarketing.com

http://marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/

The main things to understand about Local SEO are that Google rules the roost because of their market share, obeying their rules is critical to succeeding and violating their rules is a really bad idea, all of Local SEO hangs on the consistency of your client's NAP (name, address, phone number) across the whole web, and that the medium is constantly changing, meaning that Local SEOs must keep up with the news on a daily basis, literally. It's an extremely lively and exciting area of SEO, but is also probably the area most fraught with bugs and client frustration due to a lack of transparent communication on Google's part and their beta mentality regarding the products they roll out. So, buckle your seat belt; you are in for a fun ride! I sincerely hope the resources I've provided will get you started on the right foot!

Hi Richard,

Darin and Thomas are offering good advice for the basics of neighboring town optimization, but I feel more needs to be said, given the nature of your sample client's business model.

First, let's touch bases about keeping your priorities straight, like this:

• You main goal is to optimize and rank well in the blended/local results for West Palm Beach.

• Your secondary goal is to go after organic rankings for other nearby towns (not local rankings, as your client is not physically located there)

Now, here is where I differ slightly from the good advice that's being given by our members: Creating city landing pages is the most common practice for achieving these secondary organic rankings. However, you need to have something real to write about to justify the creation of said pages. For a dentist, this may be a little more difficult, as his business model is by nature stationary.

By contrast, a carpet cleaner has an easy road ahead in creating city landing pages because he actually travels to those cities. What you need to ask yourself (and your client) is what the dentist does that can justify him creating content about those neighboring cities. For example, does he give or attend dental seminars in any of the neighboring towns? That would be a good reason to write a page optimized for the other city terms. Or, perhaps he sponsors a little league team in one of the neighboring cities, or visits elementary schools there? Try to find something to write about that genuinely reflects his presence in a neighboring town and your content will have a point beyond a grab for organic rankings.

But always bear in mind, for a stationary business like a dental office, the bulk of your focus must always be placed on building up his authority in his city of location.

I do not recommend creating a separate set of service pages for each city (botox jupiter, botox royal palm beach, botox wellington, dental implants jupiter, dental implants royal palm beach, etc.). This is awkward and not really useful to anyone, given that your dental client is in a single location offering the same services to all comers. So whereas go-to-client business models (plumbers, chimney sweeps, landscapers) are a natural fit for city landing page development because of their actual work in a variety of cities, stationary business models (restaurants, retail shops, dental offices) must be more creative to have a legitimate reason for creating this type of content.

Definitely don't just throw up a bunch of thin or duplicate pages, swapping out city names in the title tags...but do try to discover if there is a true connection between your dentist and the neighboring towns and then use that as your reason for writing.

Hi Jason,

In Google's world, Local Search hinges on physical address, even for SABs (service area businesses). This means that, regardless of your on-page optimization, your business is most likely to achieve local pack rankings for its city of location - not for a different city where you are not physically located. While I'm not sure from your description whether your business is brick-and-mortar (like a dentist located in the suburbs who wishes to gain clients from the neighboring major city) or is an SAB (like a plumber located in the suburbs who travels to the neighboring big city to make house calls), it doesn't really matter. Google's bias toward physical location dictates that most local businesses must go for local rankings for their city of location and organic rankings for any other city.

Because of this, the approach that makes most sense to me is to optimize the basic pages of the website (home, about, contact) for the city of location, because you want these pages to reinforce Google's belief in the validity of the NAP (name, address, phone number) you have included on your Google+ Local page. The goal here is to achieve the highest possible local rankings for the city of location, because this is what Google cares about most.

Then, build additional content on the website for additional target cities and try to build as much authority surrounding it as possible, in hopes that it will be able to achieve organic visibility.

This would be my approach, as I feel it clearly delineates both physical location and target cities.

Hi Mgordon,

Google is completely doing away with custom categories, and I have come across other threads with business owners expressing concern that their most important categories do not exist in the new pre-set category taxonomy. There are three thoughts I can share with you on this.

1. I have heard talk that Google may be open to hearing requests for additional categories to be added. When/how this will happen, I don't know, but here's a thread in the Google And Your Business Help Forum which mentions this possibility: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/custom$20categories/business/A3zjPqFi6C8/LVjo_aOBxq8J

You might want to do some more searching around the Google forum in case there was a discussion of this I happened to miss. Google staffers do sometimes start threads to address concerns like these, but the custom categories are definitely going away, so they can't be part of your marketing strategy.

2. Have you used Mike Blumenthal's category tool to check for synonyms that may trigger an appropriate new category for you? Here's the link:

http://blumenthals.com/Google_LBC_Categories

3. You can, of course, mention those lost categories in the business description field of the Google+ Local page, but it's my opinion that Google has devalued this area of the page to some extent and I don't know what effect, if any, it has on influencing rank at this point.

Sorry not to have a solution here. I do suggest searching around Google's forum for more discussions started by people finding themselves in your same situation with the new category system.

Hi Molly,

Thanks:) So glad you found that article relevant. When I wrote that piece, it was because this concept of city landing pages is so important, but so little had been formally written about it. The response has been great! I'm very happy if it will help you. Good luck!

Hi Again Emerald,

I hope we are all understanding your question better after the further details you have provided. As you answered all of my 4 questions - positively - for your city in Spain, then there is no reason why you cannot engage in a Local Search campaign. When I search, from my computer in the USA, for 'travel agency madrid, spain' Google shows me local results for that city. So, yes, it is certainly possible for you to do this.

You will want to make sure that your website has basic local optimization in place and then get the business listed in Google Places and other relevant local business indexes.

On a final note, I need to mention that I would not recommend setting up any virtual offices either in the USA or Spain as this would violate Google's Places Quality Guidelines. See: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528

Hope this helps!

Miriam

Hi Jason,

Are you carrying out a Local Search Marketing campaign for the business? I'm assuming you travel to your clients to perform for them, right? And you do so within a certain geographic radius, I'm guessing. If this is the case, a campaign for you would typically look something like:

• You'd need to have a street address (even your home address) that you'd be using to create your Google+ Local listing and then following the options within the dashboard to ensure that the address is hidden to comply with Google's rule about SABs (service area businesses) hiding their addresses. If you're physically located in Colombus, then your Google+ Local page would display that you are based in Columbus, OH, without actually showing your street address. Google would then consider as you a most relevant LOCAL result for queries like 'magician columbus' or searches for magicians stemming from Columbus-based devices.

• You would also need to have a dedicated local area code phone number.

• In addition to building your Google+ Local page for your city of location, you would be creating listings (called citations) for your business in a number of other local directories.

• The main thrust of your website optimization would center on your service terms (magician, comedy magician, corporate magician etc.) + your city of location. So, in other words, if you're physically located in Columbus, you'd be optimizing the core pages on your website for 'Columbus Magician', 'Corporate Magician in Columbus', etc. I would consider this a much more typical way to handle the SEO for a local business than optimizing just for the state of Ohio would be. The point of all of the above is to earn high local rankings for the business where it has a physical address.

• In addition to optimizing your core website pages for your city of location, you would likely be building out additional content on the website to showcase the additional cities to which you will travel to serve. So, if you serve in 10 cities within Ohio, then that would be 10 pages of unique, terrific content, optimized for your services in that specific city. A common way to approach this is to showcase your work in those cities, which should be easy for a magician to do. Just remember, the content must be unique on each page. The point of this work is to go after high organic rankings for cities in which you lack a physical location. You're unlikely to achieve local pack rankings for any city in which you're not physically located, but you can pursue organic rankings via a combination of content development, social buzz and link earning.

• Google will personalize users' results based on their physical location whether or not they add a geo-modifier. If I search for 'pizza', Google shows me a local pack of pizza places in my city. But, this behavior is typically on a city basis - not a state basis, so that's an important distinction. On mobile devices, this type of city-based geo-personalization is even more pronounced, to the point that you'll get different results when you're at one end of town than you will at the other end of town for many queries.

So, basically, I think Local SEO is the area you need to be investigating and learning about. All Moz Members have free access to our new Moz Local Learning Center (http://moz.com/learn/local) and we have lots of great Local SEO blog posts on the Moz blog.

I hope this helps with your question.

Hi Copyjack,

There are many positive things about Localeze's product, but honestly, most of the Local SEOs I know agree that there is no product currently on the market that can replace manual citation building and claiming. Different products build a certain number/variety of citations, but only when you do it yourself can do you have total control over the quality of what you build and where you build it. The tradeoff, is, of course, that manual citation building is much more time consuming than a one-time submission via a provider like Localeze or Yext. If you do decide to go the Localeze route, I think they are a good company.

Hi Jason,

I should have been more clear about this. I'm sorry. Let me provide a little more detail.

In my experience, most local business websites have some basic pages, regardless of whether the business is a dental clinic, or a legal firm or a restaurant. Most feature the following pages;

• Home

• About

• Contact Us

On these pages, I would be adamant about ensuring that the optimization of the titles, tags and text matches the core business NAP (name, address, phone). So, if the business is physically located in Jamestown, then these pages should reflect this in every way possible so that when humans and search engine bots hit these pages, the content there matches the content you are publishing on your various local business listings, in terms of geography.

Beyond these three basic pages, most local businesses will also have a set of service/product description pages. Here, we enter some grey area, because the content and optimization of these pages will be dictated by the needs/goals of the unique business. Some possible choices:

• If the business does serve clients in its city of location, then it's a no-brainer to optimize the product/service pages for this geo term. In other words, instead of just optimizing for 'teeth whitening', you would be optimizing for 'teeth whitening in jamestown' and such variants.

• If the business does not serve clients in its city of location, then these pages could be optimized for the neighboring city where it does serve.

• If the business provides services in multiple cities with equivalent values, then you could either optimize the core service/product pages for the city of location (my first choice) with the plan to build additional content for other cities, or, you could not use geo terms at all in the optimization of these pages (a somewhat iffy choice) and rely on 'cities we serve' pages to stand in for having optimized the actual product/service pages.

There may be other choices, because there are always little nuances to each businesses, but what I've described above are the most common approaches.

Now, in terms of building city landing pages for multiple service cities, I'd like to point you to an article I wrote on this some time back that many people told me really helped them understand their options. Here we go:

The Nitty Gritty of City Landing Pages for Local Businesses

Of course, a local business website will have other pages like testimonials pages, work with us pages, etc., on each one of which you'll be making a nuanced decision in regards to which keyword terms are targeted.

I hope I've provided some further insight here and that the article I've linked to will provide even more.

Hi Perfect Pitch,

I agree with Patrick - don't touch anything. I would, however, report the issue via the Google Mapmaker Forum:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/map-maker

See if you can get one of the RERs there to help you get the map corrected before you make changes to anything else. Clearly, there's an important discrepancy here that could be causing problems, not just for your client, but for everyone doing business on that street and everyone trying to come there to do business.

Hi JohnWeb12,

Your final link is actually not taking me to the intended results, because it's localizing to my own city, so I can't see this. But, yes, in the other links, there is reason for concern if any third party is creating a Google+ Local page for your client. The one thing I'm not clear on is that, in your provided example, 2 different addresses and phone numbers are being used - one in Edgewater and one in Annapolis. I would need to fully understand the situation to totally 'get' what is going on here. If the company in your example is just one company, and, let's say, the address on the directory page is virtual rather than a real location, then, yes, that could certainly hurt the business. If, in your client's case, 2 Google+ Local pages have been built for the same location, then that is totally a violation.

It's fine to list a business on a directory, but I would never recommend that you link a Google+ Local page of any kind to a directory page. In fact, I will go so far as to say that no third party should ever be creating Google+ Local pages for businesses. Those should always, always belong to/be in the control of the business owner, and not anyone else. So, while I wasn't able to access that very important final link to get what's going on here, I do think you have reason for concern, but how harmful the situation may be isn't something I can ascertain unless you can publish your actual client's own details so that the nuances of the situation are clear.

Hi Kerplow,

Bede has hit the nail on the head with this:

Yext is more about listing management and control. Localeze and UBL are more about hitting upstream data providers and getting full coverage. They're best used in some sort of combination, so I don't think this is an either/or choice.

Yext's tool is about management, whereas Localeze and UBL are primarily about the creation of profiles. If management is your goal, then you'll probably want go with the Yext for that...though many Local SEOs object to the price tag.

Hi Jason,

Thank you for the additional details. To be honest, I have little or no faith in keyword tools for local research these days, so I wouldn't necessarily believe that no one in Pittsburgh is searching for a magician. It just isn't logical.

That being said, yes, you must create pages optimized for Cleveland to have a hope of appearing organically for relevant searches. You do have a chance, definitely! Create great content for your target cities and you do have a chance to gain organic visibility for these terms, though it will likely never outrank competitors physically located in these cities. You are understanding this correctly.

Hi Digitalkiddie,

I would expect Google to be able to understand international prefixes. Can't give you a 100% guarantee on that, but I'm reasonably certain that they are sophisticated enough to get this. So, my advice is to list your complete local number wherever possible, but if some directories require a different format, follow their guidelines and provide what they want.

Hope this helps!

Hi Oren,

You are correct in the phenomenon that you have noticed. For quite some time now, Google has been localizing results to the searcher's geographic location. Thus, when you search from Boston for dentists in Chicago, you will likely be shown somewhat different results than will the dentist searching for himself from his location in Chicago. On mobile, this is often even more evident. If you search for a coffee shop while driving through the north end of town, you will be shown the cafes nearest to you. This will change to a new set of cafes when you reach the south end of town.

While I have never seen a serious study conducted of the exact degree of variance in the results, the important thing to understand is that every user is seeing different results, personalized to their geography. Gone are the days when a business could definitively rank #1 for a term, due to this type of personalization.

Hi Tina,

If your address is a mailbox, the business is not eligible for inclusion in Google Places for Business. Here are the guidelines referring to this:

Business Location: Use a precise, accurate address to describe your business location.

Do not create a listing or place your pin marker at a location where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations.Your business location should be staffed during its stated hours.

So, you should not be using this mailbox in place of an actual physical address. Doing so can lead to Google taking your listing down if they figure out that the address is not real. You can use your home address, but not a mailbox. For service area businesses, you must have a physical address, just like a brick-and-mortar business. Google says:

_Businesses that operate in a service area should create one listing for the central office or location and designate service areas.  If you wish to display your complete business address while setting your service area(s), your business location should be staffed and able to receive customers during its stated hours. Google will determine how best to display your business address based on your inputs as well as inputs from other sources. _

Here is a link to the guidelines so that you can read them and bring your business into compliance with them:

https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en

Beyond Google, each local business index has its own rules as to what is allowed, but getting down to the basics, you must start with a legitimate street address because this is what Google is going to be looking for, and the lack of one means a lack of eligibility for inclusion. Hope this helps!

Hi Peter,

All local listings hang on NAP (name, address and phone number) and the phone number aspect must be a local area code phone number. You should not be listing a toll free number as your main number - not on your local business listings, website or anyplace else. I have not personally run across a report before of Google manually changing a toll free number to a local one, but number changes can definitely take place because Google is scraping data from a variety of sources. If they find instances of the web of your NAP with the local phone number, then they would certainly prefer to use that, as toll free numbers aren't viewed as local.

The Google Places dashboard provides you with an option to list an alternate, secondary number, so if you want to put your toll free number there, that's acceptable, but don't list it as your core number. That's not what Google wants.

Hello Taso,

While there isn't really anything you can 'do' to get Google to pick up notes on third party reviews, you mention Yelp in your question and that is a special case. Google stopped showing notation of Yelp reviews in mid-2010, so if this is the source of your 3rd party reviews, you will not see them show up in G. Places. Here is a good article from Lisa Barone at that time:

http://smallbiztrends.com/2010/08/yelp-reviews-out-of-google-places.html

So, you will need to be sure you're getting reviews in sources Google does use. Look at your competitors' websites for a quick picture of what those include. It can take Google some time to pick up new reviews, so be prepared for that, but do go ahead and start planning to acquire them.

And, definitely, work on getting Google-based reviews. Those are very important since Google stopped displaying 3rd party reviews from any source but their own. Hope this helps!

Miriam