Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hey Gabe,

Great topic, and those competitors with EMDs outranking one are seriously aggravating. You've done a really good job of brainstorming the pros and cons. Pretty much 100% of the time, I advocate for a single site approach. The potential for brand building, authority building, ease of management and protection from the ever-changing whims of Google's filters make this the smart choice. Some things to ask the client, which I'm going to pretend is called R&B Realty:

1. Won't it be easier for you to build awareness of R&B serving all realty needs, than to expect consumers to somehow remember that they should go to rbfarmrealestate.com or rbhomesforsale.com? Don't you just want them to think of RBrealty.com for all of their needs?

2. Is there anything about the present domain that is ruling out building awesome farm-related content? For example is the domain something like homesforsalechicago.com right now? If so, could it be that you do need to purchase a new domain, but that it needs to be a branded domain that can encompass all present and future services? Imagine if in future R&B wants to expand to commercial real estate or luxury real estate. Would they then need 4 domains? That's a rabbit hole you don't want to go down.

3. Are you ready to invest? Provided that the current domain isn't making it somehow impossible to believe one could buy farm real estate from the company, I would present the company with a plan for creating the best possible section on the website for farm real estate. I would consistently publish best-in-class articles on this topic until I'd convinced Google that farm real estate is part-and-parcel of my brand, just as much as residential real estate is. I would be sure this content was highlighted from the homepage onward, and was built with good UX and good CTAs in mind. I'd invest a great deal in this, and make my pages rank highly for core terms. I'd also consider offsite marketing initiatives (both online and off) that would begin to build awareness of my brand's association with farm properties. I see far more opportunities than limits with this approach, and with the right plan, you should have no problem creating a sterling strategy for the client.

Hope these thoughts are helpful!

You're welcome, Emma. It's truly my pleasure! Good luck with the work ahead.

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 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

Hey Patrick,

Coming back to give you 2 additional pro tips I got from Mike Blumenthal:

1. Get multiple people to report the issue via the "send feedback" link. This could help the job get done.

2. If you see no traction after a couple of months, go report the whole issue in the GMB forum. The TCs there can try to escalate it for you.

So nice of Mike to offer these extra tips

You're welcome, Patrick. So, I have 2 suggestions:

1. Short-term, change the email being sent out so that it links to a correct, custom map on your website instead of G Maps.

2. Long-term, go to your town on G Maps, and in the lower right, click the tiny "send feedback" link to report the missing street issue. It will likely take a month, but hopefully Google will act on this. Only then should you re-include the link to your G Maps map in the email.

Hope this helps!

Jen, thank you so much for contributing your findings to this thread. I'm so happy you have a resource you've linked to. Fantastic!

That would be a good outcome! Thanks for starting an interesting discussion.

Thanks, John! Kind of you to say. Reviews happen to be my favorite aspect of Local.

Hi Coppell,

Google puts the burden on business owners to become aware of and read Google's guidelines. They won't stop you from creating most listings that violate the guidelines, but these listings can then be taken down for violations if a) Google catches them, or, b) a consumer or competitor reports them.

The only time you should create a Google My Business listings is if it is guideline-compliant. Otherwise, you are putting effort into something that's a liability to your brand and reputation, instead of being an asset.

So, unfortunately, you were unaware of Google's guidelines in this and have built rankings and reviews around an ineligible address. Regarding the new address, I had asked some questions. You mention it has no postal delivery. Why is that? Is it on a brand new street? How do business owners occupying your street receive mail? Also, you mention you are sharing this office with a friend. Are they in the same business category as you?

Hi Michael,

You're welcome. Regarding the use of brand names in title tags, we've had some good discussions of this here in the forum over the years (https://moz.com/community/q/include-site-name-in-page-titles-or-not)

You'll see opinions differ. My personal feeling is that, for a local business, the brand name should definitely be in the title tags on the home, about, contact and reviews page + city landing pages for multi-location businesses. Then, it should be included where you can on other pages (product/service for example). I don't think it's essential for it to be on every single page, but for the sake of branding, I like making room for it where possible. I hope you'll read that discussion I linked to, and you might want to research this further. Great title tags are so important! Worth the research and effort. To that end, I think you'll enjoy this Whiteboard Friday:

https://moz.com/blog/title-tag-hacks-whiteboard-friday

Glad to help!

Hi Coppell,

Thanks so much for asking about this. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you formerly built a Google My Business listing for a mailbox, that was actually a violation of Google's guidelines which state:

PO Boxes or postboxes located at remote locations are not acceptable.

So, if you've achieved local pack rankings based on this ineligible mailbox address, I'm afraid these would be viewed as unearned and could be removed as spam. You haven't specified whether you are talking about ranking well organically or locally, but if it's the latter, then this is definitely a concern.

Now, as you mention, you do have a real, physical office where you are meeting customers face-to-face. Can you please provide a bit more information about why it has no mailing address? Are you saying your city doesn't deliver mail to you there? Something else? Where does mail get delivered to businesses located at this new location?

Hey Ben,

I happen to love philosophical Local SEO discussions - they are too few and far between, IMO.

You've pretty much answered your good question by understanding that paying for placement allows you to "cut in line" (I like that analogy). Traditional Adwords have never had anything to do with organic authority, which is why Adwords can be used by scammers to fool consumers (want a great but scary read: https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/14/16309752/google-rehabs-near-me-search-adwords-crackdown). So, it's not just that businesses with low organic rankings can dominate PPC, but that totally unethical business models can use it to scam the consumer public. This is in no way confined to Google's program, but they do get the lion's share of visibility.

Now, here's what I'm finding interesting. Google's growing Local Service Ads (formerly Home Service Ads) is a bit different, in that it has a quite serious vetting process AND that Google is obliging itself to guarantee work being done up to $2,000. This means that if Google allows a scammer to slip past them into the program, Google will end up paying for it.

While this doesn't directly relate to organic rankings, there is an indirect tie. I would theorize that a local business which has the credentials to pass Google's vetting process for LSA inclusion will also be working hard at building the real-world reputation that can lead to organic authority and high organic rankings. They will be earning good press, good links. So, in a way, LSA could reduce the disconnect between ads and business quality. Interesting to think about, right?

Hi Michael,

Great, thanks for the further details. Okay, so typically, for a single location local business, you're going to have a homepage, about page, contact page, testimonials page and set of pages defining the services the business offers. Multi-location businesses are more complex, but with just a single location, you'll want to be sure that the complete NAP of the business is on every page of the website, either in the masthead or footer. Be sure it's also the first thing on the Contact Us page, too.

While this provides good, strong signals to people and search engines about the locale of the business, it remains a good practice to optimize the title tags with your geo-terms as well. So, for example, let's say your insurance agency (Progressive) is in Oakland and offers fire, health, life, home and renters insurance. You'll have a page for each of these services, and the title tags might read like:

The fire insurance Oakland, CA residents trust most | Progressive

Oakland's most affordable health insurance | Progressive

etc.

Your tags will be better than that, but my point is that there will be variety of language, and that sometimes you may use both city and state names, and sometimes only the city. I don't believe state abbreviations are essential, with one very important exception: if the name of the city you live in occurs in numerous states, definitely do try to work in the state abbreviation when you can. For example, there are apparently 30+ cities called "Franklin" in the U.S. I continuously see Google assuming when I search for something in Fairfax, CA, that I'm actually searching for something in Fairfax, VA. It's very annoying. This tells me that state modifiers are important signals to Google, and so while it may not be necessary to always specify them, if your clients are in cities with analogs, I'd play it safe by including state abbreviations in as many title tags as I could. But, if the client is in San Francisco, it's a safer bet that Google (and searchers) are going to get where you are if you do business there, without the addition of CA to your title tags.

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

Hi Patrick!

Ooh - these can be tough! Thanks for providing such thorough details.

The good news is, the majority of your patients are unlikely to look you up via a street address. So long as their search for "Chalco Clinic" is getting them to a Knowledge Panel and a map that showing your accurate location, you're likely getting found by most of your patients. You'd also want to check to be sure that a non-branded search (like "health clinic omaha" is also rendering a listing that sends your patients to the right place from the local pack/local finder view).

When I do the searches you've listed out, it's clear that Google thinks of this geography as 168th St ... not 168th Ave. You can see that right on the map - it's being designated a street not an avenue. I want to be sure I understand ... there is just one 168th in your town, right? Or, are you saying that Omaha has both a 168th St. and a 168th Avenue? Please, let me know on that. I'll pop back by as soon as I can to read your answer.

Hi Michael!

Would you be able to provide a bit more context here so the community can fine-tune its suggestions? Are you asking about including these terms in your title tag for a local business website? If so, which pages of the site? What is the goal of the page you're optimizing? What is the business model (single location local business, multi-location local business, virtual business?). The more detail you can provide, the better of an answer you should receive here. Thanks!

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.

I know, funny video, right? So glad if it gave you some tips, Ben!

I know! That cracked me up too - quite oddball! It certainly made me remember the video. Glad to know it may have given you a couple of ideas, Cesare.

Hey DaveyTree,

Some nice responses here from Cesare! I'm enjoying reading the discussion you two are having.

I agree with Cesare that it sounds like you're going above and beyond many companies in regards to your Yelp efforts, and yep, I've encountered other business owners expressing frustrations similar to yours. While it sounds like you've gained very advanced knowledge of Yelp in your efforts to promote your business, take a minute to watch this video from 2016:

http://localu.org/blog/guest-video-top-10-yelp-tips-small-business-2016/

It taught me some things I didn't know about Yelp when I first watched it, and maybe you'll get some new ideas, too.

Great topic, AL123al!

I agree with all of the posters who are stating that your client's approach isn't practical. I have a couple of resources I'd recommend you share with the client that should get him up-to-speed on this topic.

1. First, show the client this article on the realities of review spam. It's real, and there are actions you can take. It takes persistence sometimes, but you've got to be hearty in business:

https://moz.com/blog/review-spam

2. Then, show him this second article which details how to handle all types of reviews, from 1-star disasters, to 5-star treasures, to spam:

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

If you get get the client to sit tight and read through both of those, he should walk away with a completely different (and much better) perspective on dealing with the reality of reviews.

End of the day, attempting to delete a GMB listing is not an answer. The listing could simply come back again, and your client's reputation will follow him wherever he goes. Much better to get the necessary education to deal with all forms of reviews, and move forward confidently.

LOL. Funny analogy, EGOL.

Hi Ruchy,

It's totally fine to have testimonials on your website, provided they are authentic. I wrote a pretty exhaustive article on just this topic last year. It includes guidance from some of the best in the review business, including sample markup for your reviews:

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

I believe that should get you going!

Thanks, Gabe! So nice of you to say. We've just had another good thread about EMDs going this past week, with a great response from Rand on it. You might like to read: https://moz.com/community/q/to-re-domain-or-not-re-domain-that-is-the-question#reply_376575

Good luck, Mike, and that would be great if you would share anything you learn with our community. Thank you!

Hey Mike,

I have been looking into your excellent question a bit for the last two days, and while there are good tutorials out there about implementing Facebook Locations (like this one: https://sweetiq.com/blog/how-to-claim-facebook-locations/), what I'm not finding is trustworthy documentation of downsides, and I have one concern about this.

One of my colleagues and I noticed that Facebook's API is not seeming to return the locations of businesses using Facebook Locations, unless you add a city name to your query. This seems a bit odd and I don't know what to make of it, and don't have the resources of time at the moment to explore whether this behavior of Facebook's API could have further-reaching effects on search. For example, does this mean that apps/directories that pull from this API aren't going to return your multi-locations in their results? How does this impact Google results? Etc., etc.

I think you've raised a question that deserves a full study, and I'm sorry not to be able to surface one for you. I think you may have surfaced something that's in uncharted waters, and I'd love to see an enterprising Local SEO explore this topic further. In the meantime, you might consider posting in Facebook's help community to see if you can get any anecdotal replies from businesses who are implementing Facebook Locations, to see if they've noted any peculiar or negative impacts of going that route instead of going with individually building out pages one-at-a-time.

Hi Ruchy,

I believe the resource you're looking for regarding Schema would be this one: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/reviews

On your further questions, to earn local business reviews on Google, you have to have a local business (not a digital/virtual business). You'll need to be eligible for a GMB listing (read these guidelines: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en). If the business in question doesn't meet Google's eligibility guidelines, it can't have a listing and receive these types of reviews.

Hey Matt,

A tough subject. I'm guessing you've read all the general advice on ensuring that you've added plenty of your own guideline-compliant photos on behalf of your clients so that Google has good stuff to choose from, and it sounds like you know how to flag photos or report them like this: https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Basics-for-Business-Owners/Remove-Photo-From-Location-Listing/td-p/1131795

But as to doing this at scale, I'm not aware of a solution that gives you any additional control over GMB images than you have with manual management. I think I once asked Local SEO Guide if their Locadium product alerts customers to new images being uploaded to their GMB listings, but I don't believe they ever replied. You might investigate that product further to see if you can get an answer. My question to them may simply have gotten lost - it's the one thing I wondered about when the product debuted. But, even if a product were to alert you to photos being added (which would be half the battle) the other half of the battle would be that it's up to Google to plunk photos into your listing - it's their choice. You can report unwanted images, but you can't proactively prevent Google from accepting them or displaying them. Definitely a pain point, and one of the impactful outcomes of Googles crowd-sourcing approach to location data.

Hi Bob,

Gaston has linked to a good resource regarding migrating to HTTPS, which has been made into a "moment of truth" for businesses who don't follow Google's lead on this in 2017. For more on this, I recommend: http://streetfightmag.com/2017/10/02/the-impending-httpstrophe/

Regarding your other questions, if your business is digital/virtual, you don't necessarily need an address, but it's a trust signal to have one, and you should at least have a phone number if you want customers to feel you're a real company.

If your business is local, a physical address (even if it's your home address) and dedicated phone number are prerequisites. Without them, you don't really have a local business, and won't be able to fully market your company as one.

Hope this helps!

Hi Gavo,

My apologies for the delayed reply, as I've been away for the past 10 days. I think you're right to feel some concerns and have some questions about what your client is doing. If the myotherapy is just a service his chiropractic office is offering, then he shouldn't be building out new listings for it. Google's policy on this hasn't changed.

However there are some nuances to the scenario, like:

• Did he legally register this with government agencies as a new, completely distinct business

• Does he have a unique phone number for the business, being answered "Myotherapy Office" instead of "Chiropractic Office" when patients (or Google) phone in?

• Is the myotherapy part of the business open at separate hours from the chiro business?

There could, potentially, be cause for treating the two models as separate, but you'll need to know the complete details before making an educated guess as to whether the owner is putting himself at risk for suspension.

Hi Tariq!

You'll typically be best off building your Google My Business listings manually, which you can then import to Moz Local for the purposes of building out the rest of your most important citations. You can learn more about syncing Moz Local and Google My Business here: https://moz.com/blog/my-business-console-free-tool

A WP theme isn't really going to ensure higher maps rankings. Yoast's Local SEO plugin for WP (https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/local-seo/) is popular, but I think it oversimplifies the idea that any plugin or theme is going to = high local rankings. There are several hundred factors that contribute to ranking well locally on Google, and your website factors into that in terms of its basic SEO, content and links. Check out this year's Local Search Ranking Factors survey for further details: https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

Hope this helps!

Hi SSDigital,

Ooof...listing hijacking is truly awful. I'm so sorry for the trouble you're experiencing, and even sorrier to have to mention that it's not uncommon. Here's a phone number for Yext: 888-444-2988. Hope it helps!

Hey There!

Are you talking about reviews from Facebook appearing in your Google Knowledge Panel? Feel free to link to a screenshot, or to one of the older articles you're referring to, just for some more clarification. Thanks!

Hi AtlasGlobal!

Great questions. You do not want to assume the old listings for the former brand, as their reputation belongs to them and not you. Rather, I recommend that you read this post https://searchengineland.com/business-owners-guide-moving-office-234671 and follow these steps outlined in this post for what to do when a business moves: https://moz.com/blog/delete-gmb-listing. I would follow those steps in dealing with the GMB listings, and I'd recommend updating any existing  Yelp listing manually for your client, and then I would use Moz Local to get the new info out there on the major aggregators + other critical platforms.

Hi Rayflex!

There are two ways to approach a good question like this, and it's often best to take both:

1. Do a competitive audit, using a spreadsheet like this free one so that you can identify where your top competitor is strong that you are less strong: https://moz.com/blog/basic-local-competitive-audit. Then, feel free to come back to the community with any findings or questions that arise from that process.

2. Additionally, you're welcome to show us the listing, if you have the authority to do so. If you can, please provide a link to your business' website and tell us the exact keyword phrase you're trying to rank for. It's perfectly fine if you're not able to share this info, but without it, the best the community can do is make guesses about which factors may be holding your business back from the local pack rankings you're hoping to achieve.

Hi MrSem,

Yes, the limitations you've pointed out are, unfortunately, baked into the environment. There's no way to prove impact in a vacuum. You can't stop competitors from making changes on their end that could be positive or negatively impacting the rank of your business at the same time that you are cleaning up your citations. Search results are so dynamic, it's rarely possible to be 100% positive in stating causation, with no margin for error, because even if you can control what your company is doing, you can't control what competitors are doing in the same time frame, or as you mention, a Google update occurring in that time frame, or even a bug. So, basically what you have is industry practitioners over time noticing apparent cause and effect. When practitioners state that citation cleanup appears to impact search visibility, it's based on more formal studies like Andrew's (above) and on what they notice across the board with clients, over time.

As for what is actually being cleaned up, that's easier to define. It's going to be resolving inconsistent NAP+W, hours of operation, categories and duplicates, much of the time. It can also include remedying incompletions.

I understand your skepticism. Toothpaste manufacturers have a vested interest in telling you their product will make your teeth whiter. But there's an important difference here that shouldn't be overlooked: the things we've come to think of as local search ranking factors originate in the early study of local search results being performed in the trenches by very small agencies. Going back more than a decade, you can read through the blogs of folks like Mike Blumenthal, sharing what they are discovering moves the needle, client by client. That's not quite the same as the toothpaste company, because the scale was very small at the dawn of Local. You could chalk the corpus of local-related blog posts over the past 12 or so years up to being mere sales pitches, but I think if you start reading backward from 2017, you'll see it really wasn't that way. Just as in organic SEO, it's been a voyage of discovery

Hey Ben!

Please check out my 2016 article on this topic: https://moz.com/blog/are-coworking-offices-eligible-for-google-my-business-listings

Let me know if any further questions arise after reading it

Great question, MrSem! Now, full disclosure: I do work for Moz and we do have Moz Local, and I want to validate your comment about not feeling certain whether you can really trust statements made by folks who offer citation management as a service. I can see why you'd feel that way - makes sense to ask a question like yours. So, if even given my work here at Moz, you can still find some value in my explanation of the role of location data management, I'd like to take the time to reply.

Here's one case study you might like to look at, in which Local SEO Guide fixed 8000+ citation issues for a retailer with 1,300 branches, with a documented increase of 23% in Google local pack visibility across 6000 tracked keywords: http://www.localseoguide.com/our-work/case-studies/local-retailer-citation-cleanup/

Here's another in which Mockingbird saw a 27% increase in traffic following citation cleanup using both Moz Local and Yext: https://mockingbird.marketing/mockingbird-case-study-local-optimization-nap-cleanup/

You can find other studies like this, and Moz has done some internal case studies of its own with customers where we've seen similar numbers resulting from citation/duplicate cleanup.

When it comes to citations, I think of their role in two ways:

1. We know Google draws data from a variety of sources. If Google is drawing in bad data about your business, it's not a good thing. So, this is on the SEO side of things: defending your Google presence by ensuring that the sources Google draws from are accurate and trustworthy.

2. From a consumer standpoint, bad data is a trust and revenue killer. One Placeable study found that a whopping 73% of consumers lose trust in a brand if its listings contain misinformation (https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2338839/73-lose-trust-in-brands-due-to-inaccurate-local-business-listings-survey). And, you have only to experience the annoyance of calling an out-of-service phone number or arriving at the vacated building of a business that has moved to form a very negative impression of a local brand.

For me, point #1 is table stakes in Local SEO. Between the numbers in studies like the ones I've linked to, and my own experience of seeing Google pull wrong data from various places, a clean citation profile is a must in a competitive market. But, beyond this, it's that 2nd point that really gets me: if you miss out on "being there" at a consumer's point-of-decision because your listing on Citysearch or Yelp or Foursquare is incorrect, who knows how much revenue you've just lost? Some statistics say that a customer is worth 6-7 times as much as the dollar amount of his initial purchase. So, you may not just be missing out on one $60 sale of a yoga mat. You could be missing out on $420 dollars of sales over time. You might not only be missing out on a single purchase of a $4,000 engagement ring; you could be losing $28,000 in lifetime sales. So, for sure, you want to be in the right places, at the right moment, with the right data.

Hope these thoughts are helpful, and that others in the community will join this interesting discussion. It's a good one!

Hi MrSem,

By open/closed for business do you mean a permanently closed business, or something you look up when it's after hours for a business? Any further details?

BTW, I mentioned I would have more coming soon on this topic of SAB challenges. Just published: https://moz.com/blog/sabs-decreased-local-search-visibility

Hi MrSem,

Awesome topic, and coincidentally, something I've been thinking about quite recently. Local Search Ranking Factors 2017 continues to cite hiding your address as a negative factor: it's #18 of the negative ranking factors section of the survey. There was a time in which it was extremely evident that hiding the address was dinging businesses (I'm thinking back to about 2010). Since then, I've personally felt that Google dialed this factor back, but the fact that some of my colleagues are still seeing enough negative impact from this for it to make it into the LSRF survey makes me suppose they are seeing things more frequently than I am. I can't assign an exact degree of negativity to this factor. In fact, it might vary from pack-to-pack, depending on the strength of the players.

Now, here's another twist to this. Hidden addresses are quickly become a really severe liability in a whole new way. When Google's Home Service Ads come to town, claimed listings for SABs who are complying with Google's hide-address guidelines appear to be gone from the local packs/local finders. Joy Hawkins has some examples of this here: https://whitespark.ca/blog/is-google-going-to-remove-3packs/ and I plan to write more on this topic soon. If you or your clients are being impacted by this artefact of the HSA program, I recommend watching Mike Blumenthal and Mary Bowling discussing this here: http://localu.org/blog/changing-landscape-for-service-area-businesses-sabs/

So, at this point, yes, I've got to declare hiding the address to be a behavior that can negatively impact service area businesses in a variety of ways, and it's quite difficult that compliance with Google's guidelines could appear to "punish" these business models, but that's about where we're at right now.

Hope my reply, and some of the resources I've linked to, help. And I hope our community will chime in with their opinions. I truly believe this topic deserves much discussion!

My great pleasure, Neil. Best of luck to you!

Hi Jason!

Thanks so much for coming back on this one. I'm really glad it helped. Since I responded, one of my Moz Blog posts was published which might offer additional help. It walks you through doing a full competitive audit, with a free downloadable spreadsheet to help you: https://moz.com/blog/basic-local-competitive-audit

Going through the formal process of the audit could help you turn up some more things for your to-do list. Good luck to you!

Hi MrSem,

Thanks for re-launching this conversation with new questions, which are good ones. My advice here, numbered for clarity:

1. You should only have one "Contact" page on the site, listing all 5 of your locations. You should also have a unique page for each location. These are typically called "location landing pages", "local landing pages" or "city landing pages" - not "contact pages". The contact page should feature the basic contact info of each branch. The landing pages should feature much more than this. They should each be a unique resource of information about that branch, including NAP, driving directions, a map, reviews, special offers, customized CTAs, proofs of community involvement and anything else you can think of that might interest, inform and persuade customers as to the desirability of choosing your company. If you're listing a toll free number, be sure you're designating it as such and that it is the unique LOCAL number you're most closely associating with each branch of your business.

2. If the number of locations you have is beginning to create navigational concerns, you may be reaching the point where you need to consider a store locator widget. Typically, I don't see these being implemented for a business with just 5 locations. More like 10+. For major brands with hundreds or thousands of locations, store locators are an essential medium for helping consumers find the branch nearest them. For your business, with 5 locations, the function simply may not be necessary. You can list all of your location in high level navigation without clutter, and you can also put them in the footer, on the contact page, etc. This shouldn't take up too much room, and should provide good UX for your users.

Does this help answer your questions? Please, let me know if you have others.

Hi Neil,

I'm so sorry for the delayed reply. For some reason, I didn't receive a notification that you'd responded. So sorry about that!

Okay, so there are some guidelines you need to refer to here. It does sound like your business may qualify as a department of the train station. Google's guidelines on this state:

Public-facing departments that operate as distinct entities should have their own page. The exact name of each department must be different from that of the main business and that of other departments. Typically such departments have a separate customer entrance and should each have distinct categories. Their hours may sometimes differ from those of the main business.

• Acceptable (as distinct listings):
  • "Spring Gardens Optical Centre"
  • "Cafe Nero"
  • "Manchester General Hospital Department of Dermatology"
• Not acceptable (as distinct listings):
  • The Apple products section of PC World
  • The hot food bar inside Meadowhall

For each department, the category that is the most representative of that department must be different from that of the main business and that of other departments.

• The main business "Barclays" has the category "Bank" whereas the department "Barclays Advisors" has the category "Financial Consultant"
• The main business "Southend Toyota" has the category "Toyota Dealer" whereas "Southend Toyota Service & Parts" has the category "Auto Repair Shop" (plus the category "Auto Parts Shop")
• The main business "GetGo" has the category "Convenience Store" (plus the category "Sandwich Shop") whereas the department "GetGo Fuel" has the category "Petrol Station", and the department "WetGo" has the category "Car Wash"

So, from reading the guidelines, and given that you have a distinct name, the above should clarify your eligibility for a GMB listing for each of your branches.

However, regarding your phone number, that does concern me a bit. Google states:

• Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location as directly as possible, and provide one website that represents your individual business location.

  • Use a local phone number instead of central, call centre helpline number whenever possible.
  • The phone number must be under the direct control of the business.

To be totally safe, you should have a unique phone number for each branch that is being answered at each branch. Any other route can lead to NAP confusion, ranking issues and other problems. So, before you start listing your branches, I would recommend resolving the phone number issue.

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

Thanks, Neil! And thanks for being understanding (we just don't have many trains where I live in the US and I've never consulted with a business in your industry). Just a few more questions:

1. Is the name of your business different than the name of a given train station.

2. Do you have your own phone number at each train station, or are calls to you being routed through an answering service/desk belonging to each train station?

3. Would you consider your business a "department" of a train station?

Please, let me know. I want to be sure I advise you to the best of my ability.

Hey There Capsquare!

Joy's suggestion of Whitespark might be a good one. They're a very fine company. However, if you've got 30 locations, and let's say you want to submit them to 7 basic places (Google, Bing, Acxiom, Localeze, Infogroup, Factual and YP), at $4 a citation, I'm getting an $840 price tag, so that's not really within your client's budget. And, it doesn't include finding and permanently closing duplicate listings (which, with 30 locations, it's a good bet they've got), remedying existing listings with misinformation, and ongoing monitoring (pretty essential for a good-sized enterprise like your client's). And, of course, 4 hours of your time isn't going to cover citation development/management. So, your client is pretty much putting you in a rather difficult position, because their expectations aren't commensurate with the requirements for managing their business online.

I've been in your shoes, Capsquare, trying to find the right way to educate owners as to the importance of investing reasonably in location data management. It's a necessary investment, and given how search outperforms so many other mediums as a driver of traffic/transactions, it's a smart investment. A single component of citations - reviews - can truly blow away other forms of traditional marketing investments. In fact, I'd suggest you show this recent GetFiveStars post to the client, to give them a sense of why revising their budget to stretch to citation management could result in greater profits for them: https://www.getfivestars.com/blog/google-as-the-new-home-page/

But, I know ... sometimes clients don't get this, despite statistics. It's always worth a try, though.