Hi FPK,

Glad to have you here. So, your client is #2 in the screenshot (I believe I'm understanding that correctly, but please let me know if I've misunderstood). If I'm correct, here are a few things to remember:

1. Local rankings are not static. What you see is not what your client or his customers will necessarily see, depending on your and their locations at the time of making the search. For more on this, read Phil Rozek's recent article: http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2017/05/24/did-your-local-rankings-really-sink-or-are-you-just-looking-at-them-wrong/

2. Reviews are just one factor of several hundred. To do a complete audit for any client, we recommend assessing all of the top Local Search Ranking Factors mentioned here: https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors. You need to audit both your client and any competitor who is outranking him to discover what the higher ranking businesses are getting right that your client may not be excelling at. The breadth of factors is wide: age of domain, age of listing, links, domain authority, topical authority, citation accuracy, authority and scope ... there is so much to consider here, so it's important to avoid oversimplifying this to something like "X is outranking Y because X has more reviews."

3. Definitely dive deep into the effects of Google's Possum filter, which has caused many businesses that share a category and building or street with competitors to experience extreme ranking changes. It looks like Kingston Mortgage Solutions is right across the street from you. To see if Possum may be at work in what your client is experiencing, read Joy Hawkins' article: http://searchengineland.com/everything-need-know-googles-possum-algorithm-update-258900

4. It looks like the client is well within Google's borders for the city of Kingston, so no worries on that score.

5. I'm concerned that I'm seeing duplicate GMB listings for your client. They appear to have listed themselves twice with the identical address and phone number but with two different names: The Mortgage Professionals and Mortgage Pro Team (The Mortgage Professionals). This would be a violation of Google's guidelines (see: <cite class="_Rm">https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en</cite>) and needs to be investigated swiftly. I am also seeing at least 3 practitioner listings at this same address that need to be investigated to ensure that they are guideline-compliant and not being viewed by Google as duplicates. None of the names on these listings meet Google's guidelines, unfortunately. So, we've hit on a real problem here and one that your agency will want to research fully and make every effort to resolve for the client.

6. Moz Local now supports Canada, and a good thing to do would be to look up the client in our free Check Listing tool to begin to assess how widespread this issue is with duplicates. With the full, paid version of the tool, you'll be able to add alternate info, as well, to find as many duplicates as possible.

This is a start, but isn't a genuine substitute for a professional audit, which it looks like this client definitely needs. I hope this quick glance of mine provides a good starting point!

Good, Andrew. A rep named Mike told me they'd be on the lookout for your tweet to them. Hope you hear back, and you're very welcome.

Hi Andrew,

Okay, so I rec'd this response back from a GMB rep on Twitter:

I'm happy to help. First, send a private message and include your listing and account details. https://goo.gl/lDYjYK  -Mike

<iframe id="xdm_default9191_provider" src="https://twitter.com/i/cards/tfw/v1/865177259983994880?cardname=2586390716%3Amessage_me&autoplay_disabled=true&forward=true&earned=true&lang=en&user_color=rgb(0%2C 132%2C 180)&card_height=35&scribe_context={"client"%3A"web"%2C"page"%3A"connect"%2C"section"%3A"connect"%2C"component"%3A"tweet"}#xdm_e=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com&xdm_c=default9191&xdm_p=1" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="100%" height="34"></iframe>I wrote back, let them know I was asking on behalf of a Moz Q&A forum member, that your name is Andrew and that I'd pass the message along to you. So, my advice here is to reach out on Twitter today and let them know you're the member on whose behalf Miriam Ellis reached out. I'm hoping you can at least have a near real-time conversation with them.Here's a link to the interaction I had: https://twitter.com/GoogleMyBiz/status/865177259983994880My gut feeling on this is that there may not be much they or you can do, but it's worth checking out. It would be great if you'd come back and let us know how it went, Andrew. Good luck!

Hi Andrew,

Helpful details! I understand your situation well now, and I can see why this is problematic. I've just tweeted GMB support, because I'm honestly concerned you may be stuck here, unless they have a tip I've not encountered before. The problem is, were you to attempt to get rid of the GMB listing, it might well end up being marked "permanently closed" which is definitely not the signal you want to send to your B2B partners. We'll see what support says - they're typically pretty great, but I'm not sure there's a foolproof solution here. Your situation isn't unheard-of, for sure. See: https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Enhance-Your-Presence/How-to-replace-Google-Local-listing-with-Knowledge-Graph/td-p/496345

In the meantime, as you've got the GMB listing currently representing your brand to the public, I'd say the most important thing you could do would be to ensure you've got a strong review acquisition campaign going so that you can encourage better sentiment to appear that better reflects the current status of your operations. In the local business world, a whopping 73% of consumers don't consider reviews older than 3 months to be relevant, according to BrightLocal (https://www.brightlocal.com/learn/local-consumer-review-survey/). So, I would expend a great deal of effort over the next year to push down those older negative reviews with newer positive ones.

I'll definitely return to this thread if I hear back from Google's Twitter support. And, if anyone in the community has dealt with this situation before, please chime in!

Hi Andrew,

May I ask you some questions, please, to get a clearer picture of the business model?

You mention that your company is a national B2B business. Does this mean you have multiple physical locations to which your business associates come for transactions, or do you only have a single home office to which they come?

If you've got multiple locations, do the others have Google My Business listings, or only the home office?

When you are performing searches to see whether a local knowledge panel or general knowledge panel result is coming up for the business, are you physically located in the same town as the business headquarters?

Can you further clarify why you feel bad reviews are built into the situation? What has caused this to be so?

Thanks!

Hi There,

Good question! Short answer here is: no, a Local SEO is seldom going to suggest a multi-site approach to represent different services a business offers. Here are some of the reasons why:

1. You will only be able to build local business listings for the main business at the physical location, so there is no local pack ranking advantage to having two different websites, as you can't build additional listings for one of the services offered - this would violate Google's guidelines.

2. Simultaneously, what you worry about with the multi-site approach isn't so much a duplicate penalty/filter (unless you duplicate content between the two sites) but, rather, the accidental creation of duplicate listings. If Google (or another local business index) gets confused by finding shared partial NAP (name, address, phone) on two different websites, it can confuse them and lead to the accidental duplicate listings being created, which can then sap the strength of the main listing for the main business. It can also confuse consumers. The way to reduce the likelihood of this would be to be sure that the physical address isn't on the second website and that you either have a) a unique phone number for the second website or b) put the phone number in image text. Even so, these things can get referenced off the website and pulled in that way, so it's not really foolproof, but it is a best-effort attempt.

3. Finally, a major drawback of the multi-site approach is that, instead of every marketing effort you make adding to the strength of the brand, and therefore all aspects of what the brand offers, you are dividing this in half while doubling the management efforts that have to be expended trying to market two websites, instead of pouring all of that marketing goodness into a single entity. This really matters when it comes to your organic rankings. If you have an absolutely awesome website with high authority, you should be able to get your pages that surround the topic of this particular service the business offers to rank very well. With a second website, you'll be starting from scratch, trying to rank an unknown newcomer instead of simply building on the strength of the existing website by building great content and earning links to it, all under the umbrella of a single brand.

So, hopefully these are points you can bring to the company to help them see why in both organic and local marketing, a single site approach is generally preferred. Particularly as we've moved into the era of RankBrain, the ability to become an authority in a certain topic has become a central marketing mindset. You might even show the client this website (Moz.com) as an illustration of how a brand can become associated with a topic (SEO) that then helps it to rank for a multitude of related facets (linkbuilding, on-page SEO, local SEO, content development, etc.). Rather than creating a website for each of these areas, there is just one Moz, and that has helped the brand to become known, overall, for all of these things.

Please, let us know if you have any further questions!

Hi Christian,

Good advice from EGOL. Your question raises an issue the Local SEO community, in particular, needs to look into further, as we tend to look at sponsorships as good sources of links. That being said, you'll see discussion like this in the general SEO industry:

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-chrome-bought-a-paid-link-for-350-000-21690.html

So, this is an area I believe needs further research to define exactly how Google views links from sponsorships.

So glad to help, Gabe!

Nice responses from both Donna and Joy here. Thanks, ladies

Kimberly, definitely pay attention to Joy's advice regarding using friend's houses for this. It's a definite no-no. Review Google's Guidelines to know how to play by the rules and avoid disaster.

I recommend reading the following:

This one is now 3 years old, so there might be a few old terms in it, but it should help you define your business model:

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

And this one should help you with your approach to creating these landing pages:

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

Finally, I'm going to raise the issue of RankBrain here and link you to Rand's WB Friday on this:

https://moz.com/blog/optimizing-for-rankbrain-whiteboard-friday

Please take a few minutes to watch this to help you determine whether multiple pages for the sake of keyword breadth or a single, really comprehensive page for each theme/topic will serve you better. SEO is changing and that goes for both local and virtual businesses.

I hope these resources will help you skill up to develop a really smart and modern strategy for marketing your business!

Hi Gabe,

As James mentions, there's not a known number that would  = too many. What is known is that Google does filter out reviews if they arrive in unnatural patterns. A business that has been sitting in Google My Business for years and has only earned 15 reviews in that time suddenly acquiring 30 reviews in a month might, indeed, look odd and trip that filter. But those are not exact numbers.

I've never actually consulted with a college as a client before so the idea of a review campaign amongst students is a bit new to me. Just brainstorming here, off the cuff. In a traditional business setting, one fundamental technique of review acquisition to is ask your HAPPY customers to review you. You'll need to consider how to approximate this in an educational setting. How do you know which students are happy? Ones who have won some sort of award? Members of a winning rowing team? One idea might be former alumnae who have gone on to great things for which you know they credit the U, in part. If you simply do a student-body-wide ask, you are likely to end up with the sort of complaints seen here: https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+University+of+New+Mexico/@35.0843187,-106.6197812,15z/data=!4m7!3m6!1s0x0:0x7777c7361d5ed347!8m2!3d35.0843187!4d-106.6197812!9m1!1b1

So, it seems to me that, in order to control the velocity with which reviews come in and also to approach this as a business would, you'd need to focus on a small subset of students or former students for a given time period and then focus on another group.

I'd start by defining a goal for this project. What do you hope to achieve by earning more reviews? Then, begin experimenting with different forms of outreach that might contribute to this goal. And, of course, avoid known pitfalls.

1. Don't ask for too many reviews at once.

2. Don't specify that you want positive reviews.

3. Don't offer incentives/gifts of any kind.

4. Don't ask people who work for the U to review it.

Just some initial thoughts here. Hope they are helpful.