Hi Taylor,

Good topic! While it's true that a town of that size is unlikely to have a lot of geo-specific directories, all of the normal structured citations sources are still available (the ones that serve all businesses across the country), so you'll still be building citations.

If the business needs to earn local mentions, how about these options:

1. Sponsorships of local businesses, events and organizations

2. Cross-promotions with related local companies

3. Local blog mentions.

4. If the town has an online newspaper, that would be good, too.

When the town is small, you can only go so far with getting geo-specific references. Once you've explored this to its limit, you may need to focus more effort on industry-specific references, instead. Does this help?

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!

Hey Jared,

So sorry to hear about your duplicates issue. This may be one of those scenarios which would require a consultant looking directly at your dashboard. You may need to engage someone with good skills to do this ... but, before you do so, can you let me know:

1. Are any of the practitioners sharing a phone number with one another or with the practice, itself?

2. What exact language are you seeing in the dashboard regarding the duplicates?

Thanks!

You're welcome! Have a nice afternoon.

Hey RoxBox,

Thanks for the reply. I want to start by saying that I am only a fan of vanity phone numbers for a really limited number of scenarios: radio ads, TV ads and billboards. Beyond that, I am just not a fan. Here are some reasons:

1. You don't want to use a vanity number on your local business listings because some won't accept letters instead of numbers, and there's a serious question as to whether clicks-to-call might get hammered, too.

2. Unless your consumer base is all really young folks with perfect eyesight, vanity numbers make things unnecessarily difficult for consumers trying to see the tiny letters on a mobile phone's number pad, and even on a landline pad. I've had my phone disconnect while I've hunted around for the letter Q, for example. So, vanity numbers really aren't consumer-friendly.

So, if the business is determined to have a vanity number, I would advise them to use it only for specific advertising scenarios (like a radio ad). And if they want to connect that radio ad to UX on the website, go ahead and put it in an image in the website masthead. But keep it separate from the pure text-based NAP of the business, whether that features a toll free or local phone number. Never make a vanity number the only option for a local business. They just aren't well-liked, according to an informal poll I took of some Local SEO colleagues.

Hope this helps!

Hey RoxBox,

Just want to be sure you've seen my follow-up question

Hey There!

Are you saying you are considering changing a number phone number for a vanity number (letters instead of numbers?). I just want to be sure I'm understanding correctly. Thanks!

Hey There!

This previous discussion should be helpful: https://moz.com/community/q/what-is-the-best-seo-tool-for-tracking-local-rankings

Hey There!

There are several important reasons for not sharing a phone number between locations:

1. Google states that they want the number to connect as directly as possible to the individual location. So right there, Google's own guidelines are warning your client not to share phone numbers, whether they are toll free or local.

2. When numbers are duplicated, there is a risk of listing conflation ... in other words, there's a chance that the listings for City A could have their details mixed up with that of City B. Merges do not appear to be as common as they once were in Google, but the risk is still there. Address and phone number are the key factors that differentiate multi-locations from one another. Separate is better.

3. I can almost guarantee that, at some point, a business which is branching out into a multi-location model is going to want to utilize call tracking at some time. Before you begin building listings, you may want to bring this up to the client. If the client decides to buy new numbers, he may want to make them call tracking numbers from the get-go, so that NAP inconsistencies don't start populating the web. With a single phone number, tracking is simply not going to be possible for a multi-location business. For more on PROPER call tracking (that won't get you into trouble) see: https://www.callrail.com/resources/mike-blumenthal/ and https://www.callrail.com/blog/guide-to-local-seo-and-nap/. Pay special attention to porting.

4. My main concern about using Google Voice would be that they could sunset it. They've done the same with so many products over the years, I would personally feel anxious using it to build citations with for my important company. If they should shut it down, what would happen to all those numbers that users have used for their local business listings? Could be a big headache. I'm not terribly well acquainted with Google Voice, and am not sure of what the rate of adoption is, but I'd rather go with a different company for calls and call tracking.

Hope these suggestions help you assist your client!

Happy Travels, Alan!

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

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

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

Does this make this a bit clearer?

Hi Alan!

Did my answer help you at all? Just want to be sure you've been helped.

Hi Alan!

My apologies for the delay in responding here - just getting back into the swing of things after the holidays

Okay - good news: what you have is a multi-practitioner practice, like most real estate firms would be. Typically, the structure of this would be:

1. You have a main number for the firm that connects to your customer support/front desk. You use this number on your website header, footer and pages like Contact Us. You use this phone number on your Google My Business listing for the firm and all other citations you build for the firm. You link from these citations to the homepage of the website.

2. You have a unique, high quality landing page for each of the practitioners in the firm (one for you, one for your new partner). You each list a unique phone number on your designated landing page. You build a unique set of local business listings/citations for each partner using their own phone number. You be SURE you are filling out the business title field on these citations appropriately. In other words, your citations for yourself are just Alan Rosinsky, and not Alan Rosinsky: Metro Manhattan Office Space. Similarly, your partner is just E_lliot Forest_ on his citations. You do not include the name of the company in the business title field of the practitioner citations. You link from the practitioner citations to each partner's designated landing page on the website.

3. You can have a Staff or About Us page on the site that lists all partners and their phone numbers, topped by the main contact information for the office.

4. As for the pages of property listings, themselves, I would simply put Phone Alan Rosinsky: (XXX) XXX-XXXX or Phone Elliot Forest: (XXX) XXX-XXXX on them and would not be concerned that an agent's detail would get mixed up with the main details for the practice, provided you have taken all necessary steps described above to clearly delineate each partner from one another and from the practice. This is a very common business model that should not lead to NAP inconsistency if managed properly.

5. You go into this with eyes open about Possum. Google's new filter for listings that share a physical location and share categories will likely lead to variables in which of your 3 listings (the practice and the 2 partners) show up at a given time for local searches. Your business model would be one with which a Local SEO might experiment to see if choosing a different Google category for each of the 3 entities could positively impact visibility, despite Possum. It has been some time since I've worked with a real estate agency, so I'm not sure what's available in terms of category experimentation opportunities, but I'd look into it in creating the Google My Business listings for the 3 entities.

Hope this covers the waterfront. Please, let em know if you have any further questions about this!

Hi Jeremy,

Hmm, sorry if that's creating an issue. I'd suggest getting in touch with Touchpoint Digital's David Deering to see if he has time to consult with you on any complex schema issues you can't resolve or find good advice for. He's the master, as far as local schema is concerned. Sorry my suggested solution seems like it wouldn't resolve the issue.