Welcome to the Q&A Forum

So glad to help!

Hi Dominick!

Good for you for being thorough about this. In answer to your 2 questions:

1. As the business is genuinely being closed at this location and is not moving to a new location, you'll just want to follow Google's recommendations for reporting the business as closed: https://support.google.com/business/answer/6314541?hl=en&ref_topic=4854191

2. Yes, you should follow up with closing out as many other citations that pertained to the business as possible. Why? For a couple of reasons, including not wanting the other offices to have to field calls from unhappy customers who are seeking the closed business in vain, and also, because you never really want stray, inaccurate NAP floating around out there in the ecosystem for any business. So, yes, I vote for closing out the old references.

Hope these replies help!

Hey There!

Sorry to hear about this. First, I do want to be sure to mention that there has been a shakeup in the packs in the past week. Please see:

http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-important/42891-lot-movement-3-pack-local-finder.html

and

http://searchengineland.com/google-filtering-business-local-search-results-258044

I'm looking up 'Sea Leveler Cape Canaveral' in Google right now, and do see a Knowledge Panel for your business, so that's good news, and see this GMB listing:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sea+Leveler+Sport+Fishing+Charters/@28.4086071,-80.6143363,15z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xb376f8aa9ed43c09!8m2!3d28.4086071!4d-80.6143363

So, I see no signs that your listing has actually be suspended. Please let me know, did you see your issue resolve? Are you able to see the above listing okay?

Hi Catherine!

Thanks for saying that. I want to be sure you are following exactly these steps.

1. Be sure you are in the GMB dash for the specific business and are clicking the big red edit button that's over that large header background image at the top.

2. Then, click the edit/pencil icon next to the address

3. Then, be sure to use the scroll bar on the side of the popup to scroll down to the 'I deliver goods and services' text with the little radio buttons. That's where you need to be.

Can you get there? If that is totally absent, I recommend contacting Google directly about this.

Hi Kristen,

Great question! So sorry, but I have no personal experience to add here about being a Local Guide. These might interest you, though:

https://jakehennett.wordpress.com/2016/01/20/2016-01-20-local-guide-experiences/

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/_J0EEGiM9cg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whDs4MSumbg

And Mike Blumenthal, I believe, is a Local Guide. He mentions it in the comments of this blog post, but I don't recall ever seeing him blog about it: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2015/01/15/google-replacing-city-experts-with-local-guides-program/

There doesn't seem to be a ton out there about people's personal experiences being Google Local Guides. If anyone in our community is doing this, it would be neat to hear what you think of the program!

Hi Catherine!

Can you let me know, please, if Google has made a dashboard change in your country? Can you no longer set a service radius via the command that says, "I deliver goods and services to," and then has a field for you to enter cities or zip codes?

Hey There!

Hope these answers help:

1. Yes, create a landing page on your website for each of the 2 stores and link all of your citations (including your GMB listing) to the correct respective landing page.

2. There are several hundred factors that contribute to local rankings. You'll want to study:

https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

and

https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-checklist

3. I'd like to ask some of the traditional SEO experts in our community to weigh in on this one, but technically, if you only have one business, you should only be representing it with a single website.

Hi Kristen,

Local Guides is this program offered by Google: https://www.google.com/local/guides/

I think that's fascinating that there was no call to action to claim the listing! Thank you for letting me know that.

Hey Alex!

Christy invited me to pop by. Your 2 businesses exist in two totally separate categories, in Google's eyes: 'Air Duct Cleaning Service' and 'Car Detailing', so provided that you meet the following requirements, you should have no problems with running 2 legally separate businesses, even if they are both being run out of your home:

1. Have a separate phone number for each business that is always answered with the correct company name.

2. Have separate websites for each, with completely unique content on them (no shared content).

3. Do not interlink your sites in an attempt to cross promote them.

4. Build a unique citation set for each. Don't try to piggyback one business onto the other in your local business listings.

If you can meet all of the above requirements, you'll likely be best served by going with 2 unique businesses. If your categories were related (like Car Detailing and Car Wash) I'd be giving just the opposite advice, but as your two service types have nothing to do with one another, I vote for running two legally distinct companies. Hope this helps!

Hi Tony!

Yes, you would want any practitioner listings on other platforms to match the practitioner listings on Google (i.e. have the same phone number across the board for each practitioner you are promoting). The idea here is that, the more frequently Google finds Practitioner A listed with Phone Number A, the more trust Google feels in the data they have about that entity. Conversely, if Google were to find Practitioner A listed with Phone Numbers A, B, C and D, Google would feel less trust in what the accurate data should be.

So, for sure, you'll want to clean up phone number variants you find so that everything you can access matches what you're listing on Google for a given practitioner.

Hope this helps!

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

So appreciate you following up as you test this out!

Just seconding Ira's excellent response here. Without in-person contact, the business is ineligible for a GMB listing. Very good topic!

Hey Kurt,

I'm able to replicate exactly what you are seeing, Kurt. I'm in CA. so, this might potentially influence the results I'm seeing vs. what Ira is seeing.

I have seen both versions of the Local Finder view, but am not clear on what Google is doing with the test of both versions, and I'd never noticed before this difference of versions being triggered by plural vs. singular results. I'm actually doing some other searches now (shoe store vs. shoe stores, dentist vs. dentists with city modifiers) and I am NOT able to replicate the singular vs. plural difference you discovered with the church search.

What I do see is that, for that church search, the radius of the results appears to be the same, and that it's quite interesting that Google is only showing reviews for the singular search. Sorry not to have more insight on this, but it definitely looks like good old Google testing things out for the search you've been doing. Could change by the time you wake up tomorrow.

It makes me realize that I'd like to see a post on differences like this in the Local Finder view. I can't recall seeing one. Thanks for raising the question.

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

Hi There!

I'm hoping watching some of Rand's Whiteboard Friday's will give you a clearer sense of how to organize this, but, in brief:

1. You should never assume Google knows the location of a business, nor the locations it serves. It is up to you to point that out via content and links, but not to go overboard. There is nothing worse than reading text like this:

Our Chicago Housecleaning service help customers in Chicago keep their Chicago homes clean with good housekeeping practices special to Chicago customers.

Not saying you'd write something like that, but if you start looking at local business websites, you'll run into agonies like this one. So, the answer is, no, when writing in natural language, you're not going to append your city name to every keyword you are focusing on. Highly recommend watching those WB Fridays for more on this.

2. What you want to avoid here is unnatural links. Typically, people linking to you are not naturally going to use your preferred text. Highly recommend you read through this as you plan your link strategy: https://moz.com/blog/the-anatomy-of-a-link

3. I reached out to Dan Leibson at Local SEO Guide and he said the problem you are encountering most likely stems from not first making a copy of the sheet. You might be trying to edit the original, instead, which Dan says folks sometimes do by accident. Here are the instructions:

This tool is really simple to use:

1. Make a copy of the sheet for you to use yourself (don’t ask me for edit access, I’m not going to give it to you)
2. Put the city you want to localize for (or zip code) in cell A4
3. Put the keywords you want to localize in A10+
4. Click the “Generate Keywords” button
5. Check the new tab that has the localized versions of all your keywords

Hope this helps, and good luck!

Hi Mark!

Thanks so much for taking the time to pop in an add some context to this discussion. First, I'd like to thank you for making an important distinction:

I don't think there is a good reason to worry too much about tracking phone numbers listed in paid directory listings.

It's very important for our community to notice here that Mark is referencing paid listings, not structured citations.

Also, Mark, as you've popped by, I'd like to ask if any of your sentiments or advice have changed since you wrote that post at Mike's site. It's a highly cited post. Glad you've included a link to a newer post of yours, and I'd value hearing if anything you've seen since your wrote the original guest post has changed your take on call tracking 'safety' in any way.

Again, thanks for joining this discussion. Very valuable having you here!

Hey There!

Good topic! First, let me point you to this cool little tool Local SEO Guide just published: http://www.localseoguide.com/the-local-keyword-generator-tool/ It should really help with your keyword organization needs that you've mentioned.

From your post, what I understand is that your business is at a very critical moment in planning its strategy. You are so right: it is really easy to go at this wrong and end up with a redundant, duplicative site that simply doesn't do a good job of serving users. Most local businesses will need to create a strategy something like this for their website:

1. Build great basic pages (home, about, contact, testimonials, etc.)

2. Build a great page for each service the company offers.

3. Build a high quality, unique page for each city in which the business has a physical location. So, if you've got 5 physical locations, that's 5 pages.

4. Then, consider how you wish to cover all of the other cities that you serve. If you serve hundreds of cities, chances are slim that you're going to be able to create amazing content for all of them in the short term. As you've mentioned, you know you're not gunning for local pack rankings for cities in which you lack a physical location, but providing some content about them can definitely help with your organic visibility. So, typically, in this scenario, you'd be considering something along the lines of identifying maybe 10-20 most important cities where you serve but lack a physical location for, and then consider how you can create content that really shines for your work in those cities. For example, an architect physically located in San Antonio, Texas may have designed 3 building in Dallas, Texas. Even though he is not located in Dallas, he could create a wonderful page about the buildings he helped create there. In other words, you can showcase your projects in a given city, including text, photos, testimonials, links to 3rd party reviews, topical tips for that city, etc.

If a business can take this approach to its more important service cities, and then earn a few good links to those pages, they are well on their way to competing for organic visibility. They can then move out from there, perhaps mentioning some of their secondary target cities in blog posts, social media, etc.

Here are some resources I think you'll find very helpful at this critical stage of your planning:

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

https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-checklist

https://moz.com/blog/build-content-keyword-map-for-seo-whiteboard-friday

https://moz.com/blog/long-tail-seo-target-low-volume-keywords-whiteboard-friday

https://moz.com/blog/google-may-analyze-evaluate-quality-content-whiteboard-friday

Hope you'll enjoy these!

Hey Ira!

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

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

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

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

Hi Ira!

Mike Blumenthal wrote about this same question at LocalU in 2014. See here. The discussion in the comments there is quite good.

Oh, yes, Ira ... even if you are listing an SAB, it has to have a physical address, but then hide it. Only about 20 categories? Wow - that is really a limited data set. That wouldn't even cover core brick-and-mortar enterprises. Hmm!

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

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

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

Great question! And one that is built into the scenario of a single location business expanding to new locations.

There are typically 2 routes local multi-location businesses can take.

1. Build a single set of service description pages + a unique page for each location.

2. Build pages for every possible keyword/city combo + a unique page for each location.

Benefits of route one: by focusing your resources on this more limited set of pages, you may find you've got what it takes to build the BEST page on, for example, native plant landscaping in the industry and the BEST page about your location in San Francisco.

Drawbacks tend to relate to how to optimize major pages of the website (homepage, about). With just 2 locations, you can likely include some optimization for both cities on these pages, but if you start opening numerous locations, this can become untenable. After all, Whole Foods does not list hundreds of cities on its homepage ;). And, once you've got these two sets of pages built, you can turn focus in all kinds of exciting directions, creating all kinds of new content that continues to build your brand and increase conversions.

Benefits of route two: If you have the resources to do this well, you can end up with some very thorough keyword coverage. However, it may or may not be great for human users. Will users genuinely be helped in some unique way by the presence of your page on 'native landcaping san franciso' and your page on 'native landscaping oakland', describing the exact same service twice? In some cases, yes, but in others, no. So, make a wise choice here. Does a set of pages covering every possible service/city combo exist for users, or because you're crossing your fingers search engines will take note?

Drawbacks become quickly apparent where resources are lacking. Thin, duplicate content can easily result from this route, weakening your website instead of strengthening it. With proper resources, this doesn't have to be the case, but if you suspect it might be tough to pull off dozens of truly top quality pages with the route 2 approach, I'd advise sticking with route one.

Hope this helps, and Rand's most recent Whiteboard Friday might help with organization of the work ahead of you: https://moz.com/blog/build-content-keyword-map-for-seo-whiteboard-friday

Hey Andy & Kristen!

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

Ben, the link Alick has shared to Joy Hawkins' post should guide you based on your business model. If you still have questions after reading that, please let us know!

Thanks, Wendy! You too. And, it's not uncommon for Google to test things, so all of us often catch some weird thing like this that then autoresolves.

Hi Andy,

Thanks for popping in to let the community know what CallRail has done to improve this.

Hi Tamera,

If Google is finding different tracking numbers for your business on different listings, then, yes, that would be a situation of NAP inconsistency which could diminish Google's trust in your data. Hence, the suggestions of making your existing phone number a call tracking number, porting, etc.

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?

Wow! Thank you so much for taking the time to describe your experience with CallRail. This is the first time I've heard these issues described, and can understand your wariness. Sounds like a really rough time!

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

I hope it's muy helpful!

Hey Jason,

Unless those modifiers (city names) are part of the legal business names of the 150 businesses, then the Google My Business listings are actually in violation of Google's Guidelines (see: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en).

So, cleaning them up would be all to the good in terms of avoiding possible red flags at Google!

But, I'll be totally honest here. Could removing city keywords from your business name fields negatively impact you? Yes, it's possible, in that Google is still a bit goofy about weighting some exact match keyword brands in their SERPs. They shouldn't be doing this, they may be better at this than formerly, but I think this is still a factor.

So, you might see some ranking drops, BUT, that being said, I'd still recommend cleaning up your name as I'd rather struggle positively toward high rankings than deal with Google forming a negative 'opinion' of my business for violating their guidelines.

As you work on cleaning up your NAP, one thing to note. You will have to leave city names on your Facebook Place listings. They are the odd man out in this regard, requiring that you add modifiers to the business titles of multi-location listings, which is the exact opposite of what Google wants. Go figure!

Hope this helps!

Hey There!

Good question, and yes, if you use call tracking numbers improperly, it can play havoc with your NAP consistency and your lcoal rankings. I recommend you read this piece from start to finish to get a big picture sense of call tracking, including how to do it in a safe way:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/11/25/guide-to-using-call-tracking-for-local-search/

Hope this helps!

Thanks, Wendy!

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

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

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

My pleasure, Gal

Hey There!

It sounds like a new GMB listing is in order to me. Like you, I'm a Local SEO, but without having complete knowledge of the situation, I'm making a general guess instead of giving informed advice. It's not unheard of for marketers to pay to consult with others marketers when in doubt. If, with the business' whole scenario before you, you're not 100% convinced you know the right course to set, it could be invaluable to to reach out to someone else in the industry and offer to pay for their time to consult with you while looking at the actual business and its history and goals. In your shoes, if I wasn't sure my advice was perfect, that's what I'd do

My pleasure, Bridget! Happy to be of help to you.

Hi Wendy!

Are you able to share a link to the Google My Business listing so that the community can take a look at this with you?

Hi Bridget!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hmm, there's some grey area here. A different brand offering different services sounds like a new company to me, likely necessitating starting over. That being said, your situation is one in which I'd recommend hiring a really qualified Local SEO consultant for whom you can 'open the books' in private. You might want to get in touch with one of these folks: https://moz.com/learn/local/trusted-providers

You want to be certain you're making the right move with this, as there are nuances to the situation a general discussion in a forum may not be able to pick up on/address. On that list, you might want to consider a company like Local Visibility System for some consulting to be sure you are correctly planning your rebrand and the citation work that will need to follow it. This is one of those business moves that can go well with proper planning or be a disaster if some element is missing from the strategy.

Hope this suggestion helps!

Hi Ira,

So sorry, no email reporting. Maybe at some point! I can see how that would be helpful.

Hey there!

Is she also moving to a new location, or just re-branding her existing business?

Hey Gal,

I'm personally a fan of title tags like this one on Phil Rozek's homepage:

http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/

I love it when they contain a mix of sentiment and keywords, because this makes them stand out in the SERPs.

It's fine to have your brand name in most/all of your title tags, and I think it's REALLY important to have in on the homepage, the local landing page, the about page and contact page. Beyond that, with both title and H tags, I recommend being creative.

I hope you'll receive further feedback from the community, Bob! It's exciting that you're planning your business.

Hi Ira!

Were you aware that Moz Search Insights is a product you can add on to Moz Local that includes review data? You might like to check this out before you sign up with Synup (haha!)

https://moz.com/blog/moz-local-insights-announcement

Hey Bob,

By 'start a company from scratch' do you mean business consulting? Like someone comes to you wanting to open a hair salon and you advise them from the beginning? Or, something else?

The appropriateness of your rates is going to be based on the types of clients you are targeting. $200/hr will likely be too much for Mom & Pops and startups in Boise (though maybe not in Los Angeles!), but if you focus on industries that are typically populated by enterprise level companies, your rate may work. Think hospitals, large franchises, major brands, etc.

Hoping you'll get lots of community feedback on this one!

Hey Ira,

I believe some of the commentary on that thread is from just last year, so that's fairly recent. Here's a review from 2016:

http://hubbion.com/reviews/synup/

And here's a 2016 comparison chart that might help: http://localseochecklist.org/citation-submission-services/

So sorry not to have first-hand experience with this.

Hi Ira,

Yes, I think if you can go through a service that manages YP listings, it might be worth it. I see you've started a new thread about Synup. Popping over there.

Hi Kevin!

I apologize for not noticing your thread earlier. Don't know how I missed it!

You are describing so well what happens when a multi-site approach begins to get out of hand. While you could, of course, run 5 different websites, the long term health of the brand is likely going to be best served by consolidation, with proper redirects being set up from the old sites to the new umbrella site, and citations being corrected to reflect the change of URL. You'll likely want to dedicate good resources to earning some new links, while you're at it, to the main site, to strengthen your hand, and a dedicated review acquisition campaign would be smart to throw into this mix, too.

Could you lose rankings? Yes, it's possible, but you can mitigate this as much as possible with proper redirects.

The major benefit of consolidation will be that, going forward, every single action you take will go to strengthening the brand, rather than you having to slice that up 5 different ways. Your goal will be to become the dominant player in your city for everything you do with an incredibly powerful website backed up with a unified marketing plan.

I do recommend going with folders rather than subdomains. It's simpler.

Hoping you'll get some other opinions from our community, and that this one helps. Wishing you luck in the work ahead!

Hi Ira,

You might find this thread over at Linda Buquet's forum helpful: http://www.localsearchforum.com/local-seo-tools-software/19078-need-opinions-about-synup-com.html

It ranges from 2014-2015 with people's ongoing opinions of this product.

I hope someone here in our forum might be able to give you a first-hand account of how they like this product, but then again, we may have a lot of Moz Local customers here

Hey Ira,

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

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

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