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Hi Cyrus,
I actually see you coming up organically (just searching in Google) for these terms, on the first page. I'm not using Ad Preview.
To start troubleshooting any issues with your Local SEO, I'd recommend going through this: https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-checklist
Remember, too, that location has a greater impact on Local Pack rankings than on organic ones, so while you may be physically closer to people in Wilmington, you may not be as strong organically as the Jacksonville competitor.
Hi Cornelius!
Another great question from you. Here's how to understand this:
If these are 3 legally distinct businesses (a lawyer, a bakery and a chiropractor) all at the same physical location, and each is staffing the office during stated business hours and each has its own unique phone number, you should be A-OK. Google is pretty sophisticated at parsing out multiple businesses at the same address these days. But...
If you ever suspect that these are NOT 3 legally distinct businesses, hold on. If, for example, a legal firm is trying to pretend that its personal injury services, estate services and criminal law services are 3 distinct businesses, then they are being spammy as all get-out trying to list them as 3 different businesses. It's the Local SEO's job to tell them they shouldn't do this and that they are headed for a listing takedown if Google, competing Local SEOs or the public notices what they have done. Another example of this would be an HVAC company trying to bill itself as two different business: one for heating and one for cooling. Eligibility for local business listings revolves around physical location, not the number of services a company offers. So, one physical location for a single business = a single local business listing.
There are some exceptions to the above, like a multi-practitioner office or a multi-department campus. Happily, you'll find that the Guideline For Representing Your Business On Google lay this all out in pretty clear terms, and these are what Local SEOs study and refer to in creating local search marketing strategies that keep clients safe from penalties and takedowns. If you're just getting started marketing local businesses, start with the guidelines. Google has been the dominant player in Local Search for over a decade, and so their definitions of good vs. bad practices have, perforce, become industry definitions in many, many ways.
Hope this helps!
Hi Cornelius,
Good question! Virtual offices are not permitted by Google's guidelines as they are not deemed to be real physical locations. If you have a client who doesn't have an official office, they will be better served using their home address and listing themselves on those directories that allow the address to be hidden, rather than using a virtual office which is a Local SEO taboo!
Phil Rozek has written a couple of good articles over the years on which directories allow one to use their home address while hiding it:
Hope this helps, and please let our community know if you have any further questions about this important topic.
Hi Steve!
In order to build local business listings, the business must:
Have a physical location, even if its a home business. The address can be hidden on the listings on many directories, but the physical location must be real, and not be something like a P.O. Box or virtual office.
Have unique phone number not shared by any other business.
Make in-person contact with its customers (virtual companies are ineligible).
Regarding multi-location businesses, each location should have its own phone number. The listing must be built around the physical location the business occupies, not around services/goods/packages it offers. So, for example, a supermarket cannot have one listing for vegetables and another listing for meat. Or, in your case, your office at 123 Main Street is eligible for a listing for the physical building, but it is not eligible for one listing for holidays in Tahiti and another for holidays in Sweden. So, just 1 listing per physical location. If you have 10 physical locations, each meeting face-to-face with customers and each having its own phone number, then you are eligible for 10 listings.
Definitely recommend reading up on on the Google Guidelines to remove any grey areas here. Please, let us know if you have any further questions about this topic, as it's such an important one to get right.
Hey Steven,
Ryan & Varun are correct in the quote of the Google guidelines. You just want to use the name of the church across all three locations unless the churches officially rename themselves with modifiers. You might need to research this a bit. I've never marketed a church and I'm not sure how they are legally registered. Do they have some form of county registration or license? If so, and they feel that their congregation members may be getting misdirected or confused, they might want to consider officially rebranding the three locations so that their location names are part of the church names. So sorry, but I've only worked with commercial entities and am not sure how churches register themselves in communities. I'd look into this, because I think there may be a legitimate concern here, given that the website doubtless differentiates between the 3 locations in the way they are referring to them, and ideally, you'd like their citations to match that, so that James River Church West Campus is being referred to exactly that way, everywhere on the web. Time to do some research 
Good luck!
This is a great question. Matt has given you the list of the partners we trust with our Moz Local tool. I'd like to add a bit more about this.
Once you've got the basic citations built (Google, Facebook, Yelp, the list Matt shared, etc.) you're going to want to start looking elsewhere, and there are 2 things that can really help you judge the relevance of a citation source that have nothing to do with PR or other metrics like that.
How well does that site rank for your keywords? If it ranks highly, it's a good bet you should be listed there, as long as that doesn't come with some ridiculous price tag.
Are your customers actually using that platform? If the source also supports reviews, look up your competitors in your city. See if people from that city are leaving reviews on the site. That's a quick way to see if it's being used.
Likely, you are going to find yourself wading into the niche directory space once you've moved beyond building standard, core citations, and my honored colleague Phil Rozek just happened to publish an amazingly good piece on this topic: http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2016/07/27/niche-local-citations-dont-get-enough-love/ It not only contains good advice, but also some good links to further reading on this topic of niche directories. I think that post is going to light up your day
Remember that for local businesses, both industry platforms and geographic platforms are possible citations sources. If you're a chimney sweep in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for example, relevant citations could include being listed on the National Chimney Sweep Guild site, and also on the local Tulsa Chamber of Commerce site, or on a local news site, etc. Think in both directions: industry & geography. Most local businesses can build many good citations this way, expanding their visibility as they go.
Hope this helps!
Hi Jordan!
Regarding your local landing pages, I think you'll find this Moz Blog piece really fills the bill: https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages
Regarding optimization, with just 2 cities, you may be able to include both in the tags and titles on some of your main pages (home, about, contact) but that kind of depends. So, for example on your homepage title tag, you could have
Green Tree Bank: Serving Jackson, OR and Yola, CA
Or, you can skip that approach and just go with the brand and a message on main pages' tags and focus very heavily on geographic terms on the landing pages. It something to experiment with.
Main thing is, those landing pages should be viewed as 2 of the most important pages on the website, as they are the ones your citations should link to and your customers will be reaching most easily via those citations. Make these pages shining stars, expending all possible resources to offer an exceptional, persuasive experience in order to maximize conversions.
Hope this helps!
Hey Brian,
Andy's suggestions are good ones, and I'll just add to this that your Charlottesville page exists in a much less competitive market than your Atlanta page, by dint of population alone. Barring any technical issues with the website, it may be that Google simply finds your bands by location page to be too weak to compete in Atlanta.
Hey There!
In my view, the client has 2 options here:
Spring for unique content on the 250 site
Reconsider his decision about bringing everything into a single site. The question you've asked (can you really write about the identical service 250 times) is exactly why he should see his strategy is cumbersome. Ideally, you'd have a good handful of unique pages describing benefits of the service and would then have 250 semi-unique pages on the website, one for each physical location.
Whoa! I see that. That looks really different to me. It's not an old school authoritative one box. It's two businesses, side by side, that when clicked, brings up new SERPs and the knowledge panel. Something about this is teasing my brain, like I once saw an example of something similar, but I just can't place it. It's certainly interesting!
What I can say is that Google is testing a ton of things right now. They've got the new image carousel, and then there's the whole local pack paid entry thing making buzz. What you've shared here looks like a test to me. And check this out. Look up 'law schools california'. A totally different display!
Thanks for sharing this. I'd be curious to know if you're seeing it on other similar searches.
Update: Check out Dr. Pete's article here: https://moz.com/blog/google-glossary
Looks like a Rich Lists SERP with only 2 entries. Hat tip to Darren Shaw for pointing that out to me
Hey There!
Blue Corona has provided a good answer. I just want to confirm here that you definitely do not want a second listing for an e-commerce business. That's not considered to be a local business. Regarding store codes, Google says:
"In Google My Business Locations, you submit a unique identifier for each store, called a store code. You must know these store codes to create a local feed in a later step."
I am not aware of any other use of store codes beyond this.
Hi Vadim!
Thanks for sharing your take on best wording for this. I like your suggestion.
Hi Ricky!
If the client is determined to keep both sites, here is the only way to be 99% safe doing so:
Only 1 site can list NAP. The other must not list NAP. You do not want any part of NAP shared between 2 sites.
Do not build citations for the NAP-less site. Remove them where they exist.
Zero shared content between the 2 sites.
Define a totally different purpose for the existence of the second site. If site A is about the business, site B could be about something else, like maybe a community information portal about health care or something.
Do not interlink between the 2 sites.
If it's necessary to have a phone number of some kind on site B, it must be unique and must be answered with a different brand name than that for site A
The above should remove concerns about loss of authority, citation inconsistency and duplicate content. Quite a bit of trouble, though, and may not be worth it unless the client can think of a really good, different purpose for the site B, other than promoting his business on it.
Hi Oliver,
It might help to think of it this way. Whatever your town is (small or large) that is your local home base. This is the address you'll be using in all of your citation building, the footer and contact page of your website, and in at least some of your website content and optimization, all for the purposes of ranking locally.
For any other locations you serve, but where you lack a physical location, you'll be aiming at organic (not local pack) rankings. So, this will have nothing to do with your citations. It will all have to do with service city content you build on the website + additional outreach in the form of social and paid promotions.
So, even if your town is small, it's the anchor that proves you to be a local, physical business. It's what proves your eligibility to be included in Google My Business and other citation platforms. It's your best hope of local pack rankings.
Everything beyond your city of location is for organic outreach.
As for how Google will handle all this, given the user-as-centroid phenomenon, Google will customize local results for the searcher based on his physical location at the time of search. So, you do want to be sure you're making it clear that your physical location is at 'X' so that Google is convinced searchers near there are close to you.
Hope this helps, and might like this for further reading: https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages
Hey John,
Hmm, what a strange answer this is:
Answer In regards to the hashtags, you can either use them or if you prefer only the related keywords to be used, that works as well. Also, you can follow the tips I have shared in my previous email.
I am totally in the dark about why Google would even mention this. Maybe I've missed something 
"align incentives for recognizing and reporting stock deficiencies and customer satisfaction."
That's an excellent point, Donna! Employees who know their follow-through will be appreciated and rewarded are sure to take a more active part.
I've had your same experience with checkers, in particular, asking if I found everything I wanted. I'm thinking of a store, in particular, that simply does not carry a product I use almost daily (organic masa harina for making tortillas). They have a bulk section, but simply don't carry this product. I have to either order it online, or take a 50 mile trip to get it from a different store. Next time I'm at the masa-less store, I'm going to tell them I didn't find everything I need, and see what the checker does. From past interactions, I'm not hopeful that this will result in them stocking this product, but it should be interesting to analyze what occurs.
Appreciate you taking the time to contribute, and I think your suggestion is a very good one!
Hi There!
If the client is running 2 distinct legal businesses (like a landscaping company and an accounting firm) from a single address, then he should get a unique phone number for the 2nd business, be sure the websites feature completely unique content, and then he will be eligible for a Google My Business listing for each.
If, however, the client is actually running one business but is attempting to make it look like two companies (like an HVAC company trying to sell its heating services as though they are a separate business from its cooling services), then he is only eligible for 1 GMB listing, regardless of the number of websites he builds.
In fact, in the latter scenario, having a second website for the company is not normally advisable, because what you are then doing is putting partial duplicate NAP (name, address, phone) on two websites, instead of one, possibly leading to a loss of trust on Google's part about the authoritative data for the business. In most cases, Local SEOs will recommend that a single business at a single address should go with a single, powerful website.
But, if the businesses are legally distinct, it''s normally okay that they share the same address, so long as the phone numbers and websites are unique.
Hope this help, and definitely do share Google's guidelines with the client. They help answer many questions like these.
Yeah, sounds like an untrained rep to me. That does happen. Unless - bwahhahaaa - Google just gave away the secret sauce! But ... I kinda don't think so.
Glad you asked about it though!
Hi There!
You might like to check out this earlier thread on the same topic: https://moz.com/community/q/google-places-multiple-company-listings-how-to-rank-the-hq-page-over-a-branch-location
As Nick points out, rankings are not static. What you see in the results while you are physically in one location will be different than what you see when you move to a different location. That's called the 'user as centroid' phenomenon, meaning that Google is customizing local results for you based on your physical location at the time of search.
Because of this, it's important to include in your troubleshooting a notation of where you are located when you are seeing any results.
Hey Dougie!
So far, you've received a lot of great suggestions for tools. I'm going to make one additional really down-to-Earth suggestion about this topic. Survey your staff (any member of your team who communicates directly with your customers) to find out exactly what words they hear/see your customers using when asking about your products and services.
This is an important task for 2 reasons:
Corporate lingo and consumer lingo are not always the same. You may call that thing a Craftmatic Adjustable Lazyboy Model 23-T4D. I may call it a recliner. Be sure you're using the customers' language, including synonyms, in your optimization, writing and marketing.
Regional language difference matter. If you sell pop but I drink soda or cola, we're missing each other.
Pull your staff findings into a keyword focus spreadsheet to expand the way you write and speak about your products. Hope this helps!
Hi John,
Are you 100% positive you were talking to a Google rep? Did you phone them or did someone phone you? While there was the 2013 G dashboard update that permitted use of rich text in the description (with the warning that it could take longer to get approved) I do not recall ever seeing mention of the use of # in descriptions. I'm very curious about someone telling you this, and feel a little nervous that you may either have been speaking to an untrained Google rep or, possibly, a scammer misrepresenting themselves as a Google rep. Seems a bit odd.
As Eric mentions, Google has treated the description very strangely in recent years. It doesn't show in most place. 
Can you shed any more light on the origin of the conversation you had?
This week, I came across an article citing a fascinating statistic from The Harris Poll which surveyed consumers and found that the #1 reason they shop digitally for groceries is when they can’t purchase an item from their routine shopping sources. In other words, if the supermarket they shop at doesn’t carry Seventh Generation Laundry Soap (or some other product), then they’ll turn to a digital provider for fulfillment.
This survey focused specifically on grocery items, but what it sparked in my brain was the fact that ANY local store that doesn’t have in place an active campaign to discover unmet consumer desires is likely going to see an increasing loss of sales as shoppers turn to online competitors. I’m going to jot down a few ideas for how better communication could lessen these types of losses, and I would really love it if our community could add to the list of suggestions:
Have in-store signage that states, “Don’t see a favorite product of yours? Ask us to carry it!"
Have SMS/text messaging that requests this same info from mobile users.
Train staff to ask a clear, direct question like, “Is there anything you wish we carried here?” and have a process for aggregating that data to make new inventory buys.
Be sure the company website is also asking for this feedback and making it clear that the store will gladly order items not already in-stock.
Use social outreach to gather ideas from customers about favorite products that are missing from your inventory.
Those are just some ideas off the top of my head. Now, I’m a Local SEO, not a retailer, so some of you will be better equipped to answer this question than I:
How would you gauge whether a product is actually popular enough to keep permanently in-stock, rather than just being a one-time thing you’d special order for a customer with unusual tastes?
I do wonder about how that plays into this scenario, and how a retailer should invest in new products not knowing whether just 1 customer will buy them or they will be a major hit with lots of customers.
One final thought on this: a pain point I’ve noticed in the online/offline equation is time. I’ve had a store offer to special order an item for me, but if it’s something I need right away, I’ll look for a different source locally, or, if there isn’t one, may as well just order it online myself. So this makes me think:
If you have access to extra fast shipping (faster than the average consumer could get a product shipped to his home) this would be a point to emphasize. If you can get a product overnight or maybe in 2 days without the consumer having to spring for a big shipping charge, this could influence his decision
Google says that 30% of consumers state they would buy from a local store, rather than online, if they knew a product was available. So, this would indicate to me that making it very clear you’ve got the products a customer wants is vital.
I recently took a 50 mile trip to purchase a high quality picnic basket from a retailer, because I needed it quickly. I couldn’t wait the 3-5 business days the manufacturer said it would take if I ordered online. Point being, if a local retailer has geographic convenience and fast service on their side, they’ve got an advantage.
Please, add your thoughts and tips for strategies that could protect local retailers from losing customers to digital competitors. I’m really looking forward to reading any comments!
Hey Radi,
What you are talking about is hyperlocal content, which, if developed deftly, can be great for both visibility and conversions. However, if it's obviously a stretch to create this kind of content for a specific business model, it can end up looking really spammy.
Issa is on the ball stating that the content for these hyperlocal landing pages would need to be strong and unique, and this is pretty much where the rubber hits the road: does you client have something unique to say about his product/service in each of these hyperlocal markets, or is it really just all the same from one neighborhood to another?
You mention that your client sells plastic plants. My guess is that he is selling the same goods to each suburb, so unless there is something unique you can think to for each suburban audience, my concern would be that these pages might be being created for no other purpose that SEO. Sadly, as you've pointed out, a competitor is getting away with it. This is where Google lets SEOs down: teaching the business community that low quality is rewarded.
Can you think of something better for this client to do, that isn't low quality? Maybe video marketing? A social campaign? Acquisition of awesome reviews/testimonials? Something about businesses in each suburb that used plastic plants? What I'm urging here is to use your marketing smarts to see if there is a higher path you can take the client along, rather than agreeing that he should imitate a low quality competitor.
One thing to bear in mind with this ... that spammy competitor may be getting away with this today, but they've got a sword dangling over their head. They may be only one Google tweak away from anonymity. Should that happen, and should your client have invested his marketing budget in more interesting, creative work, he could find himself standing tall as others fall away.
Haha, thank you, Patrick!
Hmm, I'm not a huge fan of clients who refuse to implement their marketers advice, but photos are at least a start, accompanied by stories.
BTW, Bob, this would be a good article to share with a client in this market:
https://www.ethicalseoconsulting.com/25-email-lead-generation-tips-from-social-media/
Some good marketing ideas in there that your client might latch onto, given the visual nature of his business.
Oh, my, I'm totally laughing at myself right now. I read your business name off your initial screenshot as 'OLD' rather than 'QLD' so I was searching for the wrong name. Hahah!
I was seriously wondering what 'old drone photography' was!
Okay, so yes, this is a GMB listing:
Looks like you've got some work cut out for you earning reviews, Tony, and the Google trust that goes along with them. Let me link you here to our Local SEO Checklist so that you can methodically go through any problems that might be holding your business back in Google's eyes, as well as helping you create a strong strategy for locally marketing your company.
Hope this helps!
Hi Rosemary,
You are right to be concerned about promoting virtual locations. The only safe thing for them to do is to honestly state their real, physical locations and develop organic content around other cities they serve but lack locations in.
Hey Tim,
Your client is physically located in Clovis, so ranking in the local packs in Fresno would not be a good goal to set for him. If you take a look, your client is ranking #2 in the local pack for 'it support clovis' https://www.google.com/search?q=it+support+clovis%2C+ca&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
Given that your client is about 9 miles away from Fresno, and should not expect to rank in the Fresno local packs, you have two paths to suggest to him:
Build organic content on the website specifically geared toward work he is doing for Fresno-based businesses. Goal here is organic rankings.
Invest in Adwords for Fresno traffic
Hope this helps!
Hi John,
So, what you are talking about is called Containment Information. Google says:
See the full guidelines here: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en
Regarding your URLs, I would go with
Regarding keywords, this is tough because you are talking about so many locations. Typical advice looks like this
...but only if you have the resources to build a good, high quality page for each of the 1700 locations. If you do, I'd focus on service + city + regional terms and synonyms on the pages.
I might suggest, given the size of this client, that you hire a good Local SEO to consult with you, to whom you can show the actual business in confidence. The goal would be to have them confirm GMB eligibility, actually looking at your client. There can be nuances to that our community might miss, not looking at the actual business model. Investment in an hour or two of consulting with a top notch Local SEO would seem a wise investment to me, given the very big scope of the project. We have a list of trusted Local SEOs here: https://moz.com/learn/local/trusted-providers
Hope this helps!
Hi Tony,
This is a Google+ page: https://plus.google.com/b/101693763581475613867/+QlddronesAu/posts?gmbpt=true&hl=en-GB
It is not a Google My Business listing.
I am not able to turn up a GMB listing for your business searching for its name + Bellbowrie Australia.
To get a Google My Business listing, you'd be starting here: https://www.google.com/business/
I confess, I'm a bit confused about your mention of postal validation, though. That sounds like you DO have a GMB listing. Here's an example of one in the USA:
Do you have a maps-based link like this for your business?
Hi John,
Good questions! I am not 100% certain I understand what you mean by 'contract shops'. Do these businesses:
Belong to you?
Feature street-level signage with your company name on them?
Meet face-to-face with customers at the 1700 locations?
Or, are you describing a different arrangement? Please, provide as much detail as possible. Thanks!
Hi Tony,
What you are asking about is a 'Place Label'. Here's Google's official page on those: https://support.google.com/business/answer/6056435 Hope this helps!
Agree with Andy. Unfortunately, this is all part of Google's apparent master plan to force the pay-to-play scenario. Given that rumor has it that we will also see a paid ad in one of the 3-pack spots at some point, the writing is on the wall.
Hi Cole,
I'm not sure that adding schema to businesses that are not yours would directly benefit you, though it might benefit the stores in question. Can you explain what your goal is with this?
Just adding to what Marcus has written ... a multi-site approach is very rarely recommended for local businesses.
While Google can typically handle multiple businesses at a shared address, they need to either be:
a) legally distinct businesses (like a dentist and carpet cleaning company)
or
b) distinct forward facing departments within a business (like the service dept. and the sales department of a car dealership).
And, each would need to have its own direct phone number.
What Google does not want is any single business attempting to appear like multiple businesses. So, for example, a law practice creating 1 GMB listing for its personal injury services and another for its corporate law services. If it's just one business, at one address, it is only eligible for 1 GMB listing.
Hope this helps!
Hi Anton,
If yours is a local business serving local customers in person, then, yes, a P.O. box will severely limit your local search marketing. Because P.O. boxes are not considered legitimate physical addresses, you'll be unable to build a full set of citations for the business, and that will likely hamper your local search ranking efforts.
Definitely better to use an actual address! Hope this helps.
Hi Gal,
My suggestion would be to go forward like this:
URLs:
domain.com/chicago/32-center-st
Title Tags:
Brand City Street
Others in our community may have different suggestions, but the above seems simple and consistent to me.
Hi Ken,
If you and your fiancee are marketing the business yourselves, the area you need to study is Local SEO. It's important, of course, that you understand traditional SEO, because that's the foundation of Local, but the form of marketing that will be most specific to your business model is Local.
Local SEO is city-based. I see optimization on this site for the county rather than the city. You need to focus on Bensalem rather than Bucks County, in your title tags and content. You can target other cities as well, if your fiancee does photo shoots in them that she can highlight, but Bensalem is your marketing anchor, the city you occupy, the city you'll be building citations around and the city Google will see you as relevant to.
Your homepage needs some more content and I see some thin pages elsewhere, as well, but it's great effort is being put into the blog.
I'm going to recommend that you and your fiancee sit down with our Local SEO checklist to take the website from its current state to a more competitive state: https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-checklist
It's a big document, and if you pay careful attention to each section, I believe it will really help you take the business forward.
Got it! There are 2 options I can see here, and like I said, I'd be very inclined to do some consulting with Linda Buquet in your shoes, if she were available, and show her the complete details of the scenario.
From the limited details I have on this, I see 2 options for you:
Do a total citation audit first to make a record of all listings located at suite B and formerly occupied by the retiree. Then, if one of your 3 dentists will be occupying suite B, you would be editing the name (and I'm assuming phone) of these to reflect the new dentist. The main problem with this would be reviews ... it's likely that they would reference the retiree and that could be problematic.
Read this thread and the links it contains regarding Dr/Dentist duplicates: https://moz.com/community/q/dental-practice-google-and-dentist-personal-google You may need to minimize the old listings and create new ones.
I have to confess, the situation with the firm occupying two suites is throwing me a bit. I've never personally dealt with a business that was organized that way, and it's unusual enough for me that I'd be inclined to seek professional consulting, particular given Google's very irregular handling of listings for doctors and dentists.
At the very least, I hope my reply points you in a good direction for further research into how your practice should handle this.
Hey Derek!
Good to know. In that case, I'm wondering whether you plan to abandon suite numbers altogether and just be at the street address, or are there other businesses in the building, as well, not related to yours?
Hi David!
Interesting topic! I'd like to show you something here on Moz that might help hash this out bit more. This our our recommended companies list:
https://moz.com/rand/recommended-list-seo-consultants/
This section of our site (which resides on the main domain, not a subdomain) helps people find various types of marketers they need for different services. I don't believe it has earned a ton of links; it's just a pretty straightforward resource for the marketing community that many companies feel proud to be included on. So, that's one approach - if you feel your customers would benefit from knowing of other digital service providers you trust in your city, then build the resource on your own website for the sake of usefulness, and maybe you'll earn a few links to it. Better, maybe some networking opportunities would arise for you for real-world work with related agencies in your city.
The alternative I see would be to start a completely separate business - a directory - on its own domain. Depending on the size of your city and the number of companies offering these types of services in that city, management could be a minor effort or become a full time job. I've never build a directory, but I did curate one back in the good 'ol days once and it was a big hassle, so my view of this is a bit biased, based on that experience. That was back when you could plonk a bunch of Adsense on something like a directory and earn a bit of money. The challenge today would be how your business would directly benefit from undertaking this second path of running a free-standing directory.
I'm no authority when it comes to directories. Yes, many have been devalued over the years, but local ones can still be useful in markets that aren't too saturated. The question mark for me in this scenario would be whether you would see some form of ROI for the effort.
Hope these thoughts are helpful!
Hi Neil,
There is no known issue with using a mobile number, but do make the investment in getting a dedicated one for your business, one that you answer with the business name at all times. Don't mix business with personal. That would be the only proviso on this. Otherwise, you'll be fine with a mobile number.
Hey Steve,
I think what you might be looking for would be a heatmap study like this one: https://moz.com/blog/the-new-snack-pack-where-users-clicking-how-you-can-win
You might be able to find others. Hope that helps!
Hey Derek!
In your shoes, I would track down Linda Buquet at her localsearchforum and beseech her to share some of her amazing knowledge of dental Local SEO with me
But, in the meantime, it would help if you could clarify - are you bringing the retiree's practice under the umbrella of your own? In other words, if your client is Green Tree Dental at 123 Main St. Suite A, then is Retiree Dental at 123 Main St. Suite B now going to be part of Green Tree Dental's offices, occupying both sides of the hall? Or is Retiree going to close its doors at Suite B and NOT be occupied by Green Tree?
Hey There!
So sorry, but I don't have experience with bulk upload on WebMD, though I have seen references to it. Here's a page that might help you get in touch with the company: http://www.wbmd.com/contactus.shtml
You might also try tweeting them at @WebMD
Hope it helps!
Hey There!
Good suggestions from the community about studying the Beginner's Guide so that you can be more specific in your query here, which should ensure much better community feedback. Also, I see you've categorized this as a local strategy question. May I recommend that you go through our Local SEO Checklist, for advice specific to Local? See: https://moz.com/blog/local-seo-checklist
Hope this helps!
Hi Jonathan,
This should help: http://searchengineland.com/get-google-review-links-g-update-237190
Hope it does!