Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Eric,

Good point: one size doesn't fit all, and testing is certainly important! If your clients experience success with this product, I'm sure our community would appreciate knowing.

Hi Ian,
I can understand how you feel about this, and yes, these policies do often seem to favor the reviewer over the business owner, which really isn't fair. Some platforms are better than others at listening to spam complaints. With Google, it has been such a long haul to get them to the point where they've started to understand that they needed to offer some kind of support for their local product (at all!), that I am not surprised that you are getting generic answers to your queries about a spam review.

One other thing you might try ... check out Joy Hawkin's post about Twitter-based Google support: http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-important/38665-new-google-my-business-support-via-twitter-tweet-ghelp.html

If you could prove to them that the user was not a customer, perhaps you might get a more custom response from the support staff. Just a thought.

Hey Alex,

Exciting to work with a new company! As they are new, I would suggest:

1. For the first X number of months, you focus solely on Vancouver-related content. This would include basic info about the company and its products/services + an on-site blog where you'd start writing about Vancouver-oriented topics relating to your smoothies, health, convenience, customers, etc.

2. Once you've got this rolling well, then, I would say you could perhaps split this 80/20 Vancouver content/national content. So you'd continue to focus largely on Vancouver, but might also write some posts that would be of national interest whether they particularly apply to your city or not. This might be things like 5 best fruits for better skin, 5 best vegetables for better digestion, 5 best smoothies for a chest cold (by the way, the answer here is pineapple/almond milk) etc. These posts, if good enough, could earn wider interest in your brand, and as EGOL mentions, possibly pave the way for future expansion of the business beyond Vancouver.

Hi Abdul,
I'm so sorry, can you define what you mean by local tieups, please? Thanks!

Hi Jackson,

Yes, I'm not a fan of phone trees either, particularly as Google doesn't really like them (they prefer numbers that connect directly), and what you've described about temporarily disabling them for phone verification has been the main advice I've seen for some years on this. However, and here's something interesting, Mike Blumenthal recently reported that verification options may be emerging that could bypass phone verification: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2016/02/15/google-mybusiness-now-surfacing-web-verify-option-2/

As for replacing a phone tree with something other than a live human being who directs calls to staff, I'm afraid I don't know. I will ask that some of my teammates pop by to see if anyone has any further suggestions about this.

Hi Ian,

Thanks for starting a good topic. I would like to ask for clarification as to what you mean by 'this service'. Are you saying someone is offering a some sort of review service, or are you simply talking about setting up profiles for your clients on sites like Google, Yelp, and Facebook in order to earn some reviews?

If the latter, then common advice here is going to be that fear of negative reviews should never deter a business from building the citations and review profiles necessary to achieving local search visibility. And the fact of the matter is, even if you don't actively build citations, they can get automated for you, meaning that you may already have profiles out there with your business name on them, and with reviews on them, that you'd be ignoring if you don't investigate and take an active part.

Yes, it's reality that a business is likely to get negative reviews, at some point, and yes, you are totally correct that fake and spam reviews do happen. Most review platforms have a TOS which, if violated, can be grounds for getting a review removed (for example, a review containing a racial epithet or discussing illegal behavior) but, in many cases, no, platforms will not remove negative reviews, in which case, you can either respond to the negative review and explain why it is fake, seek legal council, or, do the thing you've already mentioned which is to try to overbalance the negative review with many more positive reviews.

It may be helpful to remember that all of your direct competitors are in the same boat. They, too, are all at risk for receiving fake reviews. And, if that doesn't help, there have been highly publicized cases in which raising enough of a fuss in the right places has caused the big players to take down spam, because they are responding to the publicity.

Hopefully, that last thing wouldn't be something you'd ever need to do, but, it does exist as a last resort in an egregious case of review spam that you've been unable to address by any other method.

I hope you'll get more feedback on this!

Hey Doug!

In fairness, I have to say that this situation requires a full audit and competitive analysis ;), but let's take a cursory look together, anyway.  Have you checked out Mary Bowling's competitive analysis slidedeck from the recent MozCon Local? It is amazingly thorough and just super: http://localu.org/blog/how-to-do-competitive-analysis-for-local-search/. All of those things are ones you want to investigate for this client to get a really clear picture of exactly why they are being outranked. It's a very substantial task and one the client needs to budget for.

Now, let's take a first-glance look:

1. Site is visually handsome. Nice job.

2. Complete NAP is absent from the top of the contact page. Put it there, preferably encoded in Schema.

3. Some title tags contain 'Southern California' instead of 'Santa Barabara'. Santa Barbara is your true local term and deserves most attention.

4. Have you checked thoroughly for duplicate content? I did a random search for some text on your Auto Accident page and it is bringing up this page on Geico: https://www.geico.com/claims/after-an-accident/. Some text is identical. Some is different.

5. I'd rate the content fair on this website. It's not the worst or the best I've seen. The pages describing the services are on the generic side, with nothing that would make them stand out from a competitors' pages as being more useful or informative.There is room for improvement here. Beware of awkward keyword usage. It does stick out on some of these pages.

6. Do you have 2 offices: http://www.maho-prentice.com/ventura-county/? Both physical and forward-facing? If so, this second one isn't in your footer and is not referenced on the Contact page. There does not appear to be a distinct phone number (or any number) associated with the Ventura office.

7. Duplicate cleanup is really important here: https://moz.com/local/details/JTI1NUIlMjUyMk1haG8lMjUyMFByZW50aWNlJTI1MkMlMjUyMExMUCUyNTIyJTI1MkMlMjUyMjkzMTAxJTI1MjIlMjUyQyUyNTIyTWFobyUyNTIwUHJlbnRpY2UlMjUyQyUyNTIwTExQJTI1MjIlMjUyQyUyNTIyNjI5JTI1MjBTdGF0ZSUyNTIwU3RyZWV0JTI1MjIlMjUyQyUyNTIyOTMxMDElMjUyMiUyNTJDJTI1MjI4MDU5NjIxOTMwJTI1MjIlMjU1RA==

Especially pay attention to the first duplicate that search surfaces. It's the duplicate Google My Business listing, which appears to be sharing the phone number of the Santa Barbara office: https://www.google.com/maps?cid=9808975411924782492. Bingo! This is an extremely important find and could be negatively impacting the chance of either office ranking well in the packs. Explain to client that they must have a unique number for each location. *And do be sure that the Oxnard location is, indeed, a legitimate location (not a Regus office, etc.).

8. Be very sure that, if citations have been created for the attorneys at the practice, they are not sharing phone numbers with one another or with the practice. I am concerned about this, seeing the shared number between the 2 offices. Also, be aware that the attorney's citations can't contain the business name, and should not share categories in Google.

9. I'm going to take a look at just 1 of the 4 terms, and you can follow these steps with the others: injury attorney Santa Barbara. Remember, due to personalization and user-as-centroid, what I see will be different from what you see and what the client's clients see. Okay, this is some good news. On the map, https://www.google.com/search?q=injury+attorney+Santa+Barbara&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=injury attorney Santa Barbara&rflfq=1&rlha=0&tbm=lcl&tbs=lf:1,lf_ui:2&oll=34.42400809465862,-119.70669439999995&ospn=0.014301546346509042,0.025963783264160156&oz=15&fll=34.423087693043946,-119.70426968305048&fspn=0.03228503412244521,0.061626434326171875&fz=14&qop=1&rlfi=hd:;si: there does not appear to be any geographic inhibtor to your client doing well. They are located close enough to their competitors to avoid suffering from any geographic limitations.

In fact, your client is ranking #4 for the term I've searched, which is really good news. They are just outside of the pack for me, meaning that they may very well be inside of it when someone is actually in Santa Barbara looking for them (no guarantee there, but could be).

Top 2 competitors in this pack exceed your client in number of reviews. Competitors 3 has less. Go for 20 over the next few months with a good review acquisition program.

10. Finally, there is a strong clue here in the organic search for 'injury attorney santa barbara'. Unlike some SERPs, these are made up mainly of business websites vs. directories. Harris and Crane are at 1 & 3 organically and 1 & 2 in the local pack. What this all hints at is that it is organic strength that is driving hard in this pack and that an improvement in your client's organic strength may be critical to pack improvement. For more on this, watch this really fascinating Local U video: http://localu.org/blog/penguin-local/. Pay particular attention to Mike Blumenthal's explanation about what drives packs. And don't forget the importance of industry/geography-specific citations that go beyond getting data right with the major aggregators updated by a service like Moz Local. And remember that age matters here. The age of your competitors' efforts can be a strength it will take time to overcome, if they have been at this longer than your client, and your own efforts will take time to go into effect.

So, that's a first glance. The phone number issue is extremely important, and a real audit will be necessary here to see if there are serious issues with practitioner duplicates. Do a full assessment of the content to apprise yourself of any duplicate content issues and work on both the content and organic strength of the website. Good inspiration for that here: https://moz.com/blog/why-good-unique-content-needs-to-die-whiteboard-friday. Work on review acquisition.

And, finally, do all you can to stress to clients like this one that there are no static local rankings. Personalization and user-as-centroid in a city like theirs almost guarantees that results are varying from user to user, so it is a far wiser investment to focus on conversions rather than rankings. I totally know that this can be a hard point to get across, but it is so important to try to communicate this lesson to our clients.

I hope you'll receive other feedback!

Hey Chris,

Multi-practitioner business models have the option to either:

1. Promote the practice + promote the practitioners, or

2. Just promote the practice

If you go with the first, the main thing is to be sure that each practitioner has a unique landing page on the website (to which his/her citations link) and that each has his or her own phone number (separate from the practice's main phone number). Taking these precautions should normally prevent any issues with merging, but I am not quite sure what you mean about duplicate reviews. Are you saying that the patients are posting a review for the practice and then posting the same review again for a specific doctor? A little clarification on that might help.

If you go with the second option, then, yes, you can attempt to get rid of citations for the practitioners, but, because you are talking about a medical practice, it's very important to dig into Google's history with not closing doctor/dentist duplicates. It may be that the Yext rep with whom you're communicating is unaware of this. Note Linda Buquet's remarks on this previous Moz thread regarding this: https://moz.com/community/q/dental-practice-google-and-dentist-personal-google

Hope this give some good food for thought.

Hi Abdul!

I believe what I'm understanding is that you sell your products through shops that you don't own. In other words, a car parts store, which you don't own, carries your batteries, tires, etc. Is that right?

If so, then your business model is not truly local. You would be operating a local business if you owned these local shops, but not if they simply sell your products.

If I've understood the above correctly, then why is it important for you to rank locally? Wouldn't it be more important for you to work on developing business-to-business relationships with the shop owners so that they can buy your products and they can put in the work of ranking locally?

My apologies if I'm not quite understanding your business model. Please, feel free to provide further details to clarify the business model. Thanks!

Excellent discussion going on here and thanks, David Brooks, for popping in to add more context to this.

This seems to be distilling down to a question of the amount of control the brand desires. If the company determines that the multi-site approach is one it's essential to retain, then my best advice here would be to hand the keys over to the 6 franchise owners to each of their websites and task them with creating their own content that in no way duplicates corporate content or the content of any other site in the franchise. This is the only authentic approach to this that I can see because:

• If the various sites genuinely represent totally separate entities, then the owner of a location should be made 100% responsible for his own marketing and SEO, apart from adhering to corporate guidelines. In this scenario, you relinquish corporate control and hope for the best.

• If the various sites do not genuinely represent totally separate entities and are, in fact, being controlled by the corporate body behind the scenes, then the corporate body needs to come up with the funding to employ its own content development department capable of marketing all of the sites appropriately, without recourse to spinning or other such ideas. If this is the case, then the franchise owners' feelings or wishes don't really enter the picture, because total control is being maintained by the corporate body.

I continue to believe that a single site approach would be preferable in most cases, but, barring the possibility of that, the above two options represent paths that could be taken.

Hey Dwayne!

Thanks for starting a good discussion. I agree with Chris here, in that the scenario you're describing is the main reason why most Local SEOs would urge you to go with a single site with landing pages for each company location on it, as opposed to a multi-site approach. You can look at it like this:

1. With a single site approach, everything you do on that site (publishing content, earning links, earning testimonials, accruing age, etc.) goes to benefit all of of your locations at once. Your brand gets maximum 'juice' out of everything you do and grows in strength over time.

2. With a multi-site approach, you are responsible for creating unique content for X number of sites instead of just one. Unless you've got the funding/creativity to keep up a steady stream of unique, helpful content on all of the sites, you will end up in a conundrum like this one, wondering if you should spin the same piece across multiple sites (not a good idea) because you just don't have the time to be writing 3, 6, 9, 12 different unique and awesome blog posts every week or even every month. Imagine writing just one really awesome piece that builds your brand and supports all of your locations. So much easier and appealing, right?

So, the above is kind of the long answer. The short answer is, no, it's not a good strategy to spin content. If you can't write something unique for each website, better to leave it alone. If you feel it's imperative to keep 3 websites instead of consolidating into one, you might try a relay approach in which you focus on Site 1 in February, Site 2 in March, site 3 in April and then back to site 1 in in May, etc. Not ideal, but might make it possible for you to focus on creating something really strong for 1 of the 3 sites, and then move onto the next one.

Good discussion!

Hey Brodie,

Some very salient suggestions there. I appreciate you taking the time to write those out. You've mentioned something I'd never actually considered: that Yelp's policy against requesting reviews is actually costing them users who will otherwise never leave a review on Yelp. It seems so simple now that you've mentioned it, but that viewpoint had honestly never occurred to me before. Of course, Yelp would likely filter out first time reviews, but there's a chance a new reviewer could become an intrigued one and eventually move beyond the filter. Very, very interesting. Thanks again for the good thoughts!

Hi Bethany!

So glad you've provided these clarifying answers. The business model seems a bit unusual, with all practitioners using the same room, the building not being a business, etc. So there is some grey area here, but here's what I believe is applicable:

1. Google can typically sort out different businesses being located at the same office, but you need to be aware that there is, indeed, some risk here. It is possible that:

• Should other practitioners using the building create GMB listings, there is a chance their details could get merged with your client's details, particularly if those practitioners don't know what they are doing and don't adhere to Google's guidelines. Hopefully this will not happen, but, there is a lack of control here that makes me a little nervous. Should one of the other people working in the office knowingly or accidentally spam Google, it could negatively impact your client.

• There is a possibility that, in looking at the street-level signage of the business, Google could become confused by not seeing your client's name on the building. This could lead to a lack of trust.

2. So, given the above, what you will want to do as the Local SEO for this client is to be sure you set up a regular schedule of checking his GMB listing to be sure the NAP and all other details have remained accurate and haven't suddenly changed (indicating a merge). And, you'll want to be on the alert for any sudden ranking drops (which might indicate a red flag being raised at Google due to the activities of other people using the building).

3. I do not advise you to go with the suite number suggestion of the Google rep to whom you spoke. I'm afraid they might not have been acquainted with Google's very adamant policy stating that the address must be exactly as it is in the real world. That rep needs more training.

4. The one thing that gave me pause about the business model you are describing is this guideline from Google stating that this type of business is ineligible for a GMB listing:

An ongoing service, class, or meeting at a location that you don't own or have the authority to represent. Please coordinate with your host to have your information displayed on the page for their business within their "Introduction" field.

But, in this case, because the building isn't actually a business and has no brand, my conclusion on this is that the guideline doesn't apply, and that your client would be eligible for a GMB listing.

Whew! Lots to consider but the devil is in the details with Local SEO. Hope this helps!

Hi Brodie,

Very good to have thoughts on this from someone who is deep in the weeds of rep management, like yourself. It sounds like you've had some really challenging experiences with Yelp, and I definitely hear that from local business owners, too. It can be tough when a platform becomes dominant (whether that's Yelp, or Google, or Amazon) and its users feel they don't have a voice in a process that has a deep impact on their business or their life.

Given your experience, if you could act as an adviser to Yelp, what actionable suggestions would you make for them to start repairing a relationship with the business community which you feel is broken or troubled? I'd love to know!

Hi Vernon!

Thank you so much for checking in on this thread. I think you have some good logic about this. Personally, I'm watching Google most closely, because of how dominant they are in everything else local But, that being said, I do believe they have some genuine competition this time, for reasons you've mentioned and others. Appreciate your contribution!

Hi Julie,

Very happy you responded. I agree with you that there is a familiarity with Amazon's brand that could do a lot in the way of built-in trust. Interesting point about the Yelp accounts. Most local business owners will have one (something like 2+ million of them) but I'm not sure about the total number of registered Yelp members. And, it does indeed look as though you have to sign up for Yelp to make a request for a project bid. So, that may be a little bit of a hurdle, but no different than what Amazon, with the major exception that just about everyone on the face of the Earth already has an Amazon account. Good thoughts, Julie.

Hey There!

I really appreciate you coming back to update this thread with your experience. So, that's really good to note that someone noticed your company Twitter. Good to know! And sure, you don't want to abuse the account, but it sounds like you've now got a new resource that could be handy in a variety of situations. Neat development!

Hi Jason,

Would it be this: http://www.localsearchforum.com/local-search-news/39251-huge-ranking-algorithm-change-jan-10-2016-a.html

Or is that too early?

Hi Bethany!

I want to be sure I'm understanding this correctly. Would you be able to provide some answers to these questions, please?

1. Does the wellness center have a name? Is it an entity that is being marketed on its own, or is it just a building multiple, unrelated doctors are using?

2. Does your client not have his own office inside the building, with its own postal mailbox, perhaps as a suite?

3. Does your client operate from 9-5 Mon-Fri at this location or is he only there part time for appointments?

4. Does you client have a receptionist answering his own phone, or is it going through a switchboard/answering service/phone desk?

5. Do the other doctors work full time at this same building, in the same rooms, or are they in offices of their own within the building?

Your answers will provide some important clues that should help determine your client's options. I'll look forward to popping back by!

Hi Melissa!

A few thoughts on this:

1. I understand that the owner wants to rank as highly as possible - of course. Nevertheless, in order for him to be keeping current with the way search works, he needs to understand that there are no universal #1 rankings. Due to personalization and the user-as-centroid phenomenon, what the owner sees on his cell phone is not going to identically match what his customers see on theirs. Rather than obsessing over rankings, the owner would be strengthening his business by focusing on conversions. Are the pages being created by this business causing phones to ring? If yes, conversions are high. If no, conversions are not what they could be. We've already identified that the page you've shared here is weak. Rather than focusing too much on rankings, the owner needs to start at the beginning by focusing on quality. If he can't invest in this or wait for a careful effort to pay off, he should simply invest directly in PPC.

2. There are 2 ways to approach a multi-service, multi-location business:

A: You have a page for each service and a page for each location. You do not develop a page for every possible combination of services/cities. This is the best approach when funding, creativity or commitment to quality may be in question.

B: You do create a page for every possible combination of the cities and services. So, you have a shredding page for city A and a shredding page for city B. You have a page for data management for City A and another for the same term for city B. While this approach is possible, it should really only be undertaken where there is sufficient commitment to quality and sufficient funding, otherwise you'll end up weakening the site with thin/duplicate pages instead of strengthening it.

Whichever approach is taken, you should always link obviously to all pages. Don't hide them. If they are pages for the public, they belong in a high level menu.

3. Right now, it seems like the business is experimenting with option B, but not doing a really great job at it. So, the business is at a critical point here and needs to decide whether they can continue with option B in a way that adds value and strengthens the site and is fully public, or, if they actually would be better off going with option A.

The website is only 1 aspect of rankings, but it's an extremely important one, and a key factor in conversions. Hope this helps

Hey To All Our Local Adepts

You know how Amazon, Google and Facebook have all been experimenting with how they can become the middleman between customers needing home services and companies that provide those services? Well, Yelp is getting into the game now, too.

On the one hand, so many local business owners know the very real impact their Yelp profile can have on their bottom line. I've spoken to local business owners who have told me Yelp drives more phone calls than their own websites do. On the other hand, Yelp has not had an unblemished relationship with business owners or Local SEOs.  This interesting tension between Yelp's dominance in the review world and their satisfaction track record in the business community makes me wonder how many people will try out their new leads program and whether business owners will trust Yelp less or more than Amazon, Facebook or Google.

What do you think? Would you be interested in giving Yelp's new program a try? If you're advising clients, which of the four emergent home service programs (Google, Yelp, Facebook or Amazon) would you suggest first, and what would you base your recommendation on? Has anyone tried Yelp's program yet? How's it going?

Hey There!

Important question ... why does the company have 80 websites? Are they being individually managed by the owner of each store, or are they all in the control of the central company?

If the latter, what you are describing is a strong illustration supporting the typical advice that it is generally better to build 1 powerhouse website for your brand than a large number of thin, weak, duplicative sites.

If this company was my client, I would be earnestly urging them to consolidate everything into a single site. If they are currently investing in maintaining 80 website, there's reason to hope that they've got the funding to develop a strong, unique landing page for each of the 80 locations on their main corporate website, and redirect the old sites to the central one. Check out how REI.com surfaces unique pages for all of their locations. It's inspiring how they've made each page unique. If your client could take a similar approach, they'd be on a better road for the future.

You would, of course, need to update all citations to point to the landing pages once you had developed them.

If, however, the 80 websites are being controlled by 80 different franchise location managers, what needs to be developed here is a policy that prevents these managers from taking the content of the corporation. If they want to each run a separate website, they need to take on the responsibility of creating their own content. And, of course, the corporate website needs to be sure it doesn't have internal duplicate content and is not taking content from its franchise managers, either. 80 separate websites should = 80 totally separate efforts. That's a lot to have going on, pointing back to the preferred method of consolidation wherever possible.

Hope this helps!

Hey Donald,

What I'm understanding is that your clients use

"I offer estate planning services"

as opposed to

"At Adams Law, comprehensive estate planning services have been designed to help you ..."

And that you feel the second example seems more professional. I can see where you're coming from. I can also see that overuse of the word 'I' can start to look rather narcissistic. There's an anecdote about Teddy Roosevelt writing a book so full of the word 'I' that his typesetters had to purchase more of that letter! And, interestingly, this same topic has been coming up in the 2016 primary cycle in which pundits are counting the number of times one Democratic candidate is using the word 'I' vs. the other using the word 'we'. The upshot is, at least in my view, that pronouns definitely set a tone and say a lot about a person or a business. Here's what I think:

1. Legal firms are supposed to sound professional because they deal in matters of serious import for their clients. Most people would not want to entrust their legal affairs to a law firm that seems sloppy or careless. So, a small but significant signal of professionalism is the company's name. Adams Attorneys At Law sounds very official, right? More so than "I do law and stuff like that." would. Then, too, web copy should always be modestly optimized with a brand's name, just for the sake of associating the brand's content with the brand's name in the user's mind.

2. However, mention of the brand's name does not need to exclude use of personal pronouns like 'We' or 'I'. As in, "I want every client of Adams Law to be empowered with accessible, affordable counsel." Or "We will make sure you feel comfortable at Adams Law from your first phone call, to your first meeting, to your final settlement." You can use both. A key point of using first person pronouns is to indicate that a human being or group of humans are communicating something. This is meant to engender a sense of approachability - of someone manning the ship, right? "We are here to help you" is more indicative of a personal communication than "Adams Law exists to help clients".

3. But how far you go with with this depends on the culture of your business. A lawyer who deals with family law may want to project more personal empathy than one who deals with taxes. Or, one who is managing wealth may want to project more of an energetic, hip vibe than one who is trying to appear aggressive because he takes criminal cases.

4. I've written copy for so many different industries over the past 10+ years and my preferred pronoun for nearly all business models is actually not 'I' or 'We'. It's 'YOU'. For most business models, I advocate that 'you' be the most frequently used pronoun, and that 'I' or 'We' come second to that and the brand comes third. How you finesse this relates to how formally a business interacts with its customers. From stuffy to downright laid back, knowing the preferred tone of a client's culture is what should set the tone for all copy, creating consistency and a clear message.

Hope this helps!

Hi Melissa!

This is likely one of those scenarios in which you'll need to work with a Local SEO company to get a full audit and competitive analysis. A quick look at this can yield some information, but may not dig deep enough. Here's what I see at a glance:

1. This is not a strong page and something is odd with the formatting of it. I see a very large amount of white space on the page before the text starts. Text is thin.

2. I am unable to find this page http://www.crmi-online.com/shredding-greenville-nc.html in your navigation menu. Where is it? I was only able to find it by clicking the link you shared in your post.

3. As Logan has mentioned, going with a multi-domain approach is not likely to be a good idea. I am a bit confused by the number of businesses you have. In your footer, I see:

Corporate Office & Sales in New Bern

Record & Data Center in Greenville

I am assuming that these are both offices of CRMI, but the way you have these listed almost makes that look like 2 different businesses with those names, meaning you could be sending a confusing NAP signal to bots.

Are these both forward-facing offices of CRMI that the public comes to? Do both offices offer the same or totally different services?

4. If both are forward facing offices, then you should have a unique landing page for each on the site and link their Google My Business listings and their citations to those landing pages. Do not use forwarding URLs in citations.

5. Is your core search term 'shredding greenville nc'? If so, I am seeing your company ranking #2 in the 3 pack for this. I also see you ranking #2 for 'shredding service greenville nc'. Are you seeing something different?

So, that's just a really quick glance with more questions, maybe, than answers. Please, feel free to provide further details. You've started a good thread

Corporate Office & Sales
507 Pollock Street  Suite 4
PO Box 280
New Bern, NC 28563

Corporate Office & Sales
507 Pollock Street  Suite 4
PO Box 280
New Bern, NC 28563

Corporate Office & Sales
507 Pollock Street  Suite 4
PO Box 280
New Bern, NC 28563

Hey Luke,

So sorry to hear about your Knowledge Graph woes. I well remember a Blumenthal article on this from a few years back: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/07/22/10-reasons-that-the-google-knowledge-graph-sucks-more-than-the-local-graph/

Have you been able to determine the source of the misspelled name? This seems to me like it would be the most important step! Is there any chance you are able to share the identity of the company with the community? It might help, but if that's not possible, it's okay.

Hi Michael,

Yes, this is a bit complicated. Ideally, you'd have just 1 website for the business, but if you have to have 2, be sure there is no connection between the two. No shared NAP, no shared content, etc. It would need to be run as a completely separate business to avoid the danger of NAP confusion.

Hey Peter,

Ah, a web design company. So, not having an address is really not that abnormal. It's certainly not ideal, though. They've got an address listed on their GMB listing, but perhaps they've intentionally left if off the website because they don't want walk-in traffic. On the other hand, it could be a lack of Local SEO.

In terms of geography, it doesn't look like it's playing a role here. The location is well beyond the city center and does not appear to be part of close-set radius. It's not reviews that are doing it - they have none. So, what I'd recommend here is doing a full competitive analysis to see if you can track down whether some organic metric is contributing to that high ranking. It's an interesting case.

Hi Ben,

What you want here is:

1. Ideally, 1 website with a landing page on it for each of the 2 locations.

2. A unique Google My Business Page for each of the 2 locations, linking to their respective landing pages

3. Google Plus, as a local product, is dead. Read: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2015/11/25/google-plus-upgrade-faq-for-the-smb/ The only reason to maintain a social presence on Google Plus is if your business has somehow earned a major following there. Otherwise, you may be better off devoting social efforts to Facebook, Pinterest, Youtube, and what have you. For a couple of years, the advice for local businesses was to post on Google+ but it never really took off and then Google divorced it from Local, so, remaining pages are kind of useless and if you don't log into them every 6 months, Google will un-validate them. Whether it's necessary to close them, I can't really say. That's a good question, but not one I've seen raised before and am not sure how the millions of local businesses who have recently gone through the +/local divorce are handling that.

Hope this helps!

Hey Peter,

Unfortunately, I have seen multiple cases in which high quality results are outranked by those that don't even have a website, let alone a good website. Often, this comes down to geographic factors, but it can sometimes be the result of spam. If you'd like to share an example, I'd be happy to take a look!

Hmm, that's too bad that you haven't rec'd a response in 24 hours. And your experience with phone support sounds typical - some staff are very good, but others don't seem to have equal training. Frustrating.

On Google dedicated reps, I have wondered if they might go that way if they fully implement Home Service Ads in Local, but, I'm not holding my breath. It would be awesome if they did!

Hey Tom,

I see how this could be problematic. In general, Local SEOs will cite the guidelines Joey has, in which Google states they don't want this:

Location information, such as neighborhood, city, or street name, unless it is part of the real-world representation of the business.

So, short answer here is that you need to leave your name exactly as it appears in the real world on your websites and the citations that you can control (and, of course, your Google My Business listing). I wonder if it would be possible for you to reach out to the top 20 aggregators appearing for your core search and ask them to edit your listing name. If not, then the consolation here is that the playing field is level if competing colleges area all suffering the same fate with the aggregators. In other words, their percentage of NAP inconsistency would be the same as yours.

Anecdotally, what you're experiencing is also experienced by all multi-location businesses that list their locations on Facebook. Facebook won't let you have more than 1 FB Place with an identical name, so you have to be Joe's Diner Boston, Joe's Diner Chicago, Joe's Diner St. Paul, etc. Again, because their competitors are all in the same boat, it's something they don't really have to sweat.

100% NAP consistency isn't normally achievable. You want to be as consistent as you can, but don't stress about attaining absolute perfection, and my bet is that the inclusion of your city names on these aggregators is not hurting you very much, if at all. So, this would be a see-what-you-can-do-and-then-leave-it-at-that situation. Hope this helps! Interesting thread.

If the address is a legitimate forward-facing public office, then it shouldn't be causing any local or organic issues. I definitely recommend doing a run-through of this https://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015 to see if there could be technical issues holding you back.

Good Morning, Peter!

Thanks so much for sharing your experience, and that's a great example from the Webmaster Help Forum. I agree with you that the voluntary support in Google's forum is kind of an extraordinary thing. On the one hand, it has proved an excellent training ground for Local SEOs who have become TCs and have gained extra knowledge of common problems with the local products. On the other hand, it sort of abets Google in not having to staff Local as they probably should.

It will be nice if someone give the Twitter option a try and shares with us how it went!

Hey There!

You have 2 possible approaches here:

1. Build a unique landing page on the website for each store if you feel you can create high quality content for each. This should be possible, if the project has the funding to post things like unique specials, events, products, offerings in each store on an ongoing basis. Link the Google My Business page and all other citations for each location to its unique landing page on the company website. A good example of this would be a site like REI.com. Go to http://www.rei.com/map/store and type in a geographic search. For example, searching for San Diego, CA, takes you here: http://www.rei.com/map/store#San Diego%2C CA. From there you can click on the map-based link to get to the individual page: http://www.rei.com/stores/san-diego.html. Look at what a nice job they've done with that page!

2. If the project seems overwhelming, the alternative would be something more like this: http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/restaurant_locator.html. When you type in a zip code, it simply brings up a map. There does not seem to be a unique page for each store. No doubt, the corporation felt such an approach would be futile given that McDonald's has some 35,000 locations globally and they all serve basically the same thing (though I have heard you can get an unlisted green chile cheeseburger at the McDonald's in Window Rock, AZ. in Navajo Country).

Which approach is stronger? #1, in most cases, but whether you can take that approach is going to depend on the funding for the project.

Hope this helps.

Hey Everybody!

If you've been doing Local for some years, chances are, you remember those dark days in the past when there was zero Google local support. You could post something in their forum, but that was pretty much your only hope. It was an absolutely amazing day when they finally rolled out phone support, and I'm still very grateful that this exists, but just this week, I learned about another way to contact support.

Joy Hawkins has surfaced a Twitter account you can tweet when in need of assistance and she says its not only really fast, but that the help is US-based (which would be great for US users).

I'd never heard of this before and wondered if any of you have tried it, and what response times and overall satisfaction you experienced with it. If you've not tried it yet and are experiencing a local client conundrum, maybe give it a try and let our community here know how it went?

Thank you so much for popping by, Dr. Pete. Jaclyn, it was Dr. Pete's second opinion I asked for

Hi John!

Ahh! I always think of this as NAP+W (name, address, phone + website) so I wanted to be sure U-NAP wasn't some type of product or service I'd never heard of before. U-NAP ... I like it.

Okay, so you should be able to get good guidance on this from Google's guidelines, which state:

• Containment information indicating that your business is located inside another business (whether or not the businesses are part of the same organization).
  • Not acceptable: "Chase ATM (in Duane Reade)", "Apple Store at Stanford Shopping Center", "Benefit Brow Bar - Bloomingdales", "Sam’s Club Tire & Battery (part of Sam’s Club)", "Geek Squad (inside Best Buy)"
  • Acceptable: "Chase ATM", "Apple Store", "Benefit Brow Bar", "Sam’s Club Tire & Battery", "Geek Squad"

So, it's perfectly fine to have both the hotel and restaurant listed. Just be sure you are following the naming convention and that you have a unique phone number for the restaurant and either a unique page on the hotel site for it, or a unique website for it.

Does this help?

So glad to have you here, Brent, asking good questions like this one

My pleasure, Patrick!

Hey Brent!

Great topic. And a complex one due to several factors:

1. First, it's really important for you scrutinize with exceeding sharpness Google's guidelines: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en. In particular, pay attention to the guidelines for names and practitioners, but read the whole thing a couple of times, if you've not already done so.

2. Google can handle more than 1 business being located at the same location, BUT

• They must each have a unique phone number; no shared numbers

• They should each have their own website, with completely unique content - your client should definitely not be mentioning two businesses on the same website, nor attempting to put 2 business names on the same GMB listing, as he is risking the NAP consistency of both by doing so

• Even with the above precautions, there is some danger here; read on

3. Google is very clear that they don't want you to build out separate GMB listings for different categories of a business. In other words, an HVAC company should not build a GMB listing for its heating services and another GMB listing for its cooling services. This is completely forbidden. The danger here is that, technically, Google might view the chiropractic and massage services as actually just being 2 services belonging to the same business (like the HVAC example). Seeing them both located at 123 Main Street might cause Google to suspect that this is really just 1 business trying to spam them by appearing to be 2 businesses. I'm not saying that this WILL happen, but it's important to know that it could, and that, should you build out 2 separate websites and GMB listings, it could still end up getting red flags. Or, Google might decide that the massage business is simply renting space within the chiropractic office and is therefore not eligible for its own GMB listing (see Ineligible Business section of the guidelines as it relates to 'an ongoing service, class or meeting). Upshot here is, there are some risks to what the business is doing here, even if they are legitimately running 2 businesses out of the same building.

4. An alternative to this might be found in the fact that your client is a solo practitioner. Instead of promoting 2 businesses, your client would be eligible to build 1 GMB listing for his chiropractic company and use chiropractic categories for it, and built a solo practitioner listing as well, but use massage-related categories for it. If he's not in too competitive of a city, this could lead to some business for his massage services as well as his chiropractic ones, without any concerns about DBAs, 2nd websites, etc. It would be vital for the business to build up the single website with lots of good content for the massage service as a category of services being offered in addition to the chiropractic services. So, important to know that this option exists.

So, a lot of factors to consider here. If this were my own client, I'd be hesitant to advise them to go this route of the DBA existing in the same office, but if they really wanted to go forward with that, I would take every possible step to the differentiate the 2 businesses with unique phone numbers, unique websites, unique citations, etc ... but only after fully advising the client of the risks.

Hope this helps!

Hi Jaclyn,

What a good question. Here's what I'm reading in your post:

"These pages perform well in their backyard in terms of engagement metrics like bounce rate, session duration, etc."

"My worry is that the high bounce rates, low time on site, and general irrelevancy of these pages to someone far away are going to affect them negatively"

Without a full analysis of your analytics data, I can't give a 100% confident answer on this, but my gut feeling is that if the pages are performing well locally, the conversions resulting from this may be more important than the concerns about bounce rate as it relates to national users.

That's interesting that you haven't seen any effect on the traffic from editing the titles/tags of these pages. Have you given it a couple of months? Or did you just do this a week or two ago?

One thing your question has made me curious about, and for which I don't have an answer, is whether Google is sophisticated enough to notice that a low bounce rate locally and a high one nationally means that the site is really more relevant to local users. National SEO should not negatively impact Local SEO if done properly, but I've not thought of this in terms of bounce rate, specifically. I'm actually going to ask another team member what they think about this and will update this thread if I get further feedback. It's really an excellent question!

Hi Patrick,

Darren Shaw's company, Whitespark, is located in Canada and is widely respected for their citation building program. You might want to check them out.

My pleasure, Michael!

Hi Michael,

Citations are based on physical location. Are you saying that there is a single physical location being represented by 3 different websites and that your customer does not own the website that accurately represents the real brand (Acme Print.com)?

Hiya!

Oof, that's a toughie, indeed. To my knowledge, there is nothing you can do to get Google to increase the speed with which they re-visit a third party site. Good news is, you are in the same boat as everyone on this, and as Eric mentions, it's likely best to simply turn your attention elsewhere while you wait. How about scoring a few really awesome new citations for the business? Maybe a feature in a local newspaper or blog? Something robust would be great. Sorry there's no magic wand on this one

Hi John,

You really need a full audit here, but here's what I see at a glance, searching for 'heating and cooling duluth mn'. I didn't see a mention of your most important keyword phrase, so that's the one I chose.

• You are ranking #7 in the Maps pack, visible when you click the 3 pack for more results. So, it's not that you're nowhere (thank goodness) - it's just that you're lower than 3 in the pack

• The 6 results ranking above you are all physically closer to the cluster Google has designated as relevant for this search term. Look at the map and mouse over each entry in the left-hand list and you will see this behavior. Though Google is drawing a pretty wide radius for results, you are outside of it. Note that this is not a circular radius. Blesener looks about as far away as your company, but, they are closer to that shoreline area where the cluster is clearly based. https://www.google.com/search?q=heating+and+cooling+duluth+mn&oq=heating+and+cooling+duluth+mn&aqs=chrome.0.0l6.6459j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#q=heating and cooling duluth mn&rflfq=1&rlha=0&tbm=lcl&tbs=lf:1,lf_ui:4&rlfi=hd:;si:

• Remember that getting into a pack when you're not located within the city of search is a rarity rather than the rule. So, it's easy to explain this away by saying that you're not in Duluth, so you shouldn't expect to rank for any Duluth based-or-related searches, but because we can see that your competitors are getting this extra nice treatment from Google while not being in Duluth, it does call into question other factors. It's important to note that there may be NOTHING you can do to overcome a cluster, but you want to be sure you've done everything possible before giving up hope.

• Why is your address visible on your GMB listing? Do customers come to your place of business? If so, A-OK, but if not, then your address should really be hidden to comply with Google's guidelines for SABs.

• No competitor outranking you in this pack has more than 4 reviews, and I totally agree with you that I'm seeing some pretty iffy websites outranking you in the local pack (but, again, this may be a geo issue you can't overcome). Nevertheless, absolutely implement a review acquisition program and see if that won't move you up a couple of notches by going beyond the 4 reviews you have to 10 reviews, 20 reviews, etc.

• On your website, I wouldn't advise keeping your links to the 3 city pages in the footer. If you serve 3 cities, you should link to your landing pages for them from your main menu. And you really should have a page for Hermantown. Even if it's a small city, it's YOUR small city. Promote with pride and it will look more natural that you're saying "we're in Hermantown and we also serve Duluth, Two Harbors, etc."

• I do see that an effort has been made to differentiate the content on the 3 city landing pages. That's good to see, but I believe you could go farther with these. What about video documentaries of your projects? Testimonials from customers in those cities? More targeted advice about microclimates in the given cities? What can you do to take these from being long pages of text that are basically using the same headings to being 3-4 really glowing pages that are going to convince users that your company is simply the best choice in the area?

• How well do you feel you are doing going after more longtail terms? Heating and Cooling appears to be a major phrase for your industry, but how are you doing for your various products/services? Have you built sufficient content to cover all of these? Are you answering every possible questions someone might have relating to these?

• It looks like you've got a strong start going with citations (https://moz.com/local/details/JTI1NUIlMjUyMk1NVCUyNTIwSGVhdGluZyUyNTIwJTI1MjYlMjUyMENvb2xpbmclMjUyMiUyNTJDJTI1MjI1NTgxMSUyNTIyJTI1MkMlMjUyMk1NVCUyNTIwSGVhdGluZyUyNTIwJTI1MjYlMjUyMENvb2xpbmclMjUyMiUyNTJDJTI1MjI1NTAxJTI1MjBNaWxsZXIlMjUyMFRydW5rJTI1MjBId3klMjUyMiUyNTJDJTI1MjI1NTgxMSUyNTIyJTI1MkMlMjUyMjIxODcyOTE1ODUlMjUyMiUyNTVE) so how are you doing beyond the basics? Any way to get this business blogged about by a local blogger or written up in the local news?

• Finally, your organic rank is a concern, for sure. Building on what loganr has written, you need to do a full technical SEO audit to be sure that there are no errors creating this lack of organic rank. I highly recommend: https://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015

So, in sum, you need to:

• Face the reality of out-of-city limitations

• Get reviews

• Improve site architecture

• Improve landing pages

• Develop further citation opportunities

• Hide GMB address if applicable

• Do a full technical SEO audit

*Please remember that this is just a start - an at-a-glance impression I've had. Hopefully, you can dig deeper, either on your own, or by hiring experts.

Hey Donald!Great topic. Building city landing pages is a common best practice for service area businesses with staff who travel to clients to serve them in a variety of towns beyond the town in which the company is physically located. Does your client go to clients' homes/businesses, or do his clients come to him? If the latter, then city landing pages are unlikely to be a good fit, but if the former, here's how you evaluate this:

Bad City Landing Pages:

• Have duplicate content

• Have thin or poorly-written content

• Have no reason, beyond a grab for rankings, to exist

• Are buried somewhere deep in the architecture of the site instead of in a high level menu

• Contain large blocks of zip codes or similar spammy stuff

• Contain fake or virtual addresses for the purpose of trying to appear to have a physical location where none exists

Good City Landing Pages:

• Have the absolute best content you are capable of creating, including text, videos, photos, testimonials and anything else you can think of to make these pages terrific

• Do not duplicate one another in any way

• Actually serve customers, rather than simply grabbing for rankings

• Are linked to from a high level menu

• Cover a reasonable number of cities for the business

The challenge facing any service area business when embracing the creation of city landing pages is to make them as interesting, unique and helpful as possible. This can be a challenge when you essentially offer the same service in each location, so this is where your marketing smarts can help.

For example, you might have the client take a camera along to do video documentary of his projects in each given city. Or, you might ask 5 really happy customers to allow you to do a shoot of a video testimonial for each of the given cities. Or, you might be running a geo-sensitive business in which advice for customers in one city might be different than advice for customers in a different city (not likely in your client's industry, but applicable when it comes to things like terrain, weather, laws or other micro conditions).

As the marketer, you can be a huge help in assisting the client in a brainstorming session that will surface different topics and media that can make each city landing page different and useful for customers. If the marketer or the business owner are not up to the task, my advice is always going to be not to undertake the project. This really requires the best effort both can make, and it can be a truly fun and educational undertaking for both the owner and his marketer.

Hope this helps!

Hey There!

Good question, and brace for a long answer here.

So, where we start with this is Google's own guidelines for multi-practitioners which we excavate for clues to see how they feel about your scenario. These guidelines state:

Individual practitioners (e.g. doctors, lawyers, real estate agents)

An individual practitioner is a public facing professional, typically with his or her own customer base. Doctors, dentists, lawyers, financial planners, and insurance or real estate agents all are individual practitioners. Pages for practitioners may include title or degree certification (e.g. Dr., MD, JD, Esq., CFA).

An individual practitioner should create his or her own dedicated page if:

• He or she operates in a public-facing role. Support staff should not create their own page.
• He or she is directly contactable at the verified location during stated hours.

A practitioner should not have multiple pages to cover all of his or her specializations.

Multiple practitioners at one location

If the practitioner is one of several public facing practitioners at this location:

• The organization should create a page for this location, separate from that of the practitioner.
• The page for the practitioner should be titled with name of the practitioner only, excluding that of the organization.

This is the sum total of what Google tells us and, and while some of these guidelines apply to your scenario (like your agents operating in a public facing role) there's a catch here.

Though you've described having multiple offices across the country, you have further described that these agents you'd like to market don't work at these offices. They work from home and would need to keep their addresses hidden because of this. This is a common scenario and one of the more significant grey areas of the guidelines. The problem here is, should Google discover than you've created 30 listings in Iowa for your agents, and then they look at their street level imaging of the back-end addresses you've listed in your GMB dashboard, they will see that these are not offices - they are houses. And, at that point, it's up to Google to decide whether you have a legitimate business model or whether you are trying to game the system by appearing to have offices in these 30 locations when you really don't.

The problem here is that many companies have spammed Google in this way. The yard cleaning company whose owner literally does work from home in San Francisco, but who has also set up listings in San Jose (his cousin's house), Oakland (his mom's house) and Walnut Creek (his sister's house). Google catches onto this and hammers down not only on the 3 spammy listings but may also hammer down on the legitimate listing in San Francisco, as well.

So, while this is not what you are trying to do, and your agents genuinely do work at home while representing your company, the grey area here is whether Google will see it that way. There is no guarantee that they will, and so what I would say on this is that the safe path here is to only list your physical offices in the cities where you have them and list any agents that work in these offices and are "directly contactable at the verified location during stated hours". You could try it the other way, listing every possible agent, but you'd be doing so at your own risk.

Hope these are helpful thoughts! It's good you're considering all the options here. Very smart.

P.S. So sorry about the formatting on this. It is wacky.

Hi Steve,

I'm sorry to hear about the trouble your company has had with this. First, I want to clarify that the actual sentiment in your reviews is unlikely to be the primary cause ranking failures. In fact, there have been famous cases like that of the dentist who shot a lion in which hundreds of people left him scathingly negative reviews which, unfortunately, led to him ranking highly for his query (though Google might now have adjusted for this). In other words, negative sentiment in reviews may/may not be the cause of ranking problems you are having (there are believed to be several hundred factors that contribute to local rank) but I can totally see how they would impact conversions for your business.

So, what I think your decision here is whether you need to start your business from scratch, completely re-branding the business and starting with a fresh brand, fresh website, fresh citations and fresh reviews, or, whether the company can overcome its past reputation. The answer to this is going to lie in how extreme you feel the negative effects of these reviews are on your bottom line and the ability of the business to have a future. The answer is really going to vary, depending on the situation, and without being able to evaluate your unique situation, the community here can only give general thoughts on this. You might want to consider consulting with a good agency with whom you can share the full details of the company's history.

Things to consider:

1. If the complaints refer to mere inconveniences or annoyances the customers experienced, then it may be possible to keep your brand and, by implementing a very active review acquisition strategy, to balance out and eventually surpass the number of old negative reviews with new positive ones.

2. But, if the complaints refer to something severe, like accusations of illegal business practices, then no amount of better reviews may suffice to remedy the problem, and you might be justified in wanting to start over.

I recommend consulting with a reputable agency with whom you can share your company history in private so that you can get advice that is specific to your scenario.

Hey Jon!

If you feel totally confident that Google will agree that these are 2 different forward-facing businesses at the same address, than the differentiating items will be the name, the phone number and the website landing page the Google My Business listing links to. Being sure that all 3 things are unique should help Google keep them separate, ideally. Hope this helps!