Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hey There

While I haven't personally experimented with this, these resources interested me and I thought they might interest you, too:

http://www.bestpestmarketing.com/nearbynow/

http://www.localsearchforum.com/local-seo-ranking/17695-nearby-now-heat-maps-reviews-does-anyone-use.html

What surprises me is the lack of coverage of this app in the past year. If you set your search parameter to the past year, you'll see very few mentions. I'm not sure why that is, but it actually took me a minute to even remember the app you were referencing when I first read this thread. Then, I remembered seeing it discussed in 2014. If you do play around with it and like the results, I'd love it if you'd update this thread with your experience, as there just doesn't seem to be a ton of coverage on it.

Hi John!I'd like to weigh in on your question, but I'm not familiar with the term U-NAP. I may have missed something. Please, define and I'll gladly pop back by.

Hey There!

First step here is to read Google's guidelines for Departments Within Other Business:

https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en

Be sure that you actually have 2 businesses that qualify as separate, in Google's eyes, before you make a decision about how to represent these to the public on your website, citations, etc. Hopefully a read-through will help with this.

Hi Andrea!

I'm so happy this thread helped you! You wrote:

"From what I read, the best solution would be instead putting the blog on the main site and this discussion confirmed this."

YES! Absolutely.

Regarding what to do with the old domains, I go with choice #1 on that.

How kind of you to say that, Sarah. It's my pleasure to lend a hand!

Thank you, Sarah!

So, reviews are sentiments left by a third party who has done business with your company. In other words, I eat at your restaurant and then I go to Google, Yelp or some other review platform to leave a review of my dining experience. Google-based reviews are considered to have the most impact on Google pack rankings, but perhaps not the most impact on conversions. In the U.S., for example, Yelp profiles are often particularly influential, if they have great reviews or really bad ones. Reviews can also exist on a company's own website, using a review app of some kind that allows customers to review a product or service. Think Amazon.com.

If you are being outranked in the local packs by a competitor, reviews are one thing to evaluate as they are one of the signals (though only one) which can cause a competitor to outrank you.

Citations are partial or complete mentions of your business NAP+W (name, address, phone + website) on any third party platform, whether that's a business directory, a blog, a news site or what have you. Any time your partial or complete NAP+W is mentioned anywhere on the web (except your own website), that is a citation. It's a vital part of Local SEO to be sure that all citations feature consistent data (NAP+W is identical across the board). Like reviews, the number, consistency and authority of your citations are believed to impact local pack rankings. So, if a competitor has more citations, better consistency, or citations on more authoritative sites than you do, it can contribute to them outranking you. So, again, this is something to evaluate in doing competitive analysis.

Hope this helps clarify, and you might like to check out our free Local Learning Center for more definitions of the elements of a Local Search Marketing campaign: <cite class="_Rm">https://moz.com/learn/local</cite>

Hi Brian!

Why not use:

samhillbands.com/wedding-bands-charlottesville-va

It's very simple. Is there a reason for using sub-folders?

That's great, Will. Wishing you very good luck ahead!

Hi Will!
I'm glad you've opened this up for discussion, as it's always a good thing when the question of business ethics arises for there to be a chance to think out loud about what the right thing is to do. There are really 2 parts to this:

1. Your client needs to run his business ethically. It sounds like the facts here are that your client actually has only 1 real physical shop but that, for ranking purposes, he's wanting to convince his customers and the search engines that he has 3. When you put it this way, it's really easy to see that the truth isn't being told, which automatically makes this a question of ethics. Who would want to do business with a company that operates by tricking its customers, right?

And as far as the search engines go, I totally get it that their guidelines for service area businesses may sometimes seem like unfair restrictions. Google has never given SABs quite the same treatment that they have accorded B&Ms. But, if we're using a Google product, they are asking us to abide by their rules, and doing so is only playing fair. Your client would not appreciate his competitors being untruthful about their business models in order to surpass him, and he might, in fact, want to report them to Google for doing so. If your client can put himself in the shoes of his customers, search engines and competitors, hopefully his sense of fairness will be a guiding light here. And, if not, he is likely to learn the hard way. Competitors will report him or Google will see a red flag in looking at their street-level imagery and the client may find not only his 2 fictitious locations removed, but also, his genuine location flagged as spam, too. No one can predict when these things may happen, so it's a very anxious situation.

If ethics don't work, and concern for the lifetime success of the business doesn't work, then this may not be a client you want to keep.

2. Now, let's take a look at why Bryan is advising you never to suggest that a client "play the system". Just like for the client, ethics really matter in the way you run your own business. Good marketing relies on knowledge, skill and experience - not tricks. And, for the long term success of your business, you need successful clients whose brands you are building to last. This is how you build your own, priceless brand. The polar opposite of this is going to be clients whose businesses may benefit from loopholes temporarily but who may then come crashing down, leading to a serious impact on their bottom line and, possibly, litigation against your company if they blame you for the advice you've given and your contracts don't protect you from this.

I sense from your honest question that you are standing at very important crossroad for your company. It's really good that you're thinking about this and wanting to discuss it. The Internet is still literally crammed with those crummy SEO companies that don't know what they're doing and make a strange living off of bad practices that hurt the businesses that engage them, but it's the agencies that commit to taking the high road that are standing the test of time. Companies like these ones: https://moz.com/rand/recommended-list-seo-consultants/

My best advice here is to imagine the respect you want to win for the brand you are trying to build and act accordingly.

Closing up: practical advice here for your client if he is willing to walk a better walk on this, organic optimization is the option open for the non-physical cities the company serves. If the business needs calls right now, invest in some PPC for these cities while you work to build organic authority for these target cities.

Good luck, and thanks for starting an important discussion!

Hi Rosemary,

Oooh, this is a toughie. I have no experience with Local SEO in China. I know Baidu Maps outside of China used to be powered by Nokia Here, but since they sold their mapping unit to German car manufacturers, I'm not sure what happened with that. I believe Baidu Maps inside of China is powered by NavInfo, but I don't know anything beyond this.

So, my suggestions here, lacking concrete knowledge to share with you about this would be:

1. Go directly to the blogger who wrote that article you linked to and try leaving a blog comment asking this. If the blogger doesn't reply or is no longer there, contact the company and ask if you can book an hour of their consulting time to be brought up to speed on the regulations regarding local business submission in China.

2. If that doesn't work, see if you can track down Nyagoslav Zhekov of Whitespark. He has done more International Local SEO than anyone else I know, and as he was living in Asia for a time, might know more about Baidu Maps than the average Local SEO.

3. And, if that doesn't work, you might scroll through our recommend list to see if any companies there specialize in International SEO: https://moz.com/rand/recommended-list-seo-consultants/ Maybe get some consulting from there.

Clearly, this is important if you've got a client in China, but resources in the U.S. may be hard to come by for this, as finding an International SEO who does Local in China may be a rare flower

Hey Scott,

What Ioganr has mentioned is correct. Google+ pages, per se, are no longer really the core URLs of your local data on Google. Rather, what happens these days is that your Google My Business dashboard data is being displayed in a variety of ways, and that the URL you'd be most likely to link to these days for any purpose would be the Maps-based URL, like this:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Whole+Foods+Market/@38.596632,-121.364044,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x5f6895a3853012bc

But, linking to this on a RFQ page is probably going to be a distraction from what you'd like users to do there, yes.

Hi Kaitlin!

The radius from which Google draws local and localized organic results is really dependent on competition. There won't be a single answer to your question, because it's going to be different in each case. For example, if you are located in a very rural area with few options, Google will reach out beyond the borders of your town to adjacent towns to return results to make up a full set of results. In some cases like this, there won't even be a 3 pack, but solely organic results.

When you are dealing with a large city, you are much less likely to see this outreaching behavior on Google's part, because they will have plenty of results right near the user within the city. The only exception to this would be if the business is offering something very unusual and there are few or no competitors inside the city.

For a Service Area Business, the rule of thumb is to go for local pack rankings for their city of location and organic rankings for their service cities. It's rare for a service area business to rank in the local pack for any city where they lack a physical location, unless, again, they are offering something very rare.

Doing research on Maps will help you determine the general radius from which Google is drawing results for a particular query, but it's extremely important to remember the user-as-centroid phenomenon, especially when dealing with cities. Google will show different results to users at one end of the city than to those at the other end of it. Educating clients about the fact that there are no static rankings is vital these days

Hope this helps!

Hey Dominick,

You know - honestly what I'd do here is comment on Joy's post with your question! I bet she'll reply and because it appears she has dealt with your exact situation before, she might be able to offer some additional suggestions like that. Why not go right to the source?

Hi Rosemary,
No, the traffic will not be automatically separated by Google, but what your post has made me realize is that we really do need an update on this celebrated post that was written in the pre-Plus-divorce era:

http://localu.org/blog/how-to-segment-local-search-analytics/

I honestly don't know if anyone has written anything on this important topic since the breakup. I'd love to see Ed Reese do a followup on that post, or someone else who is up to the task!

Thanks for that important answer. Honestly, without a face-to-face interaction, this really takes this out of the realm of local optimization to be a purely organic context. If the products are the same for customers in each of the 3 cities in 5 states, are you confident that you have the strength on your team to find 15 really awesome topics for these pages that will make them not just filler but something amazing for your customers? This might depend on your product, if its application in one city would be somehow quite different from its application in another city ... I can't think of a ready example.

Without knowing what the product is, it's hard to evaluate whether the approach you're considering has a good-sense foundation or could end up being a waste of your resources. It may be that you'd be better off sticking with PPC so that you're getting in front of your customers in various cities, as the true local component seems like it may be missing from this scenario. Hard to say without really knowing a lot about your business, the talent on your team and your customers' needs. Hope that makes sense.

Hey There!

Important question here: is your staff actually meeting face-to-face with customers, and, if so, where is that happening? At physical offices from which you operate? At customers' homes or businesses?

Glad if it helped to get some brainstorming going! It's just a thought, and I understand that the company chose the brand, but hopefully with strong enough content, that may overcome any confusion that may be any part of this scenario.

Thanks, Dominick,

This scenario is actually more complex than it may seem at first glance because of a couple of things. It would seem like the obvious step would simply be to report your sold branch as closed and move on, letting the new owner open a new GMB listing for their new purchase. However, before you jump into doing this, do read this: http://imprezziomarketing.com/seo-blog/google-maps/is-permanently-closed-killing-your-ranking-4-case-studies/

I would not want you reporting the branch as closed to impact your other open branches, so please do read that case study to see if this helps shine some light on your strategy for this.

Isn't that a gem, Donna? Really a nice resource!

Hi Dominick,

So, is the new owner going to rename this old branch of yours to be something different? Have you discussed with the owner what their plans are, in terms of website and Local SEO efforts for the newly acquired branch?

So glad that helped, Steve. Regarding Angie's List, I am not 100% sure on this - their data could be proprietary. Our Local Search Ecosystem does not show any system pushing to Angie's List: https://moz.com/learn/local/local-search-data-us

Hi Steve,

If you are dealing with citations for 120 locations, there is pretty much no way you should be doing that manually ;). That's an enormous project!

As others have mentioned on this thread, there are going to be several options for you to choose from in terms of a purchased service, and, you may need to implement that with some manual follow-up in case these programs don't correct everything, in which case, this resource may help: http://www.reengageconsulting.com/be-where-your-customers-are-with-local-business-listings/

You're receiving really excellent technical feedback here from the community checking for potential technical issues, and it seems like you've ruled a lot of this out. So, I'm going to make a comment which may seem a bit different, from a user viewpoint rather than a technical one.

Visiting your site and seeing that you were in Florida, I thought that perhaps 'Native American Palm Huts' (the name of the business) might have something to do with the palm structures called Chickees that are traditionally built by the Seminole Indians in your state. See: http://www.semtribe.com/Culture/Chickee.aspx. The designation 'Native American' immediately makes me think that a business is talking about a product that is Native-made (which is a term protected by the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Arts_and_Crafts_Act_of_1990, a truth-in-advertising law).

And, at first, I saw this statement on a couple of pages of your site that made me wonder if your company is an Indigenous one making these Chickees for local tribes, "We Do Major Construction for the Native Americans."

But, on further perusal of the site, I think I understand that what the company actually makes is the types of huts typically associated with Polynesia - tiki huts/bars. Interestingly, as I looked into this a little more, I saw that you may have some competitors who are using Chickee and Tiki interchangeably, or, at least linking the 2 structures together though they originate in very different parts of the world ... like here: http://www.bigcypresstikihuts.com/tiki_hut_history.aspx

What all of this is making me wonder about is whether the company name, and the practice of referring to the products as Native American, and other semantic keyword combinations might be:

1. Confusing to users (it was to me at first).

2. Confusing to bots (sending signals to them that you are trying to rank for something traditional/historical rather than a completely different commercial product).

3. In compliance with the Indian Arts & Crafts act (is your company Native-owned?). If you are Native-owned, I would definitely suggest highlighting this as an excellent feature of the business. If you are not Native-owned, you may need to consider re-branding, or, at least, do some careful study of that law.

I also want to take a minute to mention that the site is not especially well optimized from a purely Local SEO perspective, but it may be that you've decided to go after the state rather than specific cities. I wouldn't overlook Local SEO, as it could cut down some of your competition as you work toward ranking for broader geography.

I do think there's some growing room here, both in terms of improving your existing content and developing new content as you go along. The site is pretty small, and rather than an image gallery (which has no text) you could be building well-written project showcases which would have local relevance and considerably expand the website.

Finally, anecdotally, I want to share that I have seen cases in which the brand of a business was either too generic or too random to send a good signal to the bots that a user was looking for that specific, commercial business rather than some other sort of known term. For example, if you had a swimming pool business that was named just "Florida", it would be a stretch to convince Google that people searching for 'Florida' are actually looking for your company rather than the state. That's an extreme example, and your business name does contain the keyword phrase 'Palm Huts' but I mention it because the language we use can sometimes send signals to both humans and bots that we may not have considered.

Something to think about, and I hope these first impressions as a new visitor to your site may be helpful.

Hi Scott!
Good question! Your specific industry is likely to dictate whether a widget will be useful, but I don't really know of a general widget that would directly impact local or localized organic rank. One might indirectly impact rankings if the presence of it enticed users to stay on a page longer, but I think it really depends on whether users found it highly useful and different than some app they already have on their cell phone (like weather!).

I do recommend that you check out this 2015 post from Phil Rozek about building location landing pages. It's a good one:

http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2015/04/06/25-principles-of-building-effective-city-pages-for-local-seo/

Hope it helps!

Hi Radi!

Your question is an important one, but without being able to look at the actual business, the community will have to provide general answers rather than specific ones. It's perfectly fine if you can't share your client's info - but it will limit the specificity of the feedback you'll receive here.

Local ranking issues generally stem from one or more of the following:

1. Guideline violations

2. NAP consistency problems

3. Review inequalities

4. Poor organic strength

5. Newness

6. Citation volume inequalities or citation newness

7. A history of past issues with the business or its account (past violations)

8. Geographic limitations (user as centroid, distance from industry centroid, etc.)

There can be other things, but these are the big ones. A look at the 2015 Local Search Ranking Factors survey is going to be the best place to start considering the many, many factors that contribute to rank:https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

It sounds from your description like the business and/or your campaign are new. It's important to understand that age does matter, and that it takes time for things like citation building to go into effect. So, if you're doing the right things (building consistent citations, earning slow but steady reviews, building great content on the website, etc.) then it may just be a matter of time before you see this pay off. It's really important to set client expectations properly regarding this. But, at the same time, it's also vital to be sure that there are no guideline violations, duplicates or a past history of problems, so that you are squaring away those things that can hinder the good efforts you are currently making.

Hope this helps!

Hey There!

The word here wouldn't be 'duplicates' but, rather, 'discrepancies'. While Google may be able to recognize some of these as similar enough, why take a chance? NAP consistency has been considered a Top 10 ranking factor for many years going, so yes, I'd definitely suggest getting the business name consistent across the ecosystem. It will be a load off your mind!

Hi Meier,

I so urge you to take EGOL's advice as gold - he is legendary in his knowledge. The scenario you are describing with the PBN is not something that sounds safe or natural to either of us - so, this is your Moz squad talking here

It might help you to put yourself in a user's shoes. Does it actually benefit you, if you're looking for key grinding or to get let into your locked car to be thinking about pressure washing at that moment? No. There is no natural relationship there. Do you want to go, via a link, from a pressure washing site to a locksmith site or vice versa? No. There is simply no relationship there.

I also want to raise the issue here that the locksmith industry is one of the most notorious for its history of spam problems in the localsphere. Anything you do for clients in this industry is going to be in an atmosphere of heightened scrutiny (particularly at Google) and so a profile of unrelated, unnatural links would be just the sort of thing they'd be looking for to bring down the hammer.

So, please exercise caution here!

Happy New Year to you, Meier, and we're very happy you're part of the community

Wow - the scenario you are describing of a locksmith with multiple websites for 20 locations and NAP consistency issues is a tall order. You may receive totally different advice from other community members, but here's mine:

1. I would consolidate everything into a single website for this brand and permanently 301 redirect the old sites to the new one.

2. I would create a landing page for each of the 20 offices on the new website with the awesome content you are planning to build, rather than trying to split this up in 20 directions. This way, you are directly building the brand for all locations instead of trying to do it via some more circuitous method.

3. I would do (or hire out) a complete citation audit and invest $$$ in it to be sure all 20 locations are being audited.

4. I would read Joy Hawkins' tutorial, word for word, about duplicate detection: http://searchengineland.com/definitive-guide-duplicate-research-local-seo-238719. I would find, document and fix all duplicates possible.

5. I would then conduct a citation cleanup campaign. If I did it via a tool, I'd make darned sure everything was being caught and corrected. Anything not corrected, I'd fix manually. The beauty here would be that if you did steps 1 & 2 first, while cleaning up any bad NAP on the citations, you'd also be implementing the new landing page URL for each business location in its citation set. And, of course, complying to the letter with Google's guidelines as to naming conventions will be critical in this step.

6. Finally, I really don't know much about PBNs, apart from the problems surrounding them (see: https://moz.com/community/q/private-blogging-network , http://searchengineland.com/google-targets-sites-using-private-blog-networks-manual-action-ranking-penalties-204000, https://moz.com/blog/how-to-check-which-links-can-harm-your-sites-rankings etc.) I'm guessing that you are already aware of these problems, but just in case not, thought I'd mention. When it came to advising my own client, I would not recommend that a PBN be their link strategy, because I don't feel comfortable with representing one as what Google has been pretty clear about stating they want in terms of natural links. Rather, I'd aim for something like this: https://moz.com/blog/link-building-outreach-in-a-skeptical-world-whiteboard-friday and I'd aim to avoid mistakes like those shown here: https://moz.com/blog/the-rules-of-link-building-whiteboard-friday

Hope this helps and that you'll receive more feedback from the community!

Hi Armands,

This might be a bit shocking, but I've never been a big fan of any free keyword research tool I've tried for Local SEO purposes, but then, keyword research hasn't been a daily task for me in a couple of years. It's really important for me to mention that it has been at least a couple of years since I've looked at whatever paid tools may be new, so I can't say whether their accuracy has improved, specifically for correctly representing local search volumes. When I was doing more of this, I simply used the old strategy that I remember first being recommended by Matt McGee of performing non-local keyword research and adding geomodifiers back into your list of findings, knowing that people search for most things that exist in most cities, regardless of what tools say. This may not sound sophisticated - and it isn't - but it has always made good horse sense to me. Do note, however, that Rand did an important Whiteboard Friday on this topic of how we can't do keyword research like it's 2010: https://moz.com/blog/cant-do-keyword-research-like-its-2010-whiteboard-friday

Where this gets a bit more complex is when you have geographic vocabulary differences (soda vs. pop, lawyer vs. attorney, stick horse vs. hobby horse), in which case, knowing the way your audience speaks is either going to be something you research in person, or something you approximate via Internet research of social media to see how people talk locally about the products you sell.

Now, that being said, there is one trick I'm totally fond of - the wildcard search Mary Bowling spoke of at a recent conference. I had never seen that before, and it's awesome:

http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2015/02/18/how-to-use-wildcard-searches-for-local-keyword-research-lightning-round-with-mary-bowling/

And, remember to pay attention to the 'related searches' section at the bottom of most Google results. There are some really obvious clues there.

And, finally, I've always thought that Google's categories provided some of the most important keywords one should be optimizing for, when you are aiming to rank well in Google's local product.

So, while I want to be sure to note that I am not a local keyword research expert in any way, I think much of keyword research is actually just common sense, but with the understanding that some of it isn't common sense and findings can totally surprise us about the way people search.

Further Reading:

http://www.localsearchforum.com/local-seo-tools-software/38694-free-keyword-rank-software-competitive-analysis-pre-consultations.html

https://www.brightlocal.com/2014/07/22/effective-local-keyword-research/

http://www.localsearchforum.com/local-content/38255-keyword-research-blog-posts-local-content.html (see CodyBaird's comment)

Hi Armands,

Great advice from EGOL. I will add a bit - I don't find the Keyword Planner to be very helpful for accurate local search volume research. Believe me - people are searching for photographers in your city, even if tools don't accurately reflect this. So, yes, you'll want to market yourself locally (website content, citations, reviews, etc.) but there is no reason that you can't simultaneously go for national coverage as well, if your business lends itself to that, as EGOL has described.

Hi Richard,

It sounds like you are doing the right things, but how quickly you see results is going to be largely dependent on how stiff the local competition is. If it's low, you should see results quite quickly from the type of work you're doing (blogging, building citations, earning reviews) but if it's tough, it could be a matter of many, many months before you can edge out your competitors.

I like Andi's suggestion, in that it's hinting at is doing something your competitors might not be doing. A video or social campaign that puts great stuff out there about your business (in a way your competitors aren't latching onto) could give you a speedy competitive advantage.

Hi Jubaer!

The first thing to do here is to establish what connection your business has to these other target states where you lack a physical location. A web design company isn't like an SAB (a plumber, electrician, etc.) that will typically travel to various cities to serve clients. So, your connection is likely to be different to this, and for your industry, is typically going to be the fact that you have clients in these states. So, one suggestion would be that you create a page for each target state (it sounds like you're going after states instead of cities, right?) and then showcase your clients in that state on its designated page on the website. Add really good testimonials from the clients in those cities, accompanying their business showcase and brainstorm other content you might add to these pages to make them interesting and helpful.

Understand that you will, of course, be going after organic rankings rather than local ones, and that if you fail to get the organic results you're hoping for (competition is likely to be very stiff) you may need to rely in part or in full on PPC instead of organic.

Hi Patrick!

Great topic and here are the first 10 steps I would focus on:

1. Make a spreadsheet with the NAP+W of every office and every practitioner you are planning to market.

2. Check the spreadsheet to make sure no office or practitioner you are planning to market is sharing a phone number with any other entry on the spreadsheet.

3. Also check the spreadsheet to make sure that each office of practitioner you are planning to market has its own landing page on the website. In other words, the office in Lincoln has a dedicated website page, the office in Omaha has a dedicated website page and Dr. John Jones has his own landing page on the site, too. Be sure that each entry in your spreadsheet has a clear, unique URL associated with it (that's the W in your NAP+W).

4. Now, once you've ensured that there is a unique landing page on the website for each entity you are marketing, be sure that the content on those pages is unique and truly helpful. Major funding and effort should go toward this step, as content quality is going to play a key role in both organic and local rankings. Advise the client that they need to make a big spend here.

5. Now, re-read Google's guidelines, paying very close attention to the guidelines for Chains, Departments & Practitioners. Be sure you are current on Google's policies as they sound like they will be highly applicable to your client. Follow these guidelines to the letter.

6. Now, do a citation audit to discover existing citations, duplicates and any inconsistency problems. Document your findings. Make corrections where necessary.

7. Getting all of the above ducks in a row will get you where you need to be to start building a unique citation set for each entity (office or practitioner), referring to your spreadsheet to be sure you've got the right NAP+W for each. Build citations on all of the major platforms. You might choose to use a service for this step, like Moz Local or Whitespark, Bright Local, Yext, etc. Given the scope of the project, a paid service could end up saving valuable time.

8. Then, follow this up by building citations on healthcare-specific entities. You may find a service that builds healthcare citations, or you may choose to do this step manually.

9. Once you've got the content right and the citations developed, the next focus will be earning reviews. These are very important, given their impact on both rankings and conversions. Be aware of any laws governing Nebraska regarding healthcare advertising/solicitation and then create a viable strategy for earning reviews on the major platforms and medical platforms for each entity you are marketing

10. All of the above represents a normal strategy for most local businesses. You need to do these things, even if they are the same things your client's competitors will be doing. Step 10 is where this gets interesting and it's what I'd call the 'competitive difference maker'. As the marketer, you need to audit how the client's direct competitors are marketing themselves in Nebraska and figure out what they either aren't doing at all or aren't doing well that your client could do to make themselves stand out. This is where you will invest creativity, time and funding once you've got the basics covered.

I've seen advertising dollars spent foolishly in the medical field. For example, a one-horse town with just one hospital in it investing in billboards encouraging people to choose that hospital for ER care. If there's only one hospital in town, people don't have a choice and don't need to be convinced to go to the hospital when they break their arm, right? That's a case I've always remembered because it seemed so unnecessary.

By contrast, I saw something that appeared to be an app for an ER in a different region with several hospitals which apparently predicted wait-times for patients, making it easier for them to pick which hospital to go to for fastest service. I didn't look into the details of this fully, but I though the convenience it provided patients was an interesting idea. I wonder how it's working out.

What you need to find is something your client can do that is going to make them more useful, convenient, accessible or beneficial to patients than their competitors are. This step 10 is where your brilliance as an adviser really has a chance to shine!

Hope this helps and good luck with the big project!

Hey There!

This is the strategy I would recommend:

1. You have 2 locations. Put them in the masthead of the website to make that first glance impression that you've got 2 locations.

2. Build a landing page for each of the 2 locations and make the content on them unique and awesome, with the complete NAP in Schema at the top for just the correct location. I do not advise putting both locations on the 2 landings pages.

3. Don't put NAP on the landing pages for the non-physical locations, and be sure there is a genuine reason for the existence of these pages. Normally, location-less landing pages are built for service area businesses, not brick-and-mortar concerns. For example, it makes good horse sense for a plumber to explain that he services cities A, B, C and D, but for a dentist, saying that his customers may come to him from cities A,B,C and D is not really natural or helpful. Unless there is some genuine connection between the business and these surrounding cities, it would likely be better to focus on different types of content development that will make the site stronger rather than watering the site down with content that's a stretch in terms of usefulness. Please feel free to share further details about this, but normally, city landing pages of the type you are describing are best for SABs, not B&Ms, unless there is a strong connection between the business and some other city in which they are not located.

4. Put both locations, in Schema, in the footer and on the Contact page. Combined with the NAP in the masthead, this should address the need to be sure customers know you've got 2 locations.

5. Definitely do link all citations (including the GMB listing) to the right landing page for each of the 2 locations. Be consistent.

Hope this helps!

Hi Niek,

You know, this is a very tricky one, as frankly, I wouldn't advise reporting the business as closed to Google, given that you don't really want to send a signal to them that the place has gone out of business, even if you're no longer operating as a local company. Normally, I'm helping business owners who want to be sure they're doing well locally, so this question is reverse engineering for me. Obviously, you can't force Google to show a different type of knowledge panel (like the one they show for Hubspot) and I do confirm that what they are showing for a branded search for your business is a local-type knowledge panel which clicks over to the local data in the Maps view, but if you were to try to close the listing, it might not be the right thing to do.

I seldom make a recommendation like this, but if I were in your shoes, I'd see if I could get Joy Hawkins at Imprezzio Marketing to consult with me. She has made a special study of particular aspects of Google listings, including closing them, duplicates, etc. She would be the person I'd reach out to for some consulting time to see if you can erase a local footprint without harming your overall signals to Google that this business is, in fact, in operation but simply not in local operation anymore. Hope this recommendation is helpful.

Hi Jonas,

If re-branding is not an option, then it sounds like you will continue to experience NAP inconsistency, of the type you've noticed and explained. Without settling on a single brand for all references across the web, inconsistency sounds unavoidable.

Hi Lauren,

Also wanted to add a link to a related discussion here:

https://moz.com/community/q/does-multiple-sites-that-relate-to-one-company-hurt-seo

Hi Jonas!

I haven't had to deal with special characters much, personally, but here's how I look at this. It's going to be most important that your website and your Google My Business page match up - so, it sounds like Google is supporting your special character, so be sure your website is branded that way, too. As for your other citations, I do feel some concerns. You may need to stick to building citations only on those directories that support your special character, or what you will end up with is a bunch of citations that are sharing your phone number, address and website URL, but not your name.

Unfortunately, even if you do stick to building citations only on platforms which support the special character, you are likely to run into a problem because of the way data is shared around the local ecosystem. For example, if you create a citation on golocal and they do accept your character, but they then push that data to das ortliche, and this platform doesn't support the character, it could automatically change the N°1 to No1, meaning that citation inconsistency could end up being auto-generated around the web for the business, simply because of the way data is shared (see: https://moz.com/learn/local/local-search-data-europe). So, basically, I think you're going to have NAP inconsistencies no matter what you do here.

Is it a big enough problem for the business to consider re-branding? That really depends on how well their business is already known. If they aren't well-known, a re-brand might make sense.

Hey Dave,

I totally know where you are coming from, and what you are describing is something I was also suggesting to clients not very long ago. It seemed like a rational solution. But a few things made me change my own position on this:

1. Google has gotten MUCH better at separating businesses at a shared location than they used to be just a couple of years ago. They used to be really poor at doing this and merged listings were a common phenomenon. They are much less common now, and I attribute this to Google's growing sophistication.

2. Google has always been really clear about wanting the real world address, and while in the past, I might have felt I had to 'help' them with suite numbers because of their known merging fiasco, I don't feel this is necessary any longer, and it's always safer to abide by the letter to the guidelines, right?

3. Google has definitely become more sophisticated at reading real-world signage. Their team can look at a streetview-type image of any business, and if they see a discrepancy in what you've listed with what's on the building, they can act on that information.

So, that's my evolution of thinking on this over the past couple of years, in a nutshell. The only grey area I personally still have about this is when the businesses are similar. For example, a muffler shop and an oil change place might legitimately be two different businesses in the real world, but could possibly be mistaken for a single business owner trying to spam Google by making categories of a business appear to be separate businesses. So I'm not 100% confident as to where we and Google are at with that scenario these days.

Hi There,

Just wanted to pop back by, as I wouldn't personally advise adding a suite number unless one actually exists. Google wants real physical addresses. So, the better course here... provided we are talking about 2 unique businesses that aren't related .... would just be to make sure the name, number and website are unique.

Good topic, and I believe what John is describing is a franchise in which there is a national website for the brand, but that individual locations of that franchise are owned by individual owners. Is that right, John?

If so, the problem with franchises is that they frequently don't give location owners much or any control over what is on their landing page of the corporate site, so in some cases, the franchise owner might want his own website so that he can work toward building the brand locally more than the franchise is going to do on his behalf. Is this the right decision? It really depends. Honestly, if it's something like a pizza franchise where menus, sales and everything else is the same across the board, I don't see a compelling reason to operate a unique local website. But, if there is a high degree of differentiation between what's being sold or done at different locations, and the business owner doesn't have any control over what appears on the corporate site, then there could be a case for the separate site. How is it with the hardware store? Is everything the same in its Chicago location as in its Denver location, or is something really different happening at the two locations .... different products, different specials, different classes, something else? That's what needs to be determined.

Hi Bob,

Not that I can share with you, no, but hopefully the ideas are enough to go on. So glad if they helped! A company whose city differentiation I've always admired is REI's. But, it's a big franchise so a somewhat different model. The way they do their city pages is quite nice, however

Hi Danny!

If you're are saying you are listing this in Moz Local as 2 distinct listings, then they can each have their own hours of operation, but if you are saying there is only 1 Moz Local listing representing both the lobby and the drive-thru, Moz Local can only accept and push out one set of hours per listing. How are you handing this on your Google My Business listing?

Hey Bob!

First off, way to go in advising the client to remove footer spam. That's really a big first step. Here are some thoughts:

1. This is not great, on the homepage:

Larry has worked with clients from Milwaukee and many other locations including Chicago and the Racine Kenosha area.  Dogs from Waukesha, West Allis and Wauwatosa have been trained at Salty Dog Farms.  Clients from Sheboygan, West Bend and Fox Point have been pleased with Larry’s dog training skills.

I understand what you're trying to do here, but it's coming across as forced. Here's how I would recommend approaching this, in a totally natural way:

• I see that Larry is located in Cedar Grove, so from a truly local standpoint, he is only 'entitled' to rank in Cedar Grove packs, right? So, we have to think of organic rankings and the only connection I can see is that his clients (the dogs) are located in various towns and cities. So, here's what you do.

You get Larry to document with text, photos, videos and whatever else you think would be good for 5 dogs he has trained or is going to train - one from each of the cities he is hoping to associate his business with - and in addition to documenting key moments of the training process, you also get a text or video testimonial from the happy owner at the end of the program.  For example, "Sunny used to jump on the table whenever the family was eating. Here he is doing that. Here's Larry training sunny that this is not good. Here's Sunny behaving at dinner time."

You create 5 new pages on the site - one for each of his 5 most important target cities. These pages are something like "Dog Training: Chicago - The Case of Sunny, The Adorable Pomeranian" and "Dog Training: Waukesha - The case of Bingo, The Tough Terrier". You'll need to carefully choose very happy customers who are willing to participate in having their dog featured in a training story.

The videos don't have to be professional, but they need to be socially shareable. If the dogs are funny/cute/weird, that would help! The stories need to be told very well.

You create these pages with a good balance of text to images/videos and, finally, to make the link to the city authentic, Larry goes to visit the dogs in their homes and takes a short video, which he transcribes to show how Sunny and Bingo are now happy dogs in their Chicago/Waukesha homes. You put this on the pages, too. It would be nice if he could meet up with the owner and the dog at some recognizable landmark in the town.

Further, you take the welfare of Chicago and Waukesha dogs to heart, and also on these city/dog pages, you do some homework and surface resources for them ... dog parks, pet food shops, most popular vets (based on reviews) in that specific city. You include these as resources for dogs there.

And, finally, think of something other than what I've suggested. Brainstorm with Larry. What would really help dogs/owners in the cities? Include this in the pages, too.

Pick the 5 most important cities and start with those. It will be a big project. Don't just aim for good, unique content - aim for 10x content and try to make it as share-worthy as possible. Fortunately, people are crazy about dogs, so this is a really good industry to try this for! What you will end up with is a stronger page than many competitors will have, that not only ties Larry to cities, but also showcases his expertise.

2. The website needs some local work. It's not clear from the first impression where this business is located. Look at the homepage. You have to scroll to the bottom of the text to get a hint of geography. Improve geo-signals, not just with text but with visuals, too. How about a photo of Larry and his dog entourage somewhere geographically recognizable?

3. Nothing about the way the business is currently being presented is immediately telling me why I should use this company instead of another. What is the key selling point? Gentle training? Satisfaction guarantee? 30 years experience? Find the message that persuades and make it much, much clearer.

4. Some usability work is needed. Logo doesn't link back to homepage, etc.

5. If the footer was spammy, have you checked out NAP consistency in the citations?

I think you know you've got a ways to go with this, Bob, but the good news is - it's a very 'friendly' industry and there is definitely hope of taking this business from where it is to where it wants to go! Hope you'll get further feedback!

Hi There!

It's generally okay to run more than one business out of the same address unless the businesses are in the same or similar category. So, for example an air conditioner repair shop and heater repair shop at the same location might fall under suspicion. But an auto garage and an accountant at the same location should have no problems provided the complete name, phone and website are distinct.

Eric's answer is great, with a very good link. Also see this thread: https://moz.com/community/q/no-location-option-in-incognito-search-settings

Hi Gayane,

We have a long recent thread on this same topic here, https://moz.com/community/q/does-multiple-sites-that-relate-to-one-company-hurt-seo , which you might like to check out

Hi Rachel,

When a business is a service area business (like a plumber, locksmith, electrician, housekeeping service, etc.) it's totally fine to build content on the website about the cities they serve, even if they aren't physically located there. It's a best practice for these types of business models to have a page on their site for each major service city. Requirements are that each page be totally unique and of high quality. The thing you want to research here is landing page content. Here's an article of mine from 2014 on this. Some of the terms are outdated due to Google changes, but the basic ideas are the same:

https://www.google.com/search?q=moz+local+landing+pages+guide&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

This is a start, but it would be a great idea to research this topic further for other ideas about the types of content you might create. However, unless the business has postal queries, including the mailing addresses on the pages will not help and might just be confusing. Hope this helps!

Hi Rachel,

Yes, that's pretty much what I was concerned about. Unless that's an office that's staffed during normal business hours, then having a GMB page for it would be a violation of Google's guidelines. It would be important to show those guidelines to the client and explain to them that Google not only has the ability to read signs on the fronts of buildings, but will likely remove the listing should they realize its just a postal address. Not only this, but the takedown of the NY listing could also negatively impact the NJ listing.

So, the very best thing you can do for this client is likely to be totally honest with him, show him the guidelines and explain that he is risking the good name of his company (in Google's eyes) by attempting to appear to be physically located in a place that he isn't. Most business owners care way too much about the future of their companies to do something like this, once they have the proper education. That's where we come in, to help clients make sound decisions based on our own education.

There are appropriate ways to market a business in locations where you don't have a physical office - ways that have no risk attached to them and that have been endorsed by Google - but having a GMB page for a mailing address isn't one them. Hope this helps and good luck to you in helping get your client a better, safer path!

So glad it helped, Rich, and hope no one drowned in that sea of words