Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Azael,

Matt has given you some great resources to explore to evaluate the strength of any page. Just to add to this, I find it can be helpful to think of your website as a book, with a new topic on each page. You want to make every page of your book worth reading, so it is worth it to devote the necessary time and resources to creating the best possible content you can on each and every page of the website. Once you've accomplished this, you can start thinking from the outside-in, regarding things like people linking to your pages. But first, you've got to develop really great pages that will merit things like time on site, links, social mentions and more.

Hey There,

You know ... this is a really interesting topic and not actually one I have a solid answer for. If we were talking about website URLs on your own site, I'd definitely be cheering for any refinements you want to make to improve UX/SEO. But with local listing URLs, honestly, the URLs are frequently so ugly, I haven't paid a ton of attention to them, nor can I recall seeing anything written about this. I mean, look at this Superpage URL for a Whole Foods Market in California:

superpages.com/bp/Sacramento-CA/Whole-Foods-Market-L0503237111.htm

It's not exactly beautiful, is it? Other directories do a much better job, but it's just never been something I've paid a ton of attention to.

What would be the goal you'd have in mind with changing your present URLs? Do you think it would make them more recognizable, shareable, friendly in some way? Curious about this. I think it was in 2013 that Google rolled out custom URLs, which I've never really heard a ton about since then (possibly because Google has recently made it nearly impossible to get to Google+ Local pages at this point!).

At any rate, this is an interesting and worthy topic and I hope more members of the community will contribute their thoughts as to whether having beautiful local listing URLs matters, and if so, how?

You are very welcome! Thanks for asking a good question.

Hi Ryan,

Thanks for the clarification. While the site is very appealing visually and I can see the work that has gone into it, I believe you have a duplicate content issue going on. For example, I cut and pasted this text from your Carefree Systems page, "An ionized pool is one of the greatest pleasures you will experience. Once" and it is coming up on multiple websites. Check this out:

https://www.google.com/search?q=An+ionized+pool+is+one+of+the+greatest+pleasures+you+will+experience.+Once&oq=An+ionized+pool+is+one+of+the+greatest+pleasures+you+will+experience.+Once&aqs=chrome..69i57.1106j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8

Let's try another. From your Ionization page text, "pool vacuums first came out. Today you probably won’t"

https://www.google.com/search?q=pool+vacuums+first+came+out.+Today+you+probably+won’t&oq=pool+vacuums+first+came+out.+Today+you+probably+won’t&aqs=chrome..69i57.1272j0j1&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8

So, this would be my first top priority with the site. Discover all duplicate content and write fresh, unique content for the pages. I also noticed that some pages have very little text on them. It's worth it to take the time to really write out the very best, most complete and engaging content you can for every single page you publish on the website.

I cannot say what percentage of lower rankings than competitors may be being caused by duplicate content, but it certainly is a red flag. Hope this insight is helpful as a place to start.

Hi Joshua,

Ah, yes, back to the old question of this I know how you feel about that and it is definitely an important decision. I'd like to understand:

• Are you running a virtual business, or does your current website represent a physical realty office?

• What would you be putting on the new site? Would this also be branded in some way with the realty office (if this is a realty office and not a virtual business)?

Hi Ryan,

I'll be happy to take a look at this with you. Would you be able to answer a couple of questions please?

• What keyword phrase are you wondering about? Is it 'pool cleaning', 'pool service'?

• Are you asking about local pack rankings or organic rankings?

• Are you adding a geomodifier (like Peoria) to your search term? If so, what is it?

• Or, are you not adding a geomodifier, but are simply searching from your device based in Peoria (or some other city)?

These details will help clarify this for the community. Thanks!

Hi John,

As Bill suggests, you're probably best off going with Google's preferred address format, as they are 'the big cheese' in Local. Then, be sure to correct all other citations, and the website content, to match that.

I would not be concerned about the business name, though it is rather long. It's true that Google does penalize spammy business names, but they don't do a very good job of catching so many of them, I'd be very surprised if this was the root of your ranking issues.

Getting your citations consistent will be a big start, but it looks like you also need to implement a program for earning Google-based reviews, and I would recommend doing a run-through of the Ultimate Local SEO Review by Casey Meraz to see if there are other areas that need improvement: https://moz.com/blog/ultimate-local-seo-audit

Hey Jack!

Good questions. I want to preface my comment by stating that this is the type of issue that is typically going to require a formal audit from a Local SEO expert to properly diagnose. There are too many factors that contribute to local search rankings for someone to be able to take a look for 2 minutes and say 'voila, here's the problem.' So, I would highly recommend that you consider hiring a local search expert for some consultation to dig down properly, but in the meantime, I can take a glance at this.

What you are describing is not an uncommon issue. If I'm understanding properly, when you are searching from a Philadelphia-based device, you are ranking well in the local pack for your core term 'garage door repair', but when you add the geomodifier, you are no longer ranking well locally. Right so far?

In a city of any good size, it is totally normal for your non-geomodified local searches to bring up different results than your geo-modified ones. What I have personally noticed about this is that the former searches tend to tighten my radius to be nearer to my exact physical location at the time of search, whereas adding a city name appears to alter the radius or industry centroid. So, in other words, if I just search for pizza, Google shows me the pizza places nearest me. If I search for 'Pizza Philadelphia' Google may choose some other centroid than me, and show me pizza places downtown, near the courthouse, near a cluster of other pizza restaurants, etc.

What I look at in cases like yours is the proximity of your company's physical address to the addresses of the competitors who are outranking you in the pack. I see your address is hidden on your Google My Business page, so I'm popping over to your website and see the following address:

13440 Damar Drive Unit F2
Philadelphia, PA 19116

Now, do this comparison:

1. Do your 'garage door repair philadelphia' search in Google and then click into the more results view. Look at where the high ranking businesses are located.

2. Open a second browser window, go to maps.google.com and look up your own address.

I think you will very quickly see that, sure enough, you are located way on the outskirts of the radius Google appears to be pulling results from for that geomodified search.

Again, this is my very quick glance at this, but I would suspect that geography appears to be playing a role (and not one you can influence) in this scenario. Other things to investigate?

-History of Google guideline violations, be they past or current

-Citation consistency and spread (glad you are using Moz Local!). Pay attention to duplicates we report!

-Google-based review count and rating

-Domain authority

-Link quality

So, that's a start, Jack, and I do recommend that you either dig deeper into research on this or consider hiring an expert who can take a more thorough look at numerous factors. Hope this is helpful!

P.S. BTW, in regards to your comments about spammy names, unfortunately, yes - these still often rank dreadfully well in Google. It's a shame. What you want to find out is whether these suspiciously generic names are, in fact, the legitimate business name or DBA of the competitor. If they are not, consider reporting them for a guideline violation. I've seen it work. But, if those are the real names, you are out of luck

It's my pleasure, and good luck with this, Silkstream!

My pleasure, Robert! I liked your answer, too

Hey Dragon!

Robert is offering good advice. I'll just add a few things here.

Different platforms have different policies on this. For example, look at this conversation on TripAdvisor about ownership changes and old reviews: http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g1-i12105-k7183031-Removing_bad_reviews_with_new_ownership-TripAdvisor_Support.html

And here's a good discussion of the details of Google's policy: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/business/Vz8WIPI95M4;context-place=topicsearchin/business/new$20ownership$20reviews

And here's Yelp's section on what to do in a variety of scenarios surrounding a change of ownership/management:

http://www.yelp-support.com/Reporting_Business_Changes?l=en_US

So, I'm mentioning the above because it will likely be worth it to handle this on a platform-by-platform basis, researching general best practices and deciding how to proceed.

Hope this helps!

Hej Aleksander! Hvordan går det?

So, here's the straight talk on citations. There are 2 main benefits to building them:

1. The more local business platforms on which you list a business, the better the chances are that customers will find you on their choice of sites. So, for example, customers who really like TripAdvisor will find your business there if you're listed there, and customers who prefer Yelp will find you over there, if you're listed.

2. Citation spread, consistency and authority are all believed to positively impact Google local pack rankings. So, the more citations you have on quality, relevant platforms, the more 'trust' it is believed Google will feel in the validity of your business data.

So far so good, right? But, it's very important to understand that all of the above is tied to you having a unique physical location in a specific place. For example, your business is located at Karl Johans gate in Oslo. You can only build citations for this specific location. You cannot build citations stating that your business is also located in Sweden, for example. But, what you should do is research which directories the search engines return most highly for you core search terms and be sure you are listed there, regardless of where the business data source is. For example, lots of US-based businesses are listed in directory called Hotfrog, which is physically located in Australia. So main takeways are:

1. Build citations on those directories that are popular in Norway for your industry's common searches, regardless of where the citation platform's company is physically located, but ...

2. Only build citations for your actual physical location. Never try to appear as though your business is physically located in any other city or country, unless you have a staffed physical office there.

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

Hi Peter,

I believe you're referring to a David Deering article on Whitespark (http://www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/50-how-to-make-your-local-business-schema-better) from earlier this year. I would trust pretty much any advice regarding citations published on Darren Shaw's company's website and I think that's a great article from David.

I'd like to know more about his/Darren's experience with seeing quicker citation pick-up using sameAs. I'm not sure if the speed they are citing comes from something Whitespark has noted handling the massive numbers of citations they manage, or if this is something David Deering is experimenting with on his own, or what have you. The folks are extremely nice and friendly up there in Canada, and if I were you, I'd reach out to David and ask him if he can tell you a bit more about any phenomena they have documented regarding use of sameAs, to see whether any gains in speed would warrant you investing in implementing this. I've not seen any side-by-side testing done, but maybe the fellows at Whitespark have done some? Great topic!

Hey There,

If memory serves, Google switched to using Most Helpful as the default setting some years ago when they partnered with Zagat. Prior to that, it had been ordered in terms of recency. I am not positive about this, but I believe 'Most Helpful' is determined via an algo that may include a combination of the authority of the reviewer + recency + review language and other factors. In your case, there is some reason that the algo thinks it is helpful for people to see those negative reviews - and I can totally see how much of a pain this is, given that the rest of your reviews are largely positive and you even have more recent, positive reviews.

I'd definitely take a look at the review profiles of the 2 people who left the negative reviews. If they've left lots of other reviews, their authority could be playing a role in this. If the reviews are, indeed, libelous, this post may help you in reporting:

http://www.localsearchforum.com/local-reviews/3931-how-remove-slanderous-google-reviews.html

Sorry not to have more definite information about this, but it's one of those algo-related things that likely puzzles many business owners and about which Google is not very forthcoming.

Hi Rosemary,

Tim is right - Schema.org's own documentation is likely the most thorough you will find. I've not heard of anyone teaching a course in this, I'm afraid. May be you'll need to create your own little help doc, linking to the various Schema tutorials and interesting 3rd party blog posts for your team to reference as needed. I'm a big believer in building these types of internal help docs for teams

Hey Mike,

In a nutshell, you can have:

1. 1 GMB page per staffed physical location

2. and, if you choose, 1 GMB page for each of the lawyers in the practice, but be sure to follow Google's conventions as to naming practices for practitioners (detailed in Kristen's response) and definitely provide a unique local number for each attorney that directly connects to him/her. Be sure all citations for the attorneys are consistent across the web and all link to a unique landing page on the website for the respective attorney, which features their complete NAP at the top.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean about backlinks to a Google Map Location URL. Can you provide an example or further explanation of this?

The decision to use Google as a social medium has become quite controversial in past months due to the removal of Google+ links and the disappearance of owner posts from any highly visible display. I recommend reading the comments discussion here for more info on this https://blumenthals.com/blog/2015/07/23/google-removing-all-non-verified-local-pages-from-plus/. While GMB is still vital to a local search campaign, Google+ as a social platform may be of questionable value.

Hi Rich,

Here's what you'll want to do:

1. Build citations on only those directories which support hidden addresses. Phil Rozek has done the most work of anyone in the industry on surfacing lists of these, which you can see here:

http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2012/08/13/can-you-rank-well-in-local-google-without-revealing-your-street-address-anywhere/

http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2013/04/22/private-local-citations-where-can-you-list-your-business-but-hide-your-address/

*Please note, those posts are couple of years old, so you may want to do some of your own research to see if there is anything different or new, but in the main, those lists should be a great start for you.

2. Build links, yes, but do be advised that these may/may not have quite the same impact as citations. They should help, nevertheless. Interestingly, the quality/authority of inbound links to the domain were judged to have the 2nd greatest impact on organic rankings in the most recent Moz Local Search Ranking Factors but only the 12th greatest on local rankings. This is pretty typical, but I think it's important to note that many Local SEOs are advising increasing focus on link earning as a result of the universal rollout of the 3-pack, making local rankings harder to win and organic rankings more important to earn.

So, there's my expert opinion Hope it helps!

Hi Dina,

Unfortunately, no, there is no way to ensure that Google will show your GMB data for a branded search with a different spelling of your name. You're not alone in asking about this (https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/business/FwNJpoLy0vE;context-place=topicsearchin/business/ampersand). If your GMB page lists you as '&', this is a very strong signal to Google that this is your business name. It could be possible to overcome this if there were enough incidental references to your business as 'and' around the web, but I can't recommend building citations this way as you really do need to pick one version and go with it.

Hey There!

Sounds like a big project. It's normally best to update current listings. I think you'll find these posts to be helpful, while bearing in mind that each platform has its own policies and options:

http://www.joyannehawkins.com/the-proper-way-to-deal-with-duplicates-in-google-my-business/

http://www.localsearchforum.com/moving-name-changes/36969-moving-business-best-practices.html

Hope these help!

Hey There!

If the helmets are actually 3 different styles (rather than just colors) then these really are 3 different products that might have differences in terms of comfort, durability, design and customer satisfaction. Given this, I would not recommend showing the reviews of Style 1 on the the page for Style 2. It's not just a matter of whether or not you should duplicate content here, but rather, ensuring that your customer is being shown reviews that speak to the exact product they are considering buying. After all, what if a customer who purchased Style 1 writes that they they really appreciate the nylon comfort lining in the helmet, but Style 2 doesn't have this comfort lining? If a customer reads the reviews of Style 1 on the page for Style 2 and is misled about that comfort lining, they will be disappointed in the product.

So, a better path here would be to form a strategy for increasing the reviews of the actual products, rather than trying to make the reviews of one product serve as testimonial for others. I think it can be helpful to put yourself in the customer's shoes here. When you're looking for a product, you'd certainly want to read reviews about it, rather than reviews of a different product, right? In the online world, where we can't see/hold/examine an item in person, our best option is to glean information from product descriptions and reviews, and we wouldn't appreciate a mixup of customer sentiment being posted with the wrong product.

Hope these thoughts are helpful!

You're welcome!

If you currently have internal links in your website or inbound links from 3rd party sources linking to the original URLs, you'll want to:

a) be sure all menus, references, etc. inside the website get updated to the new links

b) reach out to any 3rd party sites linking to these original URLs to ask if they can update the links they have to the new URLs

Hope this helps!

Yes, I like this URL structure:

www.rightfitpersonaltraining.com/city-personal-trainers/trainername

It's very user-friendly and clear, and would contain good keywords both for the service and the name or the trainer. Be sure inbound links get cleaned up, as well as internal ones, if you make this change

Hi John,

To clarify, when you say, "Half the address is cut off in the results, the city is not displayed at all. And sometimes results from a neighbouring city are shown." are you talking about organic results rather than local results? I can't recall a scenario in which name length affected address display in the local pack results, so that made me wonder if you are referring to organic results, instead, or, perhaps, are you not in the 3 pack but are seeing the cut-off address in the Local Finder view (which can be truncated, yes) when you click the 'More' link?

Are you able to share the actual searches you are performing/actual name of the business?

Hi Gary!

In addition to the Moz Recommended Companies list Erica has linked to, you might also check out the Contributors box on the annual Moz Local Search Ranking Factors survey we publish, as all participants are recognized Local SEO experts.

Hey Donald,

YP can be a good citation for a local business but I am puzzled by the sheer number of links you've found - 2500? Most businesses would not have 2500 listings (unless they are McDonald's or something like that). What is the origin of this many links from a single entity?

Hi Brian,

As others in the community have rightly indicated, sharing a phone number across multiple websites is definitely a no-no. It may help to think of it this way. You have a Google My Business listing for your company, HappyTrees.com, and it points to your website. Google's bots travel from your GMB data to your website to cross-check for accuracy. They find your name, address and phone number on the website page your GMB listing points to and say, "A-okay, this checks out."

Then they crawl further and they begin to encounter the phone number you've got on your GMB listing and HappyTrees.com on BigTrees.com, TallTrees.com and GreenTrees.com. The bot stops and says, "Wait a minute, I thought this phone number belonged to Happy Trees. What's up with this? Hmm ... my data isn't trustworthy about this business. Likely, this shouldn't be ranking as well as this competitor here who clearly has this very consistent NAP."

Maybe a somewhat cartoon-ish explanation, but I find it can be helpful to visualize how Google may react to decisions you are making in your online marketing. One of your best bets for achieving high rankings is to have utterly consistent NAP across the ecosystem, and so, the following things can dilute this:

1. Any mismatches in name, address, phone, website anywhere on the web

2. Taking a multi-site approach instead of a single site approach

3. Duplicating your content across multi sites

4. Sharing details or interlinking between multi sites

5. The use of call tracking numbers in any local search campaign except in a very few instances which are described very well in these 2 posts:

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

http://localu.org/blog/truth-about-seo-call-tracking/

Any mistakes in these areas have been described as severely damaging to a business' ability to rank well for its desired terms, so a thorough study of the history of each of these types of issues would be your best bet for protecting your company against unwanted outcomes.

Hope this helps, and glad you've asked!

Hi Rob,

This is one of those issues where I have mixed feelings. Google's John Mu definitely stated that Google views testimonials and reviews as different, and here is some discussion surrounding his comments about this:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/wY1vF2RRos4/discussion

http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local/26385-say-what-google-says-dont-add-review-markup-your-customer-reviews.html

https://plus.google.com/+JoyHawkins/posts/J6772rFU1VG

So, where do I personally fall in on this? Seeing John Mu recommend removal of markup is a pretty strong recommendation and as I always advise complying with Google's guidelines, I would typically agree with this, but at this point, the grey area for me is that I've not seen this become an official guideline, so there's some uncertainty on this. I know I am still seeing local business sites with testimonial markup and I would be surprised if they are actually being penalized for this, but, at the same time, John's comment has mostly called into question whether there is any value at all in making this effort to markup testimonials. It simply may not be worth it, but I say that with the proviso that it will not surprise me one little bit to see Google change their stance again on this next week, next month, next year.  So, that's pretty much where I am with this. Hopefully reading the above discussions will help you form an educated opinion.

Hi Adam,

Good question. Unfortunately, a storage unit would not likely meet Google's guidelines for a physical location. Rather, what you'd need to do here is list whatever your headquarters are (your main location where you answer your phone, even if that's your house) and build just 1 Google+ Local page for that, being sure to set the business as a service area business so that the address is hidden. Then, instead of going for local pack rankings for your service locations, you'll need to go for organic ones via the city landing pages you build on your website for the various cities you serve.

Hi Caleb!

That's a good question. It's very important for me to state here that Moz Local is not a ranking tool. We do not guarantee rankings in any way. Likely, you already know this, but just wanted to be sure this was clear. Whether using a tool or working manually, citations are built for 2 main reasons:

1. To build up the 'trust' it is perceived that Google places in widely available, correct business NAP+W.

2. To help customers locate your business on a variety of platforms.

#1 is believed to help you with your Google local pack rankings and #2 is believed to directly market to customers on platforms they frequently use (like Yelp or Facebook). Citations are not widely recognized as a means for improving organic or national rankings.

So, in your case, as you don't really see customers between normal business hours, citation building may not be the most important investment for your business. On the other hand, if you have a B2B relationship and your business associates are coming to your office between normal business hours, citation building could help them find you in the local packs of results. Additionally, citations are normally listed in the organic results below the main result for a branded search, so, it could be postulated that this could help B2B customers feel more secure about how established your business is. But, it would not like help you rank better for your software keywords.

*However, there is one grey area related to this that deserves mention. The majority of citations include a link to the business website. So, in a sense, citation building is a form of link building. It would be possible, then, to parlay that out into thinking that earning citations means you've earned some new links for the business, right? And links do influence organic rank, right? But, it's my gut feeling that, because the links contain in citations are not merit-based (in other words, you're not actually earning them based on something great you've done) they probably do not have a ton of value in the current, more sophisticated Google environment. Could they help at all? My guess is that they might be of minimal help, but that you would likely benefit more organically from other efforts.

Hope this helps!

Hi Rosemary,

I think you'll find this article from Local SEO Guide to be totally on-target for your client:

http://www.localseoguide.com/seriously-track-your-google-my-business-pages/

Sure thing, Chad!

Hi John,

Hmm, that does make it a bit tougher, having to put everything on the weaker domain, but I see what you mean in regards to having to go that way for branding purposes. I'm reaching out to one of our traditional SEO experts on staff for additional feedback on this. Please, check back.

Hi Li,

Google+ Local is pretty much essential for any local business. These days, direct links to the Google+ Local page are very hard to find due to cosmetic changes Google has been making to the way they present data, but, the information you provide in the Google My Business dashboard is what will then be displayed in the local packs of results, the local finder view, Google Maps and any Knowledge Panel results you have. So, yes, it's really important.

While it's true that customers now have the freedom to leave reviews whenever and wherever they wish to, there are 3 very important things to consider regarding this.

1. All of your competitors are in the same boat. They face the reality of both positive and negative reviews, and to fail to join in is likely going to cost you business.

2. The best insurance against earning too many negative reviews is awesome customer service. Do your best job in training your staff to treat customers excellently and you should mainly earn positive reviews.

3. And here's something quite fascinating. Surveys like this one from GetFiveStars indicate that a core motivation for consumers is to reward excellent service. While it's true that some consumers are also motivated to leave reviews when service was really negative, it can lessen concern to realize that the business owner is actually in a position of great control if the excellent service he provides can generate the positive reviews he wants to earn.

Hope this helps!

Hi David,

This is not an uncommon issue. See:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/business/lYNM9SSJOso

http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local/20149-knowledge-panel-shows-wrong-name-but-g-page-correct.html

and also

http://localu.org/blog/8-tips-optimize-local-knowledge-panel-google-search/

I recommend you create a thread in the Google forum (above) and if that doesn't work, that you get on the phone with Google via the contact button here: https://support.google.com/business/?hl=en&rd=1#topic=4539639

Hope this helps!

Hi John,

So, if I'm understanding correctly, both companies will now be named Company B, but there will remain 2 distinct physical locations. You have 2 options here, that I can see:

Option 1

Make a legal business name change so that you have Company B Boston and Company B Philadelphia as the legal names of the 2 companies and run them separately. Keep the 2 websites, being sure that the NAP on Company B Boston is only on site #1 and that the NAP on Company B Philadelphia is only on site #2. Do not share phone numbers or any other part of the NAP. Edit all citations accordingly.

This option will allow you to maintain the 2 websites and, hopefully, build up the strength of the poorer site over time.

Option 2

This is likely the better option. Name both companies Company B. Bring any good content aboard from the poorer website and then redirect the poorer website to the stronger one. Create a unique landing page on the new, consolidated website for City A and City B, ensuring that the addresses and phone numbers are unique. Edit the citations so that all of them for location A point to the City A landing page and that all of them for location B point to the City B landing page.

This option allows you to go with a single website, single brand and means all of the future work you do is going toward building up the authority of a single, very strong company.

Hope this advice is helpful!

Hi Chad!

I see. If you have just one physical location, I recommend the following structure:

1. Include your city of location on your main pages (home, about, contact and the landing page for that city).

2. Create a unique landing page for each service city. Be sure the content is of very high quality on these pages.

3. Create a set of services pages, describing each of your company's services. Optimize these for the service keywords.

#3 has some grey area. If it is most important for you to rank for your city of location, then include that city in the optimization of these pages. If the service cities are of equal importance to the city of location, then do not optimize these for the cities - just optimize them for the services.

And, of course, be sure you are not duplicating content on any page

Hi Eric!

Please do create a support ticket with us here https://moz.com/help/contact and one of our Helpsters will walk through this with you one-on-one. In your ticket, please share the email of your Moz account, the complete name, address and phone of your business, and the link to your Facebook Place. We should be able to help you with this!

Hi Chad,

Are you asking about a multi-location business? I believe so. If no city is more important than any other, then you would likely want to focus on the brand/keywords on the homepage and focus on the various cities on the city landing pages. If there are more details you'd like to share, feel free!

Hi Ruben,

I agree with Dmitrii that it shouldn't matter what program you use, so long as the tags are readable by Google. The only benefit I can think of for going with one service over another would be if some popular product happens to increase your chances that customers might see your stuff, but I honestly haven't ever seen that documented.

Hey Neil,

The problem here is that Google has rolled out both a new local and a new maps interface in the past couple of months, and I'm not sure what this has done to photo requirements. Here are the most recent things I could find for you, but I am not positive the numbers are still accurate. You might need to experiment a bit:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2015/02/24/google-my-business-upgrades-business-photos/

http://localu.org/blog/your-google-my-business-profile-image-your-most-important-image/

Hope this helps a bit!

Hi Brian,

This kind of thing can be really tough to diagnose in a forum. Your Google+ Local listing status should not, in my opinion, have any major effect on your organic rankings. I recommend that you look for other clues as to something else that might have changed, such as a shakeup in your industry's organic results, new issues reported in Google Search Console, a competitor who has recently done something big to jump ahead of you. You may need to hire a consultant and open up your analytics for them so that they can start narrowing down possible issues, but I would be surprised if the Google+ Local page turned out to be at the root of this change you've seen.

Hey There!

Have you checked out this recent Whiteboard Friday? https://moz.com/blog/how-to-hack-the-amplification-process-whiteboard-friday

I believe it may give you some good ideas!

Hi Ruben,

Back in 2014, Google stated that they don't want markup on testimonials on your website. You can read about this here and figure out how you'd like to proceed, given this policy:

http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local/26385-say-what-google-says-dont-add-review-markup-your-customer-reviews.html

This caused quite a bit of talk at the time, and I don't believe all sites are complying, but important to know.

Regarding third party reviews you are republishing on your site, I have not seen individual reviews coming up with stars on them for some time, but this seems to change so frequently. For example, up until recently, I was seeing Facebook listings coming up in Google's SERPs with stars on them. Now, that appears to have changed. So, I'm not sure what, if anything, you could do right now to get individual reviews posted on your website to show up with stars in the SERPs.

If anyone has seen a different pattern, please do share with Ruben!

Sounds like a good plan, Luke! Good luck with the work, and be sure the calendar is crawlable

Ah, got it, Luke! Thanks for clarifying. It seems to me, then, that what you might need is some kind of a calendar on the main city landing page for each location that links to the different class descriptions. Would this be a way to format 38 different links so that customers can understand them easily and see what's available? Just a thought!

Hi Luke,

Hmm ... that doesn't sound right to me. I may be missing something, but unless these 38 pages for each location have genuinely been created about the location and things relating specifically to it, I would not stick the NAP on there, just for the sake of putting it on a bunch of pages. What you're describing to me sounds like some kind of afterthought.

I also wouldn't change the footer around like that. It could create usability difficulties if it's changing throughout the site. Rather, my preference would be complete NAP only at the top of a single landing page per physical location, and NAP of all 8 businesses consistently in the sitewide footer. And, again, NAP of all 8 on the Contact page.This is what I consider to be the normal structure.

As for what to do with those several hundred pages, are they of really high quality? Are they city-specific or just generic to the business' topic? An example of city-specific might be something like a website for an arborist. He has a page for City A talking about how Dutch Elm Disease has hit that city. For City B, he has a page about birch tree borers that have affected that city's trees. So, from the main city A landing page, he could link to the Dutch Elm piece and for the main city B landing page, he could link to the birch borer page, as additional resources.

But if the content is just generic and you're trying to divvy it up between the cities, if there's not a strong contextual relationship, then there isn't really a good reason for doing so.

Hi Brian!

If you'll see my #3 suggestion, above:

3. If you'd like to start working toward gaining some additional visibility for other cities you serve, you will need to do so organically rather than locally, via the creation of unique content and earned links to that content.

Hope that helps!

Hey Neil,

Smart topic, and yes, you are right that Google has stopped showing the description in pretty much any relevant place. It's still showing on Google+ Local pages, but as almost no links exist to Google+ Local pages anymore, few people are likely to ever seen the description. Nevertheless, the description is information you are giving to Google about your business, even if they don't display it. So, in my opinion, it's still worth it to write a good, non-spammy description.

On a side note, I find it particularly weird that a couple of GMB dashboard updates ago, Google went to the trouble of allowing rich text in the description. That seemed like a great feature. But, it's become of rather minimal value now, with the description being all but absent from what the typical user will see.

Hi Ruben,

Just to clarify, are you talking about testimonials you've collected from clients and have published on your website or are you talking about 3rd party reviews you've collected from other platforms and are re-publishing on your website?

Hey Brian,

Donna is absolutely correct in her explanation. Just for further clarification:

1. Local business listings relate to physical location only. They do not relate to, and should not be created for, cities where you don't have a physical location.

2. You don't want to undermine the good rankings you've achieved for your city of location by accidentally violating Google's Guidelines.

3. If you'd like to start working toward gaining some additional visibility for other cities you serve, you will need to do so organically rather than locally, via the creation of unique content and earned links to that content.

Hope this helps!