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Hi Lingke!
Good feedback from everyone here. I just wanted to be sure to throw into the mix that fact that John Mueller specifically stated last December that Google does not want markup on on-site testimonials:
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/wY1vF2RRos4/discussion
Hey There VERBInteractive!
Just wanted to add a little proviso here to the advice you've been so nice to share with Peter. Adding a suite number should only be considered if a business legitimately has a suite number in the real business world, at which they receive postal mail. I believe this is what you meant, but in the past, Local SEOs have experimented with adding fictitious suite numbers in cases like Peter's. These days, no one I know is recommending this practice anymore. If the suite is real, do use it, but if fictitious, don't. Just wanted to clarify 
Hi Peter,
I'd like to be able to offer a comprehensive answer here, but without actually being able to audit the client's unique situation, we can only make guesses. What I can tell you is that, these days, Google is typically able to handle multiple businesses at the same address, provided the business is clearly unique, has a unique phone number, a unique landing page on the website and other factors like that. Here's a post on Search Engine Land about multi-location SEO problems: http://searchengineland.com/local-seo-multi-location-businesses-224732
Being very general here, your third location is likely not showing up for a branded search because:
There is a problem with the listing, like a shared phone number, a violation or NAP confusion.
The location isn't 'strong' enough in some way to be shown for the search.
Something odd has happened, like a merge.
My best advice here is that you get the client's permission to share their story over at the Google and Your Business Help forum, sharing complete details in hopes of getting a TC to take a look with you. But, I would only suggest you do this after you have ruled out some/all of the above so that you can tell the TCs your listing should be clean, strong and guideline-compliant.
Hope this helps.
Hi Chad,
You're very welcome. By 'practice areas' do you mean service areas, like a plumber physically located in Dallas but who, from that office, also serves the neighboring towns of Plano, Irving and Grand Prairie? I think this is what you mean, but please correct me if I'm wrong.
For these non-physical city pages, optimization would essentially be the same as for the physical cities, with the exception that you won't have complete NAP to put at the top of the pages. As you'll already have a strong page for each service focusing on a couple of keywords (like hot water heater repair, hot water tank repair on one page, and bathroom sink repair and sink drain repair on another page) then the focus of the set of city pages should be more generic, like a top level keyword (plumbing) + the city name.
As you only have 3 physical locations, you should be fine to include all 3 in the sitewide footer, and to use Schema. If you had more than 10, I wouldn't suggest it, but just 3 should be fine. Also, be sure that all 3 are on the Contact page, too. Hope this helps!
Hi Chad,
Good question. As you mention that there are budget constraints, here's what I would suggest for your initial contract with the client: build one website with a page for every physical city and a page for every service, and build the client a blog. Then, structure into the relationship with the client the option to continue to build out pages for the cities where he serves but isn't physically located, either later in the year or whenever he can afford to begin growing the site. Additionally, with the blog in place, the client can be empowered to begin blogging about their projects relating to both their physical cities and their non-physical ones.
I want to be sure to be clear ... even if the client had a huge budget, I would not recommend trying to build multiple sites, mini sites, etc. You want one, really strong domain with unique content on it for each of the different target cities so that everything the business does is working to build up his brand.
It may be that your client already has the budget to build a page for each office, plus pages for his major non-physical service cities, plus a page for each service, in which case, you can do it all at once. But, if money is a bit slim for starters, I'd go with a basic plan of 1 page per city, 1 page per service, basic standard pages like home, about, contact, testimonials + an on-site blog. This would be the basic 'package' any business should be able to budget for, with room to grow in future.
P.S. You might also like to check out this thread, on a similar topic: https://moz.com/community/q/concerned-about-cannibalization-for-local-seo-results-should-we-move-some-of-our-location-pages-to-a-subdomain
Hi Rosemary,
Glad you've asked. Google has just become quite specific about this practice. Here are their guidelines:
Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location as directly as possible, and provide one website that represents your individual business location.
So, in short, no. You should not link to the client's Facebook Place from their Google+ Local page. Studying the guidelines can be super helpful in researching the answers to client questions like these: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en
Google is sometimes totally clear about a policy, like the above. Other scenarios have grey areas. This one is, fortunately, easy to answer:)
Hi Rosemary,
Thanks for the clarification. For a pharmacy chain (or any other franchise) here is what would typically be appropriate:
You have a single website.This website has some basic pages like home, about, specials, contact and what have you.
In addition to this, you build a unique page of high quality for each of your locations. I don't recommend subdomains. I recommend subfolders. So, this would look like: thepharmacy.com/sugar-land for your store in Sugar Land Texas, and thepharmacy.com/dallas, for your store in Dallas. If you have more than one location in a city like Dallas, your URLs might look like thepharmacy.com/dallas-deep-ellum and thepharmacy.com/dallas-highland-park. Put the complete contact info (NAP) at the top of each page and then create strong content to make the pages interesting, helpful and unique.
From your Sugar Land citations, across the web, be sure you are linking to the landing page you've created on the site for Sugar Land, ditto for Dallas citations, etc.
This would be considered a standard methodology for any multi-location business.
How you then showcase these pages on the website needs to be dictated by the number of locations you have. You want them to be easy to find. You might check out a chain like REI.com. Look at how they are surfacing locations for their users and how they are making their pages unique. They do a good job!
Hope this helps!
Hey Rosemary,
Sometimes, local lingo can be a bit of an obstacle in having a clear conversation. I want to be sure I understand what you are saying here when you are talking about 'listings'. To me, a listing is a citation - such as your Google+ Local listing, your Yelp listing, your Bing Places listing, etc. I believe you may be talking about city landing pages on your website, instead. Is this what you are describing:
You have a multi-location business with physical offices in various locales?
You do not have a strong page on the website for each of these offices? Instead, all of your search engine results, including local pack rankings and organic rankings, are pointing to your home page?
You have a unique set of citations for each physical office? You have a Google+ Local page for each, a Bing listing for each, a Best of the Web listing for each, a Yelp listing for each, etc?
Is this all correct? Please, provide as much detail as would be helpful.
Hi Stacy,
Your question is smart! It's good you're working to understand this, and I'll do my best to explain how this works on a local level. I'm going to break this into 4 parts.
Because your business is located in Akron, your Google local pack rankings will be confined to appearing for searchers who are either searching from a device in Akron, or, including the term 'Akron' in their search ... like 'magicians akron'. You are unlikely to achieve local pack rankings for any other city than Akron, because of Google's bias toward physical location. In order for you to achieve local pack rankings in Cleveland, you would need to have a physical location there.
Because of the above, your ability to be visible for Cleveland is going to be confined to organic results rather than local ones. For starters, you will need a Cleveland page on your website. You don't have a physical location there, of course, but you can strive to create the BEST page in your industry/geography. You'll want to make this page totally amazing, with fantastic content, and link to it from the top level menu of your website. What would be natural here would be for you to thoroughly showcase some of your gigs you've done in Cleveland. Write them up, show photos, videos, testimonials from customers, FAQs, talk about Cleveland, your work there, etc. Be sure you're implementing best SEO practices in the text and tags of the page. In addition to your menu linking to this Cleveland page, link to it from other pages within the site and then begin the work of earning inbound links from third party sites. The better the page is and the more links it has earned, the better your chances of this page showing up in the organic results for Cleveland-based-or-related searches.
Once you have built this best-in-industry/geography page, consider blogging to continue to grow your 'Cleveland-ness'. I'm not very familiar with your industry, so you'll likely have better ideas than I would regarding what to blog about, but I'd think further showcasing of your events, posts about magic, posts about magic shops, magic tricks, magic venues in Cleveland would be a start. Promote the posts socially. Each one is a chance for a potential customer to end up on your site, saying, "Hey, I want to hire this magician!"
The third thing you have to consider is competition. If local pack rankings in Akron, and your best efforts to rank organically for Cleveland are not getting you the visibility and gigs you need, if may be that the competitiveness of the searches you are going for is just too tough for a new business to surmount and you will need to rely on PPC. You may only need to pay for clicks temporarily, until you've achieved local/organic visibility, or, it may need to be a permanent part of your marketing strategy.
Finally, be aware that Google is currentyl going through the greatest upheaval in Local in recent memory, converting formerly free local pack rankings to pay-to-play home service ads (see: http://searchengineland.com/google-home-services-ads-plumbers-locksmiths-san-francisco-beta-226469). In the next few years, you may be _required to pay for placement. _This could be bad, if your budget is slim. Or, for a business like yours, it could be good if Google will allow you to pay enough to appear for searches in a neighboring city where you're not physically located. Not sure if that will work that way, but it might. So, stay tuned in on these developments.
Hope this helps!
Hi Henya!
Great question! For many years, Google was not in favor of toll free numbers as primary numbers. It was standard advice that you absolutely had to use a local area code number, instead, both on Google and in all your citations. However, over the past couple of years, we saw a change with this and I began noticing quite a few listings listings (particularly hotels) with 800 numbers on them. That was very surprising.
However, I believe there is more to this story, because it seems to me that in the past year or so, I notice that I am, again, no longer encountering 800 numbers with any frequency in the 3-packs, hotel packs, local finder, etc. Do some of your own searches for hotels boston, hotels santa fe, hotels dallas, etc. and look at the 'more' link that takes you to the local finder results. You'll likely see all local area code phone numbers. Whether these are the result of the business owner consciously ensuring that their primary number is local, based on older version of Google's guidelines, or because Google is somehow manually overriding the suggestion of a toll free number as primary, I'm not sure. I suspect it's the former. Nevertheless, there is nothing about toll free numbers in the guidelines, which read:
Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location as directly as possible, and provide one website that represents your individual business location.
So, officially, Google is not forbidding toll free numbers, but personally, I would still avoid using them if possible, because of the following:
A local area code number is a signal of 'localness', just like a zip code. You always want to appear as local as possible.
Moz Local Search Ranking Factors found 'Listing 800 Number as Only Phone Number on My Business Page' to be the 16th most negative ranking factor. So, there is some negativity suspected regarding 800 numbers, though the language here is referring to having this as your only number. The factor does not speak to having 800 as primary and local as secondary, but still, there is still some perception out there as toll free numbers being negative.
Finally, unless the business is something like a hotel, I do believe that using an 800 number as primary could potentially make you less powerful than competitors who are using a local number.
So, in a nutshell, if your client has a local area code phone number - yes, I do feel it would be worth it edit citations to list it as the primary number and relegate any toll free numbers to the secondary field.
Hope this helps!
My pleasure, Brian! Good luck with your business!
Hi Brian,
Yes, you can (and should) be using the location landing pages on the website as the website links in your citations for a multi-location business. So, your citations for your business in Chicago can link to mycompany.com/chicago and your citations for your business in Denver can link to mycompany.com/denver. Just be sure that:
You are consistently linking ALL Chicago citations to the Chicago landing page on the website. Don't link some to that page, some to the homepage and some to other pages. Consistency is key.
Be sure each of the location landing pages is of very high quality, with complete NAP at the top (preferably in Schema) and very good content. No thin, duplicate content.
Be sure each location has its own local phone number.
Hope this helps!
Hi KJ,
Agree with the consensus here that building mini sites is not the right approach. Take whatever energy you would have put into developing these and channel it into making the landing pages for your locations the best in their industry/towns. I was just watching a great little video by Darren Shaw in which this is one of the things he covers. Might be worth sharing with your team:
http://www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/70-website-optimization-basics-for-local-seo
And earlier this year, Phil Rozek penned some pretty fine tips on making your pages strong:
I am curious about one element of your original post. You mention, "We have been having a terrible time in the local search results for 20 + locations." I wasn't sure whether you were saying that you've never done well in them, were doing well in them until something changed (such as the universal rollout of Local Stacks) or something else. With the latter, I would guess that a huge number of businesses are now struggling to cope with the fact that there are only 3 spots to rank for any keyword, necessitating greater focus on lower volume keywords/categories, organic and paid results. Everybody but the top 3 businesses is now in this boat. Very tough.
Hey Christopher,
Unfortunately, Google doesn't have a function for setting seasonal dates/hours. Here's a recent thread from the Google forum, including a response from a Top Contributor:
Here's another:
It's my memory that Google once forbid the inclusion of seasonal businesses in their local product, but this language no longer exists in their guidelines. If you report the business as closed, then you will likely lose rankings ... just not a great situation. Is there no staff at the location at all during the off-season? Not even to take phone calls?
Just speaking from personal experience on this as a consumer rather than as a marketer - some jingles are annoying in actual sound, but regardless of that, I can remember word-for-word, note-for-note, jingles I heard 30 years ago, some for businesses that are no longer even in business. And, in chatting with peers, you start singing one of those jingles and everyone joins in, laughing, because they have these burned into their brains as well. In fact, if someone mentions the name of a business, I find it's very common for someone else to chime in with the jingle, just because they associate the brand with the tune and find it amusing that they do so.
Now, I was too young to be a consumer of anything more than dolls and Kit-Kat candy bars 30 years ago, but these days, my family listens to the radio at least once a week to hear football games. One jingle we hear over and over again is a really simple one for an auto parts store. It says, "Oh, Oh, Oh, O'Reilly - Auto Parts!". We've noticed where the local O'Reilly auto parts store is, we sometimes can't keep ourselves from singing the jingle if we notice the sign while driving by and if we need to replace our windshield wipers this winter, you can bet that's the first auto parts store that will come into our heads. We don't have a similar jingle in our heads for Joe's Auto Parts or Bob's Auto Parts because they're not on the radio. Songs are really magical. Listen to how simple this jingle is, but how the repetition of the word 'Oh' makes it feel energetic and fun to mimic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkSDGk67IWI
So, again, speaking purely from personal experience, I do hear jingles, I do remember them if I hear them frequently enough, and they do make me feel sort of amused about businesses ... and, while feeling amused, I've given space in my brain over to the business to be recalled when I need their product, because their advertising has put a tune to a spot in the local business landscape where I live.
Hi Bob,
I second Russ' suggestion regarding real-world networking in your community. Chances are, you know more about marketing than most of your neighbors and if you can start using that expertise to benefit the community, the people you help will hopefully begin referring you to friends and family. Are there opportunities for you to present at local business meetings, such as chamber of commerce events? Could you host a seminar, geared toward a specific sector of the business community? Additionally, begin blogging regularly about the local business scene. Talk about important industries. Give free advice. Make friends.
From a purely local (as in Google local) standpoint, you are allowed to list your business only if you make face-to-face contact with your customers. Making that part of your business model will enable you to build citations, most of which are free. With good citations, reviews and the right organic strength, you can work toward local stack rankings.
Hope these thoughts are helpful and good luck to you!
Hi Rosemary,
The dust has definitely not settled. Linda Buquet and Joy Hawkins have been documenting numerous different Snack Pack styles. Here are some links to get you started on this:
Linda has quite a few threads on her forum regarding the Snack Pack, so you might comb through those to see if anyone has reported what you are seeing regarding Android vs. Apple. I can't recall, per se, seeing that mentioned, but there has been so much news about this, it's hard to remember everything If no one else has documented it, maybe you'd like to!
From what I've seen, I don't believe Google has settled on a preferred style of these yet, hence the variations being reported. Stirring times!
Hey There,
No I wouldn't worry about that. Most optimized local business sites have complete NAP in schema in the footer and then that is repeated on the Contact Page. I really doubt there's any problem with this.
Hey J.P.,
I've heard good things about Moz Local, too
However, we won't push specifically to hospitality directories, as we focus mainly on the big aggregators.
I believe Whitespark's citation building service will do niche-specific directories. You might want to check them out: https://www.whitespark.ca/citation-building-submission-service
Hi Taysir,
Those are Google's new Home Service Ads. The rollout began with plumbers and locksmiths. Check this out:
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2015/07/30/googles-home-service-ads-questions-and-observations/
I think you'll find it just what the doctor ordered in understanding these results!
Hey Michael!
Very good and creative tips from Moosa and Umar about trying to track this down, so I'll just respond to the part of your question dealing with what to tell clients.
100% consistency may not be a realistic goal for any business, precisely because of a scenario like yours in which old or bad data ends up on a directory you just can get connected up with. In such cases, judging the overall importance of the directory in question becomes key. If the directory is ranking in the top few pages for your client's name, then incorrect NAP there warrants making every possible effort toward resolution. But, if it's an obscure result, make normal efforts and then let it go at that if you can't find any way to correct it. Document your work for clients and pre-set expectations that you are shooting for high consistency, but not perfect consistency. Some of the smartest citation building experts I know have told me that 100% consistency is not only frequently impossible, but not even actually essential.
Hope this helps!
Hi Derek,
You're totally fine using Schema any place you have your complete NAP. For the rest of your questions, I think you're going to absolutely love this Phil Rozek post, which digs deep into which elements to use:
Hope that hits the spot!
Hi Joao!
This is a really good topic and you've received some very important advice from both Matt & Bryan.
Your situation is exactly why my ultimate preference is to have local businesses choose a domain name that reflects their real-world brand rather than focusing only on keywords. Your business could eventually expand to include, lawn care, yard maintenance, landscaping, snow removal, tree trimming, controlled burning and who knows what all if you are growing! You can't fit all of that into a domain name. But, if a business name is TidyYards and the domain name is simply TidyYards.com, then the business will have to focus on the strength of things like its content rather than hoping that an EMD will do the trick. I definitely understand that Google is still rewarding keyword-focused domains, but to me, this is a holdover from their less-sophisticated past that I believe will recede over time. In sum, I think building a strong real-world brand is more important than keywords in your domain. If you're considering starting from scratch, you might want to throw that idea into the mix.
You are 100% spot on about needing to be sure if you change this in one place, you must then change it in all. Good advice, Bryan!
You're very welcome, David, and good luck!
Hi David,
This is one of those questions that it is really difficult to resolve in an informal forum. These types of things can require logging into dashboards, doing a lot of research etc. Now, you've already taken the direct route of trying to show this to Google. I recommend 2 things:
If you don't see the issue resolve within 2 weeks of speaking to Google reps, call them again.
If that doesn't work, take this to the Google help forum (https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/business), be prepared to share all information and make a serious plea for a TC or staffer to assist you there.
If neither of these methods work, hire a heavy hitting SEO as a consultant. He/she may need to dig deep, given the fact that Google pulls data from a variety of sources, meaning that there can be so many variables in a case like this.
Additional reading while you're waiting for help:
http://localu.org/blog/8-tips-optimize-local-knowledge-panel-google-search/
http://localu.org/blog/local-knowledge-panel-doesnt-show-google-can/
Hope this helps!
Hi Anthony,
Normally, my answer would be the same as the one given by Bryan. The simplest path in most multi-location business scenarios is to have 1 page per city and 1 page per service, rather than trying to cover every possible geo/keyword combo. However, most people ask about this before they have invested so much time and money in the development of the site and its content.
Because you've already made the investment, this is what I would suggest you evaluate with the decision makers at the practice:
Is the content simply mediocre or is it actually duplicate content?
If the former, can you envision a way to take these pages to a new level of usefulness? For example, what if, on these pages you currently have, you showcased all of the free or inexpensive auxiliary local resources for mental health? I'm thinking of group therapy, mental health department, serene places to walk for meditation, free yoga or tai chi resources, elder advocacy groups, healthy and fun things for children, lectures, seminars, outdoor concerts, community gardens, pet shelters and anything else you could think of that could make a meaningful difference in patients' mind and body health. Because you would be doing this based on the symptoms of certain conditions and the resources of a given city, each page would, by its very nature, be unique and helpful. You would have, in fact, greatly enhanced the hyperlocal value of each page.
But, if the content is duplicative, that's another matter as it could really be hurting the business and not doing much for the practice's clients. You might, in this case, decide to dismantle a structure that probably shouldn't have been built in the first place and go with the 1 page per city/ 1 page per service model, perhaps even implementing some of the hyperlocal suggestions I've brainstormed to improve the city pages, the health condition pages or both. You could cull the duplicate pages for their best work, build fewer, much better pages instead using some of the old work and greatly adding to it and end up with a very strong but slimmer site.
I think either path is viable, depending on the resources available to you. Hope this helps!
Yes, that's the knowledge panel.
Hey Pixel,
I wanted to mention that, for some reason, every time I've tried to access your site in Firefox, I get a Server Not Found error, though I can access it fine in Chrome. Something you might want to look into.
The site is lacking some very basic Local SEO best practices, including but not limited to:
No complete NAP in footer
No complete NAP on contact page
Title tags are not optimized with reference to San Jose
Homepage text also makes no reference to San Jose or any geography at all
So, while whomever built the site has made some good efforts at visual appeal, this business is hardly coming across as local at all, due to a lack of basic best practices.
In addition to working on the optimization of the site, I would suggest running the business through our free Check Listing tool (moz.com/local/search) to start assessing the state of citations.
Looks like there is good room for growth in this area:
And earning reviews will be super important. I'm seeing zero on Google or Yelp.
Here's a good post from Casey Meraz on auditing local businesses: https://moz.com/blog/ultimate-local-seo-audit
There is great opportunity for this business to improve - lots to do! Good luck to you!
Hey Richard,
I'm sorry I didn't see this until today. Yes, Google definitely seems to be demoting Google+ in a big way. Recommended reading:
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2015/08/07/thoughts-about-the-new-local-stack-display/
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2015/08/06/7-pack-becoming-3-pack-with-mobile-like-snak-pack-rollout/
I'm not sure I'm totally following your last paragraph about the national agencies. Are you saying they no longer seem to feel G+ is as important as they used to? Sorry, not quite sure that's what you're explaining, but I can see why people would feel that way, given that G+ links have become so invisible. Nevertheless, the Google My Business dash remains as important as ever as the main source for the data now featured in the new Local Stacks/Local Finder and the other types of Snack-Pack style results. So, the dashboard is still important, but the front-end display represents a genuine departure from what we'd grown accustomed to. Many Local SEOs feel the Local Stack is a step toward a paid inclusion model and this could certainly be true.
Glad you used my favorite little trick - looking up the business on Moz Local to get to the Google+ page. Works like a charm every time
Thanks for starting a good discussion!
Hey Dino,
Are you able to share the website? It would definitely help the community provide specific, rather than generic, suggestions. If you can't, that's okay, but you are welcome to share the URL here if you're comfortable with that and will probably get much more actionable advice by doing so.
In the meantime, I'm wondering about your chosen category. I think of a garbage collection service as a city service that picks up my recycling cans ... not something I would call to haul away an old car or something like that. I noticed that Google offers these 3 categories:
Junkyard
Salvage Yard
Auto Wrecker
In addition to Garbage Collection Service, which you mentioned you're already using, I also see a category for 'Garbage Dump Service'. I wonder if that's an important one for you to know about as the synonyms are very similar to those used for Garbage Collection Service:
pick up, pickup, recycling, trash, pick up, pickup, recycling, trash, pick up, pickup, recycling, trash
So, some interesting possibilities, but without seeing the site itself and looking at the results, best I can do here is suggest you do a full audit of the website. Here's a great post for that: https://moz.com/blog/ultimate-local-seo-audit
Hi Amanda,
What Moosa has explained is super important. Duplicating content across 2 different domains is putting the business at risk for duplicate content filters. General best practice for a mutli-location business is to build a single domain featuring all of your data and include in it a page for each physical location or each major city you serve. This post should help you plan a better marketing strategy:
https://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide
Hope this helps.
Hey Donna,
Agree with you. So much white space on so many SERPs, it looks like a blizzard. One thing I've been thinking about regarding this, as many Local SEOs are speculating that this could be a step on the path to monetized packs and also considering Google's move into the home service fulfillment arena - what if we will see an iteration of this in future where you have to pay to get your address/phone to show? And on mobile, what if Google started charging for clicks on the phone icons? I wonder...
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!
Hi Travis,
Yes, I'm seeing phone icons on mobile, but not on desktop ... and no addresses.
Hi Steven,
There is no ideal length. Different platforms have different minimum and maximum requirements, and if you're using Yext, I would expect they have that, too. In Moz Local, we have a 250 character minimum, which is pretty average. In manual citation building, it's long been considered a best practice to write a number of descriptions of varying lengths for use on various platforms, but with the advent of automated citation building tools, you typically would just write one. So, I'd say 250 minimum, but definitely write more if there's more to say. Be concise, but take the time to highlight the key points you feel will influence customers (or the congregation, in your case!) most. Hope this helps!
Hey Sam,
I started a thread on this over here: https://moz.com/community/q/the-local-stack-rollout-a-new-day-in-local
Please, pop over.
Hey There, all my fellow Local SEOs!
Yesterday morning, I was searching for a car wash and was really puzzled to see my search return snack pack-style results, given that I wasn't looking for a restaurant, hotel or an entertainment venue. Sure enough, what I had run into was the rollout of Google's latest local SERPs, which for the sake of clarity, let's call the Local Stack. This is happening in multiple countries and across thousands of keywords and your local clients (or your local business) are likely to be affected by it, so I thought I'd post a heads-up here.
Good Reading:
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2015/08/06/7-pack-becoming-3-pack-with-mobile-like-snak-pack-rollout/
That last one has a bunch more great links in it.
In June, I wrote a post here on Moz itemizing my concerns about the Snack Pack and its impacts on the hospitality/entertainment industries. Now, these same concerns are coming to me local-search-wide, with the rollout of the Local Stack. My early days key points from looking at the new Local Stack:
No phone numbers without clicking through to Local Finder, which I consider to be really poor usability, given the invention of the cell phone and the way we use it call businesses.
No links to the Google+ Local page, meaning that consultants like ourselves may have a really hard time explaining the value of creating a Google listing when so few SERPs will now actually lead to that listing.
3 chances to rank when your city has dozens or even hundreds or businesses in a single industry seems next-to-impossible. It's not a good reflection of the diversity of the business scene in the real world. There aren't 3 Italian restaurants in San Francisco or 3 lawyers in Boston. There are scores of them. Google's Local Stack is a poor reflection of the real world, in my view, and makes every city look like a one horse town.
On the other hand, the baldness of the Local Stack is making the 'more' link at the bottom of it really jump out at me, and if you click through, up to 20 businesses will show with the Local Finder. So, I'm a bit torn on this. Are the 4 businesses that just fell out of prominence with the removal of the 7 pack worse off or are 13 businesses now jumping for joy because they are in a sort of pack today that they weren't in 2 days ago? I guess this depends on how willing consumers are to click that 'more' link.
Given the meagerness of the Local Stack, organic is likely a great deal more important now for every local business, but I'm concerned by SERPs I'm looking at which are mainly taken up by directories rather than any actual local business websites.
So, those are some first thoughts from me and I would totally love to hear yours on this thread as you are trying to assess how you see this impacting your clients or your business. It's definitely a new day in Local!
Hi Lior,
Would you be able to share a couple of things with me, so I can be sure I'm looking at the right stuff.
The main keyword you are searching for when you are looking at how these branches rank
Links to the Google+ Local pages for both locations.
I'll gladly take a look!
P.S. Unless your proposed building number is a real-world address, don't add it. It needs to be a real address, where you can receive mail.
Hi Ricky,
Your gut feeling on this rings true with me. Not a good practice. Google's review policy states:
We’ll remove content that violates any of the content policies below:
So, Google's policy explicitly states that they will remove content they feel was created by any person misrepresenting themselves as a customer in order to artificially inflate the reviews of another business. This indicates that Google has a way of assessing this.
Facebook makes similar statements, including:
Ratings and reviews must follow the Facebook Community Standards, focus on the product or service offered by the Page and be based on personal experience. Reviews that don't follow these guidelines may be removed.
So, again, this platform is emphasizing that a review must be based on personal experience and may be removed by Facebook if it doesn't conform to this policy.
You'll find similar policies on pretty much any major review platform.
Here's the most recent case of crackdown I can think of: http://www.localsearchforum.com/internet-marketing/32983-yelp-warns-its-users-shows-evidence.html
And Yelp has sued business owners for alleged fake reviews: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/09/yelp-sues-small-san-diego-law-firm-over-alleged-fake-reviews/
And NY law enforcement has gotten into the act on occasion as well: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/23/technology/give-yourself-4-stars-online-it-might-cost-you.html?_r=0
And Google has been quoted as saying, "While we take down thousands of false entries each month, there is a small subset of bad apples out there." see: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/yelp-google-and-urbanspoon-targets-for-fake-reviews-1.2826154 (emphasis mine)
And Mike Blumenthal has written some posts on this I've never forgotten: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/08/09/in-search-of-the-purchased-google-review-yours-for-1-40-ea/
So, both on-line and legal consequences can be the result of spammy review practices. These are just a few cases I've thought of. I'm sure you can find a ton more. My take on this is that most platforms have policies precisely targetting fake reviews, but their ability to actually police this stuff is likely not up to the task, considering the prevalence of spammy activities like the review farm you've been looking at. Hope this helps!
Hi Corn!
Important question. Definitely do read Google's guidelines https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en which are very clear on this point:
Use a precise, accurate address to describe your business location. PO Boxes or mailboxes located at remote locations are not acceptable.
Google's guidelines are fundamental reading materials for all Local SEOs and local business owners. Study them, share them with your clients and check back on them periodically for updates, which tend to occur one or more times a year.
You might also like to read a similar thread going on here regarding virtual offices:
https://moz.com/community/q/virtual-offices-google-search
Your client's options are:
To wait until they open a physical office before participating in Google's local product
Use their home address in creating their listing but then use the options to have it hidden, in which case, Google will only display the city and phone number ... not the street address
But, using a mailbox of any kind is definitely not permitted. So glad you've asked!
Hi Christina,
Unfortunately, Google does not always reflect how things work in the real world. Their policy on virtual offices is clear and they are also not in favor of re-directing phone numbers. Home-based business are not the same as virtual offices. Google make provisions for home-based businesses via the hide address function in their dashboard. The owner is providing their real home address but then opting to have it hidden. A virtual office is providing an address at which the business isn't actually located, and this is what Google does not want. But, it's always up to the business owner to interpret the guidelines, assess risks and go with the strategy they feel confident with.
I can completely understand your position that Google 'should' see things a certain way. There are many things Google does with which I don't personally agree and their weird treatment of SABs over the years has always vexed me, but, it won't do me any good to insist that Google should see things my way if, in going against their stated wishes, I end up penalized. Google isn't interested in how I think things should work. They are interested in how they think things should work, and if I want to win the game using their system, I consider playing by their rules a prerequisite for participation.
Hi Mark,
I don't know a ton about product reviews beyond the concept of them existing within Google Shopping. See: http://adwords.blogspot.com/2014/07/helping-shoppers-decide-with-product.html
This is completely different than local business reviews, which are loosely associated with G+ Local pages and appear in the Local packs of results.
If you wish to re-purpose local business reviews from various platforms (Google+ Local, TrueLocal, Linkedin, etc. as you mentioned) you will need to research their policies to discover whether they permit re-use of their content on your website. I've linked to a Mike Blumenthal post, above, that fully explains Google's policy, but you would need to research the policies of any other platforms to see if they permit re-publication on your website.
In addition to this, some other sources will also show in-SERPs review stars in Google's organic results. Facebook is an example of this: http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2015/06/29/facebook-reviews-now-get-you-rich-snippet-review-stars-in-the-local-search-results/
Hope this helps!
Hi Jes,
You can approach this in the manner you've specified with a page for each city/service combo, but what I find is the challenge there is coming up with really valuable content in this scenario. My preference is to go with:
A page for every city
A page for every service
In other words, let you your service pages be about the services, because they are the same services regardless of where they are rendered. If you've only got 2 locations, you can of course mention those 2 cities on the service pages, but the main keywords on them should relate to the service. Then, have separate pages for each of your cities. Link to everything from the top level menu.
That being said, if you've got awesome writers and large resources, you could go with the approach you've specified to cover every possible keyword-city combo, but my advice would only be to go this way if you have the budget/available talent to make each of these pages amazing instead of so-so. What you definitely don't want is a big set of thin or duplicate pages that have been created solely to cover the combos rather than to educate and help the user.
Hope this helps!
Hey Umar!
Really appreciate you taking the time to respond to this thread, but I'd urge you to consider that just because businesses may be getting away with the violation today, doesn't mean that they'll continue to do so tomorrow. Bending Google's rules to suit one's circumstances may not be a sustainable approach to local search marketing, given the numerous crackdowns we've seen over the years. They happen quickly and can sometimes be all but impossible to recover from.
Hi There,
Very good question! While you can use any address you like on your own website, virtual offices are expressly forbidden by Google's guidelines. See: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en The guidelines state:
Use a precise, accurate address to describe your business location. PO Boxes or mailboxes located at remote locations are not acceptable.
While Umar is correct that many companies are violating Google's guidelines, (and, yes, getting away with it!) the problem with doing something you know Google doesn't want is that you never know when consequences may arise. If this were your own business and you were willing to take the risk of a possible takedown of the listing, then it would be a risk/benefit question you would need to carefully consider. It's different when it comes to advising a client. Most good Local SEOs will agree that advising a client to violate a Google guideline isn't the right thing to do. Some folks will argue that they can profit short-term from a guideline violation, and that's likely true, but most clients care so much about their businesses that they are looking for advice that will help them both now and in the future - they want a sustainable marketing strategy.
Highly recommended reading on virtual office takedowns: http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-important/26844-busted-warning-attorneys-regus-non-compliant-offices.html
You've asked an important question. It's these types of questions that can help us to be so useful to our clients!
Hey There!
I also wonder if you are referring to the knowledge panel. If so, here's a good post on this:
http://localu.org/blog/local-knowledge-panel-doesnt-show-google-can/
If this isn't what you're asking about, would you be able to provide some additional details to help the community better understand your question? Thanks!
Hi Mark,
Google's rule is 1 listing per physical location. So, if you've opened a new office (congrats!) that means starting a second, totally separate listing on Google. I believe you'll find Google's guidelines to be a big help: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en
Just be sure:
This is a physical location with in-person contact with customers
You have a unique local area code phone number for the new branch.
Hope this helps!
Hi Mark,
Local business review stars do show in the search engine results, either for branded search results or for local search results. Last time I looked into this, I believe the threshold was having earned 5 Google reviews for in-SERPs stars to typically appear in the results, but I also recall that there were some cases in which entities with less than that were getting stars. That might have had something to do with lost reviews. Google also sometimes shows in-SERPs stars for other platforms ... Facebook comes to mind.
In terms of bragging about reviews of your business, you just need to review each platform's policy regarding this. I'd linked to Mike Blumenthal's article regarding Google's policy regarding re-using your reviews on your website, but you'd want to do similar research for any other platform to be sure it's okay for you to re-publish reviews from their site onto yours.
Hi Mark,
Congrats on the good reviews your client has earned. That's terrific! The only URL that I know of is the one you access via the reviews link in various places. This won't take you to an individual URL but will take you to the disembodied popup of Google reviews. Here's an example:
You'll notice that when you click on that, there is a brief delay, but then the popup of reviews should load.
Is this what you're asking about?
Regarding re-using Google reviews, I think this is the most recent post I've read on this:
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/04/24/using-google-reviews-on-your-website/
Hi Marcus!
I highly recommend a full audit in this scenario. Here is a super post on this:
https://moz.com/blog/ultimate-local-seo-audit
In a big city like yours, in that industry, competition is going to be tough, and there are several hundred local search ranking factors to consider. You need to start at the bottom of this and work your way up through as many factors as possible, as well as doing a competitive analysis to see how competitors are outranking your client. Then, create a strategy to move the client up.