Hi There!

Your first link is taking me to a page not found page.

While I'm not certain why your Hyberbad page isn't showing up, I do want to mention that the page is striking me as over-optimized. In a very limited amount of text, the word Hyberbad is appearing more 15 or so times. Some work is ahead of this business in improving the quality of their content, ensuring there is no duplicate content, being sure the pages are seen as purposeful instead of as doorway pages. I would suggest improving the quality of the pages, toning down optimization and linking to both service locations from your top level menu.

Hope this helps!

My pleasure! And wishing you best of luck!

Hey There!

I totally get how this can be complex. While I think it's important to mention the areas which you virtually serve, what I, personally, don't find to be a good strategy is one in which any business that serves nationally tries to create a page for every city. The services they are offering across the country are the same, and the only reason to create a page for each city would be if the services are somehow different from city to city. This is different than a local business that has to describe their services in a small handful of cities to make it clear where they will travel to. For a virtual/national/international business, I don't know of a way to create unique content for hundreds, thousands or millions of cities and towns when the service is the same for all.

There needs to be another approach to clarifying countries served than a city-by-city approach. But, I wouldn't be the expert on this, because I work primarily in the Local SEO field. I could see, if you serve 3 different countries, having a unique page for each country explaining hours or operation, languages spoken, etc., ... but not every city. It doesn't seem scaleable or realistic to me to do this this way for a virtual business.

I'm going to ask for some additional input from our team from staff members with more experience in national/international SEO than I have. Please stand by, and thanks for asking a good question!

Hi Edward!

Thanks for the further details. So, yes, you are correct. In order to participate in typical local search marketing activities, you must have both a physical location and make in-person contact with your customers, whether at your location or at theirs. Barring this, you have 3 main options open to you:

1. Organic SEO - creating content, earning links, optimizing pages, etc. geared to toward various regions for which you are hoping to rank organically, because you will not be able to rank in the local packs of results. It's critical here that anything you create be of the highest possible quality and unique. No duplicate content, spammy links, doorway pages, etc.

2. PPC - Paying to appear with ads in various regions, in which case, you can appear in any city or state for which you're willing to pay.

3. Social Outreach - gearing your social campaigns toward specific regions for visibility on social platforms.

Hope this clarification is helpful!

Hi Edward!

Would you be able to fill in with a bit more detail here? Are you talking about a local business that makes in-person contact with clients in specific cities in AU, NZ and USA? Do you have an office anywhere in these countries to which people come and have face-to-face contact with staff? Or, is this a virtual business, perhaps providing services via the web or phone?

The more detail you can provide, the better help the community can give. Thanks!

Hey there!

Sorry I was slow to pick this up again. I think the issue here is likely deeper than what you do with Schema. Schema, after all, simply exists to make NAP a bit clearer. I think the core question here is whether you are genuinely running two different businesses, in which case, you would have a unique legal business name, unique phone number and website for each. Google can generally handle two businesses occupying the same address. I don't recommend, at this point, creating a fictitious suite. Represent the business/es exactly as in the real world. Google has gotten better at not merging the listings of truly distinct companies occupying the same address provided all other signals besides the address are unique.

What Google would have a problem with would be a single company promoting itself as two companies. So, for the sake of example, let's say you are a landscaping materials company called Greenscape. You deliver compost, gravel, etc. You also do custom landscaping consultations. So, you've got two services (product delivery and consultation) operating out of your site at 123 Main Street. In this scenario, you are only entitled to 1 Google+ Local page. You aren't entitled to one for the delivery service and another for the consulting service. A business that decided to bend the guidelines on this would be in danger of punitive action on Google's part, which could hurt both listings they've created. I think the guidelines are very clear about this.

The only other proviso here is that merging is a possibility, even if it seems to be less of an issue now than formerly. So, there is a possibility that even if you are running two absolutely distinct businesses out of the same building, Google could mix them up, and the chance of that happening is likely greater if there is some unifying factor between the two businesses (two podiatrists, two auto service businesses, etc.). So, do be sure you're doing everything possible to keep two companies in this scenario distinct, including different legal business names, phone number, websites, citations and, of course, totally unique content.

Hope this helps!

Hi KS!

Unfortunately, that's not really a practice I would recommend to my clients at this point. There's been some indication in recent times that while Google is completely fine with a single-location home-based business, it's very easy for them these days to see that a string of houses is being used to indicate locations in more than one place. It's my gut feeling that they don't approve of this practice and that they would take action against Google+ Local listings created in this scenario. But, in any case, your lack of in-person contact with customers means that the business does not qualify for Google+ Local listings or local pack rankings, regardless of whether you have legitimate business offices or are using the addresses of your friends. So, this may be kind of a moot point. Virtual businesses need to compete organically and utilize PPC, social media, video marketing, etc. to earn visibility - but Local SEO is not the right marketing discipline for them.

Hope this helps!

Hi KS!

Thanks for the clarification on this. So, if you are not making in-person contact with your customers, whether here or abroad, then this means that the business is not a 'local' business in the eyes of Google. Face-to-face transactions are the prerequisite of this particular type of marketing. So, as you would not be able to go the local business route of building a Google+ Local page for each location in hopes of ranking in Google's local packs of results, then your two options would be:

1. Building organic content on the website that showcases your virtual services in each of your target cities and countries.

2. Participating in PPC that enables you to pay for placement in your target cities and countries.

I'm afraid international SEO is not my area - the links Patrick has shared will be your best bet for learning about this marketing discipline. Wishing you best of luck!

Hi KS!

I'm responding on your other thread. Thanks for asking!

Hi KS -

Got your note on my older post and so am popping by here. I have some questions.

1. Are we talking about other countries ... or maybe other counties? I want to be sure I'm understanding if the business is national or international.

2. Are you meeting face-to-face with customers in the various cities and countries? Can you describe this in as much detail as possible?

Hey There,

My thinking is along the same lines as Calin's here. Assuming that it's your NAP you're encoding with Schema, why are you putting the same NAP on more than one website? It could be I'm not quite understanding the scenario you're describing.

Hi Bob,

I think Patrick is on the right track with this. If you have a legitimate connection to these other companies, it won't hurt you to be internationally listed. What I can't say is whether it will help you, but I don't feel that it will hurt you in any way.

Hey Jarrett,

Three things immediately come to mind regarding this.

1. Your Edmonton location is simply more powerful in Google's eyes than your Vancouver location. Does it have more content, more citations, more reviews, an older web presence or other things along those eyes that could be causing Google to consider the former location more authoritative than the latter?

2. You have NAP inconsistency, causing your two locations to be confused with one another. To start troubleshooting this, take different elements of your name, address, phone number and website for the two locations and put them together in Google's search. For example, you might find the Edmonton address mixed up with the Vancouver phone number on some platforms, and this would need to be fixed.

3. Your website should have 1 unique page for your Edmonton location and another unique page for your Vancouver location, featuring complete NAP and relevant content. Your Google+ Local pages and all of your other citations can then link to these instead of your homepage, helping to keep these two locations more separate. I wasn't seeing these landing pages on your site, but if you already have them, they don't seem very visible.

Hope these are some good starting points to consider.