Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi There Red!

What is the client's actual relationship to customers in Boston? Is there one? A few more details on this might help.

Hi Ron!

Thanks for letting me know you have some additional questions. Moz Local will help you get your data correct on these 7 partners:

Infogroup

Best of the Web

Localeze

Factual

Foursquare

Superpages

Acxiom

Any other platforms, you will need to manage manually.

Yes, you can absolutely use the city landing for each listing - you do not have to use the homepage. Hope this helps!

Hi Ron!

While I won't try to sell you on Moz Local (hee hee) I will provide answers to two important questions you've asked.

1. Moz Local is used by both single location and multi-location businesses. We have lots of both types of customers using our product effectively. You can have just one Moz Local listing or hundreds of them - whatever your business needs.

2. Moz Local is not a ranking service. The main benefits of using Moz Local are:

• We help ensure that your data is correct on the 5 major US aggregators + 2 other important platforms. The concept here is that correct data upstream should help to generate correct data downstream, as illustrated by this infographic: http://moz.com/learn/local/local-search-data-us

• Moz Local will also help you close out duplicate listings on the 7 partners in our network.

• Finally, Moz Local will show you some data about your listings on 8 additional non-partner sites so that you can take manual action on inconsistent, incomplete or duplicate listings.

Now, granted, getting your listings complete and consistent should help with your local search rankings, but it's important for me to be clear that we do not monitor or guarantee search engine rankings in any way.

Hope this helps! Please, feel free to let me know if you have any further questions.

Thanks so much for saying so, Tom, and glad to hear you're feeling better. I don't travel much, so I don't have anything scheduled, but thanks for asking. Have a good weekend!

Hey Tom,

Hope you're feeling better! Sadly, I was not at LocalU. Hope you have fun at the upcoming events.

You're welcome both! We can always count on Mike to provide the most awesome answer to any Local question, eh?

Hey There!

This is the best post I've ever read on this topic:

http://localu.org/blog/local-knowledge-panel-doesnt-show-google-can/

Think you'll find it to be just what the doctor ordered!

Hi David!

Good topic. First of all, you should remove the modifiers from your business title on your Google+ Local page (and elsewhere). Google was briefly supporting these types of modifiers, but the most recent iteration of their guidelines states that this is not acceptable

• Location information, such as neighborhood, city, or street name, unless it is part of the real-world representation of the business. Your name must not include street address or direction information.
  • Not acceptable: "Starbucks Downtown", "Macy’s Union Square", "Holiday Inn (I-93 at Exit 2)", "U.S. Bank ATM - 7th & Pike - Parking Garage Lobby near Elevator"
  • Acceptable: "Starbucks", "Macy’s", "Holiday Inn Salem", "U.S. Bank ATM", "University of California Berkeley"

So, do get rid of the modifiers.

But ... I do not recommend linking both locations to the same page. If one is the corporate headquarters, then linking it to the homepage would be fine, but in a multi-location scenario, linking to a specific landing page of the website for each shop would be a more typical way to ensure that you are keeping your locations distinct and separate. And yes, the authority of these pages very likely does impact rankings.

Be sure the first thing on these pages is the complete name, address and phone number of the specific location. Be sure you are creating good, unique content for each of the pages, too.

The challenge you are up against with more than one business in the same city is that Google is unlikely to show more than one of the same business in a keyword search. A brand search is different. If someone just searches for 'Crescent City Vape', Google may well show both businesses in a 3 or 7 pack, but if the search is just for 'e-cigarettes in Crescent City' then Google is less likely to show any business more than once in a pack.

So, where this leaves you then is pinning your hopes on the fact that Google is getting more and more sensitive to the user as the centroid of search - meaning that Google is likely to show users (especially mobile users) the location of your business that is physically closest to them at the time they make their search. So, a user searching from his cell while in Uptown will be more likely to see the Uptown location on his phone (and possibly his desktop) while if he goes over to the lower garden district, Google is likely to show him that shop instead.

What this boils down to is that you need to optimize and promote both locations equally, and leave it up to Google to parse which user group gets shown which result. This is about as good as you can do. I would not make the locations part of the business name on the website - instead, I would include this in:

1. The content of the page

2. The description on your citations

3. Blog posts

4. Social outreach

5. Menu links pointing to these pages on your website, as in 'Visit our Uptown Location', 'Visit our Lower Garden District Location'.

Hope this helps!

Hi Jared!

You're very welcome, and I'm glad to know this will be helpful to you. Have a good weekend!

Hey Linda -

My mistake, then - I had assumed MM would be better the GMB for a maps-based issue. Please, feel free to link to your forum thread about this, as it could be very helpful for Mgordon. So helpful to know you may be seeing a new, emerging issue there. Thank you for taking the time to share this

So glad if that will help! Good luck - you have a really important chance to help this business

Hey there!

If you discover that your images already meet Google's requirements, this is one I'd take to the Mapmaker forum:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/map-maker

You'll need to be able to reveal the actual account details there, of course, so that the RERs can take a look at what you're seeing. Without being able to see the result, this may be hard to diagnose.

You're welcome!  I think the most influential resource you can share with the client will be the 2014 Local Search Ranking Factors survey, which is based on data provided by some of the top Local SEOs in the world.

The #1 negative ranking factor in the most recent survey is:

Listing detected at false business location.

See: http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

By intentionally falsifying part of their location information, your client is putting their business at the #1 risk - if this statistic doesn't convince them, they may be a client you'll want to part company with.

The other piece of data I would give this client is that, because many of the major local business aggregators rely on USPS to standardize addresses, the use of a false zip code is likely to be auto-corrected by some or all of them at some point, creating NAP inconsistency. Google will then pool knowledge about this NAP confusion around the web, and this takes us to negative ranking factors 3, 4 and 5 in LSRF 2014. So - uh-oh, the business is running the risks inherent in 4 of 5 top negative ranking factors. That's about as drastic as it gets.

Moreover, messing up their zip code could be driving their legitimate clients away. If I'm looking for tacos in zip code 32201 and this is the location of your client's taco shop, but Google no longer trusts that it's located in that zip code, I'll be going to a competitor's taco shop with correct NAP because consistency has allowed it to outrank the business with the mismatching NAP. There's just no good reason for a brick-and-mortar business to do this to themselves. Hope you can help him see the light on this one. If not, I'd personally walk away.

Hi Spartan,

Good topic! I agree with the advice of mentioning your zip codes within the content of the existing landing pages, but, I would specifically warn against putting a big block of zip codes or city names on any page of the website. Google's webmaster guidelines cite this as a suspicious practice, see: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66358?hl=en

I would prefer to take a more creative approach to covering the zip codes in a given city. Let's say you are a house painter, servicing 3 zip codes in Davenport Iowa. Why not do three project features on the landing page, including the zip code of the house you painted in the project description? Something along the lines of, "Look at this fabulous turn-of-the-century charmer in the 52081 zip code area of old town. We chose a pearl grey and mustard palette to stately effect!" Or something like that. This would be my preferred approach to ever just putting blocks of zips, given Google's warning about this.

Regarding your more general question ... yes, developing a landing page for each city serviced by an SAB is a standard practice, but it is not a guarantee that you will rank for these cities. How well these pages do will depend on:

1. The competitiveness of the industry/geography

2. The quality of the pages

3. Overall strength of the brand/site

Unfortunately, in nearly all cases, competitors with a physical location will outrank your business for their own cities ... just as you are likely to have an edge over competitors who lack a physical location in your own city. But, if strong enough, and if the competition isn't too stiff, these types of pages can gain you some extra visibility and generate valuable leads.

Sounds not quite right - agree. Have the client look up their own business on SmartyStreets.com to see how the USPS officially recognizes their address. If they deviate from this, they may be headed for trouble

Hi Jared,

Definitely go with option 1. Yes, it will take time to establish yourself in the new city, but you don't want to undo what you've accomplished for the old city if you still have a location there. A healthy helping of patience is pretty much a prerequisite for opening a new branch. Make a plan for steadily accomplishing the following for your new business:

1. Re-optimizing core website pages to reflect your new corporate headquarters

2. Developing new content on the website to feature the new city

3. Building your new citation set for the new location

4. Engineering a review acquisition program from the new location

5. Creating social outreach for the new location

6. Looking for link opportunities for the new location (see this totally awesome post by Phil Rozek: http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2015/02/05/the-best-bleepin-local-link-questionnaire/)

7. Making your real-world outreach into the new community, offline

8. Consider temporary hyperlocal PPC to gain some visitors to your new pages

When you start to look at the list of things you'll be doing, it becomes pretty clear that none of this is going to happen overnight. It took you time to gain good visibility in Detroit - it's going to take time to do the same in Sioux Falls. Hone your creativity at this exciting new time for your business and stick with the process and you'll begin to make the kinds of gains you ultimately hope to achieve. Good luck and congratulations on your new office!

Hi GSO,

I'm having a bit of trouble getting my head around why there are different subdomains for the same city and brand. Normally, I see subdomains being used on local sites to differentiate between cities, not for the same city. I feel there's something I'm not quite understanding about your situation. Would be be able to provide a hypothetical example of how these have been divided up and why?

Hi There!

What you need to do for a multi location scenario is have a unique Google+ Local page for each location. Whether you use the social features on these or not is up to the company. Will Scott recently wrote a really good and simple explanation of the different types of Google pages here:

http://searchengineland.com/how-to-get-google-my-business-right-for-your-medical-practice-practitioners-212768

I think you if read the above, you'll be able to get a good strategy together for managing your social/local presence with the right types of Google pages.

Hope this helps!

Hi Samuel,

I see ... thank you for explaining what you meant about the dates. You're right, no one is going to search for the business name/year. Good luck with the citation building!

Hi Souk!

Good question. I'm not totally clear on what you mean by SEO-friendly reviews. Any review that can be found and crawled will be a help to your customers and to bots, so I wasn't sure if there was something beyond this you were asking about.

If your business is local, than in nearly any industry, the two major players are going to be Google and Yelp. There are, indeed, others like Bing, Yahoo, etc. and beyond these basics, there may be industry-relevant review platforms where you want to be sure you are listed.

Phil Rozek of Local Visibility System authored the most comprehensive post on this topic back in 2013. Not too much has changed in the review world in the last 1-2 years, so I believe you'll find some really good info here on major players, plus some tips for determining review platform quality:

http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2013/10/24/comparison-of-local-review-sites-where-should-you-focus-now/

Beyond the majors, you should research industry-specific sites that support reviews. Diversity is very healthy when it comes to this area of marketing.

Hi Jeremy,

You might want to take this up with Joy Hawkins at Imprezzio Marketing as she has been doing a close study of the nuances of this scenario recently. What would you be changing the phone number to? Not quite sure I am following what you're describing.

Hey Ryan!

I've really been enjoying your super contributions of late to the community. Just terrific! I want to include a little addendum here ... advice regarding using mailboxes might bear more investigation. Google wants all addresses to represent a physical location ... not a P.O. box, UPS box or what have you, so this might be something to research further. Thought I would mention, and thanks again for your recent generous contributions to so many local discussions!

Hi Peter,

This may be one of those things where you'll need to hire a Local SEO to do an audit, but very generally, this sounds to me like you may have citation consistency issues that are causing Google to make edits to your data based on bad data they are finding on third party sources. So, if for example, your client is located at 23 Hello Street, and for some reason, Google keeps changing this to 21 Hello Street, chances are strong that there are bad references out there to your business being at 21 Hello Street. So, the first step I'd suggest is a complete citation audit to discover if there are existing references to the bad data and then correcting these at the source so that the good data supports Google's correct understanding of your location.

Hi John!

Good questions. I'll answer it in 3 parts for the sake of organization:

1. No - Google does not penalize anyone for hiding their address. If the business does not receive customers at a staffed location during stated hours of operation, then not hiding the address is a violation of Google's guidelines (see: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en) and this violation is what could lead to possible action on Google's part. So, don't think of hiding the address as something that will incur a penalty.

2. That being said, there is a school of thought in the Local SEO world that in a scenario of uneven competition, businesses with a staffed, physical office that welcomes customers during stated business hours may have a slight advantage over competitors who do not have these amenities and are therefore hiding their address in compliance with Google's guidelines. So, the nuance to understand here is that if in the 7 or 3 packs in your client's industry/geography, some competitors can show their address while others have to hide it, the former may have some advantage. No one knows the exact degree of this hypothetical advantage, but it may exist. On the other hand, if in your client's packs, all of their competitors are in the same boat and are having to hide their addresses, the playing field is completely even so no one has any hypothetical advantage. It just depends on what the field of competition is like in your client's packs.

3. To my knowledge, Google is the only major engine with this hidden address requirement. For any other local business platform, the choice to display or hide the address is a personal one. Your clients can be broken down into two categories, when it comes to this:

a- Client has privacy concerns and doesn't want their street address displayed anywhere. In this case, the Local SEO on the project will need to stick to building citations only on those platforms that support hidden addresses.

b- Client has no privacy concerns and doesn't care if their street address is displayed in various places. In this case, there are no restrictions on where you can build citations.

Obviously, client B is at an advantage, because he will be able to create citations in more places.

Hope this breakdown helps clarify your options.

Hey Ruben,

Curious to know what the email said...

Hi Jeremy!

You can use the .CSV method to report a business as closed on Moz Local but this will only report it as out of business on our 7 supported partners - not web-wide. See 'Out of Business' section here: https://moz.com/local/help/documentation

So, using Moz Local would be a good start, but this would need to be supplemented with manual activity to close things like the Google+ Local page, the Facebook Place, Yahoo, Bing, etc. I am unaware of any service that closes a business web-wide.

*Note - if it is just one location of this bank that is closing while the main business remains open, be sure to check this out:

http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-important/27109-can-closed-google-local-listings-kill-ranking-important-new-troubleshooting-tip-2.html

Hi Samuel!

That is an unusual situation (and kudos to Ryan for surfacing the Burger King story!). If, in your geography, Google is only showing one local result for a branded search (not a keyword search) then the client may be stuck. In some geographies, a branded search will show a pack of all nearby locations of that brand, but it sounds like in your client's scenario, Google is showing a local one-box or something like that. Unless the customer wants to re-brand, he is likely going to be stuck with this situation unless:

1. Google starts showing multiple results for the brand

2. He manages to completely surpass the competitor so that he becomes the #1 result

Right now, Google is likely thinking that both businesses are the same entity. I'm not quite sure what you mean about adding a date to the business name - please feel free to clarify that. If the client can't re-brand then the second option is really the only active thing he can pursue. You might like to check out the How To tab of this tutorial for using our Check Listing tool to identify weaker competitors:

http://moz.com/help/guides/local/check-listing

Hey There!

We have another thread going on this topic which might be very helpful to you:

http://moz.com/community/q/transfer-local-seo-rankings-to-another-domain

Please, consider checking out the rebranding resources I've referenced over there. I think they'll help!

Hi Brian,

Good for you for discovering these. The process I would recommend would look like this:

1. Create a strategy for launching a set of new, excellent pages that cover the basics without needing to cover every possible combo as these duplicate/thin pages are likely trying to do.

2. Launch your new pages.

3. Delete the old ones and say, 'good riddance!'

Hi Christopher!

David Deering over at Whitespark just wrote a really super blog post on this topic. I highly recommend:

http://www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/50-how-to-make-your-local-business-schema-better

Is it absolutely necessary for every local business to use Schema? No ... honestly not. But in a competitive market where your client wants to be the best, then yes, clearly structured data may be a competitive difference maker. I think Deering's article will help you assess whether the effort will be worth it for your client, if you weigh it against their level of competition and their need to be on top.

*Also, be sure to check out this Moz thread on the subject of recent changes in Google's stated attitude toward schema and testimonials:

http://moz.com/community/q/how-to-add-customer-testimonials-from-customers-from-each-city-encoded-in-schema-review-markup

Hi Sachin,

I believe what you're saying, then, is that the second business is going to be re-branded under the original business' name and website. Unfortunately, there is a chance that rankings will be lost, whether temporarily or permanently. I've never personally conducted a re-brand of this kind, so the best I can do here is link you to some resources on this topic:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/rebrand

http://searchengineland.com/rebranding-seo-important-considerations-184208

http://searchengineland.com/the-smb-guide-to-changing-business-names-seo-128939

http://www.localsearchforum.com/local-search/355-rebranding-name-change-problems-google-local.html

http://imprezziomarketing.com/seo-blog/google-maps/is-permanently-closed-killing-your-ranking-4-case-studies/

I hope these are helpful!

Hey Jamie,

Well, in my suggested structure, the city landing pages wouldn't just say 'New York' on them in the titles,(by which I believe you're intending New York City, right?). They would likely include whatever the overall keyword is for the company...which would be HVAC if that is the category this company is in. What I wouldn't do, though, unless you do have the resources to create an enormous number of pages for all individual service/city combos, would be to have NYC+Heater Repair, NYC+Air Conditioner Repair, Brooklyn+Heater Repair, Brooklyn+Air Condition Repair, etc. On a limited budget/with limited resources, I think the structure I've suggested above would be the best way to convey all cities and services without repetition and without the risk of creating thin or duplicative content.

Hi Sachin!

Are you saying that the business your client acquired is going to be re-branded? In other words, is your client, Greentree Law, going to rebrand their newly acquired business, Blue Lake Law as  Greentree Law and simply now be running two branches of Greentree Law out of two separate locations? I'm not quite certain if this is what you are describing.

Hi Joshua,

Good for you for letting the client know that duplicate content landing pages for the cities are not a good idea. If the client is rural and the competition is low, I honestly wouldn't be recommending city landing pages at all in this scenario, unless their is a genuine reason for the business to be describing its activities in cities B, C, D, etc. Again, without knowing the nuances of the specific business, it's hard to give great advice. So, I can only take a general stab at this.

Let's say the client is a farm supply store located in Sonora, California. They are the only farm supply store within a 20 mile radius, and they want to be sure that customers in neighboring communities like Angels Camp, Jamestown, Colombia and Groveland know they exist. I would likely recommend a strategy like this:

1. Optimize all key pages of the website for product/service terms + Sonora

2. Earn testimonials from the farm store's loyal customers who come to them from various towns and include these throughout the product/service pages, including the name of the town the customer comes from.

3. Build citations for the Sonora-based store

4. Put a blog on the site and, on a modest basis, blog about industry-related events in the all the surrounding towns. Good content for the blog would be things like planting forecasts for the various towns at the different mountain elevations, coverage of farm stands, rural fairs, bake sales, mills, large animal vets, farming demonstrations, school gardens and anything else that relates to agriculture taking place in the neighboring communities that shop at the farm store for products.

5. Consider offering town-specific sales, contests and other promotions.

Given the rural location and low level of competition, this would likely be all the business would need to do to become very dominant for its goods and services within its own city and in the neighboring communities. It should not be necessary in any way to create those thin, duplicate content pages. A modest but well-planned effort should be all this business needs to succeed.

Good question, Wick!

You know, this really does get into the murky water. We can state the dilemma this way:

1. Google wants a precise, accurate address, as Linda has so correctly referenced. Linda is completely on the money about the use of a suite number where no such suite exists falling afoul of Google's clear guidelines. If I walk up to your door and can't find Suite B, then I've been misled.

2. So, if the business owner follows Google's guideline and doesn't add a non-existent suite, then the reality has to be faced that the risk of merging and duplicates may be increased by adhering to the guidelines. This is the tough part. If I live with my sister and she runs her yoga business out of the same building I'm running my photography studio in, we are both running the risk of Google jumbling our listings up.

3. So, where does this leave us? Basically, it leaves us with possibly having problems with our presence on Google because we are abiding by Google's rules. That's a rather imperfect situation, of course, but is the reality. And it leaves me wondering things like:

• Whether Google actually would have a problem with a suite number legally obtained from postal or local authorities, even if I don't put up a dividing wall and a second front door for the second business. Wikipedia defines a 'secondary suite' this way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_suite ; it normally has a second entrance. But is this a legal definition? And, is it Google's definition? In my hypothetical scenario, could I technically have a suite with a shared entrance and no interior partition dividing me from my sister's yoga business? I honestly don't know if there is a rock solid answer to this.

• And, here's one Linda would be better able to answer than I, given her position as a TC in Google's own forum: in instances in which a cluster of businesses have no suites, how is Google's track record of merging looking these days? I've heard they've gotten better at this than the formerly were, but it seems like it has been some time since I've seen much commenting on this topic.

Just some thoughts. I would welcome further discussion on this thread from all community members!

Hi Joshua,

That's really nice that you read my Moz Blog article. If the client is business model #2, then his city of location will almost always outweigh anything you do with additional cities. It can be difficult to offer general advice in this situation because I'm not aware of the specifics of the client's business - for instance, what is his relationship to these other cities? Is it a strong relationship or is it kind of a situation in which you're having to scramble to find a reason to build content for cities B, C and D? These nuances are very important in creating a strategy. Yes, broad keywords are almost always going to outweigh service/city terms, but for most local businesses, it's the city-related or city-based searches that count most.

Hey Neil,

Yes, having the practice's city name in the URLs is a perfectly fine tactic, as long as it's reasonable, but the main thing here to remember is that this is just one tiny thing that should be happening on any local business website. You want your basic SEO right, of course, but as the link Ryan has shared will demonstrate, there are just tons of things that require effort. No one's rankings are going to boil down to any one of the factors. The goal is to make a superior effort in your city and industry across many, many factors.

Hey there!

I've reached out to Ed Reese, the author of that article on LocalU to see if something has changed since he wrote it (could be!). If we're lucky, Ed might be nice enough to reply. I'll return to this thread.

Hi Kevin,

Great topic and a tough situation! You are quite right that neither you nor the client will able to control what Google is displaying in their 7-packs for these multi-branch/same city scenarios, unless the overall business decides to promote one branch and not the others. Now, if the brand is known and the customer is doing a brand search, Google will often show them all of the branches nearby. Example: if you just look up McDonald's, chances are, Google is going to show you several of these that are nearest to me in a single pack.

But, if the competition is for non-branded phrases (tires, muffler repair, oil change, autobody shop, etc.) then it does seem to me that Google seldom shows the same brand twice in the same pack, at least in the US. Not sure if this is different in Canada. For example, if I look up 'tire shop' Google shows me 7 different businesses in the pack - there are no repetitions of any brand within the result.

So, this scenario your client is in is almost guaranteed to result in unequal treatment of the businesses ... with one important exception you should consider discussing with the client. One of the most important developments that's been growing in Local SEO over the past few years relates to how the user has become the new 'centroid' of search, particularly in mobile local results. What this means is that if your client has one tire shop at one end of Toronto, and a second at the other end, there is a very good chance that the user will be shown the result that is physically nearest to him at the time he performs the search.

Given that this phenomenon clearly now exists, the strategy I would be recommending to the franchise would be to market all branches with equal effort and then, step back and leave it up to Google to parse which location is nearest to each given searcher. This will be the best any business can do in this situation. And I would back this up with research into hyperlocal blogging and advertising, based on neighborhood-related terms.

Good luck!

Hi Zachary,

Almost across the board, Local SEOs will recommend the single site approach for the multi-store scenario. Recommend that you check this article out:

http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide

...and that you do a close study of how REI.com handles their multi-location business on their website. Especially look at the effort they put into making each location landing page on their website unique. Hope this helps!

Hi Wesley,

I'm looking at the link you've shared and am not sure I'm seeing what you're reporting. The query in your search if for Tatt-away and the maps box is showing 3 different businesses at 3 completely different addresses. I don't see 2 businesses with the same address/different suite. What are you seeing, specifically? What are the businesses in question?

Hi Anton,

In my opinion, this situation is one in which I'd be recommending a complete audit of the website for its local and traditional SEO, content, links and off-site local search marketing. Here's a great place to start: http://moz.com/blog/ultimate-local-seo-audit. In the space of a Q&A forum, no one is going to be able to do a thorough job of this, but I have some resources to share that I feel may be helpful to you in troubleshooting issues with the site and, also, improving it.

1. First, discover if any obvious mistakes are being made by starting here:

http://moz.com/blog/troubleshooting-local-ranking-failures

http://searchengineland.com/citation-inconsistency-no1-issue-affecting-local-ranking-210643

http://www.brightlocal.com/2014/12/04/insidelocal-webinar-troubleshooting-local-ranking-issues/

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

2. Next, be sure the website is utilizing basic Local SEO best practices:

http://www.smallbusinessonlinecoach.com/blog/seo/onpage-optimization-local-seo-perfectly-optimized-local-page/

3. Next, dig into the numerous factors that make up local search rankings to determine how well your client is doing with the most important ones:

http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

http://www.brightlocal.com/2014/11/13/insidelocal-webinar-local-ranking-factors-discussed/#watch

4. Check out what experts are recommending as best Local SEO practices for the coming year:

http://moz.com/blog/how-to-have-a-successful-local-seo-campaign-in-2015

http://www.brightlocal.com/2014/12/17/insidelocal-webinar-state-local-search-2015/

5. Keep current on changes that will indubitably roll out this year by following people who make it a habit of writing about these things. I recommend following Mike Blumenthal, Linda Buquet, Phil Rozek, Darren Shaw, Greg Sterling, authors as Search Engine Land who write about Local SEO and authors here on the Moz blog who do the same. This is a short list, there are lots of very great options out there for daily reading.

Local SEO, in my opinion boils down to:

1. Not violating Google's guidelines

2. Avoiding obvious pitfalls

3. Publishing the very best website you are capable of in your industry/geography, possibly earning links for the qulity of your content and having a strategy for ongoing content publication and that the basic SEO of the site is correct rather than problematic

4. Ensuring your citations are in tiptop shape

5. Social participation, if appropriate

6. Keeping up with the news, because it's a given that there will be both minor and major changes that may impact your rankings and your strategy.

I hope these resources are helpful!

You're very welcome, Luke!

Hey Don,
Thank you. Yes, this has become a pretty hot topic again since Google's revision of their guidelines.

Hey Luke!

Good topic - here's the scoop:

1. Yes, if the owner gets away with it, this tactic could help them rank in additional geographies, BUT ...

2. It puts them at risk for Google take down of the listings in question, and could potentially influence Google's view of the whole business. Suggest you read:

http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local-important/26844-busted-warning-attorneys-regus-non-compliant-offices.html

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/12/11/google-some-days-i-just-shake-my-head-today-is-one-of-them/

If you believe some of your competitors are falsely claiming to have staffed, physical offices, you may report them as spam.

Hope this helps!

You've very welcome!

Hi Adam,

I want to make sure you received the answer I gave to Stephen via the Help Desk as well. Basically, right now, yes, Moz Local in marking hidden Google+ Local addresses as inconsistent and this is negatively impacting the Moz Local listing score, but coincidentally, this is something our Engineers are working on to change. I don't have an ETA, but it is our plan to stop marking these as inconsistent in the near future, and this will remove any negative impact on the listing score. Hope this helps!

Hi Adam,

You will find a discussion on this same topic going on here:

http://moz.com/community/q/targeting-different-cities-for-my-service-geo-landing-pages

Think it will give you some good pointers.

Hey Kevin,

I'm so, so sorry that this thread fell off my radar. I'm normally alerted to responses on threads, but somehow overlooked this one. My apologies! From what you've explained, I strongly suspect that your client may have a trust issue going on with Google. With the old office information out there on the web, you may be dealing with a multi-listing or duplicate listing scenario that could be shaking Google's faith in where the business is actually located. What likely needs to happen here is a complete audit of the client's history, citations and Google presence to figure out if there is mixed data out there sending confusing signals to Google. There's not going to be an easy answer to this, unfortunately - it's going to require a good Local SEO sitting down with the data for this particular business and going through it, troubleshooting. Best case scenario - there aren't any problems and it's just going to take time for the map to appear again, but worst case scenario - old records are adversely affecting the business' web presence in a variety of ways that need to be discovered and remedied, one by one.

Hope this helps a little! Sorry not to be able to be more specific.