Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Scott!

The best way to differentiate practitioners in the multi-practitioner scenario is to aim for as many of these as you can:

1. Put only the doctor's name in the business title. So, Dr. John Johnson - not Dr. John Johnson, Greentree Dental

2. If possible, list a unique phone number for each doctor/dentist at which he/she is directly contactable. I know this isn't always possible, but if it is, it can reduce the risk of merging.

3. Do not share Google My Business categories between the practitioners. If possible, divide the chosen categories between the practitioners.

4. Set up a unique landing page on the website for each practitioner and point the Google+ Local page to it, instead of pointing them all to the homepage. Be sure the complete contact info for the practitioner is on this page and the content is unique.

5. Write a unique Google+ Local description for each practitioner.

All of these precautions can help reduce the chances of accidental merges and duplications.

Hope this helps!

Hi Mick,

I would recommend that you actually work with the postal authorities in your region to acquire a separate suite number for the business and this should eliminate concerns. Your client legitimately has 2 businesses and should make the effort to set up a proper unique address for both. And, as you've mentioned, a different phone number is essential, of course. You should also be sure you're running unique websites with completely separate content for the 2 businesses. What you're trying to do here is to differentiate for customers and engines, as much as possible, the two companies. On the customer side, you want them to be able to correctly contact and find the two businesses. On the engine side, you want to prevent accidental merging and duplicates by being sure that two businesses are being run as unique entities, if they are unique entities.

It is generally not difficult to acquire an official suite number, but who you go to for this depends upon where you live. It is different in different regions.

Hope this helps!

Hi Matt!

The number of Google My Business pages you have is dictated by the number of physical locations out of which you operate - not the number of services your company offers. For example an HVAC company with a single location can have just 1 Google My Business page - not one for heating, another for cooling. I think maybe you already understand this, but I just wanted to be sure to mention it in case there was any confusion about this.

If you have 2 locations, you'll have 2 pages, but Google doesn't have categories for PPC or SEO, though they do have one for Website Designer. You'll want to accurately represent whichever service you offer at each location, as best as you can, which will likely involve use of the category Internet Marketing to categorize your PPC and SEO services, and then a clearer explanation in the business description field.

On the website, it would be most typical to have a location landing page for each of your physical offices, and then 1 page for each service you offer.

Does this help, or am I not quite getting to the heart of your question? Please, let me know!

Hi AlpsKiosks,

I want to be sure I'm understanding your question correctly. If you are trying to list a business physically located in Canada, I'm afraid Moz Local is not a good match for you. But, if you're saying that you are trying to list the businesses of your US-based clients, then Moz Local will work for that. As with any citation building strategy (whether manual or automated) it's all about the physical location of the business, and at this time, Moz Local supports US-based businesses solely. Hope this explanation is helpful, but please let me know if you have any further questions about this!

Hi Ryan,

That's a difficult situation! Usually, what I've found in this situation is that you have to spend an hour or two backtracking to discover where the name of one business is being conflated with the address/phone/website of the other. This might exist on the company's website or website, or it might exist in citations, or elsewhere. In many cases, this type of conflation is what has caused the confusion on Google's part. It's really important when you have a franchise that you've done everything you possibly can to differentiate the various branches, including different addresses, phone numbers, landing page URLs or websites, content, citations, etc. Even then, Google can sometimes become confused about this scenario and begin merging down details. So, if you can backtrack to a source for this confusion and correct it, that may resolve the issue.

You can also try to contact Google directly about this (go here and click the contact us button https://support.google.com/business/?hl=en&rd=1#topic=4539639) but you may very well get the answer, "That result is generate algorithmically and we can't do anything about it." Might be worth a try anyway.

Hi Ahead4!

Google's local product takes into consideration the concept of an industry centroid - for example, an area of town where most restaurants, insurance companies or car dealerships are located - so I wouldn't immediately think that Google would have any problem with 2 businesses of the same industry being in the same region. That being said, in investigating this, I would want to look carefully at details like the distinctness of each business name, address and website content.

I would want to be sure that citations are completely distinct for each business and haven't accidentally gotten mixed up on any of the major platforms.

Age is also a factor - if Client A is six months ahead of Client B, then they may have earned six months more of 'trust' in Google's book and their citations may have had that much more time to go live and settle in.

I'd also be curious to know, if you are managing both clients, did you build their websites identically (same language in menus, calls to action, etc.) that could lead Google to believe these 2 websites are just cookie cutter templates of one another? Are there other things you might have done that are similar enough to make you uneasy about Google possibly confusing the 2 businesses as being just 1? Content that is actually too close in wording or a link profile that it is nearly identical or a social media outreach that is the same for both businesses?

And, of course, a very important question here would be that the business addresses are, indeed, unique. You've explained that the businesses are next door to one another, but their street addresses are totally different, right?

As Kayintveen_MD has mentioned, there are many nuances to this situation that bear investigating. I've quickly brainstormed a few here but I am sure there are many more. At the end of the day, though, Google understands that similar businesses are often located in a certain part of town and that, alone, should not be cause for fear of penalties. When you have 2 clients in the same town and industry, only one of them is going to be #1, which is likely why many Local SEOs will not take on 2 clients in the same business and city. You might find this article helpful in your further troubleshooting:

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

Hi Calico,

If you entered the email address associated with your Foursquare account and then got the message that you no longer had any accounts needing authorization, then it sounds to me like you're good to go. However, if you have any doubts about this, please feel free to start a ticket in our Help Hub so that you can privately share your account details with our Help Team, just so we can double check for you. To start a ticket, go here: https://moz.com/help/contact and choose the blue 'Local' link and then include in your ticket:

1. The email address associated with your Moz Local account

2. The name, address, phone number and website of your business

3. A summary of your question

Via the Help Hub, we will be able to pop into your account and take a look, just to be sure all looks well.

Hope this helps!

Hi Calico!

Then that sounds like you did just the right thing and are good to go. Once you've authorized Foursquare, that enables us to push your data out to that platform. Sounds to me like you're right on track:)

Hi Taysir,

You might want to check out this thread, also going on regarding a related topic:

http://moz.com/community/q/google-maps-redirect-notice-on-track-able-url-s-how-do-i-track-maps-visits-in-analytics

Hi PT:)

You might also like to check out this blog post on local landing pages:

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

Hope this will be helpful!

Hi Calico:)

Of the 7 partners in our network, Foursquare is the one that requires that you take an extra step, via the Moz Local dashboard, of authenticating the listing. You would do so by clicking the 'Foursquare Authentication' tab in the left navigation menu of the Moz Local dashboard and the following the steps from there. Is this what you did, or are you saying that you did something else? Please let me know!

Hi There!

I'm sorry to hear you're running into a hitch with this. At this point, I would definitely recommend starting a ticket with our Help Team. In your ticket, it will be helpful if you can provide:

1. The email address associate with your Moz Local account

2. The name, address, phone number and website of the business in question

3. Links to your live Google+ Local and/or Facebook Place pages

4. A summary of the issue you are experiencing.

Our whole Help Team is here to support you. You can start your ticket by going here and clicking on the blue 'Local' link from the box of options: https://moz.com/help/contact

Hope to see your ticket come through so that our team can get this resolved for you:)

Hi Shawn,

You can do this either way - link to the home page or to landing pages from your citations. Personally, I prefer to link to the local landing page for each location, not because of linkbuilding, but because it may help cut down on listings getting merged with one another. I feel it's always best to do my utmost to differentiate multi-location listings, and the URL is one way to do that. This is also the case with multi-practitioner listings, too.

Hi Red Nova,

While, unfortunately, I don't know how to resolve this, I do know there is a Google and Your Business forum thread open right now on this topic. I would highly suggest adding your own query to that thread. The more people that respond to it, the better the chances of getting a response from a Google staffer with a suggested solution. Here's the thread:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/analytics|sort:date/business/Ab_sPzkwTBg/02Dm0hAIfo4J

The issue is pretty new - I'm sorry not to have a easy fix for you, but I hope the link will at least get you talking with others who are having this problem, and perhaps some of our community members will contribute here if they've found a fix. I hope so!

Good Morning!

Thanks so much for asking about this:) Any time you need to edit your name, address, phone number or website in Moz Local, there is a set of specific steps that need to be taken in a specific order to push your changes through. Let me share these steps with you here:

First, edit the desired data on your Google+ Local or Facebook Place Page

About an hour later, please log into your Moz Local account click the little cloud icon on the page to download the .CSV file our system has auto-generated for your business.

Edit the desired field in the .CSV, making sure that you hand-type in whatever edit you need to make. We recommend using either a recent version of Excel or Google’s free Google Sheets to edit your .CSV. If you have multiple businesses in the .CSV, you can delete the other rows so that we are only editing the business of your choice.

Save the .CSV and then return to the Moz Local dashboard and upload the .CSV via the big yellow button.

We will then re-validate the listing against Google or Facebook and you should see your edit succeed.

I sincerely hope these steps will be helpful! Please let me know if you have any further questions!

If you run into any trouble and need to have a Help Team member take a one-on-one look at your account, please do contact us through the Help Hub:)

Hi There!

Sorry that wasn't what you needed. Basically, no, so far as I know, there is no obvious visual signal looking through Bing Places that a listing has been verified. If you click on the 'report a problem' link at the bottom of a Bing Place page, it takes you to a page that says 'Are you the business owner, claim this listing', but unfortunately, it appears to do this whether the listing is claimed or not. So, that's kind of weird. As an experiment, you could attempt to go through the claiming process of a listing you are curious about and see if it eventually stops you with a 'this is already claimed' message. This is the only test I can think of to run. Hope it's at least somewhat helpful to know you're not missing some obvious visual signal. There just doesn't appear to be one, nor can I find any documentation that such a signal exists.

Hi There!

Unfortunately, I'm not very well versed in Local SEO in the Netherlands, but I do believe this Moz blog post will help you to begin troubleshooting how well-optimized your local presence is, regardless of country:

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

Also, want to be sure that your company is running a Google+ Local page ... not just a Google+ social type page and that you actually qualify as a local business of the type that Google would most typically show mapped results for. Do you make in-person contact with your customers and do they come to your physical location to do business with you? These are some important questions, and I hope the article will help!

Good Morning!

Ah, I think I see what you were explaining now. So, this is how I find it most helpful to think of this.

If I am located in Topeka, Kansas (or have my location set there) and I search for 'hotels', Google assumes that I am looking for a hotel near me.

But, if I am located in Topeka, Kansas (or have my location set there) and I search for 'hotels Dallas, TX' I'm making it very clear to Google that I am looking for lodgings elsewhere.

In other words, if I don't tell Google to be specific to some region other than my own, Google assumes I want the results nearest me. But if I am specific that I want results from somewhere else by including that location in my query, Google shows me the local results for that location.

Hi Joshua!

I'm a little puzzled by the conclusion your are drawing. Don't your tests prove that inferred location is actually the stronger force here, if your client is ranking highest for non-geo-term searches with your location set to a city rather than including a city in the search phrase? From the result set you've shared, that's how I would read it, but it may be that I am the one who is missing something:)

Hey There!

I want to be sure that you understand how to interpret your Moz Local listing score, and have a good sense of what Moz Local is doing for and what you can take manual action on.

When you sign into your Moz Local dashboard and click on a business listing there, you are taken to a business details page where you will see your overall listing score. This score is comprised of your status on the 7 partner sites in our network + the status of your listings on 8 non-partner sites, as well.

The 7 supported partner sites in our network are:
Factual
Foursquare
Neustar/Localeze
Infogroup
Best of the Web
Acxiom
Superpages

Once you’ve uploaded your listing to Moz Local, it’s our job to push your data out to the above 7 partner sites. Your overall listing score will begin to rise as each of the above listings achieves updated status. The rise may be gradual rather than instantaneous, but should be noticeable over time. You should be sure you’ve filled out as many details as possible on your listing so that it can achieve a maximum score. If you’ve filled out all of these fields, you’re good to go on this and it’s our job to take it from there, pushing out your data to the 7 partners. As each partner achieves updated status, your listing score will gradually begin to rise.

Apart from this, you can contribute to a rise in your listing score manually by improving your listings on the non-partner sites shown on the details page. These non-partner sites are:

Google
Facebook
Yelp
Hotfrog
YP
Citysearch
Yahoo!
Bing

On the details page, if you discover that we are reporting issues to you under the ‘Inconsistent’ and ‘Incomplete’ tabs on any of the above non-partner sites, you should consider taking manual action to correct these things. This activity on your part will also eventually contribute to a rise in your listing score. However, if you don't have login information for these sites, your ability to work on these non-partner sites is definitely going to be limited. You may need to work at contacting each of the platforms individually to see if they can help you regain control of the listings.

Finally, if our tool also surfaces duplicate listings for you, you’ll want to pay close attention to these. If the duplicates are on any of the 7 partner sites, you can simply click the ‘close’ button. If they are on the non-partner sites, clicking the close button will take you to a page on the associated site where you will need to work manually with the platform to request closure of the duplicate. Again, you may need to do some spadework to see if these non-partner platforms can help you get back in control of the listings.

Taken altogether, the work we are doing to push your data to the 7 partner sites and the work you do on the non-partner sites will contribute to a rise in your listing score.

I hope this helps you feel fully informed about our service and your opportunities! Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any further questions.

Excellent and passionate discussion here, guys! Proud to see this kind of care and growth being exchanged in this thread.

Leslieevarts, you've asked a truly important question here. I would agree with this:

1. EMDs can still help but if you do change over to the new domain, I would expect you to see a drop like EGOL has described. And don't forget that, in Local, you would need to have a plan in action to correct every citation that exists for the business to edit the domain name, too, should you choose to go with this route. Your drop could last months, years, or even be permanent. Tough decision.

2. As Robert has pointed out, it would not be a good idea to run 2 local websites at once. The chaos that can result from this choice would be most unwelcome for the you and the business owner, so steer clear of this.

So, basically, I feel that the answer to your question depends on whether the client determines that he can face an indefinite period of loss because the hoped-for eventual gain will be great enough to make it worthwhile.

Hi Jess,

Unfortunately, it's a pretty universal complaint of SABs that they get second class treatment from Google's local product. This has always been the case. There are numerous open threads on this topic on the Google And Your Business help forum, and you might find a good matching case there that will help you diagnose the nuances of your own scenario:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/pin$20marker$20wrong|sort:date

This one provides instructions for moving the pin:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/pin$20marker$20wrong|sort:date/business/aokxdjIY2Mk/dxwa5x_2fmkJ

Also highly recommend you peruse this discussion:

http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/google-local/19572-incorrect-pin-marker-map-google-mybusiness-page.html

Hope these resources are helpful!

Hi There!

Here's a link for you that I believe should help explain this:

https://www.bingplaces.com/Home/MoreFAQ#verificationProcess

Hi DeploySEO,

It does sound like you're on the right track realizing that content development is going to need to be a major priority here. Don't underestimate the amount of creativity this process requires and deserves - you want to create a finished body of content that your customer love and of which your company is really proud. Wishing you good luck:)!

Hey There!

Think you might enjoy reading:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/03/18/google-maps-report-a-problem-does-it-work-for-local-spam/

Hope this helps!

Hey Calif,

Nice answer from Sachin. I just want to be clear what types of rich snippets you're referring to. Want to be sure you're receiving the right feedback:)

Hi There!

Would you be able to offer a bit more detail about the business model? Is this a local business with a physical location, face-to-face contact with customers and a Google+ Local page? If so, you must have a local area code phone number available on the Google+ Local page ... but I'm not quite sure this is what you're describing. The more detail you can provide, the better the community will be able to offer thoughts.

Hi Spencer!

Unless the listing was created with the business name/personal name entered that way, then that's right to assume that Yahoo has pulled the info from elsewhere. So, the task at hand here is for you to sleuth out the source of that data and see if you can correct it there.

You should definitely check out the big picture of Yahoo's data sources by looking at this infographic: http://moz.com/learn/local/local-search-data-us but given the Yahoo/Yelp deal of 2014, I'd think that would be very important to investigate, too (see: http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/12/yahoo-partners-with-yelp-to-bring-local-data-to-its-search-tools/)

I would start by searching for that undesired business title in Google's main engine and on Google Maps to see if you can pull it up, wherever it exists and then hopefully take care of it at the source.

Hope this helps!

What a great discussion going on here on this one! Love our community:)

My thoughts on this are:

1. I agree with Donna's suggestion of seeking legal advice on this before you begin using another brand's name on your website.

2. If you are legally advised that it's okay to do so, then the comparison model is a legitimate topic for content development. Explaining the differences between your organization and that of your better known competitor will be educational for parents and guardians considering their local options for youth sports. This will be good information for them to have.

I would suggest approaching this very mindfully and with full transparency that your organization is completely separate from Pop Warner and has no affiliation with this organization. Your strategy must have education as its basis in order to avoid the totally unwanted outcome of local parents deciding you are trying to trick them into thinking your organization is anything other than what it truthfully is - that's certainly not going to be the start of a happy relationship! After all, what you really want here is for your organization to build up a brand that earns local recognition as a wonderful option for youth sports. You don't want to build Pop Warner's brand - you want to build your own.

Hi IPIM!

Agree with the single domain vs. mult-domain approach, and you absolutely want to avoid duplicating content across multiple websites. I think you might find this article helpful:

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

Hi Dino!

Agree with Anthony that those are unique and that the main concern here is to be certain that your content on those pages is unique. Definitely a challenge with 1200 pages, but fortunately, there should be totally unique things to do in each of those cities, so it's quite possible to manage this.

Hi There Jessential!

I'm so sorry to hear that you're having some concerns about the progress of your Moz Local listings. Out of respect for your company's privacy, may I suggest that you start a help request ticket with us so that our Helpsters can talk freely with you about your business details in a private, rather than public, setting? I do not see that you've started a ticket on this and believe you'll get the most detailed and specific help by doing so. To start a ticket, go here:

https://moz.com/help/contact

Click the 'Local' heading

Then scroll down and fill out the form.

Please provide as much detail as you can about every concern you have, and I promise you will receive caring support and good troubleshooting assistance!

We'll hope to see your ticket come through!

Hi There!

You're getting some great feedback from the community here. Are you able to find the listing when you do a brand+city search in Google's main engine for the business? Are you able to share the query publicly? It's okay if not, but it might help the community if you are able to.

Thanks, Rajeev. That's really nice to hear!

Hi Ruben,

That's a good thing to learn! Yes, I've run into different requirements over the years in different states. Interesting to know how it works in Florida. Good luck:)

Hi Ruben!

I want to be sure I'm understanding the scenario here. You already own 2 companies which are occupying the same address. You are now considering renting out an office to a 3rd business that belongs to someone else. Right? If I've misunderstood, please clarify.

If I'm on the right track, I'm actually concerned about the scenario of the 2 businesses sharing an address to begin with. I'm assuming that they at least have separate phone numbers and separate websites with unique content. Hopefully that will prevent Google from confusing/merging the two businesses in future, but it is something I'd always be monitoring, just in case. Normally, it's considered a better practice to get a separate suite number for different businesses in the same building. How you do this is likely dictated by how things work in your state, but, yes, getting an official suite number from the USPS would be the most correct and solid way to do this so that each business can receive its own mail and customers are properly directed. So, in renting out an office to the 3rd business, this would be my advice as well (separate website, separate phone, separate suite).

Could yet another business at this address draw Google's attention to the situation in some negative way? It's possible. The 2 businesses sharing the address make me a bit nervous, frankly, but as you say, they are ranking just fine, so perhaps there will be no negative consequences at all. There is always an element of unpredictability when it comes to Google's behavior in regards to local businesses. They hammer down on some things that are kind of puzzling while letting overt spam go in other searches. So, no guarantees. Good luck!

Hi RajeevEDU,

Your business model matches with Business Model IV as laid out in this blog post:

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

You might like to take a gander at that to consider your options. Hope you find that to be a good read!

Hi Peter,

Thank you so much for providing additional clarification about your business model. This has made offering guidance a much clearer task! I'll break my reply into two parts:

1. Google's rule is one listing per business, per location. So, it doesn't matter how many additional websites you may have for a single location. You are only allowed to have 1 Google+ Local listing per business, per location. Do not build more than one listing for any physical location you have. This would be forbidden.

2. You should be publishing your business NAP (business name, address, phone number) on only one website per location in order to avoid the woes of NAP inconsistency which can tank your local rankings. So, just for example, your main website sells lawnmowers, garden seeds and compost to walk-in customers in Phoenix, Arizona. You've got your complete NAP on this website, letting Google know that your NAP is associated with these products and phoenixgardencenter.com

What happens, then, if Google then finds your complete or partial NAP on your microsite specializing in just compost, compostcity.com? Google pauses and says, "Wait a minute! I thought this phone number and street address belonged to phoenixgardencenter.com. What the heck is this compostcity thing?" The result: confusion on the part of Google about the trustworthiness of the data they have in their cluster about your business. The possible outcome: merged listings, duplicate listings and ranking failures.

So - in sum - only 1 Google+ Local page for any physical location you have and no shared NAP between websites. If you want to run microsites, better get 800 numbers for them or something like that in an attempt to differentiate them from your true local sites, and do be sure, of course, that you are not duplicating content or anything else between more than one site:)

Hope this helps!

Hi GSO!

Nice of you to say about my articles. I'm grateful:)

Yep - the remarks of Darren/Calen/Greg are pretty much along the lines of what I am saying about unverified businesses ranking. While I'm not aware of any actual dedicated study that has been done of this, I think all of us have seen those unverified businesses ranking well, but to me it always seems kind of without rhyme or reason why they are. To be honest, I sometimes suspect that it may be owing to some sort of 'laziness', for lack of a better word, on Google's part and that those unverified businesses are in danger of being knocked down by new competitors who are more on the ball. So, while I wish there was a comparison study I can point to, I'm afraid I'm left with gut feelings like the smart guys you've quoted. I do believe it's important to claim your listing, for a variety of reasons, but I can point to instances in which my gut feeling doesn't prove out! Kind of weird, huh?

Hi Rox,

Good for you for going straight to Google with this. That was just what I was going to suggest after reading your initial post but before I saw your follow-up. And thanks for generously share what you've learned. This may be of future help to other community members:)

Hi GSO,

Good question! Local Search Rankings Factors 2013 cited having an 'Individually Owner-verified Local Plus Page' as the 8th most important ranking factor (see: http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors) so this is having the importance of this being real on pretty high authority

That being said, this question does come up from time to time because in less competitive verticals (and sometimes even in competitive ones!) one does see unverified Google+ Local pages ranking well. Who can really say why this is but Google, right, but basic rule of thumb in the Local SEO world is that you should claim all listings pertaining to your business.

Chris & Egol - you guys are a couple of jokers

Hi Redkey!

Oh, my, I do not envy you this situation. What the client has done is one of those few things that would actually make me turn and run, but if you are already under contract with them, these would be my suggestions:

1. First, have a really good and honest chat with the client about the 'iffiness' of their chosen strategy. Tell them that you totally get that they were just imitating what appeared to be working for a competitor, but that the competitor is in danger of big let down at any time in the future if their microsites are, in fact, duplicative/thin/spammy. If the client is in a market that is a spammy or non-competitive one, the competitors' pages may be really old ones that are just gathering dust, waiting for some update from Google to blast them into oblivion. I know this kind of junk exists out there in the SERPs, and that some of it is still ranking well (sadly) - I run into it not infrequently. I consider it an object lesson in Google's failure to deliver quality for some phrases, but not a smart opportunity for creating a marketing strategy. Google is always trying to improve result quality, and one day, I believe these types of sites will meet their deserved doom:) I would talk all of this over with the client and describe the strategy as clumsy at best and very risky at worst.

2. There are very few instances in which I can imagine that a single business could turn out 35 highly valuable city websites. Unless there is some extremely decisive factor that makes Boston Business different from Cape Cod Business, there is really no legitimate reason to have different websites. I would, indeed, advise the client to let them expire, unless he can explain a real-world reason for having a unique website for each city, backed up by a plan to create completely unique content for each of the sites.

3. The preferred approach here would be to help this client take new pride in a single website for his brand, with strong, unique pages for each city with which he has a legitimate relationship. By building out an extremely strong, helpful, accurate website, he will be building his brand and doing what he needs to to alert bots and humans to his presence in the various cities. I don't know the nuances of your client's business, if it's single-location or multi-location, if it's B&M or an SAB, but, in general, this would be the very best approach. If he can take all of the effort he's likely been putting into managing 35 different websites and put it into managing just 1, think how awesome his site could become!

You might like to read:

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

I hope this straight stuff from me is helpful. You actually have the opportunity to educate this client and put him on a much better path that could serve his business well in future!

Hey There!

I'm glad you've asked about this. From your description, it sounds to me like you may not actually be running the 'right' type of Facebook page for the businesses in question. Moz Local validates against Facebook Place pages only - not social/brand-type pages. In order for validation to succeed, you would need to have a unique Facebook Place for each of business locations. Facebook Place pages can typically be identified by the fact that they have:

• Reviews

• A map

• Complete name, address, phone number, website

• Visits (not just likes)

If you discover that you need to change the type of Facebook page for a business, you can investigate this directly with Facebook by going to:

https://www.facebook.com/help/343548832389235/

Click on the heading ‘How do I add a map or address to my page?’ to see Facebook’s guidelines for changing the type of page.

Alternatively, we can validate against a Google+ Local/Google My Business page, instead of Facebook, but likewise, each location will need to have a unique page, and the pages must be postcard-verified with Google in order for us to see them.

Hope this helps. If you need further assistance, please don't hesitate to ask. If you need to show me the Facebook page in question, and don't want to post it publicly, you can PM me. You can also start a ticket at our Help Hub for private assistance.

Hi Djreich!

Good topic! In general, inclusion of more than one result in a single pack for the same brand is the result of tremendous dominance or lack of competition. You don't mention the industry your client is in, so I can't really guess at their competition, but rule of thumb would be that if your pack is a 7-pack and you've got 7 or more competitors in that city offering the same service, getting Google to grant a single business more than 1 spot is going to be uphill work on desktop devices. You may have a bit of an easier time on mobile, depending on the proximity of the two businesses to the customer performing the search. If it's only a 3-pack (more common since Pigeon), getting more than one spot in it is going to be a real long shot, unless you are the only game in town. And remember, what you see is not necessarily what this company's customers see, on desktop or mobile devices.

It's good that you are going get the citations clean and consistent for the second location. That's vital! From a content perspective, each of the 2 locations should have its own, strong page on the website, linked to from a top level menu, including Schema-encoded NAP and good text content about the respective locations. If the company has a blog, continuing to build out content for each location would be smart, too. Working on social for both locations would be a good idea, and don't ignore video marketing as a way to get a very visual result for a second location, even if you can't make it into the pack. Review acquisition, particularly of Google-based reviews, could help. I would also think that doing a competitive analysis of who is coming up in the pack would be very important, enabling you to see if there are any weak competitors in there who might be bumped down by specific positive actions on your client's part.

I wish I had a tried-and-true formula for you on this, but the variables of pack size, user location, authority of the brand and level of competition make it pretty impossible to predict whether getting 2 spots in one pack is a reasonable goal or pie-in-the-sky. You will be doing a complete analysis of all of this, and may find weak spots or the competition may just be too stiff to reasonably be overmastered, in which case, diversifying keywords goals for the 2 businesses and/or going after organic rather than local visibility may be a better strategy.

Hey Ricky,

Such a good question. As you can probably guess, the proviso here is that you can build all of these pages ... if they have genuine value. To be honest, most sites you see taking this approach are building pages that don't really have a purpose other than attempting to gain rankings for a laundry list of terms, right? After all, having a slip and fall accident in Miami isn't really much different than having one in Orlando. In the real world - it isn't different. But trying to please the bots can cause business owners and marketers to get into some pretty complicated contortions.

My honest preference is to have 1 page per service and 1 page per location and depend on building the authority of the brand so that the site is strong enough to rank for many terms. I think the Moz blog is an awfully good example of this. Search for a topic, and up comes a Moz blog post, and not because we've got "For Seattle, For San Francisco, For Boston" in the titles. The strength of the site, overall, helps with ranking for topics. True, Moz is not a local business, but the concept is the same to me - building the kind of authority that makes whatever you publish on your site seem important/relevant to Google for its topic. So, like I've said, 1 page per service and 1 per location would be my ideal preference.

That being said, the legal industry is cutthroat in major cities, and sometimes a Local SEO will find himself doing things that may not seem very sensible, just trying to keep ahead of the competition. If, in auditing your unique competitive scenario, you do feel you have to build a page for every service/city combo, I guess the best you can do is to try to make those pages as unique and helpful as possible. If you're the copywriter, I don't envy you, but it can be done with enough resources and creativity.

Hi Pete!

You're getting quality feedback from the community here. As Chris and Linda have mentioned, Google's local product is intended for local businesses that make face-to-face contact with their customers. If yours is an e-commerce business (a virtual business) then getting listed in Google's local product would actually be a violation of their policies. If there's some chance that we're misunderstanding your business model, please do offer further details!

Nice of you to say, Pixel!

Hi Lee,

Excellent question! Let's take a look at the Google Local Business Information Quality Guidelines together to understand why Google has let you know that some of these locations for your client are not acceptable (see: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en). The applicable part states:

Do not create a page or place your pin marker at a location where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations. Your business location should be staffed during its stated hours.

What Google means by this is that they find staffed locations acceptable, and what you are describing is office space that the business uses from time to time - so a very different scenario than the one which Google allows.

I have heard rare anecdotal evidence of physical visits from Google, and it looks like Linda Buquet has, too. More common would be something like Andrew Shotland's story of his infamous call from Google that resulted in his listing being yanked (see: http://www.localseoguide.com/hey-seos-if-google-maps-calls-dont-answer/). So, that sort of thing definitely does happen and this is the sort of story it can help to share with clients to illustrate for them Google's activities when it comes to attempting to enforce compliance with their guidelines.

Best suggestion here would be to get rid of the Google+ Local listings for the non-compliant listings and create a better strategy for seeking organic (rather than local) visibility for non-physical-location cities. You might like to read:

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

Hope this helps!

I'm betting dollars to doughnuts that's probably the case with the NAP. It's likely in the dashboard but hidden. You should absolutely include the full NAP on the website (typically in the footer and on the contact page and preferably in Schema markup) and use it in your citation building. It's extremely important to do so