Hi CyberAlien,

So nice to know a colleague recommended you try Moz, and please don't call yourself ignorant - we are all here to learn and help one another!

Let me share some important info with you regarding Local Search.

If the category your business is in is, in fact, 'web design', then you are in somewhat special circumstances. About four or so years ago, Google stopped showing web design/SEO firms in their local pack of results for core searches like 'web design', 'website design', etc. The local pack of results consists of the lettered results (typically A-G) with the little pin icons that are shown within the other, traditional organic results.

Why did Google stop showing web design/SEO companies in the local packs? To my knowledge, they've never made an official announcement about this, but it's presumed that they did so because Google feels that most of these companies conduct most of their business virtually instead of face-to-face. Conducting in-person, face-to-face business with customers is really the defining characteristic of a local business, in Google's opinion, and so, even though some web design firms do meet with their clients in person, they are out of luck as far as the local packs go.

It is sometimes possible to generate local pack results by adding 'in' to a query, as in 'web design in little rock', but the value of appearing for 'in' queries is generally far less than appearing for main queries like 'web design', 'web design little rock', 'web design company', etc.

So, what this all boils down to is that because Google doesn't really consider your company as local, it's likely that you are going to have to make efforts to appear in the organic results rather than the local ones.

It sounds like you've already taken a big step toward this by creating three pages for each of your three offices. Good start! Some questions:

• Is the content on each of these pages 100% unique?

• Are the offices real, physical offices occupied solely by your firm? If so, yes, you could utilize schema. This article offers tools for doing so: http://moz.com/blog/free-local-seo-tools

• Have you optimized these page for both the service terms AND the geographic terms?

• Have you made the content on these pages really exciting and helpful? Are the pages short or long?

• Have you promoted these pages socially in any way?

• Do you have customer testimonials on these pages? If so, are you using some form of schema review markup?

• Are there good links pointing to these pages, both from inside the site and from outside the site?

These are few questions to start with. I'm sure the community will have more questions and advice.

Good for you for finding at least two, Sonia!

Hi Robert,

Thanks so much for weighing in on this. I really appreciate the wider input on this topic, as my own view could be slanted by the fact that I tend to try to shop small local brands whenever I can. Even my favorite grocery store is an independent one - hard to find these days in the USA. Interestingly, Sonia started two threads on a similar topic, and on her other one, David Mihm was able to point out one larger retailer that is doing a good job...REI.com. Check out their location pages. I was impressed!

But when it comes to restaurants, I just have not seen anything like this in looking at the biggies like fast food chains. I find this interesting, because with their enormous incomes, they would certainly have the money to do this, but as things currently are, there's not much incentive to do so. It's easy to find McDonald's or Burger King in any town, regardless of a lack of Local SEO.

Appreciate your feedback. Maybe someone can dig around and find the food franchise that breaks the mold on this

Hi Sonia,

This may be a toughie because, in my experience at least, most enterprise level chains have pages like this to help you find a local location:

http://www.bk.com/en/us/restaurant-locator/index.html

You type your location into a search box and are typically only shown a map and address. There isn't really content here. Maybe someone in the community knows of someone who is doing this better, but it seems to me that big franchises can lean on the strength of the branding and expect Google to 'figure it out' rather than having to make the efforts smaller businesses do. Does the community agree with me on my take on this? I'd like to know!

Regarding the Burger King results page, I can't even find the address I've searched for on the page source code, so I can't tell if they are using schema.

You've asked a good question and I'll be interested to see if anyone can provide an example of what you're looking for.

Hi Jason,

The explanation of your business model is helpful in a number of ways. Interestingly, (and excitingly), Google+ Local actually has a category for magicians.

Go to Mike Blumenthal's category tool (http://blumenthals.com/Google_LBC_Categories) and type 'magician' into the search box. Here's what you'll see:

Category: Magician

Synonyms: magic, _magician_s, parties, party, magic, _magician_s, parties, party, magic, _magician_s, parties, party

As a Local SEO, I find this extremely interesting because it immediately clues us in to how Google categorizes and views your business, indicating that these are core terms that should be included in the development of your local business profiles and website optimization.

I am not sure from your description whether you are making specific efforts to promote your business via Local SEO. I would think you should be doing so, provided your business meets the following criteria:

1. Has a name or DBA

2. Has a dedicated street address (even if it's a home address that you hide when creating your local business listings)

3. Has a local area code phone number

4. Makes face-to-face contact with customers (like when you perform your magic act)

If you can say 'yes' to all four things, then you should be doing Local Search Marketing to promote your business to its fullest.

Unfortunately, whether you are researching terms like 'magician' or 'entertainer', keyword research tools can give, at best, a general picture of actual local traffic. Things like the Google Keyword Planner Tool and Google Insights can help to form this general picture, but you sort of have to make an assumption that people in major cities are, indeed, looking for magicians and entertainers.

As a local business, the core of your geographic optimization is going to be based on the city in which you are physically located. If your street address is in Cleveland, then this is what Google sees you as the most relevant answer for, when it comes to user queries. You can work to appear high in the LOCAL results (often called the 7-pack) for people searching for variations of the term 'magician cleveland' or for searches searching for 'magician' from a device located in Cleveland. Again, we are talking about LOCAL results here.

Now, many business models may be located in one city, but also travel to serve additional cities (think of plumbers). Because of Google's bias towards physical location in the city of search, these service area businesses are unlikely to appear in the Local results for these additional service cities. Instead, they have go after gaining visibility in the ORGANIC results for these additional service cities.

Currently, best practices for achieving this involve the creation of city landing pages. One page for each city where you serve. The content on each page must be unique and awesome. It should be optimized for what you do in the city where you do it. You can read a detailed explanation of this practice here:

The Nitty Gritty of City Landing Pages For Local Businesses

How well this practice works depends on how competitive your local market is, and how much work you may need to do to promote these pages. Gaining even a modest amount of visibility in the organic results for your additional service cities can make phones ring, so this will be an important area for you to investigate. Hope this helps!

Hi Jason,

We're so glad to have you here at Moz! Could you describe your business model? Are you running a local business with a physical address that makes face-to-face contact with your clients? Or, perhaps, a directory? The more information you can provide, the better answers you'll receive from the community. Again, welcome aboard!

Hi Oren,

Thanks for the great explanation. So, let me try to sum up the options I see.

Option 1: Legal firm with physical offices in Delaware and California

In this case, the firm can have a Google+ Local page for each physical office, linking to a website landing page for each physical office. Be sure, of course, that each physical office has a unique local phone number. In this scenario, the client has good hope of showing up in the local results for the cities in California and Delaware in which they are are physically located.

Option 2: Legal firm in with an office California that will send attorneys to Delaware to serve clients

In this case, the legal firm can have a Google+ Local page for their California, but not one for Delaware if they don't have a physical office in the latter state. They can, however, build content on their website to reflect the work they do in Delaware cities. In this scenario, the firm has a good chance of showing up in the local results for their California city, but not their Delaware ones. Instead, they must aim for organic visibility for their work in Delaware, and if we're dealing with the legal practice, this can be tough because there are likely to be a ton of lawyer in almost any major city. So, it's possible but very difficult to achieve good organic visibility with this content.

Hopefully, I've covered the two scenarios that might apply to your client. It pretty much all comes down to the cities in which one is physically located dictating in which cities one ranks locally.

Hi Robert,

I'd like to start by sharing with you what I think is one of the most relevant articles that's been published recently about Google+ Local pages and what you can and can't do with them. If you've not already read this one by Mike Blumenthal, check it out:

http://localu.org/blog/merge-google-pages-usually-cant-now/

As you've noticed, Google has automatically created a Google+ Local page for the business. Give the concerns of the business owner about people showing up at an administrative office, I wonder if the best thing to do might be to try hiding the address on G+ Local page, in the dashboard. Would this go at least part way toward resolving the main concern of the client?

Hi Alex,

Good questions. I'm going to run through these pretty quickly since there are quite a few. I would first recommend that you study the Google Places Quality Guidelines, which answer many of your questions:

https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en

1) Google Places

1.  Do not create a Google+ Local listing for any location except a real, physical location that is open to the public during stated business hours (like a restaurant) or from which staff goes to serve clients (like a plumber) and at which the phone is answered during stated business hours.

2. While Google is fine with home-based businesses, they must be staffed businesses where a phone is answered during normal business hours and you must be sure to comply with their rules about hiding your address. There is grey area here. Be careful. Using residential addresses can become spammy and Google is wise to it. Again, see the guidelines.

3. Each location must have a unique local area code phone number. Do not duplicate phone numbers or use 800 or call tracking numbers.

4. If you have a legitimate multi-location business, best practice is to build a landing page on the site for each office and link to the respective URL for this page from each Google+ Local listing.

2) NAP

1. Your NAP should be identical everywhere on the web. Never add keywords, city names or other modifiers to the business name.

Questions 2, 3 & 4 - see above advice in previous section.

3) Company name and domain name.

If you are a brand new company and are just now naming your business, it can help to have keywords be a legitimate part of your business name. In other words, it can be better to be Anaheim Plumbing Company vs. Bob's Fix-it Service. If your company already has a brand, re-branding is an enormous task. Not sure if this is what you are asking about.

Regarding domain names, having keywords in the domain can provide a small competitive edge, but my preference is for the domain name to authentically represent the business name. If a company is called Smith TV Installation, I'd be totally fine with having smithtvinstallation.com as the domain name. Of course, you can go with the shorter name if the name is just way too long. What you definitely want to avoid is publishing a weak site with an 'exact match domain', as this has been the subject of recent Google penalties. In other words, don't buy 50 domains with geo-specific-keyword-oriented words in them and then publish weak and duplicate content on them.

There are many good choices you can make when it comes to naming your business or buying your domain. My preferred approach is to be as authentic as you can with your brand, whenever and wherever you can.

4. Unfortunately, due to non-disclosure policies, I can't share my own clients sites with you. It sounds to me like you may not actually be promoting a true mutli-location site if you've only got a single office. I recommend that your first step be to study the guidelines and identify what your business model type really is. That's a vital first step! Hope this helps.

Hi Oren,

Might need to see a bit more info here. Are you talking about a local business that:

1. has physical locations in these other cities/states that clients come to? (like a restaurant franchise)

2. or has staff that travel from a physical address in these city/states to clients? (like a wedding photographer)

-or-

Are you talking about a virtual business that isn't making face-to-face contact with clients but offers statewide or nationwide services/products?

Please, provide as much detail as you can about the specifics of the business model to ensure you receive the best possible answer from the community.

Hi Varun,

It's great to have you here in the forum! As Matt-Antonio and ClaudioHeilborn have correctly stated, the business name you enter when you create your Google+ Local page must be your real business name, with no additional keywords of any kind. This advice is based on what Google states in their Google Places Quality Guidelines:

Do not attempt to manipulate search results by adding extraneous keywords or a description of your business in the business name field.

The guidelines are the best place to go to understand the rules Google has published regarding the use of their product. Here's the link: https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en

Hope this helps!

Hi Tony,

Essentially, your keywords will be similar, yes, though hopefully you will make room for many variants as you're creating the different pages. My hope here, though, is that your main focus here will be to create really excellent pages that tell a great story and convert customers. Yes, you've got to think about keywords, but that is just step one.

I would also be careful of approaching this with a 'rank it fast' mindset. How quickly and highly these pages rank will largely be dependent on the strengths of your various competitors. In a scenario of low-competition, you can expect to achieve visibility more easily than you can in a really tough one. The tougher the competition, the more work you may need to put into promoting these pages so that they build authority via the earning of links, social mentions, etc.

Good luck with the work ahead!

Hi Daniel,

It sounds as if you already found an answer to your original question, so that's good.

Regarding citation building - yes, this is something to be handled with care. The most important thing is to ensure that your NAP (business name, address, phone) is the same every place your business is listed around the web. That is also correct that you should only be building citations for physical locations. So, a plumber in city A who serves cities B-E is still only going to build one listing for his business on each platform. He's not going to build them for cities where he isn't physically located.

Hope this makes sense.

Hi Echo1,

I think you'll find this Phil Rozek article really hits the spot:

http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2013/05/01/checklist-for-keeping-google-plusreviews-out-of-the-filter/

Check that out. It's terrific!

Patrick - very nice extra tip about blogging about the specials. That's an excellent idea. I'm giving you a thumbs up for that one. Blogging can also be a very important part of the ongoing content development process!

Hi Tony,

The creation of city landing pages for SABs (service area businesses) is still a common best practice. The key here, though, is not to simply put up 40 near-identical pages with different geo terms on them. You've got to create awesome pages. I would consider creating 40 awesome city landing pages all at once to be an awfully tall order. Any business owner is going to feel overwhelmed by this, and even a talented copywriter is going to feel bogged down by such an order. If this were my client, I'd say, "Let's take this 5 cities at a time. For each of our first five pages, we're going to:

• Write up 3 project descriptions

• Take super before-and-after photos to illustrate the completed projects

• Shoot a video and transcribe it

• Interview our best customers in that city and get testimonials

• Create a unique special/coupon for each city

• Create one unique feature for each city that no other city landing page has. For example the page for City A might feature an interview with the business owner. The page for City B might feature 5 emergency stain removal tips. The page for City C might feature recommendations for choosing carpet types for the home that stand up to most wear. City D's page might showcase how the company supports the Little League in that town. Etc."

This somewhat strenuous method intentionally avoids taking shortcuts and results in pages that are created with a lot of thought and care. The point here is to take the necessary time to assemble very persuasive, helpful content that will come across as exceptional to website visitors coming from a specific town. Once the first 5 pages are done, move onto the next 5. Eventually, you will have created the 40 desired pages, but each will be a little masterpiece of creativity and care.

Do remember, of course, that it's vital to set the business owner's expectations correctly on this: the goal of these pages will be to achieve organic rankings for his service cities, not local rankings, because he doesn't stand much chance of ranking in the local pack of results for cities where he isn't physically located, due to Google's bias in this matter. But, high organic rankings can make phones ring for SABs, and pursuing this visibility with real care instead of a slapdash approach remains the best way I know of to achieve a goal like that of your client.

Hi RCF,

Here is what I see:

Searching for 'doctor of business administration' with my location set to Redmond Oregon, http://www.georgefox.edu/business/dba/ is coming up #8 organically.

Doing this same search, but with my location set to Newberg, Oregon, I see http://www.georgefox.edu/offices/sfs/grad/tuition/business/dba/ coming up #2 organically.

It looks like my exact rankings may not be identical to yours, but at least my searches appear to confirm that the 2 different pages are surfacing with the 2 different locations being set.

Unfortunately, I agree with Moosa that it's very hard to hit on a precise reason for why Google would be favoring your tuition page over your home page when a user's location is set to the town the in which the institution is located. I do have a suggestion, though. Why not try putting Newberg, OR in the title tag of the page you'd like to be ranking highest for Newberg-located searchers, mention it in the H1 tag, and mention it more than once in the copy. I'd also recommend that you put the complete NAP (name, address, phone) in the body copy of the page, though I see it's already in the footer. Perhaps by increasing the optimization for Newberg on this page, you might strengthen the pages chances of ranking the way you want it to? Just a suggestions.

Not at all, Oren! You're very welcome.

Hi Oren,

You are correct in the phenomenon that you have noticed. For quite some time now, Google has been localizing results to the searcher's geographic location. Thus, when you search from Boston for dentists in Chicago, you will likely be shown somewhat different results than will the dentist searching for himself from his location in Chicago. On mobile, this is often even more evident. If you search for a coffee shop while driving through the north end of town, you will be shown the cafes nearest to you. This will change to a new set of cafes when you reach the south end of town.

While I have never seen a serious study conducted of the exact degree of variance in the results, the important thing to understand is that every user is seeing different results, personalized to their geography. Gone are the days when a business could definitively rank #1 for a term, due to this type of personalization.

Hi Kirmeliux,

I agree with your approach of keeping this all on one domain, as opposed to building a second, separate site.

Will the fact that that your first city name is in the URL harm your ability to rank for the second city? This is a good question, but I have never seen a professional study done side by side of a non geo domain vs. a geo domain, in the scenario you're describing of then having to build a second geo term into the site. I'm sure this is a common issue with SABs. For example a plumber with the domain name thedallasplumber.com would then typically want to rank for Fort Worth and other geo terms, as well. I suspect that if this causes any hitch for Google, it would be slight and could be overcome by the authority the other city landing pages achieve.

My one suggestion is that you be sure that both cities' pages are accessible from the top level navigation. You mention building a second site within the site. I'm not completely sure of what you are envisioning here, but did want to mention that I think it's important that the pages for both city a and city b are accessible from the main menu.

Hi Guy,

Edmond has give some thoughtful feedback. The one suggestion I would be careful of is the one in which a central device at an office is being used to encourage reviews. If reviews stem from the same IP address (known as a review kiosk) they are likely to be flagged by Google as spam, so that is not something I would recommend.

I would also be careful about offering incentives for reviews. Google's stance on this has been very strange, and is worth researching.

Beyond this, though, having print materials to hand to the client at the time of service is a great idea, as is educating key members of the staff to request reviews. Whitespark has a great, free handout that you can brand with your own company logo that gives directions for leaving a Google+ Local review. You'll find it here:

http://www.whitespark.ca/review-handout-generator/

*Just remember, the one review platform on which you cannot ask for reviews is Yelp. Their guidelines forbid soliciting reviews in any way.

Additionally, if you have good customers who simply are not going to go on the Internet to leave you a review, but who would be happy to give you a hand written testimonial, you could get them to write you one at the the time of service, or in a follow up email, and you can turn these into testimonials you post on your website. You can use Schema review markup to encode these reviews, giving you a chance that Google will display stars on your results in the search engine results. This is a good solution for customers who are not tech savvy.

Remember, no business needs to earn a huge number of reviews all at once. A little, slow trickle of them over time is a much better signal than a whole bunch at once.

Here's a post I like, by Phil Rozek, about Google+ Local reviews. I think you might like it, too:

http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2013/04/04/the-complete-guide-to-google-pluslocal-reviews-and-especially-how-to-get-them/

Hope this helps!

Hi Czubmeister,

I'll echo back to you what I believe you are describing, just to be sure I'm correctly understanding your client's situation

• The client ranks in the 7 pack for his 2 core terms, but does not rank organically for these same terms

• The client ranks well organically for other terms

Hopefully, I've got this right.

Here's what I believe you're experiencing:

The client's organic strength for those 2 core terms is a major part of why he is ranking in the local pack of results. His organic rankings for those 2 terms have been subsumed into his overall local ranking. Since the Venice update in early 2012, it has become quite uncommon for any business to have both an organic and local ranking for a single search term. Though you'll find exceptions to this here and there, typically, if a business has earned a spot in the local pack, the owner should not expect to also see himself in the organic results for the same term.

So, just remember that organic factors are part of the local algorithm, and your client's local pack ranking does represent his organic strength, in a result which combines both organic factors (like website authority) with local ones (like citations and number of reviews). Hope this helps!

It's my pleasure, Jason. Good luck to you with the work ahead!

Hi Marcus,

When a ranking drop happens, there are typically 3 possible causes:

• The business has been surpassed by more active competitors

• There is a temporary shakeup going on, meaning that rankings will likely return in a short time

• The business has been penalized, meaning that time goes by and the previous high rankings do not return

From your description, it sounds like it may be the last of these. You mention "once they had they transferred over" and I'm not quite sure to what this refers, but a key task here will be to see if the client can put a date on exactly when they lost rankings. If they can't maybe their analytics can help you. Then, perhaps you can tie this time period to a known Google penalty, as well as being sure that all of the bases are covered in my original list of Local SEO requirements.

Major penalties and troubleshooting fall outside my areas of knowledge, so I am going to request that one of our expert traditional SEOs might also come look at your question. They will likely be able to ask questions and see things that I can't.

Hi Jason,

I should have been more clear about this. I'm sorry. Let me provide a little more detail.

In my experience, most local business websites have some basic pages, regardless of whether the business is a dental clinic, or a legal firm or a restaurant. Most feature the following pages;

• Home

• About

• Contact Us

On these pages, I would be adamant about ensuring that the optimization of the titles, tags and text matches the core business NAP (name, address, phone). So, if the business is physically located in Jamestown, then these pages should reflect this in every way possible so that when humans and search engine bots hit these pages, the content there matches the content you are publishing on your various local business listings, in terms of geography.

Beyond these three basic pages, most local businesses will also have a set of service/product description pages. Here, we enter some grey area, because the content and optimization of these pages will be dictated by the needs/goals of the unique business. Some possible choices:

• If the business does serve clients in its city of location, then it's a no-brainer to optimize the product/service pages for this geo term. In other words, instead of just optimizing for 'teeth whitening', you would be optimizing for 'teeth whitening in jamestown' and such variants.

• If the business does not serve clients in its city of location, then these pages could be optimized for the neighboring city where it does serve.

• If the business provides services in multiple cities with equivalent values, then you could either optimize the core service/product pages for the city of location (my first choice) with the plan to build additional content for other cities, or, you could not use geo terms at all in the optimization of these pages (a somewhat iffy choice) and rely on 'cities we serve' pages to stand in for having optimized the actual product/service pages.

There may be other choices, because there are always little nuances to each businesses, but what I've described above are the most common approaches.

Now, in terms of building city landing pages for multiple service cities, I'd like to point you to an article I wrote on this some time back that many people told me really helped them understand their options. Here we go:

The Nitty Gritty of City Landing Pages for Local Businesses

Of course, a local business website will have other pages like testimonials pages, work with us pages, etc., on each one of which you'll be making a nuanced decision in regards to which keyword terms are targeted.

I hope I've provided some further insight here and that the article I've linked to will provide even more.

Hi DentalDesign,

Can you provide further clarification as to what you mean by 'struggling for rankings'? Does this mean the client has lost rankings or is struggling to achieve the high rankings they would like to earn?

As a rule of thumb, high local rankings hinge on -

1. Physical location in city of search

2. A lack of violations of Google's guidelines

3. Consistency of NAP (name, address, phone) across all citations

4. A perfectly optimized website

5. Quality and authority of that site

6. Review acquisition

7. Traditional SEO factors

8. Activities of competitors

Local Search Ranking factors 2013 goes into awesome detail regarding the most important positive and negative ranking factors. It's an amazing resource: http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

Hi Jason,

In Google's world, Local Search hinges on physical address, even for SABs (service area businesses). This means that, regardless of your on-page optimization, your business is most likely to achieve local pack rankings for its city of location - not for a different city where you are not physically located. While I'm not sure from your description whether your business is brick-and-mortar (like a dentist located in the suburbs who wishes to gain clients from the neighboring major city) or is an SAB (like a plumber located in the suburbs who travels to the neighboring big city to make house calls), it doesn't really matter. Google's bias toward physical location dictates that most local businesses must go for local rankings for their city of location and organic rankings for any other city.

Because of this, the approach that makes most sense to me is to optimize the basic pages of the website (home, about, contact) for the city of location, because you want these pages to reinforce Google's belief in the validity of the NAP (name, address, phone number) you have included on your Google+ Local page. The goal here is to achieve the highest possible local rankings for the city of location, because this is what Google cares about most.

Then, build additional content on the website for additional target cities and try to build as much authority surrounding it as possible, in hopes that it will be able to achieve organic visibility.

This would be my approach, as I feel it clearly delineates both physical location and target cities.

Hi DHStom,

We had so many readers point out that many of the tools in my post are US-centric. It left me wondering how much of this was caused by the fact that my area of knowledge in Local SEO is strongly tied to serving US businesses, and how much of this reflects a lack of tool development in other regions like the UK, Canada and Australia. I am not sure of the answer to this.

I believe the best-known suite of Local tools for UK users is the paid tools from BrightLocal.com. These are not free tools, of course, but they are spoken of very highly.

You might also like to check out this post by Nyagoslav Zhekov from 2012 regarding citation tools and they areas they serve. Nyagoslav has done Local SEO in more countries than anyone I know:

http://www.ngsmarketing.com/local-citation-building-tools/

The post is now a couple of years old, so I'm not 100% sure about the current status of the tools mentioned.

It would be great if someone could put together an awesome list of Local SEO tools that support countries other than the US and submit a post to YouMoz on this. Clearly, there is need for such information!

Hi Scott,

No offense intended. We all run into problems we don't know how to solve. This is pretty specialized - someone who not only knows Bing really well, but also, whether there are issues with their local algo that could result in a branch outranking a main office. It's the Bing part of this that I think makes the question hardest. I feel like I'm pretty good at Local SEO, but because of Google's dominance in this sphere, I simply don't know enough about Bing to have ready, helpful examples for you. Sorry about that, and I really do hope you can get this sorted out. I'd love to hear what you learn.

Hi Gavo,

If you are talking about local business citations, most of these exist on business profiles on local business directories. If you have a national/virtual business, then local business directories aren't really the right match. However, if you do have something like a corporate headquarters that accepts walk-in traffic during stated business hours and makes face-to-face contact with customers there, then you can certainly create local listings for that office. But, it sounds to me like you are describing a national/organic SEO campaign for a non-local business, in which case, citations are not the right fit for what you are doing.

Hi Scott,

I have seen a similar, but not identical, issue reported numerous times in the Google Places Help Forum, in which a branch office is outranking the main headquarters of the business in Google. See threads like this one:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/main$20location/business/Bov09hyd1LM/AuIjdGSy_YYJ

Basically, when this comes up, the advice typically given is that there is no way to force the search engine to choose one location over another, and that the only thing the owner can do is to work on building the authority of the main location in hopes that Google will catch on.

Your situation is different in 3 important ways:

1. You're talking about Bing, not Google.

2. You're dealing with a broken contract and apparently don't have control over the branch office.

3. Your assessment is that the authority of the main office already far surpasses that of the branch office.

Unfortunately, I don't have an easy answer for you here, but I do have a suggestion. I recommend that you try Bing's support chat to see if you can talk to a live person about the issue:

https://sales.liveperson.net/hc/18987408/?cmd=file&file=visitorWantsToChat&site=18987408&byhref=1&SESSIONVAR!skill=bing-support-us-english

You need to be able to share the actual details of the business - not use stand-ins - of course. Without the real data, no one will be able to assess what is going on, so hopefully, you have the permission of the client to share their info with something like a live chat. I'd be very interested to hear what the rep tells you.

If you don't get anywhere with this, I would recommend hiring a heavy hitting SEO, with whom you can share full details, to help you audit the situation. Someone who is highly experienced with Bing and Local would be my pick, but this may not be easy to find, as Local is so Google-centric, because of Google's dominance.

I hope I've given you at least a starting point here.

Hi Mike,

Last July, I put this exact same question about linking to a Google+ Local page to Mike Blumenthal, aka Professor Maps. I think you'll really enjoy reading his thoughtful answer, which he turned into a blog post:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/07/02/should-you-do-linkbuilding-to-your-g-page-for-local/

Remember that it takes time to see the benefits of citation building, and that this is only one of the things that you need to be doing to promote a local business. Paramount is ensuring that you've obeyed all guidelines and rules (haven't made mistakes), and that the website is perfectly locally optimized. In addition to citation building, there is on-going content development, earning reviews, earning links and social outreach. If you're the new kid in a competitive vertical, you've got to work hard at a variety of disciplines in order to begin to move in on already-established businesses. Discovering their weaknesses can be one way to determine areas in which you can do a better job. Local SEO requires a ton of work and a big helping of patience!

Hi Catherine,

Please don't worry that you seemed over-anxious. Being safe is so important, and I'm so glad if I was able to help a little. Wishing you well!

Hi Catherine,

I'm terribly sorry to hear about this worrisome experience you have had and agree with you that people's privacy concerns are totally legitimate. Let's start with your most immediate concerns. If your address exists around the web and you are worried that someone is stalking you, you might want to start by contacting the local police to make them aware of the situation. They may have important advice for you that you simply won't get on a marketing forum. You might want to take extra precautions, such as ensuring that your home security is up-to-date and that your neighbors are aware of your concerns and can let you know if they see anyone strange on your property. Tell a friend or relative and arrange to check in with them via text or phone periodically each day so that they know you are okay.

The marketing side of this is important, but your safety comes first. If you fear for your safety, take precautions first.

Having said that, we can look at this from the marketing side as well. Let me clarify for you, and for others on this thread, Google's position on address.

• If you have a brick-and-mortar address that accepts walk-in traffic during stated business hours (like 9-5), then Google does want your address to be visible on your website and your Google+ Local page. Typically, home-based business models do not accept walk-in traffic, but public businesses like retail shops and restaurants do.

• If you are a home-based business, however, and do not accept walk-in traffic (maybe you accept in-home appointments, or you travel to your clients' locations to serve them), then you should be hiding your address on your Google+ Local page. As to publishing your address elsewhere, such as on your website or your third party citations, that is up to you. Yes, there is some indication that it's more trustworthy in Google's eyes if they can cross-reference your hidden address in their database with other instances of it they find non-hidden around the web, but you can still achieve visibility without publishing it. You can simply publish your business name and local phone number on your website if privacy concerns are paramount to you.

I recommend that you read the 2 following articles by Phil Rozek about local business directories, beyond Google Places for Business, that allow you to hide your address when listing your business:

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

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

As these articles will describe, there are many directories that allow you to be listed while hiding your address, and for a business owner with privacy concerns, these are great resources.

If you decide that it's important for your home address not to appear anywhere on the web, you can choose from one of two approaches:

1. Discover all references and edit them yourself.

2. Hire a company like Whitespark to do citation cleanup, the goal of which would be to get your address hidden where possible or to delete references where hiding an address is not allowed. Whitespark just launched a new citation cleaup service you might want to check out.

I want to stress, however, that either method will take time for edits to go into effect, and you will have to follow up periodically to be sure nothing has re-surfaced. In the meantime, I strongly advise that you put your safety concerns first and contact authorities and your personal support circle so that you can feel safer. Sending good thoughts your way.

Just popping in to add my voice to the choir. I agree with the consensus here that the URLs are too long. You are smart to be concerned about overoptimization, and I think it would be worth the effort to create new URLs and redirect the old ones.

Hi Kermiliux,

The 404 error issue is an ongoing one. Go to http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/404$20error and read some of the threads there. Hope this helps!

Hi Eric,

First, I need to make a small correction to my earlier statement. I meant to state that duplicating text across PAGES would = duplicate content. Footer content is excluded from this. Most websites have the same content in their footer from page to page. Sorry if what I wrote was misleading. So, duplicate content isn't the issue here, but...

While I agree that your devil's advocate argument contains horse sense in some ways, the footer is probably one of the most obvious places Google would look for spam. If Google goes out of their way to state that they don't want blocks of city names on a website, I think it's wise to take this at face value. And I think that, because footers are historic candidates for spamming, Google would be especially down on this type of content being placed there.

I may be a little bewildered by your client's goals. If they don't want to rank for their service cities, why include them anywhere on the website? And if the goal is to let visitors know the areas they serve, why not at least put that on the homepage of the website, shine a spotlight on it so it's totally clear? Make a custom map. Write a full description. Create unique pages and link to them from a top level menu.

Relegating this vital information to the footer, which many people won't even see, just doesn't make sense to me. The areas an SAB serves are critical data and should be highlighted in every way possible. When I develop websites for SABs, I create two main types of pages beyond the typical homepage, contact, about, etc.:

1. Service description pages (one for each service)

2. City landing pages (one for each major city served)

To me, these are the basics of any local business website, and I would be puzzled by a client who didn't 'get' this. I work primarily with small-to-medium local businesses, and I totally understand budget constraints, This is why creating a protracted timeline for getting all the necessary pages developed is often a good solution. To me, from what you've written, it sounds like your client may not have clear goals in mind in regards to how their website will serve them and their customers. Hopefully, as their marketer, you can help them create a plan that will take their website forward to becoming a true sales-generating asset. I hope these thoughts are helpful.

So glad that hit the spot!

Sounds like a good idea. I'd be sure the homepage of your website and the contact us page states the same, to make it totally clear.

Hi Eric,

You are right to be wary of this tactic. Not only would you be creating duplicate content by replicating this statement from page to page, but you would also be going against Google's webmaster guidelines which state:

Keyword stuffing

"Keyword stuffing" refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate a site's ranking in Google search results. Often these keywords appear in a list or group, or out of context (not as natural prose). Filling pages with keywords or numbers results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site's ranking. Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context.

Examples of keyword stuffing include:

• Lists of phone numbers without substantial added value
• Blocks of text listing cities and states a webpage is trying to rank for

(Bolded emphasis mine) See: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66358?hl=en

Unfortunately, if your client lacks the funding to develop unique content for each of his service cities, then he should not expect to rank for them. In days gone by, the client would have needed to pay for phone book ads that highlighted his service cities. Lacking funding, he would have been out of the running. These days, because of Google's bias towards unique, useful content, funding comes into play when it comes to content development.

Perhaps you can find a good solution for this client in the form of an on-going contract in which you develop 1-2 new pages or posts for him per month at a reasonable rate. By then end of 2014, he would have added 12-24 new pages of content to his website, covering his cities and many of his services. He needs to be convinced of the value of this investment, and if you start with just a few of the cities and he begins getting more phone calls, it's likely he will see that this is an essential investment that is going to pay for itself over time.

Hi Courtney,

I support the sound conclusion you've reached. As the marketer on the project, hands-on nearly always beats automation. Whitespark's service is terrific and if you're using that and hand building citations for your clients, they have an edge over other companies who have taken the automated route, simply because someone (read: you) has maximum control over their citation profile. Great responses on this thread.

Hi CommercePundit,

Okay, so if you do accept walk-in traffic during stated business hours, then you should not have to hide your address. Only proviso would be that Google is convinced you are a brick-and-mortar location and not a service area business. There have been instances, like with carpet cleaning companies that also allow people to drop off area rugs, in which Google may not be convinced that a business is truly brick-and-mortar. If Google thinks you are an SAB, then you must hide the address or risk penalties. To be on the safe side, I would make sure that the website and business description on the Google+ Local page include a 'come to our shop during these business hours'-type message.

Hi Kirmeliux

I believe you can use the same email address for both the personal and the business page, but I am not 100% sure on that. You might want to double check on this by starting a thread at the Google And Your Business Forum. There may have been a policy change on this, thus my not being 100% sure. Here is the forum link:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/business

Regarding the dead URL:

• What did you edit on the listing?

• What error message do you get on the old URL (the dead one)?

Hi Commerce Pundit,

Thanks for the further details. So, if the physical point of transactions is in your customers homes and all other transactions are handled via e-commerce, then your Google+ Local page is not in compliance with Google's guidelines. The face-to-face component of your business appears to be as an SAB (service area business) meaning that you are required to indicate this in the dashboard of your Google+ Local page, in which case, your address will be hidden. Here is the language from the guidelines:

• Businesses that operate in a service area should create one listing for the central office or location and designate service areas.  If you wish to display your complete business address while setting your service area(s), your business location should be staffed and able to receive customers during its stated hours. Google will determine how best to display your business address based on your inputs as well as inputs from other sources. Learn how to add service areas to your listing.
• If you don't conduct face-to-face business at your location, you must select "Yes, this business serves customers at their locations" under the "Service Areas and Location Settings" section of your dashboard, and then select the "Do not show my business address on my Maps listing" option.

Here is a post I wrote here on Moz around the time that Google announced its requirements for SABs:

http://moz.com/blog/why-you-may-need-to-hide-your-google-places-address-asap

And here is a visual guide by Mike Blumenthal to the new Places for Business dashboard which shows where these options about service area businesses exist:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/04/02/visual-guide-to-the-new-places-for-business-dashboard/

It's extremely important to be in compliance with Google's requirements for SABs, or it may prevent your business from achieving the rankings you want.

Finally, regarding seeing impressions, as ImWaqas has pointed out, Google offers a way for you to see their display of the impressions your listing is getting. However, be advised that the numbers shown are not considered to be terribly accurate. Mainly, I use that area of the dashboard to be sure that a listing is getting SOME impressions, just to be sure it's not dead, rather than relying on the actual numbers shown.

Once your business is in compliance with all of the Google Places Quality Guidelines (see: https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en) then the work ahead will be to do your utmost to to succeed at all of the ranking factors outlined in the 2 resources linked to by Chris Menke, above.

The best metric of the success you achieve will not be found in the Places dashboard, but in the number of phone calls/form submissions your business gets. This is the data that really matters.

Long answer, but I sincerely hope it helps!

Hi Kirmeliux,

That's correct - Google+ Local pages are automatically created for local businesses and it's good that you've claimed them.

While it's possible to have as many social-type G+ pages as you want, per Mike's post, it's not possible to merge them unless they are of the same type (like accidentally having two Google+ Local pages, in which case, you'll likely need to contact support to get help merging the two).

Regarding having both a Google+ personal account and a Google+ business page, check this out:

http://keystoneclick.com/blogs/lori-highby/steps-creating-google-account

However, the issue remains that you are unlikely to be able to merge these items and will have to maintain them separately if you choose to create them. That's why I linked to the Mike Blumenthal article - it provides good suggestions for how to manage multiple types of pages.

Hi CommercePundit,

When setting my location to Toledo and searching for 'kitchen cabinets', I do not see your business coming up in either the local pack of results or in the first page of organic results.

Typically, then, the advice here would be that you need to build authority in order to begin appearing higher in the results. For this, the resources Chris has linked to are just what the doctor ordered. There are several hundred factors that contribute to high local rankings and a business needs to pursue many different areas of marketing in order to compete and to surpass competitors.

However, I need to take a step back first, here. We need to determine if your business is, in fact, eligible for local inclusion. After looking at your Google+ Local page, I visited your website and in looking at the custom map you've created of satisfied customers, I see nationwide clientele. I could totally be mistaken about this, but I did want to ask:

1. Does your business have in-person transactions with its customers, or is business handled virtually via e-commerce?

2. If your business does have transactions face-to-face with customers, do these happen at the company's location (like a showroom in Toledo) or at the clients' locations (perhaps with staff installing cabinets in customers' homes)?

The answers to both questions are vital for determining your eligibility. If, by some chance, your business model does not fit Google's image of what a local business is, then pursuing local rankings would be futile. Please, feel free to provide as much detail as you can and I'll do my best to advise you.

So glad this was what you needed, Mike!

Hi Kirmeliux,

I recommend this excellent post by Mike Blumenthal on what is and isn't possible at this point in the G+ environment:

http://localu.org/blog/merge-google-pages-usually-cant-now/

Hi Matt,

I recommend you read this recent post from Mike Blumenthal at LocalU:

http://localu.org/blog/merge-google-pages-usually-cant-now/