Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Pushkar,

Having keywords in a domain can help to some extent, yes, but in today's web, for the most part, the domain has to be populated with great content. Google's penalty has largely targeted EMDs with thin content. You can find exceptions to this, but have you researched all of the factors that may be contributing to high rankings for that competitor? I am at a disadvantage here, not being able to read the language the results are in, unfortunately. I'm not sure what 'sad shayari hindi' is. For example is this a branded search, a person, a product, etc?

This question was initially assigned to me because it was perceived as Local, which is my area of expertise. I am going to as a few of our traditional SEOs to stop by to see if they can offer further insight.

Hi Jesse,

Competing is nearly always possible, but the unknown quantity is time (how long it will take). Citations are definitely important, as some of our members have wisely recommended here, but the authority of the website is, in my opinion, an equal or greater factor in overall local rankings.There is debate about the exact importance of each ranking factor, as evidenced by the recent Local Search Ranking Factors. I recommend that you read this 2013 survey and try to do as much as you possibly can with the client in the foundational ranking factors category of the survey to start with. All of these steps will take time. So, it's definitely possible to outrank competitors, but the effort/funding/time that will take is going to be unique to each market and client. I would share the survey with the client to help them begin to understand the diversity of efforts that need to be made to begin to get in the game. Good luck!

Hi Steve,

You've received some very thoughtful replies here. I am just popping in to say that while the above suggestions sound good to me if applied to Google+ reviews, Yelp does not permit review solicitation in any form. In other words, your client should not be asking customers to review them on Yelp in any way. Not verbally, via email, via CTAs on the website, etc. Their policy is the most stringent in the industry - they want all reviews to be the results of spontaneous activity on the part of consumers. So, while I think you've received some excellent advice here, I would not recommend applying it to Yelp. Hope this saves you some headaches!

So glad to be of help Silkstream, and that's good that you're working hard to remedy the duplicate content issue. Sounds like a really big project. Good luck with all the steps!

Hi WebDesignBarrie,

I'm not totally sure I know what you mean by "local rich snippets". I'm going to take a guess that you are talking about using Schema??? If so, yes, it is completely fine for a single business with multiple physical locations to publish a unique page for each location and put Schema markup for the location, as well as for other elements like testimonials, if desired. And, it's also fine to have more than one location in the footer. My rule of thumb is that it's fine to do this provided there are less than 10 locations. If there are more than that, I think it makes the footer too unwieldy. It sounds like you have just 4 locations and should be fine. If I've misunderstood your questions, please just let me know.

Hi SilkStream,

I want to be sure I'm correctly understanding what you've described. Does this check out?

• You've got a unique website page for every city in the UK

• You only have physical locations in some of these cities

• You have published the complete NAP (name, address, phone) of the business on these city landing pages, reflecting your physical locations

• You are now wondering if it would be okay to add the NAP of physical locations to the pages for neighboring cities where you have no physical location.

Yes? If so, then here's what I think:

No, I would not recommend this. Here's why: right now, you are telling Google, "This Google+ Local page corresponds to this city landing page where we have a physical office. See, the NAP matches. This is the authoritative page on our website for our physical office in City A."

Now, if you start putting City A's NAP on the non-physical location pages for neighboring cities B, C, D and E, you are making Google say, "Wait, I thought this phone number went with City A. But it seems to have something to do with cities B, D, D and E. Same with the address. Where's the authoritative signal?"

In other words, I think the practice you're considering could actually cloud the clarity of the signal you are sending to Google about your NAP.

Instead of taking this route, I would be more inclined to put calls-to-action on the non-physical location pages and link them to the nearby physical office pages. In other words, I would put a CTA on the pages for non-physical location cities B, C, D and E stating, "Come see us in nearby City A," This CTA would link to the City A page and that's where your users (and the bots) could find your complete City A NAP.

This would be how I would handle this. And, of course, I would be sure that you've got unique content on all of these pages. Hope these ideas help!

My pleasure, Partyrocks! Good luck with the work ahead.

Hi Netlover,

The following local business indexes/directories require phone verification either part of the time, or always:

Google

Bing

Yelp

Foursquare

Infogroup/Express Update

YP.com

iBegin

Other forms of verification will include email and postal mail verification or a combination of these with phone verification. Hope this helps!

Hi Kelly,

I agree with Thomas that Local SEO, Content Development and Social Media activity, surrounding your local geography, are the best tools to consider for achieving your goals of increasing your visibility for local long tail traffic. Thomas has made some good suggestions here, and I will add something more specific.

I have seen a few sites, some of them not very beautifully designed, that offer 'what's it like to live here' user generated content. I've had to look at this when writing about areas in which I don't live. You have an advantage here in writing about your own home town, it would seem. What if you wrote a good article about each of the neighborhoods in your local city/cities and then invited users to expand on the article with their take on what it's like to live there? There could be subtopics, too, like what are the schools like here, what are the restaurants like here, what are the shops like here, what's the government like here, parks, doctors, etc. Here's an example:

http://www.city-data.com/forum/san-bernardino-riverside-counties/839376-whats-like-live-palm-springs.html

That is more in the form of a forum, which you might consider, or you might do yours more like blog posts and then treat the user entries somewhat like reviews, marking them up with Schema.

Don't know if this is the perfect fit for the things you want to rank for, but it is a UGC feature I've noticed that I think is really cool. If your site could become THE powerhouse site offering this type of content in your city, that could be pretty powerful. Hope this helps!

Hi Partyrocks,

That's good that you are starting to see your listing show up for important terms. Improving your rankings will depend on a variety of factors including the following:

• Physical Location in City of Search

• Citations you've built on 3rd party indexes/directories

• Reviews you earn

• Proper category choices

• The authority of your website

• Lack of violations on your Google+ Local page

• Authority of links pointing to your website

These are just a few things, off the top of my head. Edging out competitors means making a greater effort than they are in areas like the above. I would recommend that you do a close study of the most recent Local Search Ranking Factors to consider the top ranking factors, gauge where you are in the process of promoting the business and see where you can focus your energies to improve your visibility. For example, your current Google+ Local page has zero reviews, so this is easy to identify as worthy of effort. Hope this helps!

Hi Wellnesswooz,

I think the answer to your question may be found in the most recent iteration of the Google Places Quality Guidelines, which read:

"Do not create a listing 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"

(bolded emphasis mine)

If what you are talking about is a non-staffed location, then it doesn't qualify for inclusion in Google's Local results. Exceptions to this would be something like a self-service ATM machine. Here is a link to the guidelines: https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en

I am not quite sure I understand what you mean by 'other working areas'. Are you talking about setting a service radius like a plumber might do to show the different cities he serves? If so, this option is really only appropriate for Service Area Businesses (SABs) which travel to customers to serve them.

Google+ Local is really geared toward companies that transact business directly with customers, face-to-face. If this does not describe your business model or any of your locations, then it will be better for you to rely on organic, rather than Local, SEO. Hope this helps!

I just want to second Keri here in saying that this thread is AWESOME! I want to thank each of you for taking the time to contribute such carefully considered ideas. Just terrific.

And Robert, best wishes for a speedy recovery! Sending good thoughts your way.

Hi Craig,

I agree that duplicate content is a concern here. Let's say your client is a plant nursery with 5 locations. Typically, what I would do would be to create 5 branch landing pages (one for each of the nurseries) and these would be locally optimized, but my inventory pages would not be assigned to a specific location. If my plant nursery client has the same 500 tree varieties in the 5 locations, I do not find it reasonable that I would turn the nursery into a 2500+ page website. This is way beyond the scope of any local business site I've ever created and I can't imagine any way a local business could reasonably create that much unique content for the same 500 trees. Nor can I envision that this would be necessary, if as you say, the scenario isn't terribly competitive.

I'm curious as to whether your client is actually a plant nursery owner. I ask, because I live in a pretty garden-oriented state - California - and even in bigger cities, there are only going to be a modest number of plant nurseries. I would be surprised if people are doing a ton of actual searching for 'orange trees san jose', 'liriodendron trees san jose', 'birch trees san jose'. I would assume they would be searching more for things like 'tree nursery san jose', 'plant nursery san jose' and that if I ranked highly enough for these things, I would convert at a high level.

Now, that being said, should there be special things the client would like to highlight, perhaps on a seasonal level, like 'bare root fruit trees now on sale' or 'special on trees for shade gardens' that apply across all branches of the franchise, a blog might be a good solution for this, bringing extra attention to certain inventory items.

My thinking is that, if your client was a virtual e-commerce company, then yes, getting high rankings for every single item in the inventory would be essential, but the optimization would not be associated with geography in any way. Thus, you would have a single page for each product - optimized only for the product name. But, once you bring geography into this, the concept of optimizing each product for each city just puts the project beyond what will be typical (or, I would say, necessary) for a local business website. Take a look at how major franchises are doing this. I don't think McDonalds' has created a page for 'Big Mac+ City Name' for every city in which they have a restaurant, right?

Does this make sense, Craig, or am I missing your point?

Hi Pushkar,

I just wanted to clarify - when you write 'Top 7 Ranking' - are you talking about Google's Local 7 pack, or are you referring to organic rankings? Your screenshot shows organic rankings, so perhaps that's what you mean, but Google's organic results typically consist of more than seven entries, so I thought I would be sure.

If you're looking to learn more about the pros and cons of EMDs, I recommend this YouMoz post from last year:

http://moz.com/blog/the-exact-match-domain-playbook-a-guide-and-best-practices-for-emds

Hi Jason,

I need to start by saying that I typically work on the other end of things - trying to get local rankings for businesses. I've never had a client in your particular situation of wanting to build national authority while trying to keep local rankings.

For your installation services, do you have a unique office in each city from which staff goes out to install your product at client locations, and if so, did you create Google+ Local pages for each of these offices? If so, do these Google+ Local pages link to unique landing pages on the website, such as mysite.com/widget-installation-san-diego? Also curious to know how many physical offices you have - 3, 15, 100? And, are you currently getting local pack rankings for these various offices, or have your good rankings been organic rather than local? Lots of questions!

The sample URL I've written would typically be how city/branch landing pages would be structured for an SAB (service area business). I wouldn't typically recommend creating a subfolder for this. Google has stated that they don't care if you use subdomains or subfolders, provided they can be crawled, but I typically utilize subdomains as I find them easier to manage and keep track of than multiple subfolders.

It is possible to rank both nationally and locally (think of major brands like McDonalds with a corporate headquarters and multiple franchise locations around the globe). As Todd says, national rankings depend on building a very high level of authority (again, think McDonalds) for your brand.

If you would like to provide some further details, I will be happy to stop back by. And perhaps some members will also pop in who have accomplished, first-hand, what you are hoping to achieve.

You're welcome, Clint. If the listing is new, that could certainly be a contributing factor. In the meantime, the client should be doing all he can to strengthen his website and citations and begin getting reviews. All of these will contribute to his hoped-for climb up the ranks. Good luck!

Hi Clint,

If the client is failing to rank for core terms, you may need to do a full audit. Unfortunately, without seeing the listings myself, I can't offer further insight. As you know, local search rankings are based on hundreds of factors, so the client's issues may stem from so many different things, from age of the listings, to citation issues, to violations, penalties, merges, duplicates, etc.

I would first make sure that the client isn't violating any of the Google Places Quality Guidelines: https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en

And then, if Local is relatively new to you, study the most recent Local Search Ranking Factors survey: http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

Achieving ranking dominance in Local depends on all of the ducks being in a row. I do doubt that what you are describing could result in ranking failures because, as I've said, Google should understand that those two elements are the same, but there could be other elements that are off, and only an in-depth dive can surface these.

Good luck with this Tim. Thanks for letting us know what you did.

Good question, Clint. I would not be concerned about the particular variance you've mentioned. Google should understand that # and Ste are the same thing.

What would be a problem is if you left the suite number off some of the listings. That could cause problems. But what you've described should be fine.

Hi Steve,

So glad my reply was helpful. Good for you for getting the NAP into compliance. You've done your client a major service.

Hi Nathan,

This is a good question. Google will consider the client's business as being most relevant to its city of location. So, if the business is physically located in Woodstock, its best chances of appearing in the local pack of results will relate to searches that either include the term 'woodstock' or stem from Woodstock-based devices.

Beyond this, the client can work towards organic visibility by the process of building high quality city landing pages for his other service cities. Let me give you a link here to a very large post I wrote about this very topic:

The Nitty Gritty of City Landing Pages

Why don't you give that a read, and then if you have any additional questions, please come back with them. I'm happy to answer! Welcome to the community - it's great to have you here!

Hi Tim,

I have not personally had to deal with a situation like yours in relation to Yahoo. Chris has made a good suggestion. I'll add this link:

http://help.yahoo.com/kb/index?page=product&y=PROD_MAPS&locale=en_US&pir=n2YevKlibUm4h_m5q4l1ourzcw8ETD2NS4xyyId8IYGuMz39FW_z3Gt4pbF18gvWKre_haBhhPOlk5sLhdWSH7NECi0rGgxsyQ--

I would try signing into the client's account from there and see if you can get direct contact with Yahoo that way. Sorry not to have a better solution, but I don't have enough practical experience with a brand new building + Yahoo maps. If you do get through and get a response from their team, I'd appreciate it if you return here with an update. Good luck!

Hi Denise,

Robert has made some important points. Most importantly, it's vital to understand that Google considers any business as being most relevant to its city of location - not to neighboring cities, even if the company resides right on the border.

This is a frequent cause for frustration for business owners who are located just outside the borders of major cities, especially when many clients come to them from the major city, or when the business owner travels to the major city to serve.

Nevertheless, except in cases of low competition or a lack of data, most businesses should only expect to rank locally for their city of location. Additional rankings for nearby cities will typically have to be pursued with organic, rather than local, SEO.

Good luck with your project, Sarah!

Hey Ron,

That's a good resource you've linked to, but I think what SEOSarah is talking about is growing pains switching from the old dash to the new one. Some of the old fields no longer exist in the new dash and the data in them isn't being displayed on the new +Local pages, so I think this is causing some confusion for people.

Hi SEOSarah,

You know, this is such a good question and is one I am positive must be occurring to many Local SEO and local business owners as we transition from the old Places dashboard to the new Places for Business Dashboard. As you've correctly observed, the old dashboard contains those additional details fields, but the new dashboard lacks them. So far as I know, nobody knows whether Google ever plans to re-introduce those fields into the new dashboard They may or may not, but these clearly have not been transferred over from the old dash to the new. A similar conundrum has arisen over the old custom categories and the new dash which allows for 10 categories but will only accept pre-set choices.

If you are still seeing the old Places dashboard then, yes, I would take the time to fill out the additional details section if appropriate. Even if this isn't being displayed, I would assume that the data exists behind the scenes in Google's cluster of information about the business, so why not fill it out? It should only take a few seconds to do and can't hurt you.

As to categories, though, if you are still seeing the old dash, I would recommend against choosing any custom categories as these are definitely not making the transition to the new dash. I would choose from Google's pre-set category taxonomy only.

Hope this helps!

Hi Adam,

Thanks for following up, and I will mark this question as answered. I hope you see your business continue to appear well, and that you'll take note of those couple of issues I pointed out. I think we all need to be a bit patient with the carousel right now, because Google is clearly trying out different things with it.

Hi Partyrocks,

Do you mean a Google+ Local page or a Google+ page? Sorry, but the terminology is often confusing. There could be a number of reasons your page is not appearing, ranging from ineligibility, to guideline violations, to duplicates. Without being able to see your unique listing, it is unfortunately not possible to diagnose this scenario. If you can share your complete details, including a link to your listing, I'll be happy to take a look. If, for privacy reasons, you cannot share, your best bet would be to hire a high level Local SEO (if it is a Google+ Local page) to do an audit for you in private.

Hi Linda,

Thanks for sharing your experience with this. Agree, this situation may require a detailed audit.

Hi Martin,

Unfortunately, this is one of those questions which cannot be answered without knowing the full history and details of your specific client. Contributing factors could range from something as simple as the age of the account, to something as complicated as a penalty. Without being able to actually investigate the client's unique details, it's impossible to suggest causes or solutions.

If you can provide further details, I'd be happy to take a look at them. If you can't do that, for understandable reasons of client confidentiality, you would be best off hiring a high level Local SEO to audit the situation.

In the meantime, you want to be sure that the client's listing is fully compliant with the Google Places Quality Guidelines and that all appropriate efforts are being made to excel at the top Local Search Ranking Factors.

Hi Adam,

Speaking of testing....the user rating filter just is not working for me right now. Google is claiming they have no results with a minimum or 2 stars, 3 stars or 4 stars. Wonky! But 'wonkier' yet - when I choose the filter, Google is changing the search term in the search box from 'Bed & Breakfast Savannah GA' to just 'Bed'. So, no wonder there are no filtered results if Google is magically transforming the search term to 'bed'. Looks like a bug to me, and it's preventing me from replicating what you've described, unfortunately. So, I did some searches for B&Bs in other major cities, and weirdest of all, Google isn't showing me the carousel display. Yep, testing.

I was, at least, able to take a look at the Google+ Local page for your company (https://plus.google.com/114103513425453802836/about?gl=US&hl=en-US)

I see a couple of areas of concern that I'll jot down here.

1. It looks like you are listing a toll free number as your primary number, instead of a local area code phone number. This is not a good idea, though I know it's a common practice in the hospitality industry. In fact, I just wrote a post about this NAP consistency issue. See: Hotels A Hotbed For Local Business Nap Consistency Issues

If you take a look at all of the businesses appearing in the carousel for your stated search, you will see that all of them are correctly listing a (912) number as their primary number - not an 800 number.

Is this the root of your problem? Not sure, but it could be contributing to it.

2. It's an unwritten rule that you should not include geo terms in your business description field. Yours currently reads:

"The Presidents’ Quarters Inn, a historic bed and breakfast in Savannah GA, offers seasonal getaway packages and specials that range in focus. The perfect getaway awaits you!"

It has long been observed that inclusion of geo terms in your business description can have a negative effect on your rankings, so I would alter that business description.

These are the only issues I see with the page in question and am just not sure if they add up to the answer to what you are experiencing, but I would correct them and see what happens.

If, after correcting these, you do not see your hotel pop back into the results, I would suggest two things:

1. Start a thread at the Google And Your Business Help Forum (http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/business) to see if you can get the ear of a TC or RER there with direct access to Google staff.

2. Get a professional audit done by a high level Local SEO to see if they can turn up problems other than the ones I've been able to see in my brief glance at the +Local page.

Hope this helps!

Hi Anton,

This is a good question. On visiting your Red Deer example page, a few concerns come up:

1. The text content is quite thin on this page. If it's this thin on the other pages, yes, that could be a problem.

2. If the text on the other pages is a duplicate or near-duplicate of the Red Deer page, then that is definitely a problem.

3. The optimization of the Red Deer page seems a bit awkward to me. 'Red Deer' just feels like it has been dropped into the text in a manner that doesn't read very naturally.

4. The text on the Red Deer page needs some TLC. Your major call to action contains an error in word choice:

Call 1-780-760-3333 for a free consolation.

These 4 elements do give some cause for concern that these pages may have been published without a lot of planning or effort going into them. Poorly planned and executed pages with thin or duplicate content can definitely water down the strength of your website. My view is that you need to find a reason for these landing pages to exist; a user-centric reason. What can you tell Red Deer customers about your work for Red Deer businesses that is unique? How does this differ from your Edmonton work?

I think a natural fit for website design firms taking the approach you would like to is to showcase their local clients in each chosen locale. Do awesome project writeups, case studies, infographics about the community, stat sharing, etc., to make each page unique and worth visiting. Never take a cookie cutter approach, or I think it will be readily apparent to Google and humans that you aren't making the most awesome effort you could to be the best possible answer for related queries. Hope this helps!

Hi Pedram,

While some platforms do allow for bulk uploads of data (see: https://support.google.com/places/answer/178024?hl=en), you will need to provide a local, non-redirecting phone number per each physical location in order to comply with the Google Places quality guidelines which state:

"Use a local phone number instead of a call center number whenever possible."

Be careful, too, of the eligibility of your locations. You mention that many of your locations are 'administrative'. Do they comply with this guideline?

Only businesses that make in-person contact with customers qualify for a Google Places listing.

Some links you might want to check out:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/bulk$20uploads/business/wNhEV4RgVPw/0tVTlwIqU_8J

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/bulk$20uploads/business/4ciD52RZ2eA/VD4ohx1RIEwJ

http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/google-places-help-support/1093-just-check-my-understanding-current-state-play.html#post4438

I hope these tips help!

Thank you for the links, Freddy.

Looking now at your bit.ly URL, I see you have a large number of locations, making this problem more complex. I was under the impression that you only had two. I am a bit confused by what I am seeing in the examples vs. your notes.

Is this your HQ? In Bathurst?

https://plus.google.com/113521293483420343122/about?gl=au&hl=en

When I access the bit.ly URL for Google Maps, I am seeing a South Guilford in the A position and Bathurst in the B position, but your screencast is highlighting a Kewdale location as the one appearing for your branded search in the organic results. So, not sure what is up with this discrepancy. I am in the USA, so I may be seeing results in a different order in Maps, even with your link.

One thing that immediately jumps out at me is a violation of the Google Places Quality Guidelines. Many of your listings have 'City Branch' in the business title and this is not allowed. For example: Westrac - Bathurst Branch. This is not allowed, per these guidelines:

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

This needs to be cleaned up.

Because I am confused about which of your branches is HQ, I'm not sure which Google+ Local page to look at. Can you please provide a link to the HQ listing? The Bathurst one I looked at in G Maps Position B looks completely unoptimized.

Something else I've noted is that it appears you are linking all of your +Local pages to the homepage of your website. Have considered building a landing page for each branch and linking to that instead of the homepage?

Do any of these locations share a phone number? Have you gone through all of this listings to see if the phone number of one of them is ending up live on another one of the listings?

Here is a similar thread on the Google And Your Business Forum:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/branch/business/WPptzqIgcj8/OKWaMlCtxQsJ

Thought you might like to take a glance at that.

This is as far as I've been able to dig. I'll stop back by if you can provide further clarification, Freddy.

Hi Adam,

Perhaps due to the newness of the carousel, yours is the first report I've seen of a top 3 business being bumped entirely out of the display. There are several hundred factors that contribute to local search rankings, and when a sudden drop occurs, one has to suspect things like possible violations, duplicate listings, merged listings, etc. Without seeing your actual listing, I can't really assess where you are at with your Local SEO efforts, but the first thing to ask yourself is whether a violation of the Google Places Quality Guidelines has accidentally occurred (see: https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en).

If your business had previously been ranking at the tail end of the results and disappeared once the carousel display was implemented, I would think you might have to just work a bit harder at your Local Search Ranking Factors ( see: http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors), but given that you were already up on top and have now disappeared, I am suspicious of a violation, penalty or other similar problem.

There is always a small chance that Google is testing things in your city and you may reappear in the carousel tomorrow, but for now, I think you need to investigate possible problems with your listing. If you cannot share your data here, you might want to hire a Local SEO to help you, but if you can share your data, I'll be happy to take a quick look.

Hi Adam  (and Irving, too!)

Yes, at the very least, the two different firms should be differentiated by unique phone number and suite numbers, and citation cleanup will be extremely important. A proviso, though: you may continue to experience some problems with the situation, as Google can have difficulty with businesses that are too similar occupying a similar address. Mergings can happen, so you will want to check the listing regularly to be sure this isn't happening. Good luck to you both, guys. That's a tricky situation!

Glad you figured this out, Bob. For anyone else coming across this post, I'm assuming the original question here was referring to NAP consistency. A comma, of the kind Bob has identified, should not detract from the desired consistency. Things to worry about would be a difference in the business name, the numbers or spelling of the street address, a wrong zip code or phone number. A comma isn't going to make any difference.

Hi Laurie,

Your concerns are on target. The Google Places Quality Guidelines are very clear on this:

Rental or for-sale properties, such as vacation homes or vacant apartments, are not eligible to be listed on Google Maps and should not be verified. Instead, verify the listing for your sales or leasing office or offices. If you have a property with an on-site office, you may verify that office location.

If you list a business in Google Places for Business, it means that it is a staffed location to which customers come to have a transaction during listed business hours. A rental property does not meet this definition. The exception to this would be an SAB (service area business like a plumber) that goes to clients to serve during listed business hours, but this is also not your client's business model.

Unfortunately, what your client (and her competitors) are doing is a violation of the guidelines. I know it can be really tempting to break rules when you see so many competitors getting away with it, but it's very risky to consider this a justification for violation. If Google wakes up to what's going on (and they probably eventually will) they may not only suspend all her rental listings, but her legit listing, too, leaving her with no local presence. Getting back into Google's good graces after something like this can be next-to-impossible.

So my advice - and I'm positive that this is what a Google staffer would tell you, too - would be to get rid of those ineligible listings before they cause a breakdown in trust between the business and Google. If she takes the high road when Google cracks down, she will likely thrive while less rule-abiding competitors fall by the wayside.

Hi Tammy,

A couple of suggestions.

1. You might want to check out Whitespark's Local Rank Tracker (see: https://www.whitespark.ca/rank-tracker). The creator, Darren Shaw, is extremely Local-aware.

2. If you are in the dental space, you might like to follow Linda Buquet, if you aren't already doing so. Linda used to be a specialist in Local SEO for dentists before she started her forum (see: http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/) and she often shares good tips related to this.

Hope this helps! Dentists are really nice clients, in my experience. It's a nice market in which to specialize!

Hi Tammy,

Your question isn't at all silly. What are you using to track local rankings? What tool? Or are you doing this manually?

Do bear in mind that there is no authoritative, set ranking for any local business. Why? Because Google personalizes the results for all users. So, what you see ranking #1 on your computer in your location may not be what I see ranking #1 for this term. Though you can get a relative idea of rankings, you can't really get an exact idea, making it important to educate clients on the fact that other metrics are a better gauge of marketing results. Traffic and conversions really matter! Rankings matter, too, of course, but not as much as phones ringing.

Hi Jon,

Unfortunately, what you are experiencing is one of the potential issues with having multiple listings, whether this is for multiple practitioners within a single location or multiple locations within a region. It is up to Google to decide which of your listings they consider to be most authoritative.

I will repeat a question asked by Ron. How far apart are your different locations? Are you searching from a single location or are you going to the devices at different offices and searching for the respective locations from them? Google will typically localize the results either to your device, or to keyword indicators you provide in the search term, such as a city name. Would you like to provide more specifics as to what you are searching for and from where you are searching for it?

I will be happy to stop back by this thread if you can provide some further details.

Hi David,

Google currently does not support linking a single brand page to multiple local pages. There is no ETA for when they will support this, unfortunately. Google is just saying, 'hold tight'. For more on this, here is a thread from the Google and Your Business Forum:

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

Hope this helps!

Hi Steve,

You need to go with whatever the legal business name or DBA is and then correct all citations to match this. It can be a lot of work, but considering that the recent David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors 2013 lists consistency of structured citations as the #3 ranking factor, this is about as important as anything can be!

You may need to re-verify some listings (particularly the Google+ Local listing) with the naming change, and yes, there may be a bit of a drop, but if you can get all citations into compliance, it should be uphill from there. I'd look at it this way: right now, the business is in a negative situation with citation inconsistency issues that, if fixed, could yield better future results for them.

Good luck with the work ahead!

Hi Nowspeedtom,

This is a good question. While there is no documentation of direct ranking benefits from participating in Google Business Photos, it stands to reason that enhancing your content may have some benefits in terms of user behavior and possibly conversions. However, bear in mind that one of the 2 main places that Google displays these tours (the Google+ Local page) has just been downgraded in visibility. Recent changes in Google's display are making it harder and harder for the average user to actually access the Google+ Local listing, so I'm guessing that if any users would get to the virtual tour, it would have to be through Google Maps. Something to think about.

Hi Erick,

Good question. There are services like ActivSpace.com which will rent a small, legitimate office with a front door and phone hookup for a modest fee. This would normally be utilized by local business owners who do not have an established professional office, do not want to publish their home address as their office, and who are hoping to make headway in the local search engine rankings with a modest but legitimate local address that will be staffed during normal business hours so that customer can come to conduct face-to-face business.

In my opinion, this would not be an appropriate option for your client for two reasons:

1) You do not mention that your client plans to staff an office. Without staff in place to accept face-to-face business and phone calls during normal business hours, the location does not qualify as truly local.

2) E-commerce businesses are not deemed to be truly local, and therefore must pursue organic rather than local visibility.

Here are the sections of the Google Places Quality Guidelines which refer to this:

"Only businesses that make in-person contact with customers qualify for a Google Places listing."

"Do not create a listing 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."

While it may make sense for your client to set a goal of establishing a physical presence one day in USA as his company grows, it would not be honest for him to fake a presence in the meantime. I would explain to the client that honesty in business trumps all other concerns as there is no more important factor that earning client trust. In order to earn real trust, he must present his business as it genuinely is.

Hope this helps!

Hi Tony,

I have most experiencing in consulting with true local businesses. Their business models typically fall into 1 of 3 categories:

1. They have a single physical location (like a restaurant)  to which clients come

2. They have multiple physical locations (like a chain) to which clients come

3. They have a central office from which employees go to render services at clients' locations in various cities (like a landscaping company)

In the second case, the norm is to create a set of location landing pages on the website (one for each location) and to link to these from the main site menu. Each page would be optimized with the complete NAP (name, address, phone number) and would contain as much unique information as possible about the respective office.

In the third case, the norm is to create city landing pages for each of the cities in the company's service radius. The content would need to be unique on these, but they need not simply be a repeat of information from page to page. For example, in the case of the landscaper, he could have one set of pages describing his services (softscaping, hardscaping, water feature installation, etc) and these main pages would be optimized for his city of location, as this is the one Google will care about when it comes to his core Local SEO. Then, he can create a second set of pages showcasing his work in each of the various cities in a unique manner. He could include a brief summary of all of his services on these city landing pages, but the bulk of the content would be a showcase of his projects. For example, 'here is an arbor we built in San Jose', 'here is a pond we installed in San Rafael'.  His city landing pages can be a text and image-based gallery of his design projects.

Your case is a bit different, Tony, because Google does not view website design firms as truly local and doesn't display them as local results. Everything for you will be organic in nature, but your scenario is most like my case #3 in that you can take similar steps to showcase your design work for clients in various cities. You don't need to offer an enormous explanation of your HTML, PHP, WordPress and Joomla work on each of these landing pages, repeating yourself ad infinitum. You can have a separate set of pages that go into the specifics of these services and create different types of content on the city landing pages, hopefully showcasing the sites you have developed for clients in various cities. If you need to create a CSS-based (read: crawlable) dropdown in your menu to include these pages under headings like 'See our San Jose Web Design Projects', then that would be fine, because you definitely do want these pages to be indexed as highly important.

Do avoid duplicate content - this is very important. Yes, it's going to take effort, but here is a chance for your creativity and love of your work to really shine through. Get energized! This is really important work and developing pages that wow your potential clients and make you proud of your company should be a fun and exciting challenge for your firm.

Hi Ryan,

This is a topic that has many people confused, so you are not alone. Have you followed the steps outlined in Mike Blumenthal's guide to merging? See:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/08/03/step-by-step-guide-to-the-google-businesslocal-merge-verification-process/

*I have to wonder, however, about Google's take on your business model. In visiting your pages, it appears to me that your business model is virtual rather than local. Do you agree/disagree with this?

Hi AllieMc,

This issue is common and complicated. I'm going to link you to a couple of Google And Your Business Forum Threads to see if you see your exact scenario resolved in them. Read these:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/lost$20account|sort:date/business/seRAeWevjq8/jCxrMZ2J8LsJ

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/lost$20account|sort:date/business/1QxO_JoFttE/XbhaTJ9SFm4J

If these don't help, please return with further details.

You are very welcome, HippieChick. Glad this helped to clear up a big question at your office!

Hi HippieChick,

I'm not sure I understand your question. Are you saying your legal business name has the word Austin in it? If so, how exactly do you feel this might hurt you?

Or, are you saying your legal business name doesn't have the word Austin in it but that you've added it to the business description field of your local business listings? If this is the case, then that is not allowed and is, in particular, a violation of the Google Places Quality Guidelines.

Please, feel free to provide a further explanation of your scenario and concerns.