Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Matthew,

I've requested that our help team pop in to give you a good explanation of grading. Hang tight! I'm sure you'll receive a helpful answer soon.

I'm so glad my answer was helpful, Chris. Best of luck with your venture!

Hi Chris,

Thanks so much for the detailed response. As you know, the local business directory field is pretty saturated and is dominated by major players (think Yahoo, Yelp, etc.). That being said, at least you are focusing on building a niche directory (for accountants) rather than a general one (for all local businesses). This does cut down the competition, but it is still going to be a massive undertaking trying to get Google to rank your directory pages well if they already have older, larger sources to choose from, in addition to their own delivery of local pack results for searches like 'accountant dublin'.

Here are some suggestions for what you can do to begin building a good directory:

1. Allow accountants to create listings with a significant amount of unique content on them. For example, have a large business description field for each listing, and specify that the content the accountant uploads to it be unique. Also, create fields for things like professional associations and certifications and anything else you can think of that an accountant might list about their services, their policies, their business model, their location, etc.

2. Allow for UGC in the form of reviews on each listing.

3. Be sure you are using Schema properly to markup both the listing data and the reviews.

4. Develop a blog on the directory, perhaps with guest posting opportunities for accountants.

5. I understand that accounting may be one of those dreaded so-called 'boring' industries, but you've got to discover a way to come up with interesting content that has the potential to be shared and bring traffic and links. We had a good YouMoz post on this very topic about a year ago. See: http://moz.com/blog/the-guide-to-developing-a-content-strategy-for-boring-industries

6. Designate a staff member to participate in/speak at relevant industry conferences. If there are conferences accountants attend, your designated member needs to be there, helping at the same time as exposing attending accountants to your brand.

7. Discover which social media platforms your listed members utilize and develop a presence there so that you can participate/offer help in some way.

In my opinion, it's going to take a lot of work and a lot of giving of your time to begin to brand your venture as something accountants need to participate in. The more accounting firm listings users build into your index, the larger it can grow and the more valuable a data source it will become to search engines.

My pleasure, Carla! So glad to help.

Good discussion going on here fellows!

Matthew, I am just going to throw out a bunch of ideas for your consideration, and some of these will be questions to gauge a better understanding of your client's unique scenario.

1. Is the client physically located in Grimsby? Have they established a unique (non-shared) physical address there now? As you might imagine, if the actual local record has been merged and then suspended, it is going to pretty much kill the business' chances of achieving high local rankings. As the Local SEO on this project, your top priority is to get this worked out with Google, and it will take time. You've got to be incredibly persistent.

2. Have you cleaned up the total web record of citations for the business? If the client was listing two businesses at the same address in Google's local product, chances are, this data exists elsewhere. If the issue with the addresses has been resolved on a physical level, you need to engage in a citation cleanup campaign to edit all references so that they reflect the new, allowable address for the single business, if the client has now got this straightened out. Remember that Google looks at the whole data cluster about each business and draws information about this from the whole web. If Google continues to see two businesses at the same address, they will continue not to 'trust' the business.

3. You mention ranking around 11-17, so, here, I am assuming you are talking about organic rankings rather than local ones, meaning that these results will be most influenced by organic SEO factors (domain authority, age of domain, content development, links quality, on-page SEO, etc.).  Has the client given up trying to rank well in the blended local pack of results because they've been de-listed? Have you decided to focus on organic results only, because of this?

In sum, the typical goal for a local electrician is going to be to get as high in the local pack of results as he can, with a combination of local and organic factors enabling his high ranking. If the business was actually de-listed by Google, that is an extremely tough situation and one that the company has to work night and day to overcome via direct dialogue with Google staff. Until this can be resolved, the client will always be held back from being where he needs to, and in your shoes, I would be doing a full audit of all elements of marketing the client has engaged in to be sure they haven't made other spammy choices or violations. They have got to be squeaky clean in all areas and plead with Google to re-consider their eligibility for inclusion. You may or may not be able to achieve this for the client and should be operating under that understanding. It's very difficult to get back into Google's good graces once they've hammered down on a violation, but this is what has to be seen as the big goal.

Sorry not to have better news, but I hope this information helps!

Hi Carlo,

This is just fine. What you are doing is creating a type of content typically referred to as city landing pages. It sounds like this may be a bit of new concept to you, so I would like to share a guide with you that I wrote a few months back that digs deeply into this topic and has received quite a bit of positive feedback in the Local SEO sphere:

The Nitty Gritty of City Landing Pages

I hope you will find this helpful as you brainstorm the types of content you can develop in scenarios like this one. Best of luck!

Hi Chris,

I think I may need a bit more information to provide a helpful answer. Please, provide answers to these three questions:

1. Do you mean you are developing a general local business directory (like Yellow Pages, CitySearch, Best of the Web) or some other type of directory?

2. Where do you want to drive inbound traffic to? The directory or something else?

3. Please define what you mean, exactly, by 'hyperlocal searches'?

The more information you can provide, the better answer you will receive from the community. Looking forward to your further details.

Thanks, SEO 5 Team. Appreciate the kind words!

Hi Jake,

Oh, my, that sounds like a really bad situation! Yes, you've got to get rid of these. If these listings are duplicates of an accurate, honest listing with a genuine physical street address, then the best thing to do is to use the 'report a problem link' on each page. Do not claim these listings! But do be logged into the client's authoritative account while you report the problems. Click the 'place is a duplicate' box and describe as best you can. In the description field, include the URL of the single, accurate listing. State that you are the business owner and are attempting to clean up spam created by a previous SEO company. Be as detailed as you can.

Now, once you've accomplished this, you need to engage in a citation cleanup campaign, searching the web for all possible references to these bogus addresses associated with the business name or phone number. These also need to be cleaned up to try to clean up Google's data cluster about the business.

Nota Bene: Before I touched this project, I would let the incoming client know that, while I will make my best effort, this level of spam is pretty egregious and I cannot guarantee results here because of this. The business may already be penalized. Bad citations may continue to auto-populate for years to come. It's really a mess. So, I would do my best, but 40 spam listings in 5 cities is a scarily tall order for anyone to clean up.

Hang in there, Jake. I'm not surprised you're already exhausted!

Hi Carla,

Here's a shortie-but-goodie from Barry Schwartz on this topic:

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-one-site-locations-15454.html

Note the quote from Goolger, John Mu, on that one.

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-one-site-locations-15454.html

And here is Google and Your Business forum Top Contributor Linda Buquet's educated opinion on this:

http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/local-search/8993-can-we-create-multiple-websites-services-same.html

What the client needs to understand is that:

1. Their local business can have only 1 Google+ Local listing, linking to a single domain. If Google finds the business name attached to multiple websites, Google will be confused and lack 'trust' in the data cluster they create for the business. Similarly, if any other element of the business' core NAP (name-address-phone) is found on more than one website, this will cloud Google's understanding of the business. This can lead to accidental duplicate listing creation and ranking problems.

2. Your client will be splitting up their authority across multiple domains instead of building great authority on a single domain, where every action taken goes toward strengthening the brand.

3. Let's not forget Google's big recent targeting of EMDs. Though we didn't see drastic effects from this in Local, we all have received fair warning from the EMD penalty that Google is down on thin content, exact match domain sites. What I see in Local is a single business owner publishing thin and duplicate content on a set of domains like sanfranciscoplumber.com, sanjoseplumber.com, sanrafaelplumber.com, etc., and I believe Google has made it pretty clear that this type of activity is under scrutiny. I think there are definite risks associated with a multi-site approach.

4. And let's consider how this looks to the most important audience - potential customers. All local businesses must work to develop an authoritative, memorable brand that comes to mind instantly when a service is needed. If my hot water heater stops working, what is that brand, that domain name? Is it sanjoseplumber.com, sanrafaelplumber.com??? I can't remember. But if it's StanislovPlumbing.com - an honest representation of the business name that matches branding - and I've used their services before, my chances of remembering/recognizing them is much higher. To me, this is a very strong argument against splitting up brand/authority across multiple sites.

These are just a few reasons. I could likely come up with more, but honestly, I can't think of a single instance in which I would recommend that a small local business owner try to operate multiple websites. It is completely possible to rank well for a variety of service/geo terms with a single website with the right approach. Good luck in educating your client about this, Carla. Feel free to share this post with him, as well as the links I've provided.

Good discussion going on here, and thought I would add, if the business is Local in nature, rather than virtual, I strongly recommend against a multi-site approach. I wanted to clarify this in case members take a look at this thread and own a local business.

Hi Christina,

If you can assemble enough before-and-after data, that might make a very nice submission to YouMoz! I would be very interested to read your results.

Miriam

Hi Christina,

I'm sorry, but I don't believe I've ever seen a study like the one you've described published. It would be great if someone would conduct such a study. This is one of those Google products you rarely hear about, even in the Local SEO world, and to my knowledge, no one has ever done ROI calculations or anything like that. Good question, though.

I'll leave this question open for discussion in case one of our members has done research into this that I just haven't happened to see.

Hi Goudengids,

Thank you for explaining that! I think some members may have assumed you were a local business owner hoping stars would show up from your single business website, but now you've clarified this. I have never worked with a YP site, hands on, but I think two things would be at play here.

1. That you've got correct markup on your individual pages. Use: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets to check if your markup is correct.

2. The authority of your pages, in Google's mind. Could there be any issues going on with duplicate content between goudengids.be and goldenpages.be? Typically, I see YP sites have a single domain with sub-sections for different languages, so the structure you are using is not what I'm used to seeing.

Also, how well you manage your review base may be a factor. For example, on a page like this one, I see 3 identical reviews: http://www.goudengids.be/qn/business/detail/en_BE_YP_PAID_248495_0000_76551_7575_2013000536113021/

You know how strict Yelp is with their filters and quality controls. Your YP might consider implementing stricter quality controls, too, in order to influence Google's 'trust' of your product.

Just some suggestions, and I do hope you will get a helpful answer at Google's support forum.

Hi Christina,

Nice answer from Mike! I find it helpful to explain your type of scenario this way:

1. Think of Local SEO in conjunction with your physical location.

2. Think of traditional SEO in conjunction with your location-less service cities.

You'll be doing everything you can to become dominant in the local results for your city of location, but your location-less cities will require the best traditional SEO efforts you can muster.

Hi Ruchi,

What you are experiencing is a common phenomenon. Your former organic rank has been subsumed into your new blended/local rank. This is why you are no longer seeing your organic result as a separate result.

This usually occurs once a business begins engaging in Local Search Marketing in some form. Perhaps you claimed your Google+ Local listing or started building citations on various local directories recently?

Unless you want to completely delete all local references to your business, then your current blended/local rank is here to stay.

It is possible to go after a secondary organic ranking by optimizing a second page on your website. This doesn't always work, but it sometimes does if the competition isn't too tough.

I'm interested to know why you would prefer to have an organic listing over a blended/local one. Are you experiencing something negative? Feel free to provide additional details if your questions/concerns have not yet been answered.

Hi Goudengids,

Can you explain this in a little more detail:

"for over a year now we actively use schema.org into our yellow pages platform."

Do you mean you are running a yellow pages-type website? Or something else?  More detail would be helpful, and it's good you've started a thread in the Google support forum. Some very smart folks there, for sure!

Hi Steve,

I'm going to alert our technical help staff to your question and ask them to pop by. Stay tuned!

Hi John,

While I don't own a hotel or restaurant or other entertainment-oriented business, I have been working in Local SEO since the mid-2000s. While I'm not sure that it's necessary to do anything 'different', I do think the carousel may prompt Local business owners and Local SEOs to do some things better. Namely:

1. You have got to be on top of your citation sources. Because clicking on a business in the carousel now brings up a big list of citations in the SERPs, reputation management has just been pointed up as more important than ever. Crummy reviews on your Yelp profile or bad NAP data on your Yahoo! Local profile are going to have a greater impact on any user who actually scrolls around through that page of branded SERPs. Keeping your citations up to date, responding positively to negative reviews and working hard to earn good reviews simply matter more than ever now for carousel-included businesses.

2. Images matter more than ever now. There was a completely awesome forum post about how to control which image appears for your business. Go to: http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/local-search/8819-case-study-images-businesses-carousel-local-results.html The author's test was relatively small, but his order of operations for getting a preferred image to appear in the carousel make sense to me. I'll quote here:

"The whole point of this is to inform you that; you have control over the images that show on the new results. Here is a quick breakdown of what Google is looking for.

1. Listing verified and managed in Google Places (This is the easiest method of control)

2. Gathers User Photos for unverified listing

3. Uses Citation Sources as a last resort for photos.

4. Adds a map image when nothing else can be found."

At the same time, actually choosing which image will make you stand out in the lineup matters a lot now, too. Mike Blumenthal touches on this in this piece (http://localu.org/blog/google-introduces-new-carousel-display-for-local-results/) but I have yet to see a real study of tactics that make an image stand out. For example, is it better to have a closeup of food or an image of your building as your main photo? What about the use of color? Does using red make your image pop? Etc. This is deserved of experimentation, for sure.

3. Where you're at in the carousel lineup matters, based on early heatmap studies. Mike Ramsey wrote a good piece on this and a study of the heatmap is helpful in understanding this:

http://localu.org/blog/a-heat-map-click-study-for-googles-local-carousel-results/

4. Expect change. Google is experimenting with this right now. Just this week, I was discussing with a member here at Moz the fact that some people are seeing a toggle button in the carousel that is totally absent for other people. This kind of behavior is indicative of testing. And, the whole thing with the Zagat-based ratings is in flux right now, too. So, the carousel we are seeing in mid-July may be quite different from the one we're seeing in December later this year.

Overall, I don't really see the carousel as a game changer. I see it as incentive to continue to do better at the core work of Local SEO. Having a violation-free Google+ Local page, building strong, clean citations, earning diverse reviews, managing your reputation, etc.

I hope others will contribute to this important topic John has brought up!

Hi Steve,

Some citations can take months to go live. You might want to read:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/09/26/infographic-citations-time-to-live/

Hope this helps!

Hi Rameet,

I'm sorry my earlier replies didn't help. I'll close your earlier post and let's leave this one open in hopes that you get replies that are what you were looking for. Thanks for letting me know!

I'm reading Christopher's explanation a little differently. Christopher, are you saying you have a single business (a flower shop) that you originally listed at something like your home office address, but that the flower shop is now moving and you want it to be listed at its new location? If so, this is the procedure:

1. Edit the existent Google listing to show the new address. This may require re-verification and may result in ranking loss, at least temporarily.

2. You may also lose your reviews. However, if you have the new Google Places for Business Dashboard, the good news is that it is possible to request that Google moves your old reviews to the new location. Read Googler Jade's explanation of this here:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/business/3IyA72bx3o4

If you have the old dashboard, you cannot do this and will likely lose any reviews associated with the old address.

3. Launch a citation cleanup campaign in which you discover and edit all mentions of the business across the web and update them to reflect the new address. This includes mentions on your website of the old address.

If you are saying that you are also changing domain names (not sure if this is what you meant) you need to change this everywhere, too.

You may experience some fluctuations in rankings, but hopefully you can keep working towards building authority over time.

Hi Rameet,

I'm following up to discover if you did not feel you got an answer on this previous thread on the same topic:

http://moz.com/community/q/how-can-i-tell-if-my-targeted-keywords-are-geo-based

I understood from your thread that it was your competitor, not you, who had optimized a website for NYC terms, but the question you have asked here is basically the same. Because of this, I want to discover if you feel something was missing on your previous thread, prompting you to re-post this same question. Please, let me know. It's important to us that you receive help with your question!

Robert, may I suggest that if you come up with a good study and results, you consider submitting a post to YouMoz? I would love to see something like this show up in my submission queue:) I get to take a first peek at all of our YouMoz submissions and, as you can imagine, I am extra happy when the topic is Local!

As for the carousel, I like this:

"Hopefully, we will wake up in a month or two and it will have been changed."

Haha! Here's to hoping. Thanks for the very enjoyable chat, Robert!

Hi Jonathan,

Unfortunately, Google just works this way and is unlikely to change. Sorry the client doesn't feel she can take advantage of Local SEO. If she is dead set against using but hiding her home address, her alternative would be to rent a real small office from a company like ActivSpace.com so that she can become a competitor for her important search phrases. Without being able to compete Locally, she is unlikely to get the business she no doubt is hoping for. Too bad!

Hi Jonathan,

What needs to happen here is that the photographer stops using a prohibited address on any of her profiles or website. Use of a P.O. box, Pak Mail address is against the guidelines.

Instead, she should be using her home address, but hiding it. She doesn't have to put it on her website and she can stick to listing herself in indexes and directories that allow the business to hide their address. In other words, she'll be inputting her address as she creates her profiles, but she'll be selecting the option to keep the address un-published. Happily, a ton of indexes/directories allow this type of listing. Here are 2 pieces by Phil Rozek listing places where you can submit your business but hide your address:

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/

So, the steps I would take would be:

1. Tell the client that you made a mistake. Her company's welfare comes first and telling her like it is will be so helpful to her, even if it's a little embarrassing for you. Better late than never, right? And as you haven't charged her, she can't really be put out if free advice was wrong.

2. If you want to, tell her you'd like a chance to remedy the mistake, for free.

3. Sit down together and read Google's Places Quality Guidelines. Explain to her what I've just explained to you about using but hiding her home address. Privacy concerns are very real, so she should be happy to learn that it's possible to get listed but keep her address private.

4. Remove any reference to the taboo address from her website, blog, Social Media profiles or what have you.

5. Engage in a cleanup campaign hitting every local business listing that exists for her that references the forbidden address. Edit the listings to list but hide her home address. Continue to check the ecosystem over the coming months to be sure the bad address doesn't surface again on its own.

6. Be sure you are adhering to Google's guidelines in every respect from here on out.

This is a positive and pro-active approach you can take with the business owner that should eventually lead to better outcomes.

Hi Jonathan,

Ugh...yes, my firm gets daily emails offering SEO services, too. Such a pain, and I totally respect your position that you want to learn to do this yourself rather than rely on someone else. My take on this is that if this were your own business you were marketing, then experimentation of the kind you are doing would be a great way to learn.

Clients are different, however. I don't believe in taking risks for clients or enter into contracts for services that I don't yet have the expertise to provide with success.

For example, my firm does website design, copywriting, Local SEO and consultation. These are the services we offer and charge for. We do not do PPC, Social Media, linkbuilding and many other forms of marketing. I have no expertise in these areas and can't take on clients who need these things - so I refer these business owners to trustworthy colleagues who are specialists in these areas. I can't do it all in-house! My firm is small, and my main goal is that any business owner who contacts me is matched up with the best possible person who will know how to utilize funding wisely, do great work and avoid any type of penalties. That person may not be me every time.

What I am seeing is that you are in a learning phase with Local SEO right now. That is a great place to be, but it may not be a great platform from which to be offering client services because even small mistakes in Local can be so far-reaching for the client. Local is very unforgiving when it comes to mistakes, given the way a single error can be replicated via data feeds across the web.

I'm glad you'll follow through on the links I've shared with you. They are great learning resources, and don't overlook the Google Places Quality Guidelines. Every Local SEO needs to know these like the backs of their hands because they are the foundation of every Local campaign. I sincerely hope that you don't feel like you're being clobbered on this thread. From the title of your post, "Why are my local results so terrible," I think you've made an important start to diagnosing the answer to your question. You simply have some more learning to do before you can provide Local SEO services with confidence and success, I believe, and recognizing this may be a truly empowering step in the growth of your business. I am wishing you a ton of fun and good luck ahead in the learning process!

That's right, Linda. We can find exceptions to Google's rules all day long and violations can go unpunished for years, but once they are caught, they are really caught. You have done an excellent job here of trying to save a fellow member from feeling the pain of a Google penalty. I'm marking your response as a good answer.

Hi Robert,

Thoughtful follow-up. I share many of your qualms about the carousel, as it happens. Actually, some of things I find to be most awkward about this are:

1. The removal of phone number and address from the carousel, making the results less local.

2. The act of clicking on a single result no longer takes me anywhere. Not to a website, not to a +Local page. It takes me to more search engine results.

A decade ago, as a cub web designer, I read something that I've remembered ever since. Back then, splash pages were all the rage. People with sensitivity to good UX began pointing out that once someone clicks on your result in the SERPs, they have already committed to entering your website. Why make them click a second time once they hit your splash page in order to get to your REAL website? I found this advice to be so sensible, and it was one of the first things that came to mind when I first started playing with the carousel. In my opinion, Google's carousel has created a new interface on top of the things people want...namely, websites and Google+ Local listings. It has moved the user one more step away from what he wants...and that is not good UX.

But, is it good for Google's earnings? That's another story. Can't really figure that out yet, but I see sense in what you say.

I've also totally noticed the Yelp phenom. Actually blogged about this a couple of months ago - how Yelp had taken Merchant Circle's former place in the SERPs as a dominant Wikipedia-like result in Local. For several years, nearly all local searches brought up Merchant Circle results on the first page of Google. They no longer do. They bring up Yelp results. Not really sure this has anything to do with AdWords. I think the volume of reviews Yelp has is simply dominant, compared to what Google+ Local has managed to achieve.

On that note, I'm going to link to a short post I wrote last week on my blog regarding something interesting I noted regarding Yelp vs. Google review counts. I hope this isn't too off topic; our conversation has broadened a bit here, Robert.

Do Review Velocity or Recency Influence Local Business Rankings

I did a very tiny, informal look at the number of recent reviews in Yelp vs. Google+ Local and was quite stunned at what I saw. I'll excerpt here:

"I was shocked by how few people have used Google to leave a review in the past 6 months for restaurants in this lively, well-to-do urban community. When I actually started digging into the profiles, something quite interesting became evident. For those profiles with 100-200+ reviews, nearly all of them were left more than a year ago."

I think you might be interested to look at the numbers in my original post, Robert. They may explain why Google can't help but allow Yelp to be dominant right now in the SERPs. Would be very interested in your thoughts on this, actually.

Hi Brian,

What you are seeing with the link reading 'Google+ page' linking to a Google+ Local page is typical, actually, but if you want more information about the process of merging a social page with a local page, let me link you to a Google and Your Business Forum Top Contributor's good explanation of this:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/business/wsTTX-knOFc

Does this help?

Hi Robert,

The plot thickens: compare your screenshot with the screenshots in the blog post I linked to by the folks at Acorn. Even between these 2 examples, that toggle button is slightly different. The Acorn one just says 'Ratings' on it, while your screenshot has several words in the button. Kind of confirms my suggestion that Google must be doing a lot of testing, eh?

I've set this back to a discussion question, but thank you for marking my answer as good! I appreciate it!

"the highway and the name changed 4 times"

Yep! That's just what I feared. I can't say for certain whether the issues you are experiencing are stemming from this, but let's say I have a strong suspicion that confusion over the road name may be causing you trouble. Definitely try to get the attention of an RER at the MapMaker forum on this. Those guys are brilliant and tend to be quite helpful if you tell your story in thorough but concise language. Please, come back and let me know what happens with this. I'm curious, because these situations are always very complex.

Oh, boy! This looks like this may be one of those issues where regional names and official names of roads are at variance (Texas vs. West State Highway 16). I have seen things like this come up in the past, and they typically require some dialogue. My recommendation would be that you try to discuss this with a Regional Expert Reviewer at the Google MapMaker forum. Go to: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/map-maker and create a thread there, disclosing full details of the business.

This may require more than trying to move the marker. If there is an internal disagreement in Google's system regarding what a road is called, this can be problematic in a number of ways. I won't even attempt to diagnose this here, Sarah, because you need to be speaking with someone who has the ability to translate what Google Maps 'thinks' about this road name to determine how you should be listing your business. Hope my suggestion leads to a solution for you. Situations like this one can be a big pain the neck, so put on your patience hat

Hey Robert!

Your question threw me for a loop. It made me say, "Review, price, cuisine filter in the carousel. What on earth is that?" Why did I ask this? Because I've never seen it!

I then tossed a question about this out to a few colleagues and the 3 who replied don't see the filter option either. I was able to find a screenshot of what you are talking about on this blog post regarding hotels back in May:

http://blog.acorn-is.com/2013/05/google-places-link-gone-new-local-carousel-results.html

But neither hotel nor restaurant searches in my town or the two towns you mentioned are delivering me this option in Chrome or FF.

So, what do we make of this, Robert? I guess we have to put it down to all the testing Google must be doing right now with this new product. It's really strange that you and your office mate are able to pull up different results. I have no explanation for this (oh, Google!). I'd certainly like to get to play with that option myself. I suppose if Google decides it is a good feature, we'll all see it eventually, or it could simply disappear.

I'll leave this thread open for discussion in case some of our other members can shed light on whether they are or aren't seeing the filter toggle. Thanks for bringing this up! A new puzzle.

Hi SEOSarah,

Please provide a detailed description of what you mean by 'inconsistent'. If you mean you've got St. vs. Street or (000) 000-0000 vs. 000-000-0000, then this should not matter. Google pulls citation data from all over the web and there are baked-in variables on how the different major indexes and directories format data. But, if you mean you're missing a suite address or have a wrong phone number out there, then that does matter. Feel free to provide further information about this.

Hi David,

This is an odd one, I agree. Obviously, proximity of the searcher to the business in question contributes to what ranks where, but what you are experiencing with office A showing when you are in town B and and office B showing when you're in town A is new to me. If only one of the offices was showing when you were searching from both towns, I would suggest that that location is being judged by Google to be of premium importance, regardless of location. I've seen that happen before. But I don't have an answer for the phenomenon you have described. It's like Google has it backwards!

My suggestion: start a thread about this in either the Google and Your Business Forum or the Google MapMaker forum and see if you can get either a Google Top Contributor or MapMaker RER to escalate the issue to a Google staffer. *You'll have to cross your fingers on this. I can't guarantee you'll receive a response, but the issue is problematic enough for your customers to deserve an explanation, in my opinion.

I would title your post something like: Results Sending Customers To 2 Opposite Locations, Despite Proximity Of Searcher.

Then, show exactly what you are experiencing and be prepared to share the full account details. If you do get an answer from a Google staffer, I would certainly be interested in hearing what they say. Most problems in Local SEO come up over and over again, but this is a new one for me and I'd like to know if you learn anything.

Hi Todd,

I would not be concerned about Google's OCR regarding images in your header. That is not my understanding of the purpose of OCR. But, I would definitely search the Internet for that call tracking number. Because you had it published in real text on the site, it may exist elsewhere on the web. You need to find all instances of it (if any) and edit them to reflect your authoritative local business number. Good luck!

Hi Markas,

Unfortunately, we've now moved into an area that is not within my area of expertise. It would be best if you would start a new thread with this new, separate question so that you can title it something that will earn attention from our members and associates with knowledge about domain extensions. It's almost always better to start a new thread if a new question comes up that is not related to your original question. Hope this tip helps!

Hi Jonathan,

My best recommendation here is going to be that you advise the client to hire a professional Local SEO to consult with both you and her about Local Search Marketing. Because of the number of violations you have accidentally made in trying to help this client, I am assuming that you were hired in some other capacity (perhaps as her designer or traditional SEO or SM expert?) and that you are finding that you've waded in over your head trying to manage her Local SEO. I would recommend that you tell her so as quickly as possible, and don't let her expect that you can consult with her in areas that are not your specialty. It's just too easy to accidentally violate Google's guidelines and damage a client's ability to rank well if Local isn't your area of expertise. If this client is counting on you for advice, I would take the following steps:

1. Tell her that, while you can help her with certain services you've engaged to provide, you are not a Local SEO.

2. Go with her to https://getlisted.org/static/resources/trustedproviders.html. This is GetListed.org's list of trusted providers in the Local SEO field. Both you and she can visit the websites of the terrific companies listed there and contact a few of them to see what they can offer you. They will quickly be able to discern (like Linda Buquet has on this thread) that there a number of violations going on that are putting your client at risk for penalties and will be able to consult with you on damage control and creating a good local search marketing strategy.

3. If you have interest in Local SEO (which is a totally fascinating field!) and see that you have clients coming in these days who need help with this, you may want to consider studying this area of marketing so that you can eventually add Local SEO to your menu of client services. This is a truly fun and challenging discipline that anyone can dive into and learn a ton about. Here is a list of resources for you of places to learn about Local SEO;

This is my own article on The Rudiments of Local SEO which I share with new clients.

This is the blog of the man I (and most people) consider to be the top Local SEO in the world: Mike Blumenthal

At DavidMihm.com you will find published the annual Local Search Ranking Factors report. This is the premiere industry survey and the 2013 edition will be published within the next few weeks.

And here is Linda Buquet's highly active and educational Local Search Forum where you can learn a ton.

That's a good start. There is always room for another awesome new Local SEO - so many businesses need guidance! In the meantime, though, I do suggest that you get your client connected with an established pro ASAP to help get things under control and point both you and the client in the right direction.

Hi Rahul,

Good question!

Of course, there is nothing actually 'illegal' about duplicate or thin content...it is simply unwise. I can completely understand the frustration with this when you see competitors employing a dumb tactic like the one you've described (creating tons of thin, duplicate pages and simply changing out the city name on each one) and managing to rank well in Google for it. I've seen lots of examples like that over the years, too. Often, these pages are old and have unfairly accrued 'trust' in Google because of that. They totally don't deserve to rank, but even despite Google's duplicate content penalties, they are. So, you are faced with a temptation to follow their example. You've seen those old cartoons where the character has a little angel and a little devil on either shoulder. What your competitors are doing represents that little devil. I'll take the role of angel here in hopes of helping you to see why you shouldn't go with the devil

1. Your competitors are showing every human being who visits their website that they are happy with making the least possible effort. If they make the least possible effort for their own business, just think of what a poor effort they must make for their clients' websites. I certainly wouldn't want to hire such a lazy, uncreative web design team. Would you?

2. Your competitors are sitting ducks for a duplicate content penalty from Google. Even if they are getting away with this today, tomorrow could be the day Google hammers down on them or an algo change makes all of that stuff on their website invisible for good. I certainly wouldn't want that kind of constant threat of disaster hanging over my head. Would you?

3. Your competitors are providing a very poor user experience for their website's human visitors. Instead of trying to be helpful and share what they know about designing websites in Boston or Atlanta or San Francisco, they are simply trying to manipulate people. Every page on a website represents an opportunity to educate, to inspire, to engage. Not only are your competitors being manipulative, they are missing a massive opportunity to build relationships with potential customers. This is a huge loss!

4. Your competitors are teaching all of their colleagues that they have no standards of excellence. In the Internet Marketing industry, lots of pros refer clients to colleagues whom they trust. For example, my firm doesn't do citation cleanup. I have a colleague who does and am happy to refer incoming clients to him because he has proven to me that he has very high standards. His website, blog and track record on the web prove his authority and dedication to excellence. There is absolutely no way I would refer a client to a web design firm whose website was littered with duplicate doorway pages. So, there is more lost opportunity.

I hope these few examples are starting to build a clear picture in your mind of how failure to take the high road can harm your business in a variety of ways. I recommend that you shake your head at what your competitors are doing and resolve that you will leave them in the dust by building awesome, unique, useful, inspiring pages and utilize your very best SEO skills to help those pages to rank well. Building your business on the web calls for maximum effort and maximum creativity - not minimum effort. Get fired up and do this right! It will serve you well in the long haul.

We're here to help! So glad you found help here.

Hi Todd,

Thanks for your detailed reply. I'll answer, one by one:

1. All main pages of your website need to be optimized with your geography in mind. Remember - you are not trying to rank for 'home health care' or 'visiting nurses' - you are trying to rank for your keywords+your city name. You don't care if people in Texas find you. You care if your neighbors can find you and the local optimization of your website is a big part of what will make this possible. I am going to link you to a guide I give to all of my new Local SEO clients. I think it will be a helpful read for you:

The Rudiments of Local SEO

2. Good idea!

3. Call tracking numbers are taboo in Local Search, unfortunately, because they cloud the purity of the NAP (name-address-phone number) signal you need to be sending to bots and humans. For more on this issue, read this article by Chris Silver Smith (http://searchengineland.com/for-local-seo-lack-of-call-tracking-solution-spawns-cloaking-70198) and this more recent one by Mike Blumenthal (http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/05/14/a-guide-to-call-tracking-and-local/) to get the history and current understanding of this issue. These articles will teach you what you should and shouldn't do with call tracking numbers.

4. If the majority of your business is being transacted at clients' locations then you are an SAB and should be hiding your address. It's estimated that Google has penalized thousands (likely more) of businesses for failure to comply with this rule since they announced it in May of 2012. How you comply depends on whether you have the old or new Places dashboard. The new one makes the procedure more automatic, but I'm not sure which dash you have, so this is something you should research further.

5. Many good Local SEO firms offer audits, but their rates will all be different. You should expect to invest at least a few hundred dollars in a good one. I recommend that you visit that Professional Assistance page on GetListed and contact a few of the providers there to inquire about their rates.

Hope this helps!

It's my pleasure, Todd. I'm here to help!

Thank you, Matt. That's very nice of you to say!

Hi Markas,

If your goal is to be running a high-quality Yellow Pages-type directory for the Baltics, then it's a good start to get as many businesses as you can into your index. Things that will improve the authority of your directory might include:

1. Getting business owners to take control of their listings and add their own details to them, including business descriptions, hours of operation, payment forms accepted, parking available, credentials, years in business, website address, photos etc. Take a look at Google+ Local listings, YP listings, Yelp Listings and see the types of information being included on the individual listings to make the rich sources of information.

2. Harness UGC. Become a review platform and enable customers to review their favorite business, the way sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor do. This will build up the unique, useful content on your directory with nearly all of the work being done by members who use the directory and want to review businesses they patronize.

3. Form relevant partnerships. In the world of YP and local business indexes, a lot of data changes hands. Take a look at the relationships documented in Get Listed's Local Search Ecosystem infographic and you will see how different players team up to share data: https://getlisted.org/static/resources/local-search-data-providers.html. Unfortunately, I don't have any first-hand experience with the local business scene in the Baltics, but if you can identify partners, you can help one another build authority.

4. Then, there is the obvious: making sure your directory is search engine friendly. Be sure all important URLs can be crawled and that your navigation system is easy to use. Be sure you've got good basic content on your site (contact page, about page, policy pages, etc.) and then see what else you can build that will make your directory site unique and useful. Be sure you've covered the basics of on-page SEO to make your pages as clear as possible to search engines and human users.

These are just a few ideas. I think the main thing here is for you to study how other directories have gone from being small-time to becoming major players. If there aren't currently a ton of well-established local business indexes in your geography, you may have an exciting opportunity to become a major player. It really depends on the competition. Study local competition and look at the big guys in countries like the US to see what makes them tick. Hope this helps!

Hi Indicoll,

I'm glad you've brought this up. An example  like 'golf clubs leeds' is a good one. You are correct that this is unnatural language. You don't want to be writing, "We have the best golf clubs leeds", because it sounds unnatural to your human visitors, and also, because Google takes poor writing into account.

As Adam has pointed out, you can signal geography in many ways on your website and you should not have to rely on stating 'golf clubs leeds' over an over again in order to rank. Of course, there are some instances in which you feel you simply must find a way to work an exact match phrase in, in which case, creativity can sometimes come to the rescue. This would be a legitimate:

"The Golf Clubs Leeds Pros Reach For, Course After Course"

Something like that would be okay and would include those keywords in exact order, if it's essential to do so, but for the most part, Google will understand the meaning of a properly-optimized page without too much effort on the website owner's part. Optimize your tags and sprinkle keywords in a natural manner in thorough copy and you should be good to go. By contrast, awkward language can drive customers away and flag a site as spammy. It's good you are thinking about this. It's quite important!

Hi Todd,

There are number of issues going on here. In the scope of Q&A, I can't provide a full audit, but will jot down some issues I see.

1. The site is not locally optimized. This is a big piece of the picture. You've got to work your geographic keywords into important areas like title tags and main copy. Organic factors are a major component of high local rankings.

2. There is a serious issue going on on your Google+ Local page. 3 of your 4 reviews are from employees of your company. This is a violation of the guidelines. These guidelines (located at: https://support.google.com/places/answer/187622?hl=en) state:

Conflict of interest: Reviews are only valuable when they are honest and unbiased. For instance, as a business owner or employee you should not review your own business or current place of work.

You should get your employees to remove those reviews and not allow staff to review the business in future.

3. Uh-oh! This is a big problem, too. Your Google+ Local pages lists your phone number as 616-531-9973 but the number you are listing in your website footer NAP is 616-530-0093. These numbers should be identical. You should have a single local area code phone number associated with the business name and address, so, seeing this, I suspect that you have a citation consistency issue going on. If you've got different phone numbers published in different places, this is definitely a problem and needs to be resolved.

4. Do you meet face-to-face with clients at 3101 Prairie St. SW or do all transactions happen in the homes of your clients where caregivers are rendering services? If the latter, you should be complying with Google's hide address rule. I'm not totally clear from visiting your website whether your business is a Service Area Business (like a plumbing company) or qualifies as brick-and-mortar. If an SAB, failure to hide the address on your Google+ Local listing will typically result in penalties and ranking issues.

5. Great you are using GetListed. Looking at your to-do list there, it looks like you haven't yet created a listing at Yelp, Nokia or eLocal. Once you've got all of GetListed's suggested listings under control, you can continue to build out citations at many other places. If you check out the Learning Center at GetListed, you will see 2 articles regarding best citations by city and best citations by industry. Check those out, and do further research to see if there are other places to see where your business should be listed.

Again, my remarks cannot be seen in the light of a full audit, but what I have managed to turn up in a few minutes of looking should clue us both in that you've got some pretty serious issues going on. These deserve immediate attention. If you aren't currently working one-on-one with a Local SEO consultant, you may want to consider hiring one, and there is no better list of trusted providers than the list at GetListed at https://getlisted.org/static/resources/trustedproviders.html. If I was able to find this many problems at a glance, you may have others going on and a professional audit may be the very best thing you could do for your company. Hope this advice helps!

Hi SEOSarah,

I monitor reported issues pretty closely and have not see a rash of threads in the Google Mapmaker or Google and Your Business Forums come in about moved pin markers, so I don't believe there has been a recent problem with this...not in the past couple of months, at any rate.

You could have some citation consistency issues going on, causing Google to re-locate pins. Alternatively, if your clients are SABs, certain choices made in the Google Places dash can cause a pin to be put in the city center. There is also the new Google Maps currently in beta, but I'm not sure if you're seeing this or are still seeing the old Google Maps. Without more information about what you are experiencing, it isn't possible for me to diagnose this.

Likely what you are going to need to do is to report the issue via the Google MapMaker forum (go to: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/map-maker) and engage in troubleshooting with one of the MapMaker RERs there that mod the forum. They will need to have exact details about the businesses in question so that they can tell if something is wrong on your end or if there was a glitch in Google. They have the power to move the pins, if appropriate.

Hope this helps!

Hi Rameet,

Sorry my first reply didn't answer your question. Let me take another stab at it here.

If the business is truly local (i.e. has a unique physical address, local phone number and face-to-face transactions) then it can rank for multiple cities by utilizing city landing pages for each office tied to the Google+ Local pages for each location. In such a case, you would not be optimizing the entire site for a single city. Instead, you would be building out your basic service pages without gearing them towards a single city and then you would be building your city landing pages that would target each of your physical location cities. That would be the best way to approach this, in my opinion, and you should be able to work towards high LOCAL rankings for each city where you have a physical presence.

But if we are not talking about a truly local business and are talking about a virtual one that has to compete for ORGANIC rankings, then yes, if you optimize all of the site for NYC terms, you are sending a pretty clear message to the bots that you want to show up organically for NYC-related searches - not Chicago-related searches. I would expect the SERPs to reflect this choice, meaning that you could well lose organic rankings for Chicago if the whole site is optimized for NYC.

*I will add, though, with as little detail as we have about the client, I have to speak in general terms here. I'm not auditing your specific client's situation so my reply needs to be seen as a rule-of-thumb suggestion rather than a carefully planned marketing strategy. Hope that makes sense!

Hi Web Talent,

You write: is there a point, say of visibility and traffic - where it simply doesn't make sense to change branding online?

My answer would be, no. Here's why:

1. What's on the web is supposed to be an identical reflection of what's off the web. So, if you're Woodlands Dental Clinic in Dallas, TX., you need to be that on the web as well to be appropriately marketing the business. If you change your name to Woodlands Family Dentistry, that change needs to be reflected everywhere to be accurately marketing the business and avoiding customer confusion.

2. Remember, too, that offline sources make their way onto the web as well, in the form of Yellow Pages listings and the like. So, having consistent offline citations is actually very important.

So, basically, because of the reality of possible lost traffic and rankings surrounding the re-branding of a local business, what is most important is that the business owner understands it is almost like he is starting a new business if he chooses to re-brand it. Explaining this to a client in this way will help him to understand what a serious/weighty decision he has to make about whether it will really be worth it. In my view, online has to reflect offline, so every business needs to be sure they are truly ready to deal with loss when they rebrand. In the best case scenario, they will eventually be able to rebuild what they've lost in terms of authority and reputation, but that may not always be the case. I'd rather be a deeply embedded lawyer with kind of a funny name and high rankings in LA than a re-branded one trying to break back into a deep pack, even if my business name was more to my taste. You know?