Welcome to the Q&A Forum

My pleasure, Zack. Happy Holidays!

Hi Zachary,

Good question! You are quite right...Google has never publicly outlawed usage of geo terms in the business description field. Advice against this comes from Local SEOs who have seen this practice ding listings. In conversation, I've heard top Local SEOs I know say it can ding a listing anywhere from 4 to 20 positions in the local serps. It's a hidden, not-publicly-acknowledged penalty. So, definitely don't do this. I think the best use of the business description is as an elevator pitch. For example, if a business has won awards locally (Voted best local clinic by Community Magazine), that's a great USP. Figure out what the USP is and put that in the description, exclusive of geo terms.

Will you see live exceptions to this in the SERPs? Yes. Google doesn't catch everything. But you know Google...if they do catch you, punishment is swift and awful.

Thanks for asking your question. So many people are unaware of this hidden penalty.

Hi Mark!

Thanks for asking this good question. While there is no limit to how big a website can be, I think you can see from the general response here that most members would encourage you to stick to manually developing quality pages rather than automating hundreds of thousands of pages, solely for ranking purposes. I second this advice.

Now, I would like to clarify your business model. Are you a physical, actual business that customers come to, either to buy paintball equipment or to play paintball in a gallery? Or, is your business virtual, with no in person transactions? I'm not quite understanding this from your description.

If the former, I would certainly encourage you to develop a very strong, unique page for each of your physical locations. If you have 10 locations (with unique street addresses and phone numbers), then that would be 10 pages. If you've got 20 locations, that would be 20 pages, etc. But don't approach these with a 'just switch out the city name in the title tags' mindset. Make these pages as exceptional as possible. Tell stories, show off testimonials, share pictures and  videos, entertain, educate, inspire. These city landing pages will be intimately linked into your whole Local SEM campaign, provided they each represent a business location with a unique dedicated street address and unique local area code phone number.

But, if you are considering simply building a page for every city in the UK, I just can't see justification for doing so. Ask yourself - what is the value?

There are business models (such as carpet cleaners, chimney sweeps, general contractors, etc.) that go to their clients' locations to serve and for which I would be advising that they create city landing pages for each of their service cities, but this would be extremely regional...not statewide or national or International. A carpet cleaner might serve 15 different towns and cities in his region, and I would encourage him to start gathering project notes and testimonials, videos and photos to begin developing a body of content important enough for him to start creating strong, interesting and unique pages for each of these cities. But I've also had local business owners tell me they want to cover every city in California, for instance, because they think it will help them to do so, and I discourage this.

Even if the business is virtual and doesn't have any in-person transactions with clients or physical locations, I would still discourage this blanketing-the-whole-nation-with-pages approach. A national retailer needs to build up its brand so that it becomes known and visible organically for its products rather than your theoretical approach of targeting every city in the nation. In short order, the mindset behind that approach just doesn't make good horse sense.

And, as others have stated, adding thousands of thin, potentially duplicate pages to any site could definitely have a very negative effect on rankings.

My advice is to make the time to start developing a content strategy for cities in which you have a legitimate presence. If budget means you can't hire a copywriter to help you with this and to speed up the work, accept that this project deserves all the time you can give it and that a slow development of exceptional pages is better than a fast automation of poor quality pages.

Hope this helps!

Hi TechWyse,

I want to be sure I am understanding your question correctly. Are you saying that the business has no usable address whatsoever? Not even a home address? Please clarify.

It is totally possible to build citations for service area businesses (like carpet cleaners, landscapers, contractors, etc.), but they do need to have a physical address in order to participate. This work typically goes like this:

1. You create a Google Places Listing for the business and be sure to pick the 'hide address' function during creation. Google does not want service radius businesses to display their addresses on their Google Places/Google+ Local pages.

2. You can then build a variety of citations in other local business indexes. There are two approaches here. Even though Google doesn't want service radius businesses to show their address on Google's products, there is nothing to prevent you from listing that address on other listings, like Yelp, Merchant Circle, Best of the Web, etc. Alternatively, if the client does not want his street address to appear anywhere on these directories, he can stick to publishing his listing only at those directories which allow you to hide your address. Here is Phil Rozek's helpful list of such resources:

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

Important To Understand

It is perfectly fine, at this point, for service radius businesses to use their home address as their physical address, provided that the address is not being used by any other business. For example, if a husband had an accounting business and a wife had a pet grooming business, both operating out of the home, they could not both use the same address nor the same telephone number. So, both phone and address must be dedicated and unique to avoid problems.

Also, at this point, it is a violation of Google's guidelines to use anything other than a real physical address as a business location. No P.O. boxes, no virtual offices. Despite the fact that Google requires the hiding of the physical address in their system, the address is still entered in the back end dashboard and must be a real location.

Hope these pointers help, and if I've in any way misunderstood your client's business model, please feel free to provide further details.

Hi Benjamin, Are you saying you want to use a different business name on your Google+ page than you are using on your Google+ Local page? This is not a good idea, as the chances of Google becoming confused about your identity are pretty high. You should brand your business with a single title.

Hi Chanel27,

As you can see, your very simple query has generated some very thoughtful replies from 3 smart members here. I think what each member is encouraging you to consider is what your standards of good content and your goals for each given project really are.

Unfortunately, as cited elsewhere in this discussion, it is quite possible to hire someone to roll out some content for you at $10 a pop, but you have to be prepared for the quality of a $10 article to be less than sterling. And, at that price, you are probably going to need to be checking for copyscape issues yourself. On the other end of the spectrum, you can engage true experts in different fields and offer them several hundred dollars per piece to bring their expertise to your website for a series of articles or an ongoing project. This investment is far more likely to lead to prestige for the brand/business/website in question and possible extra benefits when it comes to link earning and Social Media buzz.

So, there just isn't going to be a simple answer. Does the business need to get by on a shoe string right now? If that's the case, I'd be urging the business owner to write the content himself, as, presumably he knows his core business better than anyone he can hire for $10 a page, right? I'd rather see a business owner develop 5 really good pages of content on his site than have him pay someone else pennies to publish 50 low quality pages for him.

Can the business budget to build relationships with expert writers in 2013? This would be ideal. Getting really good people to expand and deepen the message a website delivers is an excellent tactic for any publisher, and this service is deserved of good pay.

What you want to avoid is simply publishing 'stuff' because it's a 'tactic'. You want to have a real reason to write and really good writers to accomplish this work in a way that sets your brand apart. Copy created in this fashion will stand the test of time, while low level copy does nothing but drag down the validity and authority of your brand.

Bottom line: clients should be taught that their budget for copy is at the top of the priority list. Without words, a magazine is just a cover and a website is just pictures.

Great discussion here, guys!

Just thought I'd pop in to add my 2 cents.

Having a phone number in the title tag will not 'hurt' the business in any way, and is a not uncommon practice in Local SEO. The only possible negative to doing this would be that you would have less characters to devote to words as they are being devoted to the digits of the phone number. So, that's about the only downside of doing this. Just remember, the client should be putting a unique title tag on every page, so some of his pages might have a phone number in the title tag, but don't use it on every page. Be creative, varied and informative in each tag and you should not expect any negative outcomes.

Ben,

If you're not already using it, 51 Blocks Local Competitive Analysis tool is a good one, and it's free:

http://www.51blocks.com/online-marketing-tools/free-local-analysis/

Might be of help to you in your research.

You are so welcome, Zeke!

Hi Ben,

Very good question. In the Google Places Quality Guidelines, Google states:

-Do not provide phone numbers or URLs that redirect or “refer” users to landing pages or phone numbers other than those of the actual business.

So, from this guideline, we know that Google doesn't want you to list a URL that redirects to something you don't own, but in this case, apparently this business owns TheCarmelDentist.com. They are not redirecting to a domain that doesn't belong to the business.

This scenario brings up questions. Why is this business doing this? One good guess might be that they've bulit this new website at thecarmeldentist.com and have redirected the old fishers site to the new one, but have yet to update their Google+ Local Page to reflect the URL. All attempts to reach the fishers site are redirecting, so the + Local Page is simply redirecting, too. I can't think of any good reason why they wouldn't just simply list the URL, so my best guess is that they just haven't updated the + Page yet.

Looking at this specific scenario, I just doubt that the redirect is being done with an intent to spam. Because the whole old site has apparently been redirected to the new one, I think this business has simply moved to a new domain.

I would also guess that the redirect rule in the guidelines is meant to speak to the practice of either competitive hijacking of listings and redirecting the URLs to competitors' stuff, or, possibly, spammy stuff in which a snake oil marketer might convince a business owner that their URL should be redirecting to some sort of directory page instead of to the company's website. But, it doesn't look like this is what is happening in your example, unless I'm totally overlooking something.

Now, you are quite right that the EMD penalty does not seem to have hit hard in Local. Like you, I see plenty of these rankings just fine. At this point, it is still quite possible to rank well with an EMD, and if the EMD is supported by strong content, it probably won't ever be penalized.

That being said, if asked whether I would personally advise a client to switch from BobJonesDDS.com to carmeldentist.com, just in hopes of a ranking boost, my answer for 2013 would be a resounding 'no'. Every move Google has made over the past 2 years clearly supports, in my eyes, their preference for authentic presentation of brands. If Bob Jones DDS is your brand, then use it, I say. Don't go for the EMD because it doesn't truly represent your brand...it represents an attempt to rank. Google is getting impatient with anything done simply to rank.

Within the scope of Q&A, I can't do a a full competitive analysis of the situation you've highlighted, Ben, but remember, a domain is just a fraction of the local search ranking factors. Don't forget proximity to centroid, business cluster, domain age, links, citations, reviews, etc. All of these things and so much more determine rank. I don't believe an EMD can be seen as THE cause, though it could be part of the cause.

One last note. The dentist in question does have some problems going on. Their +Page is calling them The Fishers Dentist. Their website is calling them The Carmel Dentist and their address listed on their website is Indianapolis. Even if I'm not predicting a swift EMD penalty, the confusion of the signals they are sending to Google about their brand and locale is pretty serious and could lead to all kinds of problems for them. Not good.

Hope these thoughts help. Please, feel free to share more about your study, Ben.

Hi Erin, Thanks for clarifying. Technically, this should not cause a problem for Google, but because of their history of issues with phone number confusion, when I'm optimizing a Local site, I put the 800 number in image text only. I don't include it in real text. I guess you could say I take a better-safe-than-sorry approach, just to avoid possible hassles down the road.

Brad has hit the nail on the head. Very clear, concise advice on what to do!

Hi Erin,

Do you mean add your toll free number to your website, or to your Google listing? If the first, what do you mean by adding it 'below' the local number? Where on the site? If the latter, yes, you are allowed to list a toll free number.

Hi Zeke,

Oh, clients like these are a handful! Explain, very clearly, to the client that the reason their listings went under review was because they broke the rules. What they want to do now is still breaking the rules and could risk their one legitimate location's rankings if Google decides they are spamming the index. Don't be vague. Be totally straightforward on this. Show them the guidelines: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528

Especially this part:

Business Location: Use a precise, accurate address to describe your business location.

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.

Do not create more than one listing for each business location, either in a single account or multiple accounts.

Businesses that operate in a service area, as opposed to a single location, should not create a listing for every city they service. Businesses that operate in a service area should create one listing for the central office or location and designate service areas. Learn how to add service areas to your listing.

If you don't conduct face-to-face business at your location, you must select "Yes, this business serves customers at their locations" under the "Service Areas and Location Settings" section of your dashboard, and then select the "Do not show my business address on my Maps listing" option.

If the client cannot see that these rules are precisely describing that what they want to do is a violation, my advice is to drop them like a hot potato.

Local SEOs strive to help honest business people - not to abet rule breakers. If your client changes his tune after he sees the guidelines, then you can offer him an alternative, legitimate strategy that would work along these lines:

1. The client may go after true local rankings for his city of location by running a well optimized website that incorporates important local hooks, by having a single Places listing/Google+ Local Page that follows all the rules, and by building citations for his single, legit address.

2. If he is a service-radius-type business (like a plumber, carpet cleaner, chimney sweep) and serves customers at their locations rather than at his location, then he must comply with the hide address rule on his single Places Listing.

3. All of the above goes toward achieving high local rankings within the pinned, lettered blended/local pack of results.

4. Now, to approach the task of ranking well for his service cities (as a plumber, carpet cleaner or lawyer would), he can begin to showcase his work in these other surrounding cities where he is not physically located by created awesome city landing pages for each. These pages must feature totally unique, first class copy (no cutting and pasting copy, no thin content). He can create a unique page for each city that he serves.

5. He can then work on earning links to these pages to improve their chances of rankings.

6. Unlike the goal of steps 1,2 and 3, the goal of steps 4 and 5 for his service cities will be organic rankings - not local rankings. Google predominantly views any business as being most relevant to its city of location - not its service cities, so this is vital for the client to understand.

By following the above method, the client will be doing all he can to try to gain high local rankings for his city of location terms, and high organic rankings for his service city location terms. This is a completely valid way of working with this type of business model. Lay it out clearly for the client what you can do, and then let him make a decision. If he just won't see the light, walk away...he's going to be living in penalty land until he decides to play by the rules. In my own work as a Local SEO, I have learned to shoot straight with clients like this one who are spamming either because they don't understand the rules, or because they do know the rules and want to bend them for their own perceived benefit. The first type, I have a wonderful opportunity to educate. The second type, I can be quite direct in stating that I only offer guidelines-compliant services. Then, let them decide. Good luck and I hope this helps!

Hi Erin,
Chris' advice is exactly what I would have given. Go ahead and add the 800 number to the masthead of the website or elsewhere in image text. Just be sure that the indexable text on the website features the local number, and be sure that this local number is the one being used on all of the client's citations. Consistency is king in Local SEO.

Hello Vladislav,

Interesting question. Now, 'gutter ma' isn't exactly what I would call a local search. Local searches are typically city-based. So, for you, if you're located in Springfield, true local searches would be for things like 'gutter cleaning springfield' or searches without the 'springfield' but being performed on Springfield-based devices.

So, when we're looking at the more random results for a statewide search something like 'gutter ma' (which probably is not how most people would be searching for your services) we see a variety of locales represented. Setting my location to Springfield, this is what I see:

1. Abbott Window & Gutter Cleaning, Inc.

   <cite>www.abbottwindowandguttercleaning.com/</cite> 1 Google review

2. 2 Kane Industrial Drive

   Hudson, MA
   (978) 562-1744 |

   Minuteman Leafguard

   <cite>www.leafguardgutters.com/boston-ma/hudson</cite> Google+ page

3. 50 Boston Road

   Lowell, MA
   (978) 256-0092 |

   Insul-Kings

   <cite>www.insulkings.com/</cite> 1 Google review

4. 66 Farm Road

   Marlborough, MA
   (508) 481-0666 |

   Marlboro Gutter Cleaning

   <cite>www.cleangutter.com/</cite> Google+ page

5. 	Plymouth, MA
   (800) 994-3000

   Gutter Pro

   <cite>www.gutterpro.com/</cite> 2 Google reviews

6. 60 Medford Street

   Somerville, MA
   (617) 868-2673 |

   Carroll Seamless Gutters Inc

   <cite>www.carrollsons.com/</cite> Google+ page

7. 16 Jacques Street

   Worcester, MA
   (508) 488-9999 |

   Custom Insulation Company, Inc.

   <cite>www.custominsulation.com/</cite> 2 Google reviews - Google+ pageMore results near Massachusetts »

As you can see from this search, Google is selecting businesses from many different cities within the state. What their algo is for doing so on a broad search like this, I do not know. But, at least on my search, it doesn't appear that they are simply putting up listing from the state capitol (Boston). The selection looks quite random to me and I have no idea how one could influence it because of the apparent randomness.

Also, I would truly question the value of ranking in a local pack like this for a state based, unspecific search. Presumably, people are looking for your client for 'gutter cleaning' not just 'gutter' and if they are leaving off any geo terms at all, Google will show them local results based on their location, and if they are adding a city term, it would presumably be their own, in which case, your client has the best chances of ranking in the local pack of results for their city of location.

Hope this helps!

Hi Hampig, and Happy Holidays to you, too!

Here is the text from the Google Places Quality Guidelines: (http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528)

Business Location: Use a precise, accurate address to describe your business location.

• 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.

Because a virtual office is a location at which a business doesn't physically exist, then it falls under these guidelines. I can understand where there might be some grey area in people's minds because Google doesn't actually use the words 'virtual office' in the guidelines, but the language precisely describes what a virtual office is. I wouldn't be surprised if Google eventually updates the guidelines to include the words 'virtual office', but for now, they are counting on people reading their definition and understanding that this would apply to any misrepresentation of physical locale, including a virtual office, P.O box, etc.

For further discussion on this, you might check out this Google Forum thread (http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/business/kFP-9-BIcBE/ny6z00BAgr0J) in which a Level 11 MapMaker RER states:

"Google considers UPS boxes, other private mailboxes and most virtual offices the same."

I also highly recommend this thread on The Local Search Forum:

http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/google-places-help-support/978-virtual-offices-home-address-google-plus-local.html

I understand that startups and small businesses have budgetary concerns and could be tempted to try to bend the rules to help themselves appear as though they are physically located in cities where they actually aren't, but I would strongly advise avoiding that temptation, because of what I consider to be totally clear guidelines against it.

And, regarding service area type businesses (like carpet cleaners), where they serve in multiple cities, Google is quite clear on that as well. You can have 1 listing for your physical location, but should hide the address of the business, as the location is not a place people can come to. You are not allowed to create listings for every city in which you serve.

As I see it, you've got to play by Google's rules (even if they don't make sense sometimes) if you want to participate in their products. Yes, there are countless examples of people getting away with bending and breaking the rules, but it's certainly not a strategy I would advise.

At a very basic level, the founding principal of doing good business is being honest, and I couldn't call misrepresentation of locale honest, nor could I call doing this in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings honest.  And, beyond this concept of civic ethics, there is the very real fact that if Google ever catches you doing something they don't like, punishment will be swift and lasting and Google does not make a point of trying to see things 'your' way. They see things their way, so knowing and playing by the rules is just good insurance against disaster.

Hope my reply helps further explain the virtual office issue. I'm glad you came back to discuss this further!

Hi David,

Thanks for returning to talk more about the concept of the virtual office. If you have a staffed physical location that clients can come to and out of which your staff is working, then that is not a virtual office. It's a real one. If Michael's firm could acquire an office like this in Austin, his troubles would be over.

But, if the physical space is an empty one that's being rented for the purposes of misrepresenting locale...Google definitely does not want that, and unfortunately, there are ton of people doing that. With the hide address penalty in full swing these days for business owners who don't comply with this year's ruling, Google has made it really clear that the only addresses they want listed are those where human beings can visit and that all others must hide their addresses. So, this is clearly something on Google's brain. While this isn't exactly about virtual offices, it does show how focused Google is on physical, staffed locations, which to my mind, lends more oomph than ever to the advice regarding avoiding virtual offices.

Thanks again for coming back!

Hi Mr. Partyman,

In my opinion, because you are already established with your first business at the street address, the best thing to do would be to get a Suite A, just for the second business.

As Sanket has pointed out, it's critical that each business has its own phone number, business name and Google categories, as well as its own address, so be sure you are making these totally distinct.

Hope this helps!

Hi Michael,

I must politely beg to differ with the advice being given by David and Hampig regarding a virtual office. Google is not in favor of these and, in fact, should such an office come under scrutiny, it could cause serious damage to your whole local profile. Because of this, I do not advise purchasing a virtual office, using a P.O. Box or anything along those lines.

You are quite correct that lack of a physical office in Austin will make it next to impossible for you to rank in the local set of results for Austin-based searches or searches containing the word 'Austin'. Google considers a business as being most relevant to its city of location - not to neighboring cities - so in Google's eyes, you are a Bee Cave business, not an Austin business.

I empathize with the frustration of this. Tons of business models (carpet cleaners, chimney sweeps, realtors) serve within a wide radius, and tons of businesses are located just on the borders of big cities like Austin or Dallas, but Google's local product just isn't set up to favor these business models.

This means that your attempts to rank for Austin are going to have to be organic rather than Local. Now, that being said, Michael, I am seeing a couple of areas of concern that I thought I'd point out as I noticed them while taking a look at your business. Here is the Google+ Local Page I found for your business: https://plus.google.com/111099812929349352484/about?hl=en

On it, I see the address being listed as: 13500 Galleria Circle #115 Austin, TX 78738

As you've stated, you're not in Austin, so where did this address come from?

Also, in the business description field, I see this:

The Experts in Austin Real Estate

This needs to be rewritten to avoid possible penalties. Never put geographic terms in your business description.

Further, I see that a bunch of your reviews mention the names of agents at your business. You have little/no control over what others write, but there is some thought that the use of names may be a cause of lost reviews. If they disappear (as thousands/millions of reviews have done lately) you may want to remember this, because it could possibly be the cause. Google is just a nightmare for reviews right now.

One other thing that can be very difficult for multi-partner or multi-agent firms such as realty firms, law firms or medical practices is the allowed use of creating unique Places-based listing for each partner in the firm. Google allows this, but rankings can tank if multiple partners are using the same categories, or, listings can be merged because of similarity in business name, address or phone number. I don't know if this is an issue with your business at this point, but if you were actually located within Austin and having trouble ranking, this would definitely be a point I'd investigate.

So, bottom line, short of getting a legitimate office in Austin, ranking in the local results for things related to that city cannot be seen a very realistic goal for your business. It's not that it never happens, but it's very, very rare. Perhaps the business will be able to relocate there at some point in the future, but until that time, your true local efforts should target and appropriately reflect Bee Cave, while your organic efforts can target Austin. Hope this helps, and good luck. You are in very enormous amounts of company in wishing Google handled things like this differently!

My pleasure, Jake, and good luck with the changes.

Hi Jake, Ideally, if I were building a local business website from scratch, I would set up the page URLs like this: website.com/city-services Your example of what you want to change the names to look fine, too, so long as you are going to 301 redirect the old pages to the new ones. If you don't, you will lose any links and citations you may have built or achieved for those pages. Also, if this is going to affect the URLs linked from, say, Google+ Local to pages on the website, you'll to change the URLs in Google+ (or other directories) to the new URLs to avoid confusion. All this said, I'm on the same page with what Matt said about this. It's possible for pages with totally lousy URLs to do just fine, in my experience, but if you have a choice, it's nice to write them nicely.

Hi Searchpl,

So glad you asked this question before going forward. Having businesses share the same address in Google+ Local is a big taboo. Don't do it! The dangers are merged and duplicate listings and an inability to rank.

Instead, if you are running 3 totally distinct entities from the same building (let's say a chiropractor's office, a yoga studio and an e-commerce site selling neck support pillows), you could take this approach:

1. Get a unique suite number for the yoga studio and another for the chiropractor's office, to which mail can be delivered at the building.

2. Get a unique local phone number for the yoga studio and another for the chiro office. Do not use either of these numbers for the online store.

3. Do not publish the physical address or phone numbers of either the chiropractor's office or the yoga studio on the e-commerce website. You must have a third phone number (could be a toll free one) for the e-commerce store, but must have local numbers for the other two businesses.

4. Set up a unique Places listing/Google+ Local page for the yoga studio, and another for the chiro office, but do not do this for the e-commerce store as it is not a true local business (no in-person transactions with customers).

The above method is the only way I would recommend moving into the local space. Any other approach puts the business at risk for a mess of trouble in the SERPs. Hope this helps!

P.S. All of the above advice presupposes that each of the 3 businesses has a unique name. In other words, Dr. Jones Chiropractor, New Life Yoga Studio, and Neck Pillows Central.

You are very welcome, Christopher! I will PM you.

Hello Daniel,

As Gareth has correctly stated, Google's public statement (via comments from Googler, Jade, in the Google and Your Business Forum) regarding moving to a new address is that you should close the listing and start a new one. Now, that being said, I have talked to other Local SEOs who disagree with this advice. In fact, just last Friday I was speaking with someone who said that what they did was to create a new listing for the new address, edit the citations in as many places as possible to reflect the new address (on other directories, etc.) and then deleted the old listing. Reviews were apparently lost (that's to be expected) but he said that the transition went okay. I've heard others speak of other approaches as well.

Nothing is fool proof. Google seems to have a lot of trouble handling changes of address well. Because of this, I'm going to give you some resources for reading up further on this topic.

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/moved/business/t-y8Vil0xKo/w6Ywu8Nh1DgJ

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/new$20address/business/6INR3kqaVFY/sLwo2dlTfUsJ

http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/google-places-help-support/1242-uhggg-client-moved-new-location-now-google.html

I don't have a simple answer to give you for how long this should take, unfortunately. You will see in the above threads why that is. Google really needs to improve their ability to handle this activity that happens every day - businesses do move! Hope this helps, Daniel.

Hi John,

I'm in 80% agreement with what our members have replied. Changing the website address should not affect local rankings as a stand-alone fact...but, if the new website is different than the old one, in terms of content, optimization, authority, links, citations, etc., then yes, you could be in for some ranking changes. The strength of the website is the biggest local ranking search factor, so I believe you may see some ranking changes, unless the new website matches the old one in all respects.

Hi Joseph,

I want to be sure I understand your question. I believe what you are asking about is why it is uncommon for a business with a local ranking (with the grey lettered pin) to also have a first page organic ranking? If I'm misunderstanding, please let me know, but I'm pretty sure that this is what you are asking about.

Let me give you some history on this. Prior to the Venice Update in March of this year, it was quite common for strong local businesses to be able to dominate the search engine results. A single business might have a pinned local ranking, one or more organic rankings, video results and citations (from places like Merchant Circle and Yelp) all on page 1 of the Google search engine results.

After Venice, however, there was a pretty obvious change in this that was noted by lots and lots of Local SEOs and Local business owners. Suddenly, if you had achieved a Local rank, you were very unlikely to have a second, organic listing on page 1. In fact, for some months, I could not find a single business that was achieving this multi-spot dominance any more.

However, we started to see some changes in this a few months away from Venice. Linda Buquet and some other Local SEOs managed to get double rankings by optimizing a secondary page of a client's website in a few instances. Adam Steele of Nightlight Media wrote a piece on this topic, which you can read here:

http://www.nightlitemedia.com/2012/05/organic-and-google-places-ranking-on-page-1/

Definitely read that to see if it helps. However, I believe that things have changed again. I am encountering enough instances of businesses being able to get multiple page 1 rankings these days to believe that there has been some tweak to the environment. However, I will add that where I am seeing these double rankings tends to be in smaller towns with modest competition, though there are some exceptions to this.

I would not advise you to build 2 different websites for the same business. That would likely lead to confusion on Google's part and a possible loss of trust in your profile/loss of rankings. Rather, it's important to understand that when you achieve a local ranking (in the pinned local results) you haven't actually lost your organic ranking; it's simply been subsumed into the blended/local ranking which is comprised of both organic and pure local factors. Nearly all results I see these days are blended results, drawing on both organic and local signals. Very, very few are the old Pack results any more.

So, what can you do? Don't knock a high Local ranking. Heatmap studies indicate that more eyes are drawn to the local listings than the organic ones. But, do build the strongest site you can, ensuring that all pages are properly optimized and that all of your Google Local participation is violation free. And, expect the display to keep changing. I could hit publish on this right now and wake up tomorrow to discover that Google has again changed the ratio of businesses getting double page one rankings. This stuff is constantly in flux. Hope this information helps!

Hi Joseph,

Like Corey, I'm reading your question as being about getting a high local ranking. If this isn't your intent, please correct me.

Corey has linked to the Local Search Industry's premiere annual report, which surveys some of the top Local SEOs in the world. It's an extremely helpful document, and it outlines what participants feel are the top local rankings factors. Now, the 2012 report (I'm a yearly participant) was undertaken before the rollout of Google's big new local product - Google+ Local - which basically replaces the Google Place Pages of former times. So, be aware that there have been some major changes since publication, though the basic advice remains solid.

Local SEO is the practice of obtaining high rankings both in the blended/local packs of results (the ones with the lettered pins on them) as well as high organic rankings for local terms that don't bring up the actual pinned local results. The lettered local results' rankings are derived from a combination of both organic signals (like the strength of the website, link profile, etc.) and local ones (like having a violation-free, complete Google+ page, number of citations from other local business directories, proximity to the centroid of business in a given city) etc.

To qualify for inclusion in Google's local products, a business must meet all 3 of the following criteria:

1. Have a unique, dedicated physical street address (not a P.O. box, shared address or virtual address)

2. Have a unique, local phone number in the city of location (not a toll free number or shared number)

3. Have in-person transactions with clientele either at the place of business (like a restaurant) or at the client's place of business (like a plumber)

If any of those 3 things doesn't match the business model, then you cannot seek inclusion in Google+ Local.

Most Local SEOs consider Mike Blumenthal to be the leading expert in the field, so if you're just getting into this, you should start reading his blog on a regular basis: http://www.blumenthals.com/blog

You might also find a couple of recent articles from my blog to be useful in getting you into the right mindset about this unique field of SEO:

The Zen of Local SEO

http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1314

The Rudiments of Local SEO

http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1344

The main thing to understand about Local SEO is that it is constantly changing...arguably even more so than traditional SEO, so constant study is a must in this field. It's a really dynamic area to work in. Hope these resources help!

My pleasure, Bob!

Hi Bob,

This is an interesting question, in light of a recent update to the Google Webmaster Guidelines. Here is a link: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66358.

And here is the text of the update: ------------------------------------

Keyword stuffing

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

Lists of phone numbers without substantial added value

Blocks of text listing cities and states a webpage is trying to rank for

Repeating the same words or phrases so often that it sounds unnatural, for example: We sell custom cigar humidors. Our custom cigar humidors are handmade. If you’re thinking of buying a custom cigar humidor, please contact our custom cigar humidor specialists at custom.cigar.humidors@example.com.

Note the second point on that list. Now, in my opinion, what Google is going after with that guideline is a practice I encounter on many local sites wherein someone posts a lists of cities (often in the footer) like this:

Auburn, Audubon, Arrington, Burnside, Camden, Cordell, Craton, Douglas, Douglas Pines, Farmington, Golden, Graham, Hyden, Isleton, Jonesy, Killey, Landow, Mongtomery, Noel Hill, etc.

You see this all the time. Sometimes the city names link to thin content, duplicate pages, and sometimes they don't link anywhere at all. It appears, from the guidelines, that Google does not like this practice.

However, my gut feeling is that Google will view this example differently:

Our dog trainers will come to your home in San Francisco, Berkeley, San Jose, Oakland and San Rafael for gentle canine behavioral training. We schedule appointments that are convenient for you, as you need to be present during each training session.

The difference here is that a short list of a few target cities has been incorporated into a paragraph of text in a natural manner. If, however, the business serves a huge list of cities, like the sample cited above, I would not list that in a block anywhere on the site. Rather, I would encourage the client to begin developing unique, strong pages of content, one by one, for each city, perhaps documenting a training session of a cute dog in a given city on each page. I would then work these into a menu tab called, "Where We Serve," or something along those lines. It's very important to avoid letting this approach turn into a weak effort resulting in duplicate content pages that mimic one another, only swapping out city names. This is a task that should be seen as an opportunity to produce some of the best copy on the website.

Now, all this being said, there are still tons of sites out there with blocks of city names linking to thin, duplicate content that are managing to pull consistent high organic rankings. For clients, this can be a temptation to imitate what a competitor like this is doing. This is where you can help by letting the client know that making a better effort than their competitor has may provide protection from future penalties, should a Google update target certain practices, or should Google turn an eye of heightened scrutiny on the client's industry. With Google, an ounce of prevention is always worth a pound of cure!

Hope this helps, Bob!

Hi Tyler,

Does the hospital have one name or four? In other words, is the whole hospital chain called St. Joseph's Hospital, or is one St. Joseph's Urgent Care, while another is Goldman-St. Joseph's and another is St. Joseph's Memorial, etc. ? If only one, and all four hospitals are administered by the same ruling body, then I would almost always suggest creating just one website if this were my Local SEO/design client.

With this approach, each of the hospital branches can be given a location landing page with unique content on it (most importantly, the unique complete contact information for each branch) and these pages will not duplicate one another in any way. Then, all the rest of the site content goes to the good of the overall brand, and there is no problem with duplication because each page is occurring only once rather than possibly occurring 4 times on 4 different websites.

Also, by making one site the official source of info for the brand, you reduce the risk of Google+ merges/dupes.

If, for some reason, the governing body insists on having 4 different websites instead of 1, then, yes, you must be sure that the content is unique on each website to avoid duplicate content.

Hi Tyler,

That's great that you're aware of Linda's forum (I'm a mod there, too:))!  I recommend writing your title tags in a more natural manner than the example you've given above. I'd go with something more like that:

Contact Moe's Italian Pizza In Springfield, IN At (XXX) XXX-XXXX

If you've found that 'gourmet' is a vital keyword for the page, you could work that in instead of the phone number, but I always try to put the phone number in the title tag of the contact page. See how my example reads naturally? Like a human would speak? In my opinion, this is the optimum way to go. Rand agrees with this method, too. I recommend you watch his WhiteBoard Friday from earlier in the year in which he talks about naturalness in title tags:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/6-changes-every-seo-should-make-before-the-over-optimization-penalty-hits-whiteboard-friday

Also, be careful about repeating keywords, as covered in Linda's thread which SEO5 has smartly linked to.

Hope this helps!

Hi Max,

Are you aware of the advice that if you move, you should create a new listing? Just wanted to make sure you knew that.

Hi Martin, Thanks for the further explanation of your business model. You are right - Local SEO is not the right match for you, so the tool isn't helpful.

Hi Steve,

Do you have a unique physical office and dedicated local phone number in Dallas? This is the only way to go after true local rankings for any service. Without this, your SEO efforts will need to have organic, rather than local, results as a goal.

If you are virtual business attempting to get some organic traffic for different cities where you have clients, which is what I'm guessing the hope is here, it would be most typical simply to create a city landing page high in the architecture of the site for each target city. So you'd have: mysite.com/dallas-content-marketing-services  or mysitecome/austin-content-marketing-services

I don't see a need to put these things in different folders, but, I definitely do see a need to be sure you are creating totally unique content for each of these landing pages. That is critical.

Does this help answer your question? If not, feel free to provide further details.

Hi Martin,
You've received some very good replies here from members. I'll just add that if you are branching into competitive analysis of local competitors, you might like to check out 51 Blocks' competitive analysis tool, which is free:

http://www.51blocks.com/online-marketing-tools/free-local-analysis/