Hi Greenhornet77,

Good question. Schema and hCard both work. I used hCard for several years on all my local clients' sites, but I've transitioned now to Schema because of the agreement between all search engines that it's readable by them. If Schema is new to you, check out this generator:

http://schema-creator.org/

For local businesses, be sure you start by clicking the 'organization' tab in the left nav. You have a choice of course, and to date, hCard still appears to be working fine, but a lot of SEOs were ticked when Google stopped supporting geoSitemaps (see: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/03/28/google-still-supporting-kml-files-but-not-the-use-of-geo-sitemaps/), and perhaps they may be less inclined in future to abandon schema because it's supported by multiple engines. Just a thought.

Good luck with the work ahead, Catherine. And keep these handy to refer to whenever necessary:

http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528

You might like to share those with the client, as well, so that what you are explaining to them about what needs to be done can be backed up with direct facts from the Google Places Quality Guidelines.

Hi Catherine,

I would not heed this advice:

"I have also heard that if you have enough citations that give your business' address some credit and show that it's not spam, you may  not have an issue."

It's important to understand that no matter how many citations you get, you are at risk of their 'power' being split between you and any other business sharing the address, and simply confusing the bots further. It might be helpful to visualize being a bot here. If you see 50 references around the web to Jane's Hair Salon, 23 for Jenny's Yoga and 72 for Bill's Martial arts all stating that they are located at 123 Main street, who do you believe?

Therein lies the problem and it's not going to be a winning situation for any of the businesses mixed up in this.

Google has never handled the concept of shared addresses well. Unfortunately, in the real world, people do share addresses, but Google's system is not designed to cope with that, so either one abstains from participation in Google's local products, or finds a way to comply with them.

You mention getting a whole new address. Do you mean the client would move to a new building? That might be an option, but it's an awfully extreme one to go to (having to move your whole business). So the client getting a unique suite number is likely what he/she should do, but yes, you may encounter some fallout when you change the address. This could be minimal or severe. And, yes, they definitely need to be using their local area code phone number on any listing of the business, as well as in crawlable text in the NAP on their website.

I really sympathize with local business owners who are trying to understand Google's non-intuitive system. It's really easy to violate their rules and make mistakes. This is why it's critical to educate yourself as much as you possibly can about this constantly-changing system. And, if you are an SEO selling services and you are really new at Local SEO, I would suggest you advise your client to hire a Local SEO who can bring specialized knowledge on board. It's just too easy to create bad outcomes for the client if Local isn't your area of specialization...and it's even easy to end up with crazy results if you eat, breathe and live Local every day :)!

Your client is in a very bad situation. It may take some months of one-on-one care to get them out of this mess. Set their expectations correctly about this so that they understand the process is going to involve time and money.

Hope this helps!

Hi Catherine,

In order to qualify for local inclusion, avoid penalties and prevent merging, your client must be able to answer yes to the following 3 points.

1. Does the business have a unique, dedicated physical address (not a virtual address, P.O. Box or shared address)?

2. Does the business have a unique, dedicated local phone number in the city of location (not an 800 number, not a call tracking number, not a shared number)

3. Does the business have in-person transactions with its customers, either at its own location (like a restaurant) or at the customers' locations (like a plumber)?

If the business does not meet any one of these 3 criteria, it does not qualify for local inclusion. I don't know where your client is at on points 2 and 3, but if they can't say yes to point one, Local SEO will be nothing but problematic for them. Here's why:

If 2 or more businesses share an address, suite address or phone number (or even if their names are too similar), Google will frequently merge the business details of the listings. This means that Joe the Barber can end up with Jim the Plumber's business name, phone number or reviews showing up on his listing. Merging is one of the most difficult issues to deal with in Local, and one to be avoided at all costs.

Here is a Google help file on this issue: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=175290

Your client's best hope is to:

1. Secure a unique suite number in the building at which he/she works and at which mail can be received.

2. Search for all citations of the business web-wide to correct any existent citations so that they include the new suite number.

Hope this helps!