Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Luke, This is a common practice for service area businesses (like plumbers, electricians, carpet cleaners, etc.) who are located in one city, but serve clients within a larger radius beyond their location city limits. It sounds like what you are describing is a bit different - a client to whom customer come from a variety of cities. I do not believe Google would have any problem with what you are doing, provided that you follow what you've planned to do in making the content for these city pages unique. I think a nice thing to do on these pages would be to add some testimonials from customers who come to the business from these other locations. Now, whether these pages will greatly impact your client's ability to rank well for the service+city keywords is up in the air. It really depends on the competitiveness of the industry and locale. If the client is in a situation of modest competition, these new pages could achieve some new visibility and drive some new, qualified traffic, but if the client is in a dog-eat-dog vertical, the new pages may not be able to be of big help. It's really one of those 'it depends' situations. Bottom line, though, it is not my experience that Google views such content as manipulative in intent if the content has a real reason for existing.

Hi Raphael,

Without actually investigating your client's unique business, my response will have to be somewhat general. The main areas one would investigate would be:

1. Age of domain

2. Strength/optimization of website/inclusion of local hooks on site (like NAP)

3. Correctness of Google local listings/lack of violations/lack of duplicates

4. Number, quality and age of citations (if yours are new, you need to give them time to go into effect)

5. Consistency of NAP across all citations

6. Review count

7. Proximity to city centroid

8. Traditional SEO factors, such as linkbuilding

There are other areas that could be applicable, certainly, but these are the main ones.

Here are some resources regarding local search rankings and related factors:

http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml

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

http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2012/10/02/how-long-does-local-search-visibility-take/

The above are a few selections which I feel will be highly relevant to what you are trying to understand about local search ranking factors and the time it can take for your work to go into full effect.

I hope you will find these useful!

Hi Green Hornet,

There's very recent breaking news on this topic, actually. When you move to a new location, Google advises you to close the old listing and create a new one. However, historically, this caused a really bad problem of a yellow label reading 'this place has permanently closed' appearing on the listing, even if the business had actually just moved. Not good.

So, I was really happy over the weekend to discover that Google has altered the messaging to read 'this place has closed or relocated'. While not ideal, it's still a big improvement. There's a great discussion of this going on over at the Local Search Forum here:

http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/google-places-important-updates/867-yay-permanently-closed-moved-business-google-update.html

Definitely, give that a read through.

You are very welcome, Mark!

Hi Tom,
Great question. There has been a ton of discussion of this, of late. Rather than try to re-write all of this, I'd like to link to a couple of pieces that give a good assessment particularly of Yext, and their NAP correction service.

Here is one from Nyagoslav Zhekov that actually received a personal response from Yext's Howard Lerman:

http://www.ngsmarketing.com/why-yext-might-not-be-the-best-fit-for-your-business/

Here is Mike Blumenthal's take on Yext:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/03/01/yext-local-seo/

And here is David Mihm's:

http://www.davidmihm.com/blog/seo-industry/yext-local-marketing/

I recommend you pay very careful attention to this part of Nyagoslav's article:

"NAP consistency – the main advantage of the service is that it rectifies the business information across Yext’s network, thus helping up the local search rankings (I have previously discussed the value of citations for local SEO). I have been “promoting” the Local Search Scorecard, an instant scanning service Yext offers for free, as a useful local SEO tool, too. But if we look deeper, we could see that there are fundamental problems with the Power Listings service and its helpfulness in terms of keeping one’s business NAP consistent. How the service works is:

• It scans all the network’s websites for the specified business information (name, address, phone number).

• It determines the best matching listings (if any) on each website and highlights them.

• It then syncs the data input via the dashboard on all these websites, updating the listings that previously have been determined as best matching, and “filling in” with new listings where it was unable to find matching ones.

The three main problems here – first, it is possible that Yext’s scanning will not find the correct listing (happens often when the same business has two offices in the same city, or when a business has been using the same phone number for more than one of their locations); second, it is possible that Yext’s scanning will not find any listing, although there is one (happens if NAP is very inconsistent); third, it is possible that there are duplicates, and as Yext finds only one listing per website, these won’t be taken care of (happens almost in every single case). What this all means is that the chances for Yext to not clear up your NAP completely, or to actually screw your other location’s NAP, are pretty high. I haven’t made a large scale research on this matter, but according to my observations there are at least a few wrong or correct duplicates for a business in at least 80% of the cases. "

Please, check out those resources regarding Yext.

Regarding Localeze, I have been part of discussion about similar problems, but do not have a published source to quote on this. Others might have a different opinion on this, but basically, every Local SEO I know agrees that there is no replacement on the market right now for manual citation correction. Hope this helps!

Hi Mark,

This is a good question about a common phenomenon. So, basically, you are performing 2 different types of searches.

When you search for 'real estate agent', by itself with no geo modifier, you are performing what I would call an 'organic search', and leaving any geo personalization up to Google. I'm not in the Netherlands, but this appears to me to work the same in the US.  So, the local results you are seeing for a broad organic search like that are coming from Google's identification of your location, rather than a signal of intent you would be sending to the search engine by including a city name.

But, when you add  your local city name to your query, you are clearly telling the search engine that you are interested in local results. This is actually a different type of search than the first example I've given.

Also, you can perform a third type of local search. For example, let's say you live in Los Angeles, but are looking for a real estate agent in San Francisco. You may, again, get slightly different results when you search for 'real estate agent san francisco' because you're not actually located in San Francisco.

So, each type of search is different, and Google is going to display somewhat different results for each query type.

I have a fabulous article for you to read more about this phenomenon. Here is Nyagoslav Zhekov's piece on this from August. Think you will really like it:

http://www.ngsmarketing.com/the-two-types-of-local-search-and-how-local-seo-should-reflect-them/

Read that through, as I'm sure it will give you some very good information.

So, basically, what a question like this boils down to is...if I rank at the top in one type of search, and lower down in a different type of search, what factors are at play that are affecting this? This will require an analysis of your own marketing efforts as well as an analysis of your competition. From this, you may be able to discover that in one set of results, on-page SEO strengths are enabling some businesses to outrank others, where as in another type of search, off-page factors such as proximity to centroid, linkbuilding, citations or reviews are the reason for some businesses outranking others.

Hope this helps!

Hi Bo,

Thanks for the additional information about your business model. So, if in-person transactions happen at each office, and each office has its own address and own phone number, sounds to me like you're good to go for pursuing local inclusion. Just be sure to follow all of the rules carefully:

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

And, yes, you can create a unique page on the site for each locale. Sounds like a plan!

Best of luck!

Hi Bo,

Regardless of location or number of websites, inclusion in Google's local search results requires that the business:

1. Has a unique physical street address (not a P.O. Box, virtual office or shared address)

2. Has a unique local phone number (not an 800 number, not a call tracking number, not a shared number)

3. Has in-person transactions with its customers, either at the company location (like a restaurant) or at the clients' locations (like a plumber).

Read those 3 points carefully. If by stating that you are an 'online business', you mean that the business is virtual and doesn't serve clients face-to-face, then the business model doesn't qualify for local inclusion.

Hope this clarifies the issue. You are welcome to ask further questions if this isn't quite clear enough.

Hi GreenHornet,

Yes, the use of call tracking numbers in Local has long been a problem, because it can ruin the clarity of your all important NAP (name, address, phone number) signals. Here is one of  David Mihm's early posts on this topic, from 2009:

http://searchengineland.com/be-wary-of-call-tracking-numbers-in-local-search-26895

A couple of years later, and also on Search Engine Land, Chris Silver Smith wrote this post regarding call tracking 'solutions' that could be categorized as cloaking:

http://searchengineland.com/for-local-seo-lack-of-call-tracking-solution-spawns-cloaking-70198

I'll excerpt from Chris' post here, regarding options:

" Avoid call tracking numbers for your website and for any online directories or online yellow pages which are being actively indexed by Google and other local search engines. Using them in banner ads, in PPC ads, and on landing pages which are set up to not be indexed is fine, so they can be used for paid search advertising with zero local SEO impact.

If you have used call tracking numbers in the past or are using them now, discontinue it. You’ll need to periodically audit local information sites to see if your listing info with the tracking number continues to appear on websites online, and carefully update/remove the tracking numbers from them.

If you think you’ve been penalized for using call tracking numbers from a provider who added cloaking software to your site, remove the offending code and submit a reinclusion request to Google explaining what happened.

As part of your standard phone script at your business, consider asking callers directly where they found your listing. Have employees who answer the phone write down responses for you to see later. This remains an excellent and free way of polling to see how effective different channels are performing.

If you are in some sort of unavoidable situation where you must get some phone tracking information, implement the tracking numbers for a brief period of time without using any sort of cloaking code. I would suggest only using tracking numbers for two or three months, maximum, and that should be sufficient to get a rough idea of how effective a particular channel is performing — then, return to using your regular phone number and audit to fix any places where the tracking number continues to appear."

Also in 2011, Greg Sterling covered Telmetrics' introduction of a call tracking solution that doesn't use call tracking numbers, but to be honest, I never saw this idea covered by anyone else and can't say how heavily it was adopted or how well it works:

http://searchengineland.com/telmetrics-introduces-call-tracking-without-tracking-numbers-93450

In 2012, the only thing I've really come across is part of an interview at SEOBook of Jake Puhl and Adam Zilko:

http://www.seobook.com/interview-local-marketing-experts-jake-puhl-adam-zilko

Here's the relevant text:

"Call Tracking Recommendations (Or Not?)

Back to Topics

Eric: Yeah, we do see that a lot, especially with people who are trying to do campaigns with different phone number tracking, where they put different phone numbers in yellow and all these different places. Do you have anything? Do you use a specific type of call tracking application?

Adam: No, we completely recommend against it, absolutely 100% against it. Any time you have any variations with your map, your name, your phone number, like Jake said, you're going to weigh down your citations, weigh down your listing, weigh down your trust with Google and that's been a big thing. We've seen, even without any other sort of off page efforts, just by cleaning up your citations across the web, we've seen a significant increase in rankings, many, many times because of that.

Every now and again, you come across, say, a seven pack with dentists, you see one that maybe doesn't have a website, in a very competitive market. Typically, it's because his citations are so dialed in, he's been in one place for 30 years and the only data out there is exactly the same, so there's a lot of trust with the map. The same kind of rules apply. We completely recommend that you never use a tracking number, and if you have to use one on your site, you put it in the form of an image file, and we'll even go as far as to make the all tag on it their actual phone number. There's just no room for any confusion at all."

I've not seen this discussed any more recently than this, and the consensus of opinion pretty much remains the same as it has for the past 3 years since this subject was first spotlighted. To wit: Call tracking numbers are bad for local campaigns, and if you absolutely have to use them, you need to make an effort to hide them, as discussed in some of the above articles.

I suggest that you read through everything I've linked to above so that you can make an informed decision about this. Hope these resources help!

Hi Alex,

Though the display has changed from Places to +, the work is basically the same. The aspects of Local SEO that have the most impact and over which you have total control are:

• The strength and optimization of your website

• Citation building

• Social Media participation

• Linkbuilding

• Avoiding violations of various guidelines

The important aspect over which you have some control is:

• Review acquisition

Other important ranking aspects over which you have little or no control are:

• Age of domain/citations/links

• Proximity to centroid

• Competitors' efforts

If the goal is to move from #3 to #1, you can work to make a superior effort in the first 2 sections of my above list in comparison to the efforts of competitors and hope that this pays off, but the third section of my list is not something you can control. If competitors are older, closer to centroid or making a greater effort, these aren't things you can control, making outranking them quite difficult.

While these recommendations are more or less the same as I would have given prior to the changeover to Google+, people are blogging about their findings as Local changes and grows. If you want to catch up on some of these issues, there are 3 blogs I would recommend you peruse. Go through the posts on these blogs for the past 3-4 months:

blumenthals.com/blog

http://marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/

http://www.ngsmarketing.com/blog/

These are my top 3 picks for really good coverage of the issues, and the three authors also happen to be Google And Your Business Forum Top Contributors, so they not only have their eyes on the ball, they have a special perspective because of their interactive relationship with Google itself.

Hope this helps!

You are most welcome.

Hello TheeDesign Studio,

Merging issues are absolutely astronomical right now. Go and search the Google And Your Business Forum for the word 'merged' alone and you will see threads from here to pluto on this topic. Why your specific issue is happening cannot be resolved with an investigation of the specific business details, but likely, you will end up walking through the Places Troubleshooter (yes, Google is still calling it Places despite all the recent changes). Here's the link:

http://support.google.com/places/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1386120&page=ts.cs

And here's the link the Google and Your Business Forum, in case you don't have that handy. Sometimes, this can be very helpful in uncovering scenarios others have experienced that match yours:

http://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!forum/business

Hope these resources help.

Hi SpeakCreative,

As of January 2010, Google stopped showing truly local results for queries like yours: web design memphis. Designers, SEOs and other marketers were hit with this filter and it has never been rescinded. Because of this, when you're dealing with a query like yours, you are likely actually dealing with an organic SEO issue, rather than a Local SEO one. Because or this, the answer to your question lies in competitive analysis of the competitors who are outranking you, to discover where they are surpassing you. Then, the task will be to make a greater effort than they have.

In other words, there isn't going to be a simple answer to a question like yours. The answer will be discovered via a close analysis of who is ranking and why.

Hi Taysir,

As Robert has mentioned, Google-based reviews are no longer coming through Places, but rather, Google+.  Places still exists to a certain extent (and it remains in all of the help doc language because Google is on the fence about updating it, apparently) but now, users must be signed into a + account to leave your business a review. There has never been a badge. I have seen some website do a little graphic of the Google logo amongst others on an About or Contact page asking for a Google review.

It's important to go about review solicitation according to Google's guidelines. Definitely read these:

http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&topic=1656880&answer=187622

And I would further suggest that you read Mike Blumenthal's recent post on the topic of review solicitation:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/09/24/asking-for-reviews-post-apocalypse/

Every review site has its own guidelines. In the Local SEO community, the census of opinion seems to be that it is okay to ask your customers to leave you a review, but it is not okay to ask them to leave you a positive review. That is the distinction most commonly arrived at from a study of the guidelines as well as Google employee comments on this topic.

Be advised that Google has ramped up their filtering of reviews in recent months. Another consensus of opinion is that it is safer to get reviews a little bit at a time, rather than in large blocks all at once, to avoid review take downs.

When it comes to encouraging reviews, methodology is dependent in part on your business model. If, for example, you are running a dental office, you might want to hold a staff meeting with your receptionists to educate them about the importance of gaining reviews over time. Then, you might make it company policy for the receptionists to mention to customers that you would appreciate a review, or, in taking care of billing at the time of service, they might include a little card encouraging the patient to leave a review. Another effort could involve acquiring the email addresses of customers and sending pre-qualified satisfied ones a follow-up email, after the time of service, requesting that they leave feedback about their experience. Be creative about this and come up with a way to encourage awareness of your appreciation of customer feedback without being pushy.

And, don't just focus on Google. I firmly believe it is better to put your eggs in many baskets on this. With Google and Yelp both having the ability to severely filter reviews that come it, it's important to have good words about your business in a variety of places on the web.

I'm so glad to be of help, KS_. See you around Q&A!

Hi Again KS_ So glad to be able to help you. Let's take your questions one by one.

1. Yes, directory submissions are quite important, though not all of them are equally important. Here is an excellent post from Nyagoslav Zhekov covering Canadian citation sources: http://www.ngsmarketing.com/local-citation-building-study-part-4-local-business-directories-around-the-world-canada-uk/ And another terrific one from Jim Rudnick: http://www.canuckseo.com/index.php/2011/05/diy-canadian-citations-our-2011-update/ As for Classifieds, I'm not completely sure I'm familiar with your intent. If you can get a permanent listing of your business on a local classifieds site, that would be great, but if it's an advertisement that comes and goes, that wouldn't really be the same thing as a permanent citation.

2. Check out the 2 links in my answer to question #1. These are great resources for Canada. These resources will list important general citation sources for all Canadian business types. Beyond this, if you are looking for citation sources specifically for Calgary businesses, or specifically for elder care facilities, you will need to discover these by manually searching for them. Look for Calgary business directories, elder services directories, etc., in Google and see if you can get cited there. No general article is going to list these types of directories, because they are niche-specific, but with manual searching, you can find them.

3. Local SEO comprises everything in the world of traditional SEO, and adds to it the concept of geography. So, anything you might do in a traditional SEO campaign is also applicable to a Local SEO campaign. As I wrote in my original response: "Depending on the competitiveness of the client's industry and region, you may then need to engage in other forms of marketing such as linkbuilding, social media, video marketing, offline marketing, etc."

4. The definition of a Local Result has changed constantly over the past 6 years. Right now when people talk about a Local Search Engine Result, they are typically referring to a result or set of results accompanied by the little teardrop shaped pin and comprising information both from the company's website and other sources like Google Places or +. You may also hear this referred to as a blended local result, because it draws information from a mix of sources. For example, my search 'home health care calgary' brings up these results. Scrolling down the page of results, you will come to the set of pinned local results, ranking A-G. Those are the local results. Google can show these results for a variety of search phrases. For example, my search for 'home health care calgary' brings me these local results, regardless of the fact that I'm in the USA. On the other hand, if someone in Calgary searches just for 'home health care', without adding 'Calgary', Google can also show them local results, based on their IP address. So, local results can be returned based on query or location. Hope these answers have helped!

Hi Stray Cat,Your question isn't stupid at all and there is a great discussion happening here. I'd like to throw in a few details for your consideration.First of all, you cannot rely on the numbers provided by keyword research tools if you are including geo terms (like ny) in your phrases. There is currently no tool that provides accurate numbers for local keyword research. So, you can use things like Google Adwords Keyword Tool and Google Insights to give you an idea of search volumes, but numbers are not to be viewed as accurate. Most Local SEOs do their keyword research without geo modifiers and then add these terms back into the list of discovered product, service and brand terms.If you were my client and were a NY painter, we would be targeting all 3 variations of your example terms. So, in the body copy, we might find sentences like:"Call The Painter New York Schools Have Hired 234 Times Since 2003 For A Beautiful Job!"and"When Hiring A Painter In New York, Always Request A License Number Before You Sign A Contract."and "A Professional New York Painter Will Always Present Documents Proving That He Is Licensed, Bonded and Insured."You can come up with better sentences than these which I've just reeled off, but the point is that you need to find ways to incorporate all of your core phrases into the copy. I further believe that it's not necessary to group keyword phrases together every time. If one line in your copy is talking about New York and the next is talking about painters, you are still using your keywords and signifying to bots and humans what your business does and where it is. Go with the lighter touch when you can, to avoid having copy that reads like a robot wrote it, and remember that your local search rankings are dependent on tons of different factors. The optimization of your pages is definitely a core factor, but it is only one factor.

Hi Carrol, As Robert has put so well...if it were only that easy:) Seeing rankings go up and then down for new pages (or newly optimized ones) is a pretty common phenomenon, with their freshness giving them a little boost that then dies away.Remember, your SEO will never be a set-and-forget effort. Now that you've done your first work and are seeing confirmation of doing this well by your A+ rating in our tools, take a little moment to celebrate how much you've accomplished and then get ready for your next steps. These may include, but won't be limited to:- Studying your analytics over the coming months to see how users are interacting with your site. This may lead to improvement you can make in both SEO and human usability. How people use your site affects your rankings.- Creating your ongoing content strategy. You may be blogging, creating whitepapers, infographics or other cool stuff to begin to draw steady, valuable, traffic to your site. Having a lively site affects your rankings.- Analyzing your competitors. While the age of your site vs. that of competitors isn't something you can control, you can learn a lot from what your competitors are doing and then figure out how to do it better. Remember, no search engine ranking exists in a vacuum. All the while you are struggling to get to the top, your competitors are doing the same, but if you can make a stronger effort than others who are being neglectful, you can hope to surpass them.- Creating your social media strategy. Find out where your customers are and then figure out how you can participate in and add value to the places they hang out most.- On-going linkbuilding. In competitive markets, this may be a never-ending task.While the effects of some SEO can be seen pretty quickly (within hours or a few days), most efforts are going to take some time to really settle in. A week is definitely not long enough to judge how Google will ultimately respond to the efforts you have made so far, but that's okay, because your efforts are just beginning. Being #18 isn't a bad place to start with a newly optimized website if you are in a competitive market, Carrol, but it does indicate that there will be work ahead of you. By making a steady, consistent effort to continue to grow and improve in as many areas as you can, you will be continuously feeding the bots data that says, "I'm here, I'm active and I'm doing everything I can to be a great resource for visitors." Hang in there. Don't be nervous. Expect this to take time and you'll be approaching the game with the right attitude. Sincerely wishing you good luck!

Thanks for following up, JustDucky.

Hi James,

The way this was done is not good, but the idea is right. If the client has 14 different offices, it is a standard best practice to create a unique page for each of them, and, yes, that means unique content. too. Rather than dealing with re-directs and rels, my advice is to reconsider your stance on creating meaningful content for each page. You just need to find a unique story to tell for each page. If the client is a service business, then doubtless, he's got a unique story from each service area to share. Put a minimum of 400 engaging words together, put the complete NAP(name, address, phone), a map of the service area, 5-10 local testimonials, maybe a video of the client at work in the local area and, bingo, you've now got a strong page that's been locally optimized for the community it serves.

Are you sure this isn't an option? It will take some effort/funding, but the business needs to understand the importance of taking a high quality approach to presenting themselves on the web, or they are going to be overrun by competitors who are willing to make these efforts.

Hi Vince,
Robert has given a great answer, below. Local keyword research is traditionally conducted without the use of geo-modifiers, because no keyword tool exists which provides accurate numbers for local terms. So, you would do keyword research without any geographic terms, and then city names, zip codes, etc. into your list.

The free Google Adwords Keyword Tool is a great place to start.
https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__c=1000000000&__u=1000000000&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS

Additional ideas can come from Google Insights: http://www.google.com/insights/search/

And this is a neat newer tool for helping you discover local zip codes and other geo data:
http://www.localmarketingsource.com/local-keyword-research-tool/

Beyond the use of tools, it's vital that you closely interview the client about their list of most common terms - things their clients say to describe the products or services at hand. There are regional differences in terminology that are very important to reflect. For example, you may discover that a plumber in California fixes 'water heaters', while one up in British Colombia fixes 'hot water tanks'. So, zoning in on regionalism is very important, custom work every good Local SEO does, and it's not something you can expect from any automated tool. This is something I find so interesting and exciting when taking care of my clients! I just love those language differences.

Hi Again,

While it's fine to use the home address as one of the legit locations, the UPS store is taboo. It should be removed, web-wide, to avoid possible penalties of the entire account. You will need to let the client know that this violation of the guidelines could get him into serious hot water, and that he's going to need to invest in some man hours to find and remove any citations that exist of the business at the non-permitted address.

This will then leave you with 2 physical addresses (the home address and the other one), both of which can be optimized for without detracting from the rankings of either. Think about McDonalds and how many locations they might have within a given city.

What will be vital is that you make certain that BOTH addresses are using the 'hide address' function in Google Places as this is a service-type business.

Ideally, if one is starting a new business or moving offices, there can be some benefits to getting an address as close as possible to the centroid of the city, but again, theses would need to be legit addresses. It sounds to me like you've got 2 good addresses to work with and one that needs to be removed.

Hi Greenhornet77,

Like Moosa, I might need a bit of clarification on the scenario you are describing. If the client has 3 legitimate physical locations (not P.O Boxes or virtual addresses, but real offices), has 3 distinct local phone numbers (one for each location) and has in-person transactions with his customers either at his locations or at theirs, then you would want to optimize for all 3 locations, both on the website and in citation building. You are allowed to have a listing for each location, providing it meets the above criteria.

Does this answer your question, or do you need to provide further details about the nuances of the situation? Please, just let me know.

Right on! It worked for the tortoise.

Hi Ben,

It's still in Beta, but I know Michael and I think it looks pretty good, from my brief glance. Michael Borgelt is a really smart fellow. You're very welcome!

Hi Bob,

I honestly think you will be best off posting the full scenario in the Google And Your Business Forum in case any bugs are involved. In the meantime, here are some resources that might help:

http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/google-places-important-updates/168-how-detect-verified-status-google-local-pages.html

http://marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/missing-google-places-google-local-images.html

http://www.localsplash.com/local-seo-2/how-to-determine-whether-a-google-local-page-has-been-claimed-and-verified.html

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/business/FcPdPDzbMbk/xJWAFVeRJrkJ

The Local Search Forum article is especially good, but I've included the others in case they have some info in them you haven't seen before.

Hi WhiteHat12,

I did actually hear rumors that there was some sort of shakeup last Thursday or Friday, but do not have documentation of this to share with you.

When you state Google Places, do you mean +? Have you recently merged your client's Place Page with a + profile? Here is a list of recent issues after merging:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/09/19/google-pages-for-local-known-bugs-quirks-after-the-g-local-merge/

You might also like to try out this new analysis tool, just launched by Michael Borgelt. I've not had a chance to check it out yet, but it looks like it could be helpful in trying to assess problems:

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

Without actually seeing the listing and investigating the account, it isn't possible to tell if there is a bug or penalty involved, or if the client has been surpassed by the actions of his competitors or if something else is going on. You may need to engage a Local SEO to consult with the client, because these issues typically take some hours to assess, due the large number of factors that can contribute to ranking changes. Hopefully, the 2 resources above will at least get you started in diagnosis.

Good luck!

Scott,

Curious if the business in question has a blog? Could he blog about 'an engine I fixed for a client in Abbeville, SC', and put a content strategy in place to start blogging about his projects in his major cities?  Maybe just start with the top 10 cities from which he gets orders for engine repair? Craft writeups of each project he accomplishes for a unique client in each city and make it a blog post. Then, move onto the 10 next-most-important cities. So, maybe he would be starting with the capitols of South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and then moving on to other busy cities.

Eventually, you could have a page on the site (or a menu area) designated Successful Project Showcase that would link permanently to these posts.

My goal here would be to find an authentic and natural approach for showcasing his work in a way that adds great content to the site and doesn't simply list every city in the South East. This strategy, in combination with his service area map, could work well, I believe.

While I can't say this would results in an actual penalty, as you say, it looks spammy, so anything like that is kind of shaky ground.

Have you considered making a service area map instead, showing all of the client's service states/cities?

If he services every city in every state of the South East, I simply cannot find a logical justification for listing them all. A map would send the same message, but in a logical, visual manner.

Hi Alice,

I think you are on the right track, identifying top selling books for which it will be a priority to write unique copy. The key here will be setting up a manageable task list. Whether the owners can handle writing 5 new descriptions a week or 25, figure out what the golden number is that they can achieve without feeling overwhelmed. Progress on a project like this typically has to be modestly paced, because the inventory is so large. Can they, perhaps, hire a copywriter to help them with some, if not all, of the work?

Hi Sara,

To qualify for local inclusion, your business needs to meet these criteria:

1. Has a unique street address (not a PO box, not a virtual office)

2. Has a unique local area code phone number in the city of location (not an 800 number or tracking number)

3. Has face-to-face transactions with its customers, either at the place of business (like a hair salon) or at the customers' locations (like a window washer).

It sounds like #3 may be the sticking point for you. Do you have in-person transactions with your customers? Feel free to provide further details on this.

Hi Christopher,

Yes, I'd say that would end up looking pretty spammy if they've got a list like this for every state in the South East on their contact page. For the same reason that an e-commerce website wouldn't list all 1000 items they carry on a single page, this is not something I'd recommend.

What's the business model? Virtual or Local? If local, a more natural approach to this would be to have unique pages for each of their physical offices. I very much doubt they have an office in every one of those cities in South Carolina, right? But, perhaps they have 10 offices throughout the South East and could have a unique page for each of them?

Maybe you could share a few more details about the type of business this is?

Hi David,

In addition to the typical citation sources (like those listed in the Search Engine Land article), there may be additional places you can list yourself that are specific to your niche. For example, a photographer's association site, or a truly local small directory in your town...things like that. Each vertical may have opportunities that aren't going to be listed in generic lists.

Nyagoslav Zhekov has been doing some interesting pieces on citations at his site. Check this out:

http://www.ngsmarketing.com/local-citation-building-study-part-4-local-business-directories-around-the-world-canada-uk/

Looks like that piece might be a great fit for you!

Buonjourno to you, David,

Local rankings take a ton of different factors into account - not only your own factors, but the factors of all of your competitors' as well. A strong local campaign typically involves:

1. Developing an awesome, locally-optimized website

2. Inclusion in the major local business indexes

3. Additional citation building

4. Review acquisition, over time

5. In competitive arenas, link building

That's just a quick rundown, but you have to take into account things like proximity to the centroid (how close are you to the center of business), web authority, and etc. Both organic and purely local factors all work together.

And, there is also the necessity of evaluating possible problems, such as duplicate or merged listings splitting your ranking power, lack of consistency in citations, penalties for over-optimization, Google bugs and etc.

All of these things need to be taken into account, so, as you can imagine, there isn't a simple answer to your question without a couple of hours of deep digging to discover your weaknesses and potential opportunities for improvement.

I recommend that you read:

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

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/09/19/google-pages-for-local-known-bugs-quirks-after-the-g-local-merge/

http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/09/18/will-citations-stop-being-effective-for-local-optimization-in-the-future/

http://searchengineland.com/top-50-citation-sources-for-uk-us-local-businesses-104938

That's a lot to read, but a good place to start in your investigation of your possible problems and areas of potential improvement.  Hope this helps!

Hi Jorge, In answer to your question - yes - if your site has not achieved a high blended/local rank (you say you are in the B position) for its core term, it is very common for it to lose its organic rankings. Since around the time of the Venice update, it has become quite rare for a business to have multiple spots on page 1.

Prior to this, it was common for dominant businesses to have a local pack-style ranking as well as 1 or 2 organic spots, all on page one. Now, examples of this are few an far between, though they do exist. There has been some interesting chat about this going around the local sphere. On the one hand, heatmap studies have shown that those blended local results draw eyes to them.

See this great article by our Dr. Pete, here at SEOmoz: www.seomoz.org/blog/eyetracking-google-serps

On the other hand, since Google's removal of the 5 star rating and replacement of it with the Zagat rating, PPC on the side of many SERPs has those gold stars, so heatmaps might look a bit different today than they did in 2011. I have heard tell of several reports of loss impressions/actions for business owners in your position who went from a high organic rank to their organic ranking being subsumed into the local pack. And the whole stars vs. Zagat issue is becoming increasingly noted. Here is an excellent video and article from Matthew Hunt of Small Business Online Coach on this issue that I recommend you check out:

http://www.smallbusinessonlinecoach.com/blog/proof-google-places-zagat-review-lowers-actions/

Now, the truth is that it is still really important to achieve a high blended/local ranking. Most businesses are dying to get into the local pack, so you can feel good about what you've achieved with this. However, the ideal achievement would be to attain one of those rather rare accomplishments of getting both a high local ranking and a high organic one. This is not a well-documented process. Here's a piece from Adam Steele giving some tips about it, but it can be difficult to achieve:

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

I know one Local SEO who actually offers training on this if you sign up for her complete program and that is Linda Buquet of CatalysteMarketing, so if you discover that getting a double rank on page one is vital to your phones ringing, you might want to consider hiring Linda for training.

Hope this response is helpful!

You are very welcome, Catherine. I'm so glad to help!

Miriam

Hi Catherine!

You guessed it - by publishing a incomplete address, you will definitely confuse the search engines. I sympathize with the wish not to reveal a home address. I value privacy, but desire for this is at loggerheads with wanting visibility, unfortunately. So, you have 3 options:

1. Don't participate in local.

2. Only list your business in those directories which allow you to hide your address. A number of the top ones do allow hiding the address, just like Google does.

3. Decide that you've got to give up privacy for the sake of inclusion in all the local directories.

What you've been doing with listing a partial address just isn't a good idea. Here is a really excellent post from Local Visibility System:

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

I think you will find that post to be totally awesome for your situation. Good luck!

Miriam

Hi KS,

Well, some of those things are going to be months in the workings for you, but I'm so glad that this gets you off to a good start. My pleasure.

Miriam