Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Catherine,

No worries at all. I'm here to help you. When the business changed its name to SpaByCar, then that was when the re-branding happened, so, I would consider Andrew's post applicable.

Once you change the the title of a Place Page, yes, it is typical to expect both re-verification of the listing and possible loss of rankings. Remember, all citations, reviews and other references to the old business name 'Mobile Nail Technician' will now be lost. Google will not associate this data with a brand new business name, so, yes, ranking loss is very probable.

Yet more reasons why a name change is shied away from by so many Local SEOs. Too bad the client couldn't just keep her name and offer a new service called SpaByCar...rather than changing her brand, but re-branding does happen in the real business world every day. It's just on the web where it is so problematic because of the way the Internet works.

Hi KS_

Good question. So, essentially, what you are doing would be termed 'Local SEO' rather than just SEO. Local is its own discipline. I will give you a brief outline here of what a Local SEO campaign looks like, in a step by step format. These are general guidelines.

1. Do keyword research without geographic modifiers (no city or regional names). Looks like you are already doing this.

2. Take your list of discovered core keywords and add your geo terms to it. This might include city names, county names, regional nicknames, zipcodes, neighborhood names and other terms.

3. You might also like to use Google Insights to surface other terms by setting your region to Canada and plugging in terms like 'home health care + calgary'. Add found terms to your list. Here is a link to this tool:

http://www.google.com/insights/search/

4. Due to your keyword research, you now have guidance as to the focus of your content development and optimization of the website at hand.

5. Your keyword findings will be reflected in the titles, tags, headers, internal links and copy of the website.

6. Understand that all of Local Search hangs on 'NAP' (name, address, phone number). The client must have a unique business name, unique street address (not a shared address, not a P.O. Box or virtual office) and a unique local telephone number in his city of location. He must also have in-person transactions with his clients in order to qualify for Local inclusion. NAP must be published consistently across the website and across the web.

7. Make sure that the complete NAP is on the contact page of the website, and I also recommend putting it in the footer, sitewide. I recommend using Schema to mark up the NAP. Here is a link to a schema creator for local businesses: http://schema-creator.org/ Be sure to choose the 'organization' tab.

8. Write unique, non-duplicate content for every page of the site. Make it excellent.

9. Once you have the website in great shape, you will be going off-site to build listings and citations. You will likely be starting with Google Places/+. Be sure to follow all the rules: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528

You will then be building other listings and working on citation building for the client. The most reputable citation discovery tool currently available is Whitespark's: http://www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/2-using-the-local-citation-finder

10. The client will also need to win reviews from his clients on a variety of sites. You need to be aware of the different rules of each review site so that you don't accidentally violate them.

11. 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.

Again, these are just the bare bones guidelines and there are nuances involved in pretty much every step . I highly recommend that, if Local SEO is new to you, you read David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors Report 2012:

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

This is the industry's most important annual survey and includes the feedback of the top Local SEOs in the world. It is a great place to get acquainted with the core issues and challenges surrounding the discipline and is a great read.

I hope this gets you off to a good start!

Hi Catherine,

Yes, so long as you've got a unique address and phone number for the 2 distinct locations, you are definitely allowed to create/maintain 2 listings. That's perfectly legitimate. Hope Andrew Shotland's article was helpful.

Miriam

Great! Glad to hear it.

Hi Catherine,

I understand. Unfortunately, by having the 2 pages with different business names pointing to the same website, you are pretty much guaranteed to run into problems. Your client is ranking well right now, but with that situation going on, this could change at any time.

When a business decides to change its name, consequences are very real on the Internet, in ways that they would never be in the offline world. I have a really good resource for you to read.

Andrew Shotland wrote a guide for this situation about a month ago: http://searchengineland.com/the-smb-guide-to-changing-business-names-seo-128939

This article does a good job of outlining the steps that must follow a business name change, but as you will see, every Local SEO kind of cringes in this scenario, because loss of rankings can definitely happen, even if you do take all the right steps.

So essentially, you are faced with a double dilemma with your client. If you leave things as they are right now, trying to maintain the current high rankings, you can almost bet that there will eventually be a day when the rankings will end because you are sending mixed signals to Google about the client's core NAP (name, address, phone). And, if you make the suggested changes now (as the article explains), you may experience some loss of rankings anyway.

The upshot, unfortunately, is that name changes in the Local SEO world are a big pain in the neck. Give the client all the information you can about this so that he/she can make an informed choice about what steps to take, and make sure your contract states clearly that you cannot be held responsible for ranking changes or penalties.

Hope this helps!

Hi Probikeshop,

I think you'll find our section on sitemaps in the Beginner's Guide To SEO to be helpful:

http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/search-engine-tools-and-services

Hi Probikeshop,

I think you'll find our section on sitemaps in the Beginner's Guide To SEO to be helpful:

http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/search-engine-tools-and-services

Hi SaraSEO,

Good advice from Robert. I want to add that it's important to understand that, if what you're engaging in is a local campaign, there is currently no keyword tool that will give you accurate city-related search volumes. From your question, I'm not positive whether you are looking for this (for example, looking for search volumes for terms like 'pizza chicago' or if, because you mention searching on a state level, your intent is something other than this.

Hi Petra,

As I suspected, the feedback I received amounted to a guess that it is an algo-driven thing. This just hasn't been documented, as far as I know. Place Labels are seen by many, understood by a few, but documented by a very few people. Sorry not to be able to quote you anything solid on this. If you're researching the issue and reach any strong theories or conclusions, I'm sure people would be interested in reading it.

Miriam

Hi Probikeshop, You've gotten some good responses here. I think you might like to watch this Whiteboard Friday from 2011 about fast indexing: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-get-indexed-faster-with-richard-baxter Things haven't changed significantly since that was posted and it has some great tips. Make sure you've done a good job with your on-page SEO and that you've got a really crawlable structure, upload your site to Google Webmaster Tools, create a flurry of Social Media buzz about the launch of your new site, get a few good links as quickly off the bat as you can and then prepare for ongoing efforts. Noting your screen name - Probikeshop - if you've got a local business, it's time to get started with your Local SEM. Your website will get indexed...though possibly not in 24 hours...but it will be indexed quickly if you are making the right efforts to build well and promote actively.

Hi Petra,

I agree with Robert. This is one of the most interesting questions I've seen this week, and one for which I don't have an answer because I've not seen it documented. I've put a question out to a couple of Local SEOs, but I'm not sure if I'll get feedback - again, because I've not seen this issue documented.

One thing I wanted to ask...are you referring simply to the teardrop pins or do you mean Place Labels (the little grey icons of forks/spoons, etc.)? If the latter, an interesting study was done of this in 2 parts awhile back:

http://www.iexposure.com/2011/06/16/how-to-get-a-google-places-label

http://www.iexposure.com/2011/07/26/how-to-get-a-google-places-label-part-2-update

The official Google page for Place Labels is here, and mentions zooming into a 'certain', but unspecified, level:

http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=174115

However, if we're just talking about pins here, I'm sorry that I don't have a trusted resource to send you to. There could be a number of factors at play, including distance to centroid, authority of the listing, etc. I will come back if I get any feedback from my pals in Local. It really is a good question.

Hi SEOKeith,

In the US, I've never had a problem with GetListed.org being down. What I really like it for is a quick glance. For example, if a local business owner phones me for the first time, I can punch in their URL and zip code and, right there while I'm on the phone, I can get a very quick idea of whether they've done any Local SEM or not. I find that very helpful.

Hi Catherine,

From another thread here, I believe you are located in the UK. Unfortunately, the GetListed tools for both the UK and Canada have not been working in recent times. I confirmed this with David Mihm (the tool's creator) today. He hopes to have them back up in a few weeks, but for now, they are down.

Hi Catherine,

Thank you so much for clarifying that. I was totally in the dark! Postal codes in the US are really different

Okay, so here are the rules. You are allowed to have 1 place page per business location. Each location must have a:

1. Unique, physical street address

2. Unique local area code phone number

So, for example, if a company had 2 offices but they shared the same phone number, they'd have to get a new number for the second business in order to qualify for a second listing.

Does your scenario meet this? Do you have 2 active physical addresses and phone numbers for the 2 businesses? Or is there actually only 1? If you have 2 address and phone numbers, you can have the 2 listings, but are they pointing to the same website with 2 different names? If so, that could cause confusion on Google's end and eventual loss of rankings.

If you don't have 2 distinct addresses, phone number and website for the 2 listings, what will happen if you allow the 2 listings to remain is that Google will likely merge the details of them, splitting the 'power' of both in half and potentially causing both listings to drop or even vanish. So, this is not something you should let slide.

Is this becoming clearer from my explanation? If not, please feel free to ask further question.

Hi Ty,

To be honest, you may need to hire a Local SEO to figure this out one-on-one with you. There are so many reasons a listing can drop or disappear. I will give a few ideas here, but this should by no means be considered as coverage of all the things that could cause this:

1. You've failed to hide the address of a business that Google knows or believes doesn't serve customers at the place of business (i.e. the client has a go-to-client business model like a carpet cleaning company or dog walker). This can cause listings to be totally pulled.

2. You have unknowingly violated a different guideline.

3. The listing isn't actually not there...it exists but is buried so deep, you're just not finding it.

4. The listing has merged with listing of one of the other branches in the business, or with that of a totally unrelated business.

5. Duplicate listings may have caused the listing to drop out of site.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, and as you can see, it's hard to diagnose anything like this without a hands on investigation of the issue.

I do have a couple of recommendations for you to get you a little further along on your path.

1. Fill out this Google Form to report the problem:

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

2. Check out this thread at the Local Search Forum where a business is describing something quite similar. The advice is the same as mine - fill out the form - but I think you might seem some things in this thread that could ring a bell for you in your own situation:

http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/google-places-help-support/427-google-local-page-just-disappeared.html

Hi Catherine,

Thanks for coming to Q&A with your good question. Would you please explain to me what you mean by 'W1' and 'WD'? I am not familiar with these abbreviations. I'll check back for more information from you.

Hi John,

Searching for 'artificial grass newcastle' from my location in the US, I actually see your company ranking #1...not that this is of much help to you. I have some questions:

• If your core phrase is 'artificial grass newcastle' is google showing true, pinned local results for this term when you search for it from your location in Newcastle? Or, is everything organic (no pins)?

• If this is not your core term, what is?

• Is there a term related to your business that does bring up pinned local results? If so, what is it?

I'm asking these questions because it's important to determine whether you need to pursue a local SEO strategy or a traditional organic one in order to gain high rankings. Can you provide further details, possibly screenshots of what you are experiencing? I'll check back.

Hi Anaid,

In order to qualify for Local inclusion, you need to meet two requirements.

1. Have a dedicated physical address and local phone number in the target city

2. Have in-person transactions with your clientele.

As Thomas Zickell has mentioned, many business without a storefront will use their home address as their home base in a given city. However, this is moot if you don't meet requirement #2. Do you transact business with your clients in person or is your business model virtual?

If you do have in person transactions, then you must obtain a physical address in the target city for local inclusion. If you are able to use a home address, then you must follow through with Google's recent policy changes and be sure that you are choosing the hide address function when setting up the profile, or you will likely have it taken down. So, in other words, you are supplying the home address, but requesting that Google hide it, to comply with their rules.

If you cannot use a home address, then you cannot participate in Local (i.e., you cannot hope to obtain pinned local results). So, your efforts to appear as a result for city-related searches in Australia will have to be solely organic. You can build city-focused content on your website and employ traditional on-page and off-page techniques (such as linkbuilding) in hopes of appearing as an organic result for these queries, though not as a local result.

Hope this clarifies your opportunities.

Hi Aim213, I'm popping by because this thread was posted in the Local SEO category, but because Google stopped displaying true local results for web design firms several years ago, this is pretty much a straight up SEO/SEM question. I'm going to ask some of our other associates to stop by and contribute what they can here. Please, stand by.

My pleasure, Kirk. Thanks for bringing your good question to Q&A!

Hi Donnie, You might like to check out this previous discussion here in Q&A: http://www.seomoz.org/q/serving-different-content-based-on-ip-location Does that help?

Hi Kirk,

Quick word of warning here: changing your business name could cause you to lose your reviews. If there are 20 reviews for Joe's Autobody, Google may not know that these reviews would be applicable for Joe's Muffler and Oil Change. Here is an example of lost reviews following name change as reported in the Google and Your Business Forum:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/google-plus-discuss/he9yex_ceog

This has always been the case, pre-Google+, so you have to be prepared to possibly lose some or all of your reviews following the change of business name.

As Googlelegaladvice has mentioned, it will be very important that you change your name in every citation you can find on the web, so that as these become updated, Google will find multiple instances to back up the fact that a new business name is, indeed, associated with the address that previously featured the old business name.

Terrific, Bob! So glad to be of help. Ventures like yours deserve big success!

Hi Umar,

You've gotten some helpful replies here. I'm a professional copywriter, and will share my own guidelines with you here.

1. Discover a topic you want to write about.

2. Do keyword research to determine how people are searching for information about your chosen topic

3. Cover your chosen topic as thoroughly as you can. You may only end up with 600 words on a given page, or you may end up writing a 2000-3000 word piece if a certain topic merits it. Don't focus on word count - focus on the thoroughness of your coverage of the topic.

4. As you write, keep your keywords in mind. Don't focus on including them a certain number of times. Use them where they make sense from a human perspective. This means your keywords will be sprinkled throughout the page, rather than crammed together in any one place. This is natural.

5. Make the copy a pleasure for humans to read. Yes...those keywords are in there, but they have been highlighted in a natural, non-robotic manner.

6. Once you've written the copy, read it through and craft a compelling title/headline for it, again, taking your keywords into proper consideration.

7. Run spellcheck and read the piece through at least twice before hitting publish. Weed out any typos, errors and awkward language before you go live.

8. Where appropriate, enhance the text copy with images, videos and other relevant tie-ins.

Hope this helps!

Hi Bob,

First, I would like to say that I applaud your business. MS is such a tough condition and it's wonderful that you are helping people with this!

Are the 4 terms you've listed based on keyword research, or are they the product of brainstorming? I definitely recommend that step number one for you be using a keyword research tool. Google's free Adwords keyword tool is a good place to start. However, it's important to understand that neither this tool nor any other will provide you with accurate estimates of geographic terms. When doing keyword research for Local SEO, you want to search for product, service and topic terms, without any geographic words appended to them. Then, you can take your list of found keyword phrases and add your geo terms back in.

What I feel is missing from your list of 4 terms is you. People looking for 'MS' or 'Multiple Sclerosis' may have many intents...they may be doing research for symptoms, looking for a doctor or, simply, a definition. What you are offering people is a service for people with MS. This clarification is missing from your keyword phrases, and while you may eventually target these broader terms by narrowing the competition down to Boise, your core pages like your homepage, contact page and about me page are going to need to be optimized for who you are and what you offer.

Let's look up 'health coach'. And let's compare it to 'personal trainer' or 'lifestyle coach'...these are terms I've heard lots of time, though you'll have to let me know if they are accurate descriptors of your business. The Google KW tool says:

Health Coach 40,500

Personal Trainer 673,000

Lifestyle Coach 2,400

So, 'health coach' looks like a good strong term, and while not as searched-for as 'personal trainer', if it is more accurate for your profession, it looks like a good term to go on.

Now, let's see if there is anything more utterly specific to being a 'ms health coach' or 'multiple sclerosis health coach':

ms health coach 91

multiple sclerosis health coach 0

So, there is a small amount of traffic for the first term, and you can certainly put it on the list because it does describe exactly what you do. Let's look at the list to see if any other terms look good:

living with ms 8,100

ms diet 6,600

ms support groups 1,900

Perhaps these are things you can help people with? These may not be the perfect words for you, but if they were a good match, you could start to form title tags like:

Living With MS To Your Fullest, With Boise MS Coach Bob Weikel

or

MS Support Groups in Boise led by MS Coach Bob Weikel

Brainstorming other ideas, I'm coming up with further terms:

multiple sclerosis coach 46

multiple sclerosis therapy 18,100

ms coach 4,400

multiple sclerosis help 4,400

multiple sclerosis program 1,300

Could be some gems for you in there. In fact,  MS Coach looks like it could be a very clear term for you, but I'm less certain when I look at results for that search. One is from the MSAA's life coaching program, but others are about sports coaches and women coaches. So that needs to be investigated further.

At any rate, these are just some ideas to get you started. I would recommend that you make a list of every possible term you can think of associated with your profession, plug it into a keyword tool, and see what you get. And remember, do your research without geo terms. Add them later. These terms can include city names, county names, regional names, state names, neighborhood names and zip codes. Here is a nice, free tool I came across recently that helps you determine top geo terms for you region:

http://www.localmarketingsource.com/local-keyword-research-tool/

It's going to be very important that you handle the Local SEO of your website correctly, so that you are making it really clear where you are, who you are and what you do.

Hope my thoughts are helpful to you, and good luck in the wonderful work you are doing!

Hi Kris,
Thank you for giving me a clearer picture of the business model. Unfortunately, there is a serious lack of documentation as to a 'correct' use of Schema in this scenario. Presumably, you've already seen documents like these:

http://schema.org/LocalBusiness

http://schema.org/Restaurant

This is the only type of example I have seen of this, and while these documents identify elements you can use, they don't give directions for how you MUST use them.

To my mind, the branchof tag would be for something like a franchise - a fast food chain or bank or something like that which has a corporate headquarters and branch locations. Please understand, I'm saying this is just my reading of the definition of that tag, but I have a feeling every business experimenting with schema is coming up with their own definitions of what these things mean.

Before Schema, when I was doing everything in hCard, I would simply create a different hCard data set for each business in a multi-location situation. This was pretty simple, but Schema offers so many different attributes.

I'll ask the other moderators here if they can give any additional input. In the meantime, in case this helps, here is a very nice free schema generator tool I found out about a month or so ago:

http://schema-creator.org/

Please check back in. One of our other smart mods may have more to add to this subject.

Hi Kris,

How many locations are you considering putting on a single page, what type of page is it, and what is the business model? Is it a franchise with corporate headquarters, or a collection of locations with no corporate headquarters?

Please, provide a bit more detail. Thanks!

Hi Daria,

That is tough if these wrong citations are stemming from personal websites rather than business directories. I can see how it will be harder to get them changed. You are doing what would be advised - writing to the owners to request that they either edit or remove the citation. With directories, it's more formalized, so easier. But, the process is the same - finding everything you can and slogging through trying to get them changed. If a couple of weeks go by and you haven't heard from the bloggers, I would write again. You could also try commenting on the blog posts that reference the business.

Finally, you can also start a thread in the Google and Your Business Forum to discuss your inability to remove old citations:

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

I'm glad a refresher on the guidelines helped you to identify and issue you were having. Good luck, Daria!

Hi Daria,

Absolutely, fix those citations, if you can. Improper citations confuse Google and can drag your rankings down. In fact, your ability to rank could be being cut in half by the fact that Google is associating two different business names with the same address. That would be the next step.

And, just to be sure you have these - here are Google's Places Guidelines, to be certain you haven't accidentally violated any of them:

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

I think cleaning up those citations will be very important, Daria.

Hi Jayme,

Unfortunately, there is no tool that offers reliable local keyword information. This is due, to my understanding, to the different location of data centers. Even if you are in a major metro location like Los Angeles, the numbers cannot be relied upon.

So, here is the method that I and other Local SEOs I know follow:

1. Do your keyword research without any type of local modifiers. Create a document with a list of your findings. This might look like:

jeweler

jewelry store

diamond engagement rings

fine jewelry

costume jewelry

etc.

2. Now, create a list of your geographic terms. These might include city names, county names, regional names, neighborhood names and zip codes. An interesting tool that can help you turn up geo keywords is here: http://www.localmarketingsource.com/local-keyword-research-tool/ This is solely for looking up the different geo terms - not geo/service/product combinations.

3. Once you've got your 2 lists, combine them. So now, your keyword sheet will look like:

jeweler minneapolis

jeweler minneapolis, mn

jeweler twin cities

jeweler 85342

jewelry store minneapolis

etc.

What you've accomplished by the end of this is a very big list of keywords that you can use. These can be reflected in your title tags, meta description tags, headers, alt tags, link title and anchor text and on-page copy. Off-site, you will, of course, want to know about these kw terms in any linkbuilding you may do.

Some of the terms may be reflected on the core pages of your site, whereas others may be set aside for userful blog posts the jeweler plans to write. I do a ton of professional copywriting for local businesses, and I am always interested in seeing keyword research that turns up terms that can easily be worked up into a Q&A-type blog post. For example, let's say we see a term come up like:

'judging diamond quality'

We can turn this into a blog post entitled:

Judging Diamond Quality 101

or

Judging Diamond Quality While Visiting A Local Jewelry Store

The post will then give tips for beginners who want to be able to tell the quality of the diamonds being offered by jewelers. And, of course, it  can contain information like:

At Village Jewelers in Minneapolis, MN, every diamond we sell comes with a a legal certificate certifying its quality...etc.

So, the point is, you will want to find places for all of your keywords over time. Building a strong, beautifully, locally-optimized website is the cornerstone of any Local SEO campaign. This work includes the optimization of various elements of the website and the crafting of exceptional copy for every page. And, it can include the development of an on-site blog, enabling the business owner or hired copywriter to create great copy on an on-going basis.

Offsite, there will be more work ahead, of course, in your pursuit of high rankings. This will include getting your local business profiles created and claimed, beings sure you don't violate any guidelines, building citations and earning reviews at a steady, but not hurried, pace. Lots to consider!

Jewelry stores are fun clients because their products is so easy to write about and their clientele is generally pretty happy! Good luck!

Hi Zachary,

This is a known issue I've run into before. Here's a similar thread from the Google and Your Business Forum:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/business/Rxy12Gx7Kf0

Definitely, use your complete address (including suite number) when creating your citations. Even if Google isn't properly displaying your suite number, they are aware of it internally, and your citations need to match it.

Hope this helps!

Hi Kristi,

1. If you choose to create local listings for each of your installers, then, yes, you would have to use their home address and local area code phone number (I do not recommend putting your 800 number on your listing even as the second phone number). You would then need to choose the hide address feature in creating each of the listings, because employees are going to customers rather than customers coming to the employees' home. Do not overlook this step, or the listings are likely to be yanked. Honestly, if you can avoid the bulk upload feature, I would. I'd do this individually.

2. Google will eventually merge the + and Place pages. Recommend you study this article regarding the category selected when you created the + page to see if you are eligible for a manual merge request or if you need to wait (http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/06/08/google-for-business-places-forums-wrapup/). Also recommend you read: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/08/03/google-business-and-local-merge-process-is-now-live/. Because you are dealing with what is essentially a multi-location business (like a franchise) Google has not yet announced a solution/intentions regarding how it will handle this type of business.

3. Where does your Place Page say you serve all 50 states? The description? Can you please provide a little more detail.

Don't feel badly about being stumped. The changes have made everybody's head spin! Mine, too!

Miriam