Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Activity Super,
You are quite correct that this is a challenge faced by countless businesses just outside the borders of major towns and cities. Because of Google's stance that a business is most relevant to its physical location, you will typically be seen and displayed as relevant to your town in the main organic/blended/local results - not to a desired nearby major city. That's just the way it works.

An exception to this is when you offer a service that is relatively unique to a large geographic area (the only large animal vet serving 4 small towns) in which case, you may find yourself dominating the local rankings for a variety of geographic terms due to lack of competition.

Because of the way Local works, then, most businesses shoot for secondary organic rankings (rather than local ones) in towns where they do not have a physical locale.

What is your business model? Are you actually an ironing service? Do you serve all clients at your shop or do you travel to some/all clients to render services? Defining this is critical to the handling of your Google Place Page.

If all clients come to you, you can show your address in G. Maps and attempt to use the old technique of making one of the additional details on the Place Page 'Areas Served'. In this, you could list up to 5 cities (do not include your city of location) from which clients come to you. I refer to this as an old technique because it is one that worked well prior to Google's layout change last July at which time they stopped publicly displaying additional details on the Place Page (as well as citations and other elements). Though Google is no longer displaying this information, they are still aware of what you put in the additional details. The thing about this is, I'm not sure if this technique works as well as it did prior to the change. Still, it wouldn't hurt you to try it.

If your business model serves some customers in your shop, and some on the road, you can show your address and also choose the service area radius feature, in which case, you could include Essex in your radius. This could be of modest help.

If your business model goes to all customers and does not do business at your physical location at all, you simply have to hide your address.

So, that takes care of the Place Page.

Other local business directories often offer you a much larger field for describing your business. You could certainly work Essex in there somewhere.

What you are left with beyond this is writing up a storm about Essex and how it relates to your business. If you've got a go-to-client business model (like a chimney sweep) this is a no-brainer, because you can simply write up your work in that city. If you don't travel to the town, however, you have to be more creative and become involved in some way in Essex in order to have something to write about. For example, a physician might give a lecture or a clinic in Essex. A brick-and-mortar business might host an event in Essex, or sponsor a children's sports team there and attend matches. Perhaps there are issues that uniquely effect your Essex-based customers (such as laws, weather, special offers, etc.) that you could write about. The thing is to find some genuine reason to connect your business to the major city in the absence of actually serving clients there.

Then, as you've discerned, linkbuilding is step two. Some people engage in article writing as well, but in my opinion, investment of time in this should typically be minimal. It would be great if you could get indexed news about your business from Essex-based news sources but this isn't always possible. Also, you might play with using hReview to highlight testimonials from Essex-based customers on your website...not sure what impact this would have, but it's an idea.

Essentially, then, a combination of a properly optimized Place Page, other local business listings, copywriting and linkbuilding will be your best bet for breaking into next-door city rankings, but if you are in a competitive industry, these rankings will typically be organic rather than truly local. Some visibility is always preferable to none!

Good Luck!

Hi Todd, I'm endorsing Kevin's response as a best answer on this, but also want to add that it will be easier on the client if he makes a plan now to begin to improve the content of key pages rather than scramble to do so after rankings suddenly fall off. Local rankings are in a constant state of flux...drops can happen so swiftly. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I would identify the 10 most important cities and write unique content for them, then move on to the 10 next-most important and so on. Do it in a way the client can afford, at a velocity you can manage.

Hello Simon, Can you fill me in on the factors that have led to you wanting to make your main pages free of geo-targeting? I ask this because, if your business serves local clientele and has a physical address and local phone number, Google is going to see you as most relevant to your city of location, making Bristol (or wherever you are located) an integral part of the SEO/Local SEO of your key pages. Secondary cities (for example, cities where you go to serve beyond your city of location) can have their own pages, but these will be secondary keywords and not your core terms which would be your services + your city of location. Am I missing something? It would help to understand why you want your content to be separate from your company's locale.

Hi Yanez,

I have some concerns about the dynamic scenario and how it relates to Local Search. I actually spoke about this with Darren Shaw of WhiteSpark and he gave me permission to quote him on this:

If set up properly, I think it can be fine for the search engines:
BAD: domain.com/locations.php > detects IP and loads the location info into the page.

OK: domain.com/locations.php > detects IP and 301 redirects to the correct location page like /denver.php. It's ok, as long as there is a crawlable list of all location pages on the site.

BEST: domain.com/locations.php > detects googlebot, and if not googlebot, detects IP and 301 redirects to the correct location page like /denver.php. It's ok, as long as there is a crawlable list of all location pages on the site. This could be called cloaking, but it's actually not a concern to the engines. There are tons of examples of sites using cloaking for good, not evil, and Google is fine with it. Google has no problem with cloaking when it benefits the user and isn't used to serve different content to the engines that a user would never see.

Hope this helps!

Miriam

Hi Bristolweb,

In July of 2011, Google made a significant change in the information they actually display on the Google Place Page. You should still fill everything out that you can, but Google is only going to publicly display part of it. Rest assured, however, they see everything you've input. Here are 2 great Mike Blumenthal articles on the changes:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2011/07/21/google-places-testing-new-layout/

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2011/07/26/google-places-what-else-went-missing-on-the-places-page-in-the-update/

Descriptions have returned in most cases, but other things like the old additional info and citations are no longer part of the public Place Page.

Hope this answers your first question.

Optimizing a Google Place Page hinges on 4 key things:

1. Adhere to the Google Places Quality Guidelines to the letter: (http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528  *Note, this is the North American link. If you are located elsewhere, your guidelines may be slightly different. You should find them and memorize them and check back frequently because they do change).

2. Choosing the best 5 categories for the business

3. Writing a good description.

4. Being clear about the business model. Does it serve clients at the brick and mortar location, in which case you may show the address, or is it a go-to-client business model that must hide the address?

Once you've done this, gaining reviews and citations are the typical SEO work ahead of you. In my work as a Local SEO, it never fails to amaze me how many local business owners make this whole thing worlds harder for themselves than it should be because they don't read the guidelines. My rule-of-thumb advice is that the most important factor of an optimized Place Page is its lack of violations. It's also important to remember that, these days, the strength of the website is the top overall ranking factor in most local results.

Hope this helps!

Miriam

So glad you found the webinar helpful!

Hi Bill,

You're getting some excellent feedback already from members here. I thought I'd pop in to make sure your question is being understood. You write:

"When doing keyword research it is very difficult to find keywords with lots of search.

For example, if I am optimizing for a Ford dealership in Hackensack,NJ there are not a lot of searches for this term."

In Local SEO, one seldom finds high volume keyword phrases with the geo keywords attached. Unless the business is in LA or NY, the number of searches DISPLAYED with city keywords attached will generally be low because the available data centers aren't showing you actual local data. So, your core term takeaways from kw research tools are going to be non-geo-specific keywords (car dealership, ford dealership, ford cars, used cars, affordable cars, car lot, or what have you). Make your list out of these terms and then add on whatever geographic terms are necessary.

Perhaps you already know this, but from the way you phrased your question, it sounded to me as if you might be judging search volume on criteria you can't count on. This is an oft-voiced beef in the Local SEO industry...keyword research tools do not present an accurate picture of true local searches. So, the workaround I've described is what is used by pretty much every Local SEO I know.

Does this make sense? Please, let me know. Great discussion in here, everybody

Hi Taysir,

If the company has made the effort to create unique city landing pages for each franchise, then, yes, it's a best practice to link from local business profiles to the respective city landing pages in any directory that allows you to do so. And, if corporate headquarters has its own local phone number and address, it can have its own directory listings as well that would link to the homepage. I recommend that you do link up the Yahoo profiles to the landing pages.

BTW, here is the link to the PRO webinar referenced by JP:

http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/all-about-google-places

Definitely worth watching!

You're very welcome, Bob. The geo terms Debi targets will depend on whether her business model operates out of a location to which clients come or whether she is running a go-to-client business model. For example, a brick and mortar paint store in San Francisco is dealing within the city, whereas a painting contractor based in San Francisco may also be serving in San Jose, Oakland, Berkeley and etc. and will need to formulate a plan for targeting all of those geo terms. So, the answer to your question is based on Debi's business model. *Also, the business model type needs to be totally clear so she knows whether or not her address needs to be hidden or not on her Google Place Page to be current with the recent guideline change, see: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-you-may-need-to-hide-your-google-places-address-asap If she can't currently afford to hire a Local SEO, then she will need to put in the time to study this subject for the benefit of her business. The more she knows, the more she can dominate. I sincerely wish her luck! Miriam

Hi Bob,

I'm delighted my response was helpful! Regarding your questions:

1. This is why I am recommending that Debi form a relationship with a Local SEO. Someone needs to do a full discovery assessment of her business (where are her clients, where does she see them, at her office, at their homes, at a medical center, what are her core terms, what are the most logical geo terms to add to her core terms, what types of content need to be added to the site, is the site currently using hCard or rich snippets or what have you?). There isn't a one-size-fits-all answer to this. The Local SEO has to really examine the nature of the business model, the goals of the client and the needs of the customer to formulate an educated plan of action. You can try making recommendations to your friend that you think will help her, but as you say, Local just isn't your thing. My opinion is that Debi needs to work with a Local SEO so that whatever she invests time in will be part of an overall plan rather than just a stab in the dark. Does this make sense?

2. You raise a very interesting point regarding citations and links. Google's link-related penalties are well documented but in the half a decade I've been doing Local, I have never heard of a citation-related penalty. So, while I wouldn't be worried about citation penalties, I understand the need to find reliable citation. In addition to Whitespark's tool, which I've linked to in my original response, I recommend you look at Myles Anderson's much lauded list of the top 50 citation sources for the USA and the UK, here:

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

I hope my suggestions are useful, Bob. I know how it can be when you are helping a friend, or even a client. They may need guidance with specific practices that just aren't your area. That's when it's time to refer them out to someone you really trust and who does specialize in the type of consulting or implementation the valued friend of client needs.

Hello JDCline,
What you a referencing is one of the chief practices of a strong Local SEO campaign - creating unique, optimized content that features services + geo terms. This can certainly be accomplished, but the chief challenges typically are:

1. Helping the client understand the value of his investment in this.

2. Finding a copywriter who is also a Local SEO and knows what they are doing.

3. Being creative with your subject.

Different industries are easier than others to write extensively about, but there isn't actually any subject that cannot benefit from creative treatment of this kind. I am not sure from your post whether the website you linked to is the one with which you are working. Is this your site, your client's site, or a competitor's site, perhaps?

If the topic is insurance, it is one of the tougher topics for creative copywriting, but brainstorming ideas can help.

For example, consider doing an interview with one of your agents in Baltimore Maryland. Do a Q&A page with him about the types of insurance most sought after by local people. Talk about anything unique to the area. For example, in a coastal state, perhaps people purchase lots of boat insurance, whereas, in a flood-prone state, perhaps flood insurance is a major need.

Do bear in mind, however, that Local SEO hangs on NAP (name, address, phone number). If you have actual offices in each of these cities, then your company is in a position to go after local search rankings. If you do not have actual offices there, you must expect to be outranked by true local companies. Your only hope is to gun for secondary organic rankings, typically shown below the true local rankings if you do not have offices in your target cities.

Hope this explanation helps.

The rule to follow is not to duplicate any of your content. You must write each page as a unique, free-standing article and then build a menu of these articles that offer specific local or regional guidance for human users.

Good luck!

Miriam

Hi Bob,

How nice of you to help your friend out. Let me give you some ideas here:

1. Debi should add at least 5 photos to her Place Page...preferably 10.

2. Debi should add at least 2 videos to her Place Page (not one, but two, as adding one video may actually make her listing less complete than more so due a mysterious glitch in the system)

3. I'm not liking the description. Think of the Places Description as a sales pitch. What can Debi say about her business that would inspire me to phone her? Has she won awards? Will she help me achieve a specific goal? Is she the most skilled in the area? Does she have certain credentials others lack? Figure out the USP and make that the description. A little more on this...until a year or two ago, the Google Places Quality Guidelines specifically forbid the repetition of any word in the business title or categories, or any geographic term, within the description field. Google removed this from the guidelines a few updates ago, but I have remained suspicious that it may still be factor. Because of this, I don't use my local SEO clients' business names or category phrases in their descriptions. I don't know what Debi's USP is, but I would write a hypothetical description like this:

Voted 'Best In Town' by Desert Living Magazine. Empathetic, skilled coaching. Achieve your goals at affordable rates.

Something like that. Something persuasive.

4. Debi needs to earn reviews. Help her put a plan in place to encourage them.

5. Debi needs to earn citations. Get her listed in all the typical free local business indexes. Consider using a paid citation finding tool like Whitespark's at: <cite>www.whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder/</cite>

6. Remember that the optimization of the Place Page is only a small part of her overall local rankings and visibility. The strength of the website is the most important factor, especially since the Venice update. Nearly all local rankings are now blended in nature (meaning organic seo + local seo is the winning combo). I glanced at Debi's site and think it needs a review by a good local SEO as it it lacking in some basic best Local SEO practices. In your shoes, I would give Debi the above info and then advise her that she should invest in working with a quality Local SEO in improving her website. This will be her smartest move.

Hope these suggestions help, Bob!

Miriam

Hi Steve,

I agree with you - the company should only have one Place Page, given that they are only one business. I expect Google would agree if they did a manual review.  However, there is a vague point here for me. One of the domains is a country level domain with the .uk extension while the other is the global .com extension. I am not sure if the company's decision to go with two different domains/websites might have some SEO basis about which I'm not qualified to speak. I'm a Local SEO....I'd like to ask one of our expert traditional SEOs to stop by this thread to give us his or her knowledge about the different domain extensions.

But, bottom line, yes, it's the same business at the same address and should have only one Place Page. If this is hurting your own business in some way, you could always visit the Google Place Pages, scroll to the bottom and use the report a problem link to describe your unhappiness with this business receiving 2 spots in the rankings when they are only one business. You would essentially be outing your competitor in so doing. Now, whether Google will act on your remarks is another matter, but the report a problem link is the avenue open to you to report activity you feel is inappropriate.

Hang in here while I ask one of our traditional SEOs to stop by.

Hi Cozy Web,

Before you take any paid steps, I think you should phone Yahoo. I believe these are the numbers:
1-866-562-7219 or 1-866-562-7228

Unlike Google, Yahoo offers phone support. Present your case to the tech and ask what you should do, as the business is listed without problem in all other directories. This is what I would do.

Miriam

Hi Antony,

I haven't seen a heatmap study or clickthru-type report covering this specifically. However, my gut feelings is that you are better off being #1 with places attached as the listing is so large and visible. I think you have cause to jump for joy with that top local ranking. I bet you are getting the lion's share of interest on that page of results.

Sorry I don't have anything to quote you. It's possible someone has done a heatmap study and that might be something you could research.

Hi Rahul,

I am assuming that you are talking about Google Place Page categories. Hopefully, I'm correct and my response will be pertinent.

A first step is to look at the top ranking competitors of your clients to see what Place Page categories they have chosen.

I consider it critical to choose at least 3 of Google's pre-set categories, and I use Mike Blumenthal's awesome local categories tool to see what my choices are:

http://blumenthals.com/index.php?Google_LBC_Categories

If it's necessary to choose custom categories, make sure they describe what the business is rather than what it does. So, 'plumber' vs. 'plumbing'.

Never include location information in the categories (no city names, no zip codes).

In addition to looking at competitors' Place Pages and using keyword research tools to turn up potential categories for your client, never skip the step of asking the client which categories HE thinks are most important. Very often, you will find yourself working with a client such as an attorney who may fit 8 or 9 different potential categories. He needs to help you narrow this down to his 5 most important categories (typically, the ones in which he does the most work).

Keywords you are using to optimize your clients' websites differ in that they can describe what the client does (plumbing) instead of just what he is (plumber) and they will certainly incorporate geo data (cities, counties, neighborhoods, zip codes, etc.). You have a wider latitude to work with on the website, whereas in Places, you must fit yourself neatly into a 5 phrase box without violating the guidelines.

Additional notes:

I found this article to be pretty good:

http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2012/03/05/13-best-practices-for-picking-google-places-business-categories/

Don't miss the comments on that post, too.

There is strong evidence that picking categories well is one of the most important steps in creating a Google Place Page. Hopefully, my feedback and the information in the article I've linked to will get you off on the right foot with this. Good luck!

Miriam

Hi Robert,

You are right in your conclusion that on things like this 'only Google knows'. However, your example term is an interesting one as Google has historically been odd in their treatment of marketing and SEO firms when it comes to local results. Google kicked SEO companies out of the local organic results a couple of years ago, and some marketing firms got the boot as well. However, for the term you've specified, I do see 1 blended local result coming up for a firm called 'The Marketing Company Scotland'. Everything else on the page of results is organic (searching from my location in California, but at least one company is being given local treatment.

It has long been a mystery how Google decides which queries have a local intent. Sometimes they just don't show local results for things you think they would and other times, they show local results when that wasn't your intent, as the searcher, at all. There isn't really a way to influence their decision on this...at least, not that I've heard of, and like yourself, I've been been doing Local SEO for years.

The only thing to hang your hat on is that Google is constantly changing their handling of local. What they are doing today may not be what they are doing and, eventually, you may see them decide that your query of choice is local in intent.

Thanks for asking such a good question here!

Miriam

Hi Bristolweb,
Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. The best way to think of clients like these is not that you are going to be duplicating or diluting your initial efforts for their first location, but that you are going to create new efforts for their second location.

1. Yes, create a unique city landing page for each of the two locations. But, no, do not duplicate any of the content on these two pages. You must write totally unique content for the two pages.

2. Then, brainstorm creatively with the owner to discover other things that make the two businesses unique. Perhaps, one week, the acupuncturist in location A is holding a seminar at his office, while the next week, the acupuncturist at location B is offering a new patient special. Start a blog on the site to begin highlighting the unique things that are happening at the two locations.

3. You are fine optimizing the website footer and main contact page for two addresses. Also, titles and meta on the main pages (like home and about) can be optimized for the two locations without much worry. But the idea here is to start building out new pages or posts that individually highlight the 2 locations.

4. Just remember, never duplicate anything. Always write fresh content.

Other than this, you are on the right track setting up the Google Place Pages and directory listings for the two different offices. If this effort can branch out into citation and review building as well, your client should see results.

Good luck!
Miriam

Hi Antony,

Marcus has given an excellent response. Yes, the organic and local algos are separate. Looking at the results for 'driving lessons brighton' from California, I am seeing a mix of pure organic results and blended results. It is technically possible to get more than 1 spot in the SERPs. You can have an organic result as well as a local result, but as you've guessed, the factors for doing so mean engaging in a strong traditional SEO campaign as well as what you are doing with Local SEO, or, having very little competition. It looks to me like you've got lots of local competitors, but if you can out-do them, there is some chance of seeing an organic result for your business in addition to the local one. I do note, though, that Google is not giving this special treatment to any of your competitors (at least not in the results I'm seeing). Each one either has an organic results or a blended places result, and this may be due to there being so many businesses competing for this term. Google has a lot to choose from.

Still, if you can utterly out-do some of them, there is a chance.

Good luck!

Miriam

Hi Again, David,

I've had a chance to talk this other with a few other Local SEOs, and here is the consensus of opinion on the Plus Box.

1. It's algorithmically generated - so nothing you can do to force a plus box on your listing.

2. That being said, following Google's general recommendations on this page might be useful:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=92319&from=52171&rd=1

3. Also, be advised that there appears to be some kind of a new crackdown going on regarding plus boxes and certain businesses who have lost Google's trust seeing their plus boxes disappear. This is a new issue and I don't have any solid data on it. But, it leads me to ask...did you have a plus box before and see it go missing? Curious!

Hope this reply helps some.

Miriam

Hi Shizzlemynizzle,

If the business in question is unable to move to Londonderry to be in the heart of things, then it's important to educate the owner as to how local SEO works. Here are the points I share with my own clients who fit the scenario you are describing.

1. NAP (name, address, phone number) are the 3 key factors upon which all of local hangs in the eyes of Google. Google will almost always see the business as most relevant to its area of location rather than neighboring locations. The business will have to be honest in using its legit address and phone number on its Place Page, in its directory listings and other citations and as the main point of contact on its website.

2. Once these basic steps of local optimization have been attended to, the business will be able to make appropriate efforts to try to gain secondary organic rankings for its work in Londonderry. You don't mention in your original post whether your client is a brick-and-mortar shop (restaurant, lawyer, boutique) or a go-to-client business (chimney sweep, landscaper, carpet cleaner). If the former, then the business owner will need to become involved in some way in the area of his choice so that he has something to write about in relationship to that geographic locale. For example, if the business owner is a doctor, perhaps he gives lectures or clinics in Londonderry? Or, if a restaurant owner, perhaps he sponsors a sports team or attends community events or offers catering in Londonderry? One has to be creative to find a legitimate subject to write about to showcase his involvement in that city.

If the latter, the client simply needs to write lots of copy about the services he renders for clients at their homes or places of business, be these window washing, dog walking or what have you.

Both copywriting and targeted linkbuilding can assist the client in developing an organic presence for cities where he isn't physically located.

3. Finally, the competitiveness of the client's industry and locale play into all of this. I am not really familiar with the business scene or population of Londonderry. Here in the US, however, let's say a bakery in rural Iowa comes to me as a client. Let's say they are the only bakery serving 3 different small towns. In this case, a locally optimized website and good local search marketing will often enable the client to obtain high local rankings for all three towns, simply because the options are so limited. So, if your client is in a scenario of low competition within all of Londonderry, then he may be able to achieve true local rankings as well as secondary organic ones. It all depends on what he does and what the local competition is like.

Hope this helps!

Hi David, The Google Plus Box was first rolled out in 2006. Here is a Matt Cutts post on the topic from way back when: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/new-google-ui-feature-plus-box/ Here is an excellent sleuthing post from Mike Blumenthal in 2008 about figuring out the sources for bad data in the plus box: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2008/03/06/google-plus-box-where-does-the-wrong-data-come-from/ The trouble with looking for documentation on this right now is that anything you search for related to 'google' and 'plus' is bringing up studies of Google+ and not the old Google plus box. I'm going to dig a little deeper, David. I'll return to this thread when I have some more info to share with you.

Hi John,

You've gotten some good responses from members here. I have a few suggestions to add.

1. Remember that citations are extremely important in local campaigns. Citations are not necessarily links. They are simply indexed mentions of your company's name, address and phone numbers. These might included directory listings, mentions of you in local news, on blogs, review sites or what have you. If citation building is new to you, I recommend reading Miles' Anderson's list of top 50 citation sources for the UK and USA:

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

2. Also, I understand your concerns that your readers may not read all of your content. That's always the case, but remember that every page on your site is potential entry page to your website. Even if someone coming to a page about 'driveways in gateshead' does no more that glance at the title and look for a phone number, at least they've come to you because you've got a page that exactly matches what they were searching for. Copywriting is critical to nearly all local marketing campaigns.

3. Finally, as you mention you are new to SEO, and I'm inferring from that that you are also new to Local SEO. Is your site well-optimized for local search with strong local hooks in place? And, have you created and claimed a complete, violation-free Google Place page for the business? Be sure you are compliant with the guidelines. And don't forget about reviews. They count, too.

Hope these thoughts help!

I do wish you luck, Web Feat! Show the client the Google Places Quality Guidelines. Then, it's not just coming from you - it's coming from Google. Also, heads up: Google just changed the language again the guidelines. I wrote about this today, in case you are interested and it might help you in talking with the client:

http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1205

Have a good rest of your weekend!

Hi WebFeat,

You've taken on 2 tough things here - a spammed record and a business owner who may not want to do things correctly. Hopefully, you will be able to help him see the light on this. Let me copy some of your remarks and respond to them individually, please, so that I'm sure I'm covering what you want to know.

Before hiring my company he had like 30 domains (keyword based) and had tons and tons of fake google places listings. He actually got a lot of traffic that way.

Bad, bad, bad. Yes...you can game the system, but this is the type of account that eventually gets banned and getting back into Google's good graces after that can be something even the best Local SEO on earth will be unable to accomplish. The client is in an emergency situation right now. If you can get the record cleaned up before punishment occurs, you're saving his neck.

However I will not tolerate that kind of stuff and want to do things the right way.

Thumbs up for you and 'boo' to the previous company who taught the client to engage in these practices.

In the end he will have 8 sites and wants to expand into other services and regions.

Some business owners do take this approach of having a separate site for each of their cities or services. The main argument for such a practice is that a) the exact match domain name can give a ranking boost and b) links coming into the domain will have matching primary keywords because of the URL. One can choose to do this, but I don't consider it a best practice for several reasons.

The first is that it hints at a single entity being multiple entities, which is not really true. The second is that it makes management (SEO, marketing, webmastering)  incredibly complicated. The third is that I believe it is better to build the authority of a single domain with tons of great content and links than to spread this thin like a scrape of butter over a whole loaf of bread. Of these three statements, the last is really just my opinion on this as a Local SEO. It's not proven fact or anything like that, but like you, I just think it's not a best practice. I would advise my own client that if they've got a single legal business, that = a single really authoritative website they can develop.

To me the best way to do this is a generic domain with a locations page and a page for each city.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by a generic domain, but at any rate, I agree with you about a single domain with a landing page for each city and each service. Then, I would build beyond this on the website, perhaps with blogging, covering every service he offers in each city one at a time. This is somewhat akin to the process your client thinks is best - having a different domain for each city and each service in each city, but instead of doing this on a ton of different domains, it's all under one roof, under the name of his business, on a single, powerhouse website.

The for the Places he would get one account - an address that is hidden since he goes to customer locations, and just multiple city defined regions.

He does have an office like address at each city. So should I make him a Places listing for each city or just the one? And of course how should the actual sites be organized?

If the client has a REAL location (and you should be sure of this because what he's told you are locations could turn out just to be virtual offices) in each of his main cities, then yes, he is allowed to have a Place Page for each of his cities. If he has only one legit location, then he should have only one Place Page.

That's good that you're hip to the recent 'hide address' guideline changes. This is still early days with this. My interpretation of the new guideline, at this point, is this:

Type A
Your business is brick-and-mortar and serves all customers at its location. Show your address.

Type B
Your business is home-based and serves some customers at your home and some on the road. Show your address and use the Service Radius tool.

Type C
Your business is home-based and does not serve any customers at your home. Hide your address.

*see http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-you-may-need-to-hide-your-google-places-address-asap

You'll need to figure which one of those fits your client's business model. I would also recommend that you read this post on this subject by Mike Blumenthal which points out some of the vagueness of the guidelines that have yet to be adequately resolved by Google:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/03/24/is-googles-new-requirement-to-hide-a-home-business-appropriate/

Google has really done a poor job with clarity on the new guideline. Hopefully, you can figure out the right move for your client on this and he will abide by your advice.

So, bottom line on this is that my professional preference would be for a single domain and whatever number of place pages matches the legitimate offices of the client. I would focus on building out content rather than building out domains.

That being said...if the client has built an empire of domains that are getting him business, it may be necessary to maintain those, but whatever he decides on that, he should be informed that by spamming Google Places he is risking his total visibility in Google. Additionally, if he ends up with just 1-2 Place Pages and 20 domains, it's going to be complicated deciding which URL the legit Place Page/Pages can point to. Again, another reason to put everything in one basket. If he wants to keep the domains, you can go with that, though it's not ideal, but insist on him cleaning up his act in Google Places or tell him you can't work with him as he's heading for a train wreck, sooner or later.

Hope this helps!

Miriam

Excellent suggestion from all 3 members here. I've give you each a thumbs up, guys. Jonathon - you've been given some really good advice to start with. I'll only add that in researching citations, I believe you are going to find Whitespark's citation finder to be a big help, if you're not already using it. Here's the link:

http://www.whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder/

Hope that will help, too.

Andrew, that's a great post by Nyagoslav. I missed that one. He has become my favorite new Local SEO over the past year. What a smart fellow!

Hi Kevin,

Unfortunately, Google does not give you a choice in this matter. If they offer you postcard only, that's your option and there isn't anything you can do to change it. A year or so ago, it was noticed that Google seemed to have increased the number of listings on which they were offering the postcard only option. You can see a post by Mike Blumenthal on this topic here:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2011/01/24/google-places-tightens-up-verification-for-new-businesses/

The postcard does seem to be associated with Google's method of being most secure that a business is real, and for many new listings, it will be the only option offered, but it is also often the only option offered when making changes to older listings, as well.

I agree with you that there are several downsides to postcard verification, one of which is that it's slower (you have to wait) but the most important of which is that the postcard can easily get lots. Check your mail carefully until it arrives. It can slip in between freebie mailers very easily.

Hope this answer helps!

Miriam

Hi Ryan,

I think maybe you're right in that I'm not understanding the scenario you are describing (i.e., I don't know what your business does). The thing is, if you sell some type of a package to a bunch of real estate offices (just as an example) that doesn't mean you get to say you are located there. Now, if you were actually putting staff at the real estate offices and were getting a dedicated suite number and phone number within the office building for said staff, that would be akin to medical practices with multiple doctors in them. I'm not sure this if this is what you are describing, though. I'm not sure how much detail you are able to provide. More would be helpful.

Hi Guys,

I can't recommend attempting to secure addresses where you aren't physically located. Honesty is the best policy with this...if Google thinks something is fishy, their hammer is swift in falling and unforgiving. Also, be sure to take note on this new policy change if you are dealing with go-to-client-type business models:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-you-may-need-to-hide-your-google-places-address-asap

Rather than spending effort/time/money on getting addresses, my advice would be to hire a copywriter to start gunning for secondary organic rankings for all of your service locations. It's not only allowed, but it can really work.

Hi Harald,

I agree with you...the terminology has become confusing. And glad to see that you are a Mike Blumenthal fan. As Mike states in his post to which you've linked, local results are essentially all blended. There used to be very significant differences between different types of results (7 packs vs. blended) for example, but in my opinion, what we are seeing now is that Google is moving it all into more or less one big lump. The actual Maps results remain somewhat different, but I think it's fairly safe to say (for the moment, anyway) that anything you see in the SERPs could be termed 'Local Universal Results'. It's not a very good name, granted, and I can understand the confusion on this.

Hope this explanation helps.

Miriam

Hi Peter,

Like Pashmina, I'm wondering if what you are seeing relates to the Venice update. Did you catch Mike Ramsey's YouMoz post on this?

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understand-and-rock-the-google-venice-update

Some changes have definitely happened.

Miriam

You are welcome, Charles. Yes, lots to learn...and the learning just continues because of the ever-changing nature of Local. The more you learn, the more you will be able to put your know-how to work for your business. Good luck!

Miriam

Hi Charles,

Thanks for the clarification. What I'm going to give you here is a quick rundown, but I'll include some links at the end for further reading. I'll break this down into a numbered list for easier reading.

1. It's critical to understand that the most powerful element of your local search engine rankings is your website. This means that...

2. It needs to be well optimized in terms of traditional SEO factors and...

3. It needs to have strong local hooks in it. Your NAP (name, address, phone number) needs to be in all the right places (typically on your contact page and in your footer sitewide). Consider utilizing hCard or Schema to make your geographic signals as clear and strong as possible. Also...

4. The content on your website has got to be as good as you can make it. Go for thoroughness, depth, clarity and good local SEO on every page of the site. Look at what your competitors are doing and then do more.

5. Because the website has become such a key to rankings, everything you've ever learned about SEO and search engine rankings applies. So, this means the strength of your domain name, age of the site and such elements are likely factors as well as the whole linkbuilding aspect of SEO. It all counts.

6. Once you've got your site in shape (plus a plan for ongoing content development) you can look off the site for opportunities. These include the obvious, such as inclusion in Google Places and other local business indexes, and also the 'hidden', meaning citations. You mention in your post that you have tried a variety of things, but as you haven't mentioned citations, perhaps this is an area you've yet to explore. Citations are to Local SEO what links have always been to traditional SEO. Once upon a time, Google displayed some of a business' citations right on its Place Page, but they stopped doing that, making citation research more difficult for Local SEOs and business owners. This has led to the development of tools...

7. Right now, Whitespark's Citation Finder Tool is pretty much the standard in the Local SEO industry. There is a free version of the tool, but it's not very helpful. The paid version is great. Here is the link:

http://www.whitespark.ca/local-citation-finder/

8. And if you are are in the US or UK, don't miss Search Engine Land's post on the top 50 citation sources:

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

Essentially, you want to build as many citations as you can over time for your business.

9. Reviews are part of the scenario, too, but Google is still very unsophisticated in this area. Their ability to value quality vs. quantity has not been demonstrated. You do want to get as many reviews as you can...but there are just too many instances of businesses with, say, 20 reviews, outranking businesses with 100 of them to draw a truly clear picture of the correlation between reviews and rankings. They play a part, but they do not, in my opinion, compare in power to the website or the citations.

10. Returning back to point 6 and the obvious work...obvious though it may be, it's absolutely critical that you build a violation-free Google Place Page. If you don't read the guidelines, you are likely to make a mistake, because Google's rules are not intuitive. Here are the guidelines:  http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528

Hopefully, my answer will get you off to a good start. I highly investigate the following:

David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors:

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

A recent webinar we had here:
http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/all-about-google-places

And become a regular reader of Mike Blumenthal's blog. Mike is widely considered to be North America's leading expert in Local:

blumenthals.com/blog

Cheers!

Miriam