Welcome to the Q&A Forum
Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.
Hi Charles1,
Thanks for coming to Q&A with this question. Your question is simply put, but it's leaving me wondering if you mean ranking solely within the Google Places/Maps rankings (clicking through actually into Maps/Places) or if you mean how do you get high pinned rankings in the main search engine results. If you can specify this, I will come back with information for you. Thanks!
Miriam
True, Ben. Well...you know Google...they change their policies frequently, so this might change at some point, too. If they handle + at all the same way that they've handled Places, changes are certain to happen in their guidelines and policies over the years.
Hi Ben,
According to this article, you can't change the category once you've set it:
Good question, BTW.
Miriam
Hi Ilya,
This is the first time I've had this question come up, and unfortunately, Google+ for businesses is still so new-ish that I can't find any convincing documentation that speaks to the benefits/drawbacks of opting for any of the 3 different categories you've cited.
My belief is that you would be best to go with the Local Business category, especially if you are taking advantage of Google Places for your business model, but I need to be clear that this is based on my early opinions on this and not on any sources I can cite or data that has been aggregated. Sounds like good material for a blog post!
I will leave this thread as 'unanswered' in case any of our members have a different opinion to share. So far, in Local, every local business I've worked with or heard about is choosing the Local category...but you may have some other reasons specifically relating to your company that would pull you towards choosing one of the other options. Without knowing more about your business model, and without more documentation on this topic to study, I think we're all making those early-days type of decisions right now with Google+
Miriam
Thanks for coming back to this thread with more info. I am always eager to hear about local business decision making because there are numerous approaches. I sincerely hope this works out well for you. It's a big effort to branch out. I like this reason you've listed: " Additionally, we use the city name in anchor text in backlinking. " Sounds good to me. And that's good that you've got the local area code phone numbers. So important! Good luck, Web Design Barrie! Miriam
Hi Web Design Barrie,
This is an interesting scenario. Most typically, when a business opens a second office that essentially offers the same services in a neighboring city, the new content/new location will simply be added to the existent site. A new landing page for the new city will be developed, the new NAP will be added to the footer, and new content will be added over time featuring work in the new city. A new Google Place page and other new local business index listings will be created for the new physical location. So long as you aren't dealing with a ton of branches of the business, this process works just fine.
You are going a different route, building a completely different website for the new branch. So, yes, because you are offering the same services at second location, you are thinking correctly about the need to rewrite all content so it's not a duplicate of site #1.
If your businesses are local, you shouldn't be using an 800 number. If you have to, put it in an image. Local search hangs, in part, on your local area code phone numbers and these should be totally distinct for the 2 different offices.
Don't worry about the code. Millions of sites share the same code.
The images are also not a big worry...but if the two offices are so identical that you can use identical imagery for them, it again makes me wonder about the decision to build a separate site. What about shots of your unique building, staff and other features at location #2.
Finally, the big thing you're going to want to attend to is that all Local SEO is handled expertly as you roll out the new business. What you're trying to avoid is Google becoming confused about the 2 businesses and merging their data. *See again my point about the phone numbers. Make sure good local SEO hooks are part of both sites, consider using hCard or Schema and take care to be error free when you create your Google Place Page and other listings.
It should be fine if these things go well. Out of my own curiosity as a Local SEO...I would really like to know about the process then led to you deciding to build a second site. I can think of certain instances in which this would be the best choice, but more often than not, going with a single site makes sense. If you have the time, I'd like to know how you decided to go this other route.
Hope my response is helpful!
Miriam
Duh! My mistake....thank you for pointing this out, Searchpl. I meant to type 'the new one' and somehow typed 'the old one'. Really sorry about this and I appreciate you asking the question the drew my attention to my mistake. Thanks!
Miriam
Hi Bristolweb!
Thanks for coming to Q&A with your very good question. Here's the deal - there is nothing you can do to control or alter this for your clients. 'Related Places' is a built-in feature of Place Pages - Google thinks it is helpful to the user to show him similar businesses nearby. I sympathize with the feeling that this isn't exactly fair to a business owner to advertise his competitors on his own Place Page, but so long as Google feels it is worth it to do so, the Related Places section is here to stay.
You ask for help improving a Place Page...would you like to link to a specific Place Page or are you asking for general advice? Please, let me know.
Miriam
It should be okay to delete the old one once you've claimed it. But I'm including the 'should' because of the unpredictability of certain aspects of Google Places. I think you will be fine, though.
Miriam
Hi Taysir,
Did you actually verify this account? Are you seeing 2 Place Pages for the client at the same address, or just one? If two, are they exact matches? Are they different from one another in any way?
Can you provide a little more information, please?
Miriam
You're welcome, Bob.
Sorry if that wasn't clear. I think I need more information. When you say you are targeting Salt Lake City and San Francisco, do you mean that you have offices in those two cities and are doing a true local campaign for the cities (optimizing the site for them + getting Google Place Pages, other local business index listings, etc.)?
Or, is your service virtual and you are just targeting cities with your content only?
If the former, then if the Local SEO is not handled correctly, Google can get confused as to why you've got two distinct addresses. In such a case, they may lose 'faith' in the validity of their data about you and that could, potentially, cause a drop,
Please, come back with more info if you can.
Miriam
Exactly. It was kind of a sad day when Google booted all the SEOs/designers out of the local index. But there is still organic. And I guess they were getting spammed like mad.
Hi Again BobGW,
As promised, I ran this past a few colleagues. As I expected, the response was "correlation is not causation". Unless the Local SEO on your site or on local business indexes was mishandled, it seems unlikely that your targeting your second location is responsible for the ranking drop you observed. Now, if Google got mixed up about your addresses, that could cause a problem, but provided you've handled your Local SEO correctly, this is probably not the culprit.
Hope this feedback helps!
Miriam
Hi Again Will,
People are often afraid that adding local factors to their website might somehow decrease their national/international rank. I have yet to hear of a case of this actually happening. So, if you'd like to get some more visibility in your area, you can embed some local hooks in the site (address in footer, on contact page) and write some copy about your services in those cities.
Now, that being said, Google removed web design companies and SEO companies from their Local index in January of 2010. See:
http://www.searchengineguide.com/miriam-ellis/google-shoves-their-liaisons-off-maps.php
So, typically they will not show local rankings for website design firms, again pointing to organic as the way to go for you. Write/Blog about your projects for local clientele and chances are, you can make a dent in the SERPs.
Hi Nathan,
I'm not sure from your post whether this is something you used to do in the past or is something you are still paying people to do for you, but in case you've been misled by bad information out there, I wanted to take a second to make you aware of the guidelines which I've linked to in my reply to Will. The practice you are describing is not allowed, and when Google gets wise to things like these, the hammer can come down pretty hard.
I thought it worthwhile to comment on this, because I would not want to see the Places account of any SEOmoz member penalized of banned.
Miriam
Hi Will,
Unfortunately, I would not recommend getting a virtual office or setting up a Google Place Page for any city in which you do not have a physical address. This practice is forbidden by Google's Places Quality Guidelines:
"Business Location: Use a precise, accurate address to describe your business location.
Do not create a listing or place your pin marker at a location where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations. If you operate from a location but receive mail at a mail box there, please list your physical address in Address Line 1, and put your mail box or suite number in Address Line 2."
http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528
Your desire to rank well in a major city in your state is understandable, but does not meet with Google's guidelines. If ranking in Denver becomes essential for your business, you must rent a real office there - not a virtual office, not a P.O. Box - in order to qualify for inclusion in Places.
Now, if you would like to get a Place Page for your Greenwood address, the criterion you must meet is that you have in-person transactions with clients either at your Greenwood address or at your clients' locations (as in the case of a carpet cleaning company, chimney sweep etc.)
If you do not have in-person transactions with clients, your business is not local, but virtual, and again, not suitable for inclusion in Google Places.
If the latter is the case, then you will need to rely solely on organic SEO to target cities where you would like to gain rankings. Typically, this will not enable you to outrank competitors with physical locations and in-person transactions in said cities, but you may be able to achieve some visibility by a combination of copywriting and linkbuilding.
Hope this set of definitions helps, Will.
Miriam
Bix, really appreciate you coming back to update this thread. Great that you had success! And, while we mustn't mix up correlation with causation, I'd say the effort you made is a very strong candidate for the causation of this. Well done! Again, thanks for taking the time to share your results. Could be very useful to others in the future who run into a problem like this. Miriam
Hi Ocelot,
Don't miss this Search Engine Land post which covers the top 50 citation sources for the UK and USA:
http://searchengineland.com/top-50-citation-sources-for-uk-us-local-businesses-104938
There may well be some good ones on there you have missed, but as far as industry-specific directories go, finding them is frequently a manual task. Actually do some searching for terms and see what you come up with. See what offers free and paid inclusion.
In addition to this, you might want to pay for usage of WhiteSpark's citation finder tool:
http://www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/2-using-the-local-citation-finder
It's an industry favorite for finding citation sources.
Hope these resources help you!
Miriam
Hi Net66,
Thanks for the further information. So - like an SEO or design firm, your client will basically have to make efforts to get as far as she can with organic. If she was actually an SEO, Google doesn't show those in Local anyway, but if she is competing with local businesses with physical addresses, no matter what she does, she is unlikely to be able to outrank them, but hopefully the work you do with her will enable her to come up below them. Half a loaf is better than none! Good luck.
Miriam
Hi BobGW,
I have not encountered any studies or evidence to indicate that adding a second location would cause a ranking drop of the original location - though, of course, you have in a sense split your KWs in half by doubling them (adding Utah).
I'd like to ask a few of my Local SEO colleagues for any feedback on this in case anyone can point to a similar case. I'll be back.
Miriam
Hi Net66,
I'm so sorry my earlier reply posted as one giant run-on paragraph. We've been having a small issue with formatting in the forum. Hope you were able to make sense of it.
As you have guessed, the fact that the client has no actual physical address is going to handicap them every step of the way in the marketing process. Google's definition of a local business is that it has a physical address and local area code phone number and does business face-to-face with its clients. Any other scenario is going to be considered virtual instead of local.
I've just re-read your original post and confess I am confused - in what way is your client's business local at all? If what she is doing is totally web-based with no in person contact with clients, why would she be seeking local traffic in the first place? I want to understand the situation correctly. Feel free to provide further details.
Miriam
Thank you Rafael. That's kind of you and good luck! If you do end up having to start a Google Places Help Forum thread, I'd title it:
"Customers Getting Lost Going To Old Address"
I think that just might get personal attention from the forum's top contributors.
Buena suerte!
Miriam
That's great, Activitysuper,
Just stage the project in a reasonable manner. Your copywriter can't do it all at once, but he/she can do it over time. Good luck!
Miriam
Hi Rafael,
I'm sorry to see from this thread and from the other one that you are having so many problems with your business right now. What a headache for you!
When you say you 'fill that out' do you mean you filled out a form in the 'report a problem' process or did you actually open a thread on the Google Places Help Forum asking for help? Normally, opening a thread on the forum does not result in an email to you, so I believe you are probably referencing the 'Report A Problem' process and not the forum.
As things stand right now, you have let them know of this issue and they are asking you to hang on while they review and respond to the situation. If you do not see resolution in about 6 weeks on this, then open a thread in the Google Places Help Forum. Here is the link:
http://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!forum/maps
In this thread, you need to describe the situation and that you went through the 'Report A Problem Process' six weeks ago and that you did not receive an email from Google after the first one and that the situation isn't resolved.
Hopefully, though, Google will resolve it before then. Good luck!
Miriam
Great. I'm glad my answer helped. Good luck!
Miriam
Hi Bristolweb,
I'm the Local SEO Associate here in Q&A. Your question is an important one. I have several points and tips to share. I'll number them for easy reading.
1. It's critical to understand that local search hinges on 3 key factors: business name, physical street address and local area code phone number. The city in which the client is located is almost always going to be the city for which Google considers him to be a most relevant answer. So, if the client's office is in San Francisco, then his best chances of ranking in local or blended local/organic results will involve 'San Francisco'. San Francisco will be the most important geographic keyword term on the client's website and it will be the location for which he is permitted to create a Google Place Page and other local business index listings.
2. As you have said, many clients will have go-to-client business models (contractors, painters, carpet cleaners, chimney sweeps, etc.). Within their service radius, there are likely to be a number of towns and cities. The San Francisco Carpet Cleaner may also serve in Berkeley, Oakland, Mill Valley and San Jose. These other city names are going to be his secondary geographic phrases.
3. In rural areas or for business models that are truly unusual and are therefor doing business in an atmosphere of little to no competition, the client may well be able to get true local rankings in his service cities, just because Google has nothing else to post as an 'answer' to queries. If there is only one tortilla shop delivering baked goods to 5 different towns in Idaho, then Google may show a true local result to anyone searching for 'tortilla shop' in any of those 5 towns simply because the shop is really the only thing on offer. Or, Google may decide the search isn't really right for local results because there is a paucity of data and they will simply show organic results instead.
4. In most cases, however, your clients will be in situations of moderate to high competition, in which case, what you will be competing for outside of the client's city of location is secondary rankings (generally organic) for each of his service cities. In most cases, the carpet cleaning company with an office in San Francisco is not going to outrank the one with an office in Berkeley when someone searches for 'Carpet Cleaning Company Berkeley'. *See point 1.
5. So, as the Local SEO on the project, your job is to come up with a strategy for highlighting your client's work in different service cities with the hopes of gaining secondary visibility for him. You will be doing this through a combination of content development on his website and, likely, off-site efforts such as link building and review acquisition. This is the work that is ahead of you in helping clients in this area.
I hope this gives you a general sense of the work involved. If you are going to be doing Local SEO for clients, I highly recommend that you spend time every day reading up on this topic. The key challenge in Local is its ever-changing nature. You literally need to be a daily local news reader to keep on top of these changes and put your knowledge to work for your clients. It's a truly fun field and one that keeps you on your toes for sure!
Please, let me know if you have any other questions and good luck!
Miriam
Hi MozMan2,
Nice to see you here today! Okay...so you went about this 50% right, in my opinion. What's missing is getting the client an actual registered suite number at which he receives mail.
Initially, this is important in the even that Google (and others local business indexes) give you a postcard-only option for verification of the listing. Sounds like you're past that point, but remember, the need to re-verify does sometimes reoccur if you have to make certain changes to a Place Page.
For the long haul, the issue is one of differentiation. The inherent danger in different businesses sharing an identical address is that Google will conflate the listings, merging them into a mess of mixed addresses, phone numbers, reviews and descriptions.
Ideally, what the chiropractor should do is convince each of the professionals in his building to get their own suite number to prevent this from happening to any or all of them.
If he can't get them to see the light about this, then he should at least protect himself by getting his own suite number. Depending on where he lives, he may need to go to the post office or some other local authority to get this thing legalized so that he's got a separate mail box to which the mailman delivers his mail at his suite address in the building.
So, again, your overall approach is correct, but the suite number should be legit to keep this on the level. And you should make sure the suite number is consistent across all mentions of his business on the web.
Hope this helps!
Miriam
Thanks, Alan. Glad you found this helpful. I hope ActivitySuper will, too.
Rafael,
I think your question is worth opening a thread on in the Google Places Help Forum. It sounds like you are dealing with significant merging.
Miriam
Hi ActivitySuper!
Thanks for coming to Q&A with what is actually very important question.
I sympathize with your puzzlement here because I hear many local business owners saying the same thing - what am I supposed to write about?
Members here are giving you good advice - you've either got to be ready to make the effort/investment, or be satisfied with simply mentioning your services and locations and cross your fingers. If you are the only game in town, that might get you somewhere, but if you've got even 1 local competitor, such an approach will not lead to the dominance that you no doubt seek.
Here is what I do for my clients (some of who, coincidentally, are carpet cleaning companies!) This advice is given with the understanding that, like most business owners in the cleaning industries, you have one actual physical location but serve within a variety of neighboring cities. If that's correct, read on. If that isn't correct and you've got multiple physical offices, let me know.
1. Implement the major local hooks on the website for the physical location - Google is always going to see you as most relevant to your city of location, not other cities within the service radius. In addition to doing the on-site Local SEO, get the business properly listed with a violation-free Google Place Page and other local business directory listings.
2. Create a list of your 5-10 main services. Make a menu on the site of a page for each of these services, optimized for the services + your city of location. The content must be good, strong and unique.
3. Create a list of your 5-10 main service cities. Create a city landing page for each of these cities (including your city of location) creating an overview of your work in each city on each page. Make a menu of these pages on the site. Again, the content must be good, strong and unique. No cutting and pasting!
At this point you will have developed 10-20 pages of unique, creative content for your website. Depending on the competitiveness of your industry in your region, this may get you enough rankings to satisfy you and get phones ringing. However, in most cases, you will want to do more. Move on to step 4.
4. Now, create a big list of all possible combinations. This might look like:
Carpet Cleaning City A
Carpet Cleaning City B
Carpet Cleaning City C
Window Cleaning City A
Window Cleaning City B
Window Cleaning City C
Tile and Grout Cleaning City A
etc.
Create a timeline for beginning to write articles over a set number of months to cover each of these phrases. You're not going to do this all at once. My clients have most typically requested that I do anywhere from 3-10 articles a month for them. A blog is terrific for this sort of thing, by the way. If the client has hired me to do 10 articles a month, in 3 months, we've covered 30 terms, in 6 months, we've covered 60 terms, etc.
The client has to participate in this. If he simply paid some penny copywriter to write a bunch of boring, generic content for this large number of terms, chances are, he wouldn't end up with a very pleasant or persuasive website. Rather, he needs to be photographing his projects in the different cities and coming to me with photos, testimonials from clients in the service cities, anecdotes and what have you. I take this, combine it with a solid knowledge of the city and the service/products used, find some other photographs and maybe maps and turn each article into a very solid piece of content. The approach is quite authentic and results in the ongoing creation of an ever-growing library of content about the client's work in each of his cities.
Remember, the whole point of this approach is to obtain secondary visibility (typically organic) for terms outside of his city of location. It should be seen as an ongoing project, and I've seen this approach work time and again for my clients.
You're at an important point of decision right now. You need to decide if you have the creativity and time to do this right on your own, hire a Local SEO-skilled Copywriter to do it for you or if you just can't do either. Sincerely wishing you luck!
Miriam
Hi Net66! Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. Very nice to have a client who is thinking of SEO in advance. If you are dealing with a company with less than 10 locations, it's actually pretty simple to optimize for all of them. I have some questions: 1. Is Company A going to be corporate headquarters with Company B being a subsidiary office, or will both companies be of equal value? 2. Are the 2 cities going to be in the same state? How close are they to one another? Answers to those might help to clarify the situation a little, as specially question 1. Now, until the client is actually moved into building B, local optimization can only be fully done for Company A. So, yes, it makes sense to begin with a well optimized website for Company A. You wouldn't want to confuse the issue by publishing information about the second business until the client is capable of verifying her address there. When the expansion happens, since you are only dealing with 2 cities, you can reasonably optimize a few of the main pages to reflect the second office (homepage, about page, contact page, as well as the footer, tags, etc.) And, of course, you will be doing her Local SEM for the new city, getting her business listed in Google Places et al. That will likely represent the beginning of your work, and the next steps will likely be to start developing unique and distinct content to showcase the two different offices. As I don't know what the business model is, I'm afraid I can't give creative suggestions, but you will need to take a creative approach to begin building out separate content for the two cities on the website. You can choose to do this on subdomains, or you can simply do it with subdirectories. Matt Cutts has said that Google sees no difference between the two. If this were my client, I'd simply use subdirectories because they tend to be a lot easier to webmaster. I hope this gets you off to a good start, but please feel free to return with further details. Miriam
Hi Dignan,
The appropriate thing to do in cases like these it to go through the REPORT A PROBLEM link at the bottom of each problematic Place Page. It's a good idea to be signed into your account while doing this. Describe the situation and link to the correct listing for your business in the wizard. State that you have only one address - the one on your authoritative listing. Ask that these 2 other listings be removed.
Wait 4-6 weeks to hear back from Google (could take considerably less time these days, actually). If you do not see resolution, then take the matter to the new Google Places Help Forum. The new forum will be here:
http://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!forum/maps
Explain the steps you have taken and ask if a Top Contributor can please help you obtain resolution.
*In your shoes, I would also do some sleuthing to try to figure out where the other data is coming from...it's coming from somewhere and discovering the origin may help you to surmise what is going on.
Hope this helps and good luck!
Miriam
Hi Echo1,
You are very welcome.
Honesty, what I'd do in this case is try to talk with Andrew. I'd try to book even 1/2 hour of his consulting time since he has gone through this exact same situation. I'm saying this is what I would do in your shoes. I can give you my best guess answer to your three questions, but because I haven't personally had to deal with this with any of my clients, I want to make it clear that I am estimating rather than telling you what you should definitely do.
That said:
There is a chance if you edit the listing, yes, you will have to go through the steps again.
I do not think it's a big deal, regarding the abbreviations. It is my opinion that Google is cool with Rd vs. Road, etc.
The one thing that would concern me is the 'do not show address' part. I'm not sure from your original post whether you want your address concealed or not. If you don't want it concealed, then you don't want it marked that way, even if it's currently showing the address.
I don't know whether to classify this as a bug or not at this point. What I do know is that Google is in the process of making quite significant updates to their whole handling of local and that oodles of problems appear for small business owners whenever they change anything.
So, I think you should be looking at your listing every day to see if it stays live or disappears again. I think you should also consider talking to Andrew about this. He is a friend and a very skilled Local SEO. And, I think you may need to take steps to get rid of the 'do not show address' if you want to ensure that your address is shown.
Hope this helps! I am wishing you luck!
Miriam
Hey Robert,
I have a secret weapon - I run an RSS feed of local news into my brain at night so that I dream in local. 
Seriously, though, you are very kind and I am so glad to know I am helping others. I really love my work in Q&A. It's often one of the pleasantest tasks in my day.
Hope your week is off to a good start.
Miriam
Hello Alec,
Kane Jamison is right - if you were to do the 40x40 project, you'd have to write 1600 pages of content! Though not totally impossible, it's pretty much the next closest thing to impossible.
Kane is on the right track. What you are in need of is a plan for organization. Such a plan might looks something like this:
-Have a landing page for each of your dance schools.
-The page must be well optimized for the schools' locations.
-Write good, unique content for each of these landing pages (at least we're only talking about 40 pages here).
-List the main classes that are available at each school on its respective landing page.
-Build an onsite blog.
-Every week, write several posts about special classes, new classes, events, etc. going on at different schools.
-Have an area on each dance studio page from which you link to some of the blog posts that are specifically about something at that studio.
In this way, you can build content in a gradual way about different things that happen in each of the schools, without undertaking the crazy work of trying to write copy for 1600 pages.
Chances are, you won't rank #1 for every single thing you offer, but if you out-write and out-link most competitors, you should end up getting lots of good rankings.
What' I've suggested is just a strategy brainstormed in a couple of minutes. You can work out the fine details. You definitely need to decide on the architecture of the site first.
Good luck!
Miriam
Hey Robert -
Yes, I like your new rule! It is really impossible to diagnose most stuff in Places without looking at it, but so often, the member isn't free to share the business name, so we do the best we can
Hi Echo1,
Nice to see you here!. Your question is timely. Check this out:
http://marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/google-places-update-do-not-support-location.html
Linda's post is well worth reading...and it contains these 2 important links:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Places/thread?tid=0c8ca117c0cbfb60&hl=en
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Places/thread?hl=en&tid=6cccf153cc8b6d8b
I believe you these links will really help you.
Out of curiosity...are you positive you were speaking to Google reps? They have been doing calls lately. And they really made Local SEO Andrew Shotland mad. You might want to read:
http://www.localseoguide.com/hey-seos-if-google-maps-calls-dont-answer/
Uh-oh!
Good luck with your 'do not support' issues. That has been one that has plagued places so steadily for so long.
Hi Stephen,
Thanks for using Q&A for your very good question. The trouble is that unless your business is in a true metropolitan location (think Los Angeles) keyword research tools are unlikely to show you helpful geographic terms. This has been a problem with Local SEO since day 1.
Most of my colleagues in Local agree that you should follow a process something like this:
-Use tools like the G Adwords Keyword Tool and Insights to identify your basic service/product keywords.
Make a list
Take out your plurals and odd spellings
This will get you down to your core list...in your case, things like Health Insurance, Automobile Insurance, Automobile Insurance Company, Accident Insurance firm or what have you.
Now go in and add your geographic terms (city names, regional names, county names, neighborhood names, postal codes, etc.) to your core terms.
Now add back in plurals (companies vs. company etc.)
Now you have a very big list because you've got Automobile Insurance Company Belfast, Personal Liability Insurance Belfast, Automobile Insurance Newcastle, Personal Liability Insurance Newcastle, etc.
This is basically how it's done, and it tends to work quite well. Good luck!
Miriam
It's worth trying, Bix. Hope it works out for you!
Hey Just Ducky,
I have a client who had an e-commerce website for years. We re-designed their site and the sales shot up insanely higher (their original site was really bad). A couple of years into working with the client, Local became big. The client has a little studio/shop that people can visit, so we did some Local SEO for them as well. Rankings have not fallen...but more important, sales have continued to increase annually.
Miriam
Hi Jason,
Almost anything is possible in the SERPs in this regard. You can have an organic listing, a Place Page, a one box, blended listings and everything but the kitchen sink.
Without seeing your listing in question, I am wondering if your keyword phrase is one that just happens to return Places-only results (what we used to refer to as the 10-pack and the 7-pack and the 3-pack). Are competitors' results local-only (places-based) or are they blended organic/local results for this search term?
How strong is the client's site? Is it well optimized?
Sorry to be answering your question with more questions but some more details might help, though you certainly don't need to highlight your client if you aren't permitted to.
Miriam
Hi Ariel,
Thanks so much for bringing your question here to Q&A!
The icons you are referring to are called 'Place Labels'.
Read these:
http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=174115
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
These 3 links should bring you totally up to speed on this subject. Best of luck!
Miriam
Hi Again Bix,
As I suspected, this may be difficult/impossible to have remove. My only good suggestion on this is to try using the Google Maps Troubleshooter to see if you can get some help that way, but I think you may be stuck with that link being generated by the algo:
http://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!forum/maps
Too bad there isn't a simple solution for this. Just one of those things where I wish there was more support!
Miriam
Hi Bix,
Thanks for the further info. You are very lucky to be showing up for that London search, given that you are not in London (i.e. you don't have a dedicated physical address there). The reason Google is associating that map with your business is because that is you company's real, registered physical address. Your screenshot is not of a set of local results, nor would you qualify for a real local result because of the lack of a dedicated address in that city. So, I'm afraid you are stuck with the map link to Brighton. I agree...that might confuse some users, but frankly, I would think that your awesome ranking outside of your city of location totally outweighs the downside of having that mapped link.
Sorry I can't tell you how to change this. Google displays what they feel is relevant, and for that search, they feel it's relevant to display your address.
I want you to know that I put a little feeler out amongst a couple of colleagues in Local to see if they have a different opinion on this. I didn't use your name or anything; just described the situation in general terms. If I get any differing opinions, I will certainly return to this thread, but I'm pretty positive any Local SEO will agree with my take on this.
Your site must have good traditional SEO and Local SEO factors to be doing so well for that term. You might like to read Linda Buquet's recent article on the Venice update...wonder if this could be the reason for your prominences in organic outside your true, physical location:
http://marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/google-venice-update-local-seo.html
Cheers!
Miriam
Hi Bix,
Can you clarify for me whether you actually have a physical office dedicated to just your business in London - or are you sharing a building or something along those lines? That would be a start. Thanks, and by the way, love your screen name. I'm a big Bix fan.
Miriam