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Hi Searchout,
Good for you for creating a unique page for each of your locations. I like to keep URLs as simple as possible, for users, so I'd go with:
etc.
From an SEO perspective, I don't think there's a big difference between root URLs and subfolders. If you're using one structure, I doubt you'd see any difference from doing it differently (unless you were using subdomains, which is a different conversation).
Just a thank-you for sharing your experience and tips with the community, Arowland! Much appreciated! Very creative workaround you've come up with. Neat.
It's my pleasure! It sounds like you are asking some really good questions of yourself, and being observant! That's definitely a great start. I'd say a podiatrist has some pretty excellent leeway in presentation, particularly if you are serving a great many athletes who want to meet health goals. I'd suggest coming up with some personae for your main customer "types" to get a sense of where that might take your content. And good for you for blogging!
If it turns out that most of your colleagues are being somewhat stuffy in their presentation of foot health management, you, with your pleasant personality, might have a chance to set your brand apart by presenting your practice as one where you are personally ready to help patients meet their physical fitness goals, with happy feet instead of tired dogs.
Hi WP-Pro!
So, there has been a ton of buzz in the past week or so about zero-results SERPs (see an excellent article about this by Dr. Pete here on the Moz Blog: https://moz.com/blog/zero-result-serps
Google ran a test of the above that they have since shut down.
However, I don't believe this is what you've noticed. I think you are talking about what might be called a "Branded Knowledge Panel", in that a term Google used to show a typical 3-pack for is now being dominated by a single business, with their knowledge panel showing up on the right side of the SERPs and no competitors in sight.
This is a huge pain in the neck when Google does this, as it leaves all other local businesses out in the cold. Basically, what has happened when you see this is that "something" has caused Google to believe that a single business is THE authoritative result for a search. This is fine when someone is searching for Taco Bell, but really annoying when someone is searching for "tacos".
If an authoritative knowledge panel is negatively impacting a SERP for which you were previously competing, leaving your business out in the cold, you need to take a very close look at that competitor to see if you can figure out why Google is giving them this preferential treatment. I recommend doing a competitive local business audit to highlight areas where that competitor is strong and you are weak. And look at their use of features like Google Posts, Google Q&A, etc. to see if there is some way they've gotten ahead. Study their keyword optimization on their website. And, of course, take a close look to see if some kind of spammy behavior on their part may have gotten them this preferential treatment.
There isn't a direct action you can take to force Google to show a 3-pack instead of an authoritative knowledge panel, but the general idea is that you've got to become stronger than your competitor so that Google realizes that there is more than one quality answer available to that particular search query. Unfortunately, you may have a long haul ahead.
Hi Werner,
This is a really interesting scenario, not typical of this type of question, in that you are genuinely talking about 3 different businesses here. Most often, we see questions in the forum from something like an HVAC contractor who wants to do one website for heating and another for cooling. The answer to that is an unequivocal "no", because the business is really a single entity trying to fake the appearance of being multiple businesses for the sake of SEO.
In your client's case, she has 3 unique businesses that would be represented by 3 unique Google My Business categories. Because of the different categories, we'd think less about Possum problems in this scenario, despite the shared address, because someone looking for a make-up artist is not going to be doing the same search as they would if they were seeking a portrait photographer. If she had 3 different offices, each offering just one of the services, it would make sense to consider 3 different websites accompanies by 3 sets of citations/reviews/social outreach, etc.
But, the fact that this is one owner, at a single location would make me steer her away from the multi-site approach. Managing the marketing for 3 businesses is likely to lead to burnout of either finances or creative resources, and there is the off-chance that Google could mistake the model as spam, deciding that the 3 businesses are actually just one, given the share address. I'm actually not too scared that they would do this, but it is a risk, even if she were to establish the 3 separate phone lines staffed by people who always answer the phone for only the correct business.
I think the dilemma/opportunity facing your client is one of business identity. She needs to identify what connects her three services instead of dividing them up by how they differ. If she can hit upon a single business identity that covers this wide range of services, she'll have a single business to market, at a single address, with a single phone to staff, a single reputation to manage. Your client sounds creative. I'd advise brainstorming with her so that you wind up with something like a business called "Best Face" that covers having your makeup done, your portrait taken, and your skin treated all under one roof, rather than being Anna's Makeup, Anna's Skin Care and Anna's Portraits on 3 different sites. Build a single brand that revolves around celebration of the human face, or something along those lines, and put EGOL's good advice into full action, cross selling the services and creating an indelible reputation for the owner.
What a great topic! There are likely going to be too many variables for someone in our community to exactly match your scenario and say, "Third person language vs. first person = X stats for a specialized medical practitioner." In order to get answers for your particular business in your particular local community, you'd need to run A/B testing to track whether you see a difference in conversions from one form of language or the other. I think it would be very interesting to run such a test, and could be informative.
In lieu of having ready-made stats on this for you, my thoughts are these:
Focus on the voices of your patients, more than on "I" or "We" language in the majority of your content. Particularly with the evolution of voice search, it is how your patients talk, and how Google is able to understand the semantics of your patients' language as having a particular search intent, that are going to matter the most. The language on your website will typically convert best if it is built to solve customers' problems using customers' language. Example: instead of a dental practice saying, "Services: We offer dental crowns using our CEREC technology", you'd be saying, "Get out of the dental chair with a perfect crown in less than 2 hours, thanks to CEREC technology." By swinging the language in the direction of the benefits the customer receives, local businesses are operating in the world of the consumer instead of the world of the company.
Be authentic. If your practice is small and your service is highly-specialized, your website can properly set correct patient expectations of what they'll encounter at your office, potentially reducing patient churn. If I were consulting with you to help market your practice, I'd be asking you some questions like these to discover the ideal tone:
Is the service you offer related to an upsetting health condition (like cancer) necessitating the need for a more formal or empathetic tone?
Or, is the service you offer more of an elective service (like botox for wrinkles), prompting a more upbeat presentation?
Who will be your typical patient (age, region, income, education, etc.)?
Ask yourself these and other questions about who will be reading your content, so that you can match its tone. There's a wide latitude between a specialist treating prostate cancer for men in their 50s in Boston vs. a integrative medicine doctor teaching the Forks Over Knives diet to women suffering from lupus in a laid-back town like Santa Cruz, CA. While empathy will be part of both scenarios, how formal/personable the doctor is in presenting herself/himself to patients may differ widely. So, know your audience, and present yourself and your office experience authentically, offering to solve patients' problems in language that will make them most confident and comfortable.
Hope these tips help!
Hi Wizkids964!
I just want to say I'm sorry that your thread didn't receive replies from the community. I haven't seen any good, formal data to either verify or challenge your analysis, and I expect others in our community are in the same boat.
What I have seen is videos like this one which hypothesize how to move the needle in Yelp:
https://localu.org/blog/guest-video-top-10-yelp-tips-small-business-2016/
But they aren't broken down into percentages like you've done here. It would be nice to see more studies like this, and again, my apologies that no one here had data to help prove or disprove your hypothesis.
Hmm, not sure what to make of that, and what I don't like about the graphic you captured is that image showing the 5 stars on it. I wish I had some more time to dig into this, but I'm swamped right now. If this is being regulated by Google, the there's nothing to do about it, but like I said, I'm not familiar with Rewards, so I don't know all the ins and outs.
You're very welcome! So glad that it helped.
Hey There!
In the scenario you've described, my answer would be "no", creating a landing page for a single location brick-and-mortar business does not make good horse sense. As you've rightly pointed out, the entire website is optimized for this location, nullifying the need for additional landing pages. If the dental practice opens a second location, then yes, do create these types of pages, but right now, it's not necessary either for patients or for your SEO efforts.
More on this: right now, the dental practice's only association with cities other than its city of location is that some patients may come to the locale from additional towns. That's fine, but it's nothing to really publicize. After all, a famous restaurant might have diners travel from all over the world to patronize it, but it just wouldn't make sense for the restaurant to build a landing page for each possible customer origin, right?
So, if the dental practice wants to build awareness of itself in neighboring communities, then it needs to have some stronger relationship to publicize than the fact that some if its patients live in towns B, C or D. This is where the role of relationship building comes into play. A dentist in Town A could possibly sponsor events in Town B, or speak at a conference in Town C, or offer a discount to parents for kids' first dental exams in Town D. These would be actual topics to write about on the website, or to promote via social media. Genuine relationships could be built by this type of outreach, and while it wouldn't be highlighted via landing pages, it could begin to build up brand awareness in these additional communities where the dentist lacks a physical office.
I'd also advise the dentist to consider what he can offer, in Town A, that is lacking in Towns B & C. For example, I traveled several towns away to a holistic dentist to have my mercury filling safely replaced for health reasons. No one in my own town offered this. If I were that dentist, I'd be doing everything I could to publicize rare or valuable services that are worth traveling for.
And, in the meantime, be sure the Contact page for the single location rates an A+ in thoroughness.
Hope this helps!
Hey Travis,
I've been thinking about this thread and wanted to come back to it with a question for you. You wrote:
"But after giving a friend of mine a ride to a local hotel, I've received multiple survey requests that relate to that hotel brand. And it asks me to drop a local review, for extra Google Play credit. How is that ethical?"
I'm not signed up for Google Rewards and have a question. Is the solicitation for the review in exchange for an incentive something being automated by Google, or is it your impression that the review ask is stemming from unique language created by the hotel, itself?
Hey Travis,
Excellent topic. You have two options here, as what the hotel is doing is absolutely a violation of Google's guidelines if they are offering any kind of incentive in exchange for a Google-based review:
It is so not worth the risk! At any time, any customer or competitor could report the hotel and they'd have a total reputation mess on their hands. So, I'd probably do the nice thing and let them know that. Sometimes, brands genuinely do not know the guidelines and haven't made the connection that they are deceiving their own clientele by making an incentivized review appear as though it is unbiased. So, I'd be inclined to give them a heads-up, if I thought ignorance was the root of their marketing activities. I'd be more inclined to believe this if the business was a small hotel. If it's a large hotel chain, I'd be less inclined to believe they'd just made a mistake ... they have a marketing department that shouldn't be allowing this activity to put the brand at risk.
Good luck. Unfortunately, review spam is an incredibly widespread issue, often being generated by global networks. It's really unfortunate.
Hello there!
Thanks so much for asking your question! My answer here is going to be that doing this as part of an SEO strategy will not likely be a good use of your resources. Schema implementation is not, per se, a ranking factor, though it can affect how results look, if not how they rank. In addition to this, Google has never been a fan of large blocks of zip codes within website text, so I wouldn't think they would be positively influenced by the same information presented in Schema.
The business model you are describing sounds virtual rather than local. If you are a local service area business (SAB) like a plumber, with a single physical address from which you head out to serve a variety of zip codes/towns, then you can utilize local search marketing best practices to attempt to gain organic rankings for these service cities. But this is predicated on having at least one real address for your business.
But, if the business is entirely virtual (like an e-commerce website or an Internet Service Provider or something like that and has no face-to-face contact with customers) then locally marketing the business isn't really an option, and use of Schema to attempt to show up as though the business is local isn't likely to yield results.
Rather, you'll likely need to work on your website UX+organic SEO to make it clear to consumers that you ship to/service their area.
If I've misunderstood the business model in any way, please definitely provide further details!
Good morning!
Great question, and a little history on this may be helpful.
In 2015, Google drew attention to the fact that users were increasingly using "near me" as a modifier for searches, and in an effort to prompt local results. According to Google the use of such terms as "near me" and "nearby" had doubled within the foregoing year. As a result of this, the use of "near me" terms became the subject of optimization experiments.
However, fast forward a couple of years, and Google came out with an update on this topic, which you can read in full here: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/consumer-insights/local-search-mobile-search-micro-moments/ To sum up, these near-type searches had begun to subside. The obvious answer to the "why" of this is that users are becoming increasingly aware of that fact that Google will automatically localize a huge variety of searches to which they assign a local intent, without the user having to modify their search at all, with "near me" or even with a city name. You look up "pizza" on your phone in downtown San Francisco and you can be pretty sure Google is going to show you pizza places nearest you without you having to add a modifier of any kind.
So, does this mean that brands should no longer be including terms like "near me" in their website optimization? No, it doesn't mean that, as, according to Google, people are still searching this way. It's just that fewer of them are, so whereas in 2015 SEOs might have advised quite a good sprinkling of near-type language in a website's tags and text, in 2018, the recommended sprinkling would likely be quite a bit less. And I'll add an it-depends on this, too. There could be some demographics, perhaps by region, or age, or level of technological sophistication, or even business type where use of "near me" could still be quite prevalent. And let's not forget about voice search, and whether more natural language patterns might be leading folks to be asking their assistants, "Where's the best pizza near me?" instead of just saying "pizza".
Which brings me to why I'm voting in major favor of your A/B testing! It will help you identify which language best matches your customers' style of search. It would be really nice if, after your test, you might come back to this thread and let the community know how it went. Good luck!
Hey Adam,
Honestly, I am not able to answer your question with total certainty. What I've personally experienced is that Google's volumes for local keywords have always, always felt "off" to me. When a tool tells you that no one in X city is searching for something you are positive they are searching for (like water heater repair, or housekeeping, or yard maintenance), you're just left saying, "huh?". I thought this recent Whiteboard Friday did a good job of explaining why some of Google's estimates aren't reliable, in terms of Adwords:
https://moz.com/blog/unreliable-google-adwords-keyword-volume
I'm hoping another community member will be able to give you a more satisfactory answer on this, but thought you might like to watch that video in the meantime.
Hey There,
So sorry to hear this has happened. Recommended reading:
https://onlineownership.com/google-has-suspended-your-page-due-to-quality-issues/
https://searchengineland.com/top-9-reasons-google-suspends-local-listings-247394
I recommend that you go through both of those to see if there's something you may have overlooked. Then, as Andy is mentioning, you need to take this to the GMB forum and be persistent in asking for help. Tell them you've read through both Joy Hawkins' and Tim Capper's articles on suspensions and that you either a) found and fixed an issue or b) could not find any issue at all. Be prepared to share the complete details of your business and the exact language of the message you got from Google, and to be persistent in asking for help from the Top Contributors (TCs) who staff the forum.
Hi Wizkids,
Thanks so much for bringing your question to the forum. I'm so sorry - I've read through your post twice and am not totally sure what you are asking.
I agree, the Moz post you found is too old to use reliably. The entire lingo of Local has changed so significantly since 2011, as have many Google features.
Can you simplify your question, please, to ensure that the community is getting to the heart of the matter? What precisely is your goal? What are you trying to track? Organic traffic from Google My Business listings to your website? Something else? If you can refine your scenario, I'm hoping we can find an answer for you. Thank you 
Hi Eport12!
A couple of suggestions:
I highly recommend checking out GetFiveStars, which I've personally test-driven and have been extremely impressed by. The product was co-founded by Local SEO guru Mike Blumenthal and the rate of innovation of the tool has been amazing.
I would be absolutely positive that whatever service you sign up for, it does not auto-populate review stars in reviews. One of the larger ORM software companies, Birdeye, recently fell out of Google's good graces for this practice and the case is serving as a warning now to everyone in the industry: be sure automated review requests do not auto-generate review stars. So, as you're considering your options, do keep that little proviso in mind.
Good for you, Rswhtn, for trying to get your key points into a list. I'm going to agree with Andy here: this list is something you need to take to company that does both local and organic SEO for a real audit. Trying to guess at this, without looking at your timeline, analytics, Google Search Console, competitive landscape, etc., is just going to be making random guesses as to why whatever has happened to your specific business has happened. You could be dealing with filters or penalties, you could be dealing with Google more highly localizing organic results in other places leading to you being edged out of anything but organic rankings for your own city, there could be a technical issue with your robots.txt. It could be so many things. The loss of traffic seems like enough of a reason to get a real audit going for this, so that no more time is being lost with your revenue being impacted.
Hey There!
I see that you started a previous thread on this topic that received an answer: https://moz.com/community/q/mysterious-location-based-serp-issue
Is there something about your question that wasn't answered?
Hey Dandelion,
I honestly don't think Google is going to care whether a strong piece of content is labeled a page or a post, if you're taking care to permanently link to these core assets from the top level navigation menu of the site, and are internally linking to them wherever relevant.
What could matter is user experience. Does the formatting/design of these articles change in some way, making them look like they aren't consistent with the core pages of the website? Is the experience startling for the human user? If so, you might want to look into Donald's idea, but otherwise, it's not likely something I'd worry about too much.
Hey There,
Donald is correct that virtual offices, P.O. boxes, etc. are ineligible as far as Google My Business listings go. What you are describing is a Service Area Business (SAB) if you are going to the homes of your clients or other remote locations to serve them. So, in order to be guideline-compliant, you'll want to list yourself as an SAB, using your home address, which Google will then hide publicly. The most important thing here is to avoid violating Google's guidelines ... that is a much more important consideration than how something affects your rankings.
There has been debate over the years as to whether businesses with physical, public addresses have a ranking advantage over home-based businesses with hidden addresses, it's true, but until you do get a staffed physical office to which customers come to do business with you, it's not accurate to represent your business as having one. So, list yourself accurately and focus all the energy you have on the ranking factors you can control. Hope this advice is helpful!
Hi Amy,
Does the ranking shift coincide in some way with your hours of operation on affected days vs. the hours of operation of your competitors?
Hi Arzawacki!
Kudos to you for opening this up to the community for feedback. I second EGOL's wise advice that educating yourself about SEO is going to improve your game as a designer by leaps and bounds. Rather than reiterate what EGOL is saying, I want to take a few minutes to give you some specific feedback from a brief look at the website you've linked to:
I like things about this site. I like the creativity of the language that has been used. "Ah hail no". Funny. I can see you've worked hard not to take a "vanilla" approach to what might otherwise be considered a "boring" subject.
The green is not working for me. It's too loud for my comfort, making it hard for me to attend to the content on the screen. The effect is dramatic (again, kudos for creativity) and if this were a movie I were watching, those green skies would be truly ominous. But, this is a website with the purpose of selling a service which I, the consumer, need to be sold on, and the very vivid color juxtaposed with the black background and grey text is making it really hard for me to read the content, which is how we sell the service. If you keep the site, I would tone down that green and brighten the text. This article has some good, visual examples of what I'm referring to: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/text-over-images/
The site is not well-optimized for local consumers. If this business is serving a local clientele, the site is not providing sufficient signals for consumers to fully understand this. It lacks the title tags, locally-optimized text, images, contact page contents and other factors that say "We serve here, come on in.".
The text content of the website is, in itself, extremely brief. The homepage is all but empty, when it should typically be one of the strongest pages of the website. You mention in your critique of the SEO company's other sites that you have seen that they seem "crowded" to you. This is the perennial debate between Design/UX/SEO folks: how do we keep things tidy while also getting maximum oomph from the website's content? Right now, the site is erring on the minimalist side, in my opinion, because there just isn't enough there to convince me that this service is THE ONE for me. You know how you've created the FAQ page? That's a good place to start to get into the mindset that this entire website exists to answer customers' questions, on every page. Right now, it's not doing that. Again, look at the home page. If I hit this page, am I going to pick up the phone and dial because this page has convinced me I've found the company for me? If not, the homepage isn't working for the company.
Summing up:
If you decide to keep the site, it needs some pretty substantial overhauling.
If you decide to hire an SEO company, I highly recommend hiring a company that specializes in Local SEO but also has organic SEO in their back pocket. Right now, adequate local hooks just aren't there in this site and they need to be incorporated.
If you decide to learn SEO, you'll begin to see these types of issues in your daily work, and to be able to spot within a few minutes whether websites are capable of truly serving consumers while also sending the necessary signals of authority/relevance to search engines. I'm really glad you're here in the Moz community, as it's a great place to advance your education to the next level!
Hi Calico,
You're welcome, and that's good you're not seeing anything in Google Search Console to indicate a problem.
Also want to highlight something you've said:
"I will do the audit, but my first thoughts looking at it, is that the other fishing charters around me don't really do anything for SEO, so they will likely score low. "
The purpose of you doing this audit will be to take the top competitor who isn't being filtered out for your most important keyword phrase, compare his metrics to yours, and then see if going through that process helps you figure out a reason why something he is doing is making him strong enough not to be filtered, compared to your business. So definitely do be sure you are picking that top ranking competitor who is showing up for the term most important to you.
I'd really like to hear what you discover from the audit.
Hi CalicoKitty!
I remember your previous thread that you and I were working on when Possum rolled out and your listing was filtered out by it. Since then, there has been the Hawk update, which was basically Google rolling back some of the stringency of this filter that was affecting you, but it sounds like the set of business at your marina are likely still experiencing filters due to so many being co-located.
Unfortunately, when this is the case, the only thing you can do is become strong enough to be one of the results Google does show instead of being one of the filtered ones. Barring that you have any Google penalties, suspicious links or anything like that keeping you back, basically, what you need to do is a competitive audit. You need to compare a big list of metrics for your business to the metrics of the competitor who isn't being filtered. This blog post of mine from 2017 will give you a spreadsheet for doing just that:
https://moz.com/blog/basic-local-competitive-audit
In every area where your competitor is stronger than you, you need to increase your metrics.
I will add here that since publication of that post, there are two new-ish things I'd be working on that I don't believe are included in the spreadsheet. If I felt I had done all I can to surpass my competitor, based on the spreadsheet metrics, I would create a really good strategy for:
I am seeing early days indications that active use of both may increase rankings. So, I'd be sure you are covering all of the basics in the audit sheet and then create strategy around these.
After you've done the audit, if any questions arise, please come back to this thread and ask. I'm happy to hear back from you on this.
Hi There!
To clarify, are you talking about your local or organic rankings?
You're welcome, Brooks!
Good suggestions from Brooks, but sounds like you've checked off the things he mentioned.
So, typically, Google will display the one you designate as the profile pick, but as you've seen, not always.
If you've removed the unwanted photo from your website, you can ask a GMB forum TC to help you get your listing updated. Here's a thread from Google's forum along those lines: https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Enhance-Your-Presence/Photos-pulling-from-website-that-are-not-wanted-to-show/m-p/1119604/highlight/true#M6409
But, if you want to keep that photo on your website, you can try flagging the image from several accounts over the next few weeks to see if Google will get rid of it. If nothing happens after a few weeks, you could take this to the GMB forum, but I'm not sure they'll be able to do much unless the photo is really inappropriate, in which case, you may just want to remove it from the website.
Other advice: be sure you're not using a logo as your profile pic. Google really doesn't like those and often will replace them. Be sure every photo you've uploaded to your GMB dash is of best quality and is something you'd be okay with having Google use to represent the business.
This is a good question, Brooks!
My take: When scaling rep management for companies with 100s or 1,000s of locations, there's no way the owner is going to be personally responding to each review. Rather, he/she will be designating staff to act in his/her name. So, basically, you can think of this scenario this way. You're being empowered by the owner to act on his/her behalf, and putting the name "owner" on the review is an indication that the reply represents company policy, rather than the owner sitting at a laptop late into the night writing responses. I can't imagine John Mackey was logging hours replying to Whole Foods reviews.
So, this is one of those scenarios in which I say, "Think big." If the "big guys" have staff who respond in their names, then smaller businesses can follow suit. I think we're pretty safe in assuming that Google's generic language of "response from the owner" isn't convincing Whole Foods shoppers that they've just receive a personal reply from John Mackey
That being said, it would certainly behoove owners and C-suites to craft very clear policy governing how employees should respond to the public while representing the brand. This is a step that should not be overlooked in organizations large or small.
I hope others will weigh in on this, as this is just my opinion.
Really helpful answers, thanks!
Okay, so what this business is eligible for is a single listing, representing their single physical location, and this should be located in a single account, although you can give multiple managers access to that account, if necessary.
Right now, having multiple listings for a single location is a violation of these guidelines and could get the company into trouble for spamming: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en-GB
To create further ineligible listings for service cities where they lack a physical location would also violate Google's guidelines and further heighten the risk of penalties.
To resolve this, the business either needs to ask Google to help them merge the superfluous listings into the main, eligible listing, or if the details of the listings don't match because a fake address has been used, take steps to report that the business never existed there (see article, below to determine the right course of action). That main listing must accurately list the name of the business as its title (with no city names or other keyword modifiers) and should accurately represent the physical address and phone number of the physical business.
Recommended reading: https://moz.com/blog/delete-gmb-listing
I'm so glad you asked about this, and hopefully you can get this company back on a good track with how they're marketing their business. Please, let me know if you have any further questions.
You bet, Andrew! Please keep the good questions coming
Hey There,
Thanks for bringing this to the community for feedback.
I'd like to ask a couple of questions so that I'm sure I'm seeing this correctly.
How many physical locations does this lumber store have - just one in Santa Monica, or are you saying it has 2 or 3 different actual stores that serve customers face-to-face?
You are mentioning "GMB accounts" and I want to clarify: do you mean accounts, as in Google accounts used to log into things, are do you mean GMB listings, as in the listings that show to the public when you search for something?
Related to question 2, is the sales rep talking about creating accounts or creating GMB listings?
Related to question 3, if the sales rep is, in fact, talking about creating listings, are you saying they want to create listings covering service cities but not cities where the store has a physical location?
If you can number your answers to match my queries, I should be able to respond much more accurately. Thank you!
Hi Andrew,
As Brooks has highlighted, your client's catering business sounds like a service area business (SAB) and is therefore eligible for a Google My Business listing, provided the staff meets face-to-face with its customers. Your client will need to enter their address when creating the listing and then select the options Brooks as pointed out so that the street address won't be public on the live listing.
That being said, there are some nuances to this. Google did have a bug, in recent memory, during which they briefly showed the addresses of SABs. It was a temporary issue.
Given this, the conversation you need to have with the client surrounds whether their privacy concerns are so extreme that they don't want their street address ever to appear anywhere on the Internet however briefly, or, whether, like most home-based businesses, they just don't want customers showing up at their house thinking it's a walk-in business.
If the former, your hands are tied to doing a limited Local SEO campaign for them and you'll have to rely on Organic SEO, PPC, and Social to get the word out as best you can.
If the latter, then the SAB listing is the solution for this client. It's Google's policy not to show the addresses of these businesses, and you can restrict other citation building to the sites listed in the Phil Rozek article Brooks has linked to. You'll at least be able to do a good, pretty complete campaign for them in this scenario, though not quite as thorough as you can for an SAB that doesn't care whether their address is published on some platforms.
Hope this helps and that you'll have that conversation with the client to discover the source of their objections, whether that be a strong fear or a simple concern over inconvenience.
I thought you raised some really thoughtful points, Kane. This particular situation isn't one of those black-and-white ones with a super obvious call - it's nuanced. So, I thought the points you brought up were very valid in an "it depends" kind of scenario. Thanks for the very kind words.
Thanks for the clarification (and so sorry I addressed you as "Mike" - I read your screenname incorrectly).
My thoughts on this would be based on a few factors:
If the brand were the same across all properties (Blue Apartments), then, no question, I would consolidate. This would be like having a single website for Taco Bell or any other brand, vs. having thousands of Taco Bell microsites representing their many locations. A single site would not only be easier to manage, but would consolidate all SEO benefits into a single site, building its authority. I'd have a single site at BlueApartments.com with a landing page for each complex (Blue Apartments on The Beach, Blue Apartments Theater District, Blue Apartments Downtown, Blue Apartments Westside, etc.) And, I'd build a GMB listing for each of these complexes IF (and only if) it had an on-site office, and link these listings to their respective, very well-built landing pages.
If each apartment complex has entirely distinct branding (Blue Apartments, Green Apartments, Red Apartments) then the conversation changes. I want to state that I've never done Local SEO for a multi-apartment-complex enterprise, but I see these business models doing both the single and multi-site approach in the city nearest me, and both approaches are managing to rank. I'm just looking at this at a glance, of course, but that's what I see. At the end of the day, I think that the unique branding scenario would incline me to go with a multi-site approach, for better ease-of-use for consumers, whether it impacts SEO or not. These are distinct physical places, and unlike Taco Bell, they each provide a different living experience. If I had the resources, I think I'd create a good, strong site for each property (and, if it has an on-site office, build listings for each). But, if I was shaky on resources, I would not attempt to manage multiple websites for fear I couldn't do them justice. What I would not want to end up with would be a handful of weak, duplicate websites that aren't earning any links. Lack of resources would turn me away from this approach. But sufficient resources would make it appeal to me.
My answer is a bit general here, not knowing the precise details of the business and its available resources. I'd recommend looking at the competition in your target city, and look at how direct competitors who are ranking best are operating. This would contribute to my final decision on this.
Hey Mike,
Great discussion going on here. I want to clarify - when you say "apartments" you are talking about apartment complexes, right, not individual apartment units within a development? In other words, Tan Apartment Community, Green Apartment Community, Blue Apartment Community; not Apartment 3, 20, and 35 within communities?
Hey Adam!
I'm seeing the site live at ExpressUpdate.com. Did it come back for you, or were you looking at a specific section of the site, perhaps?
Good luck on that, Patrick. The business may want to consider consolidating their websites so that all branding and marketing efforts are feeding a single super site instead of being bucketed into two sites.
Hi Patrick,
Good question! From your description, it sounds like a single business with a dual product lineup, both of which lines are sold from within multiple physical locations.
If I have that right, then, no, you don't want to cloud the NAP of the official business at the location by creating a second listing for a second product lineup, even if you slightly vary the name. Google pays no attention to suite numbers, and creating a listing at a false address is a guideline violation, so this is a non-starter, too.
Finally, if co-located businesses share a category, one or the other is likely to be filtered out due to basic similarity or the Possum update.
So, in a nutshell, no I wouldn't advise the client to do this, as it isn't guideline compliant, could cloud the clarity of the NAP for their brand and might lead to competition/ranking/penalization issues.
Hope this helps!
Hey Paul,
I'm so sorry that I just now saw your question. So, a "duplicate" listing is a listing that shares identical or near-identical NAP with another listing. Co-located businesses aren't duplicates if they have different names and phone numbers. That being said, if Co-located businesses share a category, then Google may filter one of the them out of the local packs, per the "Possum" effect.
Hi Johnny,
I'd like to be able to give you a 100% certain "yes" or "no" answer on this, but Facebook's lack of documentation always makes me say "I think", instead of "I know", for fear I've overlooked some hidden thing about their system I don't understand.
In this case, I "think" you should be fine so long as you are consistently designating the same location as the company headquarters so that its phone number and address are always the same across FB and the web.
But, you might want to ask here, in case you get a different opinion: https://www.facebook.com/help/community
Hi Johnny,
So, is what you're describing something along the lines of:
I have a multi-location business, and one location is the headquarters
I want to use the HQ's phone number on the brand page
Is that it? Please, let me know if I'm not quite following, and also, just to confirm, you are talking about Facebook, yes?
Hi Camarin,
Thank you so much for the answers. Having read them, I am failing to see how the soccer business, legally registered as a separate business and unrelated to a college recruiting company, would fail to qualify for a Google My Business listing. The only obstacle I can see is if Google is treating the soccer business as if it is truly just a service of the college recruiting business, despite them being two legally distinct businesses. The "just a service of" issue is generally seen in a scenario in which something like an HVAC company tries to build one listing for heater repairs and another for air conditioner repairs, which is clearly not allowed. But that's not really what you're describing here: we seem to be talking about two different businesses.
Three more questions:
Are the names of the two entities totally distinct as in ABC Athlete College Recruiting and NY Soccer Camps, or do they share elements as in ABC Athlete College Recruiting and ABC Athlete Soccer Camps?
Do they each have their own phone number, answered with the appropriate brand name when it rings?
When you say "Google won't list the latter", are you positive the client tried to create a listing and it was in some way rejected by Google, or are you just saying you're not seeing both of them ranking when you do a branded search?
That's so nice of you to say, Roman. Thank you.
Sounds like a good plan!
Hi Kevin!
Thanks so much for joining in on this conversation. Just a heads-up that suite numbers are not a solution for differentiating businesses in Google My Business. Google doesn't pay any attention to suite numbers, and the use of fictitious suite numbers is actually a Google guideline violation, because Google requires that you represent the address of the business exactly as it appears in the real world.
Hi There!
Some questions for you:
Are these two legally distinct businesses? One being the recruiting agency and the other being a non-proft soccer camp, both legally registered as unique entities, or is the soccer camp just a service offered by the recruiting agency rather than a stand-alone "business".
Does the recruiting agency meet face-to-face with the student-athletes?
What is the exact physical location scenario? Is the soccer camp actually taking place in the same office as the recruitment work?
Is the soccer camp a year-round business, or is it seasonal? How does this work?
What, exactly is meant by "they've been told by Google that they can't use the same address as their recruiting business"? Does this mean that the business spoke 1:1 with Google support about this?
Please, answer all five questions as best as you can so that the community can be sure to provide advice most closely tailored to the specifics of this business. Looking forward to your replies!