Optimizing a location the business doesn't actually reside in
-
I am optimizing a site for a general contractor in a small market -- Chittenden County, Vermont -- and I'm struggling with how to label his local identity on-page. His registered place of business is in a town about 12 miles outside of Burlington, which is the largest city in the county and state. Nearly 80% of geo modified keywords go to Burlington, and most people consider Chittenden County to be "greater Burlington."
I am wondering whether it will help or hurt SEO to use "Burlington" in the titles, headers, etc, even though their actual location is a few miles away. They don't get customer visits -- business operations are located in a residence and all inquiries come in over the phone or email -- so I'm not worried so much about confusing visitors. Also, their official location will be available in the footer and contact page.
If I go with "Burlington," how will this impact search rankings and G+ Places when I start focusing on citations in various directories. Will this slight geo discrepancy cause problems with organic and local SEO?
I've been wrestling with this for a while. Your input is REALLY appreciated. Thanks, guys!
-
Thanks, Patrick! Best wishes for an excellent 2015 to you, too!
-
Great tips as well, Miriam! Enjoy seeing you chime in when it comes to localized SEO
Happy 2015! - Patrick
-
Great question and something I bet a lot of other SEO's deal with, but don't always know what to do, nor ask the appropriate people for their take. Kudos to you for looking out for your client's best interests.
That being said, I agree with Ryan. Hit on your Google tools and G+ page to mention those geo-specific keywords. Also, there is nothing wrong with working to optimize a business which resides/operates out of one location while focusing their marketing in another location.
Two examples of this...
- 1st, our company is located in Cary NC, a smaller, but fast growing town outside of Raleigh, which is the major metropolis around here. However, we target a lot of SEO and keyword research at Raleigh. We've got a great presence for lots of terms relating to Cary, so Raleigh was our next goal and some of the smaller towns around us. It is possible, when done correctly, even for a highly competitive service like "SEO" and "Web Design" and "WordPress" in any major city. Burlington for you, would be nothing less.
- 2nd, we're about to work with another small carpet cleaning business who operates outside of his home yet travels to about 25 mile radius to service customers. Yes, his address on his website and G+ pages and his listings will be in Wake Forest NC, but that doesn't mean we can't go after organic searches/results in Cary, Durham, Raleigh, and the like. He is actually pretty exited to potentially get traffic and customers from all over the area.
Take 1 well written and optimized blog article targeting a specific keyword and going for a smaller market, we'll say Youngsville NC with little to no competition for my client, we see we could gain him a few customers a month potentially when that blog article ranks.
Incorporate a blog and article writing into your campaign and I'm sure you'll see success for your client.
Hope Ryan's, Miriam's and my responses were good and helpful! - Patrick
-
Hi PTDodge!
You'll want to go with your city of location in the following places:
-
Your contact page and footer on your website
-
Website copy that speaks to your physical location
-
All of your citation building
You must be absolutely clear and correct on all of the above. I know it's a shame when you don't operate out of your major target city, but it's really important to tell it like it is - which is that you are physically located in a small town but serve in other towns, including a major city. Places you can mention your major city include:
-
A local landing page on the website, devoted to that city (see: http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide)
-
Descriptions you write on some of your citations, "Voted Burlington's #1 Contractor' or what have you
-
Testimonials and project summaries from/for clients you've served in Burlington
-
A mention on the homepage that your service area includes Burlington
-
PPC campaigns
-
Blog posts
Unfortunately, none of this is likely to enable you to edge out competitors physically located in Burlington, but unless your company can get a physical location in this city, this is the reality of your situation. Telling it like it is will hamper you in some ways but is the right thing to do for your customers, representing the business honestly as it is.
Hope this helps!
-
-
Thanks, Ryan! Yeah, I'm not going crazy with geo references in the copy. I just don't want to miss out on searches for "general contractor burlington vt" when the difference is negligible. Good advice. Thanks again!
-
When you're localizing a business within Google's own tool, they allow for this kind of feature either by selecting area codes the business serves or by applying a radius in which business will make service calls. I'd do a mix and match of phrases like, "One of Burlington's most trusted..." "serving the greater Burlington area" "calls Chittenden county home". You don't need to go over board with it though. Other local search factors are going to play a larger role.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is it necessary for a single location business to have a location landing page?
I'm working with a dental practice that has one location that they use to serve a service area radius of about 15-30 mins drive time, which encompasses several other small towns. I understand the value of having individual location pages for a multi-location business, but is creating a location page for a business with a single office considered best practice as well? The entire site will be optimized for the city name that the business' physical office is located in. I'm considering creating a single location landing page that I'd link to from the footer and about navigation of the site, which would be similar to the template Miriam Ellis laid out in this awesome post: https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages In doing this, I'm hoping to create a place for office photos and driving directions from the nearby towns in order to name the different cities in the service area. However, I'm concerned about the location page competing with other pages on the site, which will be better optimized for conversions in my opinion. Does anyone have advice on best practice here?
Local Listings | | formandfunctionagency0 -
Co-working spaces for multiple locations?
I have been working out of co-working space for about 6 months, and I have had good results in local results here. I have also read that Google does not look favorably upon the inclusion of these locations. Has there policy on the inclusion of these spaces changed? Can I safely use other co-working spaces to expand to other locations? Thank you for your guidance. Ben Sessions
Local Listings | | BSessions0 -
Update business name across 150+ locations
We have 150+ locations. The current names in GMB vary based on the branch. They may include a branch number or city location in the title or some variation of the company name. We'd like to update these to reflect our company wide branding and drop the branch #/location. Any ideas on the impact of this change?
Local Listings | | Jason.Capshaw0 -
Our satellite office isn't showing up on Google maps. How can we add it?
We are trying to include maps to our locations on our "Contact" page, and in taking these maps from Google, we came upon the following issue: We have Google+ listings for several of our satellite offices, which are set up through Carr Workplaces. When we look on maps, we can only find the Carr Workplace listing, rather than the listing for our business at that location. Obviously, we don't want to display the map that way on our own page; we want the map to show our business name. I realize that Google only wants fully-staffed businesses to be displayed on maps, and so whether or not we belong there is up for debate within our company. That said, we'd like to know how to make the maps listing work regardless. Thanks!
Local Listings | | ScottImageWorks0 -
Location in business name for listings
A while back, I changed 26 of our business listings on Google so that the business name included the city, for example: "Business Name Sheffield", "Business Name York", "Business Name Doncaster". It looked consistent, it was easier to read in Google Maps when searching for Eden Mobility and even better - it may have been the cause of positive impacts in our local rankings. Using the Moz Local tool, I'm now looking at rolling out this change out throughout ALL of our business listings on the web, including Factual, Yelp etc etc... Does anybody have thoughts on this? At the back of my mind I can't help but think that I should be consistently using ONLY the business name throughout all of my online business listings. Will Google consider each of these locations as separate business entities? Here's something I found in Google's guidelines: Adding unnecessary information to your name (e.g. "Google Inc. – Mountain View Corporate Headquarters" instead of "Google") by including marketing taglines, shop codes, special characters, hours or closed/open status, phone numbers, website URLs, service/product information, location/address or directions or containment information (e.g. "Chase ATM in Duane Reade") is not permitted. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I've seen some big businesses such as ASDA doing the same thing I'm doing - but I'm undecided!
Local Listings | | LiamMcArthur0 -
Don't Let Your Google My Business Dashboard Become Inactive
Google's Jade Wang has offered some important clarification on the scenario of set-and-forget Google My Business dashboards - Google could determine that they are inactive and un-verify the listings they contain. She writes, "In some cases, we may contact Google My Business users via email to confirm that they are still actively managing a business page. If a user is unresponsive to our attempts to contact him or her and has not logged into Google My Business for a significant length of time, then we may unverify pages in the account. We're doing this in order to continue to provide users with the best experience when they’re looking for local businesses like yours. If you find that a page in your account has been incorrectly unverified, please contact support to get assistance restoring verification. It's a good idea to keep an eye on the inbox associated with your Google My Business (Locations) account. It's also a good idea to regularly log into Google My Business (Locations) to confirm that your business information is current and accurate." Mike Blumenthal initially posted that it was necessary to perform a null edit (a tactic in which you view the edit screen of your Google+ Local listing and hit 'save' without making any changes), but Mike has since updated his post to clarify that a null edit isn't actually necessary. According to what Mike learned, you can simply log into the dashboard once every few months, or if you have to make real edits or you post on your page, that should provide an adequate signal to Google that the dashboard is still being actively managed. In the past, an agency with a limited contract with a local business could create the company's Google+ Local page and step away from it. Of course, it's the ideal that your clients are actively posting to their Google My Business page, if it's the right social strategy for them, but many clients don't do this. And so, they'll likely be getting an email from Google one of these days asking if they are still active. If that's the case, you may be hearing from past clients asking if the email is real and what they should do. Fortunately, they should be able to make the the quick visit to the dashboard without help. But for agencies with large numbers of long-term clients, this business of keeping track of how often you've logged into the clients' dashboards could be a bit of a hassle. Just one more task to add to the to-do list. Google has been going through some growing pains recently. With the lock-down of the editing function on Mapmaker and the further removal of Google+ links from more places, many Local SEOs and local business owners are wondering where Google is headed in the local space. To my mind, the fact that they are trying to police active vs. neglected listings is a bit of a sign the Google remains serious about delivering Local quality. And for all of us ... that's a good thing!
Local Listings | | MiriamEllis4 -
Multiple listing directory pages pointing back to the same local business profile
I've been tuning my SEO pages to cover cities, states, and metro areas for local businesses we have. I'm wondering if the same business showing up on multiple pages, because they can actually go out and service that area, has a negative impact on rankings. Does multiple pages on your site, pointing to the same content, hurt or help the ranking of either page?
Local Listings | | All-About-Labor0 -
What to do if the domain name is very different from real business name for local listings
Hey guys, any advice is very welcome , I m´ ranking locally a website in the bay area for cabinets www.cabinetsbayarea.com we picked this domain name more for SEO purposes because it has the two most important keywords that we want to rank. My issue is that the real busniess name is HEMA DESIGN CENTER, so i dont know if we should change the name in the chamber of commerce to CABiNETS BAY AREA or list the business as HEMA DESIGN CENTER, with this website www.cabinetsbayarea.comr. We only mention the real name in the About Us. CABINETS BAY AREA it is more as a deparment of the real business name HEMA DESIGN CENTER What should i do? Thanks a lot, David
Local Listings | | conexion330