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Why is the incorrect city name being appended to search results when that search is done from a completely different city? Screenshot Included
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Hi Guys,
This is weird. When searching "generator rentals" from within Vancouver/Lower Mainland and on a mobile device, our organic listing is ranked #1. That is the good news.
The bad news is that for some reason the title returend is: Generator Rentals & Temporary Power Distribution - Edmonton". The "-Edmonton" is dynamically added, but I have no idea why. Edmonton is in a completely different province than Vancouver... over 720 miles apart.
The only thing I can think of is that there is some sort conflict with our Google places account. You see, we do have an Edmonton branch. I have setup two branches... one for the Coquitlam/Vancouver branch and one for the Edmonton. And as far as I can tell, both are setup correctly.
A screenshot from my iPhone has been linked (http://imgur.com/9YvyLDB).
Any ideas would be appreciated. Thank you,
Jarrett
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Hello Miriam,
All excellent points. I will be making some modifications to existing content today and begin writing requirements for separate city landing pages.
Thanks so much,
J
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Excellent answer Dirk... thank you. I will make some tweaks today.
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Hey Jarrett,
Three things immediately come to mind regarding this.
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Your Edmonton location is simply more powerful in Google's eyes than your Vancouver location. Does it have more content, more citations, more reviews, an older web presence or other things along those eyes that could be causing Google to consider the former location more authoritative than the latter?
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You have NAP inconsistency, causing your two locations to be confused with one another. To start troubleshooting this, take different elements of your name, address, phone number and website for the two locations and put them together in Google's search. For example, you might find the Edmonton address mixed up with the Vancouver phone number on some platforms, and this would need to be fixed.
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Your website should have 1 unique page for your Edmonton location and another unique page for your Vancouver location, featuring complete NAP and relevant content. Your Google+ Local pages and all of your other citations can then link to these instead of your homepage, helping to keep these two locations more separate. I wasn't seeing these landing pages on your site, but if you already have them, they don't seem very visible.
Hope these are some good starting points to consider.
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Hi,
First about the city added to the title. Google does this on mobile so that it's easier for the searcher to see if the business is nearby. If I search for "bakery" on my PC - it shows the normal titles, if I do the same thing on my mobile, it's adding the city.
About the wrong location: to be very honest I am not really an expert in local SEO. When I check your site however, it's seems to me that you're not really making it very clear to Google that you have two locations, and what your primary location is. You mention the two addresses on your home page, one with Alberta office, the other one with B.C. (and you assume that Google will know that B.C. stands for British Columbia).
Check this article on local SEO: https://moz.com/blog/everybody-needs-local-seo - it contains a lot of tips & tricks on how to make it very obvious to Google what your location is.
Hope this gets you started & maybe that other Moz members with more "local search" experience could add some additional tips.
rgds,
Dirk
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