Local SEO business name issue due to aggregator
-
So I work for a college and we have multiple locations. My tactic has been always to keep the name the same for all of them (no city name), and then change the address and phone number for each.
But there is 1000s of college listings websites out there that aggregate college and school data from the same source: the US government. Now the way that they have most, if not all, multi-location colleges listed is: "college name-city name". I can see the value in that, but I guess I'm just wondering what to do since it obviously can't be changed.
Should I revert all of our listings as "college name-city name" to match the 1000s of listings that have it that way?
I've been under the impression that I should leave the city/town name out of the name, but I'm just wondering what you think best practices would be?
Thanks
Tom -
Hey Tom,
I see how this could be problematic. In general, Local SEOs will cite the guidelines Joey has, in which Google states they don't want this:
Location information, such as neighborhood, city, or street name, unless it is part of the real-world representation of the business.
So, short answer here is that you need to leave your name exactly as it appears in the real world on your websites and the citations that you can control (and, of course, your Google My Business listing). I wonder if it would be possible for you to reach out to the top 20 aggregators appearing for your core search and ask them to edit your listing name. If not, then the consolation here is that the playing field is level if competing colleges area all suffering the same fate with the aggregators. In other words, their percentage of NAP inconsistency would be the same as yours.
Anecdotally, what you're experiencing is also experienced by all multi-location businesses that list their locations on Facebook. Facebook won't let you have more than 1 FB Place with an identical name, so you have to be Joe's Diner Boston, Joe's Diner Chicago, Joe's Diner St. Paul, etc. Again, because their competitors are all in the same boat, it's something they don't really have to sweat.
100% NAP consistency isn't normally achievable. You want to be as consistent as you can, but don't stress about attaining absolute perfection, and my bet is that the inclusion of your city names on these aggregators is not hurting you very much, if at all. So, this would be a see-what-you-can-do-and-then-leave-it-at-that situation. Hope this helps! Interesting thread.
-
Your issue is an interesting one. WAY back in the day I used to add the city name even to my own google listings. Today, however I don't think it does squat. In your case, however I think there is a case for using the city name in the title if its in use in other places, and if individual campus' are referred to as "XYZ College - Seattle Campus". When I look at University Of Phoenix here in Tucson, for instance, they use the city name, which is how they refer to it everywhere. That seems to be the deciding factor on whether its acceptable. Here is that Google says: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en&rd=1
Hopefully you are referring to it with the city or location name. If not, you may want to. I think it's a stretch if you don't.
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
-
Local SEO: How to get local business showing up in Google Local
Hello, We moved to a small town in Council, ID. It's interesting. None of the businesses around here are showing up in Google Local - map, phone number, hours, etc. Nothing. It's all Yelp and stuff. Is there some sort of collective local SEO that has to be done to get Council, ID on the map? It's kind of strange that no businesses show up. I want to help local businesses, but I don't know if Google will even register them. We can get a group of local businesses together if we have to. Let me know what we can do. Thanks.
Local Listings | | BobGW0 -
Google Local Changes Randomly & Our Site Keeps Dropping Off Search
I work for a university where we have 2 law schools. We have our one school on the other side of the state that has been around for a very long time, and then a newer school that is right on our main campus that has been around for about 5 - 10 years now. The newer of the 2 schools is having so much trouble being able to claim the name of the school in google search. If you type in the name of the school the other school (the one that has been around longer) was coming up in the google local on the right of the screen and their web URL was never showing up in search. This is a huge problem because the accreditations of the 2 schools are different, and students are showing up at the wrong school for their interviews. Search will only show a domain name that used to be owned by the older school but now gives information for both of the schools. So it'll show up in search results, but only under that other domain and not their own domain that has their name in the domain name. This school has an updated google mybusiness listing, and a google+ page with the correct listing. I've added some schema data around the business address on their site and JSON for the google+ page, and have re-indexed their sitemap a few times after some changes have been made and we are using their name more in the site. This fixed everything for a short while and we were getting the appropriate google local listing and their site was appearing in search results above the site that advertised both schools. Now, after about 3 months, it has reverted. I had the older school showing up in the google local, and the site that advertises both schools is the ONLY domain appearing. I've re-indexed the site after finding out that Drupal's timestamps that they automatically add to sitemaps aren't optimized for how google reads it. This has gotten the local listing back, but I still have the wrong domain appearing, it is the one advertises both schools instead of the domain that has this school's information. I don't mind that the one advertising both shows up, but if a user is searching for that particular school I would really like to get that domain to appear first above the one advertising both schools and the older school. Right now the new school isn't even in search results except for being under the site that advertises both. I wasn't sure if this was something that Moz Local could help me fix by adding the listing across the web, or if there is something else on the sites I can be doing to help them solidify their name in google search/local. Also - is this subdomain that is advertising both of them hurting them or help them? I was thinking about taking that domain down to one page that acts as a direction source to the 2 domains rather than having a ton of information and keywords that take over the results for their name since that domain is older (and used to be associated with the old school only before the new school was built) Thank you for any advice on this issue as I'm still pretty new to SEO and to the university. Thanks again!
Local Listings | | amaray4030 -
How do I treat multiple buildings on the same college campus on Google for local SEO?
Should I delete them? Simply give them a different address like "City, State, Zip"? I see the benefit of having key buildings on campus in Google Maps, but I don't want those to affect my accuracy score and, thus, my local rankings for SEO.
Local Listings | | GabeGibitz1 -
Have You Used Twitter For Google My Business Support?
Hey Everybody! If you've been doing Local for some years, chances are, you remember those dark days in the past when there was zero Google local support. You could post something in their forum, but that was pretty much your only hope. It was an absolutely amazing day when they finally rolled out phone support, and I'm still very grateful that this exists, but just this week, I learned about another way to contact support. Joy Hawkins has surfaced a Twitter account you can tweet when in need of assistance and she says its not only really fast, but that the help is US-based (which would be great for US users). I'd never heard of this before and wondered if any of you have tried it, and what response times and overall satisfaction you experienced with it. If you've not tried it yet and are experiencing a local client conundrum, maybe give it a try and let our community here know how it went?
Local Listings | | MiriamEllis5 -
SEO Google local listings
Hello We've recently started a campaign for a local business, and now the domain authority and the number of links to the site are equal if not more to all local major competitors (bar one) and organic rankings for relevant terms are increasing well... However we still do not appear in the google local listings, despite having a verified location business account - fully set up and active and linked to the website. Does anyone have any advice for increasing local rankings? Thanks in advance kind mozzers
Local Listings | | wearehappymedia0 -
Is the new local 3-pack the death of Google+ as factor?
So now we have the new 3-pack local results, which obviously cut the listings Google+ link from the results. What I find strange is that is now even when searching the business name alone, there is no sign of the associated Google+ page in the results. I still get other local third party listings like Facebook, Yellowpages, and Yelp – but no link anywhere for the Google+ page. I noticed this today when I wanted to verify something on a client’s page. There was nothing I could do search wise to bring up this business Google+ page. I finally got it by clicking the link through Moz local. After exploring this with some other clients, when I do get a Google+ page in the search results some have produced a 500 error when clicked on. If Google wasn’t killing off Google+, why would they completely omit the pages from their own search results? Another extremely strange thing, the majority of my clients are independent local businesses inside a large national company. Their Google+ listings have always been managed corporately using a bulk listing feed. We could never gain access to these pages and would always manage our listings to match that of the corp. controlled page. Well the last week of July they announced they were giving us the option to take control of the page. This happened with two different companies, MAJOR national competitors in the same industry, within a couple days of each other. They now treat it just like another version of social media, instead of a major factor within search. I find it hard to believe that something isn’t going on…
Local Listings | | masonrj0 -
SEO without a budget and Cheating Competitors
I have law clients in the atlanta ga area. I have worked with one client http://bestdefensega.com for the past 4 months trying to get him to the top. We blog 3 times a week, have manually built citations and legal directory profiles. My client doesn't have a large budget to purchase profiles on some of the larger legal directories like findlaw, lexus nexus etc.. With that said,
Local Listings | | underdogmike
Using Open Site Explorer I have discovered that his competition all have multiple business websites pointed back to their main websites.. So each law office has several really generic websites in addition to their main site. Other's appear to be receiving links from some type of link farm and really generic directory sites.
The domains of these guy's are older and more established. Where as, my client has a new practice and a new domain. How do I compete in the local market without a budget for the premium legal directories? So after 4 months my client appears in the local pack search results for only select keywords. Criminal defense attorney woodstock ga. His competition appears in the results for all variations, where my client only shows for this one term. How do I get me client in the local pack for all variations of Criminal Defense in my area? According to Moz, my site has a couple spam score issues and the explanations are not clear enough for me to make some types of changes.
**How do I make these changes to reduce the spam score? My site has more back links than Moz is reporting why?** All of the other sites that I manage perform well and my clients are realizing their ROI with relative ease. But criminal defense is a different beaat and it is starting to frustrate me. RAR! Thanks in advance!0 -
Local citations from business directories in other countries
Hi all, I normally work for clients in my home county (The Netherlands) and with local citation building I focus on Dutch websites or well know .com websites in the Netherlands. My rule of thumb kinda was, if it’s not known in the Netherlands it isn’t worth getting mentioned there. Since The Netherlands are pretty small and I think Google ain’t perfect I was wondering if it makes sense to list a Dutch business on any .com business listings that are internationally big, but aren’t well known in the Netherlands. Two reasons that got me thinking this direction: A big well known Dutch company offers a service such as Moz local and did integrate their service with several international business listing websites that I never heard off, since these business directories focus themselves on other parts of the world. Google ain’t perfect and I think they got more budget to identify trustworthy business directories with an international focus or a focus on America then with a focus on The Netherlands. So I’m wondering if it makes any sense to list a Dutch business on let’s say the top 20 international business directories (although these directories don’t have any brand recognition in The Netherlands).
Local Listings | | Bob_van_Biezen0