Consistant citations for Local SEO
-
Hi Guys - Ive got a tricky question. I want to create correct and consistent citations for this business http://www.singlewellcarsales.co.uk/
However theres a twist, the website is called ‘Singlewell Car Sales Ltd’ but they also have a service centre called ‘Singlewell Service Centre Ltd’ so in theory two business names under one website. We want to treat them as two separate businesses when adding to local directories. We also want to create two local Google pages. Both divisions share the same website, and address but include a different telephone number and business name.
I want to use Schema mark up on the website to reference both business names so that Google can make a link between the name and various local citations NAP.
My main questions is, can you use Schema two mark up two business names under one website? or will Google get confused and regard it as duplicate or inconsistent citations?
Many Thanks
Jon Rayner
-
Hey Jon!
If you feel totally confident that Google will agree that these are 2 different forward-facing businesses at the same address, than the differentiating items will be the name, the phone number and the website landing page the Google My Business listing links to. Being sure that all 3 things are unique should help Google keep them separate, ideally. Hope this helps!
-
Hi Miriam
Thanks for the info.
However, I did read the guidelines a few weeks ago. The two businesses do qualify for two Google places pages as they fall under two categories. (car dealer & car repairs)
My main concern, how do I represent two businesses within the html code on one website in hope that Google does not get confused. My aim is to create correct citations for both businesses (NAP)
I think I have a solution! (based on Ioganr's help)
However, if you have any further suggestions regarding NAP for two businesses on one website, please let me know. Your help would be much appreciated
Thanks
Jon
-
Hi Miriam
Thanks for the info
-
Hey There!
First step here is to read Google's guidelines for Departments Within Other Business:
https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en
Be sure that you actually have 2 businesses that qualify as separate, in Google's eyes, before you make a decision about how to represent these to the public on your website, citations, etc. Hopefully a read-through will help with this.
-
No problem, sorry I couldn't offer something more conclusive! Maybe someone else from your side of the pond will chime in with a similar experience.
Good luck!
-
An office building would have numbers or the name of the room to differentiate.
This one is tricky as the car sales and service centre is the same building. My original proposal to overcome this issue was to get a separate website build for the 'service centre' and then include tabs at the top of both websites that link between each other. Obviously setting this up would have a cost implementation, hence why investigating an alternative solution.
Thanks again for your help
-
Hmm...I didn't realize there weren't street numbers involved, that's usually my differentiator. Unfortunately, Google will see your proposed addresses as synonymous.
In a case of office buildings, where many different companies operate in one building, how would those addresses be formatted? (forgive my lack of knowledge on UK address formats)
-
Hi Ioganr
Thank you so much for your quick response. I did ponder on the same concept but wasn't 100% sure. Do you think this would work?:
Singlewell Car Sales Ltd
Hever Court Road
Gravesend
Kent
DA12 5UQSinglewell Service Centre Ltd
Hever Ct Rd
Gravesend
Kent
DA12 5UQMany Thanks
Jon Rayner
-
Hi Jon,
I've had a very similar situation before, where 2 businesses were operating under the same website, but located in 2 different places and under slightly different names. You can apply schema to multiple instances of NAP, but in your case, what you would need to do is create 2 different addresses.
For example, Business A would be located at 123-A Boulevard Street, and Business B would be located at 123-B Boulevard Street. That seems to be enough of a differentiation for Google being as office buildings commonly contain similar address formats. You're technically not changing anything from a geographical point of view, but this way you're able to provide Google with enough different information for them to identify. It will take some time to see the results, and you'll need to get as many good-quality citations for each company as possible.
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 - 2 Locations
Hi SEO pros, If I'm undertaking SEO for a company which has a single website (no location specific pages) and 2 office locations I'm curious on a couple of points: 1. Obviously setting up 2 locations in GMB is a must, but in terms of citation building is it just a case of needing to input 2 citations into every directory (one for each address) 2. Link building - assuming this doesn't change much from when you're ranking for one location? 3. Schema markup - Do i need to create 2 x local business schema and input both into the headers? 4. On-page SEO - trying to rank for 2 locations I'm assuming is much more difficult as you can't optimise both location keywords throughout the site - does anyone know a way around this?
Local Listings | | Jack11661 -
Local Search Verified Location Ideas
Hi, I have a client who has offices that are physically located in one town, but offers its services to a much wider area, like a hundred mile radius. You can see where this is going. In local organic search, they need to establish a verified business location in other towns. My understanding is that virtual offices, even though you can receive mail there and can have offices there, are not an acceptable solution to this problem. Maybe I'm wrong about that though. Any ideas, short of opening up permanent full-time offices in other cities for getting around this? With all due respect, if your answer is only an opinion on the importance of playing by the rules and background on the rationale behind Google's Guidelines, etc, please don't bother posting. I'm looking for actual possible alternatives. Thanks!
Local Listings | | 945010 -
Why are my citations not showing up?
We're managing a website for a client and decided to use Yext to build citations. We've gone through and manually verified that they are live. Moz Local cannot find this website or the citations, nor could Ahrefs, or Majestic. Google has indexed 154 pages of the website, Bing has indexed 10. This dealer has two websites (I know that's a faux pas, it's by client request), so that they can "test" our website before giving up their old one. They're tied to the same NAP, but have different web addresses. We got permission to claim the listings for the website we sent live and put them up about two months ago. I can't figure out for the life of me why none of my tools will verify the existence of this website and the citations. I checked for a no index and no follow command in the HTML (which shouldn't be a problem because Google has indexed the site) and it was clean. The only thing I can think of is that the old site is getting credit for the citations even though we've listed a different website address. Can anyone verify this?
Local Listings | | jtaylormoon0 -
Google Local and Seasonal Location
We currently rank in the local 3 pack for multiple keywords for our first location. We just opened a second location which is currently hanging at around #20 in the local results. We have decided to close the first highly ranking location seasonally. We do not want to send customers to that closed location. However we also do not want to list the address with google as "permanently closed" in fear of losing all ranking power of that listing. Is it possible to transfer ranking power from location to the other or merge 2 different locations? Has anyone had any experience with this, tips, advice?? Thanks in advance! Chris
Local Listings | | enjoiart0 -
Is getting a top position in a local results block acheiveable if you are outside of the central zone ?
Most of the keywords / phrases we are targeting have the city (London) appended to it ie. service name London, service name in London etc. The business of the site we are working on is located in London, but not in central London. Because of this i think the site is not being ranking as well as it could be (compared to other sites that in the centre or nearer to the centre with seemingly lower profiles, including have no reviews on their Google + Pages). The site itself is relatively strong fluctuating between 3rd and 5th spot for the target phrases in the organic listings, but because of the local block which sits under position 2 our site always towards the bottom of the first page. We've submitted the site to all the relevant local directories and listings sites, got 3 google reviews on the Plus profile and added the correct local html schema markup to any of our sites pages where our address is mentioned, but still we are sitting at around #12 on the local listings block (when you click Map results for...) at the bottom of the 7 local listings. So the site dosnt seem far off being on the front page, but I feel ive exhausted the optimisation i can do, any ideas how i can make any gains in these local listings ?
Local Listings | | Sam-P1 -
Is there a way to get your local SERP by zipcode?
I have multiple stores across various zipcodes and i'm having difficulty trying to provide an average Positioning on SERP by region. I do know that your SERP varies by region because different areas use different vernaculars. Does anyone know of a way that I can provide a SERP for keywords/terms by county or zip code?
Local Listings | | rpaiva0 -
Evidence that good citations improve visibilty
I am looking for documented evidence that structured and unstructured citations improve SERPS results/visibility. It will help in convincing a number of individuals that they are important in the UK as well...!
Local Listings | | ac_thornton0 -
Does embedding Google map help local SEO?
Hi I am curious if adding a embedded Google map to a footer helps for Local seo? Thank you
Local Listings | | Berner1