Citations for service providers and different locations
-
My clients are mostly photographers who work from home, so service based and dont have a full address listed or fear to and many want to service bigger cities and not cities they live in, or want more than one city and state. What are best practices for SEO for multiple locations as well as service providers?
-
Hi Feuza,
Linda has pointed to one of the best recent articles on this topic of needing to build citations while hiding the address of the business. I will add to this that your photographers are fortunate enough to be in an industry in which writing up locally-optimized descriptions of their photo shoots should be easy. Much more scope for the imagination here than if they were plumbers, right?
Whether your clients do this via an on-site blog or a library-like gallery of articles about their different shoots in different towns, there is great opportunity for content development that showcases their work in the different cities where they would love to gain visibility in the SERPs. They can write up weddings they shoot if they do that, or if they are nature photographers, they can write about the different regional and national parks, or if they do business photography, they can write about the companies they are shooting in different cities. And, remember, too, that they can geotag their images on social sharing sites like Flickr, Panoramio and Picasa. Pinterest could also be a great area for them to be active, too. Lots of opportunity here!
-
Linda, this is very helpful, yeah photographers think once can magically appear some where if not paying for google adwords and such. Many work from home and fear showing their real address. They are obsessed with ranking local but some of this huge towns its an impossible task and I try and educate them as much as possible.
Thank you for your input, I will check out that article
-
Hi Feuza,
In Google local it's tough to rank in the local 7 pack unless your address is actually in the city you are trying to rank in. You can try to rank in organic in those other cities, but depending on competition, normally you can't get in "the pack" unless you are located there.
But again varies by industry and city. Test it. Google: "City + KW" and see if everyone's address is in that city. Sometimes in smaller towns or low competition industries it will be mixed results.
As far as citations go - they don't move the needle that much with the blended algo. I mean they are important and you need to have a good base. But adding more won't necessarily increase rank. The current algo is more about organic ranking factors.
But as far as citations for service area businesses with hidden address... it's good to still get citations with address, because Google will match them to the address inside dash.
If you have clients that really don't want their address showing anywhere online, Phil Rosek has a post with a list of citation sources that don't require address. http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2013/04/22/private-local-citations-where-can-you-list-your-business-but-hide-your-address/
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
-
Hi All, please help me in 1 query. Currently, We are having 1 YouTube channels having all products of the organization. We are thinking to segregate different products channel wise. Is it a correct and viable option ? Please suggest.
We are having 1 YouTube channels having all products of the organization. We are thinking to segregate different products channel wise.
Image & Video Optimization | | SameerBhatia0 -
Once you start fixing Local citations with correct NAP, is it normal for your rankings to plunge at first?
I strongly believe that I have received the most solid Local advice I could from these forums and have started (in just a few days) to make the needed corrections. At the same time I'm somewhat excited and optimistic that it will be a long journey but that it's a learning process. About 5 days ago, I set my website up with "City landing pages" and I started plundering through google, fixing and claiming and correcting as many citations as I could with correct NAP. The journey still continues today as I just got my Bing Local card in the mail and verified. I went to check my rankings on Google Maps, just to see if anything had changed and sure enough it had. My listing had been holding strong at page 10 (which drives me nuts) and now after 5 days of solid work its on page 18. I have to assume that because I'm stirring the dust perhaps Google is confused and maybe in a month or so things might start moving the other way? Thoughts?
Image & Video Optimization | | jonnyholt0 -
Ranking dance teaching company in multiple locations where they hold casses
Hi Guys, This is a question to all the pro local SEOs out there. I have a client that teaches dance classes at three different studios in Manhattan, New York City, and these studios already have their own local presence in Google Local, Yelp and so on. They basically sublet the space to hold their classes. How would I rank them for these locations? Their actual office is in Brooklyn and I don't want to target Brooklyn audience, but they can verify their listings at the class locations in Manhattan. all advice appreciated!
Image & Video Optimization | | Fhenrir0 -
A lot more citations than competitors OK?
Is it OK to have 2 times as many citations as competitors? I want to make up for factors such as less reviews.
Image & Video Optimization | | BobGW0 -
How businesses get local citations without submitting them?
How do some businesses get listed in directories like YellowBook, SuperPages, MerchantCircle, etc. without submitting their information. For example, my dad's company listed themselves in YellowPages and Google Places years ago, but also show up in the ones listed above without having submitted the information to them or having paid anyone else to do it...
Image & Video Optimization | | ChaseCameron0 -
For Local SEO on a business with many locations, should the city be included in the business name?
For a franchised business with ~50 locations spread across the US, should the city be included in the business name when building citations? Fictional example: We have a staffing franchise called 'Hamilton Staffing'. They have 50 locations in the US. They are all called 'Hamilton Staffing'. We need to finalize the correct NAP information so we are consistent in building citations. For the name, should we just use 'Hamilton Staffing' for all of them? Or should we use 'Hamilton Staffing - Chicago' and the like for other locations? It looks like InfoUSA and Axciom are just using 'Hamilton Staffing', whereas Google is using 'Hamilton Staffing Chicago' and the like. Thoughts on this?
Image & Video Optimization | | brianspatterson0 -
Multiple Store locations Google Local
Hey there, Is it best to create an individual page for each store location? Or is it best to create one page and plot different locations? Thanks, Dan
Image & Video Optimization | | Sparkstone0 -
Does position in local directories effect google detecting citations?
There are a lot of local directories that i have seen google pull citations from. Quite often i see people putting listings in these directories prefixed by several "A"s, so that they will appear on the first page of the list. Just how deep does google crawl through the pages of these lists? will google actually crawl through all the pages? Some of these directories offer paid listings that appear at the top of the directory. We have been considering purchasing some of these paid positions, so that google would be more likely to pickup our citations. In one case i have noticed a directory: shopincities.com do something that spiked my interest. Basically, if you start clicking through the different pages of a category, the site will block you after 3 or 4 pages in. It serves you an error saying that you are not human. In my mind this is to prevent google from fully crawling their whole list, so that the people who pay for the top positions are picked up, and the people who don't pay, even though their profiles are listed there, never get crawled by google. So would you pay for position on these directories? here are some examples: http://www.shopincities.com
Image & Video Optimization | | adriandg
http://www.411.ca
http://www.goldbook.com
http://www.n49.ca
http://torontodirect.com
http://www.yellowpages.com Or would you just throw a whole bunch of A's infront of your business name so you appear on the first page of listings? Or do you belive it doesn't matter how deep you are in the listings, and with enough time google will find it regardless and credit it as a citation?0