LOCAL SEO: Franchise --> One storefront. Multiple territory. Multiple listings?
-
An interesting problem came our way, and I'd love your help in solving it. An individual I'm chatting with owns and manages a number of territories of a service-based Franchise business around Eastern Iowa.**His territory covers multiple cities and zips. He services all of those places, but does not have a physical presence in all. There is one company office. But he has local numbers for each territory.**The corporate franchise's website is dynamic. It shows the 'local' number and information based on the visitor's location. Basically, little microsites for each franchise territory.Three years ago he set up individual Google Places pages for each territory, using a PO box address and the local phone numbers. The Google listings are set up not to display an address. The kick is -- those addresses are now expired. Those Google Local listings still exist, and drive considerable traffic in each target city. As you can imagine, this also causes havoc on his other citations. There are scattered (YP, Yahoo, Yelp, etc) listings for each address. Their name in GetListed brings up all five different addresses, each with a number of web properties already claimed.Now that I've offered to help, I need to determine the best way to move forward.
- Suspend the verified listings with hidden addresses and move to a single listing for the office location? We could add all of the zips in manually, but it would cover a very wide range, and could lose its rank in local SERPs. Even with a well-optimized description. And the local numbers would likely not show up.
- Keep the listings. Don't touch them at all.
The owner is looking to maintain the look and feel of a local business in each of his territories. That is difficult to do with a single listing.
Assuming we decide not to touch the active listings (option 2), what will we do for other listings? Do we claim a local Yahoo listing for each location? Just for the corporate office? Would love to hear how others have attacked the multi-territory franchise problem, or would in this case.Thanks!
-
Hi Matthew,
I can understand the temptation to keep a good thing going, but if the good thing is stemming from a violation of Google's Places Quality Guidelines, then the business is running big risks by letting it ride. I'd be very wary of any violation. Cheers - Miriam
-
Hi Josh,
Thanks for describing this scenario so thoroughly. My take on this may not come as good news to the business owner, but he deserves to have a proper understanding of the situation.
What the business owner did in setting up Google Place Pages for non-physical locations was a violation of the Google Places Quality Guidelines (https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en) three years ago and remains a violation now. The current guidelines really put this in black and white:
Do not create a listing or place your pin marker at a location where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations.
Because of the clarity of Google's stance on this, the only legit way for the business owner to maintain listings in his various service regions would be for him to get genuine physical locations there with non-redirecting, distinct phone numbers. If he can see that having these listings, under whatever circumstances, has benefited his business, then perhaps he would be open to renting modest office space from a company like Activspace.com which would give him a real walk-in door and phone hookup. Thus the violation would be removed.
The addresses would, of course, then be new and the listings would need to be edited (rather than suspended). The one downside of this is that it's highly likely that he would lose some or all of his Google-based reviews attached to these businesses, because of the new address, but that would be a small loss compared to the total loss of his listings. This change of address (and possible phone number if the ones currently being used are re-directing) must then be followed up with a citation cleanup campaign in which you would find as many references as possible to the old NAP data and update it with the new data. With these legit offices in place you could then proceed as normal with the Local SEO campaign and begin building new citations for the various offices.
It may be that the business owner would only be able to afford renting space for one or two of his other locations, in which case, anything that falls outside of this should be removed via Google's troubleshooter.
The only possible alternative to this would be for him to appoint regional managers amongst his staff and change the business model to turn a handful of his employees into receptionists who are authorized to answer direct phones, book appointments and manage business out of their home offices. This can be an iffy solution, however, because Google can see that these businesses are run out of homes and the forecast is less clear as to Google's stance on this. Google knows that businesses are home-based, and for a single location, using a home address (hidden) should be fine. But there is some grey area as to whether service area businesses operating out of home addresses call up red flags at the Googleplex. I have seen some outrageous things in which people are posting on Craigslist offering to pay total strangers for the use of their home addresses to appear local. Google's ultimate position on this is not totally understood - thus my designation of this solution as iffy.
If the business owner cannot get legitimate spaces for any of his service areas, then, yes, you would need to remove the other Place Pages.
What if you do nothing? This question deserves to be asked and a considered answer provided to the business owner. As he has seen, Google doesn't do a great job of upholding their own rules much of the time. Businesses can get away with all kinds of violations for indefinite periods of time. The problem with this approach is that the business owner never knows when the axe will fall, and if his main, legit listing is associated with a bunch of spam listings, he could possibly see his whole account penalized. If he is then heavily penalized or even banned, he will go from having a lucrative presence in Google+ Local to having little or none and this is likely to prove disastrous for any local business. He really won't have a leg to stand on in pleading with Google to reconsider his business after rushing around trying to clean up his record - an awful scenario! So, while you could potentially decide to let the spam listings ride, understanding the risk being run should figure largely in such a decision.
As I see it, your job as the new Local SEO on the project is to educate the client as to the realities of the situation, the opportunities in front of him and the possible outcomes of different routes he might take. Personally, I won't work with a company that persists in wanting to violate Google's guidelines once I've explained the guidelines to them, but some Local SEOs will work in grey areas. Happily, you get to make your own rules about the work you do with clients. I think the main thing is to understand and share all possible information with the client so that everyone is operating with awareness.
Hope this detailed response is helpful both to you and your client!
-
Personally, if the existing listings are bringing in some good levels of traffic then I'd avoid removing them. What I would do is start to build more local citations to the new office address so that over time you can filter in enough traffic to be able to remove the old addresses - essentially build a enough new traffic to warrant the removal of the old addresses.
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
-
Google instantly suspends Google+ local listing of brand new company
I just tried to create a Google+ listing for a client. It's a brand new company. As soon as I submit the listing, I get an error message: "Google has suspended your page due to quality issues." There is no content on the listing, no website, etc. Just their NAP. All I can guess is their business address or phone number is on a blacklist due to some previous tenant/owner. Does Google keep a blacklist of addresses and/or phone numbers? Any other ideas?
Image & Video Optimization | | AdamThompson0 -
Local SEO Question: Domain Wide Vs Specific Page
Hey Moz Community, Question about Local SEO authority and how it applies to a domain vs. landing page. Let me elaborate... Company is launching a new local out reach sales channel and merging it with our inbound sales channel under one brand. The plan thus far is to create a targeted landing page for local customers/leads. I have been tasked with creating the written content and making sure we are optimized as much as possible for this landing page to show up for our city. Funny enough for a lot of relevant terms we are already in the top 10 with little optimization (Also due to low competition for most of these terms) Two questions: 1. Should the whole site be optimized for local - appropriate schema markup, G+ business local set up, contact page with correct address formatting, building citations/local links etc.? To accompany our targeted page? 2. Will taking a local first initiative hurt reaching our non-local target market? If so will a very targeted landing page for local customers do the trick minus rest of local optimizations ? I guess what the question really boils down to is will optimizing for local hurt our broader inbound search reach/ranks in the long run? I want to be sure we are competitive to our broader audience and local audience on the same site with trying to get into sub-domains or considering re branding what is essentially the same department but for local purposes. Responses and sharing previous experience would be greatly appreciated 🙂
Image & Video Optimization | | paul-bold0 -
Youtube vs Vimeo for better SEO
Hi i am starting to make some videos for my company like a tutorials for our products and i have some questions! What low budget service to choose for video hosting to have the best results for seo? I start with youtube because is google friendly but the ads are very big problem for me! Then i had start to thing about Vimeo but I am worried if my videos gone lost from search results! What you thing about it?
Image & Video Optimization | | petrospan0 -
Google + Local for client with no physical address and multiple phone nos
Hi I have a client who is service-based and goes out to his local customers' homes to conduct his business. He operates from home so does not want to show his home address, he also has a number of local telephone numbers that divert to his mobile. I was wondering which type of category to put his business into, my ideal would be local business but for that I need to add the address the question is can I still hide the address the way you used to in the old format or is there other recommendations to optimise his local placement?
Image & Video Optimization | | AllieMc0 -
Multiple Businesses in One Location + In One Google Places Account Under Review
HI, My Problem: Multiple businesses in one location, under one Google Places account, one being reviewed. My Question: see very bottom of this post Background: I am trying to help a client get both of his businesses ranking in Google Places. The problem is the office building has multiple doctors/practices in the same building and gave no business suite numbers to doctors that rent office space. Here is the list of the other businesses in the office: http://www.fullcirclefamilycare.com/health_care.htm. The problem escalates because the doctor I am trying to help has a chiropractic business & a spinal decompression business, both legal entities, both different registered company names, different phone numbers, and websites, but both located in this office building. He rents two offices (they should be suites) in the building. The problem escalates even more because the doctor has registered both locations (see below) in his Google Places account: Westchester Spinal Decompression Center
Image & Video Optimization | | WebBizIdeas
1241 Mamaroneck Avenue, White Plains, NY 10605 (914) 421-1502 Joint Effort Chiropractic
1241 Mamaroneck Ave., White Plains, NY 10605 (914) 368-7668
jointeffortchiro.com The first (spinal decompression) was registered a long time ago and ranks #1 for "spinal decompression white plains NY." The second he just confirmed the Google Post card a few weeks ago and has been under review since. More research so you can help me better: The "The Shop for Holistic Health / The Shop at Full Circle", a businesses location in the same office building has verified their account and ranks #1 for "women's health care white plains NY" and "midwife white plains NY." Another business,in the same office building "Keras-Donaghy Melissa S", has not claimed their listing and ranks #1 for "Women’s Health physical Therapist white plains NY" Another business, "Kuhl Josephine MD," has not claimed their listing ranks in the top 10 for "Adolescent Psychiatrist white plains NY." My Question: What do I do, wait it out and see if Google will remove the "under review" under his current Google Places account or do I add a suite number now and see if Google will send another post card? Or do I create a new account, add the business, add a suite number this time, and see if they will confirm it. I don't want to do this because the doctor already has 12 reviews on this Google Places account. If I do do this, what do I do with the Google Places account under review?0 -
Local SEO - our company is in 2 very different locations
Hi, Our company nlpca.com is in 2 locations. It's doing really well in San Francisco, California But we've opened a 2nd location in Salt Lake City, Utah The problem is that our site is all about San Francisco, California. Utah is just as important as San Francisco to us and we need to start tailoring to both. People from Utah say they are confused because our site is so tailored to California. Even our domain name is the keyword "NLP" combined with the state initial "CA" for California. A new domain is not an option. One thing we are thinking of doing is changing our header to say "The NLP and Coaching Institute and the NLP Institute of California". It would say both of our company names and hopefully the first would catch the Utah people. But I don't think it's just our banner. Can you take a look at our site and tell us how to tailor to both locations and keep our current working optimization for San Francisco, California? Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Local SEO... use 800 # or local, use full-street name or abbreviation?
Couple local SEO questions... Do you feel it’s better to submit a listing with the full type of street rather than an abbreviation? Google Places sometimes disassociates data because of small differences like this. Below is an example: Full Name: 123 Broadway Street
Image & Video Optimization | | qlkasdjfw
Abbreviation: 123 Broadway St. Also, I’m wondering if you feel it’s better to submit a local number versus an 800 number. I've modified many local listings for clients manually with an 800 number, but then there are other data sources for these same businesses that are displaying the local number. I am starting to use UBL/LocalEZE and are wondering what people have seen working best... local number or 800 number. Thanks!0 -
Has anyone created a top (Insert # Here) list of local business listing sites?
Has anyone created a top (Insert # Here) list of local business listing sites we should manually submit to? I have around 20 or so but I was wondering if someone could give me a list to cross reference. I have quite a few local business that I work with and I want to make sure I'm hitting all of the main local listings. I also spend time searching for niche listing sites too for each client, so if you have any suggestions on easier ways to find these as well, I'm game. If you have created a list and its out in the wild somewhere I will be happy to link to it from my site. I'm always open to giving some LL to helpful people. Who's up for building a tool that will search through X number of local directories and report back to you if you are listed or not. (Not getlisted.org) You can select a checklist of sites that you want to check. (; Thanks Aaron
Image & Video Optimization | | Shipyard_Agency0