Local Listings SEO: Which multi-location retailers are doing a super job with local listings? I'm also interested in finding retailers who are using schema.org microdata format to structure their store-level data.
-
Do you know of any enterprise level restaurant or retail chains that are doing a great job with their local listings content? Just looking for some links/examples of best practice executions. Also, I'm very interested in finding retailers or other multi-location businesses that are using schema.org microdata format to structure their local store location data.
-
Good for you for finding at least two, Sonia!
-
I am surprised you found 2/10.
-
FYI - in case anyone is interested...
- Costco.com store finder uses Schema.org/store and /postaladdress on individual warehouse locator pages
- Walgreens.com uses Schema.org/pharmacy, /postaladdress and /local business on individual store finder pages
I also looked at JCPenny, WalMart, Target, WaWa, Macys and several others and was unable to confirm that they use Schema.org or other formats to structure their store finder location data for the semantic web. I'm still looking for examples in case you happen to know of any especially good ones.
Thanks!
Sonia
-
Let me see...
Getting a group of franchisees to agree on marketing could be replaced with herding cats, pulling teeth, root canal, flat tire on freeway, all at the same time and you would avoid a lot more headaches.
Best
-
Thanks, Robert. I really appreciate the tip. I do think that it is an issue that is probably hard to gather a lot of franchisee support around.
-
Sonia
I do not disagree. I was a large equity holder in a national franchisor and my experience was that the franchisees still had say in what happened on the local level. Similarly, we have a client who has franchisees and even though the franchisor controls the portion of the fees that are allocated contractually to the "local" spend, the franchisee's have a committee that rules on a lot of that.
With something like McDonald's where they seem to have and exert a lot more control, it would make sense that they handle it (as you said, they achieve economies that way).I would suggest at least an email to Jon Schepke at SIM and you are free to let him know I suggested you contact him. If anyone would be able to give an expert answer to your query, it would be Jon.
Great question Sonia,
Robert
-
That's true in some cases where franchisees run a lot of locations, but largely the national company is responsible for national media buys and investments - which should include local search presence at scale.
-
I was pondering this and I think on the large restaurant chains they run into a problem we used to run into when I was involved with a franchise group. You have all these locations that are owned by individuals and not one person/group owning everyone in a larger city. It is very difficult to convince each one to spend money, etc.
Just a thought,
-
Hi Robert,
Thanks so much for weighing in on this. I really appreciate the wider input on this topic, as my own view could be slanted by the fact that I tend to try to shop small local brands whenever I can. Even my favorite grocery store is an independent one - hard to find these days in the USA. Interestingly, Sonia started two threads on a similar topic, and on her other one, David Mihm was able to point out one larger retailer that is doing a good job...REI.com. Check out their location pages. I was impressed!
But when it comes to restaurants, I just have not seen anything like this in looking at the biggies like fast food chains. I find this interesting, because with their enormous incomes, they would certainly have the money to do this, but as things currently are, there's not much incentive to do so. It's easy to find McDonald's or Burger King in any town, regardless of a lack of Local SEO.
Appreciate your feedback. Maybe someone can dig around and find the food franchise that breaks the mold on this
-
Miriam,
You are so correct on this. It always amazes me how many large companies rely on their brand, people know them, etc. and are just unwilling to even look at the improvements they could make with SEO.
One of the first people I ever heard the term SEO from was Jon Schepke who with his cousin Steve were co-founders of Meandur Internet (Proceed Interactive). Jon is CEO of SIM Partners and I know they do local on an enterprise level. Out of curiosity, I looked at their clients page and did not see any retailers that I recognized. What stood out is that companies involved with destinations are all over local.
I do not see larger retailers who are making an attempt at really making local work for them (and you and I know it would), no microdata, etc. But, when things start going a bit South, I am guessing we will see it then.
Best
-
Hi Sonia,
This may be a toughie because, in my experience at least, most enterprise level chains have pages like this to help you find a local location:
http://www.bk.com/en/us/restaurant-locator/index.html
You type your location into a search box and are typically only shown a map and address. There isn't really content here. Maybe someone in the community knows of someone who is doing this better, but it seems to me that big franchises can lean on the strength of the branding and expect Google to 'figure it out' rather than having to make the efforts smaller businesses do. Does the community agree with me on my take on this? I'd like to know!
Regarding the Burger King results page, I can't even find the address I've searched for on the page source code, so I can't tell if they are using schema.
You've asked a good question and I'll be interested to see if anyone can provide an example of what you're looking for.
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
-
How do I rank for a different business categories on google local?
Hello, How do I appear on the local listings for google in different categories or services that I offer? For instance, we're a physical therapy clinic by trade but we specialize in orthopedics, sports medicine, and lower back pain. Thus, how do I rank on google local for these types of services? Currently, we rank for physical therapy but we also miss out on a big part of our business by not ranking for these listings on local. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Cheers, Scott
Local Listings | | scottgray06200 -
Local Ranking Factors?
For Google, has anyone got a finger on how much of a factor the address type "service customers only at their location" versus "service customers at my business location AND customers location is" is as far as local search ranking especially for 3-pack results? (The former they hide the address the latter they show the street address) It seems to me the primary factors are obviously (a) proximity of user's location or location intent to the business location, then (b) natural organic ranking (age of business, domain authority, inbound links, quality content, relevance to the actual keywords searched for). But where does the address type rank amongst all the "secondary factors" like is business currently open, number of reviews and average rating, etc. etc. My guess would be reviews and average rating along with is business currently open would be third, and then address type would factor in - but for all I know the address type could be given much more importance than I am guessing?
Local Listings | | MrSem0 -
[Local Search] Do you get penalized by using a Google Voice number for each seperate business location?
My client is expanding and opening up separate locations and I will be getting all their online business listings up and running. The client wants to use a single 1-888 number for all locations, however, it was my assumption that they would need a local number for each location to improve their ranking. Could I suggest using free Google voice numbers that get forwarded to their 1-888 number or will Google discredit us for this?
Local Listings | | aedesignco0 -
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 -
Local Rankings for Second Business Location in the SAME City
I have an issue regarding local rankings for multiple locations within the SAME city, and I'm hoping to start a productive discussion about the various options for helping a second location gain visibility in the local pack. Here's the context…My business is an electronic cigarette shop in New Orleans, called Crescent City Vape. Our first location (Uptown) opened up a year ago and ranks very well in the local-pack as well as organic results for target keywords, as well as brand terms. Our second location opened up 2 months ago, also in New Orleans (Lower Garden District), about 3 miles away from the first shop. This shop, however, is not visible locally or organically, unless we get extremely specific with a branded search query like "Crescent City Vape Lower Garden District" or "Crescent City Vape St. Charles Ave." It does not rank locally for "Crescent City Vape" or "Crescent City Vape New Orleans" We have one website: crescentcityvape.com -- and both shops have a location landing page on the main site: crescentcityvape.com/uptown
Local Listings | | djreich
crescentcityvape.com/lower-garden However, when we launched our local SEO work for the first shop, we used the homepage as the URL in Google+ Local, as well as all of our citations. When we launched the second shop, we used the location landing page as the URL for G+ and all of our citations. We also added a location modifier to the business name on G+ Local: Crescent City Vape - Lower Garden District Both shops have 5+ reviews on Google+ Local, and both shops have citation profiles that are better than any other competitor. I'm confident that the local SEO basics are covered…and this is evident from the solid local and organic rankings for the original shop. My concern isn't that the second shop is ranking worse than the first. I expected this. But I am very concerned that the second shop doesn't even rank for a branded search like "Crescent City Vape." You have to get unrealistically specific with local descriptors to see the G+ local result for the second shop. e.g. "Crescent City Vape Lower Garden District". Here are some of the options and questions I've been pondering. Would love anyone's thoughts on what's worth trying and what might be too risky…since obviously I do not want to sacrifice rankings for the original shop. Changing the G+ URL of the second shop to the homepage (rather than that local landing page). In this case, G+ pages for both locations would link to the homepage. Then updating Moz Local and other citations accordingly with the URL as the homepage. My concern is that this will end up hurting rankings for the original shop more than helping rankings for the second shop. Removing the location modifier from the second shop's Google+ Local business name. When you google "Starbucks" or "McDonalds" you get a local-pack that usually includes 3 of their locations in the pack, and none have location modifiers. I'm wondering if the modifier is sending the wrong signal, because right now, when you Google "Crescent City Vape" only the original location shows up with a local result. Changing the modifier for the second shop's Google+ Local business name to something like "Crescent City Vape: New Orleans E-Cigs". Some of our competitors have added keywords to their G+ names and it's been effective for them. I know this is not aligned with Google guidelines, and may be a risky play. We don't have anything to lose with the second location if we try this…However, is there any chance this would negatively affect our original shop's rankings (since it's the same domain)? If we went in this direction, should I update our citations accordingly? And build new ones with this new "name"? Does page authority of the business URL have an impact on G+ Local rankings? i.e. would building quality links to the local landing page have much of an impact? i.e. is that a productive use of time and resources, as opposed to promoting the homepage and other more important landing pages? Appreciate your thoughts and feedback! Hopefully this discussion will be helpful for other businesses trying to rank for more than one location in the same city. Thanks!0 -
Structured Data in Google Webmaster Tools
Have noticed a significant drop in structured data items and pages on GWT in the last one week. We have not made any changes and can still see that we have the rich snippet implementation in place across our site. Has anyone else noticed this drop? What could be possible reasons for the same? On 8th July we had 646,801 items showing up on Structured Data, which dropped to 227,529 on 11th July and 66,161 on 14th July 2014!! TIA Asif
Local Listings | | prsntsnh0 -
Removing website from search while you have Pending Google Places Listing
Hello, If you have assign a website in Google places that is in Pending mode, and you removed the website in WMT, from the searches. Will be denied in google places? Thanks for your help.
Local Listings | | EVERWORLD.ENTERTAIMENT1 -
Is my Structured Data working?
Hello Everyone, I had previously added Structured Data for reviews for my product pages, which worked, and has slightly bumped up CTRs. Now, I am trying to get dates and locations to show up in the SERPs (Products are classes). Google's Structured Data Testing Tool shows that the data is being read without any errors, but I cannot seem to get them to show up in the preview (or actual SERPs). https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cleanedison.com%2Fcourses%2Fentry-level-solar-energy-training%2F If anyone could take a look and let me know if there is anything obvious I missed, it would be much appreciated. Thanks
Local Listings | | CleanEdisonInc0