Best practice for local SEO when two offices handle different services?
-
Our agency has three main services - SEO, PPC and web design. We're in the process of setting up a new office in a different city where our PPC team will be based, while SEO and web will stay in the original office.
How do we handle local SEO/Google My Business listings in this situation? Geo-targeted service pages and two separate GMB listings?
-
Very helpful thanks Miriam. Your answer confirms my gut feeling on this, I just wanted to make sure I was on the right lines. Never heard of the same business offering separate services from two physical locations before.
I think on the site we'll have two separate location pages, as you suggest. This way we can link the listings to separate URLs and keep the services separate.
-
Hi Matt!
The number of Google My Business pages you have is dictated by the number of physical locations out of which you operate - not the number of services your company offers. For example an HVAC company with a single location can have just 1 Google My Business page - not one for heating, another for cooling. I think maybe you already understand this, but I just wanted to be sure to mention it in case there was any confusion about this.
If you have 2 locations, you'll have 2 pages, but Google doesn't have categories for PPC or SEO, though they do have one for Website Designer. You'll want to accurately represent whichever service you offer at each location, as best as you can, which will likely involve use of the category Internet Marketing to categorize your PPC and SEO services, and then a clearer explanation in the business description field.
On the website, it would be most typical to have a location landing page for each of your physical offices, and then 1 page for each service you offer.
Does this help, or am I not quite getting to the heart of your question? Please, let me know!
-
Both really. For example if I was looking for SEO <location>in Google I'd want to see companies who were based in that area. If I was then told I had to go to another location for a meeting, I might be put off.</location>
Saying that, with SEO/PPC they can be more remote - it's not like looking for a taxi company. We have a couple of options, not sure which to go with.
-
I assume your services are limited to the locale, i.e. if someone in location A (which focuses on SEO) wants PPC, you'd refer them to location B. With that in mind, all locations can be a lead-gen engine for all your services. Why not put all services on each location page?
Perhaps I am not fully understanding the question, but I have a feeling you're looking at this from your perspective and overlooking the users perspective?
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
-
Why is a Google Listing Showing Up in a Different Town Than Its Address?
I have a client who runs a dental office on the outskirts of Racine, WI. His address specifically shows up as being in Racine, however, his GMB profile has always showed with the category of "Dentist in Mount Pleasant, WI" displaying below the photos. (Mount Pleasant is the next town over and his office straddles the line between the two towns in Google's overlay map of the town.) Obviously this is frustrating and I'm concerned that his location is hurting his ability to rank in the larger, more populous town of Racine. Have any other SEOs ever encountered this? And if so, how have you approached the issue? Location pages? Mentions of the location more often on the pages? tsLvH2B
Local Listings | | formandfunctionagency1 -
Tracking Google Local Click-Thrus (Maps)
We've expanded our business to be in multiple cities. We are tracking our local rankings in each city and have Adwords campaigns for those cities with location extensions. We have a separate contact page for each city but haven't setup landing pages for each city which would be fairly tricky as our services are identical for each city. So really the landing page would be almost identical to our home page content with maybe a photo of the city and the city's name thrown in here and there - definitely a risk of duplicate content detection. What I'm wondering is if anyone knows if there a Google Analytics report we can run to show us links from our Google Places for Business Listing segregated by location? My guess is that we would need to make each URL for each Google Places listing unique to that location, like http://www.oursite.com?{name of city} Or is this not even necessary by using some report settings in Google Analytics? -- update -- Well this is a 7-year old article but I suspect it might still basically hold true? In other words, it's not easy and straight forward. What I'm wondering is, if I use the ?{cityname} URL only in my Places listings URLs, well, let's make it ?place={cityname} then really all I need to do is run a report filtering by URL contains ?place= Can it really be that simple because if it is, then this old article and others like it seem to be really over complicating the strategy for simply seeing your googe places listing traffic in total and by location? https://moz.com/blog/tracking-traffic-from-google-places-in-google-analytics Furthermore, if we plan on eventually building home pages for each location, maybe the better URL structure would be mysite.com/places/{city name} and just do a 301 to the home page until the custom page is built. The big question then arises if we are only using this URL in our Google Places listings does it have any farther reaching effect on Google's organic view of our website? In other words will it try to add a unique Google Places URL to the organic results database? Will it cause a suspension of the Google Places listing? If we create the URL as an alias to the home page instead of a 301 will it risk dupe content penalty. Wait a sec... if we use a 301 won't that render tracking in Analytics useless as it's only then going to count the pageview for the home page and not the original URL, right? I guess we could use an alias and then in the robots.txt dissallow indexing of any URLs with /places/ ? Now I think I'M over complicating things. Seems like the best/easiest/safest method is to just a ?place={city name} to the Google Places URL. Then once we have unique places landing pages, just go update the URL in all our places listing.
Local Listings | | Wizkids9640 -
Does Google call your satellite offices and ask what's down the street?
Is this a real thing? Do they actually do this? Should I be concerned and train my receptionists to know their surroundings?
Local Listings | | marketingdepartment.ch6 -
Is Moz Local useful for a specialized small business?
I can see the use of Moz Local for businesses for the general public, like a restaurant. But is it useful for a more specialized business like a recording studio? The studio ranks high on Google already for our city (usually #1 but some days #2). It's not like people are driving around and grab their phone to look up an emergency recording studio stop. Is it useful?
Local Listings | | amybethmegjo0 -
How best to delete a duplicate Google My Business listing
Hi Mozzers, I am in need of help please. What is the best way to remove a duplicate GMB listing? Is best practice to a) Mark as permanently closed and wait for Google to update b) Call GMB in India and ask them to delete the redundant listing (do they even do this for you?) c) Delete the page from within my dashboard settings I am worried my NAP data is being diluted by inaccurate historical listings (most of which I have been able to claim ownership of) Any help appreciated. Ben
Local Listings | | Bendall0 -
Should I change my local listing Service type from Brick and Mortar to Service Area in Google? And will it affect my ranking in a negative manner?
Currently my company Big Boy Bail Bonds, Inc is ranking very well for the city it is located and, currently service type is brick and mortar. But my Company does not only service people at our location but we service the entire county of Los Angeles. And I wanted to know if you would advise me on weather I should change the service type from brick and morter to service area. and if doing that would effect me in a negative manner when it came to my ranking? Plz advice Thank you in advance.
Local Listings | | LittleDog1 -
Google Local Business SEO
Under "http://moz.com/blog/everybody-needs-local-seo" Q) There is a paragraph saying "If your business has multiple locations, you should have a unique location landing page for each Google Plus Local listing." Does it mean that for each of my shop (location), i have to create an brand new google plus page for it? Q) There is a paragraph saying "you're dealing with a single location, then we're talking about your home page - but these elements should also be locally optimized on product and services pages. City and state in the title tag. City and state in H1 heading" For example, if my country is australia, i have to create a page within my website and the it is optimised to the keywords "Gold Coast | Australia" in my 'product and services page'?
Local Listings | | kevinbp0 -
Default Local SEO question: Does Google really do improptu check ins?
I have a client who has multiple locations within his state, many of which are satellite offices. Although they don't have anyone working at these satellite offices full time, they have office space available to them their, someone who can take calls/mail and do use the space frequently in person. We've been in the process of cleaning up duplicate and incorrect listings in directories to get on the map in the SERPs in these markets, but the local SEO outfit we've hired has come back with a problem I found surprising. In order to clean up the duplicate & incorrect Google+ profiles that we've got out there for these offices, we evidently need to work with an actual Google moderator. This moderator has said that the satellite offices in question are actually not real business locations and are in violation of G+ guidlines. The local SEO I'm using says that it's not uncommon for Google to actually send someone out to do an in person improptu visit when they are suspicious that a listing might not belong in their listings, and I find this really surprising. Do any of you have any experience with whether this is the case? FWIW, this is a real business that could have someone working remotely in these offices remotely if that's what it took to make Google happy, but they'd rather not and certainly don't need to in order to offer their services in these markets.
Local Listings | | LeeAbrahamson0