How do I treat multiple buildings on the same college campus on Google for local SEO?

[GabeGibitz]

Should I delete them? Simply give them a different address like "City, State, Zip"?

I see the benefit of having key buildings on campus in Google Maps, but I don't want those to affect my accuracy score and, thus, my local rankings for SEO.

[julie-getonthemap]

I hope you succeed with your quest to make it easier to get college businesses listed. I am helping with a music festival in February on Sacramento State's campus. Hundreds of people attending, many who will get lost because the building is not on the map. The campus road system is convoluted with random detours and dead ends to slow down the speeders who are late for class.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Gabe,

1. If they don't have separate phone numbers, then I personally would not advise building citations for them. Google wants the number you list for a location to connect as directly as possible to the specific location. Lacking this, I wouldn't build citations, but you might find varying opinions on this.

2. Yes, if you decide to build citations for each building, you are talking about building a complete, unique citation set for each locations. So 20 buildings would equal 20 citation sets.

3. In a correct scenario, properly created listings for multi-department businesses should not water anything down. However, your scenario may not qualify as 'correct', given lack of unique numbers.

4. Here's an example. This is USF: https://www.google.com/maps/place/University+of+San+Francisco/@37.7766466,-122.4528717,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x8085874a311220bb:0x6a56ca6f837ff84e!8m2!3d37.7766466!4d-122.450683

And here is a unique building on this campus (note separate phone number): https://www.google.com/maps/place/Phelan+Hall/@37.7762416,-122.4497874,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x68467e565121581b?sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjEjOWA7YDQAhVkilQKHbXTA0YQ_BIIeDAK

I haven't looked closely at how this university is doing things, but I was able to find that example in a couple of seconds. Hopefully, you can find others.

Adhering to the letter of Google's guidelines, any citation set you build should have a real world guideline-compliant name, direct phone number and accurate street address. Any variation from this can lead to problems. Hope this helps!

[GabeGibitz]

This creates more questions than answers...ha. Feel free to direct me to a resource. I've done a hefty amount of research on SEO and local SEO, but still have lots of questions for the higher ed sector. Questions:

1. If the university doesn't have separate phone numbers (and you can't list phone extensions on FB and Google), will a different "business name" and landing page suffice for each department?
2. If I treat each department as distinct, am I creating a different property in Moz Local for them? If I had 20 departments, I'm paying 2,000 dollars a year then, right?
3. If I do make every department distinct, does that "water down" the university brand or does it give me more opportunities to rank?
4. What's standard protocol for universities? Looking for someone who has thought through this and is successful at it. Looks like people are doing things all across the board. I just want to do it right.

Thanks!! Really appreciate this community.

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Gabe,

Because Google continues to dominate Local, we normally take our queues from them. Google's guidelines allow a unique listing for major departments of campus-style entities like colleges and medical centers. Google states:

• Individual practitioners and departments within businesses, universities, hospitals, and government buildings may have separate pages. See specific guidelines about individual practitioners and departments for more information.

Publicly-facing departments that operate as distinct entities should have their own page. The exact name of each department must be different from that of the main business and that of other departments. Typically such departments have a separate customer entrance and should each have distinct categories. Their hours may sometimes differ from those of the main business.

• Acceptable (as distinct listings):
  • "Walmart Vision Center"
  • "Sears Auto Center"
  • "Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Dermatology"
• Not acceptable (as distinct listings):
  • The Apple products section of Best Buy
  • The hot food bar inside Whole Foods Market

For each department, the category that is the most representative of that department must be different from that of the main business and that of other departments.

• The main business "Wells Fargo" has the category "Bank" whereas the department "Wells Fargo Advisors" has the category "Financial Consultant"
• The main business "South Bay Toyota" has the category "Toyota Dealer" whereas the "South Bay Toyota Service & Parts" has the category "Auto Repair Shop" (plus the category "Auto Parts Store")
• The main business "GetGo" has the category "Convenience Store" (plus the category "Sandwich Shop") whereas the department "GetGo Fuel" has the category "Gas Station", and the department "WetGo" has the category "Car Wash"

So, basically, for each set of citations you build for a major building on the campus, you need to have a unique name that adheres to the guidelines, and where possible, a unique category (can be hard with schools), I HIGHLY recommend also having:

• A unique phone number for any department you list

• A unique landing page on the college website for that department, linked to from the GMB listing and all other citations.

What you need to strive for is that if English Hall has its own citations, they are consistent across the web. Moz Local can really help you ascertain inconsistencies and duplicates. You want to have the NAP+W be as consistent as possible everywhere, shoring up Google's trust in the validity of the data they have about your business.

[JordanLowry]

It is a nightmare sometimes. I've done a few audits and found everything from important blocked resources to important landing pages that are only accessible in a pdf format.

Your welcome. Let me know if there are any additional questions you may have. Feel free to shoot me a message.

[GabeGibitz]

Good insight. Yeah, I'm in higher ed trying to fix our issues and finding that most higher ed institutions have similar problems. Thanks!

[JordanLowry]

Well, there are a lot of SEO issues in the higher ed space I've seen. Since that would not be considered a "publicly facing department" I would imagine that would be overkill. My rule of thumb generally is if it provides good user experience go for it.

[GabeGibitz]

Ugh. I'll have to start a new thread addressing that specific issue. When I'm signed in to Moz Local, it doesn't say that's even an issue in the duplicates section. Our departments don't act as distinct entities (own phone numbers, billing, etc.) since we're a small university. University of Kentucky, for instance has a different location for ever dorm and does this:

Yadayada Dorm
University of Kentucky (instead of the UK address)
Lexington, KY 40390

Good user experience, but, again, good practice?

[JordanLowry]

When I run the local search I see two verified listing for 'Ashbury University' with different addresses I would consolidate those first. Also, according to Google's guidelines 'Publicly-facing departments that operate as distinct entities should have their own page.' As long as the name is different from that of the main campus you will be fine. Keep the other buildings listings open.

[GabeGibitz]

Thanks for your insights.

Yep. I'm using Moz Local to help me with this. They don't have different addresses. Just different locations (as I'm sure you can imagine).

Doesn't really help me figure out if I should close all the buildings (which is unhelpful to the user) for the sake of local SEO. Pros/cons? Risks/benefits? What kind of things am I weighing?

[JordanLowry]

I think this is a unique issue I think there might be a few different ways of handling it. I am assuming those buildings have different addresses and specific functions. The first option you can claim those local listing etc in local directories and properly fill out the local information accordingly. Or the second option would be to just maintain one listing for the school overall.

I would use Moz's local search tool and see how you already appear in the listings. Personally, I would lean towards having one local listing for the campus and if you have separate sister campuses I would claim those as well.