Hey Awesome Local Folks!

I thought I'd take a proactive stance and start a thread on the new doorway pages update from Google, as I feel there will be questions coming up about this here in the forum:

Here's the update announcement:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/03/an-update-on-doorway-pages.html

And here's the part that will make local business owners and Local SEOs take a second glance at this:

Here are questions to ask of pages that could be seen as doorway pages:

Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic?

I think this will naturally lead to questions about the practice of creating local/city landing pages. At this point, my prediction is that this will come down to high quality vs. crummy quality pages of this type. In fact, after chatting briefly with Andrew Shotland, I'm leaning a bit toward seeing the above language as being strongly geared toward directory type sites and large franchises. I recommend reading Andrew's post about his take on this, as I think he's on the right track:

http://www.localseoguide.com/googles-about-to-close-your-local-doorway-pages/

So, I'm feeling at this point that if you've made the right efforts to develop unique, high quality local landing pages, you should be good unless you are an accidental casualty of an over-zealous update. We'll see! If anyone has thoughts to contribute on this thread, I hope they will, and if lots of questions start coming up about this here in the community, feel free to link back to this thread in helping your fellow community members Thanks, all!

Hey To All My Local Pals, Here

Recently, I watched a totally fascinating LocalU video in which Mike Blumenthal introduced a hypothesis that there may be a way to analyze what, specifically, is triggering a specific local pack. Now, Mike is stating that correlation is not causation in explaining this, but basically what he starts talking about at around 4:40 in the video is that what you are seeing rank well in the local packs may be demonstrably caused by what you see ranking organically beneath the pack, or may be caused by totally different signals.

Mike says,

_"If you're seeing the top 10 results are all IYP industry sites, and there's a pack showing, and the highest local site is 24 or something in organic, it's unlikely that that's what's triggering the pack. And so then you want to look at third-party triggers and see if that's what's actually triggering the pack." _

Obviously, all of us who do Local are familiar with the idea that a tremendous variety of elements contribute to pack rankings, but I am particularly intrigued by the idea of looking at the organic result beneath a pack and determining that there is little or no correlation between them, and this then driving one to look elsewhere for contributing factors.

In a recent response to another thread here on Q&A, I discussed some common local pack ranking failure causes when organic rank is high. What I'd love to see is whether, if you look at some of your clients' desired packs, can you tell if organic signals are driving them, or can you see that it's not organic signals driving the pack, as Mike suggests. What, in those cases, does appear to be driving the packs?

I'd be so interested in a discussion on this. What do you see? What do you think of Mike's suggestions?

Hi Michelleh,
You will find differing opinions on this. Most of the Local SEOs I know use Localeze over UBL these days. I have seen doubts expressed regarding the current value of UBL. I have not used Yext, personally, but recommend you read Mike Blumenthal's recent review of their product:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/03/01/yext-local-seo/

I'll quote from Mike's post here:

"Pluses:

-From a management and process point of view for the local SEO the service makes sense. Its fast and efficient and provides some tracking. What would take 6 or 7 hours is done in 15 minutes. If outsourced it would cost in the range of a $100 but the quality and consistency would not be as good.

-It seems to generate between 5 and 6 additional citations that Google thinks are important. Why that should be the case with listings that have already been claimed is not clear.

-The service allows for specials to be easily created and disseminated quickly and things like hours to be changed in a timely fashion.

-There is some reporting and there is decent multilevel management so an SEO can allow clients to access their own reports.

-If a business were to move or change phone numbers it provides a very efficient way of grappling with that issue.

-Whether you use the service or not, Yext’s Local Search Scorecard is a great way to assess NAP consistency across a wide range of sites.

Negatives:

-The reporting is lame. Although in conversations with Yext’s Howard Lerman, they will be adding additional features and color. One of particular interest will be review tracking.

-The cost in and off itself is expensive and it is an annual recurring cost. There is a small reseller discount that starts at only 5% and with enough volume goes up.

• Web traffic from these sites is small compared to Google and even comparing to Bing or Yahoo. But that isn’t Yext’s issue."

I think the main concern with Yext's product is its cost. If you can afford it, it might be a good choice, but as I've said, most of the Local SEOs I know appear to continue to favor Localeze.

And, there is the alternative, as pointed out well by ITRogers, of doing this manually and making your own spreadsheet to keep track of your work. I don't consider this inferior to any product being offered because you have total control over exactly what you are doing. In many cases, manual submission might be the best choice, and if you do it yourself, it is certainly the most affordable!

Hi Rich,

I know those EMDs can be so tempting to use, particularly because Google still appears to have a bias towards keywords in the domain after all these years, but I'm going to attempt to explain here why you are likely hearing 'no-no' on this.

Your topic is such a good one, that I'm going to break this response down into 4 different parts, looking at this from 4 different viewpoints.

1. You're an electrician physically located in Jacksonville. You install lighting, you install wiring, you do residential work, you do commercial work. You offer half a dozen or more different services, but they all fall under the general heading of electrical work. Because you have a single office you're working out of, you are only allowed to build a single Google My Business listing, based on your Jacksonville location and using the categories Electrician and Electrical Engineer. You set this up as a service area business in your GMB dashboard, because you serve a variety of towns around your Jacksonville location. You are not allowed to create additional GMB listings for each of your services nor for cities where you don't have a physical location. So, in sum, you've got one GMB listing, properly categorized and listing one business name, one address, one phone number and one website. This is the sum of the information you are sending directly to Google about your business, via the GMB dashboard.

2. Now, we need to step into the shoes of a Googlebot to picture what happens from here, once you've created that GMB listing. We (the Googlebot) have this info about ABC Electrical at 123 Main St in Jacksonville, phone number (904) 365-7777 and URL www.abcelectrical.com. We head out to the web to cross-check this data we have with every other piece of data that seems to relate to this. We run into confusion very quickly because we start to encounter:

• The same physical street address on 6 different websites

• A shared phone number on 2 websites

• Some duplicated content on 4 websites

• A shared or similar business name on 3 sites

We thought the electrician told us his business was ABC Electrical at X address, X phone number and X website URL. So what is all this stuff? How does ABC Electrical relate to ABC Electrical Jacksonville Beach, or ABC Electrical Palm Beach, or Enterprise Electrical Jacksonville? We aren't totally sure and we don't think we 'trust' our data about this business which seems confusing. We'd rather rank a business highly when we're positive that it's relevant to the searcher, and we just don't feel sure how relevant ABC is, given how their data is all over the place. In fact, there's a chance ABC could be trying to game us, trying to appear as if it is 6 businesses instead of 1 and in 6 locations instead of 1. Hmm, we don't really like that at all.

3. Okay, so that was us being Googlebot. Kind of silly, I know, but I find it helps me to tell a story to myself like this to help me envision possible paths. Now, let's turn back into being you, the business owner. You have been in your industry for a long time, and have been building a brand called Empire Electric. You've had a single website you've been working to make the very best site on its topic in its geography. Likely, just doing this has represented a considerable investment of time and money. You've got a blog on this site, and it's challenging enough to find time every week to write something awesome on it, but you're doing it. You're making that time. You're dedicated to building that brand!

Now, suddenly, instead of concentrating all the spare time and budget you have on your one website, your one blog, you are considering splitting that up into 2, 3, 4, 5 different parts. Ask yourself seriously if you will have the time to develop totally unique, high quality content for each separate site, and to write not one blog post a week, but five, so that every site you run is equally good, equally the best of its kind in its city. Or, if not the time, the money to pay a really excellent copywriter and blogger to achieve all of this for you on an initial and then ongoing basis? Or, will trying to run all this and/or pay for all this just end up detracting from your original goal of making your company and main website the leader in its industry/geography? Will you end up with half a dozen poor quality websites instead of one powerhouse website?

4). Now, finally, let's be me - the Local SEO, or any of those other Local SEOs you've heard 'no-no' from on this. Why are you getting this response? It's because this is what we've seen with other businesses that went with a multi-site path instead of a single site one:

• NAP inconsistency across multiple websites, killing trust in the true data for the brand.

• Duplicate content

• Thin, weak content

• Neglected websites

• Owner burnout

• Efforts being spread too thin to have the effect we hoped for

• And, in extreme cases, filters, penalties and GMB takedowns!

So, that's what the no-no comes from. If you're hearing this, it's because this is what Local SEOs have seen so many times, they are worried that the same things will happen to you. To be totally honest, those you've heard this from likely feel doubtful that your business is going to be the exception that ensures that all guidelines are obeyed, no NAP is shared or convoluted, no content is thin, no content is duplicated,all sites are kept fresh and active at all times, and that there is absolutely ZERO footprint linking one website to another in any way. That is a really big list of requirements, and in fairness, it is actually possible to meet all of those requirements. It may be that you do have the time, the funding and the technical skills to meet every one of these requirements for a multi-site approach. If you do, then, yes, you could go this way.

But will it be worth it?

It's my personal opinion that it is almost always better to build the best darned authoritative website in your industry/geography, putting every bit of time and money into turning that site into a powerhouse for your brand, rather than spreading yourself thin over a bevy of websites. After all, at the end of the day, it's your brand that you want on the lips of your neighbors. You want them to know to call Empire Electric for all of the electrical needs. You don't want them to try to remember they saw some site called electricalservicesjacksonville.com. That's not a brand. It's just a bunch of keywords.

Moz is a good example we can look at. It offer a variety of products and services, all under the Moz roof. But, imagine if Moz instead had one site for this forum, another for Pro, another for Local, another for our blog, another for YouMoz, one for Seattle, another for our customers in Portland, and San Francisco, and Denver. Doesn't it make it easier for you, the community member, to know you just come to Moz for everything we offer? And wouldn't it be easier for your customers throughout Florida to know that they just come to Empire Electric for every service you offer in every city in which you serve?

Whew - long response, but it's scenarios like these that represent a major decision for a business like yours, and they deserve all the thought you can give them, taking into account how all paths might affect the future of your business. I'll just close by addressing the fact again that, yes, Google is still weighting EMDs in Local SEO. I see totally awful websites ranking because of keywords in their domains ... but I do not expect this to last. I predict that the continuous growth of Google's sophistication will one day result in a crackdown on these low quality sites. When that day comes, I'd certainly be glad I'd built a fortress at my single, branded domain and I'd sit back, and watch those EMD competitors who never deserved to rank well in the first place fall down the rankings. I'd be in pretty good shape

Hope this helps!

Hi Catherine,

In order to qualify for local inclusion, avoid penalties and prevent merging, your client must be able to answer yes to the following 3 points.

1. Does the business have a unique, dedicated physical address (not a virtual address, P.O. Box or shared address)?

2. Does the business have a unique, dedicated local phone number in the city of location (not an 800 number, not a call tracking number, not a shared number)

3. Does the business have in-person transactions with its customers, either at its own location (like a restaurant) or at the customers' locations (like a plumber)?

If the business does not meet any one of these 3 criteria, it does not qualify for local inclusion. I don't know where your client is at on points 2 and 3, but if they can't say yes to point one, Local SEO will be nothing but problematic for them. Here's why:

If 2 or more businesses share an address, suite address or phone number (or even if their names are too similar), Google will frequently merge the business details of the listings. This means that Joe the Barber can end up with Jim the Plumber's business name, phone number or reviews showing up on his listing. Merging is one of the most difficult issues to deal with in Local, and one to be avoided at all costs.

Here is a Google help file on this issue: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=175290

Your client's best hope is to:

1. Secure a unique suite number in the building at which he/she works and at which mail can be received.

2. Search for all citations of the business web-wide to correct any existent citations so that they include the new suite number.

Hope this helps!

Hi There!

I would really urge you to explain to the business owner that sharing a phone number is liable to create problems for them in marketing the business. Their Google+ Local listings could merge, mixing up their data and adversely affecting each business' ability to rank. Moreover, if the two businesses are sharing a phone number, I'm guessing that they have some sort of call center that's trying to divvy up calls for one business or the other and Google expects each individual business to be directly contactable at its local number.

This might be a good thread on Linda Buquet's forum to show the business owner http://www.localsearchforum.com/local-seo-ranking/10508-business-2-offices-but-one-phone-number.html with an explanation of why no one would want to risk this kind of headache when a separate phone number should be an affordable and quick acquisition for any business.

If the business owner will not listen to this advice, then I would only suggest undertaking working with them if they remove all references to the phone number from the Internet for one of the business and solely promote contact information for the second business. This suggestions is not likely to be well received, because doubtless the owner wants to market both businesses, but it would be really frustrating to me personally to undertake marketing in this scenario knowing it could just create a mess instead of the good results I'd hope to be creating for the business.

On the Moz Local side, what you're seeing in the results is a pretty good illustration of the confusion a shared number can cause. While I believe you can list two businesses with the same phone number, I'm not 100% certain about this, and would recommend you contact the Help Team for further information on this. So sorry you're in a tough situation with this client - sounds like it needs some careful thought and a good chat with the business owner.

Hey Donald!Great topic. Building city landing pages is a common best practice for service area businesses with staff who travel to clients to serve them in a variety of towns beyond the town in which the company is physically located. Does your client go to clients' homes/businesses, or do his clients come to him? If the latter, then city landing pages are unlikely to be a good fit, but if the former, here's how you evaluate this:

Bad City Landing Pages:

• Have duplicate content

• Have thin or poorly-written content

• Have no reason, beyond a grab for rankings, to exist

• Are buried somewhere deep in the architecture of the site instead of in a high level menu

• Contain large blocks of zip codes or similar spammy stuff

• Contain fake or virtual addresses for the purpose of trying to appear to have a physical location where none exists

Good City Landing Pages:

• Have the absolute best content you are capable of creating, including text, videos, photos, testimonials and anything else you can think of to make these pages terrific

• Do not duplicate one another in any way

• Actually serve customers, rather than simply grabbing for rankings

• Are linked to from a high level menu

• Cover a reasonable number of cities for the business

The challenge facing any service area business when embracing the creation of city landing pages is to make them as interesting, unique and helpful as possible. This can be a challenge when you essentially offer the same service in each location, so this is where your marketing smarts can help.

For example, you might have the client take a camera along to do video documentary of his projects in each given city. Or, you might ask 5 really happy customers to allow you to do a shoot of a video testimonial for each of the given cities. Or, you might be running a geo-sensitive business in which advice for customers in one city might be different than advice for customers in a different city (not likely in your client's industry, but applicable when it comes to things like terrain, weather, laws or other micro conditions).

As the marketer, you can be a huge help in assisting the client in a brainstorming session that will surface different topics and media that can make each city landing page different and useful for customers. If the marketer or the business owner are not up to the task, my advice is always going to be not to undertake the project. This really requires the best effort both can make, and it can be a truly fun and educational undertaking for both the owner and his marketer.

Hope this helps!

Hi Rox,

Great topic! I can only speak to the local aspect of this. Vanity numbers (numbers with letters in them) are considered a no-no when it comes to citation building. Ideally, what you want is a plain, local area code phone number that connects directly to the business. Looks like your current number is an 800 number, which some citation platforms don't support, but at least it is made up of numbers rather than letters. At any rate, if you client wants to use vanity numbers on radio ads or in images on his website, that's fine, but trying to list them as primary numbers on the website or citations can lead to NAP inconsistency, which is a negative ranking factor.

More on this topic:

http://searchengineland.com/what-not-to-do-on-local-business-websites-81650

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/11/25/guide-to-using-call-tracking-for-local-search/

Just for contrast, here's an article claiming the benefits of vanity phone numbers, but do pay attention to the source its coming from:

http://hello-operator.softwareadvice.com/want-memorable-toll-free-number-ask-neuroscientist-0414/

Hope this helps and that others will weigh in on use of vanity numbers in environments other than Local Search.

Hi Jayestovall,

To begin with, it's important to understand that Google will typically see any local business as most relevant to its city of location. So, if you're located in San Francisco (i.e. have a dedicated local area code phone number and street address there) your prime location and best opportunity for achieving high visibility will be for searches that include the phrase 'san francisco' or performed by san francisco-based users.

You are in a very common situation in which you operate in a wide service radius. The typical process involves creating city landing pages for each of your main service locations, and though you typically will not be able to locally outrank competitors who are physically located in those service cities, you can strive for secondary organic rankings for these geo terms.

To make this manageable, make a list of your 10 most important service cities/towns. Develop unique, non-duplicate content for each of these 10 cities. Create a section in your main site menu labeled 'Cities We Serve' or something along those lines and begin listing the pages in this menu. If you don't feel you can create useful, creative copy, hire a copywriter for this important task. Then, move onto your next 10 most important service cities. Build it in manageable chunks and do your absolute best job on every page.

Beyond this, linkbuilding to the pages would be next steps.

Hope this gives you a plan of action that makes sense!

Miriam

Hi Imedia,

You've asked a smart question, and I'm hoping you get a variety of responses from the community. I'm going to weigh in here on why I am not a fan of microsites, specifically for local businesses. I'll break this into numbered points for easiest reading:

1. It's a core goal of every local business to be sure it is sending an absolutely clear NAP+W signal to Google. That's name, address, phone number + website. If Google connects the dots in any way between your microsites, you are posing the question to them, "What is the 'W' in 'NAP=W' here?" You don't want Google to have to ask this. You want them utterly convinced that acmeplumbing.com is your authoritative website. Not sacramentoacmeplumbing.com or sanjoseacmeplumbing.com or what have you.

2. The scenario you describe in which your competitors phone number/s are all ringing back to the same office is really concerning. If they are using the same phone number on multiple sites, this could seriously compound the issue described in point #1. Now Google is asking, "Does this phone number belong to Acme Plumbing or Sacramento Acme Plumbing?" The results of Google's confusing about this could lead to duplicate listings being created with erroneous details on them and ranking failures. Never cloud NAP if you can help it.

3. If the competitors are making the further mistake of putting any part of their physical address on the microsites, then they are really playing with fire. Google finding the same business name, phone number or address on more than one company website can be a recipe for disaster. Mis-matched NAP takes up three spots in the most negative ranking factors identified in the recent Local Search Ranking Factors 2013 survey (see: http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors).

4. For a Service Area Business (SAB) model like a plumber, Google does understand that you have a single physical location and multiple service cities where you are not physically located, but restricts you to having a single listing reflective of physical locale. It makes sense to build out content for your service cities, but there is no reason this can't be on your authoritative website. Google is still a bit weak in carrying out EMD penalties in the Local sphere vs. the organic sphere, but the writing is on the wall that they are not a fan of the EMD strategy. It's still working for many businesses in Local, but who knows when that could end? Maybe tomorrow, right? I think it's simply safer to build out the content of your authoritative domain than to attempt to 'appear larger' with a host of geographically optimized EMDs.

5. For the local business owner, microsites can become a major headache. I've spoken with many business owners over the years who had these built by a previous firm, either because they thought it was a good idea or the marketer they'd hired thought it was a good idea. Then the relationship ended and the client may be confused about management of the sites or unable to access them, etc. Point being, why create a complex set of websites when a single one will do the job and everything you do on that authoritative site will enhance the company's true brand and visibility?

I hope my thoughts on this are helpful to you in your decision making process on this. You've asked an extremely good question!

Hello Arthur,

Thank you for coming to Q&A with your question. I'm the Local SEO Associate here in the forum and will do my best to give you my thoughts on this.BTW, nice website!

I want to clarify with you your statement: "but all the advice has been about organic search". You are clearly very conversant with Local, so I'm just making sure we're talking about the same thing, namely, the blended local/organic results. I did a quick search for 'laptop repair ny' and see you at #1 in organic, though not in the A-G blended results below. I'm searching from California. I switched my location to NY and saw basically the same thing - you are #1 organically for what I'm assuming is one of your key terms, but not appearing in the pinned results below. So, are we talking about your organic rank or your local/blended rank here? Perhaps you can provide a little more information on that.

That aside, let's get to your questions, some of which I'll have answer with more questions :)!

1. Are the two new locations going to be equal in importance to your original office? Or, is your original office going to remain as headquarters for the business.

If the first, I can see why you would consider taking location info off the homepage, etc., because you are then dealing with 3 different geographic terms and may not be able to get equal 'bang for your buck' if you try to optimize for all of them on each main page. That being said...I would be loath to make this decision, because you have achieved a level of organic dominance for your main location. (As an aside...are all 3 locations in NYC or are you branching out into other parts of the state?)

If the second scenario, the choice becomes much easier. If the original office is your headquarters, then I would leave things as they are, build onto the site with new content for the new locations and also make a few mentions of your other locations on the main site pages. You would be doing this with the intent to keep the main thrust of your site's overall SEO focused on that original location, while building out new stuff as your two new locations grow.

Even if your business model dictates that all 3 businesses are of equal importance, I think I would still be inclined to go with this plan. I would hate to see you lose what you've gained. And, as you are dealing with just 3 total locations (not 20 or 100) I think you can effectively optimize the site for all three without taking away what you have already established for office #1.

1a. This question is one I've seen asked and argued over frequently. People take different sides. Matt Cutts basically said years ago that Google doesn't see much difference between subdomains and subfolders. See http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/

I really don't think the situation has changed since then. In my opinion, subfolders offer greater ease of use for the site owner/web master. So long as your code is crawlable, I honestly don't think Google cares what you do in this regard and I wouldn't worry about confusing the bots. I would personally go with subfolders if given a choice between the two...but again, this seems to be a personal preference thing rather than a genuine SEO issue. ***A confession: I've gotten local landing pages to rank just fine putting them all on the root directory, so really, don't sweat it!

2. Do not, not, not make the content on your city landing pages duplicate. Yes, this is something to sweat! Devote the funding/energy/time to writing excellent unique copy for each landing page. If no one in the organization can do this, hire a copywriter with a strong knowledge of Local. Pay handsomely for this service if you have to, because it is your best bet for getting Google to see the pages as relevant, useful and distinct. To read more about this, checkout Eric Enge's interview of Carter Maslan:

http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-carter-maslan-032710.shtml

Specifically, read this part:

Eric Enge: Let’s say you have more than one location, 100 for example. In your view, is it helpful to have individual pages on the website for all of the locations? Also, is it helpful to have the Google local business center linked to each of those individual pages rather than having 100 locations that point to a single web address?

Carter Maslan: I can tell you what I think the ideal end state is, and there are various levels of getting there. Ultimately, we would like to have the store-specific page known so that people can just click through and see today's specials and any kind of adjustments for that particular day. We would love to have all of that information on a direct click to the most specific page for that location.

That’s what we encourage, but there are still a lot of chains and things that just link to their top-level domain. I guess it's a split answer. We want to get to a store specific page, but we are not uniformly there across all of the businesses.

Eric Enge: Could that potentially be encouraged by making it a ranking factor, for example?

Carter Maslan: Yes. I guess there are two sides to it. If you create a store-specific page that really just has an address, it wouldn't be as helpful as having some genuinely good content on the page that the user would really appreciate having as the first click-through experience. That’s what I think we need to work through.

We don't want to arbitrarily tell people that they must create a store-specific page, because we are really just trying to find the most useful page for that business. That’s why I am not so definitive on the store-specific page or not. I really just want what’s best for the retailer, store or businesses, first and foremost giving the user what he would want to see when he clicks on that business.

Eric Enge: Say you have a store-specific page that lists specific and individual things about just one store location. Depending on the kind of business that could be an inventory list that shows you've got extra stock?

Carter Maslan: There is a chain of stores that carries yoga equipment that my wife really likes. They have special yoga instruction, carry special brands, and host lectures on some special days. There are all kinds of things that the retailer does that relate to that specific store location, and there is also a general corporate catalogue page. So this is not black and white, and even though we want to encourage it, it's not that there is a definitive guidance saying companies need to have that page.

Eric Enge: Obviously it’s good if there is a quality page with information unique and specific to each location.

Carter Maslan: Yes, that's great. If we know that there’s good information about that page, then that helps on search and the snippets that we can show on the search results, because we know that the page is referencing that place. It does help even if it ends up not being the page that you list as your primary homepage. If there is good content that we know is content about that place, then it helps us do a better job with query results.

If a company has a page that's store-specific and talks about its class schedule, and there is one that says its holding Tai Chi class tonight and someone is searching for places to do Tai Chi, then that helps us to score it. If a lot of people have found that page helpful about the Tai Chi class, then when people search for Tai Chi we would know that that location has something to do with Tai Chi.

Hopefully, Arthur, these tips will get you off to a good start. Congratulations on the expansion of your business. That's really exciting, and don't skip my advice in question #2. This, plus correctly claiming your local business profiles for the news locations, is going to be totally critical to your success.

Good luck!
Miriam

Hi SEOAspirant,

The truth is, Google does not have published guidelines for businesses with models like yours. Because of this, you must view some of the following in the light of an experiment rather than an accepted practice.

Typically, for SABs (service area businesses) one is dealing with something like a plumbing company located in city A, but serving cities A, B, C and D. In such cases, the guidelines are clear. You create a single listing for the location, hide the address and choose a service radius or, in the new Google Places for Business Dashboard, select a couple of service cities. You never create additional listings for the service cities.

Your business model is more complex, however, as it appears that you have a location in San Diego but that your employees offer services nation-wide. I'm not very familiar with the auto transport industry, but I'm presuming this means your drivers deliver cars to dealerships or individuals all over the country, and have face-to-face transactions with the recipients. If so, I think there are 3 possible paths open to you.

Path 1:

This is in line with Stephanie's comment. In some cases, business models like yours will establish a representative in a target city and use the home address and phone number of that person. *Note that you must not use a toll free or re-directing phone number. The representative of your business in that city must be the one who answers the phone there, at the location. And, the number he/she uses must not be shared with any other business. For example if the driver shares his home with his wife who runs an accountancy firm out of their home, they cannot share the phone number.

The possible downside to this is that Google is quite capable of seeing that the address you've listed is a home. Google is fine with home based businesses, at this point, but it is not impossible that in the future they might decide that national businesses who have taken this path of using a home address to establish a location in multiple target cities are gaming the system. Tons of businesses currently operate this way and, from what I have seen, appear to be surviving in the system, but I would not rule out the concept that Google might decide they don't like this at some point.

Path 2:

This is in more line with Ian's comment, with some slight refinements. In this scenario, your national business realizes that you must invest in a small office in your main target cities and staff that office with someone who answers calls and takes orders from clients. This scenario is completely without a downside, because you are then like any other truly local business with a clearly accepted physical location in each of your target cities. You can proceed as any local business would, without fear of reproach.

What you should not do is attempt to get a virtual office, P.O. box or any similar faux location in your target cities. This is a shortcut attempted by many businesses with models similar to yours and it risks penalties and worse.

Path 3:

You decide you can't yet afford to accomplish the Path 2 plan. In that case, you could determine to set up a single listing for your single physical location and determine that this is the sum of your local efforts for now. Beyond establishing this, you determine to go after high organic visibility in your service cities via a combination of content development, linkbuilding and other traditional organic SEO practices. In this scenario, you are hoping to achieve high organic rankings for a wide number of cities, but are not going after LOCAL rankings due to a lack of legit physical locations. This is a completely risk-free path as well. In future, should you develop funding to open new offices in new cities, then you can begin to follow Path 2.

Long answer, I know, but your scenario is deserved of very careful consideration before you proceed. Hope this helps!

Hi Jess,

Good question! You should only need to actually submit a local business listing to a directory or index once. You do not need to resubmit it. That being said, some platforms offer the ability to update your listing on a regular basis with little posts (like a fully merged G+ Local page), giving the listings a social aspect somewhat like a blog or Twitter account. Additionally, some Local SEOs are fans of 'poking' the Google+ Local listing, which basically means logging in, not changing any of the information in the dashboard and hitting submit. There has been some evidence that this can help clear up certain buggy issues.

While I have no idea what the meaning is of the Network Solutions offer you received. I'd be tempted to call them to see what it is that they are actually offering. If it's automated resubmission of all your listings, this doesn't sound very valuable to me. It's not something I would recommend.

Hi Catherine,

I would not heed this advice:

"I have also heard that if you have enough citations that give your business' address some credit and show that it's not spam, you may  not have an issue."

It's important to understand that no matter how many citations you get, you are at risk of their 'power' being split between you and any other business sharing the address, and simply confusing the bots further. It might be helpful to visualize being a bot here. If you see 50 references around the web to Jane's Hair Salon, 23 for Jenny's Yoga and 72 for Bill's Martial arts all stating that they are located at 123 Main street, who do you believe?

Therein lies the problem and it's not going to be a winning situation for any of the businesses mixed up in this.

Google has never handled the concept of shared addresses well. Unfortunately, in the real world, people do share addresses, but Google's system is not designed to cope with that, so either one abstains from participation in Google's local products, or finds a way to comply with them.

You mention getting a whole new address. Do you mean the client would move to a new building? That might be an option, but it's an awfully extreme one to go to (having to move your whole business). So the client getting a unique suite number is likely what he/she should do, but yes, you may encounter some fallout when you change the address. This could be minimal or severe. And, yes, they definitely need to be using their local area code phone number on any listing of the business, as well as in crawlable text in the NAP on their website.

I really sympathize with local business owners who are trying to understand Google's non-intuitive system. It's really easy to violate their rules and make mistakes. This is why it's critical to educate yourself as much as you possibly can about this constantly-changing system. And, if you are an SEO selling services and you are really new at Local SEO, I would suggest you advise your client to hire a Local SEO who can bring specialized knowledge on board. It's just too easy to create bad outcomes for the client if Local isn't your area of specialization...and it's even easy to end up with crazy results if you eat, breathe and live Local every day :)!

Your client is in a very bad situation. It may take some months of one-on-one care to get them out of this mess. Set their expectations correctly about this so that they understand the process is going to involve time and money.

Hope this helps!