(This is Miriam replying but I'm in Mozzer Alliance right now)

Hi Michael!

I think the most important thing here is for you to give yourself a crash course in Local SEO. This is a good place to start: <cite class="_Rm">https://moz.com/learn/local</cite>

It's vital to understand that your client's local pack rankings are going to relate solely to their physical location. So, if they've got 1 physical location, that means 1 Google My Business listing and 1 set of citations for that location only. You do not want to acquire extra phone numbers or virtual addresses of any kind. Only the real, physical location can be promoted as a contender for Google local pack rankings, unless you live in a very rural area or have a very niche business. Instead, you are in a competitive industry in a large city. So, main thing is to remember that physical address = local pack rankings. All other service cities = organic rankings.

So, yes, you do need a physical address. The phone number doesn't have to be local, but it's considered preferable by some. I don't see any mention of an address on the site right now, so that's something you'll need to address with the client. If the company does not have a dedicated public address, you can use the home address of the business owner and then, when creating the Google My Business page, be sure to choose the service area business settings that signal to Google to keep the address hidden. Regardless, it's advisable to have the complete name, address and phone number (NAP) of the business on the Contact Us page and the website footer.

The site architecture you'll be building out for the moving company will likely consist of basic pages (home, about, contact, etc.) a page for each service (moving, piano moving, what have you) and a page for each major city you serve. The content on these service city landing pages must be unique and of the highest possible quality you can create. This might include text content, video content, images, testimonials, tips, safety warnings, etc. But, again, be sure to warn the client that you do not want to use virtual addresses on these pages or anything like that. Don't be swayed by competitors who are seeming to get away with thin or duplicate landing pages. This is not the way to go and it makes them weak - you can hope to surpass them with a superior effort.

I'm not sure what you're describing about the links/press releases and blocks of cities. Google's Webmaster Guidelines do not want blocks of city names/zip codes anywhere on your website, so I'm not quite sure what it was that you saw.

Finally, yes, you may have a better chance of achieving higher organic rankings in smaller cities more quickly, because the competition is likely to be lower, but achieving this is going to be a combination of time + effort. It's much better to under-promise and over-deliver, specifically as this is your first job.

Hopefully the Moz Local learning center will get you off to a good start, and we have tons of great content in the Local column of the Moz blog. https://moz.com/blog/category/local-seo

Good luck with the project!

Note: This is Miriam replying, but I'm in Mozzer Alliance at the moment.

All feedback here is really good! Thanks, everyone, for contributing so generously.

Joricia, regarding Moz Local, I'm very curious that we are not finding anything for the business. Are you able to share the details? If not, it's totally okay, but I'd like to be able to re-produce the results you are seeing.

As others have mentioned, it is definitely not a good idea to have 2 websites featuring the same or similar NAP. This can cause untold issues, unfortunately

I'll look forward to your reply!

Miriam here, signed into Mozzer Alliance at the moment.

Yes, include the suite number within span tags, definitely. You are also right that Google wants suites in the second address line, but for Schema purposes, do include them within the address section.

Hi Sander,

You are mentioning Local, but are also saying you serve a state. Local is city-related, not state-related, so I want to be sure I'm fully understanding your scenario. Are you saying:

1. Yours is a local business with a physical location in a specific city or multiple cities and in-person contact with customers?

2. Or, yours is a virtual business with no in-person contact, offering a product to an entire state?

3. You have one product featured on a single page and you want to add a city name (or a state name?) to that product page URL?

4. You have one product and are thinking of building multiple pages to cover multiple cities, adding them to the URLs for all cities in which you offer this product?

Some clarification would help, for sure!

Hey There,

I am so sorry you ran into this issue with the API. Due to an incredibly heavy traffic volume on the Mozscape index, one of our servers crashed, causing an outage in the tools that pull data from the index. The issue has been fixed and you should be able to access the tool with no issues now.

Please give that a try and let us know if you need any other assistance.

Chiaryn

Hi Dan,

I'm sorry about the formatting problem! (Month/day/year) is the standard US display format. We do try to be sensitive to our international clients and customs, but we're still a US company and not always able to accommodate everyone :(.

We definitely appreciate the feedback because we try to make the product as usable as possible. If you'd like, post this comment and any others in our feature request form found here: https://seomoz.zendesk.com/forums/293194-Moz-Feature-Requests. And let us know if we can do anything else!

Cheers, Sierra

Hi Sander,

You are mentioning Local, but are also saying you serve a state. Local is city-related, not state-related, so I want to be sure I'm fully understanding your scenario. Are you saying:

1. Yours is a local business with a physical location in a specific city or multiple cities and in-person contact with customers?

2. Or, yours is a virtual business with no in-person contact, offering a product to an entire state?

3. You have one product featured on a single page and you want to add a city name (or a state name?) to that product page URL?

4. You have one product and are thinking of building multiple pages to cover multiple cities, adding them to the URLs for all cities in which you offer this product?

Some clarification would help, for sure!

Hi Dan,

I'm sorry about the formatting problem! (Month/day/year) is the standard US display format. We do try to be sensitive to our international clients and customs, but we're still a US company and not always able to accommodate everyone :(.

We definitely appreciate the feedback because we try to make the product as usable as possible. If you'd like, post this comment and any others in our feature request form found here: https://seomoz.zendesk.com/forums/293194-Moz-Feature-Requests. And let us know if we can do anything else!

Cheers, Sierra

(This is Miriam replying but I'm in Mozzer Alliance right now)

Hi Michael!

I think the most important thing here is for you to give yourself a crash course in Local SEO. This is a good place to start: <cite class="_Rm">https://moz.com/learn/local</cite>

It's vital to understand that your client's local pack rankings are going to relate solely to their physical location. So, if they've got 1 physical location, that means 1 Google My Business listing and 1 set of citations for that location only. You do not want to acquire extra phone numbers or virtual addresses of any kind. Only the real, physical location can be promoted as a contender for Google local pack rankings, unless you live in a very rural area or have a very niche business. Instead, you are in a competitive industry in a large city. So, main thing is to remember that physical address = local pack rankings. All other service cities = organic rankings.

So, yes, you do need a physical address. The phone number doesn't have to be local, but it's considered preferable by some. I don't see any mention of an address on the site right now, so that's something you'll need to address with the client. If the company does not have a dedicated public address, you can use the home address of the business owner and then, when creating the Google My Business page, be sure to choose the service area business settings that signal to Google to keep the address hidden. Regardless, it's advisable to have the complete name, address and phone number (NAP) of the business on the Contact Us page and the website footer.

The site architecture you'll be building out for the moving company will likely consist of basic pages (home, about, contact, etc.) a page for each service (moving, piano moving, what have you) and a page for each major city you serve. The content on these service city landing pages must be unique and of the highest possible quality you can create. This might include text content, video content, images, testimonials, tips, safety warnings, etc. But, again, be sure to warn the client that you do not want to use virtual addresses on these pages or anything like that. Don't be swayed by competitors who are seeming to get away with thin or duplicate landing pages. This is not the way to go and it makes them weak - you can hope to surpass them with a superior effort.

I'm not sure what you're describing about the links/press releases and blocks of cities. Google's Webmaster Guidelines do not want blocks of city names/zip codes anywhere on your website, so I'm not quite sure what it was that you saw.

Finally, yes, you may have a better chance of achieving higher organic rankings in smaller cities more quickly, because the competition is likely to be lower, but achieving this is going to be a combination of time + effort. It's much better to under-promise and over-deliver, specifically as this is your first job.

Hopefully the Moz Local learning center will get you off to a good start, and we have tons of great content in the Local column of the Moz blog. https://moz.com/blog/category/local-seo

Good luck with the project!

Note: This is Miriam replying, but I'm in Mozzer Alliance at the moment.

All feedback here is really good! Thanks, everyone, for contributing so generously.

Joricia, regarding Moz Local, I'm very curious that we are not finding anything for the business. Are you able to share the details? If not, it's totally okay, but I'd like to be able to re-produce the results you are seeing.

As others have mentioned, it is definitely not a good idea to have 2 websites featuring the same or similar NAP. This can cause untold issues, unfortunately

I'll look forward to your reply!

Miriam here, signed into Mozzer Alliance at the moment.

Yes, include the suite number within span tags, definitely. You are also right that Google wants suites in the second address line, but for Schema purposes, do include them within the address section.