It’s never fun being the bearer of bad news.
You’re on the phone with an amazing prospect. Let’s say it’s a growing appliance sales and repair provider with 75 locations in the western US. Your agency would absolutely love to onboard this client, and the contact is telling you, with some pride, that they’re already ranking pretty well for about half of their locations.
With the right strategy, getting them the rest of the way there should be no problem at all.
But then you notice something, and your end of the phone conversation falls a little quiet as you click through from one of their Google My Business listings in Visalia to Streetview and see… not a commercial building, but a house. Uh-oh. In answer to your delicately worded question, you find out that 45 of this brand’s listings have been built around the private homes of their repairmen — an egregious violation of Google’s guidelines.
“I hate to tell you this…,” you clear your throat, and then you deliver the bad news.
If you do in-house Local SEO, do it for clients, or even just answer questions in a forum, you’ve surely had the unenviable (yet vital) task of telling someone they’re “doing it wrong,” frequently after they’ve invested considerable resources in creating a marketing structure that threatens to topple due to a crack in its foundation. Sometimes you can patch the crack, but sometimes, whole edifices of bad marketing have to be demolished before safe and secure new buildings can be erected.
Here are 5 of the commonest foundational marketing mistakes I’ve encountered over the years as a Local SEO consultant and forum participant. If you run into these in your own work, you’ll be doing someone a big favor by delivering “the bad news” as quickly as possible:
1. Creating GMB listings at ineligible addresses
What you’ll hear:
“We need to rank for these other towns, because we want customers there. Well, no, we don’t really have offices there. We have P.O. Boxes/virtual offices/our employees’ houses.”
Why it’s a problem:
Google’s guidelines state:
- Make sure that your page is created at your actual, real-world location
- PO Boxes or mailboxes located at remote locations are not acceptable.
- Service-area businesses—businesses that serve customers at their locations—should have one page for the central office or location and designate a service area from that point.
All of this adds up to Google saying you shouldn’t create a listing for anything other than a real-world location, but it’s extremely common to see a) spammers simply creating tons of listings for non-existent locations, b) people of good will not knowing the guidelines and doing the same thing, and c) service area businesses (SABs) feeling they have to create fake-location listings because Google won’t rank them for their service cities otherwise.
In all three scenarios, the brand puts itself at risk for detection and listing removal. Google can catch them, competitors and consumers can catch them, and marketers can catch them. Once caught, any effort that was put into ranking and building reputation around a fake-location listing is wasted. Better to have devoted resources to risk-free marketing efforts that will add up to something real.
What to do about it:
Advise the SAB owner to self-report the problem to Google. I know this sounds risky, but Google My Business forum Top Contributor Joy Hawkins let me know that she’s never seen a case in which Google has punished a business that self-reported accidental spam. The owner will likely need to un-verify the spam listings (see how to do that here) and then Google will likely remove the ineligible listings, leaving only the eligible ones intact.
What about dyed-in-the-wool spammers who know the guidelines and are violating them regardless, turning local pack results into useless junk? Get to the spam listing in Google Maps, click the “Suggest an edit” link, toggle the toggle to “Yes,” and choose the radio button for spam. Google may or may not act on your suggestion. If not, and the spam is misleading to consumers, I think it’s always a good idea to report it to the Google My Business forum in hopes that a volunteer Top Contributor may escalate an egregious case to a Google staffer.
2. Sharing phone numbers between multiple entities
What you’ll hear:
“I run both my dog walking service and my karate classes out of my house, but I don’t want to have to pay for two different phone lines.”
-or-
“Our restaurant has 3 locations in the city now, but we want all the calls to go through one number for reservation purposes. It’s just easier.”
-or-
“There are seven doctors at our practice. Front desk handles all calls. We can’t expect the doctors to answer their calls personally.”
Why it’s a problem:
There are actually multiple issues at hand on this one. First of all, Google’s guidelines state:
- Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location as directly as possible, and provide one website that represents your individual business location.
- Use a local phone number instead of a central, call center helpline number whenever possible.
- The phone number must be under the direct control of the business.
This rules out having the phone number of a single location representing multiple locations.
Confusing to Google
Google has also been known in the past to phone businesses for verification purposes. Should a business answer “Jim’s Dog Walking” when a Google rep is calling to verify that the phone number is associated with “Jim’s Karate Lessons,” we’re in trouble. Shared phone numbers have also been suspected in the past of causing accidental merging of Google listings, though I’ve not seen a case of this in a couple of years.
Confusing for businesses
As for the multi-practitioner scenario, the reality is that some business models simply don’t allow for practitioners to answer their own phones. Calls for doctors, dentists, attorneys, etc. are traditionally routed through a front desk. This reality calls into question whether forward-facing listings should be built for these individuals at all. We’ll dive deeper into this topic below, in the section on multi-practitioner listings.
Confusing for the ecosystem
Beyond Google-related concerns, Moz Local’s awesome engineers have taught me some rather amazing things about the problems shared phone numbers can create for citation-building campaigns in the greater ecosystem. Many local business data platforms are highly dependent on unique phone numbers as a signal of entity uniqueness (the “P” in NAP is powerful!). So, for example, if you submit both Jim’s Dog Walking and Jim’s Bookkeeping to Infogroup with the same number, Infogroup may publish both listings, but leave the phone number fields blank! And without a phone number, a local business listing is pretty worthless.
It’s because of realities like these that a unique phone number for each entity is a requirement of the Moz Local product, and should be a prerequisite for any citation building campaign.
What to do about it:
Let the business owner know that a unique phone number for each business entity, each business location, and each forward-facing practitioner who wants to be listed is a necessary business expense (and, hey, likely tax deductible, too!). Once the investment has been made in the unique numbers, the work ahead involves editing all existing citations to reflect them. The free tool Moz Check Listing can help you instantly locate existing citations for the purpose of creating a spreadsheet that details the bad data, allowing you to start correcting it manually. Or, to save time, the business owner may wish to invest in a paid, automated citation correction product like Moz Local.
Pro tip: Apart from removing local business listing stumbling blocks, unique phone numbers have an added bonus in that they enable the benefits of associating KPIs like clicks-to-call to a given entity, and existing numbers can be ported into call tracking numbers for even further analysis of traffic and conversions. You just can’t enjoy these benefits if you lump multiple entities together under a single, shared number.
3. Keyword stuffing GMB listing names
What you’ll hear:
“I have 5 locations in Dallas. How are my customers supposed to find the right one unless I add the neighborhood name to the business name on the listings?”
-or-
“We want customers to know we do both acupuncture and massage, so we put both in the listing name.”
-or-
“Well, no, the business name doesn’t actually have a city name in it, but my competitors are adding city names to their GMB listings and they’re outranking me!”
Why it’s a problem:
Long story short, it’s a blatant violation of Google’s guidelines to put extraneous keywords in the business name field of a GMB listing. Google states:
- Your name should reflect your business’ real-world name, as used consistently on your storefront, website, stationery, and as known to customers.
- Including unnecessary information in your business name is not permitted, and could result in your listing being suspended.
What to do about it:
I consider this a genuine Local SEO toughie. On the one hand, Google’s lack of enforcement of these guidelines, and apparent lack of concern about the whole thing, makes it difficult to adequately alarm business owners about the risk of suspension. I’ve successfully reported keyword stuffing violations to Google and have had them act on my reports within 24 hours… only to have the spammy names reappear hours or days afterwards. If there’s a suspension of some kind going on here, I don’t see it.
Simultaneously, Google’s local algo apparently continues to be influenced by exact keyword matches. When a business owner sees competitors outranking him via outlawed practices which Google appears to ignore, the Local SEO may feel slightly idiotic urging guideline-compliance from his patch of shaky ground.
But, do it anyway. For two reasons:
- If you’re not teaching business owners about the importance of brand building at this point, you’re not really teaching marketing. Ask the owner, “Are you into building a lasting brand, or are you hoping to get by on tricks?” Smart owners (and their marketers) will see that it’s a more legitimate strategy to build a future based on earning permanent local brand recognition for Lincoln & Herndon, than for Springfield Car Accident Slip and Fall Personal Injury Lawyers Attorneys.
- I find it interesting that, in all of Google’s guidelines, the word “suspended” is used only a few times, and one of these rare instances relates to spamming the business title field. In other words, Google is using the strongest possible language to warn against this practice, and that makes me quite nervous about tying large chunks of reputation and rankings to a tactic against which Google has forewarned. I remember that companies were doing all kinds of risky things on the eve of the Panda and Penguin updates and they woke up to a changed webscape in which they were no longer winners. Because of this, I advocate alerting any business owner who is risking his livelihood to chancy shortcuts. Better to build things for real, for the long haul.
Fortunately, it only takes a few seconds to sign into a GMB account and remove extraneous keywords from a business name. If it needs to be done at scale for large multi-location enterprises across the major aggregators, Moz Local can get the job done. Will removing spammy keywords from the GMB listing title cause the business to move down in Google’s local rankings? It’s possible that they will, but at least they’ll be able to go forward building real stuff, with the moral authority to report rule-breaking competitors and keep at it until Google acts.
And tell owners not to worry about Google not being able to sort out a downtown location from an uptown one for consumers. Google’s ability to parse user proximity is getting better every day. Mobile-local packs prove this out. If one location is wrongly outranking another, chances are good the business needs to do an audit to discover weaknesses that are holding the more appropriate listing back. That’s real strategy - no tricks!
4. Creating a multi-site morass
What you’ll hear:
“So, to cover all 3 or our locations, we have greengrocerysandiego.com, greengrocerymonterey.com and greengrocerymendocino.com… but the problem is, the content on the three sites is kind of all the same. What should we do to make the sites different?”
-or-
“So, to cover all of our services, we have jimsappliancerepair.com, jimswashingmachinerepair.com, jimsdryerrepair.com, jimshotwaterheaterrepair.com, jimsrefrigeratorrepair.com. We’re about to buy jimsvacuumrepair.com … but the problem is, there’s not much content on any of these sites. It feels like management is getting out of hand.”
Why it’s a problem:
Definitely a frequent topic in SEO forums, the practice of relying on exact match domains (EMDs) proliferates because of Google’s historic bias in their favor. The ranking influence of EMDs has been the subject of a Google updateand has lessened over time. I wouldn’t want to try to rank for competitive terms with creditcards.com or insurance.com these days.
But if you believe EMDs no longer work in the local-organic world, read this post in which a fellow’s surname/domain name gets mixed up with a distant city name and he ends up ranking in the local packs for it! Chances are, you see weak EMDs ranking all the time for your local searches — more’s the pity. And, no doubt, this ranking boost is the driving force behind local business models continuing to purchase multiple keyword-oriented domains to represent branches of their company or the variety of services they offer. This approach is problematic for 3 chief reasons:
- It’s impractical. The majority of the forum threads I’ve encountered in which small-to-medium local businesses have ended up with two, or five, or ten domains invariably lead to the discovery that the websites are made up of either thin or duplicate content. Larger enterprises are often guilty of the same. What seemed like a great idea at first, buying up all those EMDs, turns into an unmanageable morass of web properties that no one has the time to keep updated, to write for, or to market.
- Specific to the multi-service business, it’s not a smart move to put single-location NAP on multiple websites. In other words, if your construction firm is located at 123 Main Street in Funky Town, but consumers and Google are finding that same physical address associated with fences.com, bathroomremodeling.com, decks.com, and kitchenremodeling.com, you are sowing confusion in the ecosystem. Which is the authoritative business associated with that address? Some business owners further compound problems by assuming they can then build separate sets of local business listings for each of these different service-oriented domains, violating Google’s guidelines, which state:
Do not create more than one page for each location of your business.
The whole thing can become a giant mess, instead of the clean, manageable simplicity of a single brand, tied to a single domain, with a single NAP signal.
- With rare-to-nonexistent exceptions, I consider EMDs to be missed opportunities for brand building. Imagine, if instead of being Whole Foods at WholeFoods.com, the natural foods giant had decided they needed to try to squeeze a ranking boost out of buying 400+ domains to represent the eventual number of locations they now operate. WholeFoodsDallas.com, WholeFoodsMississauga.com, etc? Such an approach would get out of hand very fast.
Even the smallest businesses should take cues from big commerce. Your brand is the magic password you want on every consumer’s lips, associated with every service you offer, in every location you open. As I recently suggested to a Moz community member, be proud to domain your flower shop as rossirovetti.com instead of hoping FloralDelivery24hoursSanFrancisco.com will boost your rankings. It’s authentic, easy to remember, looks trustworthy in the SERPs, and is ripe for memorable brand building.
What to do about it:
While I can’t speak to the minutiae of every single scenario, I’ve yet to be part of a discussion about multi-sites in the Local SEO community in which I didn’t advise consolidation. Basically, the business should choose a single, proud domain and, in most cases, 301 redirect the old sites to the main one, then work to get as many external links that pointed to the multi-sites to point to the chosen main site. This oldie but goodie from the Moz blog provides a further technical checklist from a company that saw a 40% increase in traffic after consolidating domains. I’d recommend that any business that is nervous about handling the tech aspects of consolidation in-house should hire a qualified SEO to help them through the process.
5. Creating ill-considered practitioner listings
What you’ll hear:
“We have 5 dentists at the practice, but one moved/retired last month and we don’t know what to do with the GMB listing for him.”
-or-
“Dr. Green is outranking the practice in the local results for some reason, and it’s really annoying.”
Why it’s a problem:
I’ve saved the most complex for last! Multi-practitioner listings can be a blessing, but they’re so often a bane that my position on creating them has evolved to a point where I only recommend building them in specific cases.
When Google first enabled practitioner listings (listings that represent each doctor, lawyer, dentist, or agent within a business) I saw them as a golden opportunity for a given practice to dominate local search results with its presence. However, Google’s subsequent unwillingness to simply remove practitioner duplicates, coupled with the rollout of the Possum update which filters out shared category/similar location listings, coupled with the number of instances I’ve seen in which practitioner listings end up outranking brand listings, has caused me to change my opinion of their benefits. I should also add that the business title field on practitioner listings is a hotbed of Google guideline violations — few business owners have ever read Google’s nitty gritty rules about how to name these types of listings.
In a nutshell, practitioner listings gone awry can result in a bunch of wrongly-named listings often clouded by duplicates that Google won’t remove, all competing for the same keywords. Not good!
What to do about it:
You’ll have multiple scenarios to address when offering advice about this topic.
1.) If the business is brand new, and there is no record of it on the Internet as of yet, then I would only recommend creating practitioner listings if it is necessary to point out an area of specialization. So, for example if a medical practice has 5 MDs, the listing for the practice covers that, with no added listings needed. But, if a medical practice has 5 MDs and an Otolaryngologist, it may be good marketing to give the specialist his own listing, because it has its own GMB category and won’t be competing with the practice for rankings. *However, read on to understand the challenges being undertaken any time a multi-practitioner listing is created.
2.) If the multi-practitioner business is not new, chances are very good that there are listings out there for present, past, and even deceased practitioners.
- If a partner is current, be sure you point his listing at a landing page on the practice’s website, instead of at the homepage, see if you can differentiate categories, and do your utmost to optimize the practice’s own listing — the point here is to prevent practitioners from outranking the practice. What do I mean by optimization? Be sure the practice’s GMB listing is fully filled out, you’ve got amazing photos, you’re actively earning and responding to reviews, you’re publishing a Google Post at least once a week, and your citations across the web are consistent. These things should all strengthen the listing for the practice.
- If a partner is no longer with the practice, it’s ideal to unverify the listing and ask Google to market it as moved to the practice — not to the practitioner’s new location. Sound goofy? Read Joy Hawkins’ smart explanation of this convoluted issue.
- If, sadly, a practitioner has passed away, contact Google to show them an obituary so that the listing can be removed.
- If a listing represents what is actually a solo practitioner (instead of a partner in a multi-practitioner business model) and his GMB listing is now competing with the listing for his business, you can ask Google to merge the two listings.
3.) If a business wants to create practitioner listings, and they feel up to the task of handling any ranking or situational management concerns, there is one final proviso I’d add. Google’s guidelines state that practitioners should be “directly contactable at the verified location during stated hours” in order to qualify for a GMB listing. I’ve always found this requirement rather vague. Contactable by phone? Contactable in person? Google doesn’t specify. Presumably, a real estate agent in a multi-practitioner agency might be directly contactable, but as my graphic above illustrates, we wouldn’t really expect the same public availability of a surgeon, right? Point being, it may only make marketing sense to create a practitioner listing for someone who needs to be directly available to the consumer public for the business to function. I consider this a genuine grey area in the guidelines, so think it through carefully before acting.
Giving good help
It’s genuinely an honor to advise owners and marketers who are strategizing for the success of local businesses. In our own small way, local SEO consultants live in the neighborhood Mister Rogers envisioned in which you could look for the helpers when confronted with trouble. Given the livelihoods dependent on local commerce, rescuing a company from a foundational marketing mistake is satisfying work for people who like to be “helpers,” and it carries a weight of responsibility.
I’ve worked in 3 different SEO forums over the past 10+ years, and I’d like to close with some things I’ve learned about helping:
- Learn to ask the right questions. Small nuances in business models and scenarios can necessitate completely different advice. Don’t be scared to come back with second and third rounds of follow-up queries if someone hasn’t provided sufficient detail for you to advise them well. Read all details thoroughly before replying.
- Always, always consult Google’s guidelines, and link to them in your answers. It’s absolutely amazing how few owners and marketers have ever encountered them. Local SEOs are volunteer liaisons between Google and businesses. That’s just the way things have worked out.
- Don’t say you’re sure unless you’re really sure. If a forum or client question necessitates a full audit to surface a useful answer, say so. Giving pat answers to complicated queries helps no one, and can actually hurt businesses by leaving them in limbo, losing money, for an even longer time.
- Network with colleagues when weird things come up. Ranking drops can be attributed to new Google updates, or bugs, or other factors you haven’t yet noticed but that a trusted peer may have encountered.
- Practice humility. 90% of what I know about Local SEO, I’ve learned from people coming to me with problems for which, at some point, I had to discover answers. Over time, the work put in builds up our store of ready knowledge, but we will never know it all, and that’s humbling in a very good way. Community members and clients are our teachers. Let’s be grateful for them, and treat them with respect.
- Finally, don’t stress about delivering “the bad news” when you see someone who is asking for help making a marketing mistake. In the long run, your honesty will be the best gift you could possibly have given.
Happy helping!
Hey there Miriam,
Thanks for the great great post!
Also I would add "SETTING UP THE WRONG CATEGORIES ON YOUR GOOGLE MY BUSINESS PAGE"
Google looks at your first category chosen as your primary category. It is best practice to choose relevant categories that are more specific than general in nature. For example, if you are Piano Tuner and you choose ‘Musical Instrument Repair Shop’ rather than ‘Piano Tuning Service’ as your primary category you may find it difficult to rank in searches for “piano tuners.”
Often times, businesses attempt to stuff keywords into their categories by choosing many general categories. In fact, Google tells us that it’s best to add your business to just one or two categories .
So, choose your categories carefully and be as specific as possible with the available categories
Cheers
very interesting post Miriam, thank you! And great point Memli, about being careful when choosing/naming your categories. Did not know that it is much better to be more specific with the name of your categories than using more general terms.
Great addition, Memli! This was actually on my short list, but I wanted to narrow it down to the five issues I've seen the most. Poor category choices would come next in line, for sure. Excellent comment!
I think in Spain, as Lluis told, we can see all 5 mistakes often. People with their business located in other place, one phone line for some business or use one web for each branch office instead of one strong web.
Good to know, Pepmpm! By the way - I like your little dog. Thanks for taking the time to read.
I totally agree Pepmpm.
In fact, in Spain there are many companies that hardly care about their image on the Internet. They share nothing and create no value on their websites.
Worst of all, they don't generate trust and users know that.
For example, a Spanish courier company shared a telephone with other companies in another sector. When I complained about an order, that was to stop consuming their services.
I always use the same business name, phone number, email, adress in GMB and all of my directory listing and so on. I try to obbey google best practices for GMB.
Smart fellow!
Quite funny article!!! The interesting point is that I've been following the SEO news for almost a decade (more from a content creator perspective than a SEO professional would) and it's always the same history. People always trying to cheat at google instead of focusing in creating good content.
For a minute trying to cheat, a minute creating good content...what a difference!!
The worst part is that it seemed that the more intelligent google was getting, the better for the "good guys". But it's not exactly where we are...
Anyway, keep with the great content!! It's inspiring.
Hey Daniel!
So glad this gave you a few smiles while reading :) You raise such a good point, and a perennial one. Why do folks try to take tricky shortcuts instead of tapping into their own creativity and building something that lasts? But, you're right ... when Google doesn't catch spammers, being good doesn't always bring the rewards it should. I would not be surprised if, in 2018, we should see Google finally taking a more powerful stance against one form of spam: review spam. It's critical that they do this, and I believe it will happen at some point. Thanks for the good comment!
Great post Miriam!
Thanks so much, Rachel!
Great article Miriam! You covered all the challenges that many local businesses are faced with.
I am wondering though what options are left (aside for paid ads) for either a SAB or a real local business that can only survive with the business and visibility in surrounding cities. How can a small business compete if they can't be in the local pack and can't afford paid ads? You mentioned that "Google’s ability to parse user proximity is getting better every day", yet so many businesses are dependent on customers that are outside their "proximity". How can they acquire those customers when more and more clicks are going to the local pack?
Hi Ari,
You've highlighted what I see as the biggest challenge for the small SAB in the next 2-3 years. My mention of Google parsing proximity relates to brick-and-mortar businesses, but for the SAB, the rise of Google's LSA program is going to be one that will sharply separate profitable businesses from struggling, poorly-funded ones. It has long been the standard SAB challenge that they couldn't use Google's local packs to get in front of customers in service cities where the business lacks locations. But LSA adds a new twist to this - you have to be able to afford advertising costs, into the bargain.
My advice to the smallest SABs who can't afford LSA inclusion is to think deep about creating client streams that are as independent of Google as possible. While it's true that SABs can go after organic rankings in their location-less cities, that's extremely hard to do in competitive markets. So, what can these business owners do? I would suggest focusing heavily on WOMM and loyalty programs so that utterly delighted customers are generating new customers for the business. I would strive to build as many real-world relationships in the service cities as I possibly could. Eventually, the hope is that a truly motivated small SAB will become profitable enough to jump into LSA and treat it as a new, additional lead stream, built on top of what they've developed through old-fashioned, neighbor-to-neighbor brand building. Social media could lend a digital hand, too, with creativity.
I have a lot of empathy for the small SAB. They have it tough, but when what they do is truly great, the potential is there to succeed.
Hey Miriam,
Thanks for the comments and the empathy :)
My pleasure, Ari!
Good stuff Miriam! I unfortunately still see a lot of my client's competitors doing annoying things like the ones you mentioned above and getting ranked because of it. It will be great will Google tightens up more on spammy stuff like the 5 you mentioned! Thanks for sharing your insight on this.
Yes, that's such a drag, Nicholas, when you see a client's competitors getting away with spam. Here's to hoping Google steps up to the plate a bit more on this in 2018. Thanks for confirming that the problems I cited are ones you see, too, in your workaday world.
Extremely timely post for me, Miriam! I recently started working with a client with 65+ franchise locations with real, physical offices; however, I found out they created a handful of additional GMB listings using some of the franchise owner's home addresses in order to rank locally in cities neighboring their actual offices (honest mistake).
Interestingly, after conducting a bunch of searches from various major cities (using ISearchFrom - great tool!) I found that in this particular niche, most of the top ranking businesses in the map results had locations outside of the actual city. Needless to say, this made my recommendation for removing their extra GMB listings that much easier.
Question: after unverifying the listings, what is your preferred method for reporting them to Google in order to have them permanently removed from map results?
Ah - good catch, Zack, discovering these risky listing for a valued client. Way to go!
I would use the "suggest an edit" link in Maps, and then choose the "never existed" radio button. That would seem best to me to get rid of the ineligible listings - but do keep an eye out for them in future, just in case they should return. And I'd back that up by closing out any non-Google listings that may have been built for these ineligible locations. Use of the free Check Listing tool can help you turn up citations, if any, on numerous platforms. Good luck and great job!
Thanks, Miriam! This is a very challenging (but super fun!) local SEO project. Really appreciate your post + extra insights here in the comments.
These are very interesting points, Zach! Are you using the standard Google My Business dashboard to manage the client's listings or the developer's Google API Console?
In the past, I have found flagging and suggesting edits to Google Maps locations is a hit or miss. The changes can take time to show up on Google Maps, requires you check back on listings (troublesome and time-consuming if dealing with bulk listings), and changes may never be made.
Getting in touch with Google support directly is your best chance at having Google Maps and GMB issues resolved. On some Google Support resources, you can request a call, chat online with, or directly email Google My Business support to get the changes made quickly.
Hey Hannah - thanks for the extra insights here. I'm thinking I'll start by unverifying these listings, use the "suggest an edit" > "never existed" radio button, wait maybe 4 - 6 weeks and if they're still there, get in touch with Google support.
Fortunately, there are only six of these "home address" SAB listings so hopefully won't be too time-consuming to get removed.
Super interesting to see the top 3 local results occupied by businesses located in suburbs of the main cities though - and I checked across multiple cities. I suppose it makes sense given the niche (home mobility and accessibility equipment), as there are only a handful of businesses in that space per city.
Hi Miriam,
What a pleasure to read such a complete article. You truly covered all the ins and outs on regard the hard task to give the bad news to the clients.
Today one of my clients accepted the suggestion to redirect the .com website to the .edu.co which is the best option into his ecosystem.
He was very sad obviously, although absolutely convinced after reading your marvellous post.
Thank you, you made my day with your well exposed Local SEO path to give clients the bad news.
So happy if this post came at a good time for you and your client, Veronica. Thank you very much for the kind words!
Hi Miriam,
You deserve those compliments and many more. Indeed, as usual, it came in a good time.
We, fellow local SEOs here, talk about being Moz dependants; in the best sense, of course. ;)
Truly, every time we have a SEO doubt; it is not google it, instead it is " Moz it ".
Also, it is the same when we try to convince a client about a good, though highly unpopular measure, due to you have the real SEO authority for back up our recommendations.
All the best and Happy Holidays for you and the Moz Team!
Amazing comment. One I know every one of my teammates here at Moz will rejoice to read. Thank you so much, Veronica - and Happy Holidays!
Hey Myriam!
Again, this was a great post on local SEO... scary though!
I have a question.
Let's say a client shares a phone number for two locations and doesn't want to pay for a local phone number.
Should we delete one of the business listing?
Thanks
Hey Jean-Christophe!
Deleting a GMB listing would be such an extreme step, but, for the reasons I've mentioned in point #2, I wouldn't take on a client who isn't able to make a reasonable business investment like getting a phone for each of his locations. It would be like trying to help a business owner who won't pay for having his lights turned on in his place of business - he's simply setting himself up for failure. So, I'd explain the reasons he needs to have 2 numbers if he has 2 businesses, and if he was willing to invest in his business, then we'd be good to go. If not, that would signal to me that the business wasn't ready for success.
I agree with you... Thank you for your help!
Very interesting post, I am currently doing location strategies and it has been very practical to know some new points in your post.
Good timing, then! Good luck with your strategic planning :)
Thank Miriam for that article, like we say in french "il vaut mieux prévenir que guérir" (Prevention is better than cure).
Before accepting a new client for local SEO I always double check if the business respects Google My Business Guidelines and if I have a doubt I contact GMB via chat or email. A lot of people don't know that GMB have chat support (same for Adwords), you can bombard them of questions for free. Here's a a link to contact them https://support.google.com/business/answer/7091?fr... scroll down at the bottom and select Chat.
A great post with lots of good information. Thank you for taking the time to share this information.
Awfully glad you enjoyed it, William. Thank you so much for giving it a read!
Great article Miriam, Really appreciate!!! I have one question Miriam..
What is the most intense keyword type in local SEO?
Hi Saravanan!
Thanks for reading. I'm so sorry, but I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "intense keyword type". Would you be able to explain that a bit more fully?
Hehe ... loved the "customers responses" - so true.
Thanks, Brandon :)
So you're saying Google writes the moral code and if you don't follow it, you're immoral?? "Moral Authority" doesn't pay the bills...
Hi MKE-Ty!
Looking back through my post, I believe this is the part you're referencing:
"Will removing spammy keywords from the GMB listing title cause the business to move down in Google’s local rankings? It’s possible that they will, but at least they’ll be able to go forward building real stuff, with the moral authority to report rule-breaking competitors and keep at it until Google acts."
What I'm saying there is, if a business is spamming, it's hardly in any position to report other businesses for spamming. Makes sense, right?
As for Google writing a "moral code", no ... I don't mix the notion of morals with Google. What Google basically has is a TOS for using their product (Google My Business/Google Maps). If you participate in their product by creating a GMB listing, and you don't follow their rules, you're putting your reputation, rankings and revenue at risk. It's not a smart business move to do that.
Morals (or, perhaps we should say "ethics") do come into play in a different way, though. Regardless of what a business thinks about Google's products or Google's rules, many Google guideline violations are actually representative of unethical business practices. Misrepresenting a business' name, physical location, reviews, etc., is done with the intent to deceive consumers, and that's unethical (as well as, in some cases, illegal per FTC guidelines).
Having owned a small business and consulted with many others, I completely understand that livelihoods are at stake. Paying the bills, as you state, is a vital matter. But, paying the bills via deceptive practices isn't an option in an ethical business environment. Would you agree?
Great read! It's really difficult to rank in the locations where business is not physically present. I've had some bad experience. Things are getting more complicated now. Having a location based pages are not helping now. The competition is growing day by day so for me best practice is to stick with your backlink building strategy.
Hi Yasir,
It sounds like you are marketing in some very tough verticals if location pages just aren't getting the traction they used to. I still see this working in moderately competitive markets, but you are right, if the field is just too crowded, link building, PPC, social and other forms of marketing may be the best options. Thanks for sharing what you've seen, and for the kind words!
This is great advice for those working with local businesses. I've been a consultant for 10 years but have always avoided SEO because I didn't understand anything about it. I'm learning more and more as I read here. I focus mainly on paid traffic but local SEO is something that my clients keep asking about and rather than outsource it (which is what I've been doing), I figured I'd try and learn the basics myself.
Quick question, what effect do Google Reviews have on SEO for a local business, if any. Thanks.
Hi Kenny,
I'm so happy you're here, and kudos to you for having the vision to branch out beyond your initial area of expertise. Local SEO, is, indeed, a much-desired service. We have a free Local Learning Center here that I hope may be of some help to you (https://moz.com/learn/seo/local) in digging into this whole area of marketing.
Reviews have an observable impact on rankings, but the exact degree of impact isn't easily quantified. For example, you will see a business with 52 reviews and a 4.8 star rating being outranked in the local packs by one with 38 reviews and a 4.5 star rating. Why does that happen? Because reviews are only one of several hundred factors believed to make up the algorithm by which Google ranks local business. The higher ranking business could have a more authoritative website, cleaner citations, be closer to the user, etc. So, yes, reviews do impact local rankings, but you can't say they affect them "X" amount.
However, that being said, there is an even more important aspect of reviews than anything relating to rankings, and that is their impact on conversions. Reviews seriously inform consumer decisions. Study after study has shown just how profoundly the consumer journey is influenced by reviews, so management of them has become a must-have in the local business world. Our Local Learning Center has some good articles on the topic of reviews, and I also recommend the free eBook at GetFiveStars "Build a Better Business Using Complaints" (https://ebook.getfivestars.com/complaints/) if you'd like to get an excellent, fast overview of the most important aspects of reviews.
Hope this helps, and thanks so much for taking the time to read and comment.
Great Post...I have Seen many German Webshop they are Using Right GMB Business Name on local listing sites. But if you see USA Local Listing sites there are lots of Irrelevant Business details added or even few have no business address . So I'm waiting Google Will Announce update on this issue.
Hi Salim,
I'm not familiar with the therm "webshop" so I'm having a bit of trouble envisioning what you are describing. Is it ecommerce companies trying to create local listings? Maybe something else? I appreciate you documenting what you've seen.
Nice post. Now you just need to pretty much do the opposite of everything suggested and you'll be good to go!
Haha - well, that's one way to look at it! Thanks for reading, Johnny.
It is clear that Google wants us to be clear and use real points to position correctly.
Nicely said, Richard!
Sharing the same phone number is not a good idea. I didn't know about the problem you mentioned when doind this "Infogroup may publish both listings, but leave the phone number fields blank!"
That was new info to me, too, Mario, when our engineers first explained it to me. Quite amazing! Glad this post taught you something new today!
Absolutely Miriam! Great value in your post :)
Very interesting article. I learned a lots of new stuff on Local SEO. Thanks for sharing.
Happy to hear that, Krishna!
As usual, Miriam Ellis create really outstanding articles related of Local Seo, thanks for share
That's just so nice of you to say, Roman. Lovely to hear! Thank you.
I seen some people do non b rand keyword business listings. like "afternoon tea at hotel x" which seems to rank well for afternoon tea in local. which is quite disappointing. I could do the same, which is tempting but I HOPE Google will release a penalising algo soon
Yeah, that is very common - keyword stuffing the business title like that. #3 in my post! It is discouraging, and I agree with you that it would be great to see Google step up their game here.
Hi Miriam
At least here in Spain there are many specialists in making the error No. 1. It is common to see how local businesses have geolocated their brand or product / service / keyword in other places, without taking into account that in addition to Google can detect it and suppress it, this implies inconvenience and information to clients that hardly arrive
Thanks for letting me know what you see most commonly in Spain. Always helpful to hear about that!
The post has addressed a lot of dilemmas that most SEOs encounter with their clients. I have really taken notes about these things to exactly point out that a business should extend practicing it's "good business" online, even if this is just making a local listing in Google.
Glad if you founds some good takeaways here, Mary!
Hello Miriam, thank you for your meaningful post for local SEO practices. Your lovely post have cleared my misconceptions local SEO practices. It's worth sharing!
I've seen many businesses stuffing identical keywords into their GMB and yet Google shows them despite duplicate same keywords. Is this something Google is working on improving?
Hi Farhan,
Yes, unfortunately this type of spam is very prevalent. While I don't know the answer to your question (no one but Google could tell us), Google's stated commitment to SERP relevence/quality should make them care about this, the same way they eventually zoned in on EMDs as a poor indicator of quality. So, I believe they will eventually tackle this problem. Maybe this will be the year ... but maybe not!
Thanks Miriam, Some good points there for local SEO. Yes, I totally agree that SEO has so many facets and also involves a lot of guess-work or testing to find out what's going on.
Hey Miriam,
Thanks for the informative post
Yeah sure. Sometimes we have to be the bearers of bad news, yet it's for the good of both parties. I was not really aware of some of these points, well I do now. Thanks to you
So glad there were a few new tips for you in this one, Mysson. Appreciate you taking the time to let me know that!
we have to think like humans and not like if google is a robot, their algorithms and AI are smarter than us, just think how would you rank in real life and you will rank with google as well
Common sense, does, indeed, rule most of the day with Google. Most of the day ... there are a few aspects of their algorithmic philosophy that continue to feel not quite real-world to me (like their handling of SABs) but otherwise, yes, being real for humans is the best bet.
Just run PPC campaigns with the Location Extension activated and let the others figure out how to rank in the packs! :D
JK! :p But seriously...I much rather pay for position first and then work on pleasing the organic gods hoping they will judge my content worthy of being shown in the maps listing when one of my potential customers is in my service area.
Hi Jason,
That's a perfectly good suggestion. PPC can either tide you over while you hunt for additional organic rankings for your location-less cities, or can be part of your permanent strategy. Your comment makes me realize it has been awhile since I've seen a heatmap/CTR study for PPC vs. Organic results in local. Hope somebody does one soon. Thanks for taking the time to read and comment.