Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Applying NAP Local Schema Markup to a Virtual Location: spamming or not?
-
I have a client that has multiple virtual locations to show website visitors where they provide delivery services. These are individual pages that include unique phone numbers, zip codes, city & state. However there is no address (this is just a service area).
We wanted to apply schematic markup to these landing pages. Our development team successfully applied schema to the phone, state, city, etc. However for just the address property they said VIRTUAL LOCATION. This checked out fine on the Google structured data testing tool.
Our question is this; can just having VIRTUAL LOCATION for the address property be construed as spamming? This landing page is providing pertinent information for the end user. However since there is no brick and mortar address I'm trying to determine if having VIRTUAL LOCATION as the value could be frowned upon by Google.
Any insight would be very helpful.
Thanks
-
Excellent response Marcus. Thanks for your feedback.
-
Hey Rosemary
This is against the guidelines for local businesses so could be problematic
Ref: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en-GB
"If your business rents a temporary, "virtual" office at an address that is different from your primary business, do not create a page for that location unless it is staffed during your normal business hours."
If we take a look at the schema page for a local business we can see that this markup is ideally for a physical business
ref: https://schema.org/LocalBusiness
"A particular physical business or branch of an organization. Examples of LocalBusiness include a restaurant, a particular branch of a restaurant chain, a branch of a bank, a medical practice, a club, a bowling alley, etc."
So - to go back to your question I am not sure it is spam as such but it is incorrect in how you are using the mark up. This is not a 'physical business or branch of an organisation' and as such the schema markup is used incorrectly. I would remove the schema markup in this instance.
However - there is no reason why you would not have a location pages for a service area - none at all and you can do these pages well and they can provide real value to a customer in the targeted location. They won't rank in the local pack but they may well rank in the organic results below (or be used for paid traffic)
I wrote about location landing pages in some depth here:
http://searchengineland.com/local-seo-landing-pages-2-0-222583Hope that helps clear things up for you.
Cheers
Marcus -
Hi there
I would take advantage of Schema that allows you to markup serviceArea, and also review Google's "Service-area businesses on Google" resource. It allows you to mark "I deliver goods and services to my customers at their locations". Please follow these rules. You shouldn't need to create a listing for each city you service if you tell Google via Google My Business and Schema.
Let me know if this makes sense or if you need anymore help! Good luck!
Patrick
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Geo-location by state/store
Hi there, We are a Grocery co-operative retailer and have chain of stores owned by different people. We are building a new website, where we would geo-locate the closest store to the customer and direct them to a particular store (selected based on cookie and geo location). All our stores have a consistent range of products + Variation in 25% range. I have few questions How to build a site-map. Since it will be mandatory for a store to be selected and same flow for the bot and user, should have all products across all stores in the sitemap? we are allowing users to find any products across all stores if they search by product identifier. But, they will be able to see products available in a particular store if go through the hierarchical journey of the website. Will the bot crawl all pages across all the stores or since it will be geolocated to only one store, the content belonging to only one store will be indexed? We are also allowing customers to search for older products which they might have bought few years and that are not part of out catalogue any more. these products will not appear on the online hierarchical journey but, customers will be able to search and find the products . Will this affect our SEO ranking? Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks - Costa
Local Website Optimization | | Hanuman881 -
How does Google read multiple Geo Shape Schema Mark Up?
Hi Guys, I posted a question recently about "Can I have multiple areaServed mark up on one domain?" and the responses I got was no. My client work predominantly in the South East of England in specific towns, so I wanted to be able to list all the areas they service. However, after being told no, I went ahead anyway and put in multiple areaServed markup on the page to see if this generates any errors and it isn't when I run it through the Structured Data Testing Tool. I don't get any errors by doing this, so hurray! But... What I want to understand (which I can't find the answer anywhere), is if this is okay, and how will Google read my markup? Will Google see that we are in multiple areas across the SE of England and push my content up before other sites, or is this just going to confused Google? By putting in all these areas into the website as multiple locations, will Google identify that person X in area Y fits the areaServed mark up I've added and push my content to them? Overall... has anyone else used multiple areaServed markup and can validate that this works? hHpEyQf
Local Website Optimization | | Virginia-Girtz1 -
Service Area Location Pages vs. User Experience
I'm familiar with the SAB best practices outlined here. Here's my issue: Doing local landing pages as described here might not be ideal from a user experience point of view. Having a "Cities We Serve" or "Service Areas" link in the main navigation isn't necessarily valuable to the user when the city-specific landing pages are all places within a 15-mile radius of the SAB's headquarters. It would just look like the company did it for SEO. It wouldn't look natural. Seriously, it feels like best practices are totally at odds with user experience here. If I absolutely must create location pages for 10 or so municipalities within my client's service area, I'd rather NOT put the service areas as a primary navigation item. It is not useful to the user. Anyone who sees that the company provides services in the [name of city] metropolitan area will already understand that the company can service their town that is 5 miles away. It is self-evident. For example**, who would wonder whether a plumbing company with a Los Angeles address also services Beverly Hills?** It's just... silly. But the Moz guide says I've got to do those location pages! And that I've got to put them high up in the navigation! This is a problem because we've got to do local SEO, but we also have to provide an ideal experience. Thoughts?
Local Website Optimization | | Greenery1 -
Advice on applying Service Area Schema
So I have client that delivers goods to residential addresses and commercial businesses. They have 60+ distribution centers but want to target surrounding counties, cities and territories. Our development team was considering using virtual location pages (thousands) for these service areas. I have lobbied against this out of concern that Google would label these "doorway" pages. These pages would not have full addresses. I want to develop a strategy to gain coverage in these surrounding delivery areas. I was told that applying https://schema.org/serviceArea might help. However will this truly bring in the necessary visibility? Would having only a few key select virtual locations suffice (along with Service Area schema)? Any advice on applying https://schema.org/serviceArea attributes would be much appreciated.
Local Website Optimization | | RosemaryB
Thanks0 -
Should I open a new domain and website for a new location under one company?
Hi my name is Gina and I wanted to ask for some advice. I'm thinking opening a diff location and was thinking if its a good idea to open up a new domain and new website? And why that may be a good idea and why or a bad idea and why?
Local Website Optimization | | LittleDog0 -
Multilocation business, how can you rank for different categories in different locations with only branch pages?
Hello Mozzers, I am wondering how do you rank for categories locally where when you operate from multiple branches. Currently our eCommerce website has location pages for every category but I know that this is now classed as doorway pages and spammy so I am in the process of sorting out our site structure. I understand that the general format for having sites with multiple branches is to have a branch page per physical location and that's about it. Is there any more to this ? However, What confuses me though, is that if you offer all these services in all these branches, how are you going to rank for them locally if you don't have a specific page for each of them in that location? So for example - We rent Carpet cleaners , floor sanders, generators in each of our different branches. My site currently has a carpet cleaner hire <location>url , floor sander hire <location>url and a generator hire <location>url. Every branch has a url for each of my categories.</location></location></location> So if I was to get rid of all of my location category pages. How am I going to rank for these renting these products in different cities where our branches does without having specific location pages for them ? Is it just a case that google knows that because I have branch pages at locations x, y, x , then my carpet cleaner , floor sander and generator category pages will rank locally in those locations providing I have decent citations etc etc etc thanks
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC12
Pete0 -
Call Tracking, DNI Script & Local SEO
Hi Moz! I've been reading about this a lot more lately - and it doesn't seem like there's exactly a method that Google (or other search engines) would consider to be "best practices". The closest I've come to getting some clarity are these Blumenthals articles - http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/05/14/a-guide-to-call-tracking-and-local/ & the follow-up piece from CallRail - http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/11/25/guide-to-using-call-tracking-for-local-search/. Assuming a similar goal of using an existing phone number with a solid foundation in the local search ecosystem, and to create the ability to track how many calls are coming organically (not PPC or other paid platform) to the business directly from the website for an average SMB. For now, let's also assume we're also not interested in screening the calls, or evaluating customer interaction with the staff - I would love to hear from anyone who has implemented the DNI call tracking info for a website. Were there negative effects on Local SEO? Did the value of the information (# of calls/month) outweigh any local search conflicts? If I was deploying this today, it seems like the blueprint for including DNI script, while mitigating risk for losing local search visibility might go something like this: Hire reputable call-tracking service, ensure DNI will match geographic area-code & be "clean" numbers Insert DNI script on key pages on site Maintain original phone number (non-DNI) on footer, within Schema & on Contact page of the site ?? Profit Ok, those last 2 bullet points aren't as important, but I would be curious where other marketers land on this issue, as I think there's not a general consensus at this point. Thanks everyone!
Local Website Optimization | | Etna1 -
Schema - Street Address
I'm starting to use schema on a site currently working on the business address in the footer. What is the correct way to use data that has more than one line? So for example the address is something like "Unit 1, Some Farm, Some Street..." Unit 1, Some Farm Some Street or Unit 1, Some Farm
Local Website Optimization | | MickEdwards
Some Street0