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.
Adding Schema to multi-location Wordpress Website using Schema Pro
-
All, we're building a new version of our existing website using Wordpress and have both Yoast SEO Premium and Schema Pro installed. Our site has 70, a medical practice, has 70 different locations.
Each one of our locations has a page tile like the following: "Los Angeles | ABC Dental". The first part of the site title is the town we're located in followed by our site name.
Using Schema Pro, we're not sure about what to place into the "Name" field. You can see the direction from Schema Pro for local businesses here, https://wpschema.com/docs/add-schema-markup-for-a-local-business-page/
By default Schema Pro has the name field set to Site Title. However, using this on all 70 or our landing pages wouldn't provide the local aspect we want. It would just say ABC Dental. We changed this to use a new custom field where we could enter a more descriptive name.
Using our page title example of "Los Angeles | ABC Dental", would we simply enter this into the name field of Schema Pro? If not, would we format this another way such as "ABC Dental Los Angeles"
We could use some help in a strategy for Schema markup for multi-location businesses, in particular, the name field. All other information such as address, phone number, etc seems rather straight forward.
Thank you for the assistance
-
This schema defines the name of your business, it should just contain your business name (and nothing else)
"Name:_ This is the name of the business you are talking about_"
If the name of your business (legally, the name you trade with) is "ABC Dental", then this should be set to "ABC Dental"
Editing your business name for SEO is something that Google frowns upon at the GMB / schema level. Lots of the information which affects a businesses' prominence in the SERPs is cross-fed from schema, but also from Google My Business
For Google My Business, it's frowned upon to conjoin your location and business name (indeed this can cause GMB penalties)
"[Don't] Stuff only keywords in the title: Don’t take the advice above badly. If you have multiple keywords, just focus on the main one and keep the secondary ones for your website’s pages. A good example of keyword stuffing which you should avoid is the following: “Arcadia: Hotel, Motel, Bed and Breakfast, B&B, Restaurant in London. Google doesn’t like that and will often hard suspend pages that do this, so avoid it." ~ Cognitive SEO
"Your name should reflect your business’ real-world name, as used consistently on your shop front, website, stationery and as known to customers. Accurately representing your business name helps customers find your business online.
_Add additional details like address and/or service area, opening hours and category in the other sections of your business information. _
For example, if you were creating a listing for a 24-hour coffee shop in Southampton city centre called Shelly’s Coffee, you would enter that business information as:
- Business name: Shelly’s Coffee
- Address: 324 Poppy Street, Southampton
- Hours: Open 24 hours
- Category: Coffee shop
Including unnecessary information in your business name is not permitted, and could result in your listing being suspended. Refer to the specific examples below to determine what you can and can't include in your business name." ~ Google
Since Google frown on building out the business name with keywords (yes, EVEN location based ones) for GMB, and since LocalBusiness schema and GMB data serve similar functions for Google - why would they think any differently?
As such I'd personally not include your location in your business name specifically (either through schema or on GMB) as the benefit of doing so will be slight, whilst the risks may be more substantial (GMB / rich snippet spam penalties)
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
-
Do you need contact details (NAP) on every page of your website for local search ranking ?
We’ve got a clients site which doesn't have the contact details on every page, all the contact details are on the /contact page which is using the schema.org local business markup Some sites that our outranking us locally have their contact details on all pages, where as others only have it on the contact page also. Is having your contact details on every page a ranking factor for local search ?
Local Listings | | mike8780 -
Google My Business - bulk location upload vs. single upload
Hi there, I have a question regarding Google My Business listings: We currently have a business with few offices (less than 10). Each office has it's Google listing under the same Google account.
Local Listings | | OrendaLtd
We plan on opening new offices at a certain pace, let's say two a month, which means we'll have more than 10 listings in the near future.
As far as I recall, Google allows up to 10 listings per account, which means it won't suffice. On the other hand, We do not have 10 offices at the time being, which means we're not eligible for a bulk upload. Any ideas how to handle this situation?0 -
Google My Business for a Multi-Business Showroom
We are considering signing up for a multi-business showroom co-op concept in our area. Basically this space (1 address) has 10+ businesses that have their products represented at the location. There is one person working that passes along the leads to the individual companies when someone visits the showroom and shows interest in a product. I know at least 5 of the businesses are using this address for a Google My Business profile, and we would like to also. I am looking for some advice on best practices and strategy to ensure were not violating any of Google's policies. Here is a link to the showroom: http://www.brookfieldhomeandideacenter.com/
Local Listings | | JohnWeb120 -
Best Practice When Selling One Location of Company with Multiple Branches - Local Search
I have a client with a small business with 4 different branches. Currently, we have a main landing page for the company, plus distinct landing pages for each branch with maps, territories, distinct phone numbers, etc., for each branch. The company recently sold one of the branches to a competitor as they do not want to service that area anymore. They have asked me what they should do now. Obviously, we are going to remove the location page for that branch, but we also need to transfer the phone number to the other company for use as part of the sale. What tasks should I look into for separating the branch from the rest of the company while still maintaining best practice for the rest of the site/company? Thank you for your help and suggestions.
Local Listings | | Ayres-SEO0 -
Concerned about cannibalization for local SEO results. Should we move some of our location pages to a subdomain?
Currently we are providing local SEO recommendations for a well known pharmacy chain. Like most major brands they enjoy multiple organic (not just 3 pack results) listings when people search for local phrases such as "Dallas pharmacy clinics'". The issue is that all these listings are coming from the same domain page. We are seeing multiple listings both branded and non-branded search queries. Our concern is that Google will someday decide to choose one listing as the most authoritative and nix the rest of the local listings which will reduce their first page search engine saturation. To maintain first page saturation we are considering recommending to the client that they move some of their location listings
Local Listings | | RosemaryB
to a subdomain (different IP address) to avoid a Google "clean up". Please note that our client is certainly not using any "doorway" pages but some of these are very scarce on content. They do not have an issue with duplicate content either. By using subdomains could we help maintain our client's first page saturation? Any links to articles would be much appreciated.0 -
How to deal with wrong location in Google SERP
Hi, If I understand correctly, Google provides search results based on the location of the user. That's fine, because most of my clients are local. But if I look at my own search results, Google thinks I'm in a totally different town. Most likely based on my IP address. Of course I can solve that for myself, but the same goes for my potential clients. Is there a way to deal with this, from an seo perspective? For instance find out where most of the the IP providers are located and target that location?
Local Listings | | Houdoe1 -
Two businesses - using separate suite numbers
I have a client that has an office in a particular suite (Suite 101) at a local address. They rent the space so they cannot just add another suite number. They are going to have two websites for two different businesses run from the same location. They will have separate local phone numbers for each business. Is it too much of a stretch for them to show one as "Suite 101-A" and the other as "Suite 101-B" for their local pages? One of the businesses is very new with few citations at this point. The other has not started up yet, so we have better control of the citations that will be created. I've seen similar questions posted, but not one that addresses this specific issue. Thanks for any advice!
Local Listings | | wcksmith10 -
For a classifieds site, should we keep deleted/sold/expired ads?
Unlike a blog, classified sites tend to sell items that eventually are no longer available, and it's almost every page on the site that works like that (except category pages for example) We have 2 options at the moment: We keep the old ad urls. Note that these urls won't be linked from on the site anymore. They will technically only exist in Google's index. When someone comes through to them, they are present with a suggested replacement ad that is currently available. So 5 years from now, most of the "indexed" pages on the site that google sends traffic to will be these pages that simply tell you about another ad. Not nice, but so many classifieds are doing it like this. 301 the deleted/sold/expired ads to a relevant existing ad. Might have scenarios resulting in soft-404s. Both have pro's and con's, but any further insight into the matter will be great!
Local Listings | | DotSlash940