Hi Gavo,

While what Marcus points out is true (you can prompt local results for web design companies by adding 'in' to your query), it's important to understand that Google does not view web design companies as being truly local, hence their lack of inclusion in the results for the most common service + city or city + service queries. To my understanding, Google's thinking on this is that most web design (and SEO) companies operate virtually (don't meet with clients face-to-face).

So, you can add your web design company to Google's local index, and you can build citations for it, but it's likely that your overall organic rankings will hinge more on other forms of marketing in which you engage. Think content development, earning links, social outreach, etc.

Hi SearchParty,

If these are all real physical locations to which customers come to do business or from which staff goes to serve clients, then my rule of them is to include up to eight of them in the footer, properly marked up using Schema. There should also be a unique page on the website for each location.

Glad to hear it!

Hi Timothy,

The purpose of building citations on local business directories (whether manually or via a paid service like Yext) is to build up the authority of your basic business data (your business NAP - name, address, phone number) so that people can find your business in a variety of places and so that all of the data proves that you have a consistent, specific brand name, physical location, local phone number and website.

I am not aware of a list of which directories, specifically, pass page rank, but trying to look at this from Google's perspective - Google would be aware that most directory listings are built by the business owner. In other words, the links they contain are being intentionally built by the business itself. Thus, I would assume that even those directory links which do pass page rank are not going to be as highly valued as links you earn in other ways (voluntary mentions, guest posting, etc.).

Because of this, I don't consider citation building to be equivalent to link building. The latter requires additional and different efforts.

Hi ThinkCreativeGroup,

If the restaurants have different names (i.e. Bob's Pancake House vs. Bill's Burgers) then you should keep them on separate domains and do all marketing completely separately without making any effort to link the two to one another.

If there is some shared history, you could put it in a non-indexable infographic along the lines of "The Jones family opened Bob's Pancake House in 1938. In 1950, they invented their famous buckwheat cake stack. In 2012, son Bill opened Bill's Burgers across town". If, for reasons of pride, the owner wants to highlight something like this, that's fine, but I wouldn't do it in indexable text.

If the restaurants are two branches of the same brand (i.e. both of them are Bob's Pancake House) then, yes, you could develop a single website with a landing page for each physical location. You would then be linking to each of these landing pages from the citation building campaign for each location.

Hope this helps!

Hi Taysir,

This is a good question and one for which there is no 'right' answer, in my opinion. Taking the approach suggested by your spreadsheet, your chief danger would be thin or duplicate content. After all, your services in Oakland are likely to be identical to your services in Fremont, or in the multiple cities in your service area. You can go this way, of course, provided you can find a genuine reason for creating this type of content and have the resources to make each page totally unique. Often, I've found that this is not the case, so I prefer to recommend this approach in most SMB cases:

You create 3 types of pages.

1. City Landing Pages, one for each city, talking about the location and summarizing services. These pages would be optimized for your CORE service phrase + city name.

2. Service Pages, one for each service. You can link to these from the city landing pages. These would be optimized for the individual service, but not for a particular city.

3. Future Pages. I like best to give the client the ability to blog about their projects and news on an on-going basis, giving them the opportunity to begin building up content that covers a variety of keyword combinations, over time.

I find that this approach makes projects with SMBs manageable. We get really strong pages for each of their cities and each of their services onto the website, and then give them the power to begin showcasing their work in various cities via an on-site blog.

So, that's my typical project structure. I'm not saying that you can't go the other way - the way you've mentioned - just that there is an inherent danger in that approach with small, local businesses because they may be tempted to create a ton of content at once that is of low quality instead of being exceptional.

Hope this helps!

Hi Taysir,

Both P.O. boxes and virtual offices are forbidden by the Google Places Quality Guidelines (see: https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en)

Unless your client is an area of very low competition or in a very rural area, then he should not expect to rank in the local pack of results for anything but his city of location. It's important to set his expectation about this, so that he understand that this is simply how Google works. Let him know that the use of P.O. boxes or virtual offices will only harm his trustworthiness in the eyes of Google at the same time as confusing his customers.

So, he can go for local rankings for his city of location, and then go after as much organic visibility as he can for his other location-less service cities by developing content that reflects his work in these places. I think you will find some good inspiration for this in this article:

The Nitty Gritty of City Landings Pages

All SABs struggle with this situation, but it is totally possible to earn good core local visibility for the location city and additional organic visibility for the service cities with the right strategy. Good luck with the work ahead!

Hi DigitalWorkboots,

Yes, put both complete NAPs in the footer, preferably using Schema markup. Also put them both on the contact us page, as well as having a separate landing page for each office.