Adding a Business Location for SEO Purposes

[ForwardMotion]

Hello,

I'm looking for clarification on adding a new business location for SEO purposes. I have a client who wants to rank for a city North of the city his main address is in. I keep hearing over and over that one thing to do is add a location in the city you want to rank for, so my client is wanting to do that as the main city he really wants to start ranking for is the major city around. So my questions are as follows:

• If he grabs a location in the city he wants to rank for I'm assuming he will need to set up another GBP with that address and information, plus drive reviews to that GBP, correct?
• Does the new location have to have it's own phone number or can he just use his cell phone like he does for his current location?
• Can the reviews for both locations be combined or does each location have to have their own reviews? I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this one, but just want to make sure I'm not missing something.
• The sole purpose of this new location is to drive business in this city. The business is a service business that goes to their customers, so really no need for customers to visit the location. So with that said, what is the best practice for setting this up for my client?

If anyone has done this for one of your clients or yourself, I would love to hear how you did this, what is recommended and if there are pitfalls we should avoid? Any help would be greatly appreciated as I have never had a client want to do this to increase his reach into another city.

Thank you!

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Yes, you would need a second Google business profile and you would need to drive reviews to that profile.

I would highly recommend using a unique phone number.

There is no function within Google business profiles to combine reviews across multiple locations, so each location would need to have its own reviews.

In order to qualify and be eligible to create the listing in the first place, you would need to meet the following criteria:

If you have different locations for your service business, with separate service areas and separate staff at each location, you’re allowed one profile for each location. The boundaries of your profile’s overall service area shouldn’t extend farther than about 2 hours of driving time from where your business is based. For some businesses, larger service areas may be appropriate.