- Joined
- Mar 13, 2017
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- 29
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- 6
Most of my experience is with small local companies or companies with multiple physical branches, assisting them with local search issues. I have two different companies asking me for advice that don't meet this profile and I would like some guidance. I will deal with them one at a time.
The first is in Waste Management and it has two fully owned locations but several GMB listings around the country set up by various marketers in the past, some of which don't fully comply with Google's guidelines. They are essentially a national brand sub-contracting work to local independent operators. The website has a good spread of local landing pages but there is no 1-2-1 relationship between those pages and the GMB pages (there are far more landing pages than GMB listings). My question is whether the local landing pages have ranking value given that they don't have a physical presence or any citations in most cases. It would not be possible to embed a Google Map on the majority of the pages although they do contain an image of a map of the area to make it look local. Nor do they have other information such as NAP or business hours on the local pages which they should really have for maximum effect.
On one extreme I could suggest that they close all but their two genuine GMB locations and at another I could suggest trying to create listings for each landing page. I can see the advantages of both. If they had only two locations should they be set up as "service area" to cover the country? Would abandoning their local landing pages have any ranking effect given that there is no location?
Moving on to the next business it is sells insurance on domestic heating etc. out of a single location and has not even claimed its GMB listing. I plan to recommend claiming the GMB listing (if only to be able to respond to reviews) and setting up citations in the main directories and review sites for that industry. It is a service area business covering the whole country and therefore I assume that the GMB listing should be set as such.
Both businesses will benefit from organic SEO such as content marketing but that is not something I can handle. I just want to ask what I should be recommending from a local search perspective for these essentially national brand businesses. Any advice would be gratefully received.
The first is in Waste Management and it has two fully owned locations but several GMB listings around the country set up by various marketers in the past, some of which don't fully comply with Google's guidelines. They are essentially a national brand sub-contracting work to local independent operators. The website has a good spread of local landing pages but there is no 1-2-1 relationship between those pages and the GMB pages (there are far more landing pages than GMB listings). My question is whether the local landing pages have ranking value given that they don't have a physical presence or any citations in most cases. It would not be possible to embed a Google Map on the majority of the pages although they do contain an image of a map of the area to make it look local. Nor do they have other information such as NAP or business hours on the local pages which they should really have for maximum effect.
On one extreme I could suggest that they close all but their two genuine GMB locations and at another I could suggest trying to create listings for each landing page. I can see the advantages of both. If they had only two locations should they be set up as "service area" to cover the country? Would abandoning their local landing pages have any ranking effect given that there is no location?
Moving on to the next business it is sells insurance on domestic heating etc. out of a single location and has not even claimed its GMB listing. I plan to recommend claiming the GMB listing (if only to be able to respond to reviews) and setting up citations in the main directories and review sites for that industry. It is a service area business covering the whole country and therefore I assume that the GMB listing should be set as such.
Both businesses will benefit from organic SEO such as content marketing but that is not something I can handle. I just want to ask what I should be recommending from a local search perspective for these essentially national brand businesses. Any advice would be gratefully received.