Business with 3 different locations

[golfer]

Hi All,

Thank you for responding to my last post. Another quick questions. I own an Appliance Repair company and we service 3 different cities in the local area. This is a home based business as we take calls from home. I would like to get in the top 3 for each city.

Should I make a different website for each city with a business location verified in each city? Or make one website for the entire company with one business location. With out having an address in the other 2 cities wouldn't it be almost impossible to show up in the top 3? My goal is to be in the top three for all three cities. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Tim

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hi Tim, just to be clear, are you asking about creating three different GMB listings or three separate websites?

 

[golfer]

Hi Colan,

Thank you for taking the time to read my question. Yes, I built three different websites for each of my locations. Appliancerepairwestpalmbeachfl.com Appliancerepairpalmbeachgardensfl.com and appliancerepairjupiterfl.com

It was my understanding to that I needed an address in the city in which I wanted to be at the top of GMB. Which is why I went to the trouble to creating 3 different websites. Was that wrong? I am about 10 days after post card verification so far and I am coming up on the list if you google appliance repair and the zip code but not the city. If you google Same Day appliance repair and the city then I will come up. Worried I might have made some errors.

Thanks
Tim

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hi Tim, in this scenario I always advise to go with one website with a well optimized page for each location. You will likely never rank your GMB page in the pack for every city, but you have a good shot at ranking the webpages organically.

 

[Linda Buquet]

It was my understanding to that I needed an address in the city in which I wanted to be at the top of GMB.

Colan is right.

Additionally, if you are saying you set up additional addresses so you can have additional GMB pages - that is not allowed and can cause your whole acct to be suspended, including the main legitimate listing.

Oops I see you already did set up listings for the other locations.

What type of addresses did you use for the other 2? The Jupiter listing on Starling and the one in West Palm Beach both appear to be houses. What did you use for the 3rd one?

Service area businesses can only have one listing for the actual location, which in your case is your home. And typically you'll only have a chance of ranking in the local pack for the city you are actually based out of with that single listing.

So the only way to try to rank is in organic, like Colan said.

 

[JoyHawkins]

To add what Linda said, Service Area Businesses are only allowed one listing on GMB. The others will be removed once Google catches on to them or a competitor reports you.

Service-area businesses--business that serve customers at their locations--should have one page for the central office or location and designate a service area from that point. If you wish to display your complete business address while setting your service area(s), your business location should be staffed and able to receive customers during its stated hours. Google will determine how best to display your business address based on your business information as well as information from other sources.

https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038163?hl=en

 

[golfer]

Thank you all for the knowledge, I honestly had no idea. Question is what should I do now? Should I close down two of my websites and GMB accounts? Some of them are ranking for key term and zip code, but not for the key term and city. It's been about 10 days.

On a side note how many pictures do you recommend per page? Should the alt text and title be different for each picture? What about the alt text and title for the pictures on the GMB listing? Should they all have the key term and city name? Or is that overkill? Appreciate any advice. Thank you for your time.

 

[Eric Rohrback]

Should I close down two of my websites and GMB accounts? Some of them are ranking for key term and zip code, but not for the key term and city. It's been about 10 days.

That all depends how much time you have to spend on each one. Personally I would redirect the domains into one main domain for your brand and create local landing pages to try and rank organically. The only way you can get all domains to rank is to put work into each one. I'd rather consolidate efforts if the locations are close enough. You are only allowed one GMB page since you're a service-area-business, so only work with the one set at your actual location.

On a side note how many pictures do you recommend per page? Should the alt text and title be different for each picture? What about the alt text and title for the pictures on the GMB listing? Should they all have the key term and city name? Or is that overkill? Appreciate any advice. Thank you for your time.

# of pictures on a page is irrelevant. If you can put 5 pictures on a page and make it look good, or if you put 20 pictures it doesn't matter as long as the page drives users to convert. Put as many pictures as you want to make the page look good. Test different layouts and see what potential customers like/the best way to sell your services. Don't think about bots as much - think about what will make customers call you. If you have a ton of pictures, but no CTA then the pictures are just taking up space and are pretty worthless. Think about lead flow and how to funnel customers to the appropriate conversion points of the site.

Alt text & image title should accurately describe the image on the page. Try to work keywords in there, but don't overdo it & stuff keywords. If you're showing a picture of a guy repairing a furnace, then put the alt tag as "Company X's employee performing furnace repair service."

Make it natural, focus on the ultimate business objectives, measure results.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Should I close down two of my websites and GMB accounts?

There is nothing wrong with having multiple websites so you could keep all 3 if the other 2 are gaining organic traffic. You should remove your pages for the 2 listings you set up in GMB though since that's a violation. Note: deleting them from your account might only unverify the listing so you might need to contact Google to have them completely removed.

On a side note how many pictures do you recommend per page? Should the alt text and title be different for each picture? What about the alt text and title for the pictures on the GMB listing? Should they all have the key term and city name? Or is that overkill?

Alt text is important but changing file names on pictures is a more effective way to optimize them. See step #13: On-Page SEO: Anatomy of a Perfectly Optimized Page

 

[chadkimball]

You will likely never rank your GMB page in the pack for every city, but you have a good shot at ranking the webpages organically.

this is one of my biggest beefs with google local/maps. IF an SAB provides a better service than the others in the local pack, it doesn't matter, because they'll never be able to compete with those in the local pack. Ranking organically under the pack, in my experience, brings in only a TINY FRACTION of the leads that the businesses in the local pack will get.

If you want to really compete in your local area, get in that local pack however you can.

 

[JoyHawkins]

If you want to really compete in your local area, get in that local pack however you can.

Sorry, I can't agree with that advice. I've made it my personal mission to empower more SEO agencies to fight against spam and report people who are doing this that are ranking where they shouldn't be. It's working in the sense that I've never seen more reports on the GMB forum reporting spam than I have lately. We also have more people hiring us to fight spam in their city than I've ever seen.

I know blackhat tactics work. I just don't think they'll work longterm and I don't think I want to be that person that advised someone to do something against Google's guidelines that got removed down the road and left them with nothing (so all that money invested is now gone).