Rafting Company wants drop sites along river to show up in maps, not main office

[rmorgan]

I have a client with a unique problem. They are a white water rafting company with several drop spots on a river. All have verified GMB pages. The problem is their administration building shows up predominantly in SERPs instead of the drop spots, so when people when to see where to start rafting, they're going to the office.

The client still wants to have a GMB page for their office, but they want to suffocate it a little or make it clear in some way that the drop spots are really the ones to use as a point of reference.

I have some ideas on how I would handle this, but wanted to see what others thought first.

 

[Eric Rohrback]

I'm not really familiar with this line of business, and i'm sure others will have questions as well. Could you explain the "drop spots" a little more? Are they separate offices? Do they have their own staff? I think a little more info will help us understand the business situation a little clearer.

 

[rmorgan]

The drop sites are just like a hut along the river where they launch kayaks and rafts similar to a boat ramp. The drop spots are manned during business hours, and they do receive mail there.

 

[travelincat]

Is there a physical address for each? Do they have a phone at each location?

 

[rmorgan]

Yes, there are separate, unique addresses for each, and yes, they all have unique phone numbers.

 

[James Watt]

I'm not entirely sure those locations are entitled to their own GMB page in the first place, I'll be interested to see what some of the pros here have to say. From what you've said so far I'm not so sure they are, but I'll wait to see what others have to say.

Personally, I think it would be a much better user experience in general to direct people towards the website, where you have a custom map of all the drop points, along with any extra information for each one. You could have that front and center on the home page, and you could even have the location specific information pop up when someone selects the relevant place on the map. You can set up a custom map for embed here, though if you want to go nuts with features and styling you may need to get a little help, the Google maps API is a heck of a rabbit hole.

If you try and use GMB to send people to the right place, you're inevitably going to end up with poor usability. At best only 3 locations are going to pop up in the 3-pack, and why let Google decide which to show? You could have your one GMB page (for the corporate office) set as a service area business, then it would be obvious that anyone interested in a location should look at the website itself.

From a local SEO perspective, believe me, you don't want to divide your efforts. 4 locations is genuinely 4 times the work. Better to have 1 strong presence than 4 that no one keeps an eye on.

 

[DanLeibson]

Unfortunately, I think this sounds like a lost cause. I'm not quite sure what the use case is where someone is going to search for a drop point for a rafting expedition and Google is going to return a GMB result. I think a much better solution would be to make sure the drop spots are optimized in Map Maker so if Google ever wants to return mapping data they return those points. Also having some kind of mapping resource/guide on the domain itself seems like a good idea both in terms of SEO and user experience.