Should you always have 1 GBP per location page?

[Gesundheit]

Our business is an SAB with multiple locations across the US, and we're expanding into new markets in the NE. We have citations/GBPs set up for each market, based on and verified at the location of our warehouses, which are our only physical addresses, although we don't do business at them. The GBPs all link to the corresponding location page.

As we're expanding, we're getting into denser markets where one warehouse will service a large number of cities. My recommendation has been to keep with our practice and only add location pages to our site if they can correspond to a GBP, and then optimize the location page for the broader area. Others on the team, including our field operations teams, seem to disagree and have recommended that we make more than one page for some markets - so basically we would have a warehouse/GBP which would be representative of two or more location pages on our site.

Am I correct in thinking that a 1:1 ratio is typically going to be our best option? Are there ever instances when this might not be ideal? If the company does decide to go forward with adding multiple location pages, should I consider changing my link structure for my other GBPs?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

As we're expanding, we're getting into denser markets where one warehouse will service a large number of cities. My recommendation has been to keep with our practice and only add location pages to our site if they can correspond to a GBP, and then optimize the location page for the broader area. Others on the team, including our field operations teams, seem to disagree and have recommended that we make more than one page for some markets - so basically we would have a warehouse/GBP which would be representative of two or more location pages on our site.

Building location pages for the areas that the GBP is not physically located in is a good idea. Since the GBP typically only ranks in the physical city that it's located in, creating location pages allows you to rank organically in cities you don't have a physical location in. We wrote about location pages and some performance around them here - Can Service Area Pages With Duplicate or Similar Content Increase Traffic? - Sterling Sky Inc

 

[Gesundheit]

Building location pages for the areas that the GBP is not physically located in is a good idea. Since the GBP typically only ranks in the physical city that it's located in, creating location pages allows you to rank organically in cities you don't have a physical location in. We wrote about location pages and some performance around them here - Can Service Area Pages With Duplicate or Similar Content Increase Traffic? - Sterling Sky Inc

Thanks Colan, I appreciate this. What you're saying makes sense. To be clear, what is your recommendation on linking a GBP to market-specific landing pages? When the GBP-to-Location Page is 1:1, the answer is clear; but what about when it's 1:3? (Ex A single GBP represents 3 different Location Pages) In that instance, should the GBP list its URL as the homepage, or select a Location Page at random?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

In most cases where there is just one physical location I would link to the homepage.