Cleaning up Multi-Location Franchises for a Driving School
-
I am working with a client who owns a driving school. There are 32 franchises in the same region of the state. These are independently owned and run. Each franchise has its own service area, phone number, offering, and contact information. The tricky thing is, they teach the classes either online or at local high schools, so it's service-based and there is no physical address to publicly display.
They are trying to straighten out their Google Listings. They have 15 or so GMBs already either claimed or unclaimed. Some have the incorrect street addresses, some have service areas, etc.
I am planning to manually create or clean up each one, marking them as serving the city they are in. I'm trying to put together an estimate on how much time it will take, and I'm wondering if there is any way to do this from a central ownership standpoint, instead of tackling each one independently. The same user will be the owner of each listing... Is there any way to speed up the process of claiming & optimizing (or any recommended approach in general)?
-
Bulk would be good if you did not have all the problems you currently have.
The big flag I see is having listings out there with the wrong address #1 and also having an address showing when they are SAB's.
I would tackle them one by one since you clearly have unique issues with each profile.
I would budget about 2 hours of time for each, and work with Twitter support to get things cleared up (not phone support, unless they are USA based)
-
Thank you!
If doing a bulk update, should I include information about the listings that already exist, or should I tackle only those manually? I am not sure if Google would create duplicates or catch that those listings already exist if doing it this way.
-
Hi there,
Hi there you can update multiple locations to one account - https://support.google.com/business/answer/3370250?hl=en
If you want to create & clean up GMB account for each franchise, then it's going to be a manual, laborious process.
It all depends on how the franchise owner wants to present themselves to the market.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to manage two websites that have the same locations on GMB?
We have a client who sells chalet holidays on two different websites. There are 12 Chalets in total dotted around the alps. We want these locations to feature on Google My Business for both websites. However, it seems to only let us choose between having one website or the other. What's the best way to have both featuring all 12 chalets? Currently, we have them all listed individually in a grouped location under one website. Looking forward to hearing all your great geeky suggestions!
Local Listings | | SolveWebMedia0 -
Is it necessary for a single location business to have a location landing page?
I'm working with a dental practice that has one location that they use to serve a service area radius of about 15-30 mins drive time, which encompasses several other small towns. I understand the value of having individual location pages for a multi-location business, but is creating a location page for a business with a single office considered best practice as well? The entire site will be optimized for the city name that the business' physical office is located in. I'm considering creating a single location landing page that I'd link to from the footer and about navigation of the site, which would be similar to the template Miriam Ellis laid out in this awesome post: https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages In doing this, I'm hoping to create a place for office photos and driving directions from the nearby towns in order to name the different cities in the service area. However, I'm concerned about the location page competing with other pages on the site, which will be better optimized for conversions in my opinion. Does anyone have advice on best practice here?
Local Listings | | formandfunctionagency0 -
Local search traffictwo locations
Hello, Can I ask for some advice? A client of mine is located in two cities. The first one was his original city and he has lots of traffic for various search terms and is very happy. He then expanded and has a branch in a second city. We created a unique landing page for it and a Google My Business page, built citations and it is ranking quite well (on first page for the two keywords that we targeted). But traffic is not great as city 1. His main navigation has a list of services and also a locations tab which has the two locations. The services pages are all unique and target specific keywords and I added location to the end of them - : e.g. **SERVICE KEYWORD CITY 1, CITY 2. ** A search for SERVICE KEYWORD + CITY 1 is on first page and lots of traffic. For SERVICE KEYWORD + CITY 2 it is on page 2. How would we increase the traffic to the second city? Should we create sub pages of the services he provides with the location set as city2 only (and keep the original ones only as city 1)? These would kind of duplicate the services pages we already have so we would have the problem that we might be duplicating stuff. Since SERVICE KEYWORD CITY 1 are doing really well (he's either first or second) I am loathe to change it too much but not sure how to get more keywords for city 2 without duplication the services pages. Any advice?
Local Listings | | AL123al0 -
Strategy for a business that has many service locations, but no real storefront?
I've struggled for a few years now trying to find the right solution. Say a client (home services contractor) has only one "location" - only one physical address from which they manage operations. This is not a retail store, not an office where customers would go. Technicians are dispatched to a 50 mile radius to provide service. This 50 mile radius includes a large metro area and many small cities. Let's take Austin, TX for example. Let's say Contractor ABC has it's office/warehouse in a smaller city just north, Round Rock, and the office's zip code is 78664. But they provide service to all of Austin and some surrounding cities such as Cedar Park, Pflugerville, Lakeway, Buda, etc. Their competitor, Contractor XYZ, services the exact same areas, but they have the benefit of having a physical address in the heart of downtown Austin, zip 78701. How does Contractor ABC effectively compete for rankings in Austin as well as the rest of the service area? More specifically, what is the best practice for handling NAP in this scenario? Most recently our strategy has been to enter the actual physical address where required (not trying to pull one over on google and trusting that google makes the correlation to the metro area) and where we can, we just put the metro (Austin, TX for example). This is also for display purposes so that a potential customer in Austin or Buda doesn't think, "Oh, this company is in RoundRock, this is not for me." I have multiple clients in this scenario and would like to have more clarity in this strategy before signing them up for MozLocal - P.S. any feedback on the current usefulness of that platform is also welcome!
Local Listings | | vernonmack0 -
Multiple locations and local directories
Hello, A client has opened a new office in another city. I have created a local landing page for this city. Now I want to build citations for it. However, I have already set up directories like Yelp/Yell with the primary/original address in the original city. Is it OK to set up new citations using the new city local address. The company name stays the same obviously. So I will have duplicate listings on the directories for the same company. Will this work? Thanks for any help
Local Listings | | AL123al1 -
Optimizing a location the business doesn't actually reside in
I am optimizing a site for a general contractor in a small market -- Chittenden County, Vermont -- and I'm struggling with how to label his local identity on-page. His registered place of business is in a town about 12 miles outside of Burlington, which is the largest city in the county and state. Nearly 80% of geo modified keywords go to Burlington, and most people consider Chittenden County to be "greater Burlington." I am wondering whether it will help or hurt SEO to use "Burlington" in the titles, headers, etc, even though their actual location is a few miles away. They don't get customer visits -- business operations are located in a residence and all inquiries come in over the phone or email -- so I'm not worried so much about confusing visitors. Also, their official location will be available in the footer and contact page. If I go with "Burlington," how will this impact search rankings and G+ Places when I start focusing on citations in various directories. Will this slight geo discrepancy cause problems with organic and local SEO? I've been wrestling with this for a while. Your input is REALLY appreciated. Thanks, guys!
Local Listings | | ptdodge0 -
Different Search Results Depending On Location
Hello all, I was talking to a client earlier this week and they were telling me that they were not ranking fora desired keyword term. When I, however, ran a Google search for the keyword term in question, the client's website was showing a ranking on my end. We are both located in California. I'm in Southern California and they're in Northern California, but I don't think that should make a significant difference should it? Anyway, I've never run into such a quandary before and am curious to know if any of you out there can help me better understand why we're receiving different search results. Any and all insights are welcomed and appreciated.
Local Listings | | maxcarnage0 -
Upstream locations to mark a business closed that will cascade to other listings services?
Working with a multi-location business with hundreds of locations, there is always a certain amount of churn (closures, new locations.) In some cases, the business owners never claim listings, or claim them in only the major local business listings such as Yelp and Google Places. Does anyone know of a good post or discussion about how to do a "cascading mark as closed" which will make its way through the LBL ecosystem eventually? In other words, is there a few upstream places to mark a business closed that will influence the consumers of their data feed? thanks!
Local Listings | | scottclark0