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Hi John, To clarify, when you say, "Half the address is cut off in the results, the city is not displayed at all. And sometimes results from a neighbouring city are shown." are you talking about organic results rather than local results? I can't recall a scenario in which name length affected address display in the local pack results, so that made me wonder if you are referring to organic results, instead, or, perhaps, are you not in the 3 pack but are seeing the cut-off address in the Local Finder view (which can be truncated, yes) when you click the 'More' link? Are you able to share the actual searches you are performing/actual name of the business?

Hi Gary! In addition to the Moz Recommended Companies list Erica has linked to, you might also check out the Contributors box on the annual Moz Local Search Ranking Factors survey we publish, as all participants are recognized Local SEO experts.

Hi Brian,oo problem, happy it helped! Of course- it's always better to confirm with someone else when there's a lot at stake!

Hi Rosemary, I think you'll find this article from Local SEO Guide to be totally on-target for your client: http://www.localseoguide.com/seriously-track-your-google-my-business-pages/

Hi John, Hmm, that does make it a bit tougher, having to put everything on the weaker domain, but I see what you mean in regards to having to go that way for branding purposes. I'm reaching out to one of our traditional SEO experts on staff for additional feedback on this. Please, check back.

Hi Brian, This kind of thing can be really tough to diagnose in a forum. Your Google+ Local listing status should not, in my opinion, have any major effect on your organic rankings. I recommend that you look for other clues as to something else that might have changed, such as a shakeup in your industry's organic results, new issues reported in Google Search Console, a competitor who has recently done something big to jump ahead of you. You may need to hire a consultant and open up your analytics for them so that they can start narrowing down possible issues, but I would be surprised if the Google+ Local page turned out to be at the root of this change you've seen.

To add to what Miriam has said, there is no quick or easy answer to "how to rank organically". My best suggestion is to start with the Moz Beginner's Guide Chapter 4 (Basics of Search Engine Friendly Design and Development) and go from there. Of course, if you do come up with questions as you go, feel free to post them in the Moz Q&A. There are lots of people who are willing to help. Be as specific as you can to get the best response.

Hey Neil, Smart topic, and yes, you are right that Google has stopped showing the description in pretty much any relevant place. It's still showing on Google+ Local pages, but as almost no links exist to Google+ Local pages anymore, few people are likely to ever seen the description. Nevertheless, the description is information you are giving to Google about your business, even if they don't display it. So, in my opinion, it's still worth it to write a good, non-spammy description. On a side note, I find it particularly weird that a couple of GMB dashboard updates ago, Google went to the trouble of allowing rich text in the description. That seemed like a great feature. But, it's become of rather minimal value now, with the description being all but absent from what the typical user will see.

Hey Ryan, I agree with Josh. Best to start here: http://www.google.com/business/

Holiday Inn actually names those businesses by location though. So that's their "real name." http://www.holidayinn.com/hotels/gb/en/hd/australia/sydney-hotels?cm_sp=OSMAM-HI-AA-EN-HED-AIX-MHR-Sydney Even on their own site, it's "holiday inn sydney" etc. It's not "Holiday Inn" with a location. It's a slight but important difference.

Thank you, We are also attempting to implement the Google code for social profiles as outlined here: https://developers.google.com/structured-data/customize/social-profiles Thank you again.

Hi Jack! Thanks for asking a good question. Local listings are all about physical location - not about services or instruments. Google's guidelines (https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en) do a good job of describing this. So, your local listings represent your physical location and not the variety of services you offer. Because Moz Local relies on Google and Facebook for valid data, we'll want to find just one listing per location you operate from for the business on these platforms. You can, however, use the business description field to talk about your services, the instruments you teach, etc. Hope this helps!

I think BOTW is a good citation source, but if you can't get it for free the best thing to do is test. If you're thinking that site will be a valuable piece to your marketing (and deserve a piece of the budget), then test with the first location to see how much traffic it drives. Set up a special segment or filter in Google Analytics to track referrals from BOTW. If you're seeing some decent traffic for what you're paying (and possible conversions), then it's definitely worth expanding to. If you're just paying for the citation source then you might be better off sinking that monthly fee into paid search or somewhere else. I agree BOTW is a good local citation to have, but that's what I would do to try and justify spending money on it.

I have a question -- after you put the city pages in Webmaster Tools, what do you have to do next? Anything special other than what you would normally do in Webmaster Tools?

Thank you for your help, I appreciate it. I will follow your 2 prolonged approach! Ben

Many thanks, all extremely helpful information! It's really appreciated. This all gives me some food for thought and it also looks like I've got some work to do! Thanks again.

Hi Rosemary, Miriam has the right idea - Google probably can crawl your marked-up JavaScript, but whether they will actually use it in e.g. rich snippets is up to them. You can apply semantic markup to the individual containers that each piece of third-party data is pulled into, and that should work.

It's my pleasure. Have a super week!

Hey Dino! Thanks so much for following up. If your story isn't proof of the importance of proper categorization, nothing is I'm really glad your client popped back into the pack and wish you luck with making them even stronger with the work ahead. It looks like a lot of effort has gone into their website, so that's a really good sign!

This should help out, as well: https://moz.com/learn/local/local-search-data-uk