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There is very clear evidence that accurate citations drastically improve local search results. From a very simple, logical perspective - if the citations are inaccurate (it doesn't match the business name or address) then how would Google know to attribute the search result to your business? Moz local does a good job of explaining why businesses need accurate, structured local citations for the best visibility.

I received a good response form one of my associates. I thought I'd post it because it was a concise answer. 1. Yes, Google has several ways of determining where you are searching from or about and then shows ads accordingly.2. Indirectly, yes it can make the click less expensive because it could raise the clickthrough, thus raising the quality score, thus lowering the required cost per click. Is it worth the effort to create unique ads for each state? No. It makes things very complicated to measure and difficult to manage.

So glad that helped!

Hey Guys! Pigeon is definitely causing all kinds of shakeups, some good some bad, for individual business owners. Best post I have read so far on this comes from Mike Blumenthal's little study of one of his own clients before and after Pigeon. Don't miss this, as it may help you start to get a sense of what is going on with your own business: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2014/08/03/pigeon-an-anecdotal-impact-report/

So my question is, will hosting our site in Australia on a .au domain rank it higher than relying just on subfolders? If it was me, I would. By having that extension you are stating clearly what your intended target area is. Additionally, this could save you money if you do run local country ads, due to the ads being of higher quality and relevance. Just be very careful that you do not have duplicate content index-able across multiple sites. Make it unique for each area and country

There are a lot of factors to this. It falls into the famous "it depends" seo answer 1. Do you want the email address to appear more professional? If not, then just get a gmail address that is easier to manage and troubleshoot that a server controlled email. I'm sure you could find something like BikramSCV@gmail.com available. 2. Do people (and Google) associate the abbreviation "SCV" with the local area? Doing a few searches in Google should let you know this very quickly. If so, then use the shorter domain. If not, then the longer domain since it includes the "yoga" and "santa clarita" keywords. You could at this point use the other domain for email, if the professional appearance is important to you. I did a few searches in Google for you, and it appears that they do not put the two together, and it shows different results for each phrase. BUT, that does not mean that users don't associate them together. Try and think of how your site will be searched for, and make your domain choice accordingly. You could also spend a few moments looking up other domains, just to see what is catchy, and available.

Hi Paul, Thank you so much for your patience! Our engineers have been able to surface what they feel is at the root of this odd issue. If you got to this Google+ Local page: https://plus.google.com/100180822171424943321/about?hl=en-US ....you will see that there is no comma between the suite number and the city name. Our tool is very sensitive to punctuation and apparently, this lack of a comma is what we believe is throwing off the results. If you could go to your Google My Business account and fix this issue, we believe it would also then resolve on our end. Hope this helps! A bit of a weird one, I know

Hey Doug, Smart fellow you are to realize the importance of NAP in this situation. Your best bet is likely to involve: Getting a different suite number for each local-focused business Getting a different phone number for each local-focused business Having a different website for each of the businesses And, of course, each business should have its own name, Google+ Local categories, etc. If the client does not want to work with his post office to get those suite numbers, then he could end up with merging, duplicate and ranking issues that will be no fun!

Hi Ira, Google's Local Business Information quality guidelines offer the best guidance on naming: Business Name: Your title should reflect your business’s real-world title. In addition to your business’s real-world title, you may include a single descriptor that helps customers locate your business or understand what your business offers. Marketing taglines, phone numbers, store codes, or URLs are not valid descriptors. Examples of acceptable titles with descriptors (in italics for demonstration purposes) are "Starbucks Downtown" or "Joe’s Pizza Delivery"_. _Examples that would not be accepted would be "#1 Seattle Plumbing", "Joe’s Pizza Best Delivery" or "Joe’s Pizza Restaurant Dallas". See: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en Hope this helps!

Hi Everyone, I got this question answered by google and thought I'd share. Hello Anthony, Thank you for the clarification, You have creative control of the information displayed. The bulk spreadsheet allows you to enter in a blanket description. However on a personal note I prefer custom when I read a page, (and it does no harm to customize) to me it makes it feel more "friendly". Customizing a description should have no effect on ranking, any changes can take a day or 2 to be seen. In that time the page may act strange, but it should be back to normal within the week. Ultimately the choice to personalize or use a standard description is up to you. Here it will have no effect on verification or ranking. To be concise, I suppose the answers are as follows: 1) Should I copy and paste each location's current unique description into the spreadsheet, or just write one very good description and copy it for all 20 locations?This is 100% your personal preference.   2) Does Google like/dislike "duplicate content" as it applies to business descriptions?  Google does not care.3) Is changing a location's description likely to temporarily harm the "ranking" of my business location in search results?No. It has no effect.  Hope this helps!

Hi Asif, The numbers you see in WMT will be fairly accurate: the numbers for site: searches are rarely accurate, so I wouldn't pay them too much attention. You can usually trust what you see in WMT though. Cheers, Jane

Yups, seeing the same thing in our Google Webmaster Tools accounts.

Thanks.   I submitted a feature request: https://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/49105990-Make-email-address-an-optional-field-for-Moz-Local

No problem, glad I could help.

Many thanx guys, your input is really helpful. I can say that implementing good and helpful content with focus on local and good citations plus strong backlinks will do the magic. Saab

Hi Again VicMark, There are several reasons for building out a strong landing page for each physical office that you own. In short order, these are: A local landing page tells the residents of that city that you are here to serve them and care enough about them to have devoted a page on your website to them. It can speak to their direct needs and show that you are local to them. A local landing page can improve your search engine results visibility, as opposed to expecting the bots to rank all of your cities by glancing at your homepage. Just like the old SEO concept of building out a page per topic/keyword set, building a page for each of your physical cities creates a body of data that makes it very clear to bots that you've got something important going on, surrounding that city keyword. For multi-location businesses, having a unique page for each physical office can help keep your data separate and clear, reducing the risk of ending up with duplicate or merged local business listings. To my mind, these are all really good reasons for local businesses to invest in create an incredibly good and unique page for each of their physical locations. I've found it to be well worth the investment! You might like to read more about this concept of local landing pages at: http://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide Hope this helps!

Yeah I was referring to directories. I figured just brand name would be the safer option but I was curious if other SEOs out there had success/difficulties using the modifier. I appreciate the response, thanks!

ha ha this is hysterical: I use an example of a optimization project for local search. It's an marina and in Dutch it is: 'jacht huren near Makkum' which google translate translated to 'rent Yacht near Makkum'. Just try to input this query into google. I'm sometimes scare myself Exact match in English for my set out applied method done in Dutch. This is new because when I set it up I already tested this so it's not luck so to say. And see how the suffix descriptor yacht rental delivers what I promised: marina + home town or rent yacht + marina city. I should have asked more for this:) O yeah it's Alpha Sail that I done it for. The company name for the marina.

Yes, the dashboard you mentioned is for 10+ locations. Larger clients generally keep a spreadsheet or database of locations and upload it every time it changes or periodically. You can still manage and upload with the tool, but you'll probably be better off managing the locations individually. https://www.google.com/local/business/?hl=en Click "get your page" and create a new listing - from the sounds of it, it'll be a new storefront. Managing the pages separately shouldn't be too much of a hassle.