National Company Needs Local (7 Box) Rankings in Test Metros

[jayt]

A lot of pressure on me for this one...
I have a national client with excellent naturals, and a huge PPC budget. Getting killed locally, forcing use below the 7box. I need to find either a definitive way to get into the 7 box in dozens of metro areas, or HIRE a consultant who knows this landscape better.
Any thoughts?
The client serves all 50 states, by phone and online, in a very competitive market. I've killed it for 12 years, and volume has slipped so we need to grab more local.
Complimenting matters, we are currently migrating their main site to CMS (Umbraco).. a little busy!

[Vanessa12]

If I were you I'd want to bring in someone with specialized Local expertise. Especially if you are handling the other aspects of their web presence, you probably don't have the time to research how to handle their entire Local presence in that market. Local has its own guidelines and rules and if you start without some knowledge of what you're doing you could make it worse. However, if you can put in the time to properly research this you can go that route too. Since it's a big client for you it might be good to bring in someone as backup.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Jayt,

Very good question! Step one is to explain to the client that inclusion in Google's local results is based on the business having:

1. A physical address in the target city (not a virtual office, p.o. box or shared address)

2. A local area code phone number in the city of address (not a toll free number, call tracking number or shared number)

3. In-person transactions with customers, face-to-face, either at the company's offices (like a lawyer or doctor) or at the customers' locations (like a plumber or carpet cleaner).

From your description, your client's business is virtual (serving customers over the phone and online) and therefor, is not eligible for local inclusion. Share the Google Places Quality Guidelines with the client so that can see Google's own explanation of their policies:

http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528

Because of your client's virtual, national business model, building visibility on a local level via Local SEO is out. Rather, your client will need to rely on organic SEO in an effort of gaining secondary organic visibility for service+ geography terms (not primary organic visibility via the local packs of results). Realistically speaking, unless the client is in a non-competitive market, this will be an uphill battle, because it is Google's current preference to show mostly true local results for queries they believe have a local intent. If Google already has plenty of businesses that meet the above 3 criteria, your client will need some incredible SEO work to convince Google to show them organically for queries relating to geographic regions where they have no physical presence.

I hate to sound negative, and I'm not saying this goal is impossible, but the client needs to be given the education that will help him understand how and why Google operates the way they do in relation to local data so that the client can make the smartest investment of time, money and effort. Organic SEO may be able to take the client part of the way, but don't forget about PPC. That may have to be a large part of the mix for any company seeking this type of national dominance. Hope this helps!