Effects of changing your city to overall rankings?

[KempRugeLawGroup]

One of our offices is in Trinity, Florida. However, "Trinity" isn't a real city. It is essentially the nicer part of New Port Richey. Organically, we rank for new port richey terms, but i have a suspicion, our lack of maps/local presence is hurting us. Should we do a massive citation overhaul and change everything to New Port Richey for that office? Will doing that somehow hurt our site overall?

Thanks,

Ruben

[RobertFisher]

Ruben,

Knowing your site and that area, I do not think it will hurt you to be New Port Richey; the question is will it help? I would look at queries using the keyword planner in adwords and see if the query difference is worth the work necessary to change it.

Best

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Ruben,
Where does Google think you are? On the map, I mean, are you categorized as Trinity or New Port Richey? Whatever they think is how you should be listing, promoting and optimizing, lest you be at odds with their take on geography.

[RobertFisher]

Miriam,

That is truly a great question. At the end of the day, it is somewhat confusing. Where Ruben is, the largest city within 20 miles of him is Tampa, the second largest within about 15 is Clearwater, within 5 or 6 is Palm Harbor, New Port Richey, etc. Trinity is not more than a neighborhood.

In Houston, I have lived in Montrose which is literally a mile from the city center. Does Google see me in Montrose ( a very distinct and well known area of Houston) or do they see me in Houston? My guess here is Houston. For Ruben and the law firm, I doubt there are 2 searches a month on Trinity lawyer or attorney and my guess would be one of those at least was a religious choice He is really better served using New Port Richey. I lived in Tampa and my business was in Clearwater. When he first mentioned Trinity, I had to look it up.

That is why I think (and we both know at best it is an educated guess) New Port Richey would serve him better. My only concern is this: Does Google, by virtue of them claiming Trinity for some X period of time in some way begin to recognize a given area?

Best,

[KempRugeLawGroup]

Yeah, I think I'm going to have to start the process of converting to New Port Richey. The Trinity address depiction certainly isn't helping us, so I might as well try it and see what happens.

Thanks for the insights!

• Ruben

[KempRugeLawGroup]

Quick follow-up, how do I know where google thinks I am? It says Trinity, because I created the map to say trinity. But, (and this is where this area gets more confusing) there is also a city north of New Port Richey called Port Richey. The Port Richey firms rank just as well for New Port Richey searches as the New Port Richey firms do...but none of the trinity ones rank well at all in local search...

Maybe I can look up some addresses in Trinity and see if google makes a distinction between NPR and Trinity or just considers it all NPR? Would that be an indicator?

• Ruben

[RobertFisher]

Ruben,

Amber, who heads up Local for us is a master of G maps application for this. Contact me as before and I will get you the directions so you won't have to worry over it. 
Best