How to place two NADs on site (One website, 2 locations)

[BobGW]

Hello,

For our site:

nlpca(dot)com

we have 2 locations. One location is based out of a hotel in California, and one location is where we have our offices in Utah.

Our site is about both locations, emphisizing California. Do we need to create a Utah page and put the Utah NAD on that page with separate address and phone number? What do we use as an address since we only have a hotel room in California now? What do we need to do to rank for both in the natural and also Places listings?

Right now we're #1 for NLP California and #4 for NLP Utah

Thanks!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Bob,

I want to begin by clarifying what you mean by NAD. I'm familiar with NAP (name, address, phone number) but I've not encountered the term NAD before. From context, I'm guessing you mean NAP but please let me know if I'm wrong. I'll proceed as though I've guessed correctly.

As you may have reckoned, your California location doesn't qualify as truly local, because of its lack of a dedicated street address. You can't submit a hotel room number to Google Places, so until such time as you've got a standard address for the California branch, what you can do is going to be somewhat limited.

Typically, when dealing with a business model that has just a few locations, like yours, you would put the complete NAP in the footer sitewide, and on the Contact Us page, and you would also likely be creating a landing page for each of the 2 offices. Typically, you would be creating a Google Place Page for each location, creating other local business listings for each location and building out content, citations and links for each location. You can do some of this, but the lack of address for the California business is definitely going to hamper your Places efforts. You may be able to build good rankings organically, but if your core keyword phrases are most heavily used by local searchers and receive local SERPs, then you are likely to be outranked by businesses that can publish an address.

Have I helped to answer your question? If you need to add more info about your scenario, you are welcome to do so.

[BobGW]

Thank you Miriam,

We are first in google organically for "NLP San Francisco"

We are first in google local results for "NLP San Francisco"

Our address is only listed on the contact us page and it is a Salt Lake City Address

Our phone and fax are Utah numbers, and we also have an international number, all on only the contact us page.

We can't lose our rankings for the California keywords, local or organic, since these are our main traffic words.

We want to rank 1st for Utah keywords in both local and organic. Currently we don't rank for local "NLP Salt Lake City" and we're 5th for "NLP Utah" related keywords.

If necessary, we may be able to get a NAP of both utah and california, but I'm not sure on that - any ideas on how to inexpensively acquire a california address and a california phone number would be useful, and can the california phone number forward to the Utah office?

What's the solution?

[BobGW]

One more thing - don't miss my other post.

Why can't we move up above 5th place organically for "NLP Utah" keywords when we are stronger?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Bob,
Well, here's a real hold-your-horses moment. As of yesterday, the world of Local has been turned upside down a bit and I am not yet sure of the total implications for multi location businesses. From Greg Sterling's piece, http://searchengineland.com/google-places-is-over-company-makes-google-the-center-of-gravity-for-local-search-122770:

"We asked about management of multiple locations from a single page. Google said that there’s no news for the time being but that’s the ultimate goal:

A single page through which businesses can manage their online presence is a top priority, and we’re committed to ensuring business owners have a clear voice in how their business is represented on Google, via Google+."

So, management of businesses like yours is somewhat up in the air, but I believe I can still answer the main questions you've asked with some certainty.

To date, the acquisition of a legit office (no p.o. boxes, no virtual offices) and a dedicated, non-redirecting local area code phone number are essential to legit Places inclusion, and I am assuming these rules will carry over into Google+ Local. People certainly bend and break these rules, renting virtual offices, etc., but it's not something I'd ever recommend to a valued client.

If you don't currently have these things for California, I'm not 'getting' how you are ranking #1 for San Francisco in the local results. What are you using on the Place Page, in terms of NAP, to achieve these rankings. If it doesn't meet the guidelines, the risk is a sudden loss of rankings if Google takes notice. At least, that's how it has been up until yesterday. I believe the algo will carry over into the new Google+ Local, but as you can tell from my reply, I'm working hard right now to understand what has changed and what remains the same. Strongly recommend that you do all of the reading up you can over the next few days on this, Bob, as it will certainly pertain to your business and your future management of your local presence.

Miriam

[BobGW]

It looks like my coworker listed us as 2 different companies in G places with an old address. What a mess.

What would be the best white hat way to clean this up?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Bob,

Where you live, are you still seeing a Google Place Page with a 'report a problem' link at the bottom of the page? If so, you'd go through the problem wizard. If not, you might try the troubleshooter:

http://support.google.com/places/?hl=en-US&rd=1

Again, 2 days ago I would have recommended both with confidence, but with the changes, I'm not sure how support has changed. Start with those recommendations and see where you get.

[BobGW]

Miriam,

Before I break the bad news to my coworkers, does our issue in Google Places effect our organic listings. In other words, are our organic results for

NLP Calfornia

NLP San Francisco

NLP Utah

NLP Salt Lake City

at risk or is it just our Places results that are at risk?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Bob,

Pure organic results are governed by a different algo than the blended Places/+/Organic results. So, to the extent that you have any purely organic rankings, these should not be affected by your issues, but at the same time, any results that are blended are a combo of your organic and off-page, so these would have to be seen as intimately involved in your issues. Hope that clarification helps.

Good luck, Bob!

Miriam

[BobGW]

How do I tell the difference between a purely organic listing and a blended Places/+/Organic listing?

Is it that if there are no Places results on the page it is purely organic, and if there are both organic and places results on the page then the results without markers next to them are blended and the ones with markers next to them are places?

Thanks for the clarification. I should already know this.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Bob,

We're all always learning! A blended result is one that combines information from both the website and 3rd party sources (so, let's say it links to the website from the title but is accompanied by a link to the place/+ page).

A purely organic results has no third party data. This would be your typical old-style result of the title and meta linking to the website.

Most local results are blended these days, but the first page of results typically included both the blended results and some organic results.

Do a search for 'pizza san francisco' in Google. If your results are relatively similar to mine, you will see the page start with a purely organic result from Yelp and another from SeriousEats. This is followed by a set of 7 blended results in which the title element is linking to the websites of various business and is embellished with reviews from Google and Zagat, contact info and links to Google Maps which lead to the Google+ Local pages.

Then, below this, we return to pure organic results (2 for businesses and 1 for Gayot).

I hope that makes what you are seeing in the SERPs really clear to you.