Getting citations from different cities for a travelling band

[Ron10]

Hi mozzers! i play in a band that is based in Austin, TX but travels to all cities across texas.  I've been told i need to have citations in place to help my organic rankings in the cities across Texas that i perform in.

1.  What are the best ways to get citations to rank locally in each city for my band?  i have a page set up on my website for each city that we perform in.  Do i set up accounts on local business directories in each city that i perform in with a link to that city page on my site?  I have performers that i hire in each city and can use their address for the local address on each business listing but my business phone number would be the same for all cities.  I don't want this to look black hat to google by filling out business listings for many different cities with the same phone humber but my customers are in fact in all these major cities almost more than in my home town.

2.  Since i can only fill out a google places page for my home city, what other ways can i get citations to help my organic rankings in all the cities that i perform in?

Thanks in advance for everyone's input!

Ron

[Chris.Menke]

In your case, I'd avoid anything that might look inappropriate--no additional accounts, no trying to rank in local in other cities--nothing. As a business model, you fall outside of what's normal and you don't want to trip any flags. Period.

You need to trade on your brand. What is your brand?  What kind of music is your brand? What kind of people listen you your brand's music and what do they do during the day and after your shows? What other brands does your audience relate to? What brand of instruments do you play? Where do you hang out after a show at your venues? Who are your groupies and who are  they connected to in the cities where you play? These are all things you can create content about.

Interviews. Do video, written, audio interviews with every personality in every city you play in.  Seek out those people who will interview you there and get them done.

Press releases. Use a PR company  to do press releases to announce your next/future venues and tie your acts to the venues, not the addresses of hired performers in those cities. Use G+ to build your brand and release video of your performances that tie back to your G+ account.

Don't think about how to game the system, you don't need to do that. Learn how the system works and maximize the features available to you in the system and you'll do OK.

Are you getting the point? Local is about who and what you're connected to in a city or town, and how you  tie that in to your domain and your social profiles.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Ron10,

This is completely correct from Chris:

"In your case, I'd avoid anything that might look inappropriate--no additional accounts, no trying to rank in local in other cities--nothing. As a business model, you fall outside of what's normal and you don't want to trip any flags. Period."

You should set up a single Google Places for Business page (if you don't already have one). If it's brand new, check out this visual guide to the very new dashboard: http://blumenthals.com/blog/2013/04/02/visual-guide-to-the-new-places-for-business-dashboard/. Your single local listing should center on your core NAP (name, address, phone). If this is your home address and phone number, that is fine, provided they aren't shared by any other business. You should choose to hide your address in the dashboard and then use the service radius function the dashboard will show you.

You can certainly build out citations, but they must focus on your city of location, not on your service cities. That's just how Local works.

As Chris has suggested, for your service cities, developing content on the website, videos, and strong social profiles will be the best efforts for your band. Reviews will be important, too. I highly recommend you consider the practice of creating city landing pages on your website. Suggest you read an article I wrote on this topic a few months back (see: The Nitty Gritty of City Landing Pages; http://www.solaswebdesign.net/wordpress/?p=1403). Happily for you, you are going to have a ton of options for creating cool content about the your performances in the different cities. Lots more exciting than a carpet cleaning company has for cleaning rugs in Cities A, B, C and D.

Go for high local visibility for your city of location, and high organic and social visibility for your service cities and you'll be on the best track!

[Ron10]

I already have city landing pages for my service cities and they are ranking well organically.  When you say go for high social visibility in my service cities, what did you mean by that?  I already have Facebook, twitter and google plus accounts but haven't focused them on my service cities.  I've seen other bands start a Facebook account with key phrases in it that rank in the top 5 when the city name is in the name of the Facebook page.  Is that what you had in mind?  Thanks so much for all your help!

Ron

[Ron10]

Also, I have had listings in 3 business directories in one of my service cities with our trumpet players address for the last 4 years with the link pointed to that cities landing page and ranked number 2 on page one for years.  Should I delete those business directory profiles?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Ron,

Good to know your city landing pages are doing well organically. Regarding SM, yes, things like Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube could all be good ways to generate visibility for your business. You can create a local Facebook page, tweet about your local appearances in different cities, optimize your videos for different cities, etc.

Regarding your trumpet player's home address, honestly, I feel if you had to defend this to Google, they might not go along with the reasoning. You might argue that this is a place your band practices and from which you all head out to engagements in that city, and I can kind of see stretching it to that, making me hesitate to say 'delete it'. Provided that the trumpet player's listing also has a unique local phone number, you could leave things as they currently are and if all stays well, then fine, but should you notice a drop in rankings for your main listing at any point, that second location might be something to view as a culprit. Now, if the second listing is sharing a phone number with the main number, then that is a different story and it is definitely putting at risk your main listing rankings.