Footer NAP Hurt Local Optimization?

[AWCthreads]

Big city A is the target optimization for services.

Suburb city B is the location of the business.

Will the NAP of the business in the footer negatively impact on-page optimization for Big city A?

[MiriamEllis]

If this is a local business (rather than a virtual one) and the goal is Local rankings, then Google is going to see the business as most relevant to its city of location, regardless of how you optimize the website. Presumably you will be listing the physical address in the suburbs on the Google+ Local page and on various directory listings and Google will most strongly associate the business name with this location - not with a nearby desired major city. So, unless the business completely forgoes Local SEO of any kind, doesn't publish an address anywhere and only pursues organic results instead of local ones, Google will see the business as most relevant to its city of location and commonly rank it in local results for searches containing the City B term or stemming from City B-based devices. Organic rankings for City A will have to be seen as a secondary goal. Hope this helps!

[AWCthreads]

Thanks Miriam.

Another thread suggested (and a couple reputable users said it works) to optimize the site for major city A and create a sub-directory for 2, 5 or 10 other city pages.  I get the approach but what do you do with the footer NAP?

I asked for clarity in the other thread but got no takers.

So I'll ask here. For this type of optimization to work, would you have to strip the NAP from the footer for big city A site optimization AND the sub-directory individual city optimization?

Or can you leave the NAP on all the pages (sub-directory pages included) and just have strong page optimization above the footer throughout?

I'm not knowledgeable in root/sub-directory setups so I may not be asking sensible questions.