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Since 2006 www.nyc-officespace-leader.com has promoted my commercial real estate brokerage business. I have been the sole broker listed on the site. As a result, the same phone number has appeared consistently throughout the site.

Now I will be adding a colleague to the site (in addition to me) and I am struggling with how to best display my colleague's phone number. The 2nd broker will be adding property listings and blog posts. It was agreed that  my phone number would be replaced by my colleagues phone number on his listings and blog posts. Pages that existed before would remain with my phone number. The idea being that leads generated by the 2nd broker's new content get directed to him rather than me.

My concern is that having a new phone number listed will introduce an inconsistent phone number and harm our local SEO. I have read that it is absolutely critical that NAP (name, address, phone number) must be 100% consistent otherwise it can cause harm search engine ranking.

What are best practices for displaying different phone numbers for different personnel on the same website without harming local SEO efforts? This situation is certainly common, so I would think there must be some work arounds. I have seen "Contact" icons that when clicked show phone numbers. Is there any standard solution for this issue that keeps NAP data consistent?

Also, what if we keep the same number in the header but use different numbers in other locations? Is the header a location where we should be extra careful to display the same phone number?

Thanks, 
Alan Rosinsky
Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc.

An example of inconsistent listing pages are:

-http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/386-w-38th-street-office-lease-2370sf
(Broker "#2)

-http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/329-545-eighth-ave-office-lease-525sf
(myself)

An example of inconsistent blog pages are:

-http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/the-tech-explosion-impact-on-chelsea-2
(Broker "#2)

-http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/office-space-build-out-cost
(myself)

Hi Donna:

I seem to recall that in 2013 we migrated to Google Analytics with "Goals" set up. This was set up in a manner that did not use tracking code. I am not a developer and it was 3 years but I distinctly remember extensive efforts to implement this more sophisticated tracking.

Today my developer confirmed that traffic has not dropped in the last few months, however Google Analytics has not been able to detect of track this traffic since the Zoho Java script for the Sales IQ product was installed.

Any ideas or suggestions???

Thanks,
Alan

I forgot to mention the Zoho Sales IQ Javascript code that was pasted into the site was the following:

Could this cause a traffic drop?

Starting November 1st, organic web traffic from Google dropped from an average of about 60 visits a day to about 5 per day. So we are more than 90% off!!!!

At the end of September, we modified the header of the site to simplify it. We also added a snippet of code to each page to enable Zoho "Sales IQ" to work. Sales IQ enables us to track visitors and engage in chat sessions with them. Apart from that no changes have been made from the site.

Any ideas as to what could have caused this drop in traffic? Was there a Google update at that time that could have caused the drop? Or could the recent site changes have caused this?

I have attached a Google Webmasters Tool report showing the drop in traffic.

I would very much appreciate some insight into this, as all organic traffic to our site has ceased.

Thanks,
Alan

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Our commercial real estate site (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) contains about 800 URLs. Since 2012 the domain authority has dropped from 35 to about 20. Ranking and traffic dropped significantly since then.

The site has about 791 URLs. Many are set to noindex. A large percentage of these pages have a Moz page authority of only "1". It is puzzling that some pages that have similar content to "1" page rank pages rank much better, in some cases "15". If we remove or consolidate the poorly ranked pages will the overall page authority and ranking of the site improve?

Would taking the following steps help?:

1. Remove or consolidate poorly ranking unnecessary URLs?
2. Update content on poorly ranking URLs that are important?
3. Create internal text links (as opposed to links from menus) to critical pages?

A MOZ crawl of our site's URLs is visible at the link below. I am wondering if the structure of the site is just not optimized for ranking and what can be done to improve it. THANKS.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/oqchfqveelm1q11/CRAWL www.nyc-officespace-leader.com (1).csv?dl=0

Thanks,
Alan

Your Pinterest page looks very good. And apparently, it ranks very well. It is the first really effective use of Pinterest I have seen in the real estate industry. Was it complicated to set up? It is something I would certainly be interested in exploring. Could it be done in a manner that could also help improve my website's ranking, say linking back to the site?

In terms of our website, do you think it would be best to set the 350 listing pages  to "no index, not follow"? Or alternatively, is there a way I can use the listing content to improve my rankings? For instance,  if the listings were short descriptions placed on neighborhood or building pages, would that stronger?

I added a Google+ Page for my business several years ago.

Now when I click on "Search Console" within Webmaster Tools  it is asking me to provide business information that I entered several years ago for Google+. Is this normal? Should I fill it out? It seems that this info is redundant with what I filled out for Google+.

When I enter the name of my business (Metro Manhattan Office Space, Inc. ) in Google, a listing appears to the right, so it seems that Google already has my details.

Thanks,
Alan

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I have researched about 500 companies for a promotional email to office tenants regarding commercial real estate brokerage services in New York City.

Kickbox analyzed our mailing list and provided the following results:

197 Deliverable
178 Risky
37 Undeliverable
8 Unknown

What do we do about the "risky" results?  It would be a shame to lose half the list.

Does anyone have an idea what the percentage of deliverable email addresses is for "risky" in Kickbox.

Thanks,
Alan

We have added very little new website content in the last year. Our domain is www.metro-manhattan.com. Would adding a brand-new blog post once a week help improve our ranking in Google? A few years ago adding new content would've had quickly had a positive effect. Is that still the case? Or should we focus content creation resources in other areas such as social media?

Thanks, Alan

We operate www.metro-manhattan.com, a commercial real estate website. There about 550 pages. About 300 pages are for individual listings. About 150 are for buildings.

Most of the listings pages have 180-240 words. Would it be better from an SEO perspective to have multiple listings on a single page, say all Chelsea listings on the Chelsea neighborhood page? Are we shooting ourselves in the foot by having separate URLs for each listing? Are we at risI for a thin cogent Google penalty?

Would the same apply to building pages (about 150)?

Sample Listing: http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/364-madison-ave-office-lease-1802sf

Sample Building: http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/for-a-new-york-office-space-rental-consider-one-worldwide-plaza-825-eighth-avenue

My concern is that the existing site architecture may result in some form of Google penalty.

If we have to consolidate these pages what would be the best way of doing so?

Thanks, 
Alan

An SEO provider suggested we add breadcrumbs to the top of each page about 3 years ago, which we did.

3 years later we are going thru the site and find it really busy with lots of redundant and distracting elements.

We would like to remove the breadcrumbs from the top of the pages. Is there any real SEO downside to doing so?
All URLs are listed on our site map so I don't see why Google would not index all pages.

Our domain is www.metro-manhattan.com

I have uploaded a sample page with a breadcrumb.

Thanks,
Alan

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How does Hubspot compare with MOZ? Doe it provide similar features or is the functionality very different?

Is Hubspot complementary to MOZ or could it be used as a substitute? If we stopped our MOZ subscription and subscribed to Hubspot would we lose anything?

Thanks, Alan

I have researched an extensive prospect list of several thousand companies and plan on sending them promotional emails. The service is commercial real estate brokerage for companies seeking office space in New York City. Our list has been very carefully researched. We have the contact names, email addresses, social media profiles or key decision makers. We have researched building by building. So for example I would email tenants in The Chrysler Building to alert them of a new space.

What would be the best way to integrate this email with my website? For example,  would it make sense to place photos of particular listings on the email but have the visitor need to click to the site to get details? The objective being to get the recipient to the site and track their engagement so I can assess their potential value. We are using a contact management system called Zoho CRM and Zoho Campaigns, allowing me to track the actions of visitors. Zoho CRM allows me to identify the name of visitors assuming the are reaching our URL from a contact listed in our Zoho contact database.

I will probably test sending emails by building, by industry and by company size.

Does anyone have experience setting up B+B email campaigns? Any ideas as to how I can set this up in an effective manner?

Thanks,
Alan

Thanks for your candid response. What advantages would Hubspot offer over Zoho if the email list was used as a "remarketed list" for Google Adwords? Essentially Adwords would be targeted to a certain segment, in our case about 5,000 businesse tenants in Manhattan that may at some point seek to lease commercial space. The purpose of targeting by list it to avoid paying $35/click for unquallifted traffic.

Best,

Alan

My commercial real estate brokerage firm is planning an email campaign targeting office space tenants that are seeking to relocate to new office space. We have compiled the names of about 2,000 tenants located in five or six buildings and plan on emailing them. Previously have sent emails to these companies and have been able to track, via Zoho CRM which businesses are opening the emails and how many times, which has been very, very helpful!!

If we are planning a more sophisticated email campaign, with the ability to track visitors, interact ith them, send them to our website from the email, is a package like Zoho Sales IQ (see attached) sufficient or is it really better to use Hubspot (see attached)? Hubspot costs thousands of dollars more and I am not sure if it isn't overkill. Zoho Sales IQ looks like it would be sufficient to track an email campaign. But I am not sure.

Any ideas?

Thanks!!!
Alan Rosinsky

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Hi Bill:

Thanks for this most informative response!!!

The list we uploaded to Googel contained 830 email addresses, yet Adwords is showing <100 as available; so only about 10% are discoverable. Obtaining Gmail addresses would increase the response rate? But even if it did, I don't see how we could obtain these email addresses. Using retargeting lists is a good idea, however, a large percentage (probably about 75%) of web site visitors are not quality prospects. The idea behind researching a targeted list is that we would be reaching decision makers of companies occupying atleast 2,500 SF of office space in Class A buildings in Manhattan. I don't see how I could target this specifically using Google Adwords. And spending advertising dollars on retargeting when many/most visitors are weak prospects may not be a productive use of resources considering that clicks cost $20-$35.

I really wonder of there is some way to use social media adverting to target a specific list of customer. To advertise to the same decision makers using various platforms (Adwords, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) and even email them and perhaps send direct mail. The idea being to build brand recognition relatively inexpensively to a very narrow list (4-5,000 decision makers of 2,300 companies).

I guess for Adwords if we compiled a list of 20,000 decision makers we would be able to advertise to a few thousand prospects. But developing a list of that size would be an enormous endeavor.

The commissions earned are such that we only need about 20 transactions per year and probably about 150 inquiries to achieve those transactions.

Maybe the best way to move forward is to email and send postal service mail. But it would be great if there is some efficient alternative.

Google Adword cost more than $30 per click in my niche (Manhattan commercial real estate). I would need to invest $5,000-10,000 for significant traffic, which we are not prepared to do.

Does any have experience with Google Adwords Customer Match? I have heard this feature allows you to target potential customers by their email address. It would allow me to avoid paying $30 per click for visits by competitors, tire kickers and unqualified prospects which constitute about 80% of clicks.

We have an email list of about 2,000 corporate real estate decision makers. Hopefully this targeted approach would reduce the cost per qualified lead. Does anyone have experience with Customer Match? If so, is it in fact much more cost effective than Adwords that uses the usual targeting (geography, income, business title, etcetera)?

We are considering advertising to decision makers using LinkedIn and Facebook (by providing email addresses), plus targeted email to these individuals. Does anyone have an idea as to how effective this would be? I am hoping that advertising thru multiple channels would reinforce the effect. 
Thanks, Alan

Our Facebook business page is: www.facebook.com/MetroManhattanOfficeSpace/. Facebook suggests we change it from:

347 5th Ave, # 1008
New York, NY 10016

To:

347 5th Ave
New York, NY 10016

Google Places shows our address as: 347 5th Ave #1008, New York, NY 10016

The Facebook change deletes the Suite number and eliminates the comma after "NY". I am concerned how this will effect address consistency and local ranking. Shouldn't the Facebook address match our Google Places address precisely? Isn't it critical that our address format and info appear exactly the same everywhere?

Will complying with the requested Facebook address change have a negative impact on local SEO?

Thanks, Alan Rosinsky

Thanks!!! Why would the call only campaign cost less if we are competing for the same keywords? Is the click less costly or is it that the response rate and effectiveness are higher?
Thanks!!
Alan

Hi Cody:

Thanks for details regarding Facebook advertising.

What if I have business emails but not personal emails for B+B decision makers? No way to advertise to them one to one? If I have their names can we target one to one that way on Facebook?

Adwords in my niche has become obscenely expensive. My alternative approach is to research extremely targeted lists, email to these prospects, advertise if possible (using Facebook, Adwords, LinkedIn) and then finally call in an attempt to set up an appointment. Objective is to reduce unnecessary and indiscriminate Adwords could run more than $10,000/month.

Have you heard of anyone else taking a similar approach?