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Hi Shauna, This is a great question. I am understanding your scenario this way, but please correct me if I'm wrong: Your client's house is in Dallas. Your client's office is in Farmers Branch Your client would rather be listed in Dallas than in Farmers Branch. If this is incorrect, please let me know, but if correct, please read on. Google does not consider Farmers Branch to be inside of Dallas, according to Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Dallas,+TX/@32.8601609,-96.9429002,11z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x864c19f77b45974b:0xb9ec9ba4f647678f Farmers Branch is outside of the city borders. So, in Google's eyes, we know that Farmers Branch is considered a unique entity - not a part of Dallas. Given this, your client's safe options are based on his business model: If this is a brick-and-mortar business, the client has no alternative but to list it in Farmers Branch on his website and citations. If this is a service area business that customers don't come to (like a plumber) then your client has a choice of whether he'd like to base his operations out of his Dallas home or his Farmers Branch office. Google is okay with home-based businesses, provided that the phone number is dedicated to the business and is staffed during normal business hours by someone who answers the phone with the business name rather than just saying "hello" like a resident. There are very obvious benefits for the client of basing himself in Dallas instead of outside of Dallas, but this is only an option if nobody comes to the business in person. If people come to the business in person, you're back to option 1. Any variation on the above two courses does put the business at risk, and so, as the SEO, it's our job to let the client know of the guideline-compliant options and of the risks of bending guidelines. Hope this helps!

Hi Shauna! I agree with everyone here, and I'd encourage you to specifically not focus on the practices you've mentioned.  I'd also like to suggest two specific resources for you—Cyrus Shepard's "How to Rank" post and ebook, and our Beginner's Guide to Link Building.

Hi There, This past summer, Yahoo did spin off their small business division into Aabaco. Here's an article on this: https://www.aabacosmallbusiness.com/learnmore Yahoo's own links to creating a listing seem to all point here https://www.aabacosmallbusiness.com/local-listings but there just hasn't been much of an outcry over this because I think not many Local SEOs are promoting Yahoo as a must-list platform to their clients anymore. Max Minzer's awesome list says this about Yahoo (http://www.reengageconsulting.com/be-where-your-customers-are-with-local-business-listings/#yahoo Listing Support: Some support is available but don’t rely on it! General support and information provided. (408) 916-2149 – support if you create an incident number. @YSmallBizCare – Aabaco Small Biz Support Twitter account. Your best bet for free listing support. Customer Support – not much help here unless you’re a paying customer. Help for Aabaco Local Basic (free) – general information as well. So, you might want to check those options out. Interesting to note he thinks the Twitter account is the best bet for support! Yahoo used to be one the most prominent directories for local businesses, but these days, many Local SEOs agree that it may not be worth fussing with anymore.

Say I was going to fully build out these pages with content, how much unique content should I have per page (minimum)?  Would several paragraphs do the trick?

Hi Shauna, You're very welcome! If your client's only real office is in Farmer's Branch, any Google+ Local pages he has built for any other city would be a violation of the guidelines, and thus, at risk for a takedown any time Google might notice them. Because this could then potentially 'prejudice' Google against the whole business, he might find his legitimate location suspected of spammy stuff as well. So, in a nutshell here, the client should not be thinking about what he may lose if he takes down spammy listings - he should be thinking about the preservation of his legitimate location. He's in an at-risk situation that needs to be addressed as wisely and speedily as possible SAB marketing works like this: You build a website. Your core on-site optimization revolves around the city in which you have a physical office. You only build citations for that physical office. On the website, you develop a unique page of content for each service city. You do not build citations for these location-less service cities. You hope to earn organic rankings (not local pack rankings) with these city pages because of their strength, quality, earned links, etc. This article is a year old and may have a few outdated references in it, but it should help you discern your client's business model type and understand what a typical marketing plan looks like for this type of model: https://moz.com/blog/local-landing-pages-guide The only alternative to the above is for the client to establish a legitimate, staffed office in Dallas, one in Plano, etc. If this is a new client of yours and/or you are new to Local SEO, I think it would be a very smart move to suggest that he hire an expert Local SEO to consult with him. If you've already discovered that he's been engaged in some spammy practices, chances are pretty high that he has engaged in others you may not yet know about. If a good Local SEO was willing to fully audit the business for him or for your agency, they would likely uncover a number of things that need to be addressed to clean up the way the business has been marketing itself and put it on a clean track. If you're looking for a heavy hitter in this field, I recommend you check out the Contributors box on last year's Moz Local Search Ranking Factors survey. Everyone who participates in that survey does so because their expertise is widely recognized: https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors Hope this helps! P.S. Oops, so sorry. This is Miriam writing, by the way, but I'm signed into Alliance at the moment