NAP consistency - URL for multi-location business

[chriscc]

Hi everyone!
A hopefully straightforward question:
I have a two-location business; with each location pointing to different landing page URLs
I am busy building citations and ensuring consistency
My question is: where the directory allows URLs (as well as NAP data), should I input the URL of the landing page of the location being cited; or just the homepage? I've used the homepage so far and now I'm questioning whether that would cause a consistency problem...
Thank you!
Chris

 

[whitespark]

Hi Chris,

Consistency isn’t really a big deal. Don’t worry about it having a negative impact if you have have some inconsistencies.

The links from citations are relatively weak links, so the choice of url won’t have too much of an impact, but, citations are one of the few places where you can build links to your location pages, so I always prefer to link to them when the sites let you (some sites only accept homepage links).

I wouldn’t say you need to go back and update any of the ones that link to the homepage, but you might want to switch to linking to the location pages going forward.

Hope this helps.

 

[chriscc]

It certainly does help, thanks very much Darren
Also, totally take the point about link-building to the location page -- citations are probably the only place we can get such links!
Cheers
Chris

 

[JS Girard]

The one issue to consider re: consistency is that Google can create duplicates if the address and/or name are even the smallest bit different. We've had it happen because the name was punctuated different (e.g. ISL industries vs. I.S.L. Industries or a period being present/absent after "inc"), or the address didn't include a suite number.

 

[whitespark]

The one issue to consider re: consistency is that Google can create duplicates if the address and/or name are even the smallest bit different. We've had it happen because the name was punctuated different (e.g. ISL industries vs. I.S.L. Industries or a period being present/absent after "inc"), or the address didn't include a suite number.

Yes. This is one problem that can occur with citation inconsistency. Probably the biggest problem.

The question I always wonder is: do those duplicates have any negative impact?

 

[JS Girard]

Yes. This is one problem that can occur with citation inconsistency. Probably the biggest problem.

The question I always wonder is: do those duplicates have any negative impact?

Usually not, true. But clients tend to get upset when they spot it (especially since Google has this annoying tendency to surface the newly created profile more prominently when it does a wave of creation.), so I always point it out when the topic comes up on the forum.

Recently I spotted a entire top-3 composed of brand-new zero-review google-created profiles...

 

[whitespark]

Can you share the search term and location for that example, @JS Girard? @keyserholiday noticed a similar example recently.

 

[keyserholiday]

I point all of my citations to the location page.

 

[JS Girard]

Can you share the search term and location for that example, @JS Girard? @keyserholiday noticed a similar example recently.

I remember seeing other Google-created profiles in some concrete/foundations-related keywords, but I didn't take screenshots of those. I was especially surprised by this one, though, because it's a medispa search term and there is a lot of competition in that vertical:

Note that I kill google-created profiles on sight so it wouldn't work anymore anyway.

My theory: Google may have tightened the distance/in-vs-out-of-area criterion even further. I had another client suddenly stop ranking who was doing fine in early june and unless it's a review freshness issue, a shadow algorithm update is the only thing I can think of.

 

[whitespark]

This example looks very much like an increased emphasis on proximity. Notice how tight the map is, and how all the locations are very close to the blue dot (your location).

600M
900M
1.8KM

In this example, proximity seems to be trumping everything else.

 

[keyserholiday]

I remember seeing other Google-created profiles in some concrete/foundations-related keywords, but I didn't take screenshots of those. I was especially surprised by this one, though, because it's a medispa search term and there is a lot of competition in that vertical:

Note that I kill google-created profiles on sight so it wouldn't work anymore anyway.

My theory: Google may have tightened the distance/in-vs-out-of-area criterion even further. I had another client suddenly stop ranking who was doing fine in early june and unless it's a review freshness issue, a shadow algorithm update is the only thing I can think of.

I have been dealing with this for months. Google scraped citations and or websites to automatically create these GBPs. They rank really well too.