Why Not To Rank Your Local Business In Multiple Cities

Location, location location.

It’s what its all about, right?

Given that as a fact wouldn’t it make sense to find your business listed on Google Maps within multiple cities in your geographic region?

It might make sense according to your increasing ROI but in the eyes of Google, it doesn’t. There was a time when a brick and mortar business was able to rank within multiple cities on Google Maps, but those days have long since passed.

HOT TIP: As we move through this article, I will share with you a little-known secret on exactly how to get your business listed organically on the front page of Google for multiple cities, so keep reading.

Avoiding Trouble With Google

This is a very common concern amongst clients that I work with. Back in the early days of local search on Google, I would even help them with the process, but not now and here’s why.

Google does regular audits. Click To Tweet

Even if you get away with it for a little time sooner or later Google will figure out their mistake and correct it. If they deem that the error took place because of something you did to affect the search engines you could find all your entries suddenly gone which would be an extremely horrible business decision.

How To Increase Local Google Visibility

So if you can’t target multiple cities and remain on the good side of the Google gods, what can you do?

That’s easy, multiple keywords.

Let’s say you are a Dentist in Las Vegas.

The obvious result that you want to target would be: Dentist Las Vegas

But why stop there?

Here are other related terms where I found maps available.

Dentists Las Vegas
Dental Las Vegas
Dentistry Las Vegas
Las Vegas Dentists
Las Vegas Dental
Las Vegas Dentistry

In doing this article I verified that all of the above results included maps. Further, the top 3 clinics identified never stayed the same within all of the different searches. If one office ranked #1 within all of these terms what do you think that would do with their customer and client acquisition efforts?

If the above is not enough, it should also be noted that these terms listed above are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to possible opportunities for ranking on maps and I can prove it.

Integrating “Near Me” & “Nearby”

Using our original keyword term for this search:

Dentist Las Vegas

I added the word “Nearby” to the equation and found yet another map result for the term:

Dentist Nearby Las Vegas

What about “Near Me”

Dentist Near Me Las Vegas

Or just “Near”

Dentist Near Las Vegas

If you check the top 3 results for these above terms you will find that the top 3 keep changing. Sure, some shift around in position, but if they always are rock solid at #1 how do you think that would affect their associated customer acquisition efforts.

Who Cares About Near Anything?

At first blush, this might seem like a local SEO trick to drive more income out of your wallet.

Such would be the case if the main technology used today was still PC’s and laptops. However, things are changing in a huge way as the mobile media wave takes over.

I’ve looked up things using my Smart Phone and I notice a distinct difference in the way that I use Google search from my laptop. Typically speaking when I search for a local business from my Smart Phone I instinctively include words like near, nearby and near me.

I would further suggest that most people do the same thing.

If that is the way people are searching for things online, then that is the way you want to be found within Google’s results.

Taking Everything One Step Further

But even this isn’t the end of your quest to dominate your local area results on Google because we still have the long-tail results to target.

Need an example?

Dentist Office Near Las Vegas

How about another one?

Emergency Dentist Near Las Vegas

What if we put the two words together?

Emergency Dentist Office Near Las Vegas

As you can see, it takes a lot of skill to find all the best locations for you to be ranking within when it comes to local SEO strategies to increase the success of your business. Click To Tweet

But wait, we’ve been talking just about Dentists this whole article. Maybe this doesn’t work the same in other niches.

The 3 examples above are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to uncovering your golden opportunities within local search. As you can see, there are a ton of options available no matter what niche you find yourself operating within.

But What About Multiple Rankings In Various Cities

Many, if not most businesses do not find themselves operating within a single city. If you find yourself in this equation is there no hope?

Fortunately, there are answers. They just don’t happen to include Google Maps.

Simply put, Google does not want to list your brick and mortar business in any city other than the one that it actually exists within.

HOT TIP: Stay away from thinking that this would be the perfect reason to secure a box at the post office or other similar mail stop location. Doing so could lead to your business being removed from Google Map results altogether.

How you can organically target neighboring cities is via organic search results. Yes, they are not maps but they are a place where people look for information about local services they need to secure.

Closing Thoughts About Multiple City Rankings On Google

I hope I’ve helped clear up the confusion related to this topic and the reason you’re not showing up on Google Maps for neighboring cities. If you still have related questions please leave them in the comments below and I will be pleased to cover them accordingly.

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Guy Siverson

Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at ViralTNTeam

My mission is to deliver high quality online marketing information that you can easily grow your business by. Please use the comments below to ask about points I missed, provide further thoughts of wisdom or request new topics for me to cover. Thanks in advance. I look forward to being your one stop shop for all things related to the online marketing niche.