@Jason Etheredge Good move pushing for 3 physical locations. That changes everything strategically. Here's how to think about this: Short answer: 3 GBPs. Not 9. One brand, one GBP per physical location. Each GBP gets one primary category plus additional categories. Google's own guidelines are clear — one profile per location per brand. Spinning up 9 profiles for 3 locations under the same business name is how you get suspended and fragment your entity signal into oblivion. Here's how to structure it: Each GBP gets: - Primary category → Pick the highest-revenue or highest-demand service in THAT specific city. This is a market-by-market decision, not a blanket choice. If City A has more demand for fencing, make that the primary there. If City B is all about decks and additions, go General Contractor as primary there. Do the keyword research per market. - Additional categories → Stack the other service lines as secondary categories. Google allows up to 9 additional categories per profile. So Landscaping, Fencing, General Contractor (or more specific variants like "Deck Builder," "Fence Contractor," "Landscape Designer") all go in as additional categories on each profile. Why NOT 9 separate GBPs: 1. Suspension risk. Let's be real — to run 9 GBPs you'd need to spin up fake listings at different addresses to make it work. And yeah, it CAN work. People do it. But when Google catches it — and the algorithm is getting better at sniffing these out — you don't lose a little. You lose a THIRD of that client's lead flow overnight. And the client doesn't want to hear "Google caught our fake listing." They just know the phone stopped ringing. Build it right from the start so you're not having that conversation 6 months in when the client is depending on those leads to make payroll at three locations. 2. Entity dilution. You're splitting the brand's authority three ways per location instead of consolidating it. Every citation, every review, every backlink should be reinforcing ONE entity per location — not three competing entities that confuse Google about what this business actually IS. 3. Review fragmentation. Your client's going to struggle getting reviews split across 9 profiles versus concentrating social proof on 3 strong profiles.

@Jason Etheredge Treat the website as the corporate umbrella that the 3 businesses sit under The site is about what the corporation does, then you have the 3 location pages. These are about the locations and how they serve the community around them, list and link to the services each location provides. Your GEO stacks are built individually off the location pages.. With just 3 locations you can put links to each in the footer Start in the sandbox zone (the 9x9 mile Google likes to box ppl in) get it all green then work clockwise and select the major segments in the 9 - 12 mile range... then do the push To get the results I get like I did for Botox chat on a 45mile box, or Lobby Signs for a 4 state push is all about stepping it out after you take the sandbox.

@Alex Wertheim I never saw much of a gain... about 8yrs ago you could get some serious boost with it and using canonicalization but recently that advantage is gone. It's used mostly for listicles, and is a huge boost to UX

@Alex Wertheim I think it's unattended consequences of breaking cannonicalization awhile back and not fixing that link attribution...

@Joseph Smith I just sold a 25k Website restructuring and monthly consulting for the inhouse marketing team at just under 2k a month. With me being the consultant we where able to renegotiate what they pay the agency and the agency is over the 10k a month now. I also introduced then to my designer and he sold them a 20k website redesign. We also walked them through the need for a monthly marketing essentials budget of 10k for various things like Press Releases. You don't need 30 to 50 clients you need 5 great clients and to work 15hrs a week. Or 20 clients with 2 minions.

I havnt tinkered in Shopify enough to be of any help... sorry

@Paul Birkett we have a few things in the works... I m testing a new proposal process that has a 5 for 5 rate right now... it covers the pre proposal meeting, the proposal stack, and notes on how to present the proposal...