If you want to rank in a new city without an office, Darren Shaw has a short answer for Google Maps and a longer one for everything else. Shaw founded Whitespark, a local SEO tool maker and agency, and he walked through it on Edward Sturm's show. His example the whole episode is a plumber in Aurora, Colorado who wants jobs in Denver. Here is what I took from it, and how we use it at eezyRank.

The map pack needs a real office in that city

The map pack is the box of three businesses with a map at the top of a local search. Shaw is blunt about it. To show up there in a city that is not yours, "There's only one way on earth to do it. You must open a new location."

That holds even for the city next door. Aurora to Denver: "Forget it. Just give up." He calls it the city barrier. Past about 20 miles, he says map ranking is "almost impossible". Lots of service businesses drive 30 to 60 miles for a job, and that driving does not put them in those map packs. The one exception he gives is an industry with no competition, where a wide radius can work.

He also says the service area you set on your Google Business Profile does not change rankings. "Service areas in Google do not impact your rankings." The setting only shows customers where you travel. This one has outside backing: Whitespark's own 2024 test and a test by Sterling Sky both found no ranking change.

Even a real new office ranks slowly. "Everything Google knows about you is anchored" to your first location, he says. Law firms with staffed offices across a state still dominate only where they started. "It's going to take a long time."

What counts as an office

If you decide to open a location, Shaw sorts the cheap options:

  • A PO box is against Google's guidelines and puts "a major target on your back".
  • A virtual office is also against the guidelines.
  • A co-working space is a gray area. "Fineish" only with a dedicated lease and signage, and still "looked at very suspiciously by Google".
  • A sublease is his pick. Rent a room in someone else's office, with your name on the outside of the building, on the main office door and on your own door.

Look for subleases on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace, he says, not on office listing sites. His example cost a small fraction of a regular office lease.

What town pages can do without an office

Town pages on your own site can rank in the normal results, and Shaw says they can bring leads from ChatGPT and Gemini. "Sure, it helps you rank in your organic results." For AI, "Those pages are great." They do not put you in the map pack, and the organic results sit below the ads and the pack. They are still the part of a new city you can reach without an office.

He wants these pages "very detailed", and calls them "foundational, required". His setup:

  • Group pages by city. A services menu with a city level, and each service page under a city kept "hyperfocused" on that city.
  • Rework each town's page. "It's not a copy paste whether you just change the name, you just kind of rework each paragraph."
  • Use the owner's own voice. Ask the owner questions about each section, record the answers, and work from the transcript. He calls that "the very best way to get real authentic content that doesn't come across as AI generated."

Sturm added two points of his own. He warned against doorway pages "where everything is just" the same. And he said a pillar page for each location makes it "a lot easier to build topical authority for that location".

Getting the new city to know you

Pages alone are not enough. Shaw says you need references from inside that city: links, mentions, citations. "That's how Google works. That's also how LLMs work."

His ways to get them:

  • Sponsorships. Search the city name plus inurl:sponsors. Sturm noted Google removed the setting that showed 100 results at once, so Shaw runs that search on Yahoo. Many local groups will list a sponsor for a fee.
  • A short blurb instead of anchor text. You usually cannot pick the link words, so ask for a plain sentence like "Bob's Plumbing is a Denver plumbing company." He says to repeat that kind of line "on the internet all over the place".
  • Chambers of commerce, business groups and meetup groups in the new city.
  • Point those links at the city hub page. Sturm raised this and Shaw agreed: the links "trickle down to all the other service pages that are in Denver".

On reviews, Shaw thinks reviews from customers in the new city help, ideally naming the city. He is open that this is a guess: "Speculatively, no one's ever proved that." He is firm that keywords in your reply to a review do nothing. "Google doesn't use the owner response in the local search algorithm at all." A Sterling Sky test backs that. Reply like a person.

Profile changes to leave alone, and myths to skip

Shaw's warnings on the Business Profile:

  • Address and phone trigger reverification. "Don't touch those."
  • Changing the primary category can trigger it too. Extra categories and the name are "usually fine".
  • Geotagging photos does not affect rankings. "That's actually a myth." Outside tests agree, and Google strips the photo location data on upload.
  • Schema has not been shown to help map pack rankings. He is "on the fence", and calls any benefit for AI answers "pure speculation".

In his view, some agencies push schema and geotagging to sound technical and confuse clients.

One place we part ways. Shaw says Google rarely acts on keywords stuffed into a business name, and he believes they help. Google's written rules say extra words in the name are not allowed and could get the profile suspended. We follow the written rule.

How we use this at eezyRank

  • I tell clients plainly that town pages will not put them in another city's map pack. Those pages are built for normal Google results and AI assistants.
  • Each town gets a town page with that town's service pages under it, reachable from the menu.
  • Each town page we build starts from research on that town. A page that only swaps the city name is a doorway page, and we do not want those.
  • Our Business Profile check keeps the real business name, one address and phone that match the site, and categories and services that match the pages. We do not sell the service area setting, geotagged photos or schema as ways to rank.
  • Our build does not include links, sponsorships or chamber listings in a new city. When an owner gets them, the town page is where they should point.

If you want to see the pages we build for local service businesses, take a look at https://eezyrank.com.