Home address for service professionals?

[JesseCWalker]

I often work with people who are in service industries who do not have a business address (dog sitters, pilates teachers, personal trainers, house cleaners).  They often work by going into someone's home to provide the service.

However in some of these industries independent contractors compete with businesses who have a brick and mortar location.  This presents an SEO challenge when a serp features a 7-pack of local business.

When I search "masseuse" I get a 7-pack after a Wikipedia result, and a merriam-webster result.  So being in the 7-pack is essential for any real traffic for the term.

One solution to this problem is to have the contractors use their home address for their Google places listing, Yelp, etc.  Is this a good idea?

I'm a little worried about this technique because these independent contractors don't actually bring clients into their homes.  Also it would be misleading if someone was searching for a place to go to get a massage instead of having someone come to their home.

But the presence of 7pack in a serp really puts these people at an unfair advantage.

Would you use a home address?  Do you have any other suggestions as to how to level the playing field in these cases?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Jesse,
Thank you for coming to Q&A to ask your question! Here are Google's Places Guidelines in full for your perusal:

http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528

The main rule that applies to the situation you are describing is this one:

"Only businesses that make in-person contact with customers qualify for a Google Places listing."

The clients you are describing are certainly making in-person contact with their clientele.

Google is well aware of the fact that there are millions of go-to-client businesses (chimney sweeps, landscapers, window washers, etc.). The trouble is that they have tended to treat these business models as though they were less deserved of their attention, not offering very specific guidelines for them.

But, basically, any business that makes in-person contact with its customers qualifies as local. Whether the customers come to you or you go to them doesn't matter. So, if the home is the office from which the business owner is going out to serve his customers, it is perfectly accurate to list his home address as his headquarters.

What I have found to actually be the most difficult aspect of this in the years I've been doing Local SEO is that many business owners who operate out of the home are concerned about privacy. Some do not want their home address out there on the web either because they simply value privacy or because they are concerned that customers may come by their home expecting it to be a walk-in office. So, this is something that each home-based business has to make a decision about: is inclusion in Google Places worth these risks? If they are truly competitive, the answer will probably be yes, because non-inclusion pretty much means invisibility.

Regarding P.O. Boxes, virtual offices and the like,  this is not an allowed option, as stated in the guidelines:

Do not create listings at locations where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations. Listings submitted with P.O. Box addresses will be removed.

Regarding Google's service radius tool - be careful using this. There is little evidence that it helps one to rank in cities outside of one's physical location, whereas I have seen evidence that using the tool too broadly can have a rather negative effect. I prefer not to use it for my clients.

Over the years, I have often written about the need for Google to start treating this massive number of go-to-client business models as equally important. They've introduced things like the service radius feature, but I feel that isn't really a worthwhile instrument at this point. It's better to focus your Place Page (and other local profiles) on your single physical location and then use your website to build out geographic content for the different towns/cities/counties you service.

At any rate, hope this gets you off the on the right foot!
Miriam

[Jinx14678]

I THINK a PO Box would not be good as it would not be as universally accepted, but possibly an SEOMOZ associate could chime in on that?

SHane

NM I found it, and the guy that answered works for Google so the answer in NO a PO box is not accepted at Google Places

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Places/thread?tid=0cd635a1627dcb81&hl=en

[JesseCWalker]

Thanks Shane,

That is helpful.  You actually touch on another question of mine which is whether it is better for home based service providers to use a PO box or whether to use a home address.

If these local directories don't accept PO boxes that is a clear answer.  I'll look into it.

Thanks again for your input.

[Jinx14678]

Hi,

I know for certain that in Google Places you can actually specify that the "Service Provider" comes to customers locations and you can set it for a radius of up to 635 miles (could be wrong on the #)

You can also hide the address, so in this instance the home address would be the place of business and would not be unethical due to probably with Tax records (and such) the Home address IS the business address, but it is hidden so will not "confuse" the end user.

I am ALMOST certain that you can do this in most local directories as well, such as Yelp and Local.com, but don't quote me on that but if you cannot ( I do not think they accept PO Boxes) so for local citations to gain Google Places exposure you may want to use the home address IF NECESSARY.

Hope this helps

w00t!