What (Local SEO) NAP to use when your country doesn't use Suite #s?
-
New Zealand does some good things, for example we grow hairy fruit called Kiwifruit, put other fruit into bottles and call it Sauvignon Blanc, but we can also be a bit, well...fruity.
My problem is that when we Kiwis list out NAPs we do it like this: ABC Company, Level 1, 123 Example St. Now the fruity bit is we don't have Suite #s, there is never: ABC Company, Suite #400 Level 1, 123 Example St. We just expect you to go up to level 1 and bl@ody well find the office thanks very much (yea there are signs).
It seems like a Local SEO shared office situation but it's the whole floor! I'm worried if I get an office in an office building then I will have my results merged with Extremely-Boring-Accountant and Angry-Lawyer who happen to be on the same level.
What's a Local SEO aware guy to do?
-
Thanks, will do
-
Hi Bruce,
Thanks for your patience. I did get a chance to speak with my colleague - Nyagoslav Zhekov of NGSMarketing.com, and he feels that Google will be sophisticated enough to handle this issue, especially given that this is par for the course in your country. Likely Google handles this the way they do shopping malls here in the U.S. Just be sure your business name and phone number are unique to you, and cross your fingers that no problems arise.
-
Thanks Miriam
-
If I log out of normal moz, and then click the login button at the bottom of this thread and login, then I am Q&A logged in. Weird.
-
Hi Bruce,
This is quite interesting, what you've described regarding New Zealand addresses. I'm going to ask a colleague who has done quite a bit of local work in NZ if he has any info about Google's ability to handle this. I will hop back in if he is kind enough to respond to me. One would presume that Google gets this about your country (love those little kiwi birds, btw) but I'll see what I can find out!
-
Yeah I thought Miriam Ellis was the subject matter expert and I've copied her advice below (there is no solution) from 13 months ago. I'm kinda hoping that there is updated advice and even perhaps a solution?
"It's important to understand that no matter how many citations you get, you are at risk of their 'power' being split between you and any other business sharing the address, and simply confusing the bots further. It might be helpful to visualize being a bot here. If you see 50 references around the web to Jane's Hair Salon, 23 for Jenny's Yoga and 72 for Bill's Martial arts all stating that they are located at 123 Main street, who do you believe? Therein lies the problem and it's not going to be a winning situation for any of the businesses mixed up in this. Google has never handled the concept of shared addresses well. Unfortunately, in the real world, people do share addresses, but Google's system is not designed to cope with that, so either one abstains from participation in Google's local products, or finds a way to comply with them." - Miriam Ellis Oct 13 http://moz.com/community/q/local-seo-how-to-handle-multiple-business-at-same-address
-
Thanks Moosa. We use PO Box numbers.
-
Thanks for your quick response Federico. The issue is New Zealand does not use Suite #s at all.
-
My apologies for not responding to the responses earlier, I got caught in some sort of odd logged out bug for just the Q&A section
-
I'm going through the same issue with a client with 2 offices - both are shared.
I'm taking heed of the advice given at http://moz.com/community/q/local-seo-how-to-handle-multiple-business-at-same-address and http://moz.com/community/q/multiple-businesses-at-the-same-address-avoiding-google-places-trouble
-
When you don’t have it, you don’t have it… just use it with what you have and this won’t really be a problem for Google I guess…
But if you get some letter to your address how do you get it without the suite no.? #just wondering!!
-
Doesn't the building provide you with a suite number? (ask there)
They usually do for correspondence delivery. Try to see if you can get one, but if you can't then you should use what you have, without the suite # as there's none.
There are several businesses that run in a same "office" with just separate "areas" and use the same address, that shouldn't be a problem. In fact, the lack of a suite number isn't your problem, but the building's.
Hope that helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is getting views to an infographic through Imgur beneficial to SEO?
I'm considering posting infographics to Imgur in addition to hosting them on my site in an effort to leverage Reddit a bit more this year. My concern is that, if all goes well, we'll get a ton of views through Reddit to Imgur, maybe a couple clickthroughs to the site, and links to (probably) the Imgur page. I don't see that Imgur gives your profile a followed link, so how would any of this help SEO. I assume it would, because respected guys like John Dougherty espouse the benefits of Reddit, but I can't see how and I need to justify the effort to my department head.
Image & Video Optimization | | MattHolden1 -
What is the best way to optimise the website of a service area business websites for local search?
Service area businesses are a little caught in the middle when it comes to local optimisation and can really struggle to So what approaches would your recommend for optimising a service area business: Assuming the following, perhaps obvious, goals: Make sure your site visitors can clearly understand if their location is covered by your service areas Compete for search traffic for service + location searches (including those with an implided location). One common tactic that I see being used is to generate humongous lists of locations, maybe in a footer. Obviously the more areas you want to include the less relevant (and more spammy looking) your targetting looks. And of course, with loads of locations, you're not going to be able to get them all into your titles (even if you wanted to!) Maybe if you've got locations that are more inportant to you you might create specific landing pages for these location? If you've got the kind of business where the locations you target are determined by the locations you can reasonably get to during a working day it's really tough to find a realistic way to target specific location on your site. I'd be really interested to hear how you approach these kinds of sites.
Image & Video Optimization | | DougRoberts0 -
Local SEO: Specific pointers on how to improve my campaign
Hello, I changed my address midstream in my campaign, from spelling out "Suite H" to now it's #H. Wow, what a cleanup job. I'm in at least 3 dozen directories I've found, and it looks like there are more. I'm adding myself to all the main directories that yext lists here. I've also used whitespark for a couple of months. My site is here. The term I'm targeting is "Boise Weight Loss. I"m on page 3 and not in the local results. Could you guys give me some pointers on how to get up into the top 3 of the local results? I'm planning on cleaning up and adding directories. I don't know how many I'll need, and of course I am looking for pointers on the other factors (besides citations) as well. Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Google Places, Google+ Local, or both?
I understand that Google is in the process of merging Google Places into Google+ Local, but the current state is very confusing. There are still two separate signup pages, and neither even MENTIONS the other. If someone is establishing a business web presence today, what should we set up?
Image & Video Optimization | | LunaGraphica0 -
Local Search for Multiple Locations
Hi Folks, The company I work for is based in Kendal in Cumbria in the United Kingdom (that's our head office) but as we are a training company and we have training locations all over the UK, how would I go about updating the local listings to reflect this. I'd like to specifically target our London based venues. Any help much appreciated. Gaz
Image & Video Optimization | | PurpleGriffon0 -
Local SEO
Would like to read articles on local SEO that have been recently published in the past few months. Has anyone come across good articles on this topic?
Image & Video Optimization | | casper4340 -
Video SEO - Why are my videos not being indexed?
Hello All, I work on a site that has a lot of videos. The trouble is none of them are ranking. Here is an example of a page with a video on. If you click the play button you will see But none of these videos are being indexed, as you can see here. Is it because these videos are just mp4 files, rather than being embedded players (like SEOmoz use for instance)? Would embedding videos through Viddler / Wistia / Youtube etc help? Or is there some other issue at work here? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Rich
Image & Video Optimization | | JBGlobalSEO0 -
SEO for Explicit / Medical Pictures - Will It Hurt Rankings?
I have a client with page 1 rankings for several keywords. He wants to make some updates to his website. He is offering a new service and wants to show before and after photos of the procedure. He is an OB/GYN, so the before/after pictures are very explicit and have full nudity. How will this affect his rankings? Is there something that I can do to tell Google and other SE's that these photos are medical and not pornographic? Should I host them on another domain? Just looking for thoughts and insight. Thank you in advance!
Image & Video Optimization | | itrogers0