Will changing my business location affect my ranking for localised searches in my original area?
-
I run a mobile outdoor personal training service in London, UK (i.e. no bricks and mortar gym). Or, rather, my business is in London (all my clients and the freelance trainers that work for me) but I'm personally due to move out to the county of Suffolk.
As I work from a home office and my company's registered address is my home, that means I have to inform Companies House and various government agencies that the company has moved.
Does this mean:
a) I also must tell Google the company has moved, and;
b) if I do will Google start to see my website as being for a Suffolk-based company?
I really don't want this to happen: my clientele are mostly in London., I still want to market to Londoners. And if I want to expand the areas covered by my company, Suffolk is not high on my list.
You'll excuse me if this is a simple question!
Thanks for any help you could give
-
Hi Fiona,
Unfortunately, it does not really matter if you set up multiple service areas, you'll still only have a chance of ranking in the city or near the area the business is actually located. (Depending on competition.)
And also, since you'll just be moving there, you may not rank well at 1st compared to established businesses that have been there for a long time. The algo is like a giant puzzle and there are lots of things at play that go into the ranking order.
Moving can be challenging for your Google ranking, so I'd suggest reading the Moz Local Search Ranking Factors if you have not yet and be ready to start working to increase some of those ranking signals after you move. Using the Moz Local tool to try to either correct or build new citations to the new location would be important too.
-
That does help, Linda, thank you. Although I'm in a quandary. If I register multiple service areas under my business listing, will my competition still rank higher than me if their business address is in London ? I assume that when Google are informed of my move to another town, my organic ranking for London-related keywords ("personal training in westminster") would be affected?
-
Thanks, Jeff, I have unchecked 'I serve customers at my address' and have added the locations I serve customers.
-
There are a few issues I wanted to point out.
1st off the address in your Google dashboard needs to be the real address you work from. So if you move you MUST change it in dash. If you don't all kinds of problems could come up including duplicates and including your listing being deleted.
Any time you move, it breaks NAP so you will likely lose ranking.
If you move to a new city you will likely only rank in that city, not the previous city. (Depends on competition and proximity.)
In either case you need to set service area and be sure address is hidden. But that service area does not affect ranking in any way at all. Ranking area is still determined by the location that's in dash, even though address is hidden.
Hope that helps and best of luck!
-
A reputable business will have a trading address on their site, therefore the actual trading address and listings will differ. In this case every aspect of NAP will differ.
-
customerparadignm.com makes a good point, however I've seen consistency & having a set office location work better.
https://moz.com/local/ does a great job of cleaning up consistency errors and is less expensive than Yext Business Listings.
Tips:
1. Submit a Change Of Address to G
2. Consistency, consistency, consistency.
3. Verify all major business listings for your new location.
4. Make sure your new location is on your website.
5. Schema markup never hurt.
Good Luck Fiona!
-
Hi fionadoggett,
The thing is that you do not need to tell Google you are moving. Remember that you are working online, so you can hold your business location just for Google. Anyway i have seen many times in google places two different locations of the same business (but in the same city) so, may be is possible to hold both of them.
Good luck
-
Yes, unfortunately if you change the address that you have listed on your Website, along with the address you have for a Google+ page, then you might start to have issues with local search results migrating to Sufolk instead of London.
My recommendation: Change your Google+ listing to a Service-area business
For local business search, you'll want to set up the business so it not based on the physical location / address (i.e. your new home in Sufolk), but serves a greater area (i.e. London). In order to do this, you will need to set up your Google+ account as a Service-area business on Google.
This is perfect for a trainer, local plumber, tree trimmer or construction crew that works at customer's locations (either homes or businesses) vs. your home address.
My recommendation would be to go here:
https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038163?hl=en... and set up your service areas based on the zip codes or cities that the business serves.
You also have the option to check or uncheck, "I serve customers at my business address."
You might need to go through another round of verification to make this change, however.
I hope this helps!
Thanks,
- Jeff
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
-
Adding Multiple Country Locations for Google Business Listings
Hi Moz community, I hope everyone is well. I would like to ask for your advice on how to show a Google Business listing in both the UK and US for our brand. I understand that you can add multiple locations to your Google listing under the 'Manage Locations' tab but I wasn't quite sure how it worked in practice. I have a couple of questions below: If we have 2 registered locations/offices (one in the UK and one in the US) are we able to create 2 separate locations that will show our business listing correctly in the right-hand margin when people search for our brand in the US and UK respectively? If so, when a user finds our business listing in the US, are we able to serve them our US website version when they click the 'Website' button, as opposed to showing them our UK website? Our US website has been created as a sub-directory from our main UK site and can be seen as: www.example.com/us/ I hope someone is able to help, and thank you in advance.
Local Listings | | Katarina-Borovska
Katarina0 -
Best Approach for GMB/Local Optimization for Central Office with Multiple Locations
Hello, Our site is designed to place people in different locations or houses. We have six locations total; each one has its own name, physical address and landing page. We also have a central office for the brand with its own NAP. All addresses fall under the guidelines of Google My Business (i.e. people visit each location and our office...etc.). Unless it’s ideal, we most likely wouldn’t be running a full-scale local campaign for each location due to restrictions on resources and wouldn’t want to spread ourselves too thin. Our question is; would it be best to set up a GMB listing for each location including our central office, only use the central office or just the 6 locations? – We know multiple locations is not an issue for GMB but we weren’t sure if that’s the ideal way to approach it in this case. Essentially, would it be better to focus on our central office for GMB/local efforts and just make sure that our other location landing pages are the highest quality possible or better to use GMB for every location (including the main office) and over time start local work on all of the above. Also, if we do only use just the central office; should we be avoiding listing the other addresses on each landing page to avoid confusing Google as to where we are located? Any help or insight on how to approach this would be very much appreciated. Looking forward to hearing from all of you! Thank you. Best,
Local Listings | | Ben-R1 -
Is Moz Local useful for a specialized small business?
I can see the use of Moz Local for businesses for the general public, like a restaurant. But is it useful for a more specialized business like a recording studio? The studio ranks high on Google already for our city (usually #1 but some days #2). It's not like people are driving around and grab their phone to look up an emergency recording studio stop. Is it useful?
Local Listings | | amybethmegjo0 -
How to create a filter view to view local search traffic in google analytics ?
Id like to be able to drill down into the local search traffic for a site in google analytics, i know i can get some analytics data via google's local places dashboard, but id like to see a more detailed chart in google analytics. I read this article and installed this filtered view dashboard from Local U, but it seems its stopped working since it was originally published back in July 13. Is there a more up to date method for capturing this data ?
Local Listings | | jpeg800 -
Business listing verification for multiple locations
Hi there I have been asked to help with a business which has multiple locations (5 to be precise). I haven't really worked with a business on that scale before so I am a little bit out of my depth.
Local Listings | | coolhandluc
I had a look at their business listing in the moz local business listing checker and their profile seems very messy. I can see several of their branches listed, some verified, some not verified. When I look at the listing for each branch in detail they are all incomplete but at different levels (ranges from 17% to 46%). Some have a Facebook page and some haven't, same for google my business etc...
My understanding when it comes to multiple locations is that, in an ideal world, each branch should have its own google my business page, Facebook page, a Bing places for business page etc...
Can anyone confirm what the best approach is to deal with multilocations businesses and their business listing and/or point me to some online resource that could help me.
Would I also need to create multiple accounts for listing their business in directories such as Yelp, Yell etc... Thanks so much for all the help I can receive0 -
Local Business Registered at not a real Address
Hi, I am working on local SEO for a client of mine and was interested to hear what will be recommended in this case: My client registered his business in a NYC address, for his own business needs. Can I use this address as a second location for the business? There is a secretary taking care of ALL the businesses listed there, but is not a location that services customers. We don't service customers on site at any location because it's a pickup business to begin with, but we do have a fully functional office in NJ Please don't dismiss this right away, it was registered in NYC and not in NJ and all our information on the web cites this address over our NJ one (obviously i'm working on promoting our NJ one, but that's nowhere to be found on the web).
Local Listings | | Rachel_J0 -
Awesome ranking (place 1/2) but my CTR is damn low! Some thoughts...
Hey all, with a few projects I'm ranking really great. Having a good amount of impressions with terms that have decent search volume. Webmasters shows: "tax consultant city" Ranking 1.4 => 1056 imp => 3% CTR "seo city" Ranking 1.2 => 329 imp => 1% CTR Whats up here? Competitors are seaching a lot but not clicking? Brand issues? Can't believe that. Title is boring? German titles a are longer... So I don't have enough room to play. Should I get rid of important keywords? Maybe I don't need them to rank? Gives me room for tests. Local Box is steeling all the clicks? We are in the local listings and above. Payed Ads are steeling all the clicks? At this point we don't use AdWords because of high costs and our great organic rankings It would be great to hear your thoughts. Cheers
Local Listings | | PascalKremp
Pascal0 -
Why is my location info on google+ correct in one state, but wrong in another?
One search was performed from Oklahoma, and one from California where the business is located. The Google maps data is wrong in CA, but correct in OK. The wrong info is the old business name that closed two years ago. I've written Google twice asking them to remove it from Google Maps, but they write back and say no. http://d.pr/i/KbIN http://d.pr/i/Gce9 Thanks for any input, I appreciate it.
Local Listings | | marshalllj0