I don't have a business address, Any problem?
-
I am targeting local area, Melbourne in Australia.
My business address is my private (home) address and I don't want to list it as we don't have a shopfront, and I don't want my personal address online. Is there a way to get around this?
Web site - brandstenmedia.com.au
Services - Aerial Photography & Videography
-
Hello,
I often list my address, even though we don't serve customers from the address. There are a couple of reasons for this; firstly it strengthens your brand identity and gives people confidence that your business is real, and second because there is no other reliable way to get local search on your side. If you use another address this may look odd and make people suspicious about the business. If you do list your address you can set up your site for people to contact you in the ways that you wish, rather than by coming to your address, if that's what you prefer.
-
No worries, Hashtag
We're all learners! -
This is true! I guess I should clarify.
My answer was presuming, that "Aerial Photography & Videography" was also located in the same area they are targeting. That being said, using their own home, and the shipping address of the P.O. Box for all business inquiries would allow them to still remain separate from their home. I should have clarified that.
When you assume you make a buttocks out of me and myself in this case!
My apologies!!
-
Hey Hashtag - Important to note here that in Local SEO, P.O. boxes are taboo. Forbidden by Google's guidelines. So, in this case, P.O. boxes are not a solution.
-
A business address is HUGE for local search. At least get a PO Box and use that. Its cheap.
-
If you are trying to get a local search result, having a local address will be immensely beneficial, why not grab yourself a P.O. box? Could be a quick fix and a physical address!
-
Hi Landon!
Important question here - I understand that you don't want to have you address displayed, but are you at least physically located in Melbourne or are you located in a different city? Please, let us know!
-
Hi there
You can take a look at business listings through Whitespark and Service Area Maps through Google.
I would also take a look at different local business listings or citations that you can get through various city or art/photography partnerships. Do you work with local businesses that would be willing to lend testimonials?
You should also take a look at this resource from Moz.
It's not bad that you don't have a address listed, but it will make your job a bit harder. If your onsite and content allude to Melbourne and businesses in that area, you should be just fine. Remember to take advantage of image schema and sitemaps as well, so you can add descriptions and titles alluding to Melbourne or various local areas.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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 -
Google My Business - Service Area - Use Zip Codes or City Names?
Google allows you to choose up to 20 locations as service areas, and you can choose based on cities, counties, or zip codes. I'm trying to determine if zip codes, cities, or counties are better to select for our GMB profiles. We are located in the US. I am thinking it's best to use all 20 areas allowed on a profile as long as they are relevant, generally giving Google all the info they will let you provide is best. I also am leaning toward using zip codes because it also includes the city when you choose by zip code. For example: Entered the zip code 21009 and the service area selection provided was: Abingdon, MD 21009, USA Entering the city/state returns a selection of Abingdon, MD, USA I also think it may have to do with how people search and find your business as well? Does anyone have experience with this? Best practices? My google searching has not turned up any reliable info.
Local Listings | | WadeBayMgmt0 -
1 physical address, 2 live GMBs for 2 different businesses
We recently have a chiropractor client who came to us to do SEO for his newly opened myotherapy practice. We were very surprised he managed to request and got approved a GMB for the myotherapy practice under a different business name but the exact same address. Has there been changes in Google policy recently that 2 businesses are able to share the one same address? If we built citations for the myotherapy practice with the same address, will it send conflicting signals to Google? His chiropractor practice is currently ranking no. 1 in local pack and SERP for his main keyword "chiropractor + location". Any insight would be greatly appreciated!
Local Listings | | Gavo0 -
How to rank for local keywords (cities) when you don't have brick and mortar stores
Hi folks, We have developed a site that connect local consumers with local businesses (brick and mortar). The keywords that consumers search for are e.g. "plumber san diego" or "hairdresser" + "local area" and so on...good old fashioned local searches. Sometimes even without the location added in the search. But how do we BEST optimize our site to get the most organic traffic from these local searches? We don't have brick and mortar stores or offices but our service is of high value and will save consumers lots of money and even help the local businesses when in need of extra customers. Thanks in advance for all your input. Have a nice day. Chris
Local Listings | | Henrik_Kruse1 -
Having two GMB listings at same address
We currently have two verified GMB listings at the same address - I "inherited" these when I joined the company, and was considering merging them, as I am aware it is generally not recommended to have more than one listing per company per location. However, the two listings highlight two different sectors of our company so I decided to keep both and optimised them as best as possible by completing the information, adding pictures etc. One of the listings uses our legal company name, one uses our name that we trade under as an e-commerce business. The listing with our legal company name links to our corporate website and focuses on installations we do, while the listing with our e-commerce business name links to our ecommerce website and focuses on products we sell through there so they differ a bit from each other. Both serve the entire country, so they are not targeted specifically toward local searches. The following differ: Business name, sector, website
Local Listings | | ViviCa1
The following are the same: Address, phone number, opening hours So far we haven't had any issues, both are verified and show up in Google, but recently, we have had the following notification pop up: Fix locations with duplicate addresses__Use shop codes to differentiate locations that have the same address. Click each location and give it a unique address or shop code, or remove it. I'd appreciate some advice as to what would be best in this situation. Should I just add shop codes to differentiate the two listings in order to be able to keep them both? If so, what purpose do these shop codes have, how should I format these and will these be publicly visible within our listings? If you would suggest merging them, how could I ensure that it shows up whether people search for our e-commerce business name or for our legal business name as these are different? Thanks in advance!0 -
Google My Business - More than 1 business under same roof?
Good morning Mozzers from London, England, I have been having some issues around local SERPs and getting our businesses to rank. The issue I have is we run GYMS, however within our gyms certain locations we run additional businesses like CHILDREN'S NURSERIES or PHYSIOTHERAPY CLINICS etc. Now these are run affectively as different businesses, and you don't need to be a gym member to use these services. However Google only lets you have 1 primary category per business address. And all of our locations are rightly registered as GYMS. So I can't then produce a secondary business listing at the same address.....can I? Has anyone else experienced this problem, or know of a solution? Kindest regards Ben
Local Listings | | Bendall0 -
How do I find associations between two businesses?
Google seems to have associated two business that share the same location (with added suite numbers) and I'm not sure how to break the association. The puzzling thing I discovered the other day is when I do a brand search in Google maps it populates this other business as seen here: (https://www.google.com/maps/search/tatt-away/@27.184467,-81.4366649,8z/data=!3m1!4b1) We have multiple locations in Florida I know this other business and it's hosted on the same VPS as well. My question is how to I find the correlation and break it?
Local Listings | | Tatt-Away0 -
Local SEO: Creating a Second home-based business?
I'm in a bit of a pickle, here's the issue: I have a home-based business with a physical address. I plan on starting another home-based business at the same physical address. I only have one phone (cellphone). I plan on operating both businesses unless one completely eclipses the other. I can probably see your head spinning right now . . . how big of NAP issues are we looking at? I own my house, I could probably add a line to the new business address (like a suite # or something) I can afford a landline or secondary cellphone if necessary Any thoughts, ideas, criticisms, direction, hate-mail, or solutions?
Local Listings | | roachdesign0