Local Ranking with No Physical Address in New Service Area - How to Rank?
-
OK,
SO, I am a wedding company in Maui, Hawaii and have an established business on one island with a physical address. http://simplemauiwedding.net
We have started a new team in Oahu, Hawaii http://simpleoahuwedding.com and we provide service there and have a full team in place. How can I rank for Local Search on that Island with no physical address?
I would love to hear some proven strategies.
Thank you
-
Hey hey, Paul - you read my article! Woo hoo
Thank you. And thanks for your great contributions to this thread.
-
Hi William!
I'm so glad you're here, participating in Q&A. Thank you for being part of this conversation. I want to take a minute to explain why ThompsonPaul is saying "no no!" to non-physical addresses, in hopes that it may be good learning moment for lots of community members.
P.O. boxes, mailboxes, virtual offices, etc, are a violation of Google's guidelines, which state:
Use a precise, accurate address to describe your business location. PO Boxes or mailboxes located at remote locations are not acceptable.
Though you are absolutely right, William, that some mail services provide a street address, it's so important to remember that Google can read street level signage. So, if Steven's wedding company were to try to list at such a location, Google can easily see that they're looking at a mailing office instead of a business with a sign outside of it saying "Steven's Wedding Company". Important to remember that customers and competitors can see this, too, using Streetview, and can easily report any offending business for spam.
ThompsonPaul has linked to my recent Moz Blog post in which I explain that the results of being detected at an ineligible location would be a "hard penalty" causing listing removal, rendering any money, time or effort that had been put into building up the fake location listing null. We don't know for certain how this might, then, influence Google's feelings about the entire brand ... but I wouldn't want to risk that my spammy behavior in City B wasn't somehow putting a black mark next to my legitimate location in City A.
Finally, when this topic comes up, I always like to touch on the ethics of the thing. Smart businesses know that it can spell doom to be cited by the consumer public for deceptive practices. Not only has a failure to live up to truth-in-advertising standards led to public lawsuits, it has really tarnished brands. So, it's just good business to be 100% honest in how you present a business to the public, including being truthful about its physical locations. Anything else is a risk.
Good discussion going on here, William. Hopefully we can all learn something about these challenges from participating.
-
Hi Steven!
So, basically, the answer is: you can't. I know that's not what you want to hear, but it is the reality for nearly all single location businesses that serve multiple cities. Google's bias toward physical location affects all service business models this way. Unless you can get a staffed, physical office in the second city, it will be a waste of your time to make it your goal to rank in the local results for that city. Instead, your options are:
-
Go after organic rankings for that city via the authority you build surrounding website content+links for that city.
-
Pay for visibility with locally-targeted PPC.
-
Use social media to try to build brand awareness for your work in that city.
-
Do everything you can to encourage word-of-mouth among existing customers. Customers in City A have friends and family in city B. Make a superior effort to offer the type of superior service that would cause the A group to recommend your services to the B group. Consider how loyalty programs might assist with this. Perhaps every customer who brings you a new customer gets a voucher for a free dinner, free massage, etc.
-
Explore building relationships with related businesses in City B. Perhaps your company does everything but bake the cake for weddings. Find the best bakers in City B and see how you can help one another in terms of lead gen.
A combination of all these efforts could begin generating some leads for you that are not dependent on the unrealistic goal of ranking locally where you aren't locally located. Hope this helps!
-
-
I'm well aware of the reasons why small business owners might not want to have their home addresses listed, but it doesn't change the fact that Google will not allow use of UPS Store-type mailing addresses to pretend to be business locations. It's not a matter of having a "verifiable address" it's a matter of adhering to the requirement that you must have an actual business presence at that specific location where customers can come in person for service/sales.to qualify the local GMB address.
It is possible to set your home address, then select that it should be hidden and function as a local service area business instead.
But trying to get away with using a non-conforming "pretend" address will get you delisted when caught (and Google is very good at catching such non-conforming addresses in many ways, if it even lets you verify it in the first place.)
This is not just my opinion - it's specifically stated by Google in their own GMB terms of service. In fact, Local Search expert Miriam Ellis just posted about this in her Not-Actually-The-Best Local SEO Practices. To quote:
"Once caught, any effort that was put into ranking and building reputation around a fake-location listing is wasted."
Paul
-
Many people work from home and do not want to use their home address. I am sure we all know why. It is just not a good idea. It is their legal right to have a verifiable local mailing address in which they can send and receive mail. Another option is a local coworking space or execitive office space that offers mail and meeting space on an as needed basis.
The important thing is that it is a real address. You use it for real business and it can be verified.
Have a great 2018!
-
Unfortunately, these types of "pretend" business addresses are specifically against Google's ToS for Google My Business locations. It's pretty easy for them to detect and they'll nuke your location listing as a result.
-
Thanks William!
-
You need to get a mail box addres such as Mail Boxes Etc or the UPS store that gives you a physical street address. If you want to get into local that is your best and easiest option.
Make sure the address gets verified like any other address would, and never use a "Post Office" box. That will not give you the verifiable address as far as I know.
Hope this helps.
Best Regards
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
-
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 -
For Google's Structured Data, should I change my listings from Product schema to Local Business schema?
I was reading Google's Structured Data spec, and I'm considering changing the schema of our listing pages from the Product schema to the Local Business schema. Is this a good idea? To give you a little more info, the pages that I'm classifying are listings for physical spaces that our website rents out for activities, such as meetings. Here's an example of a listing: https://www.peerspace.com/pages/listings/550ddcde2f352d0800fc186b Our goal is to add the proper schema.org tags to the page so that our spaces show up in local searches, such as "meeting space in San Francisco." The problem is that when we add location microdata (addressLocality, addressRegion, etc.) to our current "Product" schema, Google tells us that "Products" can't have a location. However, we aren't quite a "Local Business" either, since we don't publicly share our space's street addresses—only the space's neighborhood/city/state for privacy reasons. As a result, we get an error from Google's Structured Data Tool as a "Local Business" page because "streetAddress" is required for Local Businesses. Should we switch to the Local Business schema anyway, even though we get structured data errors for streetAddress? Or is it better not to include the location information in the microdata so that we don't have errors? Does Google penalize you for incomplete tags? Any input is appreciated!
Local Listings | | stuartstein0 -
Is the new local 3-pack the death of Google+ as factor?
So now we have the new 3-pack local results, which obviously cut the listings Google+ link from the results. What I find strange is that is now even when searching the business name alone, there is no sign of the associated Google+ page in the results. I still get other local third party listings like Facebook, Yellowpages, and Yelp – but no link anywhere for the Google+ page. I noticed this today when I wanted to verify something on a client’s page. There was nothing I could do search wise to bring up this business Google+ page. I finally got it by clicking the link through Moz local. After exploring this with some other clients, when I do get a Google+ page in the search results some have produced a 500 error when clicked on. If Google wasn’t killing off Google+, why would they completely omit the pages from their own search results? Another extremely strange thing, the majority of my clients are independent local businesses inside a large national company. Their Google+ listings have always been managed corporately using a bulk listing feed. We could never gain access to these pages and would always manage our listings to match that of the corp. controlled page. Well the last week of July they announced they were giving us the option to take control of the page. This happened with two different companies, MAJOR national competitors in the same industry, within a couple days of each other. They now treat it just like another version of social media, instead of a major factor within search. I find it hard to believe that something isn’t going on…
Local Listings | | masonrj0 -
Why does Google only display a 3 pack of local business results for some terms?
We have seen a pattern in the Google UK SERPS where only three local listings are triggered for a query although they have a more local results to show but chose to only show three: Anyone else seen this? Anyone know why? Is there a magic number for them to trigger a six pack, does the data set they pull from need to be larger for them to trigger more local listings. "Solicitors Cambridge" = 3 listings https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=solicitors+cambridge&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=_vCwVc2mHMiAUZ-luZAE "solicitors kent" = 3 listings https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=solicitors+cambridge&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=_vCwVc2mHMiAUZ-luZAE#q=solicitors+kent "Solicitors Oxford" = 6 listings https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=solicitors+cambridge&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=_vCwVc2mHMiAUZ-luZAE Any thoughts?
Local Listings | | highwayfive1 -
What is the best address format to display for a buissness for SEO?
There is a new location opening soon and would like to set up local pages for it. What is the best/most SEO friendly way to write out the physical address? I looked on USPS and they show: 7227 W GRAND PKWY S
Local Listings | | nat88han
RICHMOND TX 77407 But local businesses seem to have the West and South written out: 7301 West Grand Parkway SouthRichmond, TX 77407Is there a best practice for this, or does it not make much of a difference as long as the website/local listings all match exactly? Not sure about writing out "West" or using "S." for the cardinal direction.0 -
Fake Yahoo Local Listing
I've recently discovered a fake yahoo local listing for one of my clients. The listing uses the office managers name along with the business, and all the correct contact information. The listing is not verified. I've tried to claim it but it just forwards me to the yext service. Under yahoo help, it tells that if the listing is not verified I will need to contact the database provider to have the info removed (Localeze, InfoUSA, Yext, YP) Problem is there is no listing in any of these data bases. Any ideas?
Local Listings | | masonrj0 -
My #1 (A) ranking client in Maps is now #38 after update?
We have a client with 4 locations and all of them do pretty well in Google Maps. Since the latest update, we dropped from #1 (A) all the way down to #38 in Maps. We're still #1 for our keyword in Organic but our Maps got crushed. We use Yext for the citations but we also do some a lot manual ones too. We have 3 reviews on that location but not sure why the big drop. I'm not even sure where to being to get it back. From our research: We noticed our categories were a little out of order. Our primary was "legal services" instead of "personal injury attorney" (we've now updated that.) I've noticed that all the listings ahead of us, minus a few of them, have their homepage as their link. We've always used a local landing page that has hand written directions on how to find us, our hours and who people will meet when they come in. Things relevant to that location. Our domain authority is a 40. Our homepage Page Authority is 49 and our landing page for that location is a 22. What else should we check to see what's happened? Should I move the Google+ page to the homepage instead of the sub-page (as well as the citations we have)? Thanks for your help!
Local Listings | | DarinPirkey0 -
For companies with multiple locations, does Google mind "Duplicate Content" in local (maps) business descriptions?
I have about 20 locations for my counseling company "Thriveworks" on google. I am getting ready to submit a spreadsheet and take advantage of the new "bulk upload" to manage these locations. Each of my locations has a description that is basically the same in terms of sentiment, but 100% original content (because Google has historically hated duplicate content). 1) Should I copy and paste each location's current unique description into the spreadsheet, or just write one very good description and copy it for all 20 locations?2) Does Google like/dislike "duplicate content" as it applies to business descriptions?3) Is changing a location's description likely to temporarily harm the "ranking" of my business location in search results?Will really appreciate any help...
Local Listings | | Thriveworks-Counseling0