Rank Locally and Globally (or at least Nationally)
-
I work with an interior design whom I've persuaded to purchase a virtual street address in the town she wanted to work in years ago. She has a Skokie, IL business address that has been claimed and confirmed across the internet. Now, she is growing and wants her new website to not only be optimized for the more affluent areas of Chicago but she also would like to gain Global notice, (I'd settle for National). My problems:
- She doesn't want to purchase a street address in Chicago because it is a pain to go get her mail.
- What do I do about all her directory listings and review sites that have her located in Skokie if I can persuade her to get a Chicago address?
- Do I leave the Skokie address and add more content targeting keyword phrases with Chicago?
- What should be my initial focus here? I feel it is a smaller target and less competition to go after Chicago but she wants to start spreading her wings and work all over the world.
Help!!
-
You come through again, Laura! I really appreciate the links and guidance you have provided. Now, to explain this to my client -- wish me luck.
-
Unfortunately, there are a lot of business directories that require your street address. If she wants her home address to remain private (understandably), it will be tougher to rank locally but not impossible. You'll need to work harder on other local ranking signals to be competitive.
Fortunately, there are quite a few sites that allow you to hide your street address even if your city is still shown. Here's a great guide for this - https://www.brightlocal.com/2014/07/10/citation-sites-allow-hide-address/. Some of the information may be out of date, so you'll have to double check with each site.
If she serves clients at their location rather than hers, her business is considered a service-area business (SAB). Joy Hawkins had some good advice for SABs in her Moz post at https://moz.com/blog/intro-local-seo-service-area-businesses.
-
Thank you so much for your clear answer and links to further information, Laura. Our initial concern, (years ago when her profiles were claimed in Skokie), was personal security. My single, female client did not want her home address published on the Internet.
Now, it appears one of our problems is solved -- where to purchase mail service. I will suggest she simply cancel her PO box street address and change that address to her home address for important items. (She receives mostly junk mail at the Skokie address anyway.)
Another question - since her purchased Skokie address is listed as her business address, I'm guessing now I will need to change her address on all the local profiles and citations rather than create a second location, (I will definitely hide her address on all listings possible).
How do you think I should handle those listings where hiding the address is not possible?
-
Hi Janet,
As Laura has mentioned, unfortunately, virtual addresses of any kind are a violation of Google's guidelines and subject to punitive action on Google's part should they discover them. The only way your client should be marketing herself locally (meaning building citations and trying to earn local pack rankings) is if she has a legitimate physical address, whether in Skokie, Chicago, or any other city.
Lacking a physical address, the client should confine themselves to organic SEO efforts or PPC.
-
Will she have an actual office at this new location in Chicago with staff, or are you talking about a virtual address rented for the purpose of making Google think you have an office at that location?
If your answer is the second one, then let me stop you there. This type of virtual address goes against Google's policies and can have negative consequences. See https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en for Google's guidelines. They've been going after these types of virtual offices for a while now. See also http://www.localsearchforum.com/help-support-google-local/978-virtual-offices-home-address-google-plus-local.html.
Leave the real address and focus on building organic traffic for Chicago. If she really wants to grow to a national level, you'll have to work on growing the brand to a national level through social media and content marketing. Unfortunately, there are no SEO quick fixes in this situation.
-
I see you have a situation where your client's objective is to work all over the world, currently has/wants some business in Chicago and but is staying in an address in Skokie. (Correct me if I am wrong)
- She doesn't want to purchase a street address in Chicago because it is a pain to go get her mail.
There are mail forwarding services. You pay for this services however, it removes the pain of travelling to Chicago.
- What do I do about all her directory listings and review sites that have her located in Skokie if I can persuade her to get a Chicago address?
It is essential to add her Chicago address to her website. The next thing to do is to add another location in Google My Business (Create an account already if you haven't) on top of her current Skokie location. Google will be able to understand she has 2 offices under her brand.
For Directories like Yelp, you do not need to change the address of the listing. What you do is add another location/listing with the same brand name and information, with the Chicago address. (See how chain outlets do it on Yelp)
This goes for other directories too to gain strength for local citations in Chicago. Google will be able to understand when they crawl the web.
- Do I leave the Skokie address and add more content targeting keyword phrases with Chicago?
I assume this is for content on her website. I would strongly encourage you to mention in your content on her website that you have another office/address. However you do not need to overdo it. Once again google will be able to pick this up and understand. I have 2 offices in 2 different countries. When I search for "mycompany country" google always displays the address of the correct office. (I only mention each address twice on my entire website)
Of course doing all this will not rank you on google when someone searches for "interior design chicago". From here onwards, you will need to SEO for the keywords you would like to fight for to gain first page.
- What should be my initial focus here? I feel it is a smaller target and less competition to go after Chicago but she wants to start spreading her wings and work all over the world.
Let's take one step at a time. First Chicago, then the world. I believe if you focus your resources and energy, you will gain more grounds optimizing for for a location. Moreover, from a business point of view, it's hard to get someone to pay your client to fly all the way to another part of the world unless your client's company is famous. Thus even if you managed to get on page 1 for "interior designer in London" I am pretty sure, the folks there will lean towards a local designer.
That being said, if your client wants to spread her wings and work all over, I think a better chance is to win an award with a magazine and get notice then to find work around the world via google.
- You might also want to test if your client can get results by running PPC on other locations/countries. This will save you much time and explanation. If it yields results, then expand your PPC campaigns!
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
-
What is the 2020 Google ranking weight for EMD (exact matching domains)
I know EMD's ranking factor have been significantly reduced in the past decade, but do you think it can help at all in 2020? Thanks, Ryan
Local SEO | | RyanMeighan0 -
Houston Printing Company Removed City from Main Page - Will Our Rankings Change?
We operate a full service printing and direct mail company located in Houston (www.catdi.com ). We have been in business for quite sometime and had enjoyed top tier position on page one for many years. However after revamping our website and main page it was determined that we used "Houston" way too often. Our keywords are ( Houston Printing , Printing in Houston)
Local SEO | | NEWCHOPPER
I suppose to the pros it looked and it seemed a little spammy with all the references to our city. But after the changed we have now dropped to mid - bottom of page two. Should we worried or does after sometime
will be move back up? I dont want to hastily change back but to our surprise those aren't really searched terms I would hate to see our positions and ranking fall because of this change. Thanks CATDI PRINTING0 -
Searchmetrics Google ranking factors study says content gaining while links losing in importance ? Any View About this Post.
I am very Curious about it anyone please update about this http://searchengineland.com/searchmetrics-google-ranking-factors-study-says-content-gaining-links-losing-importance-265431
Local SEO | | MTPixels0 -
Adwords Express Keyword Ranking Hack
I heard a rumor that Adwords Express offers a tool that lets you check real time Marketing Google ranking results (colleague brought this up) Has anybody heard of this?
Local SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Local SEO Mastermind Group?
Howdy Folks - I run a small (but growing!) SEO agency in Tennessee. I serve, primarily, local service businesses with Organic SEO and website development. I'm a completely self taught SEO and had an average client rank last year of just over position 2. I have long been dedicated to running my own SEO experiments to try to stay on top of what is working. With the constant changes to SEO, and the growing agency, I find I don't have the time to run all of the SEO experiments that I'd like to ensure that our packages are still giving the best value to our clients. I'm looking to see if 1 - 4 individuals, also running local SEO agencies, would like to form a sort of "mastermind group". Share ideas, successes and failures on a level that wouldn't be practical in a forum setting. I'm happy to share what has been working for my clients and would welcome a fresh set of eyes to see what we're missing. **Discussions like: ** Link Acquisition Scaling Staff, Content Creation and Systems Scaling Social Media Outreach Local Outreach Successes - Email Templates White/Black Hat SEO Techniques If you think it would be a good fit. Please PM me or comment. Thanks!
Local SEO | | CRO_first1 -
Content Rewriting and Page ranking
Lets say that a prior writer did a horrible job with more then a few pages on your site and you wanted to rewrite the content for each landing page. A few of these landing pages are actually ranking pretty decently would it be ok to rewrite them as long as you kept the keywords and the density some what equal?
Local SEO | | Spartan222 -
SEO planning: Franchise/multiple local sites
I am in the planning stages of franchising a cleaning business and was wondering if anyone had some ideas on SEO strategy. If money were no object and I had a team of hundreds of copywriters at my disposal, would the ultimate solution be to have the following sort of URL structure www.cleanbiz.co.uk/city within which there are numerous www.cleanbiz.co.uk/city/local-town pages? If this is the best strategy then is it worthwhile to begin work towards ranking for cities and local towns within them prior to actually operating there? I understand that lack of physical presence will penalize me in terms of local search but would a lack of physical address and phone number render any foundation work pointless (for example, prior to having any franchises in say London, would it be worth while building quality content and links on a www.cleaningbiz.co.uk/london page, and then www.cleaningbiz.co.uk/london/notting-hill, alongside a blog and so on?) Interested to understand the best way to go about this given the enormity of the campaign! Thanks
Local SEO | | EdwardoUK0 -
Moz Rank Tracker - Local Rankings?
My question is about local SEO rankings. How does the Moz Rank Tracker track local results, meaning I do not see a place to tell the tool what local market to show results for.If I have a dentist in Denver and I enter the keyword “dentist” into the tracker, is it looking for how my site ranks locally in Denver or how it ranks for “dentist” on a national level.Thanks in advance for the help!
Local SEO | | ifuseurbiz1