Local SEO address question - adding a suite number for shared address for office building

[MozMan2]

Hi, I have a client that has an address that is shared for a few different businesses in the holistic health field. My client is a chiropractor. There is an eye doctor, massage therapist and acupuncturist aslo sharing the same address. It's a subburban setting with two buildings all sharing one address.

In the interest of preventing any merged listings down the road, I recently added un unofficial suite number to his website and Google places business listing. I also did this for all of his online directory listings, and for Bing and Yahoo as well.

Did I do the right thing here?

It seems to be having a positive impact on his local SEO as far as I can tell. Or at least there has not been any negative impact in the last 6 months

Your thoughts?

[MiriamEllis]

Great. I'm glad my answer helped. Good luck!

Miriam

[MozMan2]

Thank you for your answer, it's exactly what I was expecting your to say. I'll take the advice.

[BenHuntLtd]

Thanks Miriam, I don't really know what's involved in making this "legal." He'll get the mail there with or without the suite # so I don't foresee a problem with postcard re-verification. So I guess he's good to go. If he wants to get it "legal" I can recommend that. Thanks for confirming what I already thought

[MiriamEllis]

Hi MozMan2,

Nice to see you here today! Okay...so you went about this 50% right, in my opinion. What's missing is getting the client an actual registered suite number at which he receives mail.

Initially, this is important in the even that Google (and others local business indexes) give you a postcard-only option for verification of the listing. Sounds like you're past that point, but remember, the need to re-verify does sometimes reoccur if you have to make certain changes to a Place Page.

For the long haul, the issue is one of differentiation. The inherent danger in different businesses sharing an identical address is that Google will conflate the listings, merging them into a mess of mixed addresses, phone numbers, reviews and descriptions.

Ideally, what the chiropractor should do is convince each of the professionals in his building to get their own suite number to prevent this from happening to any or all of them.

If he can't get them to see the light about this, then he should at least protect himself by getting his own suite number. Depending on where he lives, he may need to go to the post office or some other local authority to get this thing legalized so that he's got a separate mail box to which the mailman delivers his mail at his suite address in the building.

So, again, your overall approach is correct, but the suite number should be legit to keep this on the level. And you should make sure the suite number is consistent across all mentions of his business on the web.

Hope this helps!

Miriam