How to add business address in local directories for consistent NAP
-
Hi Mozers
I keep puzzling over this one! I work from home and really don't want to plaster my address all over the web. The GP page now allows for me to hide my exact location, which is great. However, as far as I can see this is not the case with all the potential local directories and listings.
I have been trying in to get around this by not adding my house number and last digit and 2 characters of my post code. So far this has been allowed by the local listings I have signed up with.
When I tried doing as recommended by the excellent Miriam and checking my business name with 'Getlisted' I found that I could only see these local listings if I added the doctored address, i.e. no house number or full postcode.
My question, finally is, if I continue in this fashion for businesses based at home addresses am I going to confuse the search engines. I want to provide a consistent NAP but GPP insists that I add a full postcode. The only way I could possible see around this is to add:
street name
city
full postcode
and omit the house name/number.
Will this be a reasonable work around to maintain client confidentiality and satisfy the NAP requirement of Local search?
-
You are very welcome, Catherine. I'm so glad to help!
Miriam
-
Dear Miriam
Totally awesome reply - as usual:)
Thanks
Catherine
-
Hi Catherine!
You guessed it - by publishing a incomplete address, you will definitely confuse the search engines. I sympathize with the wish not to reveal a home address. I value privacy, but desire for this is at loggerheads with wanting visibility, unfortunately. So, you have 3 options:
-
Don't participate in local.
-
Only list your business in those directories which allow you to hide your address. A number of the top ones do allow hiding the address, just like Google does.
-
Decide that you've got to give up privacy for the sake of inclusion in all the local directories.
What you've been doing with listing a partial address just isn't a good idea. Here is a really excellent post from Local Visibility System:
I think you will find that post to be totally awesome for your situation. Good luck!
Miriam
-
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
-
Migration + Change of Address Tool used - previous site de-indexed!!
OMG disaster! Recently migrated my site womencycles.com to moonrise.health. Painstakingly went through each URL manually to map out redirects, notified Google via change of address tool. Bam. My old website has disappeared from Google and my new site has thus lost all it's organic (i.e. redirected) traffic. I don't get it. I think I have done everything by the book, but it seems my old site has disappeared and no authority or link juice has been passed to my new site by the 301s, as the new site isn't ranking either. Some examples: https://www.google.com/search?q=women+cycles&oq=women+cycles&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i65j69i61l2j69i60.1834j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 'women cycles' previous position 1
Technical SEO | | tikitaka
https://www.google.com/search?q=chaffed+vagina&oq=chaffed+vagina&aqs=chrome..69i57.2370j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 - chaffed vagina, previous position 1 https://www.google.com/search?q=how+long+does+it+take+turmeric+to+shrink+fibroids&oq=how+long+does+it+take+turmeric+to+shrink+fibroids&aqs=chrome..69i57.1355j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 - how long does it take turmeric to shrink fibroids, previous position 1. Biggest traffic source pages were: https://womencycles.com/blog/top-10-home-remedies-that-claim-to-tighten-vagina-do-they-work/
https://womencycles.com/blog/sore-breasts-after-period-has-finished/
https://womencycles.com/blog/what-is-vaginal-gas-queefing/
https://womencycles.com/blog/tired-during-ovulation/
https://womencycles.com/blog/how-to-get-rid-of-saggy-vag-without-surgery/
https://womencycles.com/blog/vagina-chafing-causes-treatments-to-prevent-it-from-coming-back/
https://womencycles.com/blog/vaginal-dryness-during-pregnancy/ New blog articles on new site, with 301 redirect in place, but not ranking Screenshot shows my search traffic for my new site. Site migrated 13 June. Any ideas anyone??!Screenshot 2022-06-28 at 13.27.41.png0 -
Add trailing slash after removing .html extention
My website is non www ,it has wordpress in subdirectory and some static webpages in the root and other subdirectory 1. i want to remove .html extention from the webpages in the root and
Technical SEO | | Uber_
the others static webpages in subdirectory.
2. add slash at the end.
3. 301 redirect from non slash to url with slash. so it should be http://ghadaalsaman.com/articles.html to http://ghadaalsaman.com/articles/ and http://ghadaalsaman.com/en/poem-list.html to http://ghadaalsaman.com/en/poem-list/ the below code 1. working with non slash at the end **2. **redirect 301 url with slash to non here's my .htaccess <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /</ifmodule> #removing trailing slash
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ $1 [R=301,L] #www to non
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(([a-z0-9_]+.)?domain.com)$ [NC]
RewriteRule .? http://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L] #html
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^.]+)$ $1.html [NC,L] #index redirect
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index.html$ http://ghadaalsaman.com/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} .html
RewriteRule ^(.*).html$ /$1 [R=301,L] PS everything is ok with the wordpress , the problems with static pages only. Thanks in advanced0 -
My client is using a mobile template for their local pages and the Google search console is reporting thousands of duplicate titles/meta descriptions
So my client has 2000+ different store locations. Each location has the standard desktop location and my client opted for a corresponding mobile template for each location. Now the Google search console is reporting thousands of duplicate titles/meta descriptions. However this is only because the mobile template and desktop store pages are using the exact same title/meta description tag. Is Google penalizing my client for this? Would it be worth it to update the mobile template title/meta description tags?
Technical SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
How to add specific Tumblr blogs into a disavow file?
Hi guys, I am about to send a reconsideration letter and still finalizing my disavow file. The format of the disavow is Domain:badlink.com (stripping out to the root domain) but what about those toxic links that are located in tumblr such as: badlink.tumblr.com? The issue is that there are good tumblr links we got so I don't want to add just tumblr.com so do you guys think I will have issues submitting badlink.tumblr.com and not tumblr.com? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Can I promote a business page from Kuduz or City Search?
Can I promote a business page from Kuduz or City Search? Will other website link to these pages?
Technical SEO | | KristopherWho0 -
Are there SEO implications to blocking foreign IP addresses?
We are dealing with a foreign company that has completely ripped off our entire site template, design and branding. This is such an inconvenience and we've had similar things happen enough in the past that we're considering blocking large ranges of IP addresses from accessing our site, via htaccess. Is this something that will potentially cause problems with search engine bots crawling or indexing our site? We are in the US and our site is hosted in the US, but I'm not sure if the major search engines could potentially be using foreign based bots. Looking for any insight on this or if there are any other potential SEO problems to consider. Thanks
Technical SEO | | ZeeCreative0 -
Hiding sub directory from a url string
I have been trying for a few hours now to hide a sub-directory from a url string on a joomla site using .htaccess every method i have found either has no effect or breaks the site. i am aiming to change all links with component in them: http://mysite.com/component/music/7335 to http://mysite.com/music/7335 I am using the latest Joomla 2.5 install but not sure how or if that affects anything. Any help would be greatly appreciated
Technical SEO | | omega0 -
Use webmaster tools "change of address" when doing rel=canonical
We are doing a "soft migration" of a website. (Actually it is a merger of two websites). We are doing cross site rel=canonical tags instead of 301's for the first 60-90 days. These have been done on a page by page basis for an entire site. Google states that a "change of address" should be done in webmaster tools for a site migration with 301's. Should this also be done when we are doing this soft move?
Technical SEO | | EugeneF0