Local Listings for a Virtual Product
-
My company sells very geographically specific products online. We have local offices in cities connected to the product and they are labeled with terms such as "florida widget".
Could I use local SEO and add my website link to Google maps, etc... with the local address or is that not allowed since the products are not sold in the physical local office but rather online?
-
Hi Sara,
To qualify for local inclusion, your business needs to meet these criteria:
-
Has a unique street address (not a PO box, not a virtual office)
-
Has a unique local area code phone number in the city of location (not an 800 number or tracking number)
-
Has face-to-face transactions with its customers, either at the place of business (like a hair salon) or at the customers' locations (like a window washer).
It sounds like #3 may be the sticking point for you. Do you have in-person transactions with your customers? Feel free to provide further details on this.
-
-
I agree with Matt. I have an online store with a local pickup option. I ship all over the US but do not do local SEO in the city where I am based. If your product is specific to the region you should be allright with a local SEO effort.
-
Thanks! Could doing this limit my SEO to specific cities. For example, if I have a listing in Paris could my SEO efforts in the rest of France be negatively affected since the listing is not in those cities?
-
I'd double check the terms, but I reckon this is ok. You have a real physical location at each spot, which is exactly what Google wants to map. They specifically ask whether you serve customers at each location or not when you submit to places, so that isn't a criteria to be listed.
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
-
Hi All, please help me in 1 query. Currently, We are having 1 YouTube channels having all products of the organization. We are thinking to segregate different products channel wise. Is it a correct and viable option ? Please suggest.
We are having 1 YouTube channels having all products of the organization. We are thinking to segregate different products channel wise.
Image & Video Optimization | | SameerBhatia0 -
Sat in a York Based Office but I get a Google Lincoln local listing :-(
Buongiorno from 27 degrees C Wetherby UK 🙂 Imagine this scenario... I'm sat in a York Based HQ law office and Google term Langleys and the Local listing is for Lincoln is rendered 😞 The lincoln office is the smaller sister site 75 miles south of where I'm sitting as illustrated here appears (this is wrong) -
Image & Video Optimization | | Nightwing
http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/langleys-local-listing-jinxcopy_zps26e3492a.jpg I then do the same thing in a wetherby based office and get the York based local listing appears. So my question is please" what is influencing which local listing is rendered?" Confused,
David0 -
How likely it is to rank both locally and organically
I think the question summarizes it pretty well. Did anybody experienced this, to rank for one or multiple keywords in both local and organic search results?
Image & Video Optimization | | echo10 -
Google + Local for client with no physical address and multiple phone nos
Hi I have a client who is service-based and goes out to his local customers' homes to conduct his business. He operates from home so does not want to show his home address, he also has a number of local telephone numbers that divert to his mobile. I was wondering which type of category to put his business into, my ideal would be local business but for that I need to add the address the question is can I still hide the address the way you used to in the old format or is there other recommendations to optimise his local placement?
Image & Video Optimization | | AllieMc0 -
Local SEO
Would like to read articles on local SEO that have been recently published in the past few months. Has anyone come across good articles on this topic?
Image & Video Optimization | | casper4340 -
Can this make one's local listing vanish from Google local search?
Hi All, Does anyone know if selecting "Yes, this business serves customers at their locations" under "service areas and location settings" in Google Places can cause a business's listing to disappear from Google local search? My interior designer client has a bricks-and-mortar location, was ranking at about #20 for "interior designer" in Portland, and now has dropped from local search. I had "No, all customers come to the business location" selected previously. In the past week, before the vanishing, I made these changes: 1. changed the service area to "Yes, this business serves customers at their locations", 2. removed "Portland" from the description in Google Places, and 3. submitted maybe two dozen directory listings to high DA sites (using Whitespark as the tool for determining where to post). Thanks everyone! Zack
Image & Video Optimization | | HammerandHand0 -
What drives the position of the local pack in a google SERP?
I have noticed that sometimes search results appear above the local pack, and sometimes the local pack is right at the top. What causes this? is there a way to induce it?
Image & Video Optimization | | adriandg2 -
No option to claim listing in Google Places: country-wide issue
Hi, All! We were trying to advise a client about local SEO, and we ran into the issue of - their Google Places pages (yes, they have several, that's a separate issue) are "unclaimable." Meaning - up at the top of the page there is neither a "Edit this page - Business Owner?" heading or a "Edit this listing - Owner-verified listing" heading. When you try to claim it independently using the phone number (all pages have the same phone number, but different addresses), Google gives you "No address found for this phone number" and the option to now add a new page, which is not quite what we're looking for. This is an Israeli location, and this appears to be an issue with a few other random Israeli pages I checked (I saw pages with neither heading option). But a number of the Israeli pages have "Owner-verified listing." How did they get it? Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks! Regards, Aviva
Image & Video Optimization | | debi_zyx0