Local SEO-How to handle multiple business at same address
-
I have a client who shares the same address and suite number with multiple business.
What should be done to optimize their website and citations for local SEO? Is this a huge issue? What should we do so our rankings aren't affected.
Will changes take a long time to take place?
Thanks
-
Thanks Miriam!
And thanks for the link. I will definitely share the information with the client to back up what I am saying.
-
Thanks for the clarification.
The office where my client is forwards the mail to the proper business as well, even with the duplicate suite #'s so we just needed a way to make it unique to Google.
Hopefully the affect of changing the suite # isn't too severe...
-
FYI: the unique suite # was requested simply so that the address was 'unique' from google's perspective. assuming that google understands suite #'s. The mail was always forwarded to the proper business even with the duplicate suite # since this was a part of the virtual office service.
-
Good luck with the work ahead, Catherine. And keep these handy to refer to whenever necessary:
http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528
You might like to share those with the client, as well, so that what you are explaining to them about what needs to be done can be backed up with direct facts from the Google Places Quality Guidelines.
-
Yes, all this Local stuff can get confusing! Whether you are new to it or have studied it for a while it seems. I'm just an intern assigned the daunting task to figure out a whole new strategy for our client. And I definitely don't know a whole ton about SEO so thanks so much for your help!
I guess I will suggest getting a unique suite number and using a local phone number. Yes the fall out may be not so bad to extreme, but it has to be done since they don't fit the criteria for local inclusion. But from Jared's example, it seems like it should work.
Thanks again guys!
-
Thumbs up to Miriam who gives a lot of good advice here. And definitely merging is the worst case scenario. Since this discussion is still going, and since it seems your client cant simply go get a real business address (and the overhead that comes with it) Ill give a real case study as an example.
We had a client that was in a competitive niche, and provided a service (not a product). She had a virtual address, and by that I mean they paid a monthly fee to the location and as part of that fee the location would forward any inbound mail, and the client could also use meeting rooms, offices or boardrooms a certain amount of times per month. Other services were available such as phone answering etc...
When she became a client, the first thing we realized was that the client had the same suite number as all the other businesses that used the same 'virtual office' service. The clients previous SEO had already started citation work, but didnt warn them about merging or any other problems associated.
Anyway, so what we did was first request a different unique suite number from the service, which they provided at no extra cost. Then, we bought a local number and forwarded it to her home, which was a local transfer since she indeed was in that city but worked from home unless she needed to meet clients etc.
So now we had a unique local address with a unique local phone number. The last thing we had to do was simply mine for old citations and have them all changed.
This worked, and still does work, but we only did this after explaining to the client that it was not the best scenario for sustainability in local SEO. As per my first comment, at anytime Google could simply omit that address and all business that claim it as a brick and mortar address.
Best of luck !
-
Hi Catherine,
I would not heed this advice:
"I have also heard that if you have enough citations that give your business' address some credit and show that it's not spam, you may not have an issue."
It's important to understand that no matter how many citations you get, you are at risk of their 'power' being split between you and any other business sharing the address, and simply confusing the bots further. It might be helpful to visualize being a bot here. If you see 50 references around the web to Jane's Hair Salon, 23 for Jenny's Yoga and 72 for Bill's Martial arts all stating that they are located at 123 Main street, who do you believe?
Therein lies the problem and it's not going to be a winning situation for any of the businesses mixed up in this.
Google has never handled the concept of shared addresses well. Unfortunately, in the real world, people do share addresses, but Google's system is not designed to cope with that, so either one abstains from participation in Google's local products, or finds a way to comply with them.
You mention getting a whole new address. Do you mean the client would move to a new building? That might be an option, but it's an awfully extreme one to go to (having to move your whole business). So the client getting a unique suite number is likely what he/she should do, but yes, you may encounter some fallout when you change the address. This could be minimal or severe. And, yes, they definitely need to be using their local area code phone number on any listing of the business, as well as in crawlable text in the NAP on their website.
I really sympathize with local business owners who are trying to understand Google's non-intuitive system. It's really easy to violate their rules and make mistakes. This is why it's critical to educate yourself as much as you possibly can about this constantly-changing system. And, if you are an SEO selling services and you are really new at Local SEO, I would suggest you advise your client to hire a Local SEO who can bring specialized knowledge on board. It's just too easy to create bad outcomes for the client if Local isn't your area of specialization...and it's even easy to end up with crazy results if you eat, breathe and live Local every day :)!
Your client is in a very bad situation. It may take some months of one-on-one care to get them out of this mess. Set their expectations correctly about this so that they understand the process is going to involve time and money.
Hope this helps!
-
Thanks everyone for your responses!
I definitely think it's difficult to find a definite solution since the algorithms change all the time.
I have heard about the possibility of Google merging the businesses together and that is a concern. I have also heard that if you have enough citations that give your business' address some credit and show that it's not spam, you may not have an issue. Again, you never know for sure.
I definitely understand the concerns about the different suite numbers since Google and other sites make you verify via post card. What if the mail arrives at the address but then is separated according to business so each business receives its own mail and is not just lumped in a pile with the others?
If I do get a new unique suite number, how will that affect our current SEO? Will google not like that we changed our address? And do I just need a unique suite number or should we get a whole new address completely?
Also, we do use a toll free number. I'm assuming we should change that no matter how we proceed with the address?
Thanks everyone for your help!
-
Hi Catherine,
In order to qualify for local inclusion, avoid penalties and prevent merging, your client must be able to answer yes to the following 3 points.
-
Does the business have a unique, dedicated physical address (not a virtual address, P.O. Box or shared address)?
-
Does the business have a unique, dedicated local phone number in the city of location (not an 800 number, not a call tracking number, not a shared number)
-
Does the business have in-person transactions with its customers, either at its own location (like a restaurant) or at the customers' locations (like a plumber)?
If the business does not meet any one of these 3 criteria, it does not qualify for local inclusion. I don't know where your client is at on points 2 and 3, but if they can't say yes to point one, Local SEO will be nothing but problematic for them. Here's why:
If 2 or more businesses share an address, suite address or phone number (or even if their names are too similar), Google will frequently merge the business details of the listings. This means that Joe the Barber can end up with Jim the Plumber's business name, phone number or reviews showing up on his listing. Merging is one of the most difficult issues to deal with in Local, and one to be avoided at all costs.
Here is a Google help file on this issue: http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=175290
Your client's best hope is to:
1. Secure a unique suite number in the building at which he/she works and at which mail can be received.
2. Search for all citations of the business web-wide to correct any existent citations so that they include the new suite number.
Hope this helps!
-
-
I agree with bjgomer13 in saying that ranking locally with shared addresses does still work. The only caveat is that Local is always changing, and its hard to know if this is something google will target - not because of clients like yours, but because of business that abuse it. Just as they did with PO boxes earlier. As always, the advice you get is confusing because no one can 'predict' whats going to change, and this was a pretty shaky year for algo changes so everyone is being careful.
This response probably just confuses things more!
-
I have quite a bit of experience with this situation and I can tell you I have never had any issues getting a client to rank because of it. As long as your NAP is consistent across all the directories, you'll be fine. Obviously, the most ideal situation is a normal real address but that's not always possible for some businesses.
The only exception is I've noticed UPS Stores addresses seem to have a little more of an uphill battle than a business suite shared address but even with them, they eventually start ranking.
-
Yeah the person I work for recently found out about the address situation our client was in after I had made citations for them.
We aren't trying to rank in different cities or areas, just don't want our local SEO efforts to be wasted.
The company still shows up when you search for the address and Google lists all the businesses at that address so at least it hasn't merged the pages yet.
Just trying to see if there is an "industry standard" of what to do in this situation. Been seeing a lot of different viewpoints so it can get a little confusing.
Thanks for your help though!
-
This is a tough one. The worst thing to do is to start with citations and then find out they arent working, and then fix the issue and start all over again (now having two NAPs floating around.
Some businesses use virtual offices in an attempt to rank in different cities or areas. If this is the case with your client, it never hurts to contact that service and explain that you must have a unique suite number. Ive found in some cases they will be quite accommodating.
As for the effects - Ive performed local optimization for clients in this scenario and it still worked fine (and the other businesses using the same virtual office also were in the maps for their keywords), but with constant changes in Local, its risky (in my opinion) to continue without getting a unique address first.
Just my 2 cents!
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
-
Is it bad from an SEO perspective that cached AMP pages are hosted on domains other than the original publisher's?
Hello Moz, I am thinking about starting to utilize AMP for some of my website. I've been researching this AMP situation for the better part of a year and I am still unclear on a few things. What I am primarily concerned with in terms of AMP and SEO is whether or not the original publisher gets credit for the traffic to a cached AMP page that is hosted elsewhere. I can see the possible issues with this from an SEO perspective and I am pretty sure I have read about how SEOs are unhappy about this particular aspect of AMP in other places. On the AMP project FAQ page you can find this, but there is very little explanation: "Do publishers receive credit for the traffic from a measurement perspective?
Algorithm Updates | | Brian_Dowd
Yes, an AMP file is the same as the rest of your site – this space is the publisher’s canvas." So, let's say you have an AMP page on your website example.com:
example.com/amp_document.html And a cached copy is served with a URL format similar to this: https://google.com/amp/example.com/amp_document.html Then how does the original publisher get the credit for the traffic? Is it because there is a canonical tag from the AMP version to the original HTML version? Also, while I am at it, how does an AMP page actually get into Google's AMP Cache (or any other cache)? Does Google crawl the original HTML page, find the AMP version and then just decide to cache it from there? Are there any other issues with this that I should be aware of? Thanks0 -
Ecommerce SEO: Is it bad to link to product/category pages directly from content pages?
Hi ! In Moz' Whiteboard friday video Headline Writing and Title Tag SEO in a Clickbait World, Rand is talking about (among other things) best practices related to linking between search, clickbait and conversion pages. For a client of ours, a cosmetics and make-up retailer, we are planning to build content pages around related keywords, for example video, pictures and text about make-up and fashion in order to best target and capture search traffic related to make-up that is prevalent earlier in the costumer journey. Among other things, we plan to use these content pages to link directly to some of the products. For example a content piece about how to achieve full lashes will to link to particular mascaras and/or the mascara category) Things is, in the Whiteboard video Rand Says:
Algorithm Updates | | Inevo
_"..So your click-bait piece, a lot of times with click-bait pieces they're going to perform worse if you go over and try and link directly to your conversion page, because it looks like you're trying to sell people something. That's not what plays on Facebook, on Twitter, on social media in general. What plays is, "Hey, this is just entertainment, and I can just visit this piece and it's fun and funny and interesting." _ Does this mean linking directly to products pages (or category pages) from content pages is bad? Will Google think that, since we are also trying to sell something with the same piece of content, we do not deserve to rank that well on the content, and won't be considered that relevant for a search query where people are looking for make-up tips and make-up guides? Also.. is there any difference between linking from content to categories vs. products? ..I mean, a category page is not a conversion page the same way a products page is. Looking forward to your answers 🙂0 -
Crosslinking & Managing Multiple Domains in Same Webmaster Tool's Account
I am wondering if there are any consequences if you manage multiple websites in the same Webmaster Tool's account and cross link between them? My guess is that this would be a very easy thing for Google to detect and build into their algorithms. Hence affect the link juice from those domains that are owned by the same person. I am looking for verification on this. Thanks, Joe
Algorithm Updates | | csamsojo0 -
Local Data Aggregators For Canada
Hi Mozzers, I've seen David Mihm's list of data aggregators for local search for the US (infogroup, localeze, acxiom) but I'm in Canada. Does anyone know if someone has sourced this?
Algorithm Updates | | waynekolenchuk1 -
Google Local Algorithm Changes?
I was wondering if you have heard about any Google Local algorithm changes. We have about 200 franchise locations. Some of our locations have dropped significantly over the past few weeks. Locations that were showing up in the 1-3 positions are now no longer showing on the first page. This is for very relevant phrases for our main line of business (which is also in our business name)... ‘Phrase, CITY NAME’. These locations have plenty of positive Google reviews. We would typically rank well for a phrase like that based on our relevance. I did some brainstorming. Do you think any of these could have any impact? Google is all about things looking and feeling natural including link building, etc. We have used Yext which made a lot of changes across the web to fix addresses, etc. Do you think Google may be seeing this as unnatural? Too many changes at to many sites in to short a period of time? Along those same lines, do you think Google may be penalizing some of our franchise pages for being to ‘perfect’? It would be ‘natural’ for addresses to have some difference across the web and a bit unnatural to have them all match so perfectly. I know that Google has always stated the business name should be listed in Google Local the way it is listed to the general public. Things such as “Business Name Boston” should be listed as “Business Name”. Each of our franchise locations is named in house to reflect their geo location..... "Business Name Boston", "Business Name St. Louis". Many of our competitors also use the practice of attaching geo terms as well. Do you think we may be getting hit with a penalty now even though we have listed things on Google with the Geo term for years.... and is how WE refer to each location? Is it possible that by working with Yext, we drew attention to this practice? Should we remove our local listings geo term on Google Local? How about across the web? We are in a business that does not require customers to come to our location. Some of our locations have not suppressed the address in their local listings while others have. Many of our competitors have not. Do you think this could play into it? Some of our locations that are not showing in Local have good organic results. Have you heard anything about Google dropping Local if they show in organic? I know Google has been looking at social media more and more and I believe they will continue to do so. If our local pages have no social presence, could this adversely affect things? (I think this is probably not the case…. but wanted to throw it out there) I have noticed that in some cases where Local has dropped, we have multiple offices in that metro area. Is it possible that this could affect things? Have you heard of any Local algorithm changes? I know they are releasing a new dashboard sporadically, could this be in conjunction with a larger Local algorithm change? Our CMS tool does not allow us to change Title/Meta per page (I know... terrible!!). So every page has the same title and same meta description. (We are changing our CMS system! Can't wait!). Could this play into it? Thanks for any feedback!
Algorithm Updates | | MABES1 -
.htaccess and SEO
Hey Everyone, New to SEOMOZ and I have an important question: We launched a new version of our site about 6 months ago and had a TON of redirects in our HTCaccess file due to a change in our permalink structure (over 2000 easily). Anyways, recently we went back in and took 2000+ lines of individual htaccess redirects and consolidated them into a RegularExpression for the ones where we could find a pattern for and the others (30 or so) are just the actual redirect link. Since doing that, it appears our search engine traffic has dropped a bit. It's not crazy, but it's definitely noticeable. I'm not an SEO expert, so my question is this the reason why? How long will we see this decline before we're back at normal levels? We're seeing a lot less crawl errors since doing this, so I think it's a good thing. But I just wanted to check and see. The site is http://thetechblock.com if you want to take a look. Any help would be really appreciated.
Algorithm Updates | | willwade260 -
Need some Real Insight into our SEO Issue and Content Generation
We have our site www.practo.com We have our blog as blog.practo.com We plan to have our main site in a months time from now as www.ray.practo.com The Issues - I will then need to direct all my existing traffic from www.practo.com to www.ray.practo.com Keeping in mind SEO and also since I will be generating new content via our Wordpress instance what are the best ways to do this so that google does not have difficulty in find out content 1. Would it be good if I put the Wordpress instance as ray.practo.com/ blog(wordpress instance comes in here in the directory) / article-url 2.Would it be better with www.practo.com / ray / blog/article-url I am using wordpress to roll out all our new SEO based content on various keywords and topics for which we want traffice - primary reasons are since we needed a content generation cms platform so that we dont have to deal with html pages and every time publish those content pages via a developer. Is the above - what soever I am planning to do in the correct manner keeping SEO in mind. Any suggestions are welcome. I seriously need to know writing seo based content on wordpress instance and have them in the urls is that a good idea? Or is only html a good idea. But we need some cms to be there so that content writers can write content independently. Please guide accordingly. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | shanky10 -
Content on Wordpress blog inside the main website for SEO
Hi, We have our main website and our blog on blog.practo.com. Now what I see is that we wish to write in content to grow our seo keywords and links. Should we put the blog as www.practo.com/blog and then begin writing all the content or we should put the wordpress blog as www.practo.com/(wordpress blog here) and then begin writing the content. For best practices I suppose we should have content lined up as www.sitename.com/category/article name etc or www.sitename.com/article name etc - am I correct? Our main site consists of few html pages and then we have our software on a different sub domain. What are the best ways to publish content and get it crawled at a faster rate for growth? I would also wish to understand how to measure the number of growth in % to our content we are writing. Only via google analytics or some other tool? Say I wish to see the growth of 10 articles from month of may and compare it to the month of april or march 2012. So what tools could I use to see if we are progressing or not? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | shanky10