Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How to optimize for local when client has a regus office?
-
Anyone know how to optimize for local when client has a regus office? I heard it doesn't work so well because the offices are temporary and so many have used the same exact address over and over. True? Any way around it?
Thanks!!
-
Monkey wrenches always welcome! Thanks! I'll look further...
-
Thank you Marcus! Great info! Just what I was looking for.
-
Thank you, Peter!
-
Hi BBuck,
You've received some thoughtful replies here. I'm going to throw in a monkey wrench, however. Regus offices can, indeed, be problematic. I recommend you read through the threads pulled up in a Google And Your Business Forum search for the term 'regus' and you'll quickly see what I mean:
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/regus
Here's a good example of what I'm referencing:
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/regus/business/4WCI624GamE/xQtCLQw4HSMJ
And here's a good discussion of Regus offices, including the comments of a Google And Your Business Forum TC and a Google MapMaker RER:
I'd look into this further before going down this road. Hope this helps!
-
That's a really helpful and comprehensive answer Marcus. Thank you for that!<thumbsup></thumbsup>
Peter
-
Hey
As Peter mentioned, in principle, this is no different to any other kind of office address. In practice though, you may find some issues as there may be several other tenants who have had this address previously and subsequently there will be a whole list of different names, phone numbers (2/3 of the Nap), website addresses and other info associated with this address.
Also, the Regus building will likely have lots of other businesses in there at the same actual street address which may create further noise.
The general advice is simple.
- get registered with Google+ Local
- build citations at the important
- optimise the website with local in mind
- generally try to ensure the website is high quality
- Try to be active socially, publish content, build local links, encourage honest reviews etc
But, my approach here would also include a detailed audit of all business listings that exist for that address. Get everything in a spreadsheet and contact the sites one by one to either update or remove the listings. Also, to identify if there are any Google local listings that still exist for the old businesses so these can be updated and removed.
Google is probably your best tool here and a search using the elements you know such as office number (Post Code / Zip Code), address will be the first starting point.
"[Office Number]" "[Street Address]" "[Post Code]"
My business is in an office complex called the Custard Factory in Birmingham and the search above for us would look something like:
"112 Zellig Building" "Gibb Street" "B9 4AA"
This should give us a good starting point. From here we will likely find several other interesting pieces of information we can use to refine these searches:
- Business names
- Phones Number
It's not search based buy you may be able to ask the Regus folks for a list of all previous tenant names of this office and that could give you a good running start here.
Then, it's a process of more traditional searches for those businesses and any information relating to them.
"business name" AND "post code" -www.businesswebsite.co.uk
So, for our business address that would be something like
"Bowler Hat" AND "B9 4AA" -www.bowlerhat.co.uk
This will give you a list of results with the business name, post code and remove any listings for the clients website. You may have to play with this a little as the business may have name variations but this will be a good starting point for further investigation.
Citation based factors (Quality, Consistency & Volume) pay a large part in Local SEO and simply building new citations if there is lots of noise out there and some active local listings may not do what you want it to (Or I could just be really OCD about all this stuff).
I suggest a read through at least the foundational ranking factors here but this should give you plenty of scope to get started:
http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factorsHope that helps!
Marcus
-
Hi
I would think that renting a Regus office address is no different to renting office space in any serviced office location.
It will always take a bit of time to establish a new address/location and be able to SEO around it, but name, address, phone number (with the local code prefix) on the site page(s) is an definite requirement.
Provided your client is not going to be there for a short time then I would back that up by growing citations of their office so that all "signposts" so to speak point to their legitimate office location.
Rand Fishkin spoke on this subject in a Whiteboard Friday back in May. You can watch it here: <a title="http://moz.com/blog/discovering-local-citation-opportunities-whiteboard-friday">Discovering Local Citation Opportunities - Whiteboard Friday</a>
I hope that helps,
Peter
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
-
Should I optimize the login page? Will it affect the website SEO ranking?
I'm trying to resolve the site crawl issues that we have on our website. One of the links that has different issue types together is our login page. Currently we have two login pages that have the same content but different sub domains. **However I'm wondering if optimizing SEO on our login pages affects our website SEO ranking and if it's something better to do or not. ** To point out the details of the issues, the issue types that the logins pages have are "duplicate title", "duplicate content", "missing H1", "missing description", "thin content", "missing canonical tag" I'd appreciate your help, thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kaylie0 -
Over-optimizing Internal Linking: Is this real and, if so, what's the happy medium?
I have heard a lot about having a solid internal linking structure so that Google can easily discover pages and understand your page hierarchies and correlations and equity can be passed. Often, it's mentioned that it's good to have optimized anchor text, but not too optimized. You hear a lot of warnings about how over-optimization can be perceived as spammy: https://neilpatel.com/blog/avoid-over-optimizing/ But you also see posts and news like this saying that the internal link over-optimization warnings are unfounded or outdated:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SearchStan
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-no-internal-linking-overoptimization-penalty-27092.html So what's the tea? Is internal linking overoptimization a myth? If it's true, what's the tipping point? Does it have to be super invasive and keyword stuffy to negatively impact rankings? Or does simple light optimization of internal links on every page trigger this?1 -
SEO-optimized Data Visualizations (e.g. Charts) Tools
Hi there! We are currently evaluating data visualization / charting tools for rich content. Are there any open source solutions that work best in your opinion? Why? Some specific questions: Are static image / svg rendered images better than a javascript dynamic chart (canvas/HTML5)? Which gets indexed better? Is there any proven or perceived benefit to using Google Charts API that gives you an SEO boost? Are there tools for progressively enhancing HTML raw data tables to generate charts? Looking at a couple of solutions: Google Charts API C3.js Chartjs Thanks for your feedback!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | insurifyusa0 -
Credit Links on Client Websites
I know there have been several people who have asked this but a lot of them were back in 2012 before many of the google changes. My question is the same though. With all the changes with Google's algorithm. Is it okay to put your link on the bottom of your clients website. Like Web Design by, etc. Part of the reason is to drive traffic but also if someone is actually interested who designed the website, they will click it. But now reading about how bad links can hurt you tremendously, it makes me second guess if this is ok. My gut feeling says, no.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blackrino0 -
Targeting local areas without creating landing pages for each town
I have a large ecommerce website which is structured very much for SEO as it existed a few years ago. With a landing page for every product/town nationwide (its a lot of pages). Then along came Panda... I began shrinking the site in Feb last year in an effort to tackle duplicate content. We had initially used a template only changing product/town name. My first change was to reduce the amount of pages in half by merging the top two categories, as they are semantically similar enough to not need their own pages. This worked a treat, traffic didn't drop at all and the remaining pages are bringing in the desired search terms for both these products. Next I have rewritten the content for every product to ensure they are now as individual as possible. However with 46 products and each of those generating a product/area page we still have a heap of duplicate content. Now i want to reduce the town pages, I have already started writing content for my most important areas, again, to make these pages as individual as possible. The problem i have is that nobody can write enough unique content to target every town in the UK via an individual page (times by 46 products), so i want to reduce these too. QUESTION: If I have a single page for "croydon", will mentioning other local surrounding areas on this page, such as Mitcham, be enough to rank this page for both towns? I have approx 25 Google local place/map listings and grwoing, and am working from these areas outwards. I want to bring the site right down to about 150 main area pages to tackle all the duplicate content, but obviously don't want to lose my traffic for so many areas at once. Any examples of big sites that have reduced in size since Panda would be great. I have a headache... Thanks community.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Silkstream0 -
Ranking for local searches without city specific keywords?
Hey guys! I had asked this question a few months ago and now that we are seeing even more implicit information determining search results, I want to ask it again..in two parts. Is is STILL best practice for on-page to add the city name to your titles, h1s, content etc? It seems that this will eventually be an outdated tactic, right? If there is a decent amount of search volume without any city name in the search query (ie. "storefont signs", but no search volume for the phrase when specific cities are added (ie. "storefront signs west palm beach) is it worth trying to rank and optimize for that search term for a company in West Palm Beach? We can assume that if there are 20,000 monthly searches for the non-location specific term that SOME of them would be fairly local, so do we optimize the page without the city name and trust Google to display results with a local intent...therefore showing our client's site in the SERPS when someone searches "sign company" and they are IN West Palm Beach? If there is any confusion, please just ask me to clarify! I think this would be a great WhiteBoard Friday topic for Rand!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
How to perform Local SEO for sites like Angies List/Task Rabbit or Craigslist
I have a new SEO client that has a business model similar to Criagslist and Angies List or Task Rabbit, Where they offer local based services nationwide. My first thought was Local link building and citation building etc. But the issue is they are a purely online service company and they don't have a phyiscal address in every city/state they will be offering their services in. What is the best course of action for providing SEO services for this type of business model. I am pretty much at a stand still on how to rank them locally for the areas they provide services in. it's a business model that involves local businesses and customers looking for services from those local businesses.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VITALBGS0 -
Optimize a Classifieds Site
Hi, I have a classifieds website and would like to optimize it. The issues/questions I have: A Classifieds site has, say, 500 cities. Is it better to create separate subdomains for each city (http://city_name.site.com) or subdirectory (http://site.com/city_name)? Now in each city, there will be say 50 categories. Now these 50 categories are common across all the cities. Hence, the layout and content will be the same with difference of latest ads from each city and name of the city and the urls pointing to each category in the relevant city. The site architecture of a classifieds site is highly prone to have major content which is not really a duplicate content. What is the best way to deal with this situation? I have been hit by Panda in April 2011 with traffic going down 50%. However, the traffic since then has been around same level. How to best handle the duplicate content penalty in case with site like a classifieds site. Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ketan90