Can I use PO boxes as an actual business Address?
-
Hi mozzers,
A potential future client(electrician) covers 40+ locations in one region(local SEO) but only has 1 address. He wants to rank for at least 5 to 7 main locations which he has PO boxes for.
Can I use these as addresses on his website or will it be seen as violating the google guideline? If it is no good what should I do?
Thanks
-
Thank you guys for those useful tips
-
Hi Taysir,
Both P.O. boxes and virtual offices are forbidden by the Google Places Quality Guidelines (see: https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en)
Unless your client is an area of very low competition or in a very rural area, then he should not expect to rank in the local pack of results for anything but his city of location. It's important to set his expectation about this, so that he understand that this is simply how Google works. Let him know that the use of P.O. boxes or virtual offices will only harm his trustworthiness in the eyes of Google at the same time as confusing his customers.
So, he can go for local rankings for his city of location, and then go after as much organic visibility as he can for his other location-less service cities by developing content that reflects his work in these places. I think you will find some good inspiration for this in this article:
The Nitty Gritty of City Landings Pages
All SABs struggle with this situation, but it is totally possible to earn good core local visibility for the location city and additional organic visibility for the service cities with the right strategy. Good luck with the work ahead!
-
So you probably already read that so far as adding the business to Google local is concerned, PO boxes are violation of Google local quality guidelines - if you read through them, they are looking for places that receive customers and they specifically state that post office boxes aren't considered physical locations. So if you add them as a listing to Google local, they get deleted, sometimes .. pretty often (there are still some listings with PO boxes but I wouldn't bother trying). And you want your website address/phone etc to match your local listing for good local SEO. So although you could add the various PO boxes to the website, I don't think it will help for local, there's probably no real point them being on there unless they have some legitimate business use and I wouldn't recommend it.
I've mused recently (in a blog post) that using virtual offices combined with local area code numbers (e.g. forwarded to the main sales number) might work for boosting local, but only if the business centre allows use of the address rather than the PO box address. If you had the virtual office address but didn't have local matching numbers, I think that'd be a potential negative for local. I think there's an element of risk here as virtual offices aren't too difficult to spot and let's face it, it is still against the quality guidelines and trying to manipulate results etc. I'd kind of be interested to know if it'd work but I wouldn't try it for a client myself!
Things the client can do instead -
-
Use his one business address, phone etc, same on local listing as on website, and then,
-
Specify in his Google local listing which areas he covers. Rather than stating the whole of the UK, I'd recommend adding those specific areas he wants to rank for.
-
Create pages for those areas around what people search for e.g. going for the organic results 'electrician services in lincoln' etc as Google does still feature these around the local listings.
-
Add location specific content for that area - eg. case studies, testimonials for companies / customers in that area with plenty of refs to the location.
Hope that helps.
-
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
-
Two Distinct Businesses, same address?
I have a client who shares a location with another business. That is, they are both distinct businesses with unique names and phone numbers but they both share space in their suite – i.e. half the desks in the space go to the one business, the other half belong to my client. Can I set them up with Google My Business with this shared address and suite number? Thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | EdmundMansfield0 -
Google + Business Listing created with lost gmail account
Hi I wondered whether anyone can give me some guidance on how best to tackle this issue. A client of mine has claimed their spot on google Maps and has created a very basic local page on google + but now has forgotten their password for the gmail account. A colleague of mine has tried unsuccessfully to retrieve the password and to claim the listing. Question I have is - would you suggest creating a new gmail account for the client and a completely Google + local and claim the duplicate? I am so wary of local at the moment as the guidelines seem to be constantly shifting. Oh and I am based in New Zealand so all the most recent changes announced for the US haven't meandered their way over as far as here yet! Any responses gratefully received
Image & Video Optimization | | AllieMc0 -
When do I use no-follow links to interlink on my own site?
Hi Mozzers, When would I ever want to use no-follow links when interlinking pages on my site? The more authority being passed around, the better, right? Does it save or conserve page rank / authority from being transferred to pages you don't necessarily need it on? Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | Travis-W0 -
Google+ Business Page Location Problem
I run a business in the St. Louis area. Oddly, St. Louis is broken up into more than 100 municipalities. Google keeps listing my plus page by the small municipality I am in within St. Louis, which limits my ability to show up in the St. Louis local search results. However, other businesses in town are being listed under St. Louis instead of their municipality. Any ideas on how to change this? When I go in and try to change it myself, it just stays the same. Thanks, Steve
Image & Video Optimization | | BardolLawFirm0 -
How to build links with really good S3 hosted video using JW Player
I have a number of really good quality videos that are embedded on my own site. Many are "how to" or "what to do if" type video guides with questions answered by experts. They were professionally shot. So that I could reap the full SEO benefit from the videos, I have them hosted via Amazon S3 and am using an embedded JW Player. We have a video sitemap and, as a result, most of the videos have already been indexed by Google and are showing up in Google video search as residing on our webpage. Now the real problem is how to get some link benefit from them. They should be viable and valuable link bait. My initial thought was to do a PR Web type press release with the video embedded in it. The problem with that is that you are limited to Youtube and Vimeo embedded video which defeats that purpose entirely. PR Newswire has different issues but the end result is the same, I can't embed those videos with them either. As far as I can tell, all I could do with a press release would be to link to the videos. Moreover, I don't even know that press releases would be that valuable in the post penguin world but the hope was that people would share the videos naturally. So, I put it to the experts. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to get some link benefit from these videos? Any ideas at all? I am stumped. Any advice would be appreciated.
Image & Video Optimization | | LawSEOSeeker0 -
Google Places Hide Address
I've read about the changes in requirements for Google Places - and hidden the address for my relevant local clients. Is there any step I can take to speed up the edit being recognised and displayed in SERPs. In addition, I would like to know, will the address also disappear from the actual Google Places page as well?
Image & Video Optimization | | catherine-2793880 -
Has Anyone Used CBS Local Pages?
CBS has a service that they offer to their advertisers called CBS Local Pages. Has anyone used this? It's about $1500 a month and basically they send "business data" to local listing platforms, this is similar to UBL and LocalEZE it seems. One of my associates subscribed to this and they're unsure of the value, they are paying $1500/mo for something that can be achieved with $125/year with localeze. Has anyone used this?
Image & Video Optimization | | qlkasdjfw0 -
Are centralized local information management services like Unified Business Listings a helpful tool or unreliable?
As we work with more local businesses, I'm looking for an efficient way to manage their information across all of the different local databases. site is www.ubl.org
Image & Video Optimization | | ScottFasser590