Does this tactic fall into the Local SEO best practice?
-
Hi Mozzers,
I have a client who serves the entire San Francisco bay area but has only one physical location.
He asked me if he should get different addresses by renting out offices in different cities so he could use that for a better localization of his business.
Thanks for letting me know!
-
Thank you Guys for all of your responses!
-
You have answers from two different people saying very much the same thing; I'll add my name to the list: ---> your instincts were right on this one, just do what is recommended from the two responders above, and your client will thank you later
*As for your client, Just because some of the 'others' are doing it, doesn't mean it's the right, or practical thing to do. Your patience and good practices will pay off with Local Search, in time
Andy
-
Unfortunately, Taysir, it's not best practice but it works and a lot are doing it much to the chagrin of business owners who play by the rules and the SEOs who support them. As others stated here, organic SEO on local pages is what's needed. Perhaps if you post what kind of business it is, others here may give suggestions on how to optimize those.
-
You are likely right, Tony. Just need to be sure!
-
Good point Miriam, I'd assumed the offices were "post code only" and non-staffed. I guess the potential huge cost of renting out multiple offices to achieve his aim made me veer towards the scenario I'd assumed
-
Hi Taysir,
If they are staffed, physical offices, yes. If they are not, then, no. You'll need to focus on Local SEO for his physical location and organic SEO for his service cities where he isn't physically located.
-
Hi Taysir,
Simple answer - no. Google's T&C's stipulate that locations must be "physical" and not non-populated rented offices..
Strong local search indicators to Google include proof of physical locations, via NAP (name, address, postcode) citations.
There's nothing stopping them "owning" the SF bay area with a single site, district-focus pages and a single G+ Business Account with dozens of positive reviews and back-ed up citations.
Be very careful with clients who are greedy and want to game the system. if you're not careful, they'll do it anyway behind your back and cause you no-end of grief when their activities come back and bite them (and you) in the backside!
My advice is to be very firm and direct about what Google class as contravening their guidelines.
-
The money spent on rent can be applied to build a killer site that has content catered to the areas he really focuses on. So create pages for specific cities and have some job details specific to that city. The business details aren't in the question so its hard to say but I'm guessing if there isn't a need to open a new office your client is just trying to get local 'seven pack" rankings which require a physical place and a local number.
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
-
How to improve SEO in two cities at once
Hi, we have a company, and the business has a Google My Business and business citations created. the manager, wants to be on first page of Google, in the organic results, for another city thats less than 10 miles away. the business does not have two stores, just one business premises, any idea how we can improve the local/organic SEO for the second city and get on the first page of Google there as well?
Local SEO | | sarahwalsh0 -
Spaces between Letters and Numbers SEO question
This is a fun one - Example: Mercedes Benz is pushing to have all of there vehicle models to coincide with the world branding such as the "C300" is supposed to be "C 300" and the "E300" is supposed to be "E 300"... I have a few issues here as when I use Voice Search for "Mercedes Benz C 300" there is no way (that I know of) to add a space between the number and letter. In addition, when searching for the "C 300 for sale" Google corrects the text with "Did you mean: C300 for sale". I am seeking a way to accommodate both versions of the models WITHOUT adding the both C300 and C 300...etc. to the text on web pages. OR will Google eventually change the model names over time as Mercedes-Benz regulates the new U.S. naming convention. Tough question - any thoughts? Thank you for your help -
Local SEO | | MBS-MBA0 -
Moz Local Reporting - What are you doing?
I am a pro when it comes to reporting for paid search. However we came out with a new local product and use Moz Local. What are you doing for reporting? Automated reports? Are you tracking progress over time? Is there a reporting application that automates the process?
Local SEO | | PSLab0 -
Which domain extension would benefit my SEO the most? Old vs New .com or .shoes
Having a keyword in a top domain extension like .com could benefit your SEO. Well I think it was like that.
Local SEO | | KnowHowww
So if you would sell cars and you had cars.com it could benefit. But is there something to say about the new extensions like .shoes.
Do they have the same impact or are they just not old enough? A domain like cars.com is probably registered since the beginning of the Internet so it carries more weight. I'm curious to hear your opinion on the matter. Thank you in advance,
kind regards, Eelco0 -
Local SEO Website Structure.
Hi everyone, This might be quite a long post so please bear with me. I am currently rebuilding my website. My previous website was built by a web designer and was very basic. 5 page html site consisting of home, services, gallery, testimonials, contact pages. None of them were great - thin content, not optimised as well as could be - no h1's etc. To be fair I knew nothing about websites and didn't bother much with the site. As a new business I used it simply as a place for people to visit for more information after receiving a leaflet and never bothered much about driving traffic to the site. A few years down the line and I have realised I need the website to be working for me as opposed to alongside me. I am building it myself via wordpress as web designer didn't want to work in wordpress. I have done my keyword research and I'm working on pages as we speak. Previously my homepage - around 80% of visitors landed here for my main keyword (driveway cleaning glasgow) as it was number 6 in the organic listing. With my services page appearing directly underneath in 7 for the same keyword. I have starting building a new page for that keyword which contains (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) in the url. I have 301'd my previous services page to this url. Now for my questions...
Local SEO | | sfrediktru8
My 2nd keyword based on volume is driveway cleaning. How do I optimise for this or will the (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) page rank for this also as the words are contained within this page? I plan on having the same structure for the remaining services - pressure-washing-glasgow, monoblock-cleaning-glasgow etc, etc. As I am building new pages for each service with location built in, where does this leave my homepage? Should I be targeting keywords for this page? It is still my strongest page and apart from the (driveway-cleaning-glasgow) page which will get some help from the 301 these are all new pages so I would expect perhaps initially to lose some traffic. But as I am not ranking well for anything other than the main 2 keywords mentioned above it can only be beneficial long term when google recognises the specific pages for each service. And when I start using Adwords I will have a specific landing page for each service. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks0 -
Why do SMB owners want more calls as a result of SEO, but don't answer 62% of them?
Working mostly with SMBs for 8 years now, we have gradually developed the notion that small business owners are hard to reach by phone. Our Customer Service agents spend hours unsuccessfully trying to reach business owners. If a potential customer calls the business, they'll have to face the same outcome. This means missed opportunities for both parties. Needless to say, one of the most important KPIs in local SEO is the number of generated phone calls...but no one's there to answer. We wanted to dig deeper into the matter, so we did a small study with 85 businesses. Results show that: 37.8% of calls are answered by a person. 37.8% of calls are answered by an answering machine, where no actual conversation (nor conversion) is possible, so we treat these calls as unanswered. 24.3% of calls are unanswered. We also gathered a list of possible solutions to the problem, but what we really need to know is WHY do business owners neglect such an important part of their business? And what resolutions can you think of?
Local SEO | | 411Locals0 -
What is the best SEO tool for tracking local rankings
Hi Can anyone recommend what they think the best tool is to track local rankings. I want to manage several small businesses' visibility and I am not sure which one is the best. I have been told that "Bright local" and "SEO PowerSuite" are the best in the business. Is that true? or is there something better out there Thanks
Local SEO | | coolhandluc0 -
Local SEO Best Practices for 2,000+ 'location' service area business
Hi Moz Community! We operate a business where we have a network of 2,000+ technicians around the country who help people repair their mobile phones. These techs do the fixing at the customer's location, making them service area businesses. Even after scouring all of the go-to places on local SEO, I'm struggling to find best practices for this type of situation - the fact that our techs are operating in service areas presents a number of challenges. The biggest one, it seems, is that inevitably service areas are going to overlap. When I talked to a Google rep on this he said this "might" cause our locations to get de-listed and we'd just have to test and find out. Other challenges include the fact that we cannot bulk upload the service areas of our techs, and we cannot bulk verify - meaning there is a ton of work to do at our scale. Any suggestions on where to go to find resources on this specific topic, or an example of someone doing this well we can model? Thanks everyone!
Local SEO | | JohnGroves1