How can you perform productive local SEO when the company is moving?

[cakelady]

I'm working with a brick and mortar store that is planning to move to a new location in a few months. All the citation information is going to have to be updated. Is there anything productive you can do in the interim to help their rankings when you know you'll be facing an update of all their citations?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi CakeLady,

Your hands are a bit tied, but there are a couple of things you can do prior to the move.

1. Create a spreadsheet listing all of the citations of the business so that you have this ready to start working from, as soon as the move is live. Remember, Google doesn't let you list (re-list) a business until it has actually opened, so you want to hold off on actual implementation until the move is accomplished fact.

2. Create a document assessing all areas of the website that will need to be updated to reflect the new location once the move happens. Again, this way, you'll have your plan of action developed and ready to put in place quickly once the move happens.

3. Create another document containing social messaging snippets you'll be publishing on all your social profiles once the move happens, announcing the change of location.

4. Create additional new content (for the website, blog, both) to be launched when the move goes live, reflecting the new location.

5. Prepare your client for the fact that they may experience some ranking changes until the business is re-established at the new location.

6. Study up on the best way to implement a move in Google's local system so that you're secure in current best practices.

With these things in hand, you'll be able to act swiftly once the move happens.

[DougWalker]

Jim's comment is spot on! Definitely focusing on those things is of top importance since many times the organic play can push past the local one.

Something that might be helpful when it is time to clean up NAP is a YEXT package (if you don't already have one). The highest package is $499 per year, but definitely worth the hassle of trying to handle a good chunk of your citations across some of the main local sites. You can easily update the NAP in one place, then it will populate to all the directories in your particular package.

Here is a list of the directories in their network: http://www.yext.com/network/publisher-network

As a side note, one place you might be sure the NAP info is updated and that is not in the YEXT publisher network is YellowPages.com (YP).

I would also sign up for Moz Local ($49 per year) since they have a connection directly with the main data aggregators.

Best of luck!

[cakelady]

Thank you. Waiting is frustrating

[jimthornton]

I recently had to do this. The client actually didn't tell me they were moving locations and I found out after the fact. I'm not sure there is a whole lot you can do if you're referring to local/universal placement rankings. The biggest impact on those ranking changes is going to come from proximity changes, most importantly physical address in city and proximity of location to centroid of city. For us the move was a couple blocks so it didn't make a difference.

The only thing I can think of is improving for non NAP related ranking factors, ie. brand mentions, fostering real reviews, domain authority/quality of locally relevant and topically relevant inbound links, etc., and be prepared to announce the move, which a press release would help with.