Will changing my business location affect my ranking for localised searches in my original area?
-
I run a mobile outdoor personal training service in London, UK (i.e. no bricks and mortar gym). Or, rather, my business is in London (all my clients and the freelance trainers that work for me) but I'm personally due to move out to the county of Suffolk.
As I work from a home office and my company's registered address is my home, that means I have to inform Companies House and various government agencies that the company has moved.
Does this mean:
a) I also must tell Google the company has moved, and;
b) if I do will Google start to see my website as being for a Suffolk-based company?
I really don't want this to happen: my clientele are mostly in London., I still want to market to Londoners. And if I want to expand the areas covered by my company, Suffolk is not high on my list.
You'll excuse me if this is a simple question!
Thanks for any help you could give
-
Hi Fiona,
Unfortunately, it does not really matter if you set up multiple service areas, you'll still only have a chance of ranking in the city or near the area the business is actually located. (Depending on competition.)
And also, since you'll just be moving there, you may not rank well at 1st compared to established businesses that have been there for a long time. The algo is like a giant puzzle and there are lots of things at play that go into the ranking order.
Moving can be challenging for your Google ranking, so I'd suggest reading the Moz Local Search Ranking Factors if you have not yet and be ready to start working to increase some of those ranking signals after you move. Using the Moz Local tool to try to either correct or build new citations to the new location would be important too.
-
That does help, Linda, thank you. Although I'm in a quandary. If I register multiple service areas under my business listing, will my competition still rank higher than me if their business address is in London ? I assume that when Google are informed of my move to another town, my organic ranking for London-related keywords ("personal training in westminster") would be affected?
-
Thanks, Jeff, I have unchecked 'I serve customers at my address' and have added the locations I serve customers.
-
There are a few issues I wanted to point out.
1st off the address in your Google dashboard needs to be the real address you work from. So if you move you MUST change it in dash. If you don't all kinds of problems could come up including duplicates and including your listing being deleted.
Any time you move, it breaks NAP so you will likely lose ranking.
If you move to a new city you will likely only rank in that city, not the previous city. (Depends on competition and proximity.)
In either case you need to set service area and be sure address is hidden. But that service area does not affect ranking in any way at all. Ranking area is still determined by the location that's in dash, even though address is hidden.
Hope that helps and best of luck!
-
A reputable business will have a trading address on their site, therefore the actual trading address and listings will differ. In this case every aspect of NAP will differ.
-
customerparadignm.com makes a good point, however I've seen consistency & having a set office location work better.
https://moz.com/local/ does a great job of cleaning up consistency errors and is less expensive than Yext Business Listings.
Tips:
1. Submit a Change Of Address to G
2. Consistency, consistency, consistency.
3. Verify all major business listings for your new location.
4. Make sure your new location is on your website.
5. Schema markup never hurt.
Good Luck Fiona!
-
Hi fionadoggett,
The thing is that you do not need to tell Google you are moving. Remember that you are working online, so you can hold your business location just for Google. Anyway i have seen many times in google places two different locations of the same business (but in the same city) so, may be is possible to hold both of them.
Good luck
-
Yes, unfortunately if you change the address that you have listed on your Website, along with the address you have for a Google+ page, then you might start to have issues with local search results migrating to Sufolk instead of London.
My recommendation: Change your Google+ listing to a Service-area business
For local business search, you'll want to set up the business so it not based on the physical location / address (i.e. your new home in Sufolk), but serves a greater area (i.e. London). In order to do this, you will need to set up your Google+ account as a Service-area business on Google.
This is perfect for a trainer, local plumber, tree trimmer or construction crew that works at customer's locations (either homes or businesses) vs. your home address.
My recommendation would be to go here:
https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038163?hl=en... and set up your service areas based on the zip codes or cities that the business serves.
You also have the option to check or uncheck, "I serve customers at my business address."
You might need to go through another round of verification to make this change, however.
I hope this helps!
Thanks,
- Jeff
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
-
Google is indexing pages but they do not list on a brand search
One of my websites does not display sitelinks when using a branded search on mobile. Desktop , it is fine. Moz tells me I have no crawl issues. What could be reason for sitelinks not showing on mobile? Any thoughts?
Local Listings | | Web_Prosper_SEO0 -
Do any Local Rank Trackers Report This Way?
I'm having trouble finding a local rank tracking service with useful reporting. I've tried several and for the money, have gravitated toward's Whitespark's service as for $25/month I can track unlimited locations. But their report is indicative of what I've seen time and time again in my 18-year experience as a Software Developer and Internet Marketer. Whomever is making the design decisions isn't a Seasoned (Local) SEO, and/or probably hasn't done their homework well enough by talking to seasoned SEOs. Their Summary Report looks like this (see attachement). When I'm doing Local SEO I'm looking at a lot of reporting data but among that, probably the most important is: How many of the listings moved up into position #1-3 on Local Finder which is also usually the Local 3-Pack (sometimes a 2-pack explaining the discrepancy in the first two rows between the number in the #1-3 column.) I also want to know how many listing moved UP into the #4-10. And vice versa, what fell out of #1-3 and #4-10. The problem with the format of this report, if a listing falls from #2 to #5, it will be a decrease in #1-3 and an INCREASE for #4-10. This would give me the false impression that a listing that was below #10 came into the #4-10 when in actuality the increase in #4-10 was because of a decrease in #1-3!! One situation is positive the other is negative. What I want to know is how many listings (totals without getting out the calculator): moved up into #1-3 (White Spark does this via the Increase column in the Local 3-Pack row) moved up into #4-10 moved down out of #1-3 to #4-10 moved down out of #1-3 to below #10 moved down out of #4-10 to below #10. Does anyone know of local tracking services that give you this kind of data in this way? XQppQKs.jpg
Local Listings | | Consult19010 -
Radius Size around GMB location for google local search
We are a digital marketing agency Our clients are (virtually all) retail automotive dealerships. We compete in various market places coast to coast (USA). Since Google puts retail automotive dealerships under Local SEO umbrella, is it known ( published ) how large is the radius around my client's Google My Business rooftop's address? How wide is their search 'reach' according to Google? Asked another way, in a triangular, three SEO geo area, with one city being at the epicenter of the population dispersion, and my client, versus my client's competitors being different distances from where the majority of the population emanates from, all other SERP factors being equal (assumption) between the two competitors, how far is each clients REACH from a Local Search standpoint. Is this known? Published by Google. ONE example: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/BMW+of+South+Albany,+U.S.+9W,+Glenmont,+NY/42.7662693,-73.8138088/@42.6727121,-73.7993527,12z/data=!4m9!4m8!1m5!1m1!1s0x89dde0fe8829c405:0xd915fb9b3b60bf33!2m2!1d-73.7973301!2d42.589211!1m0!3e0
Local Listings | | GaryT_SEO1 -
Co-working spaces for multiple locations?
I have been working out of co-working space for about 6 months, and I have had good results in local results here. I have also read that Google does not look favorably upon the inclusion of these locations. Has there policy on the inclusion of these spaces changed? Can I safely use other co-working spaces to expand to other locations? Thank you for your guidance. Ben Sessions
Local Listings | | BSessions0 -
What to do with One physical location but serving multiple cities?
Hello everyone, I need help about this. My client sent me this "I have a question about doing local SEO for other locations for the same company.
Local Listings | | Beachflower
The Brisbane data recovery business is linked to Corporate data recovery and are physically based at the same address. Now we have other website for the same business, but named after other cities (eg sydneydatarecovery, melbournedatarecovery etc.). The business has only one physical address, which the one used for Brisbane and Corporate. How can we do Local SEo for the other location website with our Brisbane address.
We do have the Google location registered to a local address we have in each cities, but not display to the public." N.b I already build citation using the address for Brisbane Data Recovery business name. And I didn't know about this before. Please help me to fix this mess.0 -
Should I change my local listing Service type from Brick and Mortar to Service Area in Google? And will it affect my ranking in a negative manner?
Currently my company Big Boy Bail Bonds, Inc is ranking very well for the city it is located and, currently service type is brick and mortar. But my Company does not only service people at our location but we service the entire county of Los Angeles. And I wanted to know if you would advise me on weather I should change the service type from brick and morter to service area. and if doing that would effect me in a negative manner when it came to my ranking? Plz advice Thank you in advance.
Local Listings | | LittleDog1 -
Do Citations help will all local rankings/Pages on my website or just the page it's linked to
Hi All, My ecommerce site has different category/landing pages for each of my branches . I'm currently getting some more citations done as wondered the following Is it a general rule to say, that the more citations you have the better as long as they are consistent and free? Given that I have different categories /landing pages showing the NAP of my individual branches along with unique content, should all these extra citations help with local rankings across my whole site or is it usually just helping the specific localized webpage it's pointing to ? I can get a company to help me do my citations but to do all the branches, it is going to be quite expensive. Is citations quite a big individual SEO factor in local search as opposed to on page seo factors etc etc. Any advice greatly appreciated. thanks Peter
Local Listings | | PeteC120 -
Adding multiple locations business to directories
We have multiple locations business.
Local Listings | | VicMark
Adding each location business info to directories. There are same services and everything for each location. Should we keep the same description for all listings or different for each location?
Should we indicate Home Page URL (with 800 number, no address in footer) or location URL?0