Google Business Listing with no physical office location
-
Hey, everyone! As a business owner who works from home and doesn't have a physical office location.
Is setting up a Google business listing without location going to hurt my local search ranking? Should I get a virtual office so I have a physical location?
Thank you!!
-
My pleasure!
-
Thank you, Donald.
-
This is super helpful! Thank you so much!!!!
-
If you are comfortable using your home address that is what would do. In fact that is what i do and i am in the same business as you
Thanks,
-
Hey There,
Donald is correct that virtual offices, P.O. boxes, etc. are ineligible as far as Google My Business listings go. What you are describing is a Service Area Business (SAB) if you are going to the homes of your clients or other remote locations to serve them. So, in order to be guideline-compliant, you'll want to list yourself as an SAB, using your home address, which Google will then hide publicly. The most important thing here is to avoid violating Google's guidelines ... that is a much more important consideration than how something affects your rankings.
There has been debate over the years as to whether businesses with physical, public addresses have a ranking advantage over home-based businesses with hidden addresses, it's true, but until you do get a staffed physical office to which customers come to do business with you, it's not accurate to represent your business as having one. So, list yourself accurately and focus all the energy you have on the ranking factors you can control. Hope this advice is helpful!
-
So I am web designer and I work from home mostly. I either meet with my clients at their office or a coffee shop. I currently have a virtual office that I literally never go to. I don't know if I want to pay rent for something I don't use.
I am concerned about if I switch my GMB from physical location to a service area business, that might hurt my ranking?
-
I would advise against a virtual office as it is against google guidelines https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en
What type of business are you? Are you a service area business or do people see you at your office. My business is run out of my home as well. I use my home address for my business on google. So that is the physical location for me. You cannot have a po box or remote location to get a business verifies so you will need to set it up as a service area business. There has been some studies to suggest that google is bias to these type of business listings. However, I handle a couple custom home builders websites and this has not been an issue.
I have also set up custom local landing pages for these businesses to help them rank in towns that they want to be found in. Maybe you could do the same.
Thanks,
Don Silvernail
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
-
VERY specific Google search result not showing
Hello, I'm doing this google search "Peruvian Lilies Delivery To Athens, Alabama globalrose", in the hopes of this page appearing. It does not! Does anyone know why this page (or most pages in out local.globalrose.com subdomain) aren't appearing on Google search results?
Local Listings | | globalrose.com0 -
Google Beacons - Is it working?
I hooked up our google beacon and I activated per google's instructions...but I can't tell if it is working or not. Does anyone know if there is a way to verify it is transmitting other than the confirmation page I got when I put in the validation code? Thanks! Ruben
Local Listings | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Google Knowledge Graph Carousel
Hi - I am trying to get on the Google Knowledge Graph Carousel. I've set up G+, YouTube, Consistent NAP, local business schema, etc. but still have not been featured. Can you please help me figure out why I cannot get a carousel feature. Please help me determine what I am missing.
Local Listings | | mmmeans0 -
Have You Used Twitter For Google My Business Support?
Hey Everybody! If you've been doing Local for some years, chances are, you remember those dark days in the past when there was zero Google local support. You could post something in their forum, but that was pretty much your only hope. It was an absolutely amazing day when they finally rolled out phone support, and I'm still very grateful that this exists, but just this week, I learned about another way to contact support. Joy Hawkins has surfaced a Twitter account you can tweet when in need of assistance and she says its not only really fast, but that the help is US-based (which would be great for US users). I'd never heard of this before and wondered if any of you have tried it, and what response times and overall satisfaction you experienced with it. If you've not tried it yet and are experiencing a local client conundrum, maybe give it a try and let our community here know how it went?
Local Listings | | MiriamEllis5 -
Duplicate Google Plus and Google My Business Listings
My business has duplicate listings for both Google + and Google Places or Maps or My Business or whatever it's called today. Of course the listings that I want to show are marked as duplicates, and the only option is to remove the duplicates. Is there any way to merge these listings or switch which one Google recognizes?
Local Listings | | lmsybiatb0 -
Good service for loactions for google maps
Hi guys, I have one client from the locksmith niche. His service is in almost all the us but he dos not have fiscal location. Because that all the locksmith niche are consider a bit gray, so we noticed that Google not all the time accept the address (Virtual offices). Do you know good service that can give me good solution for this ? something that will give me good reliable address... Thanks
Local Listings | | EdmondHong870 -
Google My Business
I have a quick question about Google my Business listing. If moving a business to a new location, would all you need to do is edit the listing with the new NAP? The business is verified. Would I need to do anything else? Thanks for your help.
Local Listings | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
Are citations the way to go even if there is no Google Places listing
If there are no Google Places / Local listing for a keyword search term, for example... "web design vancouver", do building citations still help in enabling websites to move up the organic rankings?
Local Listings | | Gavo0