Thanks Miriam!

And thanks for the link. I will definitely share the information with the client to back up what I am saying.

Thanks for the clarification.

The office where my client is forwards the mail to the proper business as well, even with the duplicate suite #'s so we just needed a way to make it unique to Google.

Hopefully the affect of changing the suite # isn't too severe...

Yes, all this Local stuff can get confusing! Whether you are new to it or have studied it for a while it seems. I'm just an intern assigned the daunting task to figure out a whole new strategy for our client. And I definitely don't know a whole ton about SEO so thanks so much for your help!

I guess I will suggest getting a unique suite number and using a local phone number. Yes the fall out may be not so bad to extreme, but it has to be done since they don't fit the criteria for local inclusion. But from Jared's example, it seems like it should work.

Thanks again guys!

Thanks everyone for your responses!

I definitely think it's difficult to find a definite solution since the algorithms change all the time.

I have heard about the possibility of Google merging the businesses together and that is a concern. I have also heard that if you have enough citations that give your business' address some credit and show that it's not spam, you may  not have an issue. Again, you never know for sure.

I definitely understand the concerns about the different suite numbers since Google and other sites make you verify via post card. What if the mail arrives at the address but then is separated according to business so each business receives its own mail and is not just lumped in a pile with the others?

If I do get a new unique suite number, how will that affect our current SEO? Will google not like that we changed our address? And do I just need a unique suite number or should we get a whole new address completely?

Also, we do use a toll free number. I'm assuming we should change that no matter how we proceed with the address?

Thanks everyone for your help!

Yeah the person I work for recently found out about the address situation our client was in after I had made citations for them.

We aren't trying to rank in different cities or areas, just don't want our local SEO efforts to be wasted.

The company still shows up when you search for the address and Google lists all the businesses at that address so at least it hasn't merged the pages yet.

Just trying to see if there is an "industry standard" of what to do in this situation. Been seeing a lot of different viewpoints so it can get a little confusing.

Thanks for your help though!

I have a client who shares the same address and suite number with multiple business.

What should be done to optimize their website and citations for local SEO? Is this a huge issue? What should we do so our rankings aren't affected.

Will changes take a long time to take place?

Thanks