Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How to optimize for local when client has a regus office?
-
Anyone know how to optimize for local when client has a regus office? I heard it doesn't work so well because the offices are temporary and so many have used the same exact address over and over. True? Any way around it?
Thanks!!
-
Monkey wrenches always welcome! Thanks! I'll look further...
-
Thank you Marcus! Great info! Just what I was looking for.
-
Thank you, Peter!
-
Hi BBuck,
You've received some thoughtful replies here. I'm going to throw in a monkey wrench, however. Regus offices can, indeed, be problematic. I recommend you read through the threads pulled up in a Google And Your Business Forum search for the term 'regus' and you'll quickly see what I mean:
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/regus
Here's a good example of what I'm referencing:
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/regus/business/4WCI624GamE/xQtCLQw4HSMJ
And here's a good discussion of Regus offices, including the comments of a Google And Your Business Forum TC and a Google MapMaker RER:
I'd look into this further before going down this road. Hope this helps!
-
That's a really helpful and comprehensive answer Marcus. Thank you for that!<thumbsup></thumbsup>
Peter
-
Hey
As Peter mentioned, in principle, this is no different to any other kind of office address. In practice though, you may find some issues as there may be several other tenants who have had this address previously and subsequently there will be a whole list of different names, phone numbers (2/3 of the Nap), website addresses and other info associated with this address.
Also, the Regus building will likely have lots of other businesses in there at the same actual street address which may create further noise.
The general advice is simple.
- get registered with Google+ Local
- build citations at the important
- optimise the website with local in mind
- generally try to ensure the website is high quality
- Try to be active socially, publish content, build local links, encourage honest reviews etc
But, my approach here would also include a detailed audit of all business listings that exist for that address. Get everything in a spreadsheet and contact the sites one by one to either update or remove the listings. Also, to identify if there are any Google local listings that still exist for the old businesses so these can be updated and removed.
Google is probably your best tool here and a search using the elements you know such as office number (Post Code / Zip Code), address will be the first starting point.
"[Office Number]" "[Street Address]" "[Post Code]"
My business is in an office complex called the Custard Factory in Birmingham and the search above for us would look something like:
"112 Zellig Building" "Gibb Street" "B9 4AA"
This should give us a good starting point. From here we will likely find several other interesting pieces of information we can use to refine these searches:
- Business names
- Phones Number
It's not search based buy you may be able to ask the Regus folks for a list of all previous tenant names of this office and that could give you a good running start here.
Then, it's a process of more traditional searches for those businesses and any information relating to them.
"business name" AND "post code" -www.businesswebsite.co.uk
So, for our business address that would be something like
"Bowler Hat" AND "B9 4AA" -www.bowlerhat.co.uk
This will give you a list of results with the business name, post code and remove any listings for the clients website. You may have to play with this a little as the business may have name variations but this will be a good starting point for further investigation.
Citation based factors (Quality, Consistency & Volume) pay a large part in Local SEO and simply building new citations if there is lots of noise out there and some active local listings may not do what you want it to (Or I could just be really OCD about all this stuff).
I suggest a read through at least the foundational ranking factors here but this should give you plenty of scope to get started:
http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/local-search-ranking-factorsHope that helps!
Marcus
-
Hi
I would think that renting a Regus office address is no different to renting office space in any serviced office location.
It will always take a bit of time to establish a new address/location and be able to SEO around it, but name, address, phone number (with the local code prefix) on the site page(s) is an definite requirement.
Provided your client is not going to be there for a short time then I would back that up by growing citations of their office so that all "signposts" so to speak point to their legitimate office location.
Rand Fishkin spoke on this subject in a Whiteboard Friday back in May. You can watch it here: <a title="http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/discovering-local-citation-opportunities-whiteboard-friday">Discovering Local Citation Opportunities - Whiteboard Friday</a>
I hope that helps,
Peter
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
-
Should I Add Location to ALL of My Client's URLs?
Hi Mozzers, My first Moz post! Yay! I'm excited to join the squad 🙂 My client is a full service entertainment company serving the Washington DC Metro area (DC, MD & VA) and offers a host of services for those wishing to throw events/parties. Think DJs for weddings, cool photo booths, ballroom lighting etc. I'm wondering what the right URL structure should be. I've noticed that some of our competitors do put DC area keywords in their URLs, but with the moves of SERPs to focus a lot more on quality over keyword density, I'm wondering if we should focus on location based keywords in traditional areas on page (e.g. title tags, headers, metas, content etc) instead of having keywords in the URLs alongside the traditional areas I just mentioned. So, on every product related page should we do something like: example.com/weddings/planners-washington-dc-md-va
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pdrama231
example.com/weddings/djs-washington-dc-md-va
example.com/weddings/ballroom-lighting-washington-dc-md-va OR example.com/weddings/planners
example.com/weddings/djs
example.com/weddings/ballroom-lighting In both cases, we'd put the necessary location based keywords in the proper places on-page. If we follow the location-in-URL tactic, we'd use DC area terms in all subsequent product page URLs as well. Essentially, every page outside of the home page would have a location in it. Thoughts? Thank you!!0 -
Local SEO - two businesses at same address - best course of action?
Hi Mozzers - I'm working with 2 businesses at the moment, at the same address - the only difference between the two is the phone number. I could ask to split the business addresses apart, so that NAP(name, address, phone number) is different for each businesses (only the postcode will be the same). Or simply carry on at the moment, with the N and Ps different, yet with the As the same - the same addresses for both businesses. I've never experienced this issue before, so I'd value your input. Many thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
What's the best possible URL structure for a local search engine?
Hi Mozzers, I'm working at AskMe.com which is a local search engine in India i.e if you're standing somewhere & looking for the pizza joints nearby, we pick your current location and share the list of pizza outlets nearby along with ratings, reviews etc. about these outlets. Right now, our URL structure looks like www.askme.com/delhi/pizza-outlets for the city specific category pages (here, "Delhi" is the city name and "Pizza Outlets" is the category) and www.askme.com/delhi/pizza-outlets/in/saket for a category page in a particular area (here "Saket") in a city. The URL looks a little different if you're searching for something which is not a category (or not mapped to a category, in which case we 301 redirect you to the category page), it looks like www.askme.com/delhi/search/pizza-huts/in/saket if you're searching for pizza huts in Saket, Delhi as "pizza huts" is neither a category nor its mapped to any category. We're also dealing in ads & deals along with our very own e-commerce brand AskMeBazaar.com to make the better user experience and one stop shop for our customers. Now, we're working on URL restructure project and my question to you all SEO rockstars is, what can be the best possible URL structure we can have? Assume, we have kick-ass developers who can manage any given URL structure at backend.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | _nitman0 -
Credit Links on Client Websites
I know there have been several people who have asked this but a lot of them were back in 2012 before many of the google changes. My question is the same though. With all the changes with Google's algorithm. Is it okay to put your link on the bottom of your clients website. Like Web Design by, etc. Part of the reason is to drive traffic but also if someone is actually interested who designed the website, they will click it. But now reading about how bad links can hurt you tremendously, it makes me second guess if this is ok. My gut feeling says, no.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blackrino0 -
Why is my client's site not ranking anymore? Like big time!
Ok, I'm reaching out to all of you Moz'rs for some help with this one. My client's site has dropped off the face of google in a real short period of time. It went from page 1 (avg rank 3 to page 6 (avg rank 50) and below in the matter of 2 weeks. Here's some facts: 1. DA is a 22 and homepage PA is a 31. It outranks all other sites in its competitive set. 2. The homepage used to be the page that displays for keyword searches, now its the FAQ page, which has a lower PA of 23. Why has the home page seemingly vaporized? And, why is the FAQ showing as the first result? What should I start checking. I feel paralyzed, not sure where to start. More info: a. There are no alerts present in Webmaster Tools. b. For some reason the homepage (domain.com) was 301'd to domain.com/home.html. Domain.com is indexed by Google, however, domain.com/home.html is not. If this is the issue, what is the best way to handle it? Thanks in advance for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rhoadesjohn1 -
Ranking for local searches without city specific keywords?
Hey guys! I had asked this question a few months ago and now that we are seeing even more implicit information determining search results, I want to ask it again..in two parts. Is is STILL best practice for on-page to add the city name to your titles, h1s, content etc? It seems that this will eventually be an outdated tactic, right? If there is a decent amount of search volume without any city name in the search query (ie. "storefont signs", but no search volume for the phrase when specific cities are added (ie. "storefront signs west palm beach) is it worth trying to rank and optimize for that search term for a company in West Palm Beach? We can assume that if there are 20,000 monthly searches for the non-location specific term that SOME of them would be fairly local, so do we optimize the page without the city name and trust Google to display results with a local intent...therefore showing our client's site in the SERPS when someone searches "sign company" and they are IN West Palm Beach? If there is any confusion, please just ask me to clarify! I think this would be a great WhiteBoard Friday topic for Rand!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Will changing a subdirectory name negatively effect local ranking?
We submitted a group of 50+ franchise stores into UBL to fulfill directory listings back in September. We are now looking at changing the some of the URL structure to include city names. Example: website.com/store/store-name(not city) to website.com/location/city-store-name Will changing the subdirectory and resubmitting to the directory aggregators negatively effect their search results? Thanks, Jake
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AESEO0 -
Code to change country in URL for locale results
How do I change the code in my URL to search in Google by specific location?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0