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.
Local Ranking with No Physical Address in New Service Area - How to Rank?
-
OK,
SO, I am a wedding company in Maui, Hawaii and have an established business on one island with a physical address. http://simplemauiwedding.net
We have started a new team in Oahu, Hawaii http://simpleoahuwedding.com and we provide service there and have a full team in place. How can I rank for Local Search on that Island with no physical address?
I would love to hear some proven strategies.
Thank you
-
Hey hey, Paul - you read my article! Woo hoo
Thank you. And thanks for your great contributions to this thread.
-
Hi William!
I'm so glad you're here, participating in Q&A. Thank you for being part of this conversation. I want to take a minute to explain why ThompsonPaul is saying "no no!" to non-physical addresses, in hopes that it may be good learning moment for lots of community members.
P.O. boxes, mailboxes, virtual offices, etc, are a violation of Google's guidelines, which state:
Use a precise, accurate address to describe your business location. PO Boxes or mailboxes located at remote locations are not acceptable.
Though you are absolutely right, William, that some mail services provide a street address, it's so important to remember that Google can read street level signage. So, if Steven's wedding company were to try to list at such a location, Google can easily see that they're looking at a mailing office instead of a business with a sign outside of it saying "Steven's Wedding Company". Important to remember that customers and competitors can see this, too, using Streetview, and can easily report any offending business for spam.
ThompsonPaul has linked to my recent Moz Blog post in which I explain that the results of being detected at an ineligible location would be a "hard penalty" causing listing removal, rendering any money, time or effort that had been put into building up the fake location listing null. We don't know for certain how this might, then, influence Google's feelings about the entire brand ... but I wouldn't want to risk that my spammy behavior in City B wasn't somehow putting a black mark next to my legitimate location in City A.
Finally, when this topic comes up, I always like to touch on the ethics of the thing. Smart businesses know that it can spell doom to be cited by the consumer public for deceptive practices. Not only has a failure to live up to truth-in-advertising standards led to public lawsuits, it has really tarnished brands. So, it's just good business to be 100% honest in how you present a business to the public, including being truthful about its physical locations. Anything else is a risk.
Good discussion going on here, William. Hopefully we can all learn something about these challenges from participating.
-
Hi Steven!
So, basically, the answer is: you can't. I know that's not what you want to hear, but it is the reality for nearly all single location businesses that serve multiple cities. Google's bias toward physical location affects all service business models this way. Unless you can get a staffed, physical office in the second city, it will be a waste of your time to make it your goal to rank in the local results for that city. Instead, your options are:
-
Go after organic rankings for that city via the authority you build surrounding website content+links for that city.
-
Pay for visibility with locally-targeted PPC.
-
Use social media to try to build brand awareness for your work in that city.
-
Do everything you can to encourage word-of-mouth among existing customers. Customers in City A have friends and family in city B. Make a superior effort to offer the type of superior service that would cause the A group to recommend your services to the B group. Consider how loyalty programs might assist with this. Perhaps every customer who brings you a new customer gets a voucher for a free dinner, free massage, etc.
-
Explore building relationships with related businesses in City B. Perhaps your company does everything but bake the cake for weddings. Find the best bakers in City B and see how you can help one another in terms of lead gen.
A combination of all these efforts could begin generating some leads for you that are not dependent on the unrealistic goal of ranking locally where you aren't locally located. Hope this helps!
-
-
I'm well aware of the reasons why small business owners might not want to have their home addresses listed, but it doesn't change the fact that Google will not allow use of UPS Store-type mailing addresses to pretend to be business locations. It's not a matter of having a "verifiable address" it's a matter of adhering to the requirement that you must have an actual business presence at that specific location where customers can come in person for service/sales.to qualify the local GMB address.
It is possible to set your home address, then select that it should be hidden and function as a local service area business instead.
But trying to get away with using a non-conforming "pretend" address will get you delisted when caught (and Google is very good at catching such non-conforming addresses in many ways, if it even lets you verify it in the first place.)
This is not just my opinion - it's specifically stated by Google in their own GMB terms of service. In fact, Local Search expert Miriam Ellis just posted about this in her Not-Actually-The-Best Local SEO Practices. To quote:
"Once caught, any effort that was put into ranking and building reputation around a fake-location listing is wasted."
Paul
-
Many people work from home and do not want to use their home address. I am sure we all know why. It is just not a good idea. It is their legal right to have a verifiable local mailing address in which they can send and receive mail. Another option is a local coworking space or execitive office space that offers mail and meeting space on an as needed basis.
The important thing is that it is a real address. You use it for real business and it can be verified.
Have a great 2018!
-
Unfortunately, these types of "pretend" business addresses are specifically against Google's ToS for Google My Business locations. It's pretty easy for them to detect and they'll nuke your location listing as a result.
-
Thanks William!
-
You need to get a mail box addres such as Mail Boxes Etc or the UPS store that gives you a physical street address. If you want to get into local that is your best and easiest option.
Make sure the address gets verified like any other address would, and never use a "Post Office" box. That will not give you the verifiable address as far as I know.
Hope this helps.
Best Regards
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
-
How do I rank for a different business categories on google local?
Hello, How do I appear on the local listings for google in different categories or services that I offer? For instance, we're a physical therapy clinic by trade but we specialize in orthopedics, sports medicine, and lower back pain. Thus, how do I rank on google local for these types of services? Currently, we rank for physical therapy but we also miss out on a big part of our business by not ranking for these listings on local. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Cheers, Scott
Local Listings | | scottgray06200 -
How to remove a link in GMB "Products & Services: places.SinglePlatform.com"
I manage a GMB account for an HVAC client and noticed in their knowledge graph it shows: "Products & Services: places.SinglePlatform.com" I cannot find this anywhere on the backend on GMB. Has anyone experienced this and how did you fix/remove the link? Luckily, the link goes to the clients profile on SinglePlatform, but the info is outdated.
Local Listings | | Bryan_Loconto0 -
Improve Google Business ranking
While my client's websites have been ranking well in SERP for their keyterms I'm at a lost on what I can do to improve their Google business/map presence. I'm referring to their listing where the top three come up or when you search on Google Maps.
Local Listings | | FPK
https://gyazo.com/26ec78ed7f712157ec72492199545431 Ex 1. Several months ago my client was ranked #1 both for SERP and maps until they dropped to 2nd on maps. Now they're ranked 1st in search yet 2nd for local business rankings as you can see from the screenshot above. At one point my client's business did have more reviews than the 1st ranking business yet they still weren't 1st. Ex. 2. Client(s) is ranked 4th in search and doesn't show in the top 3 map listings for their search term. If you click on More places to view Google Maps they're listed all the way down as the 15th listing or worse can't even be found when searching by their main SEO key term . Of course they are found by searching for their business name so it's not like there is a problem with the listing. I make sure to: Completely fill out their Google Business profile(NAP, hours and add pictures) Have my client try to gain positive reviews Manage and respond to reviews(mainly the negative ones) Add map and Google business link to their website Can anyone offer any other insight on what else can be done to improve their local presence on maps that I might be missing?0 -
Address consistency issue between GMB and directories
We have a mortgage broker client, ABC, who shares an address with another business, XYZ who is a loans company. A previous SEO agency created GMBs for these 2 businesses using the same physical address and recently, we had to resolve this issue of duplicate address with Google. ABC was happy for us to fix the issue up by putting a unit no. "A" thus making their address "#7A Smith Street" and business XYZ now has #7B on their GMB. Our question is will this affect consistency if we were to build citations without "#7A Smith Street" but just using "7 Smith Street" which is their REAL physical address? Business XYZ has also just contracted us for SEO which means we will end up building citations for 2 businesses with the same business address (but different phone numbers). Should we actually continue using "#7A" and "#7B" for citation building even though that's not what their address is? Thank you in advance for your response!
Local Listings | | Gavo1 -
How to change your location for local search results?
Hi Everybody Back in december 2015 I came across this article https://gofishdigital.com/google-results-change-location/ explaining how to change location for local search results using the google emulation tool by setting up new coordinates. This was also picked up by mikeblumenthals' blog as being one of the best way of doing this. I tried it at the time and it worked very well. I tried using it last week and again this week but my location no longer seems to update. I have tried it on fifferent computers located in different locations and still it doesn't work. Does anyone know if this feature is no longer available and if not what else they'd recommend to verify local search results. Thanks
Local Listings | | coolhandluc0 -
Address Format for Local SEO
Hi, Ive been reading how important it is to get the address of a business consistent and written in the right format to help with Local Search Engine Rankings. Is this correct? If this is the case, are there any online generators to help create this html in the right format to put into a webpage. Thank you.
Local Listings | | Ampweb0 -
Transferring SEO services from one agency to another - troubles, concerns, etc.?
Hey Moz Community, I have a friend I'm asking for who has an agency and will be taking over SEO from another agency. One thing that worries me is that the agency has confirmed dozens of locations in Google Places (about 60-100) for this business. How would you transfer Google Places ownership (assuming they cooperate)? Could the previous agency delete these listings? If so, how would that affect Local SEO? For example, the location and phone number is already on the website. Isn't that good enough for all of these locations (about 100)? I hope this is clear; please let me know if not. I would be interested in hearing any other feedback about moving agencies. Thanks, Cole
Local Listings | | ColeLusby0 -
Bright Local - Citation Burst. Winner or Loser?
Bright Local have a package called "Citation Burst." This looks great but, we all know directory submissions can have an extremely negative impact. Has anyone used Bright Local for Citation Burst, please let me know? Thanks Gary
Local Listings | | GaryVictory1