Creative way to secure local addresses for Google Places?
-
For those of us that operate business in other areas that we technically dont have an "address" in... are there any creative ideas/ways anyone has run across in securing a physical address that you can use for local listing?
I have already tried the virtual office type of companies, and their inventory is limited to major metropolitan areas.
-
I know of a company that likely worked out a deal with a chain of rent to own furniture stores and were able to get Google Places listings with their own unique local phone numbers at each physical address across the state of Texas. I notice now they do not have the places listings they once had? Maybe they did not hide their physical address as they should have since customers purchase online rather than come into store and Google shut all their places listings down. Not real sure. Also a lot of their local domains they bought do not seem to come up number 1, 2, 3 spots anymore. They appear on page 2 - 5 on Google although their main domain ranks for things well still.
-
Hi Ryan,
I think maybe you're right in that I'm not understanding the scenario you are describing (i.e., I don't know what your business does). The thing is, if you sell some type of a package to a bunch of real estate offices (just as an example) that doesn't mean you get to say you are located there. Now, if you were actually putting staff at the real estate offices and were getting a dedicated suite number and phone number within the office building for said staff, that would be akin to medical practices with multiple doctors in them. I'm not sure this if this is what you are describing, though. I'm not sure how much detail you are able to provide. More would be helpful.
-
Miriam-
I think you are assuming that I want to game the system, which is not the case. There are plenty of scenarios where securing a local address in a partnership with someone would be a great idea. i liked your post by the way, but in my case it actually strengthens the purpose:
I will have a local listing that does not accept customers at the location- hide the address and partner with a trusted source in areas that I do service. This is a perfectly legit plan, but need help executing.
-
Hi Guys,
I can't recommend attempting to secure addresses where you aren't physically located. Honesty is the best policy with this...if Google thinks something is fishy, their hammer is swift in falling and unforgiving. Also, be sure to take note on this new policy change if you are dealing with go-to-client-type business models:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-you-may-need-to-hide-your-google-places-address-asap
Rather than spending effort/time/money on getting addresses, my advice would be to hire a copywriter to start gunning for secondary organic rankings for all of your service locations. It's not only allowed, but it can really work.
-
Thmbs up'd. Love the idea! Not super easy to execute but could be very well it.
-
Please do! You can PM me here on SEOMOZ.
-
Agree on the value. I am probably going to hire/outsource someone to just focus on this task for me over the next few months.... well worth the money.
I will think about the franchise. The only slight issue I have there is that I am looking at a lot of small town places, so that may be hard. But worth a shot for sure.
One other idea I came up with that would work well for others (not myself because of competition) is real estate offices. Most franchises has locations in town, and the realtors run their own offices.
Will let you know what I find out on both ends.
-
I have never tried it, but I've also been pondering on the best method for this same subject. I'm not saying it would be easy but think about it.
You only have to cut one deal, with one major company that has a multitude of locations and your set.
Shoot! It could end up being worth it even if you hired a professional sales team to close that deal for you with the head honcho.
Many companies know the value an SEO company can bring to there business.
-
Thanks for the idea. have you done this before? The only worry i have with larger chains/franchises is that they would have to "run it up the flagpole" and i would get lost in the red tape. Has this worked for you though? I like the idea.
-
Piggyback on a franchise that has many locations by offering them some type of package deal of your services as an exchange.
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 Local deleted my Google+ Accounts
I had a Google places/local account with several different businesses listed at the same address--they are separate businesses. I recently received an email from Google saying this violated their terms of use. I am not allowed to have several businesses listed in Google local with the same address. Google decided which of the businesses to keep and which to neglect, despite my request. So essentially they are putting us out of business by not including our money-maker in local results. Recently my company moved and now we have different suite numbers for each business. A customer can come into any of those and purchase in person, or they can purchase online. In trying to clean up my Google local account, I deleted the least important businesses, trying to get the "money maker" on local results. But now I cannot have a local account because I do not have 10 businesses listed, but I cannot have 10 businesses because they all have the same address (now different suite #'s). My Google+ pages have been deleted due to the Local business deletion. When I search for our main keyword, companies come up from all over the US but none in Arizona where we are located. Is there any way to get my Google plus pages back? Is there any way to get my main site back on Google local? Can I assign a Google + page with a company?
Branding | | RoxBrock0 -
Enigma of Google & China - Can you solve it?
In March, my team in Shanghai launched a site redesign of our English language website (targeted at expats in China) which: Changed the URL's to be more SEO friendly (keyword based, shorter, etc) Implemented endless scrolling to replace previous pagination Changed some front end layouts Changed page title and meta description tags to use keywords, be unique, use correct lengths Since then, we see in Google Analytics, traffic form Google organic branded search terms has been steadily dropping (between 5 - 20% depending on the term). Not provided is down 2%. We do not rank for many non-branded terms, so have no statistical significance there. However in Google Webmaster Tools, impressions of branded queries are also down, along with non-branded search terms (including those we tried to optimise for). We see similar traffic drops from other search engines as well (Bing, Baidu) but not at as high a level (only 3% or so). We have not changed any other marketing strategy online or offline. We have tested / done: 1. Changing title tags 2. Reverting to old pagination (as we say in GWT a drop in indexed pages) 3. Checked the tracking code is working 4. Checked our rankings (we still rank position 1 for our branded queries and even some non branded) 5. Submitted new XML site map The only large issue we could find is that from that day there were over 300,000 page not found 404 errors (which we are now redirecting by 301s as Google shows them to us, and have been doing so for 2 weeks). Nothing is helping us so far, organic traffic continues to drop week on week, so I am reaching out to the Moz community. Can anybody think of a reason for such a dramatic drop? Please help!
Branding | | RingierOneAfricaMedia0 -
Why is Google suddenly not Ranking my page in a second language in its appropriate target country?
Hi, One of my clients has company Facebook pages in several languages. The page in Arabic, which was targeted at Saudi Arabia, used to rank 5th place on the search for the brand name. The page has a steady growth of followers and a high engagement rate. for the past week it suddenly completely fell off ranking and instead the English page ranks #5 in the results for the brand name in Saudi Arabia. What could have caused this change and what can we do to bring the target language page back to its ranking?
Branding | | JonsonSwartz0 -
Google +1's and Google+ Local
Hi fellow Mozers, I manage 5 brands at the national level, each with their own Google+ profile and then under each brand, there are several hundred physical locations, each with their own Google+ Local page. My question is, should we be encouraging visitors of each location's Google+ Local profile page to +1 the page? Does it have an influence on local rankings and overall SERP results? Our goal is to ultimately get our local websites to rank better than our less targeted brand sites and have our Google+ Local pages show in search results as much as possible. Our local businesses convert to leads, where our brand sites are one step out from that and are used to feed into a "find a location" result that takes the visitor to the local site.
Branding | | dsinger0 -
How to Merge Existing Google Local and Google Business pages?
Hey everyone, I'm getting a wee bit frustrated. I have looked at every blog post I can about merging Google Local and Google Business Pages and I can't figure it out. I already have a verified Google Local page here https://plus.google.com/107404063103285095864/about?gl=CA&hl=en-CA and a Google Business Page here https://plus.google.com/b/100116630212547145177/100116630212547145177/posts . Both are already verified. How do I merge these existing profiles which are already verified?
Branding | | jhinchcliffe0 -
Has anyone had problems with thier google maps page after the google plus intergration?
About a month ago Google contacted one of my clients to inform them that the Google places is discontinued and their Google plus page will be the new Google places. They gave my client an $100 adwards credit for adwords express so their location will still show up for their business name during the change from Google places to Google plus.. When you type in the business in a local area or on a GPS now.. It is no where to be found. You have to know the address to get directions or go there on a mobile devices. The Google plus page for all of these locations is not currently showing up either. I have contacted Google and Once again something has been released without implementing it correctly. No one seems to know what is going on... after talking to three people. Does anybody know what is going on ???? This is a huge deal when being a local company.
Branding | | JohnParker27920 -
What is the impact of the new google+ share button on SERP
Hello mozzers, I'm currently wondering what will be the impact of the new social signal ( Google+ Share ) on SERP an organic traffic. As we all know by now , Facebook share have an higher social signal authority then the Facebook like on SERP @Randfish posted some great info at: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/facebook-twitters-influence-google-search-rankings Since Google rolled out the new Google+ Share social signa at : https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/share/?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=gplusdevelopers&utm_campaign=shareplugin I was wondering if somebody had the chance to do some clear testing on the SERP impact of this new social signal even if its a fresh addition to the social signals. Best regards, Yan Desjardins - Online marketing manager
Branding | | SherWeb0 -
Signals to trigger Google Shopping Results?
I am in the process of setting up a shopping cart for a customer. We will probably use osCommerce. Are there established best practices and guidelines to make one's cart trigger results in the Google "Shopping" category? For instance, using microdata and the semantic markup from Schema.org? Any experience here is welcome.
Branding | | networkelites0