PO box address for mutli reagional website
-
Hi Mozers
I have a multi regional website which serves uk, india, china, usa and more.
I want to increase my rankings for the specific country. I dont have a physical address at the UK and in am thinking of getting a PO box address and have it placed on the UK version of the site and also at google places/+.
Will having a PO box address against physical address help me in getting better ranks and will i be penalized in any way.
Looking forward for the views
-
So glad to help, Hitesh!
-
hey thank you for the info. will def look at the article to gain more insights on the same.
-
Hi Hitesh,
I think it would be really helpful if you did a quick study of the Google Places Quality Guidelines I linked to in the earlier post to get a sense of eligible and ineligible business models. In sum, in order to qualify for inclusion in Google's local product, a business must meet all of the following criteria:
-
Have face-to-face transactions with its customers - either at the company's location (like a restaurant) or at the clients' locations (like a plumber).
-
Have a unique, non-shared physical street address - not a virtual office of any kind.
-
Have a unique, non-shared local area code phone number - not a toll free or call tracking number.
If a company cannot say 'yes' to all three of those points, then it should not seek local inclusion. Instead, the company should rely on organic SEO, social media and forms of marketing apart from Local SEO to attain visibility in its focus markets. Hope this helps!
-
-
What if its a proper street address and I dont have physical staff present there?
-
Hi Hitesh,
P.O. boxes are strictly forbidden by the Google Places Quality Guidelines (https://support.google.com/places/answer/107528?hl=en), which read:
Do not create a listing or place your pin marker at a location where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations.
Without a real, staffed physical location at which business is conducted face-to-face with clients or from which employees go to visit clients at their homes or offices, a business is not eligible for local inclusion. Instead, it must rely on Organic SEO in an effort to compete. Hope this clarification saves you future headaches.
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 ranking penalty: Limited to specific pages or complete website?
Hi all, Let's say few pages on the website dropped in the rankings due to poor optimisation of the pages or hit by algo updates. Does Google limits the ranking drop only to these pages or the entire website will have any impact? I mean will this cause ranking drop to the homepage for primary keyword? Will Google pose the penalty to other pages in the website if few pages drop in the rankings. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
How much content is duplicate content? Differentiate between website pages, help-guides and blog-posts.
Hi all, I wonder that duplicate content is the strong reason beside our ranking drop. We have multiple pages of same "topic" (not exactly same content; not even 30% similar) spread across different pages like website pages (product info), blog-posts and helpguides. This happens with many websites and I wonder is there any specific way we need to differentiate the content? Does Google find the difference across website pages and blog-pots of same topic? Any good reference about this? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
What are the technical details (touchpoints) of a website gathered by Google?
Hi all, Google crawls all the webpages and gathers content to index and ranking. Beside this general info, what are the all other possible technical details Google will be gathered about a website to rank or penalise or optimise the website in SERP? Like IP address, DNS server, etc.......Please share your knowledge and ideas on this. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
What does it mean to build a 'good' website.
Hi guys. I've heard a lot of SEO professionals, Google, (and Rand in a couple of whiteboard Friday's) say it's really important to build a 'good' website if you want to rank well. What does this mean in more practical terms? (Context... I've found some sites rank much better than they 'should' do based on the competition. However, when I built my own site (well-optimised (on-page) based on thorough keyword research) it was nowhere to be found (not even top 50 after I'd 'matched' the backlink profile of others on page 1). I can only put this down to there being 'good quality website' signals lacking in the latter example. I'm not a web developer so the website was the pretty basic WordPress site.)
Algorithm Updates | | isaac6630 -
How long does it take for a website to starting ranking once the website becomes live?
I am in the process of finishing the last touches on my new company's website and I am wondering about the process of getting my new website to rank on google. I've heard many different things from many different people who believe they know everything about SEO, but they can't all be right. Is there a definite timeline? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | uofmiamiguy0 -
Increase of Directory websites in SERPs
Has anyone noticed a bump for Directory style websites in SERP after the recent Panda/Penguin updates . I am new to SEO but after monitoring one website in particular I have noticed that the site has dropped around 8 positions for location based queries and directory style sites such as yell.com, freeindex.co.uk, thompsonlocal.com all have seemed to moved up ever so slightly even above competior sites, which from memory were all below competior sites in previous search queries . I wonder what your thoughts are on this, or its possible that my site in question has been affected and I need to carry out more work to improve its positions back to its original. Your thoughts are welcome.
Algorithm Updates | | Carden0 -
If we are getting clicks from a local one box as a citation in the serps's would we see this as the referrer in GA?
If we are getting clicks from a local one box as a citation in the serps's
Algorithm Updates | | Mediative
would we see this as the referrer in GA?0 -
Why google index ip address instead of the domain name?
I have a website ,now google index ip address of it instead of the domain name,I have used 301 redirected to the domain name,but how to change the index IP to its domain name? And why google index the IP address?
Algorithm Updates | | frankfans1170