Off-Page Local SEO for a Home-Based Businesses?
-
What are some ideas for optimizing for off-page local SEO when you're working with home-based businesses that don't necessarily want to share their physical address, and using a PO box is not an option for major local SEO directories?
-
Do they have a service area where the company goes to other locations to perform the business? There are ways to deal with that in local. Otherwise, it may be a little more tricky or not appropriate to be in local directories. If you can share a little more information I'll make sure the correct person sees this question. Thanks!
-
That is always though because as you know the address is part of NAP consistency which is at the core of local ranking factors. I would suggest getting some unstructured citation (partial citations) just by using his phone number or his company name.
http://www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/13-what-is-a-citation
http://www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/12-how-to-identify-quality-citation-sources
Good luck!
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
-
Videos on Home Page
Hello, My company is currently in the process of editing our website's homepage. My creative team wants to add several videos to an already big home page. I would like a more simple and less interactive home page. There has to be close to a half dozen videos already on the page. I know that Google bots have trouble crawling some items like java. I also know that page speed is a huge factor and the mobile first index is quickly approaching. Is it ok to have all of these videos on home page? Could this due harm to the page. All the videos are hosted on Vimeo and typically expand from some sort of icon. Page load time has been an issue and this will probably be our last update before google's mobile first index. I just want to make sure I am giving the correct advice by saying there is no problem with 6+ videos on a home page. Any advice would be great! Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | aua0 -
Tracking Numbers and Local Listings
Hello all, had a quick question about the pros and cons of claiming a bunch of local listings and using a tracking # on our business profiles with those listings rather than our actual #. Anyone have any insight into whether this is good or bad practice and why? Thanks in advance!
Image & Video Optimization | | goldbergweismancairo0 -
Apparently now OK to use PO boxes to optimize local search?
I've always stood behind what I thought was Google's policy of not recognizing PO boxes. But it seems like all you have to do now is create one and take 2 seconds to create a low-quality G+ page. The below link is to a screenshot that shows my guy (yay new, high quality site with growing, relevant, authoritative content!) just out of the local results. He's not technically in Athens, so we knew it was an uphill battle. What's annoying though is the low-quality G+ PO box result above him. https://www.diigo.com/item/image/4bxh7/yi1x I know the PO Box result is not great in a vacuum in terms of conversion, but fact is if it's just phone numbers you're after they're at a distinct advantage, with no effort. For my client, we've indicated in G+ that he has a service area that extends into Athens. If Google is now favoring G+ results, I'm wondering if my guy should get a PO box instead? yi1x
Image & Video Optimization | | PerfectPitchConcepts0 -
Google categories for local limousine service
I manage the Google places page for a SAB (local limousine company). The question is, should I add "taxi" and "airport shuttle service" as categories? I have listed only "limousine" and "car service' for now and I want to play it safe although those 2 are related to limo service. Sometimes people refer to limo service as "taxi service" or they are inquiring about prices for shuttle service to the airport and they end up booking the service quite often. Does Google look to our website to find these words in the content? Google Analytics show lots of people are finding us through those two keywords as well although you cannot find the word “taxi" on our website. The interesting thing is that when searching for "taxi + my zip code" the company shows up 4th on maps results and when searching for "shuttle service + my zip code”, the company shows up 2nd on local results and also 2nd in organic results. Is this enough to make me add these 2 categories? Second question is about the area served, does it make a difference (in rankings) if I choose “Distance from one location"over"List of areas served"? What happens is the red pin would be in a different location. If I choose "Distance from one location" the pin would be right in the center of the city (which I think it shouldn't matter anymore that much since the proximity to the centroid is not a ranking factor anymore). If “list of area” served is selected, (the city name will be chosen) then the pin would be about 5 miles West of the city center. Any thoughts will be appreciated. Thank you!
Image & Video Optimization | | echo10 -
Google local
If you perform a search in Google maps for our company and you are not signed in, it returns our Google + page, with reviews, photos, directions and about tabs, which is fine but, when you click on any of the photos, there is a window that opens to the right where you can edit the location where the photo has been taken, a comment box, photo details and above all, right at the top, MY NAME! Why my name? This is the business page, I don't want people to see that. The snip is below. Thanks! g3OTPRp
Image & Video Optimization | | echo10 -
Google Places - Local Search - Not ranking when 100% complete?
Hi I have followed the examples set by David Mihm and fully completed a Google Places listing - with the geographical area covering the area that it serves along with lots of local citations but when searching on google for 'accountants swansea' it is way down on page 4 of the places results. Does it take time for Google to recognise these changes to Places listings or is my listing incorrect to attract a high listing for the search phrase. Looking at the competition many of them have not optimised or done anything with their listings pages so I am at a loss to explain why the listing is doing so badly. The places listing is at http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/place?hl=en&prmd=imvns&biw=1280&bih=829&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=accountants+swansea&fb=1&gl=uk&hq=accountants&hnear=0x486e45555a4e97b1:0x3d77128e2fe7cb74,Swansea,+Neath+Port+Talbot&cid=9815784575213492240&ei=UN6WTt7UJ8rasga-ocTrAw&sa=X&oi=local_result&ct=placepage-link&resnum=7&ved=0CFcQ4gkwBjge
Image & Video Optimization | | idv0 -
Page speed not good despite CDN and caching. Can this be fixed?
My page speed results are here, showing a speed of 40 seconds. I get an F for compress text, compress images and cache static content.How do I resolve this? Also.. I've set up a CDN. Is it a problem for SEO, that there is a copy of all my images and content at cdn.mysite.com? We get lots of search traffic through google images search.
Image & Video Optimization | | devdg0 -
Canadian Local SEO gurus: What are the best citation sources?
I have been trying to gain some position in our local O-pack results and have used whitespark to hunt for citations and aquire as many as possible, but even after 4-5 months google has still not detected many of the citations we have added. What are you favourite citation sources? which ones really help? i.e. what are some quality canadian citation sources?
Image & Video Optimization | | adriandg0