What (Local SEO) NAP to use when your country doesn't use Suite #s?
-
New Zealand does some good things, for example we grow hairy fruit called Kiwifruit, put other fruit into bottles and call it Sauvignon Blanc, but we can also be a bit, well...fruity.
My problem is that when we Kiwis list out NAPs we do it like this: ABC Company, Level 1, 123 Example St. Now the fruity bit is we don't have Suite #s, there is never: ABC Company, Suite #400 Level 1, 123 Example St. We just expect you to go up to level 1 and bl@ody well find the office thanks very much (yea there are signs).
It seems like a Local SEO shared office situation but it's the whole floor! I'm worried if I get an office in an office building then I will have my results merged with Extremely-Boring-Accountant and Angry-Lawyer who happen to be on the same level.
What's a Local SEO aware guy to do?
-
Thanks, will do
-
Hi Bruce,
Thanks for your patience. I did get a chance to speak with my colleague - Nyagoslav Zhekov of NGSMarketing.com, and he feels that Google will be sophisticated enough to handle this issue, especially given that this is par for the course in your country. Likely Google handles this the way they do shopping malls here in the U.S. Just be sure your business name and phone number are unique to you, and cross your fingers that no problems arise.
-
Thanks Miriam
-
If I log out of normal moz, and then click the login button at the bottom of this thread and login, then I am Q&A logged in. Weird.
-
Hi Bruce,
This is quite interesting, what you've described regarding New Zealand addresses. I'm going to ask a colleague who has done quite a bit of local work in NZ if he has any info about Google's ability to handle this. I will hop back in if he is kind enough to respond to me. One would presume that Google gets this about your country (love those little kiwi birds, btw) but I'll see what I can find out!
-
Yeah I thought Miriam Ellis was the subject matter expert and I've copied her advice below (there is no solution) from 13 months ago. I'm kinda hoping that there is updated advice and even perhaps a solution?
"It's important to understand that no matter how many citations you get, you are at risk of their 'power' being split between you and any other business sharing the address, and simply confusing the bots further. It might be helpful to visualize being a bot here. If you see 50 references around the web to Jane's Hair Salon, 23 for Jenny's Yoga and 72 for Bill's Martial arts all stating that they are located at 123 Main street, who do you believe? Therein lies the problem and it's not going to be a winning situation for any of the businesses mixed up in this. Google has never handled the concept of shared addresses well. Unfortunately, in the real world, people do share addresses, but Google's system is not designed to cope with that, so either one abstains from participation in Google's local products, or finds a way to comply with them." - Miriam Ellis Oct 13 http://moz.com/community/q/local-seo-how-to-handle-multiple-business-at-same-address
-
Thanks Moosa. We use PO Box numbers.
-
Thanks for your quick response Federico. The issue is New Zealand does not use Suite #s at all.
-
My apologies for not responding to the responses earlier, I got caught in some sort of odd logged out bug for just the Q&A section
-
I'm going through the same issue with a client with 2 offices - both are shared.
I'm taking heed of the advice given at http://moz.com/community/q/local-seo-how-to-handle-multiple-business-at-same-address and http://moz.com/community/q/multiple-businesses-at-the-same-address-avoiding-google-places-trouble
-
When you don’t have it, you don’t have it… just use it with what you have and this won’t really be a problem for Google I guess…
But if you get some letter to your address how do you get it without the suite no.? #just wondering!!
-
Doesn't the building provide you with a suite number? (ask there)
They usually do for correspondence delivery. Try to see if you can get one, but if you can't then you should use what you have, without the suite # as there's none.
There are several businesses that run in a same "office" with just separate "areas" and use the same address, that shouldn't be a problem. In fact, the lack of a suite number isn't your problem, but the building's.
Hope that helps!
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
-
How do I best optimize a video for a client's name?
Hello everyone, I have a client who is obsessed with his videos being indexed directly under his site. We've already labeled his videos with his names, enhanced the meta data to the video to include his name, have added his website to his YouTube Channel, and also have synced his Google Plus Business Page with his YouTube Channel. Any other tips to further optimize his videos with his name? This is a new channel, with an age of only 2 weeks- but this client is being quite loud, and thought I would see if any Moz'ers have any other tips/ suggestions? Thanks Everyone! -Kristin
Image & Video Optimization | | Red_Spot_Interactive1 -
Google+ Local City Centroid Bias
It's well-known that Google has a bias towards businesses located closest to the center of the city being searched in. How can you tell where exactly Google considers to be the center of the city? I think that the way is to just search the city name on Google Maps and the marker will appear at where they consider the center of the city to be but just wanted to double check on that first.
Image & Video Optimization | | ChaseCameron0 -
How businesses get local citations without submitting them?
How do some businesses get listed in directories like YellowBook, SuperPages, MerchantCircle, etc. without submitting their information. For example, my dad's company listed themselves in YellowPages and Google Places years ago, but also show up in the ones listed above without having submitted the information to them or having paid anyone else to do it...
Image & Video Optimization | | ChaseCameron0 -
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 -
SEO for Explicit / Medical Pictures - Will It Hurt Rankings?
I have a client with page 1 rankings for several keywords. He wants to make some updates to his website. He is offering a new service and wants to show before and after photos of the procedure. He is an OB/GYN, so the before/after pictures are very explicit and have full nudity. How will this affect his rankings? Is there something that I can do to tell Google and other SE's that these photos are medical and not pornographic? Should I host them on another domain? Just looking for thoughts and insight. Thank you in advance!
Image & Video Optimization | | itrogers0 -
As a whitehat SEO how do you manage in a highly competative market?
I have a competator that has literally hundreds of sites like this: http://www.wire-shelf.com/tag/cleaning/ that don't have a huge amount of page authority, but he is getting citations out of all of them. The site is obviously useless, and just a place for some SEO company to keep adding more links to their various clients, and creating google citations for them at the same time. Once you have filled out your information on every single local database and obtained all the legit citations you can, your competitors are still beating you by having more citations, from various sites like the one above. Is there any way to stay whitehat and actually succeed? or should i just follow suit, and make 100 crappy websites full of crap and put links in them. seems silly, but it seems like the only way to compete these days.
Image & Video Optimization | | adriandg0 -
Are there SEO benefits to Flickr?
Recently I keep hearing "Flickr" and "SEO" pop up together. For example, this mashable article said it was good for seo. I don't understand since it's a no follow. Are there seo benefits to using Flickr. Thanks for your help!
Image & Video Optimization | | DevonIntl0 -
Maximising Local Search
Hi, I work for a weather company. I have recently begun to define a keyword strategy to target specific keyphrase segments with the objective to maximise webpage visibility and increase CTR. One growing keyphrase segment is "location weather" based searches (e.g. "London Weather", "Manchester Weather"). I am keen to understand how I can maximise our presence for location weather searches within the SERPs. This seems to be a common trends seeing as Google announced that over 20% of all searches contain a relevance to locality. I have been trying to understand if there is a way to maximise our location based weather pages, perhaps using the Google Local search tactic and if there are any recommendations you could suggest? ISSUE: In order to maximise your presence through local search you need a fixed address, something our site does not offer, however it does offer bespoke landing pages for a specific weather forecast based on locality (city, town etc) Essentially, are there any recommendations you can provide a website that offers specific location based pages (without a fixed address) to maximise our location weather based search rankings within the SERPs? Many thanks Simon
Image & Video Optimization | | simonsw1