Local SEO without a GBL
-
Hey everyone,
I'm working with a local catering company that does not have a physical address available for use. Because of privacy concerns, the company is not open to using their home address. The local competition in the targeted area is fairly strong and established already. Does anyone have ideas on how I can work around this?
-
You bet, Andrew! Please keep the good questions coming
-
Thank-you Miriam. I appreciate your response here.
-
Hi Andrew,
As Brooks has highlighted, your client's catering business sounds like a service area business (SAB) and is therefore eligible for a Google My Business listing, provided the staff meets face-to-face with its customers. Your client will need to enter their address when creating the listing and then select the options Brooks as pointed out so that the street address won't be public on the live listing.
That being said, there are some nuances to this. Google did have a bug, in recent memory, during which they briefly showed the addresses of SABs. It was a temporary issue.
Given this, the conversation you need to have with the client surrounds whether their privacy concerns are so extreme that they don't want their street address ever to appear anywhere on the Internet however briefly, or, whether, like most home-based businesses, they just don't want customers showing up at their house thinking it's a walk-in business.
If the former, your hands are tied to doing a limited Local SEO campaign for them and you'll have to rely on Organic SEO, PPC, and Social to get the word out as best you can.
If the latter, then the SAB listing is the solution for this client. It's Google's policy not to show the addresses of these businesses, and you can restrict other citation building to the sites listed in the Phil Rozek article Brooks has linked to. You'll at least be able to do a good, pretty complete campaign for them in this scenario, though not quite as thorough as you can for an SAB that doesn't care whether their address is published on some platforms.
Hope this helps and that you'll have that conversation with the client to discover the source of their objections, whether that be a strong fear or a simple concern over inconvenience.
-
While you have to have a physical address to create a listing, I do think it's possible to hide your address on Google My Business.
While editing Info > Address:
- Select 'Yes' to the prompt: I deliver goods and services to my customers at their location.
- Once you've done that, you will see a checkbox option for: I also serve customers at my business address. (Your address will be hidden from the public if this box isn't checked.) I believe if that is checked, your physical address will be hidden.
Additionally, I've found this article from Phil Rozek very helpful in identifying other local directories that allow you to hide your physical address, and help increase your local signals: http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2013/04/22/private-local-citations-where-can-you-list-your-business-but-hide-your-address/
I 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
-
Local SEO penalty?
Hi Moz Community We are in a unique position. We just launched a new site for a client. The site was doing fine before but it wasn't very user friendly. We created a site with almost identical architecture and content as the last one, just new design and layout. Within 5 days, the site dropped off of LOCAL search almost completely, it now ranks on the 9th page in Austin Texas. (reliantplumbingdotcom). Every other location (Dallas, LA, Philadelphia, Houston) all show the site on the first page for relevant keywords (Austin Plumbers, Austin Plumber) I have no idea what to think about this and don't know if we're being penalized somehow (checked GSC and no manual penalty) I have never experienced a site being blacklisted locally but well ranked everywhere else. Thoughts?
Local Listings | | GrueBleenAgency1 -
Do any Local Rank Trackers Report This Way?
I'm having trouble finding a local rank tracking service with useful reporting. I've tried several and for the money, have gravitated toward's Whitespark's service as for $25/month I can track unlimited locations. But their report is indicative of what I've seen time and time again in my 18-year experience as a Software Developer and Internet Marketer. Whomever is making the design decisions isn't a Seasoned (Local) SEO, and/or probably hasn't done their homework well enough by talking to seasoned SEOs. Their Summary Report looks like this (see attachement). When I'm doing Local SEO I'm looking at a lot of reporting data but among that, probably the most important is: How many of the listings moved up into position #1-3 on Local Finder which is also usually the Local 3-Pack (sometimes a 2-pack explaining the discrepancy in the first two rows between the number in the #1-3 column.) I also want to know how many listing moved UP into the #4-10. And vice versa, what fell out of #1-3 and #4-10. The problem with the format of this report, if a listing falls from #2 to #5, it will be a decrease in #1-3 and an INCREASE for #4-10. This would give me the false impression that a listing that was below #10 came into the #4-10 when in actuality the increase in #4-10 was because of a decrease in #1-3!! One situation is positive the other is negative. What I want to know is how many listings (totals without getting out the calculator): moved up into #1-3 (White Spark does this via the Increase column in the Local 3-Pack row) moved up into #4-10 moved down out of #1-3 to #4-10 moved down out of #1-3 to below #10 moved down out of #4-10 to below #10. Does anyone know of local tracking services that give you this kind of data in this way? XQppQKs.jpg
Local Listings | | Consult19010 -
Should I use a vanity address when creating local citations?
My client is opening a new location of their business in the Dallas area and has listed the location on their website under Dallas, but their technical address is Farmers Branch. They have not started any citation building efforts, so I will be creating all citations from scratch. Should I create citations using the vanity address containing Dallas or list Farmers Branch as the city?
Local Listings | | CaddisInteractive0 -
How to handle Local SEO when two businesses merge
Hi, I have a landscaping client who is buying another company and merging the two companies together. I trying to figure what the best way to handle this type of situation is. Here are the specifics. Company A I've been working with him for a number of years, he has a really robust site with good content and with really good rankings. I've done a ton of citations, he's in good shape. His company has decent name recognition. Company B My client is buying Company B. Their site is really poor, no SEO done on site and no directory listing work. The company has great name recognition in the community and gets most clients through word of mouth. My client has decided to take Company B's name because its a more well known company. He is going to merge the companies, because he doesn't want to have 2 companies from a management standpoint. He plans to keep both physical locations open. So here are my questions. Do I keep both sites live for a period of time and put a message notifying people that "Company A is now Company B Name"? OR Do I transfer all the good content from Company A's site to Company B's site and do a 301 redirect of the URL. How should I handle the data aggregators and directory listings? I'm trying to keep all the great natural traffic that Company A gets to its site, start to build traffic around company B's location while following all of Google's policies. I could just start over and in the long-term they'd be fine, but I really love to find a strategy to avoid my client taking a big hit in organic traffic. Thanks in advance Mozzers!
Local Listings | | JohnWeb121 -
Google Local Listing Ranking/Traffic Metrics in the Google Search Console?
A client of mine asked me if it was possible to see local listing data (ranking/traffic stats) in the Google Search Console for a URL. I figured the Google Search Console only shows organic metrics not 3-pack/local listing performance. However I could be mistaken. Does the Google Search Console report this?
Local Listings | | RosemaryB0 -
Local search result not showing
Hi Mozzers, I'm not a huge expert on local SEO.. the thing is when searching for our brand + city. or brand name specific or anything we do not get the map on the right with our contact info and such.
Local Listings | | kayintveen_MD
To be sure this is what we've done. We have a google+ page + verified content (for more than 4 months now) We have images, opening times, email, url's and such filled in (for 4 months now) We are on several local sites with our address, and such We do have some old listings here and there where we have old addresses but its just a few and we are on it to update / deleting them We have Microdata on our site with our address, lat lang and such. All address data on social, and few other pages are super in sync with each other. We are located in the Netherlands so a lot of info on this site we cannot use, becuase they don't accept us for example. Very curious on some interesting info how to optimize and why we are not showing.0 -
Yext & Moz Local - Avoiding Dupliates
What happens if we are using Yext and Moz Local at the same time? I hear it can create duplicates. However if the NAP is exactly the same on both, why cant the aggregators/citation sources figure this out on their own? I need to develop a clearer understanding before i start submitting a select few of my clients through Yext. I do have the option to opt out of the Factual aggregator on Yext. Instead we would only update the sites that Yext has access to. End of day we are going to continue using Moz.com/local but yext saves us dozens of man hours while trying to clean up citations and fix duplicates (temporarily ofcourse until we contact them ourselves).
Local Listings | | waqid0 -
Difference between Moz Local and Whitesparks
What is the largest difference between Moz Local account and using Whitesparks Citation Builder? Does anyone use both together?
Local Listings | | cschwartzel0