Home address for service professionals?
-
I often work with people who are in service industries who do not have a business address (dog sitters, pilates teachers, personal trainers, house cleaners). They often work by going into someone's home to provide the service.
However in some of these industries independent contractors compete with businesses who have a brick and mortar location. This presents an SEO challenge when a serp features a 7-pack of local business.
When I search "masseuse" I get a 7-pack after a Wikipedia result, and a merriam-webster result. So being in the 7-pack is essential for any real traffic for the term.
One solution to this problem is to have the contractors use their home address for their Google places listing, Yelp, etc. Is this a good idea?
I'm a little worried about this technique because these independent contractors don't actually bring clients into their homes. Also it would be misleading if someone was searching for a place to go to get a massage instead of having someone come to their home.
But the presence of 7pack in a serp really puts these people at an unfair advantage.
Would you use a home address? Do you have any other suggestions as to how to level the playing field in these cases?
-
Hi Jesse,
Thank you for coming to Q&A to ask your question! Here are Google's Places Guidelines in full for your perusal:http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=107528
The main rule that applies to the situation you are describing is this one:
"Only businesses that make in-person contact with customers qualify for a Google Places listing."
The clients you are describing are certainly making in-person contact with their clientele.
Google is well aware of the fact that there are millions of go-to-client businesses (chimney sweeps, landscapers, window washers, etc.). The trouble is that they have tended to treat these business models as though they were less deserved of their attention, not offering very specific guidelines for them.
But, basically, any business that makes in-person contact with its customers qualifies as local. Whether the customers come to you or you go to them doesn't matter. So, if the home is the office from which the business owner is going out to serve his customers, it is perfectly accurate to list his home address as his headquarters.
What I have found to actually be the most difficult aspect of this in the years I've been doing Local SEO is that many business owners who operate out of the home are concerned about privacy. Some do not want their home address out there on the web either because they simply value privacy or because they are concerned that customers may come by their home expecting it to be a walk-in office. So, this is something that each home-based business has to make a decision about: is inclusion in Google Places worth these risks? If they are truly competitive, the answer will probably be yes, because non-inclusion pretty much means invisibility.
Regarding P.O. Boxes, virtual offices and the like, this is not an allowed option, as stated in the guidelines:
Do not create listings at locations where the business does not physically exist. P.O. Boxes are not considered accurate physical locations. Listings submitted with P.O. Box addresses will be removed.
Regarding Google's service radius tool - be careful using this. There is little evidence that it helps one to rank in cities outside of one's physical location, whereas I have seen evidence that using the tool too broadly can have a rather negative effect. I prefer not to use it for my clients.
Over the years, I have often written about the need for Google to start treating this massive number of go-to-client business models as equally important. They've introduced things like the service radius feature, but I feel that isn't really a worthwhile instrument at this point. It's better to focus your Place Page (and other local profiles) on your single physical location and then use your website to build out geographic content for the different towns/cities/counties you service.
At any rate, hope this gets you off the on the right foot!
Miriam -
I THINK a PO Box would not be good as it would not be as universally accepted, but possibly an SEOMOZ associate could chime in on that?
SHane
NM I found it, and the guy that answered works for Google so the answer in NO a PO box is not accepted at Google Places
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Places/thread?tid=0cd635a1627dcb81&hl=en
-
Thanks Shane,
That is helpful. You actually touch on another question of mine which is whether it is better for home based service providers to use a PO box or whether to use a home address.
If these local directories don't accept PO boxes that is a clear answer. I'll look into it.
Thanks again for your input.
-
Hi,
I know for certain that in Google Places you can actually specify that the "Service Provider" comes to customers locations and you can set it for a radius of up to 635 miles (could be wrong on the #)
You can also hide the address, so in this instance the home address would be the place of business and would not be unethical due to probably with Tax records (and such) the Home address IS the business address, but it is hidden so will not "confuse" the end user.
I am ALMOST certain that you can do this in most local directories as well, such as Yelp and Local.com, but don't quote me on that but if you cannot ( I do not think they accept PO Boxes) so for local citations to gain Google Places exposure you may want to use the home address IF NECESSARY.
Hope this helps
w00t!
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
-
Can I use PO boxes as an actual business Address?
Hi mozzers, A potential future client(electrician) covers 40+ locations in one region(local SEO) but only has 1 address. He wants to rank for at least 5 to 7 main locations which he has PO boxes for. Can I use these as addresses on his website or will it be seen as violating the google guideline? If it is no good what should I do? Thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Google Places UK address has randomly changed to a US address in Texas!
Hello, one of my clients has 2 Google Places listings, both UK addresses. However one of them has randomly changed to a US address in Texas, and it won't let me update the country unless I create a new listing.... https://www.google.co.uk/maps/preview#!q=the+43+club&data=!4m16!1m15!4m8!1m3!1d22152595!2d12.5088275!3d47.73855!3m2!1i1440!2i774!4f13.1!7i10!9m1!6e0!10b1!17b1!25b1!6m1!1e1&fid=1 As you can see the second listing is Texas, but it should be: Tall Trees Cottage, Winkfield Road, Ascot, Berkshire, SL5 7EX. 0208 144 0166 Any help would be great. Thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | Kerry_Jones0 -
Any Legit Local Address Services Out There?
I have a client who lives in the UK but runs a US ecommerce site. I'd still like to get him some local trust signals but he has no options when it comes to getting an address here. Has anyone found a reputableplace where you can rent an address that isn't already being used by umpteen other companies?
Image & Video Optimization | | iAnalyst.com0 -
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 -
Targeting cities and services
I'm having a dilemma about targeting different cities and services. My client has offices in different cities but the services offered are the same. Let's say for divorce, the current url structure is website/city1/divorce website/city2/divorce website/city3/divorce 6 different locations so that makes 6 different divorce pages. They offer 13 services so there are 7 different pages of each of the 13 services targeting different cities. I hope I said that clearly but I guess you know what I mean. My problem is the pages are kinda competing with each other since all of them are about the same topic. It also messes up the internal linking since sometimes you link to one city using the anchor text "divorce" and then link to a different city later on using the same keyword. Any advice on how to target different cities and services better? I was thinking of subdomains in order to target the different locations without having competing pages but I'm not sure if it's a good idea. city1.website.com/service city2.website.com/service That way each site is stand alone. What do you think? Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | spersily0 -
Help - Google places,a service my competitor has used...
I was just doing a bit of detective work on a competitors website and noticed they had employed the services of an SEO company. Anyway, i went on this SEO companies website and discovered they offer a service called "Google places". Now I have an idea what google places is (my company is registered with it) but how are SEOs using Google places as a method for SEO? And how can I copy this service to do this for my own website?
Image & Video Optimization | | copywritingbuzz0 -
Multiple Businesses at the Same Address - Avoiding Google Places Trouble
I'm trying to avoid problems with Google Places; this is like "address confusion", but is rather "business confusion". We have a gym at a street address with a suite number, and a number of personal trainers who work out of the gym. Several of them have their own websites and their own Google Places pages. 1 trainer has a Yelp account that lists the gym's street address including the suite number, and a Places page with the gym's street address. 2 trainers have the gym's street address on their personal/individual business websites, 1 with and 1 without the suite number. Is any of this going reduce Google's confidence in the accuracy of which business is really at the street address and suite number? What should we tell/require of our trainers in relation to this, if anything? Is there a chance Google will merge the Places pages? Am I paranoid? (Google Places sometimes does at it wishes, to the dismay of several of my clients.....) I do know that there are often many businesses in a building, each with their own suite numbers, and nothing bad happens. But ours is a case of multiple personal training businesses (including the gym: a small personal training studio) all at the same address And suite number. Thanks for any insight or ideas!
Image & Video Optimization | | TheSEOWiz0 -
Australian Service that Allows you to Control all your Local Listings
Hey, After a few stumbles upon a variety of services that allows you to manage all your local listings from the one profile (the latest one was Yext.com). It got me thinking - is there an Australian equivalent? My research revealed nothing. Thanks.
Image & Video Optimization | | LukeyJamo1