Local SEO and Street Address Confusion

[SEO-Pump.com]

I've been doing a website for a local business and taking it upon myself to implement some local SEO in order to get a little more experience with the application o local SEO to a real-world scenario.

One thing I am a little unsure about however is the appropriate business address to use for things such as Google Places, Google maps, etc.

Basically, it when the business was initially started, the owners build the facility 30 yards from their house.  To be more specific it is a self storage facility that includes several largish buildings.  So, when the original owners ran it, they I don't know if they listed the legal business address as "400 Streetname St." or the address of the actually buildings which would be something like "415 Streetname St."  But regardless it wasn't an issue then.

At this time, a new owner runs it and decided to transfer to primary office of the establishment to his home address and I believe had the legal business address changed. So now, the business is located still at "415 Streetname St." BUT the business is listed as being at "1007 SomeOtherStreet St."

So now I am going into Google Places, Google Plus, and Google Maps and it is bringing up at least 2 of the 3 addresses and asking me to pick.  For Google Maps, I'm still using the physical address of the actual buildings since the client is only concerned with being able to provide directions to new customers.

Is this going to cause problems when I start to link these different social media entities together and the addresses aren't matching?

[SpokeHQ]

The thing to do here is create both a social media company page and a social media location page. The company page would have the official company mailing address. The location page would have the address of the physical storage property. Then, create Google / other search engine local entries for EACH, and associate them. Clearly define what each one is. If a map site has the wrong thing, such as the business address of the old owner's house, contact their service and ask them to change it right away, rather than waiting for it to reindex.

By creating both a business and location social media pages/channels, you make it easier to deal with if the new owner decides to expand in the future, as well.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Bradley,

If I'm correctly understanding your client's scenario, your client is the new owner of a storage facility that was previously owned by someone else. This is what needs to happen:

• The address you use must be the exact address to which customers come to conduct business. It should not be someone's home address, unless the home is located at the address where business is being conducted face-to-face with customers.

• All references, whether social, local, website-based or otherwise, should exactly match this address, without any kind of variation. If more than one address, or if odd variants of the address, exist anywhere on the web, Google will index them and will become confused about the legitimate address of the business. This will impede your client's ability to achieve high local rankings.

• After establishing what the legitimate address is for the business, you, as the Local SEO on the project, must conduct a citation cleanup campaign. In this work, you will be manually searching for every possible reference to the business name + any addresses and phone numbers that may have been associated with the business over the past ten years. You must then attempt to edit all the data you find so that it matches the correct core NAP (name, address, phone number) of the current business.

Be prepared for this to be a lot of work. Prepare your client so that he understands that he must invest in your time for this, or his ranking efforts will always be hindered by inconsistent NAP. Hope this helps!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi William,

Creative thinking, but this is not a strategy I would recommend for a local business. Local businesses need to publish a single clear NAP signal, and adding mailing addresses for social media  or other purposes will cloud that signal. Because of this, I don't believe what you are recommending would be good fit for this scenario, though it might be a creative approach in a non-local scenario.