Changing my physical Address. How do I?

[CKerr]

I have a flower delivery website and flower shop in Edmonton.  When I set us the website I used my office address and not the Flower shop Address.  We are moving now and I am moving the Website and changing my map listing to be at the flower shop now but the flower shop already has a google map listing.  What is the best way to move this business into the flower shop without being punished by Google?  Should I delete the current map listing at the flower shop or should i Just change the address and website of the flower shops listing to my website?

Sorry I know I have not explained it well but its kinda complicated.  Any help would be great as I just want to make sure I do this right.

This is my map and website listing.  https://plus.google.com/112887922864576573528/about?gl=ca&hl=en

This is the flower shop's website and listing. https://plus.google.com/101712543043690197786/about?gl=ca&hl=en

Thanks

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey Christopher

Just to clarify:

• You have two businesses (A & B) both in Edmonton and running at two separate addresses.
• You are moving business A into the address of business B

You do not state what the actual problem is here but I am going to assume it has something to do with a loss of traffic / visibility in local search due to a changed address and merging of the two businesses (please correct me if this is wrong). I see strong local results (7 pack #1) for floral delivery edmonton canada / flower delivery edmonton canada but much less strong results for the other business.

I like to think in real world terms and if these are two distinct businesses, related, but distinct then really Google should not have a problem with this if they are in the same address so I see no reason why you would be 'punished' for this. Lots of physical addresses house more than one office / business so as long as you are not looking to cheat, then you should be fine.

So, we have to think about the practicalities of doing this:

1. Change address on website
2. change address on all citations to match new address

If we want to maintain (and possibly improve) our local SEO then we have to be fastidious in our approach at identifying and updating all external listings of the address (be that structured or unstructured citations).

I would approach this as follows.

**1. Identify all external citations & document in a spreadsheet. **

To do this we need to google for all listings for your business. Structured citations are easy so something like:

"business name" "post code" -www.url.co.uk

You are basically looking for business name, postcode and removing any listings from your own site.

For the unstructured citations you may need to use a little more Google-Fu and play with this a little and look for mentions of your brand name + location - your website. Play with it, be thorough, find all mentions of your site

"business name" "phone number" -www.url.co.uk
"business name" "location" -www.url.co.uk
etc

Then, document all of this in a spreadsheet and start to work through these listings updating the address.

2. Update address on your website, social profiles and any citations under your control

3. Go to work updating all the other structured and unstructured citations

You may need to verify the new address and jump through some hoops so you may see a drop in visibility for a short period but if you are thorough here you will likely come out the other side stronger with better and more consistent citations.

Top tip - co occurrence of keywords and external reviews are hot topics in local SEO so look at this as a chance to update and improve any citations you find and talk about your business, services and make note of any you can look for that can have reviews added.

Ultimately, you should not be punished if you are not doing anything nefarious here so do what you need to do and look at it as an opportunity to improve your listings as you go.

I have not added two existing businesses to one address like this but we have moved lots of businesses from one address to another and usually made solid improvements in the process.

Hope that helps
Marcus

[MiriamEllis]

I'm reading Christopher's explanation a little differently. Christopher, are you saying you have a single business (a flower shop) that you originally listed at something like your home office address, but that the flower shop is now moving and you want it to be listed at its new location? If so, this is the procedure:

1. Edit the existent Google listing to show the new address. This may require re-verification and may result in ranking loss, at least temporarily.

2. You may also lose your reviews. However, if you have the new Google Places for Business Dashboard, the good news is that it is possible to request that Google moves your old reviews to the new location. Read Googler Jade's explanation of this here:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/business/3IyA72bx3o4

If you have the old dashboard, you cannot do this and will likely lose any reviews associated with the old address.

3. Launch a citation cleanup campaign in which you discover and edit all mentions of the business across the web and update them to reflect the new address. This includes mentions on your website of the old address.

If you are saying that you are also changing domain names (not sure if this is what you meant) you need to change this everywhere, too.

You may experience some fluctuations in rankings, but hopefully you can keep working towards building authority over time.