Mismatch on the City and Zip Code as strategy?

[EEE3]

I have never seen this before, but I recently took over a client that for all intents and purposes is considered to be in Metro A. They're just south of the border and everyone (customers, etc.) consider them in Metro A. The problem is their physical address puts them in Small Town B. For whatever reason, this client has decided that they are going to put their address as follows:

Street 
Metro A, Zip Code Small Town B

They've mismatched the city and zip code in attempts to have a stronger showing in Metro A organically. I've never seen this strategy before, my gut tells me bad, bad, bad. So I'm looking for a better strategy, advice, etc.

[RyanPurkey]

That's odd. Are they a Service Area Business (SAB) that's attempting to show up in results for those given areas?

[MiriamEllis]

Sounds not quite right - agree. Have the client look up their own business on SmartyStreets.com to see how the USPS officially recognizes their address. If they deviate from this, they may be headed for trouble

[EEE3]

No. They're not an SAB. Brick and mortar.

[EEE3]

Thanks Miriam. It definitely does output an invalid address because the city & zip don't match. Do you have any specific resources you'd recommend that I can use to back up my recommendation that this is not a good idea? Aside from the traditional you need a correct address and your NAP must be consistent? I have a feeling their argument might be "But if all my address citations match (even though it's incorrect) in the major local ecosystems, how will Google know? I'd love to be able to counter that with something more solid, or an example where someone else did something similar and their results went sour.

[RyanPurkey]

Uh oh. Miriam's advice is spot on. They should best get that cleaned up.

Per the guidelines: https://support.google.com/business/answer/2853879?hl=en, "Enter the complete and exact street address for your location."

[MiriamEllis]

You're welcome!  I think the most influential resource you can share with the client will be the 2014 Local Search Ranking Factors survey, which is based on data provided by some of the top Local SEOs in the world.

The #1 negative ranking factor in the most recent survey is:

Listing detected at false business location.

See: http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

By intentionally falsifying part of their location information, your client is putting their business at the #1 risk - if this statistic doesn't convince them, they may be a client you'll want to part company with.

The other piece of data I would give this client is that, because many of the major local business aggregators rely on USPS to standardize addresses, the use of a false zip code is likely to be auto-corrected by some or all of them at some point, creating NAP inconsistency. Google will then pool knowledge about this NAP confusion around the web, and this takes us to negative ranking factors 3, 4 and 5 in LSRF 2014. So - uh-oh, the business is running the risks inherent in 4 of 5 top negative ranking factors. That's about as drastic as it gets.

Moreover, messing up their zip code could be driving their legitimate clients away. If I'm looking for tacos in zip code 32201 and this is the location of your client's taco shop, but Google no longer trusts that it's located in that zip code, I'll be going to a competitor's taco shop with correct NAP because consistency has allowed it to outrank the business with the mismatching NAP. There's just no good reason for a brick-and-mortar business to do this to themselves. Hope you can help him see the light on this one. If not, I'd personally walk away.

[EEE3]

Thanks Miriam. They do at least have the correct format on their G+ listings, but if it's a mismatch everywhere else, then they're a fish out of water.

It's great to read some solid resources advocating against it. I know this client is willing to do the right thing. I just needed the right pieces of information to make my recommendation stronger.

Thanks again!!!

[MiriamEllis]

So glad if that will help! Good luck - you have a really important chance to help this business