What options are there for local SEO when no physical location exists?

[KS__]

Great help Miriam.

Since it has been a couple of since you typed this answer, does it still hold true and 2015? I posted a similar query on http://moz.com/community/q/how-to-rank-for-a-location-country-without-having-a-physical-address-in-that-location-country#reply_297693\. Will be great if you could help me out there.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi KS!

I'm responding on your other thread. Thanks for asking!

[KS__]

Thanks Miriam. Waiting eagerly.

[acfalla]

Hi Miriam,

I run a multi-city domestic cleaning company and am facing similar challenges.  Because we do all our work on-site at clients' houses we just use a storage unit in each city as our base of operations - much more cost effective this way.

We are able to receive mail at each of our locations (a service the storage locations offer) but do you think using these storage unit addresses as our physical locations in each city would get us into trouble with google?

best Adam

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Adam,

Good question. Unfortunately, a storage unit would not likely meet Google's guidelines for a physical location. Rather, what you'd need to do here is list whatever your headquarters are (your main location where you answer your phone, even if that's your house) and build just 1 Google+ Local page for that, being sure to set the business as a service area business so that the address is hidden. Then, instead of going for local pack rankings for your service locations, you'll need to go for organic ones via the city landing pages you build on your website for the various cities you serve.

[Rachel_J]

Hi Miriam,

Does this response still hold true for almost 2016? I am doing local SEO for a business that is more service based, but their drivers have home offices. I am considering putting our truck drivers phone numbers and addresses as locations in the cities we have trucks. Also, can I use their regular local phone number instead of our 1800 number?

Is this strategy risky?

Thanks!

All the best,

Rachel

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Rachel,

Glad you asked this! At this point, no, I would not give the same advice as 3 years ago. Though I saw the above advice working back then, it's not advice I would currently give.

I don't recommend creating a network of truck drivers' houses for the purpose of citation building. Home-based businesses are fine, for a single location, but a network like this could raise red flags. If you can't staff a physical office in a city, I do not advise building a Google My Business account for it. So, you'll need to stick with getting GMB on-board for whatever your staffed, physical location is and then working on content (rather than citations) for your service cities.

Times have changed

[Rachel_J]

Hi Miriam,

Thanks, I really appreciate you taking the time to answer this question. One last thing, if the truck drivers officially answer phone calls from their house does that make a difference? Also, it would be less than 10 drivers.

Would you place the driver's home location on the website even if your not creating a GMB account for it?

I hope I'm not beating a dead horse, but this is pretty disappointing for me :).

Thanks again,

Rachel

[Rachel_J]

To add to the question, there are two office locations which I will be creating GMB accounts for. Should I be creating service areas where we have trucks on Google My Business? In other words unchecking that i service customers at my store? Is this better than not having a location at all? Can I do this also if we contract out some of our work to subcontractors in that location?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Rachel,

I know it can be tough, and scenarios like yours have grey areas.

Here is the straight and narrow on this:

• You build GMB listings for your two offices, but not for the truck drivers houses.

• Unless people are actually walking into those offices off the street during stated business hours, yours is a service area business and should be checking the boxes for this, rather than for serving customer at the physical location.

• You can set a service radius for each of the 2 locations, yes, but I advise going easy with this and not setting too large of one.

• You develop a landing page on your website for each of the cities you serve and, hopefully, earn some links to these pages as well as linking to them in a visible way internally

• You build all your other citations for the 2 locations, but not for the truck driver's houses.

• Be sure each physical office has its own unique local phone number so that they don't get mixed up

• Be sure to earn reviews for both locations

With the above path, you should be free of worry that you are violating any guidelines and can simply focus on building up your branding to be all it can be.

Now, here's the grey area and not so straight and narrow:

You could ostensibly argue that each of your truckers is, in fact, working from an office in his house and answering the phone "ABC Trucking" each time it rings. I can see that, and, I can also see the horse sense in wanting customers to know that a truck driver is right near them, if the service is one in which time is of the essence.

The problem is, what sometimes makes good horse sense doesn't always make good Google sense. We know for a fact that Google has the capability not only of looking at streetview-level images of any address, but that they also read signage on buildings. This is where the stress of worry may come into going with anything other than the straight and narrow.

Imagine you are Google. You receive a report from XYZ Trucking that ABC Plumbing is outranking them in 10 different cities, when all they really have there is a house. "It's not a real office!" XYZ plumbing complains. At this point, Google has the capability of checking up on this using their own tools, and if what they decide is that ABC's business with just 2 real offices is trying to make themselves look like they have 12 offices, it's unlikely that you are going to even have a chance to argue the horse-sense point of view. Rather, you could wake up one morning to find those 10 listings gone and the 2 for your legitimate offices falling in rankings. It's not an experience I'd wish on anybody!

Some business owners take risks. Google isn't the best at policing their own data sometimes, and people can get away with things for years, but in this case, you are the SEO on the job, and the stability of your client's visibility tops any hopes of temporary gains.

If this were my client, I'd explain all of the above to him and then explain how we are going with the straight-and-narrow, for the long-term health of his business and reputation.

Long answer - whew - but I find it helps to tell myself a story when weighting possible outcomes. Finally, regarding your question about putting the truckers' home addresses on the website, I'm not seeing a good reason for this as I'm guessing they don't want the public showing up at their homes, and there is a chance that the presence of all this non-physical-location NAP could get mixed up with the NAP for the 2 physical offices you'll be doing your best to build up.

Hope this helps, and I think you've asked some very important questions, here!

[Rachel_J]

Miriam,

I really appreciate the lengthy explanation! It helped me feel like you understand what I am trying to accomplish and I will use your words as a guide.

Thanks for all your time and expertise!

Rachel

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Rachel!

That was a pretty long reply, but if it helped, well worth the time. Best of luck in your efforts!

[3VE]

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