Will changing my business location affect my ranking for localised searches in my original area?

[fionadoggett]

I run a mobile outdoor personal training service in London, UK (i.e. no bricks and mortar gym). Or, rather, my business is in London (all my clients and the freelance trainers that work for me) but I'm personally due to move out to the county of Suffolk.

As I work from a home office and my company's registered address is my home, that means I have to inform Companies House and various government agencies that the company has moved.

Does this mean:

a) I also must tell Google the company has moved, and;

b) if I do will Google start to see my website as being for a Suffolk-based company?

I really don't want this to happen: my clientele are mostly in London., I still want to market to Londoners. And if I want to expand the areas covered by my company, Suffolk is not high on my list.

You'll excuse me if this is a simple question!

Thanks for any help you could give

[customerparadigm.com]

Yes, unfortunately if you change the address that you have listed on your Website, along with the address you have for a Google+ page, then you might start to have issues with local search results migrating to Sufolk instead of London.

My recommendation: Change your Google+ listing to a Service-area business

For local business search, you'll want to set up the business so it not based on the physical location / address (i.e. your new home in Sufolk), but serves a greater area (i.e. London). In order to do this, you will need to set up your Google+ account as a Service-area business on Google.

This is perfect for a trainer, local plumber, tree trimmer or construction crew that works at customer's locations (either homes or businesses) vs. your home address.

My recommendation would be to go here:
https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038163?hl=en

... and set up your service areas based on the zip codes or cities that the business serves.

You also have the option to check or uncheck, "I serve customers at my business address."

You might need to go through another round of verification to make this change, however.

I hope this helps!

Thanks,

• Jeff

[Shakur]

Hi  fionadoggett,

The thing is that you do not need to tell Google you are moving. Remember that you are working online, so you can hold your business location just for Google. Anyway i have seen many times in google places two different locations of the same business (but in the same city) so, may be is possible to hold both of them.

Good luck

[BritneyMuller]

customerparadignm.com makes a good point, however I've seen consistency & having a set office location work better.

https://moz.com/local/ does a great job of cleaning up consistency errors and is less expensive than Yext Business Listings.

Tips:

1. Submit a Change Of Address to G

2. Consistency, consistency, consistency.

3. Verify all major business listings for your new location.

4. Make sure your new location is on your website.

5. Schema markup never hurt.

Good Luck Fiona!

[MickEdwards]

A reputable business will have a trading address on their site, therefore the actual trading address and listings will differ.  In this case every aspect of NAP will differ.

[LindaBuquet]

There are a few issues I wanted to point out.

1st off the address in your Google dashboard needs to be the real address you work from.  So if you move you MUST change it in dash. If you don't all kinds of problems could come up including duplicates and including your listing being deleted.

Any time you move, it breaks NAP so you will likely lose ranking.

If you move to a new city you will likely only rank in that city, not the previous city. (Depends on competition and proximity.)

In either case you need to set service area and be sure address is hidden. But that service area does not affect ranking in any way at all. Ranking area is still determined by the location that's in dash, even though address is hidden.

Hope that helps and best of luck!

[fionadoggett]

Thanks, Jeff, I have unchecked 'I serve customers at my address' and have added the locations I serve customers.

[fionadoggett]

That does help, Linda, thank you. Although I'm in a quandary. If I register multiple service areas under my business listing, will my competition still rank higher than me if their business address is in London ? I assume that when Google are informed of my move to another town, my organic ranking for London-related keywords ("personal training in westminster") would be affected?

[LindaBuquet]

Hi Fiona,

Unfortunately, it does not really matter if you set up multiple service areas, you'll still only have a chance of ranking in the city or near the area the business is actually located. (Depending on competition.)

And also, since you'll just be moving there, you may not rank well at 1st compared to established businesses that have been there for a long time. The algo is like a giant puzzle and there are lots of things at play that go into the ranking order.

Moving can be challenging for your Google ranking, so I'd suggest reading the Moz Local Search Ranking Factors if you have not yet and be ready to start working to increase some of those ranking signals after you move. Using the Moz Local tool to try to either correct or build new citations to the new location would be important too.