Is your business operating in a specific area but does not have a physical location? Non-physical businesses such as at-home workers, virtual firms, and delivery services can all benefit from this form of local SEO.
But how do you promote a non-brick-and-mortar brand?
Generally, these businesses fall into one of the below categories.
1. Trades and Service Area Businesses.
Companies such as plumbing, landscaping, electricians generally do not have a drop-in facility and instead perform household callouts and services on site. This firm type often has no physical headquarters; however, you serve a specific area.
2. Home-based business
Many startup firms will operate out of a home address and is an essential first step for any company. Although your home is a physical address, you may not want people calling your home to do business. The defining feature of this type of business is that you’re working out of your house. This does not include virtual business. An example of a firm in this category would be a start-up providing a service or product that had face to face interaction, such as a dog-walker or art teacher.
3. Virtual business
If your firm never meets clients face to face and you provide the product or service solely online, you fall into this category. This could include subscription-based ingredient and recipe delivery services or Digital Marketing services. Many of these firms can be categorised as E-Commerce. These services may have physical locations such as warehouses and offices; however, you may not wish to have call-in customers.
4. Hybrid business
The best example of a hybrid company would be a restaurant offering on-site services and delivery. The delivery element serves an area and does not require a physical location, and the dine-in services are location-based.
Many firms have found themselves in this category due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with many restaurants forced into offering service area services to stay afloat. If this is the relevant category for your firm, you should combine whichever of the above options applies to one strategy.
Before we talk about all the beneficial things we can do to help local SEO, here are a few major mistakes to avoid.
- Do not waste time and money paying for an unstaffed PO box to fake a location if you do not have one. ‘Faking’ an address can lead to frustration if people try to visit/send to these locations.
- Don’t set up strings of locations using staff houses to feign multiple locations.
- If you own a real estate firm or letting agent, do not use the houses for sale or rent as locations of your firm.
Local SEO for Service Area Businesses.
This form of non-physical business has been put at the forefront of Googles more recent changes to algorithms. In addition, with the pandemic forcing companies online, this type of firm has been recognised more officially in Googles rankings.
Local marketing for SABs
In-person contact required
Google is cutting SEO ratings to punish firms who set up Google my business accounts with no face to face contact with their clients.
Hiding your address required
You must provide an address for Google my business, but you should ensure it does not display online as a physical location. Although many people will say having your site not show up as a pin on google is negative, Google has asked that all businesses that do not operate a physical location refrain from doing so.
Setting service areas
Once you have removed your physical location, you must add your service area. You do this by entering cities/counties and regions where you operate. We recommend adding no more than 15 and having them be no further than 2 hours’ drive from your address.
More than one listing allowed for some models.
If you have more than one warehouse or location that is non-visitable, create a new listing but do not overlap your service areas. We recommend not doing this for every service you provide, as this will lead to overlap when Google reads these as the same service.
Organic marketing for SABs
A website is the most crucial consumer interaction platform when you do not have a physical location. Therefore, you must ensure your website is mobile-friendly, secure and provides a simple and enjoyable user experience. In addition, by optimising the performance of your website and boosting your search ranking, you will increase website traffic and sales.
Creating unique landing pages for each service area can also be beneficial to solidify your localness. For example, if you operate a carpentry firm in Dublin 18, you can create a unique landing page for north Wicklow and south Dublin. This solidifies your localness and provides the consumer with information on your firm explicitly based on their area.
You should avoid making pages that are near-duplicates of one another. This is hurtful to Google’s perception of your firm and can be perceived as spam. We also recommend limiting the number of unique landing pages as too many can be seen as spam.
Paid local marketing for SABs
Although brick-and-mortar businesses will still rank higher than those without a physical location, this is starting to change. For now, the only way to bridge the gap is through Google ads. The downside to these location-based ads is that they require investment. However, the upside is Google lets you pay for visibility you just can’t earn any other way. We recommend testing this out, and if there is a positive ROI, it is worthwhile.
How to do local SEO for home-based businesses
There are several potential types of home workers. Which of these statements applies to you?
1. I serve customers in-person at my home and want my address to be public
This could be a day-care, private tutor, or any other business that offers their service from their home. This type of business should follow standard brick and mortar style firms approach as they want location visitors.
2. I serve customers in-person at my home and want my address to be private
Google doesn’t have clear instructions for this model. However, you should hide your address. To avoid home visitors, you should clear your location from Google and enter a service area instead.
Usually, the best approach is to decide on a particular area in which you operate to maximise organic visibility. An example would be using Blarney as a specified small location rather than Cork county.
3. I work from home and serve customers at their locations
Most of those who fall into this category are tradespeople. You are operating out of your home but provide your services on site. You should remove your physical location for this model and add a service area. We also recommend using high-quality landing pages that are service area-specific. This will boost your local SEO to make up for the lack of a pin on Google maps.
How to do local SEO for virtual businesses
E-commerce companies without storefronts all fall under the “virtual business” heading. Although they may have a warehouse, depot or office, they do not facilitate visitors. Do not set up a Google my business account for these firms. Instead, take a look around for other possible directories that may allow your firm to use them.
On the bright side, you can do a few things to help your organic search rankings. Using Google ads, you can pay for your visibility. You can also ensure your website is better than the competition by maximising your domain authority which could beat out your competition for the top spots in Googles’ organic search rankings.
For more information and any questions, please email us at [email protected]. We would be happy to help.
