How to handle temporary location for a business (e.g. summer kids camp)

[msencenb]

I'm working with a client who offers summer sleepaway camps for kids (Vermont) and day camps (New Jersey).

Does anyone have advice on how to best represent/optimize their sleepaway camps in local search results? I like and use JSON schema markup in most cases, but I haven't found much guidance for a situation like this where the camp is only for a handful of weeks a year and operates out of temporary locations (i.e. this year the summer camp lodging is at a hotel and a separate facility for their sports training).

Thank you all, I've been learning a ton from this forum!

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

Hi @msencenb. Does your client have any offices that they operate from in both Vermont and New Jersey? It would be helpful if you could elaborate about how and where the business operates administratively. The approach you take for local search will most likely be affected by whether they have any permanent office space or not. What is their legal operating address, where they get mail or that shows on their business license(s).

 

[msencenb]

Thanks @JeffClevelandTN. They do have an office/facility in New Jersey, which is what the day camps operate out of at the moment. The Vermont facility and hotel is the truly temporary one (and they may add other camp locations in the future).

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

Hi @msencenb, thanks for the additional info. As you probably already know, your client will not be eligible for any Google Business Profiles in any locations/cities/states they don't have a physical office. Without having a physical office/address, it also not really feasible to create citations outside of NJ. Depending on the location of the NJ office, if the camp(s) are not in close proximity, a GBP for that location may not be too beneficial either from a local search sense, but would add credibility (with great reviews) for anybody wanting to check on the legitimacy of the business.

Just my first impression with limited information, but due to the industry, I think that spending a lot of time on organic ranking position would not be as beneficial as promoting on social media channels especially for the non-sports camps. Kid's camps are most often engaged thru word-of-mouth and referral by other adults/parents as there is a huge trust factor involved. I did a super quick keyword search related to "summer camps" and there is not a whole lot of traffic there even in large cities.

However, for "sports camps" you may have an opportunity there. Sports Camps get a lot of exposure on social media but there does appear to be some reasonable search traffic. If you created well optimized very localized landing pages on the website with coaching staff credentials, prices, etc., all lined up several weeks in advance of the sports camp it is possible to get very good ranking results. Of course, you need to do your due diligence and do proper keyword search and competitive analysis in your client's markets before hand.

We help promote some summer kids camps in our hometown, primarily on FB and they always sell out.

Hope this helps and maybe other members will share their feedback too. Good luck!