Moving From CA To NV USA should I risk citation building SAB w/ a Virtual Office?

[onebluesummer]

I want to go full strong on SEO .. local SEO and that means dropping an address with everything I touch.

Are Virtual offices ok for SAB's? .. of course with address hidden..

What would YOU do if you had a client that was moving from one state to another?

Moving time is about 9 months out.

I've moved local business before and it usually takes 9mo exactly to get a GMB to show up in a different local PAK.

Thanks!
Charlie

 

[Eric Rohrback]

Virtual offices are not OK - don't risk it. If you're moving your business to a new location and you're a SAB, then use your physical address in the new city and hide the address.

It also does not take "9mo exactly" to get a GMB page to show up in a city. If I had a client moving to a new city that didn't have a brick and mortar office, then I would advise them the same as i'm doing for you. Use your real, physical address and hide the main address line from the Maps. SAB's will have fewer citation sources, since not all accept hiding the address line (showing only city, state) but doing it correctly is important.

If you use a virtual address (like a regus suite), know that the possibility of getting removed from maps is very likely. Are you willing to risk all the time and work you're putting into this false address, just to start all over again once it's removed? I'm guessing not, so do it the right way to start.

 

[James Watt]

To add to Eric's comment, if you look at Google's Guidelines, it says:

Businesses that are under construction or that have not yet opened to the public are ineligible.

I might have misunderstood what you were saying, but it's against TOS to set up a profile and start trying to rank before you've actually moved. Makes sense, you don't want customers to start seeing you before you're there. And when you say it takes 9 months to start showing, that's definitely not true... even very new businesses with poor ranking can start showing relatively quickly for certain searchers very close to their geographic location.

What I would do, is focus on organic SEO. Organic ranking is a big part of local, and it's something you can start right now before the move, and almost all that value will go with the client, giving them a good head start. Thinking about how to leverage a grand opening to get links, how to forge relationships with the local community when they move, maybe finding events to get involved with or sponsor, etc. are all good things to prepare for early. I'd also make sure I had my ducks in a row for updating citations to make all the address changes as painless and fast as possible. Joy Hawkins wrote an article about how to handle a move, it holds just as true when crossing state lines as not.

 

[onebluesummer]

Great Responses, Thanks guys!

Good points.. which now leads me to ..
So if a SAB hides its address is it better to only build citations that allow to hide address?
or
Is it better to build all other citations with the address Google has?

Now that I'm thinking about it they did suspend a currently listing a couple months ago because I had my address listed on my website, but hidden on google. So they made me remove my address on my site..

Also.. is Moz Local the best place to use for data aggravation? Or What major ones should I use.. I understand to to niche and local citations too.

THanks