Moving GBP to another city.

[Hec93]

So, I have been working with this client in the plumbing niche for over a year now and they were doing great with their GBP, which was a SAB. Despite our advice, they want it to try and verify their GBP in the city that we were targeting across the entire website/service landing pages with the campaign. After multiple failed attempts, client got extremally frustrated and decides to "move" the GBP to a next by city where they have a space they can "dress" as an office to pass the verification. Here´s the main problem: this other city is considerably smaller in population and by consequence, they KWs they want to go after have way less vol and overall opportunities to convert via map pack; and, like I said before all the website content is targeting (and having good organic rankings) the city we have been working on all this time. I know what is going to happen but I guess what I am asking is some sort of magic spell but, is there ANY way that the impact this (bad) decision will have on the business can be reduced? I was thinking making the location page we already have for the new city the landing page for the GBP and keep everything the same, but we know that it is usually better to have an entire website targeting a city than just one page to which you will need to build autorithy and all bunch of other stuff that will take time.
Any other ideas or should I just forget about this chimera and accept that everything needs to start again?

 

[ElizabethRule]

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink In this case, you can't make the client take good SEO advice if they are set on doing the exact opposite.

I would focus on "owning" rankings for the GBP in the new city, however small, cuz if there is less competition you can likely rank higher for your core keywords with some effort than you could in a more competitive city. You can give that city's location page some TLC and get that to rank in organic search for as many core keywords as you can. Make it the GBP landing page so the GBP can have a better shot to rank in maps for those keywords. Work with that you got!

I wouldn't waste time trying to get the GBP to rank in a city it's not physically located in, so I would switch to focus on organic for that city and get as many pages as possible to rank organically there to try and recoup as much traffic from that city as possible.

 

[Hec93]

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink In this case, you can't make the client take good SEO advice if they are set on doing the exact opposite.

I would focus on "owning" rankings for the GBP in the new city, however small, cuz if there is less competition you can likely rank higher for your core keywords with some effort than you could in a more competitive city. You can give that city's location page some TLC and get that to rank in organic search for as many core keywords as you can. Make it the GBP landing page so the GBP can have a better shot to rank in maps for those keywords. Work with that you got!

I wouldn't waste time trying to get the GBP to rank in a city it's not physically located in, so I would switch to focus on organic for that city and get as many pages as possible to rank organically there to try and recoup as much traffic from that city as possible.

Hi! Thank you so much for answering. This is the type of thing that makes this forum amazing.

Yeah, that is what I thought and unfortunately, that ship already sailed as the client already went ahead and changed the address of their GBP to the new city. Verification is still pending but it won´t be an issue. To be honest, even though this strategy of making the location page we already had the landing page for their "new" GBP is what makes sense, or al least the only way to reduce the impact this will have on their business, it feels weird/wrong, having the GBP strategy going on a different direction from the website content (that has been successfully targeting the original and larger city). I guess we will have to see how it goes. There is definitely some testing to do and a rough adjusting phase coming. Work with what you got 100%!

 

[ElizabethRule]

I think many businesses that have their GBP in a smaller city probably have the website target a larger city or even a whole state. The GBP is kind of "locked in" when it comes to location targeting, as in you need to focus on the city you're in, not much wiggle room to expand beyond that (of course, this depends on other factors too). With the website though, you are free to target a larger city and rank anywhere organically, which can expand search visibility far beyond your physical location. This can be a game changer for SABs.

As long as you have a strong location page for the city you are in, and possibly a few other pages for that city (depending on competition and what the SERP looks like for your target keywords) you should be good to target a larger city with the rest of the website. Like you said, definitely some testing to do!! Sounds like a fun challenge to me