Service Area Listings

[Dawood]

Hello everyone, hope you are all doing well. My first post
Am a developer / designer from Colorado, I do alot of SEO as well, though GMB's are a little new to me, specifically the Service Area Listing type where the address is hidden.

I've read through the posts that I could regarding this and had some questions and assumptions that would appreciate verification and insight on.

1.) It's typically best to only do one or two zipcodes or locations per service area, more is not better.
2.) When the address is hidden, the business likely will show up depending on how well the websites SEO is, among other factors.
3.) Even if your address is hidden, google still uses that as a key factor as to if or how well the business shows up in that location (maps.)

I have a client that serves clients in a location about 150 miles away. I used their local address to verify the gmb, and added all the info I could. I verified the gmb a few weeks ago and am curious if it does take time, or does the distance make it pointless/almost impossible to show up. The site ranks on the first page organically (for selected searches.)

 

[Den]

I asked about this on this forum not too long ago and the unfortunate answer is that it is damn near impossible that a SAB will rank in other cities/areas other than the one you are located in.

If it is worthwhile for the client you can set up an office in whatever area you want to rank in as Whitespark wrote about in this post

What are your tricks for ranking a SAB in other cities? | Service Area Businesses

Since adding service areas seemingly does nothing to the ranking, how do you make sure your GMB pops up in other cities which you are not located in? Location keywords in descriptions & GMB posts? Getting reviews with those keywords? Is there anything else you can do? I've got a website...

www.localsearchforum.com

 

[Dawood]

thanks Den. It's alittle unfortunate that it works this way. My client serves the whole state and has agents located in different areas as well they drive around to locations when needed. I would have thought for a service area business like this the location used to verify like this should not matter as much. We have a series of 100 unique sites that rank really well in a lot of locations.

 

[Dawood]

also, to confirm, if am understanding correctly, if am in the right location it doesn't matter if I show my address. Or does having a physical location where people can "walk in" still get presidence over SAL?

 

[Tony Wang]

@Dawood as Den mentioned, statewide presence defies Google's notion of local. They have a strong preference for businesses that are in the same city as the searcher, and the proximity factor is even smaller than city on most typical searches. It's possible to rank organically for a statewide search, depending on your competition, and of course how well your seo is.

As for hidden address vs visible, there is some disagreement, even amongst folks on here. Some will swear that hiding your address will hurt you, others disagree. Regardless, that will only affect hyper local searches, ie, same city/neighborhood.

Of course, without knowing your exact situation, it's hard to say for sure. If he's really niche and there are few competitors in the area, you could definitely show up in the local pack for neighboring cities.

Also, the service area you designate in GMB does not affect your appearance in the search results, it only shows users the areas you typically service.

Google doesn't really care how much business you do all over the state. They want to give the "local" businesses preference. Because how else will they get you to buy Ads

 

[Tim Colling]

Because how else will they get you to buy Ads

^^ Truth

 

[Dawood]

@Tony Wang Understood and thanks!
Yeah I guess my issue was, for example: Live in Fort Collins, have a unique domain name and website for Eagle County. Used office address in Fort Collins to verify it, and hid the address. The distance between the address that was used to verify the business and the area is 200miles. The gmb does not show up at all in map, and oddly enough, only if you do a search from the office that was used to verify the business, does it show up. So my guess is, where you verify, hidden or not will still make a different.

 

[Tony Wang]

Yes, where you verify is your official business address, so that's where Google will rank you. Last year Google allowed SAB's to completely remove the address if it was hidden. However, they are still going to use your business location to determine your relevance to a search. There was hope and speculation that they would use other signals instead of your business address. I haven't seen evidence of that yet, not sure if others have.

 

[Dawood]

@Tony Wang ok thank you!