What is the best way to do citations when working from home?

[Stefan Kiss]

I guess you could say I am start up local SEO company. I am working from my living room and want to start building citations.

My cell phone is my business line. I do have a land line that comes with my internet that I don?t use.

And my address is my apartment.

What is the best way to do citations? Do I just use my home address and cell number? How about business hours? Should I just make things up?

How can I verify my listings?

Any thoughts or feedback on this would be great.

Thanks

 

[mborgelt]

It seems to me that as long as your cell phone number has a local area code you can use that. As for your address, you may run into issues there. We once took on a client who's listing was blocked from search because their business address was in a residential area. But at the same time we have seen some businesses use parking lots as their business address and they are the first page of some pretty competitive searches. Hope that helps!

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hi Stefan, and welcome to the community!

The best way to do citations is to list your actual business address. If that is your apartment, list that address.

If you have a desire to hide your address, there are quite a few sites that allow you to do so.

In regards to your business hours, just list what your business hours are

 

[Stefan Kiss]

My land line is a local number. And my cell phone is close but for a bigger city two hours away. I guess I may have to get an answering machine and use my land line as the number. I would like to use my cell but if I will get hit for having the local number I guess I will just suck it up.

Thanks for the responses.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Stefan, and welcome!

Colan is right.

Plus be advised that it's a violation to have your address showing on your G+ Local page if you work from home and don't have signage and full time walk-in off the street service for clients.

And this is super important to know for clients like plumbers who do all their work onsite at the clients location. You need to do the settings right on their G+ L listings too or it can cause major problems.

This will explain and show you in more detail how and why to hide your address in the Google My Business dashboard:

<a href="http://www.localsearchforum.com/service-area-business-issues/27378-video-how-hide-address-your-google-local-page-plus-why.html">▶ VIDEO: HOW to Hide Address on your Google+ Local Page (Plus Why)</a>

Since you are just learning, be sure to read our Google Local 101 forum and Google Local IMPORTANT forum to learn more about Google My Business issues and stay up-to-date on all the changes.

 

[Stefan Kiss]

Linda,

You have just really saved me. I tend to do things in a Ready, Shoot & Aim kind of way. To get over the none stop research and planning while getting nothing done way I used to live by. So I would of jumped right in and made a bunch of mistakes.

"Plus be advised that it's a violation to have your address showing on your G+ Local page if you work from home and don't have signage and full time walk-in off the street service for clients."

Does this mean I can never be in the six pack and listed on the map if I don't have a real business location?

Thanks

 

[Linda Buquet]

Oh no, check Plumber San Marcos Ca and plumber searches in other cities. You'll see tons with hidden address ranking on top, sometimes even in the A spot.

If address is hidden the marker is round instead of teardrop and listing only shows city/state.
But does not affect ranking at all.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

If address is hidden the marker is round instead of teardrop and listing only shows city/state. But does not affect ranking at all.

And in the new Google Maps, Google doesn't provide a marker at all for listings with hidden address. Here's an example - https://plus.google.com/105589483440057777109

 

[Linda Buquet]

Oh shoot that's right Colan. Thanks for mentioning. I always use Classic so forgot about that.

But still in the SERPs, in the 7 pack, hidden address markers are round.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

But still in the SERPs, in the 7 pack, hidden address markers are round.

True Dat!