What happens to my website's organic search results if business is moved to a new area?
I am moving my cleaning service from the Dallas region to the Oklahoma City region. My current website ranks 3rd on the local google map in organic search results. Example: someone searches for "house cleaning allen tx" What will happen when I've moved to OKC and someone searches "house cleaning OKC" ?? My guess is I have to start building a ranking all over again for that area right?
Answers (6)
Harvey R.
Senior Web Developer at AutoZone
Best Answers in: Web Development (2), Blogging (1), E-Commerce (1)
That's probably true, however, you have more resources than just Google maps for local rankings. Once you know your address in OKC, make sure that is on your website (a contact page, maybe the footer of each page).
If you have a blog, write an article about the move and include "house cleaning Oklahoma City" as part of your blog title post.
Of course, create a new Google maps listing as soon as you know your new address.
No matter what you do, there will probably be a drop-off for a while but being proactive about listing your new address on your site and writing blog posts with city names in the title and body content will go a long way towards getting your site ranked in your new area.
A quick point of caution:
Don't stuff the keywords in blog titles, use them naturally, but use them!
Hope this helps.
You will experience a dip in rankings for a bit, but it shouldn't be for too long. Just make sure to tweak the optimization of your site (title tags, meta description, etc) and your site's content with your new location (and remove all references to the old place).
Following Harvey's tips if you have a blog and making sure your Google Local/Maps listing is updated will help as well.
Good luck with the move!
Here are the steps you should follow to make sure you get the local search ranking back quickly -
1. Change your company address in Google Local and confirm it by mail. It will take few weeks.
2. Make sure to have your local listing headline in the following order - "house cleaning your location".
3. Add quality description including your core business offering in the Description: section of the local business listing
4. Add images of your company logo, office, map
5. Add a company introduction video
Hope this helps.
Sameer Khan
Rackspace Search & Web Analyst
Author: Keywebmetrics.com blog
Maria N.
Account Manager at Google
Best Answers in: Search Marketing (11), Internet Marketing (2), Job Search (1), Advertising (1), Viral Marketing (1), Business Development (1), Graphic Design (1), Mobile Marketing (1), Social Enterpreneurship (1), E-Commerce (1), Web Development (1)
You are right in that you would have to start building the rank for the new keywords. There's a good chance you'll update your website's content which should help with the rank, but the challenge for ranking well for the new location would be in updating your incoming links' anchor text with the new location. In any case, it is not too difficult to make sure your organic results are good - just give it some thought and some work. Good luck!
Links:
Chris M.
Owner at METAPILOT Search Engine Optimization & Social Media Marketing
Best Answers in: Search Marketing (1)
Go to your google local listing by clicking on the "reviews" link next to your result for the "house cleaning allen tx" search). Then review the listings beneath the "More about this place" heading. (You have about 20 sites under that heading, including those on the following pages). These are (some of) the sites google uses to verify your address and if the address that these sites have for you differs from that which show in your listing, your ranking in Google Maps, or "7 Pack", will typically suffer. Once you've gone through all of those, add or change your business address at these sites, as well (if you haven't already):
Yahoo! Local
Bing
Yellow Pages
AOL Local Search
AskCity
SuperPages
MapQuest
Yelp
Citysearch
Local.com
Dex
ZoomInfo
InfoSpace
MatchPoint.com
Insiderpages.com
GetFave.com
Merchant Circle
Hot Frog
Kudzu
Best of the Web
It is going to take you a while and a small monetary investment for some of them but as the owner of your own small business, it's just stuff you need to take care of and it is going to help your local visibility in Google and other places on the web.
Besides a verified address however, the physical address must be actually located within the vicinity of the city or town you want to show up in and the further your address is from the center of that city, the easier it may be for competitors to get listed above you. OKC may have many more cleaning companies to compete with than you have in Allen, making it more difficult to get yourself in the 7 pack. So when you say "Oklahoma City region" does that mean your address will be within OKC or far outside the city or in a neighboring city. Knowing the answer to that would help determine which city you should actually be shooting for.
ALSO: I'd also add "Oklahoma City" (or what ever city you are going to target) to the end of you company name in your Google Local listing. Do that by editing your listing at the Google Local Business Center.
BTW, your Local result also comes up for the searches "maid service allen tx", "cleaning services" allen tx" and may also come up for plain old "cleaning service" for those people who are actually doing that search from within the city of Allen. You can look at your stats to see which of those searches brings you more traffic than the others. If things are really competitive when you get to OKC, Consider revising your business name to "Tailor Maid Service - Oklahoma City" or "Tailor Cleaning Service - Oklahoma City" depending on which term your stats show brings you more visitors from the search engines.
Links:
- http://maps.google.com/maps/place?sourceid=groowe&oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=...
- http://www.google.com/local/add
Clarification added December 31, 2009:
As far as your organic ranking, you'll need some basic optimization to get it to show up for new location. The easiest place to start is simply replacing your old address with your old one in those places it shows up on your site. Make sure you add the name of your city several times on your home page. If that doesn't do it, I suggest you contact an SEO company and have them put some effort into it.
