Transcript
Hi guys, and welcome to another edition of Zupo SEO Talk & Tea.
Today's conversation is about why you should have an address in the city that you are trying to rank for. That is really important, in terms of local SEO. This is a very, very local SEO question. It was kind of a question that we run into a lot when we're first working with clients. We kind of want to go over that today. But again this is Zupo SEO Talk & Tea.
Today we have genmaicha. I really don't if that's how you say it. This was in one of our other views where we do their first taste test. We actually like it so much, we have it again. We're going to go ahead and get brewing. This tea, like I've mentioned before, is pretty brown. It tastes like toasted brown rice. If you've never had that, once you smell it, you just know what I'm talking about.
It's a green tea that has this hint of brown rice, almost like barley. It's a nice little a mix-up or change, if I may, when it comes to green tea. Well, let's go talk me about why should I have an address in the city you're trying to rank for.
When it comes to local SEO, an important factor is Google likes to return results to people who are searching for things that are close in proximity, especially for searches that have an intent that they are local. For example, if you're looking to watch a movie and you type in movie theater, your intent is probably you want to watch a movie theater in your local area. That doesn't mean that you can... What? You want to find movie theaters across the country, because of what benefit does that do you?
If you're looking for movie theaters, you are probably looking for one nearby you, and you want to go to that movie theater. That's kind of a good example of why Google really orients their searches around local. They want to make sure that when someone's looking for something locally, they return local results. What that means though, is that Google has an inherent priority to make sure that they are returning results that are relevant and local.
What that means for us, is that if you're trying to rank for a city, Google is going to give preference to businesses that have an address in that city. Because if someone in that city we're looking for a service or product like yours, and it's a localized search, then they want to find local businesses. Google wants to make sure they do that, because the more people get frustrated by Google, the less people will use it.
In this case, if you are trying to rank in a city, you will automatically almost be given a handicap, if you have an address in that city. We're in Orange County right now, but let's talk about Irvine. Let's say you want to rank in Irvine, but your office address is in Anaheim. You're going to have some difficulty there because again, like I just said, Google is going to give preference to businesses that have an address in Irvine.
If you are trying to rank for a city that is not the one you have an address in, you might have a problem, which is, you should focus in on the city you are located in first. You already have the handicap, and then you're going to rank much easier, because Google recognizes your business with that address, in that city. Therefore, you have an easier time ranking.
When you go beyond the city, your own city, the problem is, you have to do much more, because let's just use the pizza example. It's always the pizza examples here. You own a pizza shop in Anaheim, but you want to deliver to Irvine. There's five other pizza shops in Irvine. Those five pizza shops in Irvine will automatically be given a boost by Google, because they're located in Irvine.
If you are a rank above them, what you have to do, is you either have to do one of two things. One, is get an address in Irvine, and there's ways you can do it. You can be creative with it. You can have a satellite office. You can just have one person working over there. There's different ways to do that. It takes some creative business operations. There are some shady things you shouldn't do. For example, you shouldn't be buying virtual offices there. Google really cracks down on that, but you have to find somewhere to get an address.
What I've seen some businesses do, is they rent out a small location in the city they want, or the second thing you'd want to do, is your SEO on your site must be so powerful that you can outweigh the handicap that the Irvine businesses have. That requires a large investment of SEO resources. It's not impossible. We've seen people do it, but the key is you need to make sure that you have lots of content and lots of links coming in, where the level of content you have is so well-optimized and so thorough, you will beat out whatever the Irvine businesses have and their content. It's one of two things. What I always advise clients, is when we start SEO, sometimes their goals go out outside the city. Then we want to start there first.
What I like to tell the customers is, let's start with the city first. Let's get a win in your city, ranked number one there. Get the business in your local city, and then we can work out about branching out. Because when you want to go quickly into another city, and you never really done SEO, it can require too much resources that you're comfortable with. A lot of people like seeing results early. It's very important for you to have an address in the city that you are ranked for, if you want to give yourself an easier time. It is possible to not have the address, but like I mentioned before, it can get really difficult.
Unfortunately, if you already have an address in a city, then you're kind of already got something you're playing with. But if you're a business and you're still deciding where you want your address to be, please keep that in mind. I've worked with a lot of businesses where they're deciding. I wish they would have considered the SEO side of it, because when we sit down and do marketing, they picked a city that they're not actually really interested in. That's what the address is, and they won't rank in the other cities that they actually wanted.
These are really important considerations to have. All in all, it's not something you can truly, really mess with, but I do want to note that your address being in the city that you want to be ranked for is so important. If you can do that, please do it. If you can't, there are creative ways to get around it. All right?
I hope that was valuable for you guys today. If you guys liked what you saw, please like and subscribe. I'm going to go ahead and start pouring out some of this brown rice tea bags called genmaicha or however you say it. Someone please correct me. I hope to see you guys again next time. Thanks.