Brick-and-mortar businesses which are traditional street side business that offers products or services face to face to the consumers, often has the advantage of reaping the most benefits out of local SEO marketing. The non-brick-and-mortar businesses often are left in confusion as they do not know how to promote their brand due to the ever-changing guidelines of Google.
There are marketing possibilities for every kind of business, but one should know which path to follow.
Categorizing the Business models which do not have a Physical address: –
Service area Business
Under this category fall most of the home services
Like plumbing, gardening, services given by electricians. You may or may not have a physical street address to serve as a headquarter, the main feature of this business is to provide service to the customer face to face.
Home based Business
The home address serves as the physical location from where the business is run by the individual, it could be a daycare centre, or it could be a combination as well.
For example, a yoga instructor who runs a yoga studio at her house but also provides classes by going to the customer’s house.
Virtual business
The interaction between customers and the business owners are carried out strictly over the phone, computer, shipping and other remote means. This business is under e-commerce and maybe operating out of multiple regions or areas, but no customer ever comes to the location.
Hybrid businesses
A hybrid business is defined by both an online presence as well as having a physical street address in terms of a store, warehouse or factory.
Local marketing for Search Area Businesses
First of all, one need to understand the Google’s requirements when it comes to SABs
There must be some sort of in-person contact with the customers in order to be permitted for a Google My Business Listing. Providing an address to Google in the creation of SAB listing is required but afterward it is mandatory to hide the address.
Service Area Businesses should also publish the best possible website, which should be mobile-friendly, informative, persuasive consumer-centric content and steadily growing domain authority based on inbound links gained over time.
You want to get this site ranking as highly as you can for as many of your important search phrases as possible.
For those individuals who serve customers in person at their homes, they should take advantage of marketing themselves as a brick-and-mortar business. Google prefers that you set no hours of operation on your listing. Based on your chosen GMB categories, however, you may be eligible for Google’s booking features. And, you can choose to mention in the business description field that access is by appointment only
For those businesses which serve customers in person but want their address to be hidden, Google doesn’t have clear enough provisions for this specific model, but basically, you will be handling it as you would a SAB that needs to hide its address. Google wants you to clear the address from the Info section of the Google My Business dashboard. You can choose to add a service area and get how to setup local SEO for businesses.
If privacy is a special concern for a particular business, it’s important to know that if Google has any record of your home address, bugs or policy changes could lead to it being visible at some point.
